27 October 2014 Last updated at 03:46
Dilma Rousseff re-elected Brazilian president
Dilma Rousseff has been re-elected president of Brazil, after securing more than 51% of votes in the closest election race in many years.
An official count showed her rival, centrist candidate Aecio Neves, taking just over 48% of the vote.
In her victory speech, Ms Rousseff said she wanted to be "a much better president than I have been until now".
She faced protests last year against corruption, record spending on the football World Cup and poor services.
Ms Rousseff, who has been in power since 2010, is popular with poor Brazilians thanks to her government's welfare programmes.
Spain unsure about letting tourists visit prehistoric site
Scientific council says regular visits to Altamira caves could damage wall paintings
Guy Hedgecoe
Scientists are at loggerheads over whether or not to allow visitors into the caves of Altamira, one of the most prized prehistoric art sites in the world, because of the damage they could cause to its wall paintings.
The Altamira caves, in Cantabria in northern Spain, were closed to the public in 2002 due to concerns about the effect human visits might have on the famous depictions of bison and other animals which have made the site known as “the Sistine Chapel of prehistoric art”.
They were partially reopened in February of this year on a short-term basis, under strict guidelines. Groups of five people, chosen by lottery, were allowed to enter at a time for a short tour while wearing full body suits and with minimal torchlight.
Militants launch missiles in fresh Islamic State threat
Kirk Semple and Eric Schmitt
Baghdad: From the battlefield near Baiji, an Islamic State jihadist fired a heat-seeking missile and blew an Iraqi Army Mi-35M attack helicopter out of the sky this month, killing its two crew members.
Days later, the Islamic State released a chilling series of images from a video purporting to capture the attack in northern Iraq: a jihadist hiding behind a wall with a Chinese-made missile launcher balanced on his shoulder; the missile blasting from the tube, its contrail swooping upward as it tracked its target; the fiery impact and the wreckage on a rural road.
The helicopter was one of several Iraqi military helicopters that the militants claim to have shot down this year, and the strongest evidence yet that Islamic State fighters in Iraq are using advanced surface-to-air missile systems that pose a serious threat to aircraft flown by Iraq and the United States-led coalition.
‘Comfort women’ issue refuses to go away
Nationalists using Asahi errors as ammo against 1993 apology
BY REIJI YOSHIDA
STAFF WRITER
“Comfort women,” as Japan refers to the females who were forced into sexual servitude for the nation’s wartime forces, have been a constant source of controversy since the early 1990s, when the media started to take a serious look at their ordeal.
These women have recently again become a focus of debate in Japan, helping to fuel a diplomatic row with South Korea amid speculation that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe might be trying to rewrite history.
The Japan Times looked into some of the details pertaining to the comfort women issue in an FYI article on March 13, 2013, (www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/03/13/reference/in-abes-future-a-nationalist-rewrite-of-the-past/)
Fortress Israel: Can people make peace when they don’t talk?
As Israelis grow skeptical about achieving peace, they have walled themselves off from their Arab neighbors.
Linda Casher moved to this Israeli collective near the Gaza Strip as a young American woman in the 1970s, she would often mingle with Palestinians at outdoor markets amid the mounds of pomegranates and rows of hanging chickens. She would hitchhike alongside Palestinian workers waiting for minibuses, and she even welcomed Palestinian women from Gaza to her kibbutz, Yad Mordechai, which has a tradition of supporting initiatives that encourage coexistence.
But no longer. The closest she has gotten to a Palestinian from Gaza lately was when Hamas gunmen emerged from the sea onto nearby Zikim beach to infiltrate southern Israel in this summer’s war. It was a long way from sharing coffee and cake at the kibbutz clubhouse.
“Zikim freaked me out,” says Ms. Casher, who asked her soldier son whether guns could still shoot after being submerged in water. “We sit on that beach all the time.”
Singapore activists charged over park protest |
Two activists charged with causing a "public nuisance" by holding an illegal march at a place earmarked for protests.
Last updated: 27 Oct 2014 08:47
|
Two Singaporean activists questioning the government's management of more than $200bn in pension funds have been charged with staging an illegal march at a venue designated for protests.
Roy Ngerng Yi Ling, 33, and Han Hui Hui, 23, led a march on September 27 at Hong Lim Park, the only place in Singapore where protests are allowed, despite having only a permit to stage a rally at a fixed spot.
The protest was the latest in a series they organised calling for greater transparency in how the Central Provident Fund is invested by the government. The fund had about Sg$265 billion ($208bn) under administration as of June this year, according to its website.
Ngerng and Han can be fined up to $3,999 (Sg$5,000) if found guilty of staging a march without approval from park administrators.
No comments:
Post a Comment