North Korea: American sentenced to 15 years hard labor has started life at a ‘special prison’
By ,
PYONGYANG, North Korea — An American citizen sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for what Pyongyang has described as hostile acts against the state has started life at a “special prison,” state media said Wednesday.
Kenneth Bae entered the prison Tuesday, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a short dispatch, but no other new details were provided about the American arrested in November who Pyongyang accuses of trying to establish an anti-Pyongyang base in the North. Two South Korean experts on North Korean law said they didn’t know what a “special prison” was.
Return to Iqrit: how one Palestinian village is being reborn
Their parents and grandparents were evicted 65 years ago, when Israel was created. Now they are coming back
On a breezy hilltop in sight of the Lebanese border, a village last populated 65 years ago is being reclaimed from the dead for the living. Vegetables and herbs have been planted amid the rubble; a couple of donkeys graze on spring grass; traditional food is cooked and eaten in a makeshift structure next to the Church of Our Lady, where mass is celebrated for up to 200 worshippers on the first Saturday of every month.
This is Iqrit, a Palestinian Christian village in northern Galilee, whose inhabitants left in the bitter war that followed the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, and who have never been permitted to return to their land and razed homes.
But in recent months, a group of young men, grandsons of Iqrit's original residents, have moved back in an attempt to reclaim and rebuild the village.
Dutch police criticised for allegedly helping two underage Muslims to marry
Ceremony arranged so bride could avoid arranged marriage in Pakistan
Peter Cluskey
Police in Amsterdam were under fire last night for allegedly helping two young underage Muslims to marry in the Netherlands – so the bride could avoid being sent back to her family’s native Pakistan for a traditional arranged marriage to her cousin.
Although they denied last night that they had acted as “wedding planners” or even as “mediators”, a police spokesman confirmed that the girl had been collected by officers “directly from school” and delivered under escort to the secret location where the wedding had taken place.
The ages of the couple have not been revealed, but it’s understood the bride did secure the consent of her parents to marry her Pakistani-Hindustani boyfriend, on condition they would renew their wedding vows in the usual Dutch civil ceremony when they turn 18.
Laos Land Grabs: Deutsche Bank Backs Ruthless 'Rubber Lords'
By Martin Hesse, Jörg Schmitt and Wieland Wagner
Vietnamese companies have been ruthlessly taking advantage of Laotian locals and their environment to create vast rubber plantations. The "rubber lords" are also getting support for the land grabs from Germany's Deutsche Bank, which is violating its ethics and sustainability policies, critics say.
Wearing only shorts, the haggard man squats on the tiny porch of his wooden shack. The 27-year-old from the Laotian village of Ban Hatxan lives here with his wife and parents. Lying before him are three lifeless lizards, their dinner. Three chickens are running around beneath his pile dwelling, and there is also a pig. This is all the family has left.
Porn numbs Chinese censors
May 15, 2013 - 12:33PM
Beijing: In the annals of bizarre bureaucratic desk jobs, the Chinese government may have all others beat.
Officials in charge of censoring pornography for the southern province of Hunan gave a rare and revealing peek into the strange (and quite possibly libido-numbing) demands of their job in a rare, local TV interview now making the rounds online.
In the space of one week alone, a four-man team in the office watched more than 700 pornographic DVDs from beginning to end, the officials said.
"When you're in this job, even if you don't want to watch any more, you have to keep watching closely," said one worker, 70-year-old Liu Xiaozhen, who demonstrated his daily viewing routine with the bored, disaffected thousand-yard stare of a man who has seen it all, many times over.
15 May 2013 Last updated at 06:15 GMT
Nigeria: Goodluck Jonathan declares emergency in states
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has declared a state of emergency in three states after a series of deadly attacks by Islamist militant groups.
The military will take "all necessary action" to "put an end to the impunity of insurgents and terrorists" in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe, he said.
Mr Jonathan also ordered more troops to be sent to the north-eastern states.
Militants from Boko Haram have been blamed for most of the violence, which has left 2,000 people dead since 2010.
The Islamist group, whose name means "Western education is forbidden" in the local Hausa language, is fighting to overthrow the government and create an Islamic state in the north.
No comments:
Post a Comment