It's true North Korea has published a paper condemning the human rights record of South Korea that takes some real chutzpah coming from country whose human rights record matches that of the former Soviet Union under Stalin. But, hey if you can't condemn with a straight face what can you condemn?
“The people of South Chosun are deprived of everything thanks to America. When human rights are infringed upon there is not even a place you can go to complain."
“Democratic rights and political freedoms are mercilessly infringed upon,” the piece continued, referring to South Korea’s practice of deleting pro-North comments made online and the arrest of leftist MP Lee Seok Ki on charges of “plotting a rebellion”.
Specific instances were listed to show the “severe suppression of people’s rights”, including examples of unemployment, suicide and the shutdown of civilian protests.
Oklahoma inmate dies after 'botched' lethal injection
A death row inmate in Oklahoma died of a heart attack after his execution was halted because the lethal injection of three drugs failed to work properly.
Clayton Lockett, 38, experienced a vein failure which prevented the drug cocktail from being fully effective.
The execution was halted after 20 minutes, during which he writhed and shook uncontrollably, US media report.
The execution of fellow inmate Charles Warner, due to take place just two hours later, was postponed for 14 days.
Almost half of Americans live with unhealthy levels of air pollution
Report finds 148m living in areas where smog and soot particles are health risk with climate change likely to worsen conditions
Nearly half of all Americans live in areas with unhealthy levels of airpollution, according to an American Lung Association (ALA) report released Wednesday.
Nearly 148 million people live in areas where smog and soot particles make it unhealthy to breathe the air, according to the ALA's annual study on US air quality.
The report, which is based on data collected between 2010 and 2012, found smog, or ozone, had worsened in 22 of the 25 biggest US metropolitan areas, including Los Angeles, Houston, Washington-Baltimore, New York City and Chicago – and said there was a high risk of more high-ozone days because of climate change.
Voting begins in Iraq as violence grips a divided country
Iraqis head to polls in first national election since US withdrawal of troops
Iraqis are heading to the polls today in their first national election since US forces withdrew from Iraq in 2011, with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki seeking a third term amid rising violence.
Iraq’s western province of Anbar is torn by fighting as Sunni Muslim militants battle the Iraqi military. Its economy is struggling and Maliki faces criticism that he is aggravating sectarian splits and trying to consolidate power.
Polls opened at 7am with a vehicle curfew imposed on the streets of Baghdad. Voters will choose from among 9,012 candidates and the parliamentary election will effectively serve as a referendum on Mr Maliki, a Shi’ite Muslim who has governed for eight years.
China: Party expels 'corrupt and degenerate' top official
Beijing:China’s ruling Communist Party has expelled one of its senior officials, Li Chuncheng, and authorised a criminal investigation into his corrupt behaviour, the latest major move in an anti-graft drive encircling the country's former domestic security chief, Zhou Yongkang.
It comes nearly 18 months after Mr Li, then deputy party secretary of Sichuan province, became the first senior official detained in what has developed into China’s biggest anti-corruption probe and a flagship of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s efforts to strengthen his grip on the leadership.
Chinese authorities have to date said nothing regarding their investigation into Mr Zhou, one of China’s most formidable politicians in recent decades, which has broadened into the detention of his immediate relatives.
Poachers held after revenge attack on elephants
The Daily Telegraph | 30 April, 2014 06:41
Three suspects will appear in court in Kenya next week after six elephants, including four juveniles, were found shot dead in a private reserve in one of the worst poaching incidents in several years.
A wildlife official said that it is thought that the killings were at least partly motivated by revenge against officials because the calves, not having tusks, had no value to poachers.
The poachers "would have no reason for killing juveniles. They are trying to hit back at the authorities," the official said.
The adult elephants had their tusks removed.
Kenya Wildlife Service said its rangers exchanged gunfire with poachers on Saturday evening.
