17 July 2014 Last updated at 08:13
BY CYRUS MOUSSAVI My dream has always been to travel the world and tell stories of change through music. I came to Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region in the north of Iraq, because few places in the world are changing more rapidly.
Gaza ceasefire between Hamas and Israel begins
A five-hour humanitarian ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas has begun in the Gaza Strip after nine days of fighting.
Correspondents say people are queuing outside banks and traffic is building up as they rush to get supplies.
Fighting continued until the truce came into effect at 10:00 local time (07:00 GMT).
Officials in Gaza say Israeli raids have left 227 Palestinians dead. Hamas rocket attacks have killed one Israeli.
Israel launched its military operation on 8 July with the stated objective of halting Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel.
However, the United Nations says most of those killed in Gaza have been civilians.
Israel accuses Hamas of hiding its military infrastructure within the civilian population.
‘How is it possible to divide the victims, all of whom should have been protected?’
Nineteen years after Srebrenica, the question of who to blame is still raw
Peter Cluskey
It is difficult to believe, but 19 years after the Srebrenica massacre, newly identified bodies are still being laid to rest almost daily.
Senad Beganovic (14) was the youngest of 175 victims interred in the village cemetery at Potocari just last Friday. He was identified only after his body was pieced together from parts discovered in four mass graves.
If what happened in Srebrenica and much of the rest of the former Yugoslavia remains as raw to the victims’ relatives as if it were yesterday, the fate of Senad Beganovic perhaps explains why. He was one of 14 victims under 18 who were buried last Friday. The oldest was 79. And the 175 coffins lowered into the rows of fresh graves were just a drop in the ocean of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys slaughtered there.
Assad seen as ally in fight against Islamists
Bashar Assad is now seen as less of a threat than the ISIS militants in the Syrian civil war. Making an ally of the regime in Damascus could be in the West's best interest, but experts warn against such a move.
The rapid advance of the radical militant group ISIS in Iraq and Syria has changed the military balance of power in the Syrian conflict. It has also shifted perceptions.
For a long time, the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad (pictured), was seen as the West's main enemy in the civil war. Following staged elections in government-controlled parts of the country in June, Assad was officially inaugurated for a new presidential term on Wednesday (16.07.2014).
But ISIS has long since surpassed the dictator as the greatest threat to the region. Its fighters don't just pose a risk to the governments of Syria, Iraq and the moderate Syrian opposition. More and more jihadists living in Europe are returning after combat missions in Syria, and security agencies warn this could lead to an increase in terrorist attacks.
Activist Ye Haiyan who offered free sex to the poor barred by China from visiting Australia
July 17, 2014 - 8:20AM
Philip Wen
China correspondent for Fairfax Media
Chinese authorities have barred one of the country’s most prominent women’s rights activists from attending an international AIDS conference in Australia, prompting outcry from human rights and health advocates.
Ye Haiyan, 39, had planned to depart for the AIDS 2014 conference in Melbourne on Wednesday, but said she was told she had been placed under a travel ban, meaning she could not board her scheduled flight.
Ms Ye, who lives in Wuhan, is best-known for campaigning for the rights of sex workers including calling for the legalisation of the profession in China, where prostitution is prevalent but illegal.
Nigerian troops flee fire, citing graft
When Islamist militants raided the northeastern Nigerian village of Izghe in February, killing 90 people, some government troops dropped their weapons, stripped off their uniforms and fled, two soldiers who were there said.
The soldiers said the troops were angry that their monthly pay had been halved to 15000 naira (R1000) without explanation, heightening their belief that money meant for them and their frontline fight against Boko Haram was being siphoned off by officials in Abuja.
"Somebody is sitting comfortably in Abuja stealing our money, and we are here facing Boko Haram fire every day," Shu'aibu, a lance corporal, said in an interview in Yola, the capital of Adamawa, last month.
James, a sergeant who was at the Izghe attack in February, said corruption among senior officers was weakening the army's ability to defeat Boko Haram, which kidnapped more than 276 schoolgirls in April.
Gunmen kill Tunisian soldiers near Algeria |
At least 14 soldiers killed when gunmen attacked military checkpoints in Mount Chaambi area, close to Algerian border.
Last updated: 17 Jul 2014 08:29
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At least 14 Tunisian soldiers have been reported killed and 20 wounded after gunmen attacked military checkpoints near the Algerian border, where the army has been conducting an operation to flush out armed groups, the ministry of defence told Al Jazeera.
The fighters, one of whom was reported killed, were armed with rocket-propelled grenades and rifles and attacked the checkpoints in the Mount Chaambi area.
Since April, thousands of Tunisian troops have been deployed to the area, where a small group of fighters have been holed up, some since the French military operation drove al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters out of Mali last year.
On the Ground in Kurdistan With Young Musicians Shaping a New Nation
BY CYRUS MOUSSAVI My dream has always been to travel the world and tell stories of change through music. I came to Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region in the north of Iraq, because few places in the world are changing more rapidly.
I’d read about a rich musical tradition carried out under the most brutal conditions. Singers traveled on foot and kept the Kurdish language and culture alive despite the best efforts of Saddam Hussein. During that regime, the very act of singing in Kurdish was political, and many musicians caught doing it were punished with death.
But in the Kurdistan of 2014, I found a musical void. The old musicians were gone. They were dead, or living abroad, or they had simply taken other jobs and forgotten how to play.
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