Three million refugees have fled Syria, says UN
UNHCR points to 'increasingly horrifying conditions' inside the country that have forced nearly 50% of Syrians to flee their homes
UNHCR points to 'increasingly horrifying conditions' inside the country that have forced nearly 50% of Syrians to flee their homes
More than three million Syrians have fled the civil war ravaging their country to become refugees – a million of them in the past year alone, the UN said on Friday.
"Syria's intensifying refugee crisis will today [Friday] surpass a record three million people," the UN's refugee agency said in a statement, adding that the number did not include hundreds of thousands of others who fled without registering as refugees.
Less than a year ago, the number of registered Syrian refugees stood at two million, UNHCR said, pointing to reports of "increasingly horrifying conditions inside the country" to explain the surge.
It described "cities where populations are surrounded, people are going hungry and civilians are being targeted or indiscriminately killed".
Captain of doomed South Korea ferry says lack of checks was customary: Yonhap
SEOUL
(Reuters) - The captain of a ferry that capsized in April in South Korea's worst maritime accident in decades told a court on Friday he was just following established practice in not making safety checks before the vessel set off, Yonhap news agency reported.
Lee Joon-seok, 68, appeared at times disoriented and unable to properly understand questions when he took the stand for the first time in the court in the southwestern city of Gwangju that is trying him and three crew members for homicide, it said.
The overloaded ferry Sewol capsized and sank on a routine voyage that killed about 300 people, causing an outpouring of grief as well as outrage at President Park Geun-hye's government for what was seen by many as a botched rescue operation.
' Soccer moms' to sue Fifa over concussion risk to children playing football
Japan lodges record defence budget request in response to strengthening China
August 29, 2014 - 5:13PM
Tokyo: Japan's Defence Ministry has made its biggest post-war budget request as Tokyo bolsters its military amid worries over China's expanding naval reach.
The ministry wants 5.05 trillion yen ($52.7 billion) for the year, with the focus on boosting protection of a string of southern islands that stretches from Kyushu to waters near Taiwan.
The request on Friday, if approved, would mark the third straight annual defence budget increase and a 3.5 per cent rise on the budget for the present fiscal year to March 2015.
SA soldiers died in CAR while generals dithered
While South African soldiers were fighting for their lives in the CAR last year, a different battle was going on back at defence headquarters.
Internal South African National Defence Force (SANDF) documents paint a dramatic picture of desperate efforts by operations staff to source a cargo aircraft to transport support equipment, including armoured vehicles, to Bangui in the Central African Republic.
The first shots were fired on Friday March 22 at about 4pm, and the operational planners decided on Saturday evening that an Antonov AN-124 aircraft was required. This was to transport eight Mamba vehicles, one diesel bowser and supporting equipment to the mission area that had “become a war zone overnight”.
On Sunday morning the rebels brokered a ceasefire. By then, 13 South African soldiers were dead and 27 injured.
In a written account seen by amaBhungane, the director of joint operation support, identified as Lieutenant Colonel WJ Damon, describes how they had tried to contact the companies that were registered as approved SANDF suppliers.
For a war correspondent's mother, James Foley killing hits close to home
As a parent who often spent nights hovering on the edge of sleep, my heart aches not only for Jim – murdered by Islamic State militants – and other captive journalists, but for their families.
DAYTON, OREGON — The news of James Foley’s beheading in Syria hit me hard. So too did yesterday's plea by Shirley Sotloff for the militant jihadist group Islamic State to release her son. As a mother of a journalist who covers wars, my heart aches not only for Jim, and other captive journalists, but for their families.
In January of 2004, I got an e-mail from my son, Tom, in Baghdad. A 21-year-old junior in college, he'd decided to spend the winter break of his study abroad in Cairo as a freelance journalist in Iraq. As a new freelancer who had chosen to jump right into conflict reporting, he, like a number of others at the time, had gone into the country with no institutional commitments. Nobody to report to. Nobody to ask anything. Nobody to miss him. And no one to look for him if he went missing.
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