Six In The Morning

The teenage girl whose baseball success provides a flimsy bridge across America’s great racial divide

 Out of America: Mo’ne is a black 13-year-old bringing a small ray of light against the dark backdrop of Missouri

 RUPERT CORNWELL Sunday 24 August 2014

At last there’s a good news story from America. Put aside the chaos abroad and the beheadings in Iraq, the sense of a president adrift and aloof, and the violence in Ferguson, Missouri, ripping open racial wounds that seemed to be healing. Instead, consider the feats of Mo’ne Davis.

Mo’ne is a black girl, aged 13, who hails from inner-city Philadelphia – and right now she’s probably the most famous baseball player on the planet. She’s on the cover of the latest Sports Illustrated; Michelle Obama has tweeted about her and every talk show in the land has tried to land her.

Baseball is a game for males, right? Not in the case of the Taney Dragons little leaguers, for whom Mo’ne is star pitcher and hitter. Little League has its own version of the World Series, for children between 11 and 13. Girls have featured in it before, but none with the impact of Mo’ne.

China executes eight for terrorist activities including Tiananmen attack

Government continues crackdown over violent incidents blamed on Uighur separatists from Xinjiang region

Agence France-Presse in Beijing

theguardian.com, Sunday 24 August 2014 04.26 BST

China has executed eight people for “terrorist attacks”, including three people it described as masterminding a suicide car crash in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 2013, state media has announced.

The official Xinhua news agency said the eight were involved in several cases connected to the north-western region of Xinjiang, where Beijing says separatist militants are behind a string of attacks that have rocked China in recent months.

Three of the condemned, named by Xinhua as Huseyin Guxur, Yusup Wherniyas and Yusup Ehmet, were “deprived of political rights to life” for their role in the assault in Tiananmen Square in October.

Militias turn Libya’s capital Tripoli into no-go zone for govt, travellers

August 24, 2014 – 3:10PM

Heba al-Shibani

Benghazi, Libya: Forces from the Libyan city of Misrata claim to have seized Tripoli’s main airport after more than a month of fighting with a rival militia.

If confirmed, the airport’s capture would be a major development in the battle to control Libya’s capital.

Fighting between the militias that helped overthrow Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi in 2011 has forced the government to relocate its offices from the city and travellers to use smaller airports. In the NATO-backed campaign to oust Gaddafi, fighters from the western region of Zintan and Misrata, east of Tripoli, were comrades-in-arms. But they later fell out and have now turned parts of Tripoli into a battlefield.

Israeli airstrikes level Gaza buildings

Seven-storey office building and 11-floor residential tower collapse injuring dozens, as death toll crosses 2100.

 Last updated: 24 Aug 2014 07:13

Israel has carried out a series of airstrikes on several commercial and residential targets across Gaza, with a seven-storey office building being the latest one.

On Sunday morning, Gaza police said Israeli airstrikes collapsed Zafer tower, a day after a 11-storey residential tower block in the centre of Gaza City was bombed wounding 22 people, including 11 children.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said that the residential tower building, which collapsed completely, had been used as a command centre by Hamas fighters. Local residents said the building housed 32 families.

Separatists plan victory parade on Ukraine’s Independence Day



By SABRA AYRES

As officials in Ukraine’s capital prepared to parade tanks and soldiers Sunday to mark the anniversary of independence from the disintegrating Soviet Union, pro-Russia separatists who control this eastern city have their own plan to rival Kiev’s attempts to drum up support for its war against them.

On Saturday afternoon, trailers transporting burned-out armored personnel carriers, crushed tanks and other bits and pieces of destroyed military equipment arrived in Donetsk’s central Lenin Square. Cranes lifted and unloaded the blackened vehicles and placed them under the watchful gaze of the former communist leader’s statue.

Pentagon struggles to defend ‘militarization’ of police forces

The Pentagon is pushing back against the notion that their 1033 program is ‘militarizing’ local police forces. But officers there acknowledge that some police departments have misused some equipment more suited for combat.



 By Anna Mulrine

When local police responded to protesters in Ferguson, Mo., wearing camouflaged fatigues and riding atop turreted armored vehicles – pointing heavy weapons at their fellow US citizens who were angry at the shooting death of an African American teenager – many troops at the Pentagon shook their heads in a mixture of alarm and frustration.

The Defense Department’s 1033 program to provide surplus military equipment to police departments across the country was under fire for contributing to the “militarization” of local police departments which, critics said, had no business possessing grenade launchers, powerful military-grade rifles, and armored vehicles that appeared to be kitted out for a war zone against small-town Americans.