Six In The Morning

Ukraine President Poroshenko hails ‘turning point’

 5 July 2014 Last updated at 23:01

 BBC

Ukraine’s president has hailed the recapture of the rebel stronghold of Sloviansk as the start of a turning point in the three-month conflict.

Petro Poroshenko said it was not a total victory, but rather an event of “huge symbolic importance”.

Government forces have made territorial gains since launching an offensive this week in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, following the breakdown of a ceasefire.

Pro-Russian rebels still hold the two regional capitals and other key areas.

But Sloviansk had been considered a focal point of the rebellion, and was the military centre of the self-declared People’s Republic of Donetsk.

Fresh video shows faces of pair who may have killed Palestinian teenager

Footage appears to replicate video shot from another angle which the boy’s family says depicts moment of his abduction

Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem

theguardian.com, Sunday 6 July 2014 07.35 BST

Fresh video footage has emerged that for the first time shows the faces of the alleged suspects in the brutal abduction and murder of a Palestinian teenager, whose burned body was found dumped in woodland near Jerusalem last week.

The video, acquired by the website the Electronic Intifada, which champions Palestinian issues, appears to replicate exactly video shot from another angle which was acquired by the Guardian on Friday and which Mohamed Abu Khdeir’s family says depicts the moment of his abduction.

 Italian navy pleads for help saving migrant boats, saying it ‘does not want a sea of death’

The rescue operation is costing £6m a month. Charlotte McDonald-Gibson reports from inside the marine control centre in Rome

CHARLOTTE MCDONALD-GIBSON  Author Biography  ROME  Sunday 06 July 2014

Sailing in a straight line on a calm day, it would take a well-equipped boat about 10 hours to get from the Libyan coast to Lampedusa, the remote Italian island which has become a beacon for tens of thousands of desperate people seeking refuge from war or poverty.

Few of these migrant boats actually make it in that time, however. With just a magnetic compass to guide them, the people packed on rubber dinghies often make dangerous diversions into choppy waters.

For much of those perilous journeys, the men, women and children travel unseen among the merchant ships and fishing fleets which criss-cross the Mediterranean.

NSA Experts: ‘National Security Has Become a State Religion’

In a SPIEGEL interview, Edward Snowden’s lawyer, Jesselyn Radack, and former NSA contractor Thomas Drake discuss the reasons behind the American spying agency’s obssession with collecting data.

Interview Conducted By Sven Becker, Marcel Rosenbach and Jörg Schindler

For more than a year now, the world has closely followed revelations disclosed by former American intelligence worker Edward Snowden. The documents from the whistleblower’s archive have fueled an at times fierce debate over the sense and legality of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) sheer greed for data.

In its current issue, SPIEGEL conducted two interviews it hopes will contribute to the debate. The first is with two major critics of the NSA’s work — human rights activist and lawyer Jesselyn Radack, who represents Snowden, and former spy Thomas Drake. The second interview is with John Podesta, a special advisor to United States President Barack Obama.

Curfew imposed after deadly clashes between Buddhists, Muslims in Myanmar

July 6, 2014 — Updated 0643 GMT (1443 HKT)

By Tim Hume, CNN

Authorities have imposed a curfew in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, following nights of deadly communal violence between Buddhists and Muslims.

Two people have been killed and 14 injured since rioting erupted Tuesday, Col. Aung Kyaw Moe, Mandalay’s Region border affairs and Security Minister tells CNN.

The rioting began when a mob began attacking a tea shop owned by a Muslim man accused of raping a Buddhist woman, and continued the following night.

 Digital Whiz-Kids Create High-Quality Music for Jihadi Groups

 

 BY ALEXANDER SMITH

Islamist militants sweeping through Iraq don’t just wield riches and huge caches of weapons – they’re marching to battle to slick, professional-sounding recordings aimed at inspiring their fighters, winning new young followers and terrorizing the population.

These fiery, sometimes gruesome and unusually polished productions have become a staple accompaniment to the growing number of videos produced and shared on social media by groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, more commonly known as ISIS.