In post-tsunami Japan, rebuilding a town begins with a child-care center
The center has become a place where mothers and children, many of whom still live in temporary homes, can reconnect, share their experiences, and support one another.
Along the water’s edge in Rikuzentakata, on the coastline of northeastern Japan, stands a single pine tree, its bark scarred by tsunami waves.
The area, once home to 23,000 people, is otherwise a barren landscape of splintered two-by-fours and tangled debris. Little else remains of this resort community that was renowned for its beautiful white sand beach.
On 11 March 2011, 30-foot swells swept away the city and many others like it. In Rikuzentakata, the tsunami left behind only a few large, gutted structures and destroyed 70,000 trees along the coastal pine forest, which had protected the rice paddies from the sand. Nearly 2,000 residents died, making it one of the hardest-hit communities. In all, almost 16,000 people lost their lives that day.
Nobody knows who paid for them, printed them or tacked them to lampposts. But the message carried in large font on the posters is crystal clear, despite the clumsy English: "Pakistan loves ISI."
The rash of posters has appeared mysteriously throughout Islamabad in what appears to be a desperate attempt to shore up support for the country's intelligence agency, as it faces challenges to its position as the nation's guardian.
The latest crisis began a week ago when gunmen shot Hamid Mir, one of the country's best known television anchors. His brother accused the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate of organising the hit, a claim broadcast on Geo News, Mr Mir's station.
"If they tried to kill Hamid Mir then I don't see how posters can help them," said a trader, known as Farooq, as he walked through Islamabad's central business and shopping district.
Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) believes themselves to be the protectors, guardians of Pakistan. They are responsible for the creation of the Taliban, supporting other terrorist organizations and probably knew of and protected Osama Bin Laden all those years he was hiding in Abbottabad before his death in May of 2011.
Ukraine crisis: Russia alarmed over US-Nato military moves
Moscow has voiced concern over an "unprecedented" increase in US and Nato military activity near Russian borders, amid an escalating crisis in Ukraine.
Britain's high court will on Tuesday hold a pre-trial hearing ahead of a court case due to be held next year brought by around 15,000 members of Nigeria's Bodo community against oil giant Shell.
London-based law firm Leigh Day, which represented Bodo residents in the talks and will do so in next year's court case, called Shell's initial offer "insulting."
Sources familiar with the talks said Shell proposed a settlement of 7.5 billion naira ($46 million, 35 million euros).
Alleged police gang rape sends shock waves through Paris
Two senior French officers arrested on suspicion of assaulting Canadian tourist
Lara Marlowe
The crime brigade at number 36 Quai des Orfèvres was a legendary institution, immortalised by Inspector Maigret, the character created by Belgian writer Georges Simenon. Last year the brigade celebrated its 100th anniversary with an exhibition sponsored by actor Jean-Paul Belmondo.
In the early hours of April 23rd the brigade’s headquarters, contiguous to the Palais de Justice, became a crime scene. Two senior officers have been placed under investigation on suspicion they gang-raped a Canadian tourist, then tampered with evidence.
There was insufficient proof to charge a third officer. He has been given the status of an “assisted witness” who must be available for questioning at all times. All three have been suspended.
Iraqi Election Fear:'No One Is Safe Anymore'
Interview Conducted By Dieter Bednarz and Klaus Brinkbäumer
Iraq's former interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, is hoping to oust the current government in this week's elections. He speaks to SPIEGEL about his belief that the Americans robbed him of power and about the country's escalating violence.
Ayad Allawi has only just seen off a delegation of Shiite clerics from Basra, and already emissaries from the autonomous region of Kurdistan are waiting for him in the parlor. A long list of supporters and activists come to visit the 69-year-old here, in the campaign office of his Iraqi National Accord Party, despite the dangers involved in a trip to Baghdad. Bomb attacks still rock the country, and the capital, every day.
