Six In The Morning

Copenhagen shootings: Police kill ‘gunman’ after two attacks

     15 February 2015 Last updated at 08:10



Police in Copenhagen say they have shot dead a man they believe was behind two deadly attacks in the Danish capital hours earlier.

Police say they killed the man in the Norrebro district after he opened fire on them.

It came after one person was killed and three police officers injured at a free speech debate in a cafe on Saturday.

In the second attack, a Jewish man was killed and two police officers wounded near the city’s main synagogue.

Police say video surveillance suggested the same man carried out both attacks. They do not believe any other people were involved.

“We assume that it’s the same culprit behind both incidents, and we also assume that the culprit that was shot by the police task force… is the person behind both of these assassinations,” Chief Police Inspector Torben Molgaard Jensen told a news conference.

It’s the little lies that torpedo the news stars – as Brian Williams has found to his cost last week

  World View: Embellishment and bravado are often punished more harshly than the untruths that cause wars

Patrick Cockburn Sunday 15 February 2015

The exposure of fake or exaggerated tales of journalistic derring-do by Brian Williams, the anchor of NBC Nightly News now suspended without pay, will ignite a small glow of satisfaction in the breasts of many foreign correspondents. The arrival of anchors, editors or “celebrity” correspondents in the middle of a crisis, war, or at any other time, has always been the bane of reporters on the ground. I remember a friend on Time magazine, in the days when it was a power in the land 40 years ago, vainly trying to explain to his bosses why he was having difficulty arranging their fact-finding tour of Kuwait in the middle of Ramadan.

Williams’s credibility first began to disintegrate when he was challenged on his claim that he had been in a Chinook helicopter that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in the Iraq War of 2003.

  The War Next Door: Can Merkel’s Diplomacy Save Europe?

  Chancellor Angela Merkel has often been accused of hesitancy. But in Minsk this week, she committed herself to helping find a way to quiet the weapons in Ukraine. The result was a cease-fire. But it is fragile and may ultimately be disadvantageous for Ukraine.

By SPIEGEL Staff

The problem has four syllables: Debaltseve. German Chancellor Angela Merkel can now pronounce it without difficulties, as can French President François Hollande. Debaltseve proved to be one of the thorniest issues during the negotiations in Minsk on Wednesday night and into Thursday. Indeed, the talks almost completely collapsed because of Debaltseve. Ultimately, Debaltseve may end up torpedoing the deal that was worked out in the end.

Debaltseve is a small town in eastern Ukraine, held by 6,000 government troops, or perhaps 8,000. Nobody wants to say for sure. It is the heart of an army that can only put 30,000 soldiers into the field, a weak heart. Until Sunday of last week, that heart was largely encircled by pro-Russian separatists and the troops could only be supplied by way of highway M03. Then, Monday came.

 War against Islamic State settling into new regional ‘normal’

February 15, 2015 – 12:41AM

  Paul McGeough Chief foreign correspondent

Washington: Despite legitimate fury by Jordanians over the barbaric murder of one of their fighter pilots, the West continues to give its Arab allies a free ride in the war on the so-called Islamic State.

King Abdullah II has donned his military uniform. And in search of a metaphor while meeting US President Barack Obama last week, he reportedly resorted to the Clint Eastwood movie Unforgiven. Really?

We are six months into this conflict and, by all accounts, on the verge of what likely will be one of its defining engagements – the battle for Mosul, Iraq’s second biggest city, which Baghdad’s US-trained security forces abandoned in June last year as the IS marauders moved in from Syria.

S Korea mulls law against abuses after ‘nut rage’

    Parliamentarians considering legislation against high-handedness following outrage over airline official’s tantrums.

 15 Feb 2015 06:20 GMT

Resentment has mounted so much in South Korea against what has come to be known as “gabjil”, high-handedness by the rich and powerful, that parliamentarians are proposing legislation to punish some of the worst abuses.

A bill to be presented in the national assembly this month is formally called the “Conglomerates Ethical Management Special Law” but has been nick-named the Cho Hyun-ah law.

Cho, also known as Heather Cho, is the daughter of the chairman of Korean Air Lines and was sentenced last week to a year in prison for an outburst on a Korean Air plane while on the ground in New York.

The bill proposes to ban members of the powerful business families known as chaebol from working at their companies for at least five years if convicted of a crime.

 Mainstream Japanese society slowly working to accommodate sexual minorities



    by Tomohiro Osaki Staff Writer

When she was in her teens, Yumiko Higuchi was suicidal.

The Niigata native says she was always loath to put on the traditional sailor-style school uniform for girls. Tormented by a growing sense of gender discomfort, the teenager had a morbid tendency to slit her wrists and overdose on drugs.

The former troubled schoolgirl is now Kazuki Osawa, a 26-year-old civil servant in Tokyo who still remains legally, and physically, female but looks and sounds male due to twice-monthly hormone injections.

Osawa has a lifetime partner, too, his childhood friend, Shoi Osawa, who is also legally female.