SIx In The Morning Sunday November 30

Bhopal 30 years on: The women of India are battling the poisonous legacy of the world's worst industrial accident

Thirty years ago, the world's worst industrial accident exposed 500,000 people to a toxic gas in Bhopal, India. So far, 25,000 have died as a direct result. But what of the survivors? Andrew Johnson meets three generations of women who have turned the disaster into a force for good

ANDREW JOHNSON

Sunday 30 November 2014

The children at the Chingari Trust Rehabilitation Centre in old Bhopal are as polite as any you would find anywhere in the world. They approach without hesitation and hold out their arms for a hearty handshake. They look you right in the eye with a mix of curiosity and boldness.

Their mums sit on the floor along the corridor as they wait for the special education classes, physiotherapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy to finish. For Chingari is a school for some of the hundreds of children born with physical and mental problems such as cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy in this part of the city– the capital of the state of Madhya Pradesh, slap-bang in the middle of India.

The rate of disability is high due to the presence of the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide factory just down the road: 30 years ago, on the night of 2 December 1984, it exploded, spewing out up to 42 tons of methyl isocyanate. The poison cloud swallowed up the slums that lay across the road, crept through windows and doorways, and brought death, panic – and three decades of suffering.

Red Bull-drinking jihadists, crucifixions and air strikes: inside Raqqa, the Islamic State’s capital

Activists tell of the Isis elite living in relative luxury as civilians face poverty, hunger, inflation and power shortages

• Mark Townsend
• The Observer, Sunday 30 November 2014

The beleaguered inhabitants of Raqqa, self-proclaimed capital of the Islamic State (Isis), are suffering widespread hunger, crippling inflation, chronic power shortages and poverty so acute that emergency soup kitchens have been set up.

With no journalists, local or foreign, able to operate inside Syria’s sixth-largest city, courageous local activists have given the Observer a detailed account of life under the jihadists’ totalitarian regime, a rare glimpse of everyday life in the city.

Their testimony reveals the evolution of a community brutally divided into haves and have-nots, with Isis enjoying well-resourced services including “private” hospitals and a relatively high standard of living as many residents struggle to make ends meet.

The Jihad Cult: Why Young Germans Are Answering Call to Holy War

By SPIEGEL Staff

Hundreds of young German Islamists have traveled to Syria to fight with the terrorist group Islamic State. SPIEGEL explored the extremist scene in Germany and the fascination with jihad in order to find answers about what drives people to join the murderous cult.

Whenever Ismail Cetinkaya runs into one of those young men who want to leave Hamburg to fight in Syria, he asks: "Have you ever slept without heat in the winter? Do you know what it's like to live without electricity and running water? Do you think a Kalashnikov works like the controller for your PlayStation 4?"

He also asks whether the young man is leaving his mother behind. And then he quotes the words of the Prophet Mohammed, and says: "Paradise lies at the feet of your mother." The implication being that those who leave their weeping mothers behind won't enter paradise.

Cetinkaya, 33, has a full beard and has been praying to Allah five times a day ever since he found himself, as he says. He's the son of Turks from Mardin, a city on the Syrian border. He speaks fluent Arabic and doesn't need a German imam or YouTube videos to understand what God wants from him.

‘Putin’s Kleptocracy,’ by Karen Dawisha

By RAJAN MENON

Now in his third (nonconsecutive) presidential term, Vladimir Putin presents himself as the strong and virtuous leader who rescued Russia from the chaos, corruption, penury and weakness of the 1990s.

State-controlled news media and Kremlin spin doctors disseminate this message diligently — and to good effect, judging from Putin’s 80 percent approval rating. But with “Putin’s Kleptocracy,” Karen Dawisha, a respected scholar of Soviet and Russian politics at Miami University in Ohio, seeks to shred this carefully constructed narrative.

Her verdict is not merely that Putin’s boast of having built a potent, efficient state that fights for the little guy and against the venality of the powerful is bunk. Her bedrock claims are that the essential character of Putin’s system is colossal corruption and that he is a prime beneficiary. The thievery, she says, has made him fabulously rich, along with a coterie of trusted friends dating back to his days as a K.G.B. officer in Communist East Germany, then as first deputy mayor in 1990s St. Petersburg, then as head of the Federal Security Service.

Death and the goddess: The world's biggest ritual slaughter

By Manesh Shrestha, for CNN

November 29, 2014 

Motilal Kushwaha had promised the Hindu goddess Gadhimai that he would offer her a male goat if one of his children found a job.

Last year his son was successful -- and on Saturday he was one of tens of thousands of people killing the animals at the temple of Gadhimai in southern Nepal as part of the biggest religious mass slaughter in the world.

"From my village everyone has made a vow [to offer animals]," says Kushwaha from Bariyarpur, a community in Bara district about 60 miles south of Kathmandu. Some, he explains, are glad they have got a son or a daughter, others that a different form of good fortune has befallen them.

The ritual sacrifice of goats, buffaloes and roosters in temples and at home is widespread in Nepal where 80 percent of the population are Hindu.

World Cup 2018 & 2022: More bidding process corruption claims

29 November 2014Last updated at 22:02 GMT

More allegations of corruption during the bidding process to stage the World Cups in 2018 and 2022 have been made.

The House of Commons Culture Media and Sport select committee has published previously unseen material submitted to it by the Sunday Times newspaper. 

It draws on claims by senior sources that officials connected to England's bid for the 2018 World Cup ran an intelligence-gathering operation against rival nations.

Russia and Qatar won the bids.

This submission by the Sunday Times outlines how England 2018 executives compiled a database of rumours and intelligence - gathered by private companies and, significantly, British embassies.