Allawi's elaborately secured residence, a former educational center of the Baath Party, is located in the upscale neighborhood of Mansour, outside the sealed Green Zone in which the government, international organizations and US Embassy have fortified themselves. Allawi drags his right leg: "A greeting from Saddam Hussein," he says. He claims that in 1978, Saddam's henchmen had wanted to dispose of him because he had demanded freedom and democracy. He points to his family's democratic tradition: His ancestors, he says, revolted against the British occupiers and were involved in the founding of Iraq, becoming ministers and lawmakers.
Political activist Gao Yu feared missing ahead of Tiananmen Square Massacre anniversary
Beijing:Prominent journalist and political analyst Gao Yu has been reported missing, prompting concern for her welfare in the lead-up to the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Friends of Ms Gao have been unable to reach the outspoken 70-year-old journalist - who was jailed twice for her political writings linked to the pro-democracy movement in 1989 - since Thursday night.
Her lawyer, Teng Biao, and other Chinese publishers and activists have said they have been unable to reach her or find her at home. On Tuesday, her home phone rang unanswered and her mobile phone was switched off.
Sugar war could sour US-Mexico trade ties
The US sugar industry is seething over soaring competition from Mexico. But if the US imposes punitive duties on Mexican sugar, observers say Mexico could reciprocate.
By Tim Johnson, McClatchy
MEXICO CITY
There’s nothing sweet in the sugar war that’s unfolding between Mexico and the United States.
The US industry, sometimes called Big Sugar, simmers over soaring competition from Mexico and argues that a doubling of Mexican exports triggered a collapse in the market price of sugar.
A reluctant Obama administration has opened a formal investigation into those exports that could result in new import duties on Mexican sugar – and ignite a broader trade dispute over sweeteners that might affect other US industries.
A spokesman for the American Sugar Alliance, Phillip Hayes, says the sugar industry faces losses of up to $1 billion this year because of what it alleges is dumping – selling at prices lower than what it costs to produce – by Mexican sugar producers.
As Hamid Mir recovers after being shot by unknown gunmen, we examine the wider backdrop of media killings in Pakistan.
Last year, the Listening Post featured a day in the life of Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir. We followed him around to get an insight on the risks faced by media workers in the country. Today, he is recovering in a Karachi hospital after being shot multiple times by unknown attackers.
Mir had faced threats to his life before. In 2012 a bomb was found - undetonated - attached to the bottom of his car.
It was the Pakistani Taliban that claimed responsibility for putting it there, saying it was in response to his coverage of their attack on the now iconic young rights campaigner, Malala Yousafzai. But this time round, Mir and his employer, Geo TV, have pointed the finger not at the Taliban but at Pakistan's powerful intelligence service, the ISI.
Last night was the debut of comedian John Oliver's new show on HBO called Last Week Tonight. Oliver, of course, is well known from his years on The Daily Show (though, if you're not familiar with it, you should also listen to his podcast, The Bugle).…
101 East goes on the campaign trail with Narendra Modi, the man tipped to be the next Prime Minister of India.
In an old Muslim cemeterysurrounded by the fallen vines of Banyan trees, Pathan Mohammad Mahrouf stood over the grave of his wife and two children.
"It feels like they're still with me," he said looking down at the mound of dirt. "It feels like I'm sitting with them."
It has been 12 years since they were murdered, burnt alive by a rampaging mob of Hindu vigilantes. His wife Bilqis, along with his daughter Kherun Nisha, 14, and son Hamid, 10, were among the first victims of the 2002 communal riots in India's Gujarat state. They were attacked by a Hindu mob seeking retribution for the death of almost 60 Hindu pilgrims in a train fire started by Muslims.
The South Korean coastguard releases video of the early stage of the ferry rescue showing the captain and crew being hauled to safety. The ship is already listing, as the crew make their way, using ropes, to the lifeboat. Speaking to reporters on Monday, a senior coastguard defends their actions, saying that did not know who they were rescuing. Investigators seize material relating to the ferry accident from the offices of a local coastguard
A BBC team has witnessed the devastating effects of air bombardment on Syrian civilians after gaining rare access to rebel-held areas of Aleppo.
