Airstrikes pound ISIS targets in Mosul
Coalition airstrikes again pounded ISIS positions in Iraq and Syria on Saturday, including at least a dozen strikes on Mosul, where anti-ISIS forces have been trying to weaken targets ahead of an anticipated fight to wrest Iraq's second largest city from the terror group.
A CNN crew watching from Kurdish positions on Mount Zartak, to the southeast of Mosul, saw at least 12 blasts in the city and heard jets streaking overhead.
ISIS swept into Mosul in June, with Iraqi forces at the time largely fleeing the advance. The Sunni Muslim terror group, also called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, folded Mosul into what it calls its Islamic caliphate -- territory that it has captured in both countries.
Brutal killing of a samba ‘queen’ exposes dark world behind the glitter of carnival
Tourists love Brazil’s glamour, but the murder of a transvestite has revealed the drug gang violence and transphobia below the surface
In the flurry of blue and white that lit up Rio de Janeiro’s vast Sambadrome last week, black bands could be spotted on some of the wrists of those who marched to the driving beats.
It was an uncharacteristically sombre touch for the prestigious Beija-Flor samba school, 12 times winners of the city’s carnival parade, whose symbol is a gigantic hummingbird. The black bands worn at a rehearsal for the carnival, which begins on Friday, were a tribute to a dancer who had been killed the week before.
Claudio da Silva, 25, a transvestite who lived as a woman and was known by the name Piu to those in the school where she danced, had often joked to the “queen of the drums”, Raissa de Oliveira, that she would one day steal her crown and take her place as the most prominent woman in Beija-Flor’s parade. That ambition was never to be realised as Da Silva’s tortured corpse was discovered on 23 January, a few weeks before the carnival.
Syrian refugees: With four million people languishing in camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, the UN calls for organised quota system
Foreign forensic experts slam Mexico's probe into missing students
A team of Argentine-led forensic experts has challenged Mexico's official conclusions regarding the disappearance of 43 students. It insisted that the probe into the incident should remain open.
The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, which includes experts from 30 countries, issued a 16-page statement on Saturday in which it strongly criticized the conclusions reached by the Mexican Attorney General's office as to what happened to the students, who disappeared in September.
The findings of the team, hired as an independent party on behalf of the students' parents, come after Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam last month told a press conference that he had the "legal certainty" that the students were murdered in the southern state of Guerrero.
Murillo Karam said investigators had concluded that the 43 young men were arrested by corrupt municipal police in the city of Iguala on September 26 and handed over to a drug gang, who killed the them, burnt their remains at a garbage dump in the town of Cocula, and disposed of them in a river.
Kerobokan prisoners fear future without Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran
Jewel Topsfield
Fairfax foreign correspondent
Prisoners in Bali's Kerobokan jail are petrified they will be abandoned by the world after their mentors and advocates Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran are killed this month.
Myuran is like my brother, my father and my uncle, all welded into one.
While the art, computer, bible and cooking classes co-ordinated by Sukumaran and Chan are well documented, few on the outside are aware of the advocacy role the men have played in the prison over many years.
The two Australians use their extensive network of supporters to source food, medical supplies, money and other goods for fellow prisoners.
"One of the Iranian lads had asthma – they were able to help with just a simple thing like getting him a ventilator," says Jocelyn Johinke, an Australian who has taught reflexology in the jail for four years.
"A girl had a tooth problem and was in severe pain and they were able to get her a dentist."
Nigeria postpones elections, focuses on major offensive against Boko Haram (+video)
Nigeria's electoral commission announced it will postpone elections for six weeks as a multinational force from Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Benin, and Niger attempt to secure a large swath of northeast land from Boko Haram.
DAKAR, SENEGAL — Nigeria's electoral commission will postpone Feb. 14 presidential and legislative elections for six weeks to give a new multinational force time to secure northeastern areas under the sway of Boko Haram, an official close to the commission told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Millions could be disenfranchised if next week's voting went ahead while the Islamic extremists hold a large swath of the northeast and commit mayhem that has driven 1.5 million people from their homes.
Civil rights groups staged a small protest Saturday against any proposed postponement. Police prevented them from entering the electoral commission headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria's capital. Armed police blocked roads leading to the building.
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