Prayers in Philippines as aid arrives |
Survivors gather in ruined churches across devastated regions as country faces up to mammoth rebuilding task.
Last updated: 17 Nov 2013 08:47
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At Santo Nino Church, near the waterfront in the flattened city of Tacloban, birds flitted between the rafters overhead as women moved through the pews with collection plates on Sunday. At the end of mass, the Roman Catholic congregation broke into applause.
Rosario Capidos, 55, sat crying in one row, hugging her nine-year-old grandson, Cyrich.
Capidos had been sheltering at home with nine other members of her family when Haiyan struck on November 8. As the waters rose, she floated her three grandchildren on a slab of styrofoam through a road flooded with debris and shipping containers to a nearby Chinese temple. Her family survived.
"That's why I'm crying," she said. "I thank God I was given a second chance to live."
Violeta Simbulan, 63, said the priest's sermon promising that God would always be there offered her comfort while trying to cope with losing two cousins and an aunt in the disaster.
Camila Vallejo, student leader, gets ready for a seat in Chilean congress
In 2011 she was the face of an uprising. Today, with Chile in a 'new era', she and fellow activists are poised to become MPs
If someone had told Camila Vallejo during the student uprisings in 2011that she and her fellow student leaders would end up as elected members of congress, she would have emphatically disagreed. "I would have said you are crazy!" she told the Observer last week.
But polls show that three former student activists are poised to win congressional seats on Sunday, as Chileans head to vote in presidential and congressional elections.
The former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, a socialist paediatrician and former political prisoner who was tortured during the Pinochet dictatorship, heads the New Majority coalition and is expected to easily win the presidential race.
Al-Shabaab is facing a bloody crisis of its own: After the Westgate atrocity, the terrorists are turning on each other
SUNDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2013Abdulhamid Daar's dreams of joining al-Shabaab began as a teenager in Toronto, with long sermons from imams on how Islam was under grave threat, making it the duty of believers to fight and defend the faith. This took the 23-year-old engineering student on a journey to Somalia and jihad.
He experienced the excitement and satisfaction of being involved in the struggle for what he believed to be a righteous cause. But he also saw friends being killed, and felt the constant fear that he, too, would die or be left crippled.
He resisted constant entreaties from his mother and four brothers and sisters to return home. He left in the end, he says, because al-Shabaab became deeply divided and turned on itself viciously. Foreign volunteers began to be executed on the orders of the movement's 36-year-old leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane, also known as Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr.
Refusal to destroy Syria's chemical weapons sparks Albanian national pride
The announcement that Albania would not destroy Syria's chemical weapons on its soil was met by cheers from Albanian citizens, who see the decision as a sign the country is taking control of its own politics.
The refusal of what Prime Minister Edi Rama called a direct US request was widely welcomed Saturday as a sign of the small and impoverished country's maturity in charting its own course.
The troubled country has been closely aligned with the US for over twenty years since the end of a brutal dictatorship in 1991.
Ben Blushi, a senior official in Prime Minister Rama's Socialist Party, told reporters Saturday that "Albania has showed it has a conscience." The opposition also backed the decision.
Rama's announcement Friday was met by cheers from hundreds of protesters on Tirana's streets, some wearing gas masks and waving Albania flags.
Special Report: Indonesia's graftbusters battle the establishment
By Kanupriya Kapoor and Randy Fabi
JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia's Inspector General of Police had just withstood eight hours of interrogation on the night of October 5, last year at the Jakarta headquarters of Indonesia's anti-corruption agency when a commotion erupted outside.
Investigators from the Corruption Eradication Commission, known by its Indonesian initials KPK, had accused Djoko Susilo of amassing land, cars, mansions and stacks of cash. His arrest was an unprecedented strike against a police force with a long-held reputation for graft in a country routinely ranked as among the most corrupt in the world.
IN THE CAMPS
Guantánamo’s forever captives to make pitch for freedom in secret
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
CROSENBERG@MIAMIHERALD.COM
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has begun notifying would-be observers that it plans to hold the first session of the long-awaited parole-style boards at Guantánamo in secret.
President Barack Obama ordered his administration to set up the so-called Periodic Review Boards March 7, 2011. In July, Defense Department officials said the boards would review the files of 71 Guantánamo prisoners’ cases — 46 so-called “indefinite detainees” and 25 men once considered candidates for war crimes trials.
Now, as the administration is poised to hold the first hearing — on Nov. 20 at Guantánamo, with 33-year-old captive Mahmud al Mujahid’s plea for release — the Pentagon says it’s unprepared to let reporters watch.
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