BBC– Human Rights Watch says activists in the Philippines are still being killed with impunity, despite the president’s campaign pledge to end such violence.

In a new report, the campaign group says it has evidence that the military was involved in seven killings and three enforced disappearances.

Each of these occurred since President Benigno Aquino took office last year, the group says.

When President Aquino came to power, he promised a change from the old regime.

The administration of his predecessor, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, had been accused of turning a blind eye to the deaths and disappearances of hundreds of people.

But according to Human Rights Watch, these abuses are still continuing.

Most of the victims – now as before – are left-wing activists and outspoken journalists.

Their families often blame the military or police of involvement.

The security forces deny the claims or say those who died were communist rebels.

Read more about Philippines Extrajudicial Killings Continue

© 2011 BBC

Photo by Flickr user The Philippine Online Chronicles

PRESS TV– A Russian official says that Libya’s ruler Muammar Gaddafi plans to blow up the capital Tripoli with missiles if revolutionaries seize the city.  In his latest televised speech on Thursday, Gaddafi said that he will not surrender to NATO forces.

“The Libyan Premier [Baghdadi al-Mahmudi] told me: if the rebels seize the city, we will cover it with missiles and blow it up,” Russia’s special envoy to Libya Mikhail Margelov told Russian newspaper Izvestia on Thursday.

“I imagine that the Gaddafi regime does have such a suicidal plan,” Margelov added.
He said that Gaddafi still had plentiful supplies of missiles and ammunition.

The Russian envoy met with the Libyan prime minister on June 16 in Tripoli after holding talks in Benghazi earlier the same month.

Read more about ‘Gaddafi Has Suicide Plan for Tripoli’.

© 2011 PressTV

Photo by Flickr user EuanSlorach

VBS TV– For part one of Vice’s recent journey into Pakistan, Vice founder Suroosh Alvi travels to Bin Laden’s infamous compound, chats with Osama’s neighbors, and visits a local university to see what people really think about having lived next to America’s most vilified fugitive for the past five years. Unsurprisingly, their concern lies less with the proximity of Bin Laden than the chaos that his death has sparked.

Although the controversy over whether or not Pakistan was harboring Bin Laden and the “trust deficit” is the primary focus for the American media, Pakistani news is busy covering the onslaught of violence that has broken out since the May 2nd raid. The people have seen a marked increase in American drone attacks, while the Taliban continues its retaliation with a relentless wave of suicide bombings. Anti-American sentiment has never run higher and this turbulent nation clearly has bigger issues than Bin Laden’s death to contend with.

© 2011 VBS TV

Photo by Flickr user ssoosay

THE NATION– When he was elected prime minister in 2009 at the head of Greece’s Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PaSoK), George Papandreou was going to wipe out corruption, open up politics, rejuvenate the country’s sclerotic economy. “There is money,” he said then, although he must have known there wasn’t any in the public coffers. Less than two years later, he has allowed the “troika” of the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund to bind him on the horns of an impossible dilemma: either the Greek government implements a second round of austerity measures more savage than any yet endured by a developed country, with deeper cuts and tax hikes and a wholesale, cut-price sell-off of its public assets, or Greece faces default on its sovereign debt and imminent bankruptcy.

Parliament is preparing to vote on the new measures, which are opposed by more than 70 percent of the population. Trade unions have begun a two-day general strike; around Syntagma Square, small bands of agitators in face masks and hoodies—the so-called “known unknowns”—clash with riot police. Choked by clouds of tear gas, thousands of peaceful demonstrators are trying to hold their ground.

Since the end of May, Syntagma has overflowed with Greece’saganaktismenoi (cousins of the indignados who filled Spanish squares this spring), here to refuse the troika’s blackmail and demand their democracy back. The crowd has been huge, politically diverse and overwhelmingly nonviolent. There are people here from all walks of Greek society; at times the rhetoric is that of a national resistance. A neat elderly couple on their first demonstration push through the crush because their pensions have been slashed, prices are rising and they just can’t make ends meet. Vassilis Papadopoulos, a 50-year-old unemployed truck driver living on loans from his mother, has come all the way from Corinth wrapped in a giant Greek flag, with a look of despair in his eyes and saucepans to bang together. This is a movement, he says, against the political system:

“They’ve all cheated us. They destroyed the banks, our pension funds. They invested our social security money in bonds for their own benefit.” Farther down, in the square itself, something entirely new seems to be taking shape: a liberated zone in which an open conversation has been going on for weeks. University professors, passers-by, unemployed laborers, all get their three minutes with the microphone. There’s a medical tent, a “time bank,” a “team to promote calm.” When riot police cleared the square with clubs on the night of June 15, these protesters didn’t fight. They simply walked right back, picked up the rubbish and repaired their neighborhood.

Read full article about Greece In Debt, Eurozone In Crisis.

© 2011 The Nation Magazine

Photo by Flickr user Christina Kekka

SKY NEWS– Two deaths have been confirmed following an air strike in the east of the capital, Tripoli, in the early hours of Sunday.  Libyan authorities say nine civilians were killed, including a family of five.

The military alliance said the errant strike may have been due to “a weapons system failure”.

“Nato regrets the loss of innocent civilian lives and takes great care in conducting strikes against a regime determined to use violence against its own citizens,” it said in a statement.

“Although we are still determining the specifics of this event, indications are that a weapons system failure may have caused this incident.”

Sky’s Sam Kiley, reporting from Tripoli, said the incident was a huge blow to the alliance, whose mandate for military action is to protect civilians by enforcing a UN Resolution against Col Gaddafi.

Reporters were earlier taken by Libyan government officials to the residential area in the Arada neighbourhood of Tripoli and saw a body pulled out of the rubble of a destroyed building.

Following the blast, deputy foreign minister Khaled Kaim told reporters at the site: “There was intentional and deliberate targeting of the civilian houses.

“This is another sign of the brutality of the West.”

Read the full article about NATO Air Strike Kills Civilians In Tripoli.

© 2011 Sky News

Photo by Flickr user rafahkid