Six In The Morning

Hundreds held in anti-Wall Street protest  

Witnesses describe chaotic scenes on New York’s Brooklyn Bridge as police officers surround and handcuff demonstrators.

Last Modified: 02 Oct 2011

New York City police said about 700 protesters have been arrested after they swarmed the Brooklyn Bridge and shut down a lane of traffic for several hours.

Police said some demonstrators spilled onto the roadway Saturday night after being told to stay on the pedestrian pathway.

“Over 700 summonses and desk appearance tickets have been issued in connection with a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge late this afternoon after multiple warnings by police were given to protesters to stay on the pedestrian walkway, and that if they took roadway they would be arrested,” said a police spokesman.

“Some complied and took the walkway without being arrested. Others proceeded on the Brooklyn-bound vehicular roadway and were.”

Pakistan protests at assassin’s death sentence

The country’s blasphemy laws continue to provoke murder and mayhem

By Andrew Buncombe  Sunday, 2 October 2011

A court in Pakistan has passed the death penalty on the bodyguard who assassinated a high-profile provincial politician after he called for reform of the country’s controversial blasphemy laws. In response, supporters of the convicted man, Mumtaz Qadri, immediately took to the streets, to denounce the decision.

The anti-terrorism court, located inside a prison in Rawalpindi and which the media was not permitted to enter, handed down two death sentences, for murder and for terrorism, after convicting Qadri of shooting dead Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab province, earlier this year. “The court has awarded my client death,” one of Qadri’s lawyers told Agence France-Presse.

Libya conflict: Sirte medical need dire, says Red Cross

Fierce fighting for the besieged Libyan city of Sirte has left people there in desperate need of medical aid, says the International Red Cross.

The BBC  2 October 2011

People are dying in the main hospital because of a shortage of oxygen and fuel, the ICRC said.

Libya’s transitional authorities called a two-day truce on Friday to let civilians leave, but the ICRC team said fighting was continuing.

Troops loyal to ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi are being slowly pushed back.

Sirte, Col Gaddafi’s hometown, and Bani Walid are the two main centres of resistance against the forces of the National Transitional Council (NTC).

A Search for the Real Ratko Mladic

He stands accused of some of the worst crimes known to criminal law. But former Bosnian-Serb military leader Ratko Mladic doesn’t think he has to answer for anything — not even for the wartime suicide of his daughter. There are many in Serbia who would agree.

By Erich Follath

To succumb to this kind of hobby in the way that he did, you have to be a bit of a dictator. But you also must be a bit of a lackey. You need to know those under your protection. And you can’t have qualms if one of your underlings dies or be too sensitive when you get stung.

Ratko Mladic knows all that only too well. He knows all about living and dying, about willing and unwilling victims, about pests and how to control them. Mladic is the perfect beekeeper.

For once, everyone can agree — be they the general’s all-forgiving friends or his sworn enemies — that no-one knows more about how to build up cells or how to look after a complex collective.

Trekking in Kashmir: Where nuclear powers once clashed

Kashmir – torn by nuclear rivals India and Pakistan – hopes new trekking business will divert timber smugglers and help reivive the economy.

By Ben Arnoldy, Staff writer  

On that first day, we climbed up and up into Kashmir’s forests and mountains, home to nomadic shepherds, timber thieves, and Indian soldiers defending the Line of Control from Pakistani militants.

I was the first Westerner some had ever seen on the Himalayan footpaths crisscrossing the world’s most militarized zone. Rimmed by peaks flowing into Pakistan and China, the Kashmir Valley looks pristine. But for decades it was a paradise lost to fighting between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan and a Kashmiri Muslim struggle for independence from New Delhi.

Love of animals led to language and man’s domination of Earth

 When our apemen ancestors began to interact with animals they developed empathy and the ability to communicate, claims anthropologist Pat Shipman

Robin McKie

The Observer, Sunday 2 October 2011

Humans became masters of the planet for a startling reason: our love of animals gave us unsurpassed power over nature. This is the claim of a leading American anthropologist who says our prehistoric ancestors’ intense relationships with other creatures – including those we hunt, keep as pets and use for food – propelled humanity towards global domination.

Interacting with animals on an intimate basis led humans to develop sophisticated tools and evolve enhanced communication skills, including language itself, Dr Pat Shipman of Pennsylvania State University told the Observer.