Six In The Morning Friday December 16

Obama vows action against Russia over election hacks

US President Barack Obama has vowed to take action against Russia for its alleged interference in the US presidential election campaign.

"We need to take action and we will," he told US radio station NPR.

Russia stands accused by the US of hacking the emails of the Democratic Party and a key Hillary Clinton aide, which the Kremlin strongly denies.

Republican president-elect Donald Trump has also dismissed the claim as "ridiculous" and politically motivated.

The intelligence agencies say they have overwhelming evidence that Russian hackers linked to the Kremlin were behind the hacks.

And on Thursday, a White House spokesman said President Vladimir Putin was involved in the cyber-attacks.

Philippines drug war's wide net claims 6-year-old shot dead in his sleep

By Will Ripley and Jay Croft, CNN

Updated 0118 GMT (0918 HKT) December 16, 2016 

A 6-year-old Manila boy killed in his sleep is among the latest victims in the ongoing violence against suspected drug criminals in the Philippines.

"There was a knock on the door," said Elizabeth Navarro, who is pregnant and already a mother of five at 29. "My husband said who's that? Then I heard two gunshots."

By the time Navarro realized what was happening, her husband, Domingo Mañosca, and son, Francis, were dead. The gunmen were gone, in what has become open season for anyone suspected of being tied to drugs.

How Germany's deportations system works

Germany has begun a plan to begin more mass deportations. But the political pressure to accelerate asylum procedures and deportation has to be balanced by the rule of law.

There were protests at Frankfurt airport but little trouble on Wednesday as a group of 34 people became the first batch of Afghan asylum seekers to be sent home en masse by the German government. This is part of a new plan to deport over 12,000 Afghans after Germany signed a memorandum of understanding with Kabul.

Under pressure from Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, Germany's immigration authorities are speeding up the asylum procedures of those people considered to have little chance of gaining asylum. In November, new statistics showed that the number of deportations had reached a record high in 2016 - some 19,914 people had been deported in the first three-quarters of the year, just short of the 20,888 people deported in the whole of 2015.

Venezuelan women sell their hair to buy food as economic crisis worsens

OBSERVERS

Nestor Solano

 People in Venezuela are doing whatever they can to make ends meet as an economic crisis continues to ravage their country. They are even selling their hair. Our Observers say that, for the past three months, hundreds of Venezuelan women have been lining up at the border each day to sell their hair illegally in neighbouring Colombia. Most of these women use the pesos they earn to buy necessities like food and medicine. 
For more than a year, Venezuelans have been facing a difficult “new normal” as their country struggles through an economic crisis that has led to widespread shortages. For some, that means lining up for hours in front of stores. Others have started crossing the border to buy supplies in Colombia. Others have started scavenging food from trash cans. When faced with empty store shelves and sky-high prices for basic goods, Venezuelans are coping in any way they can. 
The new illegal trade of selling hair has sprung up in the border state of Tachira since September. Every day, hundreds of Venezuelan women cross the border into Colombia to sacrifice their hair for a little money. 

Damning indictment of govt inaction against militant bodies

NASIR IQBAL

ISLAMABAD: The inquiry commission on the Aug 8 Quetta carnage has called for banning terrorist organisations without any delay by enforcing the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) in letter and spirit.

Terrorist organisations must not be permitted to hold meetings and people must be informed about the reasons for banning such organisations, said the Justice Qazi Faez Isa-led commission in its 110-page inquiry report submitted to a three-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali on Thursday.

The commission was formed by the Supreme Court on Oct 6 to investigate the Aug 8 suicide attack on Quetta’s Civil Hospital in which at least 74 people, mostly lawyers, had lost their lives.

Brazil just enacted the harshest austerity program in the world

The president is giving unprecedented shock therapy to the country’s failing economy.

Updated by Zeeshan Aleem zeeshan.aleem@vox.com 

Americans worried that Donald Trump will try to shred the nation’s social welfare programs can take some grim comfort by looking south: No matter what Republicans do, it will pale in comparison with the changes that are about to ravage Brazil.

On Thursday, a new constitutional amendment goes into effect in Brazil that effectively freezes federal government spending for two decades. Since the spending cap can only increase by the rate of inflation in the previous year, that means that spending on government programs like education, health care, pensions, infrastructure, and defense will, in real terms, remain paused at 2016 levels until the year 2037.