GCSB protesters lay TV complaint

GCSB protesters have laid formal complaints with the Broadcasting Standards Authority after an inaccurate television report said rocks and bottles were thrown during a Palmerston North rally. A 3News report on Saturday night claimed Palmerston North people clashed with police and threw bottles and rocks at the city’s protest

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Day of the Dead

This is how Mexican investigators believe gangsters murdered business student Juan Francisco Sicilia: Two of his friends had been assaulted in Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City, by a pair of policemen moonlighting as muggers for the Pacfico Sur drug cartel. The friends reported the criminal cops, who panicked and asked their mafia bosses for help.

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In Yemen, a High-Stakes Power Game as Saleh Is in Limbo

For the first time in 13 days, a lull has descended upon the fierce fighting between armed tribesmen and forces loyal to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The consistent shelling and gunfire in the capital city of Sana’a have been replaced by a tense quiet, with most residents still choosing to stay in their homes or flee to ancestral villages.

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Syria: Has the Regime Turned a Corner Against the Protests?

As bright spring days gradually turn hot and muggy, the consensus in Damascus is that the protest movement has been badly burnt. The activist Facebook group Syrian Revolution 2011 put out an order for a general strike across Syria on Wednesday calling for “mass protests” and the closure of all schools, universities, shops and restaurants, “not even taxis.” But there was no apparent strike on Wednesday morning in central Damascus.

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Syria: Who Is the Real President Assad?

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s carefully cultivated image as a modest leader with reformist leanings, close to his people and understanding of their concerns, has taken a severe beating after a month of brutal security measures against a burgeoning civil protest movement for greater freedoms that has slowly stretched across the country. The tall, trim, blue-eyed father of three has responded to the uprising in his country, the greatest challenge to his 11-year rule, with a characteristic mix of soft and hard measures, promising reform while also unleashing his security forces on the streets to crush dissent

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