Shops set ablaze, looted as xenophobic attacks spread in South Africa
Updated 0305 GMT (1005 HKT) April 18, 2015
South African police fired rubber bullets Friday to disperse crowds setting immigrant businesses ablaze as attacks against foreigners spread to Johannesburg.
Chanting and singing, machete-armed residents burned down shops owned by foreigners, including a Nigerian dealership in the nation's largest city.
Immigrants carrying bricks accused police of not doing enough to protect them as businesses smoldered.
Six people killed
Violence targeting immigrant shops started recently in the port city of Durban, where two foreigners and three South Africans were killed. Residents have accused African immigrants of taking their jobs and committing crimes. The unemployment rate in South Africa is 25%, according to government figures.
Anzac Day terror plot: Five teenagers arrested in Australia for 'planning Isis-inspired attack'
Two 18-year-old men have been arrested on suspicion of planning and preparing for “terrorist acts” and another 18-year-old was detained in relation to alleged weapons offences.
Two other men, aged 18 and 19, are being held for questioning. All the suspects are from Melbourne.
Germany's Ramstein airbase 'heart' of US drone program
The Ramstein airbase in Germany has been serving as the center of the US' drone strikes in Africa and the Middle East, according to reports by Der Spiegel and The Intercept. The German government is aware of the program.
The Ramstein airbase, in Germany's southwestern Rhineland Palatinate state, was being used as a "tell-tale" heart for US drone strikes in Africa and the Middle East, Der Spiegel and The Intercept reported on Saturday.
The news organizations, which reported the story after receiving information from an anonymous source, said that the German government was aware of Washington's intentions.
According to the news articles, the US administration regularly sent out drones to hit targets suspected of terrorism. These targets were mostly situated in Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"Signals are transmitted from Ramstein, which tell the drones what they should do," Der Spiegel reported a US official as saying, on condition of anonymity. The magazine also referred to documents which could put the German government under pressure, especially since Berlin had always argued that it had "no confirmed knowledge" on the central role of Ramstein in the controversial drone attacks by the US.
Japanese-Americans halt auction of internment camp artefacts
April 18, 2015 - 12:15PMCatherine Saillan
The US detained 120,000 Japanese-Americans, two-thirds of whom were US citizens, in 10 camps after Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.
Los Angeles: Nancy Oda's parents had an expression whenever she brought up her family's imprisonment behind barbed wire in the United States during World War II. "They said 'shikata ga nai' – it can't be helped," Oda recalls.
But Ms Oda, who was born in a relocation camp at Tule Lake near the California-Oregon border, won't tolerate passivity any more.
The retired school principal from the Los Angeles community of Van Nuys was among tens of thousands of Japanese Americans across the nation who jumped into action after learning that a rare collection of arts and crafts made in internment camps was being auctioned off, piece by piece.
TIME outdid itself with its '100 Most Influential People' list
And not in a good way.
TIME Magazine's annual list of the world's "100 Most Influential People" has always said more about TIME's editors than about people who have actual influence. And this year's list is no exception.
Their choices have long skewed towards the hot and the new, not necessarily those who move the needle. In 2011 it acclaimed Wael Ghonim, a young Egyptian executive who was a symbol of the uprising in that country that spring. Mr. Ghonim then receded into obscurity; Egypt watchers assumed (rightly) that he'd have no ongoing impact at all.
That edition also cited artist Ai Weiwei as the most influential man in China, while the country's president and central bank governor, who oversees China's $3 trillion in foreign reserves, didn't make the cut.
US troops on Ukrainian soil could reignite fighting: Moscow
Russia on Friday warned that the arrival of US paratroopers in Ukraine to train its forces fighting pro-Russian rebels could reignite the conflict, leading to mass bloodshed.
The arrival of hundreds of US paratroopers in war-torn Ukraine causes "serious concern," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.
It warned that the US training programme was a step towards Washington supplying weaponry to the Ukrainians fighting pro-Russian separatists in the country's Donbass region.
"Washington's encouraging attitude to (Kiev's) revanchist plans carries a risk of reigniting mass bloodshed in our neighbouring country," Moscow said.
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