'Chocolate King' Petro Poroshenko sworn in as President of Ukraine
Boko Haram holds world to ransom
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan is talking tough, but attacks could result in hostages being killed.
The Nigerian government is actively trying to open channels of negotiation with Boko Haram, the Guardian has learned. The militants abducted 200 schoolgirls seven weeks ago. Officials are aiming to gather a special task force whose goal will be to cut a deal, or wear down the commanders of certain factions, according to insiders with access to Boko Haram’s senior hierarchy.
Often portrayed as a shadowy sect that operates from the margins of society, Boko Haram is in fact deeply embedded in the impoverished northeastern rural settlements from which it sprang.
The government is looking for people to act as couriers, according to an intelligence official directly involved in the talks. That has meant trying to strengthen a network of informants and go-betweens in a situation where so much bad blood exists that direct talks have been ruled out.
Alleged kidnappings, murder and a female Christ: The banned religious group that has China worried
The group was approaching fellow diners at a McDonald's restaurant in an eastern Chinese city on a recent Wednesday night, asking for their cellphone numbers, when one woman refused.
What happened next, captured by terrified onlookers on their cellphone cameras and later replayed in news reports, would shock the Chinese public and trigger an official crackdown on what Beijing has characterized as a dangerous doomsday "cult."
"Go to hell, demon," one of the accused, Zhang Lidong, yelled as he beat the woman with a steel mop handle, telling her she would "never come back in the next reincarnation."
Breaking the silence about Israeli occupation
The founder of Breaking the Silence, a group of ex-soldiers opposed to Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza, talks about moral accountability on the group’s 10-year anniversary.
By Christa Case Bryant17 hours ago
On the anniversary of Israel’s stunning six-day defeat of its Arab neighbors, hundreds of Israelis gathered not to celebrate, but to question the morality of the 47 years of Palestinian occupation that followed. At stake is not only Palestinian freedom, but the identity of Israel, says Yehuda Shaul.
Mr. Shaul, who spent much of his mandatory three-year army service in the West Bank city ofHebron, founded Breaking the Silence 10 years ago to bring the realities of occupation into theTel Aviv “bubble.”
Growing up in a modern Orthodox family in Jerusalem, insulated from the conflict, he got a rude awakening in the IDF. During an officer course, his peers admonished him for questioning the handcuffing of a boy caught throwing stones. “Oh shut up, leftist,” he recalls them saying to him. “Go hand out candies at the checkpoints.”
Internet Giants Erect Barriers to Spy Agencies
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Just down the road from Google’s main campus here, engineers for the company are accelerating what has become the newest arms race in modern technology: They are making it far more difficult — and far more expensive — for the National Security Agency and the intelligence arms of other governments around the world to pierce their systems.
As fast as it can, Google is sealing up cracks in its systems that Edward J. Snowden revealed the N.S.A. had brilliantly exploited. It is encrypting more data as it moves among its servers and helping customers encode their own emails. Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo are taking similar steps.
7 June 2014 Last updated at 04:56
The priest who built a stadium in small-town Honduras
Juticalpa is an unlikely place for a football stadium. A dusty cattle-ranching town in the rural state of Olancho, it seems hard to believe there is an urgent need for a 20,000-capacity sporting arena in this part of Honduras.
Yet amid the thick vegetation and rolling grasslands, a team of mud-caked workers is putting the finishing touches to the Estadio Juan Ramon Breve Vargas, the biggest stadium of its kind outside the capital, Tegucigalpa.
Furthermore, the brains behind the project is neither an architect nor a civil engineer but a chain-smoking Franciscan priest from Malta, Father Alberto Gauci - whom everyone here simply calls Padre Alberto.
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