First deaths confirmed after Tropical Cyclone Pam roars over Vanuatu
Updated 0911 GMT (1711 HKT) March 14, 2015
A tropical cyclone killed at least six people in Vanuatu, UNICEF said Saturday, confirming first casualties from one of the most powerful storms ever to make landfall.
Hardly a tree stood straight after Tropical Cyclone Pam bellowed across the Pacific island nation.
Aid workers fear many more fatalities. The confirmed deaths came only from the capital, Port Vila.
A radio silence has set in on possible deaths elsewhere, and it is making Sune Gudnitz feel uneasy.
"Unfortunately, we have nothing from outside of Port Vila, which is in itself a bad sign," the spokesman for UN aid agency OCHA said. Widespread wiped out communications could indicate desolation.
Officials blamed over Philippines raid in which 44 police died
Investigation report describes disastrous operation
Floyd Whaley
A botched police raid that killed 44 elite officers and jeopardised a landmark peace deal in the Philippines involved blunders by officials from the field commander all the way up to President Benigno S Aquino III, according to a report released yesterday.
The investigative report by a specially created government panel describes a disastrous operation in which police radio batteries failed, ammunition was defective, officers were left stranded and exposed under enemy fire and nearby military units with access to aircraft and artillery were kept in the dark about the details of the raid and left unable to rescue the police.
Defective
The operation was “defective from the very beginning”, said the report, which will serve as the official government account of the episode and will be used to mete out punishment to guilty officials.
Children rescued from Boko Haram so traumatised they have forgotten their names
Kevin Sieff
Nairobi, Kenya: After years in a Boko Haram camp, the children had forgotten their native language. They couldn't even remember their names.
They just stared past Christopher Fomunyoh when he tried to engage them. It was a rare glimpse at the human toll left by the extremists who have been fighting to create an Islamic state in Nigeria and surrounding areas.
Mr Fomunyoh, regional director at the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, visited the children recently at an orphanage in the city of Maroua in northern Cameroon. They had been rescued by the country's military in November from a squalid Boko Haram encampment near the border with Nigeria.
This is what he saw: 100 children, aged 5 to 17, without shoes in an orphanage built for 20. Hard benches for sleeping. A shortage of rice. Boys who appeared to be speaking broken Arabic, rather than one of the many languages native to Cameroon.
Europe tries new tack to keep young women from joining Islamic State
An estimated 550 Western women have travelled to the Middle East to join Islamic extremist groups. Europeans hope new de-radicalization programs will help stem the flow.
VIENNA AND LONDON — While the self-described Islamic State continues to attract many young European men with its sophisticated social media campaign and mesmerizing brutality, the extremist group has also demonstrated eye-catching success with a less visible group: young Muslim women.
An estimated 550 Western women are believed to have travelled to Syriaand Iraq to join Islamic extremist groups. The propaganda arm of IS has appealed to them with everything from online cookbooks for the wives of mujahadeen to parenting guides for raising future jihadists.
But across Europe, concerned observers from teachers to family counselors, are striking back with their own set of gender tactics. Counterterrorism experts now see such a tailored strategy as central to detecting girls who could fall prey to IS propaganda. And they are pointing in particular to mothers, with their outsized influence in Muslim households, as forming one of the best lines of defense.
Turkey detains 16 Indonesians 'attempting to join ISIL'
Group of mostly children and women were trying to cross into Syria, Turkish foreign minister says.
Sixteen Indonesians have been detained in Turkey while attempting to cross into Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, Turkish foreign minister has said.
Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Friday that police were looking for another group of 16 Indonesians reported missing in Turkey.
The group that was caught in the Turkish city of Gaziantep near Syrian border included 11 children, four women and one man, Turkish media reported.
The group that was caught in the Turkish city of Gaziantep near Syrian border included 11 children, four women and one man, Turkish media reported.
Tedjo Edhy Purdijatno, Indonesia's security minister, said late on Thursday the country was investigating the incident, but it was clear that the group wanted to join ISIL "to have a better life in accordance with Islamic sharia laws".
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