Vanuatu Cyclone Pam: President appeals for "immediate" help
16 March 2015
Vanuatu is in "immediate" need after Cyclone Pam tore through the country at the weekend, its president says.
President Baldwin Lonsdale said the storm had "wiped out" all development of recent years and his country would have to rebuild "everything".
Aid has begun arriving in the storm-hit nation - one of the world's poorest - but contact has still not been made with some of its more remote islands.
Aid agencies say it could be one of the worst disasters ever to hit the region.
The official death toll stands at eight, but it is expected to rise.
The BBC's Jon Donnison, in the capital Port Vila, says just about every house there has received some damage and the situation for many people is bleak.
One village chief told our correspondent there was a desperate need for fresh water supplies.
Saddam Hussein's tomb destroyed as battle for Tikrit rages
Dictator’s once-lavish mausoleum all but flattened as Iraqi security forces and Shia militias attempt to drive out Isis
The tomb of Iraq’s late dictator Saddam Hussein was virtually levelled in heavy clashes between Isis militants and Iraqi forces in a fight for control of the city of Tikrit.
Fighting intensified to the north and south of Saddam’s hometown on Sunday as Iraqi security forces vowed to reach the centre of Tikrit within 48 hours. All that was left of Hussein’s once-lavish tomb were the support columns that held up the roof.
Poster-sized pictures of Saddam, which once covered the mausoleum, were nowhere to be seen amid the mountains of concrete rubble. Instead, Shia militia flags and photographs of militia leaders marked the predominantly Sunni village, including that of Major General Qassem Soleimani, the powerful Iranian general advising Iraqi Shia militias on the battlefield.
Ukraine calls on allies to boycott Russia’s 2018 World Cup
Poroshenko says allies should boycott soccer World Cup if Moscow does not pull troops
Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko has urged his country’s allies to consider boycotting the 2018 soccer World Cup in Russia if Moscow does not pull all its troops out of his territory.
Mr Poroshenko told the Bild German newspaper in an interview published on Monday that he preferred to keep soccer and politics separate. However, he said this was not possible when Ukrainian club Shakhtar Donetsk was having to play 1,200 km away in Lviv because Donetsk was occupied by pro-Russian separatists.
“I think there has to be discussion of a boycott of this World Cup. As long as there are Russian troops in Ukraine, I think a World Cup in that country is unthinkable,” said Mr Poroshenko, who was in Berlin on an official visit on Monday.
China now world's third-biggest arms exporter
China has eased ahead of Germany and France to become the third-largest exporter of arms worldwide. A fresh SIPRI study revealed the growing strength of the Asian giant's domestic weapons industry.
China managed to overtake Germany to become the world's third-biggest arms exporter, a new study by the Stockholm-based International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) showed Monday.
Although its roughly 5-percent share of the global arms export market remained small compared to the combined 58 percent coming from the US and Russia, the data highlighted China's prospering domestic defense industry churning out fourth-generation fighter jets, navy frigates and a wide range of rather cheap and simple weapons used in conflicts around the globe.
China had long been dependent on arms imports mainly from Russia and Ukraine, but its fast-growing economy and the frequent copying of foreign technology had reversed the trend, SIPRI said in its report covering the 2012-2014 period.
Benjamin Netanyahu plays the hardline settlement expansion card to capture right-wing voters
March 16, 2015 - 8:15PMRuth Pollard
Middle East Correspondent
Jerusalem: Warning his supporters there was a real danger Tuesday's election could bring a leftist government to power in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue with his controversial settlement expansion program in a last-ditch appeal to right-wing voters.
Speaking at a rally made up mostly of settlers and national religious voters in Tel Aviv, the prime minister promised his government would never divide Jerusalem and that – in contravention of international law – it would keep building settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
"As long as the Likud is in power, there will be no concessions or withdrawals [from the occupied territories]," he told the cheering crowds.
Japan's 'comfort women' battle spills into the US
Attempts to revise war-time history of sex slavery result in a backlash and more criticism.
Tokyo, Japan - With an ideological ally in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, right-wing activists have been emboldened to press forward their agenda not only against the domestic media and many in Japanese society, but also the United States as well.
These activists never completely disappeared after World War II, but for most of Japan's post-war history they were pushed into a narrow margin well outside the mainstream, which itself largely embraced the pacifist culture enshrined in the Japanese Constitution of 1947.
In recent decades, however, the margin inhabited by the political right has broadened and it is making inroads back into the mainstream. The relative acceptance of a prime minister holding Shinzo Abe's outspoken views on history and education serves as one point of evidence.
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