Six In The Morning Sunday May 22

Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor killed in US drone strike

Afghan government and militants confirm death of Mullah Omar’s successor in strike in Afghanistan-Pakistan border region

Jon Boone in Islamabad, Sune Engel Rasmussenin Kabul and agencies

Sunday 22 May 201609.38 BST

The Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor has been killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan, the militant group and the Kabul government have confirmed.

A senior Taliban commander, Mullah Abdul Rauf, told Associated Press (AP) on Sunday that Mansoor died in the strike on Friday night. Rauf said the strike took place “in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area”.

The office of the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, confirmed the death on Twitter:

It blamed the attack on his “refusal to answer repeated calls” to end violence in the country.

War on Isis: Western fighters join Kurds to fight terror group in Iraq and Syria

Increasing numbers of westerners have been leaving their jobs and homes to volunteer as fighters with Kurdish groups in Syria and Iraq

 

• Norma Costello Sinjar 

“At the start we didn't enter any homes. Isis usually booby trap them with IEDS,” Jason Troy, a Canadian fighter with the Kurdish Peshmerga says, pushing open the gate to a bombed out building in Sinjar, Iraqi Kurdistan.
 
“Smell anything?” he asks as he clambers over the rubble to point out the remnants of a rocket fired by Isis a few weeks ago. An overpowering smell of garlic hits us as the 38-year-old Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) from Alberta talks with frenzied energy.
 
“That’s mustard gas,” he claims before asking if we want to join him later to meet his unit.

Rise of the Populists: Austria a Step Ahead in Europe's Race to the Right

By Hasnain Kazim, Katrin Kuntz, Walter Mayr and Barbara Supp

Austria's mainstream parties long believed they could keep the far right under control. On Sunday, though, a right-wing populist could become the country's president. What went wrong? The answer has implications for all of Europe.


For someone who, it is said, wants to fundamentally change the country, Norbert Hofer seems quite relaxed. He is sitting there sipping his tea with a smile on his face and talking about all that he wants to accomplish should he be elected president of Austria.

It is a recent Friday morning, shortly before an important press conference, but Hofer is not to be rushed. His ornate office is located on the second floor of the parliament building in the heart of Vienna, where he -- for the time being -- occupies the position of third president of the Nationalrat, Austria's parliament. On May 22, though, he is seeking to make history. Were he to win the second round of presidential elections on that day, he would become the first candidate ever from the right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) to move into the Hofburg Palace, the former imperial seat that now serves as the office of the country's president.

Why drone blowback in Pakistan is a myth

AQIL SHAH 

HUMAN rights organisations and even some former US military commanders argue that drone strikes inadvertently increase terrorism by exerting a “blowback” effect. Their logic is simple. Drone strikes kill more innocent civilians than terrorists, which radicalises affected populations and motivates them to join terrorist groups to retaliate against the United States.

The perfect case for testing the blowback effect is Pakistan, where, since 2004, the CIA has launched an estimated 423 strikes, constituting 75 per cent of the agency’s drone strikes worldwide.

The strikes were carried out in the country’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) bordering Afgha­nistan, where Al Qaeda and Taliban militants found a safe haven after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

How the United States and Vietnam have become unlikely friends

By Nathan Thompson, for CNN

Updated 0406 GMT (1206 HKT) May 22, 2016

April 1975. The dog-end of the Vietnam War.

The South Vietnamese were demoralized after the U.S. withdrawal of combat forces in 1973 and the cessation of military support. The North Vietnamese, who had been fighting for nearly 20 years to see their homeland united under communism, seized the opportunity, launching a massive offensive.

Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital, fell, forcing the U.S. to stage a massive helicopter evacuation -- generating one of the best known images of the war.

The city was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, after the revolutionary leader, and the country was united and renamed the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV).

Two years after coup ousted Thai PM says country 'suffering'

AFP

 Thailand's ousted prime minister called on the kingdom's generals to return power to the people as the country marked the second anniversary Sunday of its latest coup.

Yingluck Shinawatra, whose government was thrown out of office on 22 May 2014 in the military's 12th successful putsch, said the country was "suffering" under army rule.

Since their takeover, Thailand's military have clamped down on dissent, banning political protest and ramping up prosecutions under the country's draconian sedition and royal defamation laws.

The economy has also stagnated, debunking the junta's claims that it alone holds the key to the nation's prosperity.