Six In The Morning

Mohammed says he beheaded U.S. reporter despite warnings  

Chilling portraits of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind, and other Guantanamo detainees emerge in the latest release of classified material from WikiLeaks.

Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau

Reporting from Washington- A senior Al Qaeda military commander strongly warned Khalid Shaikh Mohammed not to kill Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, cautioning him “it would not be wise to murder Pearl” and that he should “be returned back to one of the previous groups who held him, or freed.”

But Mohammed told his U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay that he cut off Pearl’s head anyway, according to U.S. military documents posted on the Internet on Monday by WikiLeaks.

Guantánamo Bay files rewrite the story of Osama bin Laden’s Tora Bora escape

Several documents claim al-Qaida leader evaded US offensive by heading north, rather than into Pakistan as widely thought

Jason Burke

The Guardian, Tuesday 26 April 2011

Osama bin Laden escaped American and British special forces closing in on his refuge in December 2001 with the help of a minor local warlord who provided fighters to guide him to safety in the north-east of Afghanistan, claims a secret intelligence report compiled by officials at Guantánamo Bay.

The al-Qaida leader’s successful flight from Tora Bora has long been seen as one of the key early lapses of the international military effort in Afghanistan. Though various theories have been floated, no firm account of how Bin Laden evaded the coalition forces and their Afghan auxiliaries has yet emerged.

However documents obtained by the Guardian reveal a host of new details about the escape of the world’s most wanted man.  

UN chief sets conditions for Sri Lanka probe



AP Tuesday, 26 April 2011

 Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said yesterday that he will only launch an international investigation into allegations of possible war crimes during the final stages of the Sri Lanka’s civil war two years ago if the government agrees, which is highly unlikely, or member states call for a probe.

A UN statement publicly releasing a report by a UN panel said the secretary-general has been advised that he needs government consent or a decision from member states in an international forum. He didn’t specify a forum but it could include the UN Security Council, General Assembly or Human Rights Council.

Syria intensifies crackdown on protests

At least 500 pro-democracy activists arrested, rights group says, after authorities deployed troops to quell protests.

Last Modified: 26 Apr 2011

Syrian security forces have arrested at least 500 pro-democracy activists, a rights group said, as the government continues a violent crackdown on anti-government protests across the country.

The arrests followed the deployment of Syrian troops backed by tanks and heavy armour on the streets of two southern towns, the Syrian rights organisation Sawasiah said on Tuesday.

The group said it had received reports that at least 20 people were killed in the city of Deraa in the aftermath of the raid by troops loyal to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Monday. But communications have been cut in the city, making it difficult to confirm the information.

25 years on: Ukraine remembers Chernobyl

The world on Tuesday marks a quarter of a century since the world’s worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. The anniversary has added resonance after the recent Fukushima disaster in Japan.  

DISASTERS | 26.04.2011  

Ceremonies are taking place Tuesday to mark the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, amid heightened fears over nuclear safety in the wake of the recent Fukushima accident in Japan.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is visiting the site of the Chernobyl accident on Tuesday to take part in a memorial service, joined by his Ukrainian counterpart, Viktor Yanukovych. President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, is however not joining the ceremony.

How wrong is Time’s most influential people list?

Really wrong. Time has a strange definition of ‘influence.’

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer  

Time’s List of the 100 “most influential people in the world” came out last week. I only noticed it today because I came across a news item about Egyptian Internet activist Wael Ghonim taking a sabbatical from his job at Google to, according to his Twitter account, “start a technology focused NGO to help fight poverty & foster education in Egypt.”

Mr. Ghonim was the little known Google marketing executive who, with friends, started the “We are all Khaled Said” Facebook page to commemorate the murder of a middle-class Egyptian man by the police. That site evolved into the online rallying point for the Egyptian revolution. He was arrested in the early days of the Egyptian uprising and upon his release gave an emotional television interview that briefly made him the revolution’s media star.