Six In The Morning

Protesters, police clash in Denver, face off in Nashville

 Incidents come amid a week of police crackdowns around the country

msnbc.com news services

DENVER – The simmering tension near the Colorado Capitol escalated dramatically Saturday with more than a dozen arrests and authorities firing rounds of pellets filled with pepper spray at supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The clash came as Occupy Wall Street protesters and state officials in Tennessee squared off for a third consecutive night, even though a local judge has refused to jail demonstrators who have been arrested.

In Denver, officers in riot gear moved late in the day into a park where protesters were attempting to establish an encampment, hauling off demonstrators just hours after a standoff at the Capitol steps degenerated into a fight that ended in a cloud of Mace and pepper spray.

Syria’s Assad warns of ‘earthquake’ if west intervenes  

 Bashar al-Assad warns against intervention in Syria, saying it is different in every respect from Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen

Reuters

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 30 October 2011  

Western powers risk causing an “earthquake” across the Middle East if they intervene in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad said, after protesters called for foreign protection from a crackdown in which 3,000 people have been killed.

Assad’s warning came ahead of Syrian government talks on Sunday with the Arab League aimed at starting a dialogue between the government and opposition and ending violence which has escalated across Syria in recent days.

Spain’s town hall meltdown

Cuts are now biting deep into civic life. One council has even bet its budget on the lottery

Alasdair Fotheringham Sunday, 30 October 2011

If Carmen Martinez Gomez, a nurse, wants to see the effects of the dramatic spending cuts Spain is currently enduring, all she has to do is glance down from her seventh-floor balcony at the building work below on the Metro, Granada’s first underground line. It is less than 10 miles long, but the Metro has already been five years in the making. And with its workers unpaid since January, its inauguration has just been put back again, reports said last week, until 2013. “It feels as if it’s never going to be finished,” Ms Martinez says. “The whole of Camino de Ronda” – three miles long and one of Granada’s main arterial streets – “looks as if a bomb hit it. Shops are going out of business because there’s virtually no through traffic, and for the elderly and disabled it’s very difficult to cross the road. The project has split the city in two.”

Al-Shabaab target Mogadishu AU military base



MOGADISHU, SOMALIA – Oct 30 2011

Both sides however gave conflicting reports on the operation.

The African Union peacekeeping force in Mogadishu (Amisom) issued a statement saying AU troops had “beaten off an attack by al-Qaeda linked terrorists on one of their positions in the outskirts of the city.

“During the failed attack, the suicide bombers blew themselves, but the extremists were unable to take control of the Amisom position.”

The statement did not indicate the number of casualties.

 Can Super Mario Save the Day for Europe?

 

By LANDON THOMAS Jr. and JACK EWING

MARIO DRAGHI was working the room as only Mario Draghi can.

The occasion was a gala at the Old Opera House here in honor of Jean-Claude Trichet, the most powerful central banker in Europe. But in some ways, the evening belonged as much to Mr. Draghi, the Italian who will succeed Mr. Trichet on Tuesday as the president of the European Central Bank in the midst of an economic maelstrom that threatens to tear apart the euro, if not Europe itself.

European leaders took a step toward resolving the crisis last Thursday, with an agreement from banks to take a 50 percent loss on the face value of their Greek debt. Far from heralding an end to the problems, however, the plan ushered in a crucial new phrase in the battle to avert financial disaster.

Thailand floods: Bangkok flood defenses are holding

Thailand’s prime minister expressed cautious optimism Saturday that the flood threat to Bangkok may be receding. But flooding from high tides may still pose a problem for a city just six feet above sea level.

By Jason Szep and Apornrath Phoonphongphiphat, Reuter

Receding floodwaters north of Bangkok have reduced the threat to the Thai capital, the prime minister said on Saturday, but high tides in the Gulf of Thailand will still test the city’s flood defenses.

“If things go on like this, we expect floodwater in Bangkok to recede within the first week of November,” Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said on national television.

Bangkok’s main waterway, the Chao Phraya River, overflowed its banks in some areas on Saturday during high tides in the Gulf of Thailand, about 20 km (12 miles) to the south. The high tides will last until Monday