Emergency rescue teams told the BBC the city was living in "danger and fear".
Thousands of people are reported to have been killed or maimed in a campaign of aerial bombardment in northern Syria this year.
The BBC's Ian Pannell and Darren Conway are the first Western broadcasters in rebel-held Aleppo this year.
"My husband was sitting at breakfast. We heard the first blast: it sounded far away. But I asked him to go and get the kids off the street. And suddenly it hit us."
Um Yahya wept. With two small children at her side, the young mother was standing in what until that morning had been her home. It was now a wreck: a tangle of rubble and cables and dust, with half the ceiling missing and parts of the building completely razed.
Schools where Prada, jewellery and private jets replace apple for teacher
April 28, 2014 - 12:32PM
David Barrett
Teachers at fee-paying schools are being "bribed" by parents who hand over expensive end-of-term gifts including designer handbags, diamond necklaces and even the free use of a private jet, it has emerged.
Witnesses reported seeing "boxes and boxes of Prada and Chanel" outside the head teacher's office at one west London independent school, prompting new concerns that an influx of foreign pupils has led to a new and "un-British" culture of gift-giving which borders on corruption.
One teacher received a wad of cash as an end-of-term gift, while giving thousands of pounds in gift tokens has become normal, the June edition of Tatler magazine reports.
Surging bloodshed strains 'marriage of irreconcilables'
Escalating conflict, splitting tribes and families, is dividing Nigeria's largely Muslim north and Christian south and its future as a unified state.
When Fulani raiders carrying rifles, machetes and clubs stormed his village one night last month, Pius Nna was stunned to see his teenage nephew among them.
"He was leading them and telling them to check very well because my house would have a lot of people in it and they would be sure to find someone to kill," said Nna, a tall farmer in his mid-60s who said he escaped by fleeing into the bush.
Sitting in a courtyard littered with rubble, Nna told how his sister's son, whose father is a Muslim Fulani, had led the raiders to burn down his farm in the attack on Ungwan Gata village, one of several mostly Christian Moro'a communities in Nigeria's central Middle Belt.
Russian propaganda campaign finds fertile ground in Ukrainians’ mixed identity
BY MATTHEW SCHOFIELD
McClatchy Foreign Staff
KIEV, UKRAINE — The Russian invasion of Ukraine began long before separatists seized control of eastern Ukrainian city buildings.
It began long before an estimated 40,000 Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border, engaging in “training exercises” as Moscow threatened “consequences” for Ukrainian resistance. It even began long before the mostly bloodless seizure of Crimea in March.
Experts and officials in Ukraine, in fact, insist it began during the autumn of 2004.
It was then, they say, while Ukrainians and much of the world rejoiced at the power of democracy shown through the Orange Revolution, that Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite a landslide victory earlier in 2004, saw the potential of democratic unrest spreading into his nation. Analysts say he worried.
Egypt Mass Trial: Judge Sentences 683 To Death For Deadly Crackdown
| by MAMDOUH THABET
Posted: Updated:
MINYA, Egypt (AP) — A judge in Egypt sentenced to death 683 alleged supporters of the country's ousted Islamist president on Monday over acts of violence and the murder of policemen in the latest mass trial in Egypt that included the Muslim Brotherhood's spiritual leader, defense lawyers said.
Under the law, Monday's verdicts in the southern city of Minya have to be referred to Egypt's Grand Mufti, the top Islamic official, said one of the attorneys, Ahmed Hefni.
Such a move is usually considered a formality but the same judge in the trial on Monday also reversed most of the death sentences out of 529 that were passed in a similar case in March, and commuted the majority of them to life imprisonment.
Monday's case is linked to deadly riots that erupted in Minya and elsewhere in Egypt after security forces violently disbanded sit-ins held by Brotherhood supporters in Cairo last August.
