Threat of ground incursion looms over Yemen
By Ben Brumfield and Hakim Almasmari, CNN
Updated 1003 GMT (1703 HKT) March 29, 2015
Oversized military trucks painted in desert beige hauled tanks in the same camouflage color down a dark highway late Saturday past glowing billboards in the Saudi Arabian town of Jazan.
With the border with Yemen little more than 20 miles away, the trucks captured on a video distributed by the news agency Reuters also carried a message: Suggestions of a ground incursion into Yemen, which is in the throws of a Houthi rebel uprising, may be more than just talk.
Saudi Arabia and Egypt have both spoken about the possibility of putting boots on the ground before. And on Saturday, Yemeni Foreign Minister Riyadh Yaseen said he expected coalition troops to be in Yemen within days.
The warning signs straight-A student was on road to Syrian Isis stronghold
Twitter account in the name of radicalised medical student Lena Mamoun Abdel Gabir showed support for Charlie Hebdo killers and radical cleric Ahmad Musa JibrilMarga Zambrana, Mark Townsend and Emma Graham-Harrison
The warning signs were clear months before British medical student Lena Mamoun Abdel Gabir left for Syria to volunteer in Islamic State-controlled areas – if anyone had thought to look.
Between pictures of flowers and cupcakes, jokes about Nutella and getting married, a Twitter account, apparently run by the 19-year-old, had followed Isis-supporting accounts, re-tweeted her support for the Charlie Hebdo killers, and, last August, shared a video by a radical cleric hugely popular with European and North American jihadists.
The content was deceptively dull, a lecture on whether Muslims should vote in council elections. The real message was the desire to share the thoughts of Palestinian-American preacher Ahmad Musa Jibril. He has been identified as the leading online cheerleader for foreign jihadists in Syria, according to a pioneering academic study published by King’s College London, exploring how radical preachers inspire and guide British and other western Muslims who go to fight.
The Gaza fisherman who built his own reef - and was shot dead there by an Israeli gunboat
The 32-year-old fisherman had built up his own artificial rock with planks of wood, tyres, and bits of metal, seemingly well within the area in which he and his colleagues are allowed to operate. It was while he was adding to this pile that an Israeli gunboat opened fire, wounding him fatally.
Tawfiq and four other fishermen were in two boats that he owned. Both vessels were seized: two of the men were injured; two others arrested. “I told him not to go that day, because the Israelis were doing a lot of shooting; but those boats had cost him $50,000 [£34,000] and he had to EARN MONEY
to pay back the loan he had taken for them,” said his brother Mohammed, 29.
to pay back the loan he had taken for them,” said his brother Mohammed, 29.Spotlight on far right in French local election runoff
French voters are going to the polls to choose thousands of local councilors in run-off elections. The vote is being seen as a barometer of the far-right National Front's growing popularity.
The second round of balloting will see the election of 4,108 local councilors who have limited powers over roads, schools and social services
The vote is not normally the focus of much attention in France. This time, however, the challenge posed by the anti-immigrant, anti-EU National Front under Marine Le Pen (center in photo above) has made the election a litmus test for the popularity of the two main parties.
Although the conservative UMP party of former President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to dominate Sunday's runoff after its victory in the first round last week, the National Front, which won 25 percent of the vote to come second last week, is thought likely to increase its growing hold on grassroots politics.
Eight candidates from National Front were elected in the first round, in comparison with the two councilor positions it currently holds, and an Ifop poll has suggested 100-120 more could be elected this time round. The party came in first in EU elections last year in France.
The Real Reason for China's Massive Military Buildup
Over several different articles, I have been exploring the dynamics of the budding U.S.-China security dilemma—a high-tech drama pitting anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) against what we used to refer to as Air-Sea Battle (ASB)—and have offered several different ways to lessen the possibility of such a dynamic from becoming cemented into the Asia-Pacific’s security architecture. However, China’s development and implementation of A2/AD clearly has various origins. One such origin that deserves to be explored is the “historical nightmare” of China’s subjugation at the hands of various colonial and Asian powers.
In many respects, China is trying to solve a centuries-old problem that never went away: how to defeat in battle military forces that are at least in a symmetrical sense superior to its own and will be for some time to come. If we alter our perspective and take a much longer view of Beijing’s own military obsolescence, a strategy that emphasizes anti-access makes tremendous sense.
Cyberbullying's Got a New Target: Big Companies
In the Wild West of the Internet, social media is often credited with giving a voice to the average citizen and helping to introduce democracy and activism to turbulent parts of the world. Yet on the flip side, online grievance campaigns have become an increasingly frequent phenomenon—with even big companies now tasting the wrath of angry swarms of web activists.
Cyberbullying isn't something normally associated with large corporations. However, in the last week alone social networking played a big role in humbling two culturally influential institutions: Starbucks and DC Comics. Both companies beat a hasty retreat from planned campaigns, and in the process learned a painful lesson in frontier Internet justice.
They join a gallery of big companies that have learned the hard way that hell hath no fury like a Twitter user scorned. So has social media ushered in the age of cyber-bullying of big companies?
No comments:
Post a Comment