Typhoon Haiyan: British and US warships head for Philippines
HMS Daring and USS George Washington lead military push to help relief effort with drinking water and air support
Britain and the US are sending warships to help relief efforts in the Philippines after typhoon Haiyan left thousands dead.
The Philippine government raised the official death toll to 1,744 on Tuesday, but the figure is expected to climb drastically, with authorities estimating that the storm killed 10,000 or more across a vast region of the country, and displaced about 660,000 others.
David Cameron said HMS Daring, which carries equipment to make drinking water from seawater, would provide humanitarian assistance and flights from its onboard helicopter. At least one Boeing C-17 military transport aircraft would be allocated to move humanitarian aid to areas that are most in need and hardest to reach, the prime minister said.
Revealed: Egypt is the worst Arab country for women
The fallout from the political upheaval in Egypt has made it the worst country in the Arab world to be a woman in, according to research published exclusively today in The Independent.
Increasingly commonplace sexual violence has combined with plummeting female representation in parliament and a growth in more extreme Islamic views to push the country to the bottom of the region for women’s rights. Egypt was ranked 22nd – below Iraq and Saudi Arabia – in polling on 22 Arab states’ treatment of women by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The island nation of Comoros, where women hold 20 per cent of ministerial positions and wives generally keep land or the home after divorce, came out on top. It was followed by Oman, Kuwait, Jordan and Qatar. More than 300 gender experts in the 21 Arab League states and Syria rated the countries according to different issues affecting women, including politics, reproductive rights and gender violence. Iraq was ranked second-worst after Egypt, followed by Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen.
Polish far-right groups turn violent at national independence day march
Police in Poland have clashed with far-right youths during a march marking national independence day. It is the third year in a row the march has turned violent.
Police in Warsaw used rubber bullets and tear gas on Monday to break up groups of masked far-right youths when a march marking independence day turned violent.
Police said the groups torched cars, threw firecrackers and set fire to a guard's booth in front of the Russian Embassy - a symbol for some Poles of repression during Soviet rule. Four officers were hospitalized in the clashes and around a dozen people were detained.
"There is no justification for hooliganism," Poland's Foreign Ministry spokesman Marcin Wojciechowski wrote on Twitter, in an apology to Russia.
Dipping 'pura vida'? Costa Ricans show lack of enthusiasm in run-up to February elections
According to polls, about 32 percent of Costa Rica's 3 million eligible voters say they plan to abstain from casting ballots due to corruption, lack of leadership, and high unemployment.
Costa Rica is approaching February’s presidential and legislative elections with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, if not with dread.
Most international surveys present Costa Rica as the“world’s happiest country” (the Happy Planet Index), or in the elite club of the world’s “full democracies” (ahead of Japan and Belgium in The Economist’s list), or as the 48th least-corrupt country (out of 174 reviewed byTransparency International).
The economy is expected to grow about 3 percent this year, and the country’s access to foreign direct investment is blunting the impact of the government’s fiscal deficit of about 5 percent of GDP. Crime is on the rise, but Ticos know that their pain is small compared to that wreaked by the narcos and maras in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.
What are you doing for 11/12/13?
Time for another calendrical coincidence: It's 11/12/13.
So what does that mean? In the cosmic scheme of things, nothing. In fact, if you tally your days by the DD/MM/YY method, it's just 12/11/13 — and the interesting lineup of sequential integers is still almost a month away. If you write Tuesday's date as Nov. 12, 2013, you might wonder what all the fuss is about.
But rest assured: There is a fuss, especially when it comes to getting hitched.
"Iconic dates have become a trend in the United States, reaching new heights when over 65,000 couples tied the knot on 07/07/07," Brian Beitler, chief marketing officer for David's Bridal, said in anews release. "11/12/13 is a sequential pattern, and we have learned that couples love dates that have patterns."
12 November 2013 Last updated at 00:07 GMT
Brazil debates internet law in wake of NSA scandal
Along with Russia, China and Iran, Brazil was one of the countries of most interest for US intelligence agencies, according to the leaks from the US National Security Agency (NSA).
But whereas those other countries may not have appeared too surprised by the extent of US spying, Brazil was outraged.
Documents leaked by the NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, indicated that the agency had monitored internal Brazilian government communications, had spied on the state oil company, and had even intercepted data from President Dilma Rousseff's own office.
In response, Ms Rousseff cancelled a trip to Washington. In an angry speech at the United Nations General Assembly, she accused the US of breaking international law.
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