Japan Producing Huge, Lightly Guarded Stockpile of Plutonium
BY DOUGLAS BIRCH, R. JEFFREY SMITH AND JAKE ADELSTEIN, CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY
ROKKASHO, Japan — With its turquoise-striped walls and massive steel cooling towers, the new industrial complex rising from bluffs above the Pacific Ocean looks like it might produce consumer electronics.
But in reality the plant 700 kilometers north of Tokyo is one of the world’s newest, largest and most controversial production facilities for a nuclear explosive material. The factory’s private owners said three months ago that after several decades of construction, it will be ready to open in October, as part of a government-supported effort to create special fuel for the country’s future nuclear power plants.
Once it’s running, sometime after October, the plant will produce thousands of gallon-sized steel canisters containing a flour-like mixture of waste uranium and plutonium. In theory, the plutonium is capable of providing the fuel for a huge nuclear arsenal, in a country that protects its nuclear plants with unarmed guards and has resisted U.S. pleas to upgrade security.
Chief UN investigator of North Korean human rights abuses discusses the allegations of crimes against humanity.
A United Nations inquiry has just concluded that the range and scope of abuse of North Korea's 25 million citizens is beyond what many imagined.
The regime is accused of committing crimes against humanity including the extermination, starvation and enslavement of its population.
The UN-mandated inquiry team says the country's leadership should be hauled before at the International Criminal Court.
Among the reported abuses, the inquiry found that pregnant women are starved, while their babies are fed rats and snakes; more than 100,000 people are in gulags; there is systematic torture; everyone is forced to inform on each other; entire communities are denied adequate food; and the bodies of the dead are burned and then used for fertiliser.
Thomas Piketty: The French economist forcing America to wake up to the end of The Dream
Thomas Piketty's tome which skewers the idea that anyone who works hard can make it in the US seems to have hit a nerve
This spring America belongs to a Frenchman. Not some world-weary actor, voluble television chef or suave and elegant wine-maker, representatives of trades that on this side of the Atlantic are seen as France's prime contributions to civilisation. No, the Anglo-Saxon superpower is in thrall to a tousled, left-leaning, Parisian economist, aged 42, named Thomas Piketty, and his doorstop of a tome on income distribution in the western world.
Capital In The Twenty-First Century, all 685 pages of it, is the No 1 best-seller on Amazon – apparently the first time that anything published by the venerable Harvard University Press has attained such dizzying celebrity. No self-regarding dinner party in Washington or New York is worth its salt without a discussion of it. Last Friday, came the ultimate accolade of a multiple coronation on the op-ed page of The New York Times.
How social media gives new voice to Brazil's protests
Street protests continue to rock Brazil and, frustrated by mainstream media coverage, a new group of citizen journalists is using digital tools to tell a different side of the story
When the battered body of a young Brazilian professional dancer, Douglas Rafael da Silva Pereira, was found in the Pavão-Pavãozinho favela in Rio de Janeiro, local people refused to believe the police statement – that his injuries were "compatible with a death caused by a fall". Instead, many residents of the community – which is located only a mile or so from Copacabana beach, one of the main backdrops to global coverage of the World Cup – took to the streets to express their anger. They set fire to barricades and even exchanged gunfire with the police, during which one man was killed.
Pavão-Pavãozinho was one of dozens of favelas that have been subjected to a police "pacification" programme, designed to seize back control of the areas from drug traffickers and make them safer for the tournament and the 2016 Olympics. The family of Pereira, who was known as DG, believe that the police mistook him for a drug trafficker and beat him to death.
The Downfall of Rome:Can a New Mayor Stop the City's Decline?
By Walter Mayr in Rome
Pilgrims from around the world are expected in Rome this weekend for the canonization of two former popes. They will find an Italian capital that is increasingly squalid and close to bankruptcy. The city's new mayor is hoping he can turn it around.
