Six In The Morning Thursday December 8

Climate change could render Sudan 'uninhabitable'

By Bianca Britton, CNN

Updated 0000 GMT (0800 HKT) December 8, 2016 

Sudan's ecosystems and natural resources are deteriorating.

Temperatures are rising, water supplies are scarce, soil fertility is low and severe droughts are common. After years of desertification, its rich biodiversity is under threat and drought has hindered the fight against hunger.

This burden is affecting not only the country's food security and sustainable development, but also the homes of many Sudanese families.

Dust storms -- known locally as "Haboob" -- have also increased in this region. Moving like a gigantic thick wall, it carries sand and dust -- burying homes, increasing evaporation to a region that's struggling to preserve water supplies, as well as eroding valuable fertile soil.

Obama under mounting pressure to disclose Russia's role in US election

Senior House Democrats seek briefing on ‘Russian interference or involvement’ a week after senators signed letter asking for information to be declassified

Spencer Ackerman in New York

@attackerman

Barack Obama is facing growing pressure from congressional Democrats in both houses demanding further disclosures regarding Russia’s role in the 2016 US elections.

The White House has not responded to a week-old letter signed by every Democrat and aligned member of the Senate intelligence committee seeking declassification of “additional information concerning the Russian government and the US election”.

Now a group of senior House Democrats has also written to the president, seeking a classified briefing for colleagues on “Russian entities’ hacking of American political organizations; hacking and strategic release of emails from campaign officials; the WikiLeaks disclosures; fake news stories produced and distributed with the intent to mislead American voters; and any other Russian or Russian-related interference or involvement in our recent election.”

NATO officer: 150 Turkish soldiers forced to leave positions following coup bid

General Scaparrotti's remarks have provided a rare insight into how Turkey's wide-ranging crackdown has affected NATO. On Tuesday, DW exclusively revealed how the Erdogan regime is targeting its own NATO personnel.

"The Turkish military had a fairly sizeable number of officers that were either detained, some recalled from here, that worked for us here, and some retired from active service," US General Curtis Scaparrotti told reporters Wednesday on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Brussels.

In all, there has been around a 50 percent reduction in the number of Turkish officers. Scaparrotti admitted that losing so many seasoned soldiers had placed "an extra load on our remaining people," although he added about half the positions had been refilled.

Scaparrotti's public comments provide a rare glimpse into how Turkey's wide-ranging crackdown on military personnel following July's botched coup attempt has affected world's largest military alliance.

Women wrestle with Cambodia's sporting taboo

PHNOM PENH (AFP) - 

The gym mats glisten with humidity and sweat as Cambodian wrestling star Chov Sotheara grapples with her male trainer, crashing through a cultural taboo against women in sport with every tussle and throw.

In conservative Cambodia gender lines are clearly defined with woman expected to adhere to 'feminine' norms of behaviour and appearance. They are certainly not meant to be throwing men over.

But without female partners to practice with, 33-year-old Chov Sotheara has no other choice.

"It's hard for parents and friends to understand that as a woman you can also enjoy sport," she said from a Phnom Penh gym that feels a far cry from the Rio Olympics, during which she represented her country last summer.

Why Lebanese women are protesting a decades-old rape law

About a dozen white veiled women stood outside government buildings on Tuesday as Lebanon's parliament discussed whether or not it should do away with a law that decriminalizes rape, provided the rapist marries his victim. 

By Christina Beck, Staff

A dozen Lebanese women dressed in bloodstained wedding dresses gathered outside of government buildings in Beirut on Tuesday to protest a rape law that they say is archaic and unjust.

The late 1940s law dictates that a rapist will not be punished if he marries his victim, a provision that astounds many women today. Protesters say that this law violates survivors' rights, and should be repealed. The law is currently being discussed in parliament. 

These protesters join a wave of women around the region in protesting laws that they say are unjust or outdated, from Saudi driving bans to other proposals to pardon men convicted of rape if they marry the victim. 

'My baby isn't dead, she was stolen from me'

Soutik BiswasIndia correspondent

More than two years after doctors at a clinic in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata told her that her newborn had died, Kanon Sarkar believes that her baby girl is still alive.

On a summer evening in July 2014, the clinic handed her family the corpse of an infant, tightly wrapped in white cloth, and told them to go home.

The grief-stricken family returned to their village, some 100km (60 miles) from the city, and following Hindu tradition, immersed the infant's body in a river skirting the village. A year later, the parents burned the death certificate "to forget the bad memories".

"Now I am convinced that my newborn baby was stolen and sold. And I was given somebody else's dead baby," Mrs Sarkar, 27, told the BBC, welling up, outside her sparse home in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district.