The Leonardo Express rumbles from Rome's airport right to the city center. After 32 minutes, it arrives at its final destination, Termini, the city's central station. An ad in a pedestrian tunnel at the station reads, "Roma Termini -- a Place to Live." Some have taken the message quite literally.
It's 11:10 p.m. Stranded people from around the world are wrapped up in their sleeping bags as they lay in front of the exit on the north side of the station. On some nights, up to a hundred homeless huddle together like freezing people in front of a fire. Many of those who sleep here are African refugees. During the daytime, Roma from Romania represent the majority in and around the station. Left largely unchecked by the local authorities, they aggresively try to squeeze money out of foreign tourists.
North Korea says army must develop to be able to beat U.S.
(Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un urged the army to develop to ensure it wins any confrontation with the United States, the reclusive country's news agency said on Sunday, a day after U.S. President Barack Obama warned the North of its military might.
Kim led a meeting of the Central Military Commission and "set forth important tasks for further developing the Korean People's Army and ways to do so", KCNA news agency said.
"He stressed the need to enhance the function and role of the political organs of the army if it is to preserve the proud history and tradition of being the army of the party, win one victory after another in the confrontation with the U.S. and creditably perform the mission as a shock force and standard-bearer in building a thriving nation."
It's a place of celebration, where dying guests are promised freedom for their souls. And where one man, whose father is No. 14,544 in the ledger, finds himself torn between two worlds.
By Moni Basu, CNN
Varanasi, India
A10-hour journey on Indian roads can be difficult and this one, fueled by faith, was more so.
Dinesh Chandra Mishra packed moth-eaten woolen blankets for the trip along with muslin and cotton quilts that had once been crisp and white. He also brought a single-burner kerosene stove, kitchen utensils and a rough estimation of clothes -- though he could not possibly calculate how long he would be away from home.
He spent one-fourth of his monthly schoolteacher's pension to hire the car that carried him and his belongings as well as his mother, sister and ailing father from their village of Gopalganj to Varanasi.
A US soldier searches for his Vietnamese son
By Sue Lloyd RobertsBBC Newsnight
Thousands of children were fathered by American servicemen during the Vietnam war. Now in their 60s and 70s, some veterans are desperate to find the sons and daughters they have never known.
A tall, thin American wearing a straw hat wanders through the narrow streets of Ho Chi Minh City, clutching a photo album. At his side is a Vietnamese interpreter and fixer, Hung Phan, who has helped dozens of former American soldiers locate their long-lost children over the last 20 years. His latest client, the American under the straw hat, is Jerry Quinn. He has come to Vietnam to find his son.
"I know we lived at number 40," says Quinn, looking down the street for the house he used to share with his Vietnamese girlfriend. But there is no number 40.
Folowing a ruling by the UN's top court many observors suggested that Japan would discontiue its research whaling having been the focus of controvosy since its eception following a world wide ban on whaling in the 1980's.
Japan's research whaling program is nothing more than a scam prepertated by the Japanese government and the fishing industry to cover its real purpose, commerical whaling not research.
Given all the research that's supposedly been conducted one one would assume that peer reviewed papers in the field of cetology would have been published, yet there is no clear evedence that any such papers or studies have been submitted to any recognised scientific journal in the field.
A Japanese whaling fleet, the first since the UN's top court ordered Tokyo to stop killing the mammals in the Antarctic under the guise of research, has left port under tight security with a lowered target of whales to be killed along the country's northern coast.
Four ships departed from the fishing town of Ayukawa in the northeast on Saturday, marking this season's start to a coastal whaling programme not covered by the International Court of Justice's landmark ruling - which found Japan's Southern Ocean expedition was a commercial activity masquerading as research.
Some observers had predicted the Japanese government would use the cover of last month's court ruling to abandon what many have long considered the facade of a scientific hunt.
But Tokyo's decision to continue whaling is likely to set off a new battle with critics who had hoped the ruling would bring an end to a slaughter that the Japanese government has embraced as part of the island nation's cultural heritage.
