Six In The Morning Sunday April 26

Major aftershock hits Nepal day after cataclysmic earthquake

By Manesh Shrestha, Jethro Mullen and Wayne Drash, CNN

Updated 1046 GMT (1746 HKT) April 26, 2015

A powerful aftershock jolted Nepal on Sunday as the Himalayan nation struggled to cope with the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake that had struck a day earlier, killing more than 2,000 people and leveling scores of buildings.

The magnitude of the new quake Sunday was initially estimated at 6.7 by the U.S. Geological Survey, considerably weaker than the 7.8 magnitude of the devastating one of a day earlier.

But it was still enough to create fresh panic among already traumatized residents.

"People are running and everything is shaking," said Kushal Neogy, a staff member of the aid group Catholic Relief Services in Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital.

Migrant boat crisis: the story of the Greek hero on the beach

One compelling image has come to represent all the Greek people who treated desperate migrants like fellow human beings

Helena Smith in Athens

Sunday 26 April 2015 00.43 BST

It was an image that came to symbolise desperation and valour: the desperation of those who will take on the sea – and the men who ferry human cargo across it – to flee the ills that cannot keep them in their own countries. And the valour of those on Europe’s southern shores who rush to save them when tragedy strikes.

Last week on the island of Rhodes, war, repression, dictatorship in distant Eritreawere far from the mind of army sergeant Antonis Deligiorgis. The world inhabited by Wegasi Nebiat, a 24-year-old Eritrean in the cabin of a yacht sailing towards the isle, was still far away.

The boat disintegrated in a matter of minutes. It was as if it was made of paper

Antonis Deligiorgis

At 8am on Monday there was nothing that indicated the two would meet. Stationed in Rhodes, the burly soldier accompanied his wife, Theodora, on the school run. “Then we thought we’d grab a coffee,” he told the Observer in an exclusive interview recounting what would soon ensue. “We stopped by a cafe on the seafront.”

Mexico elections: The surreal list of candidates reads more like the line-up of a TV panel show - and the country's long-suffering voters are not amused

Abducted students' families call for boycott as a clown, a footballer and a reality TV star stand in upcoming polls

DUNCAN TUCKER

 

GUADALAJARA

 

Sunday 26 April 2015

With a football legend, a famous clown, a former Big Brothercontestant and several soap stars in the running, the list of candidates in Mexico’s forthcoming elections reads more like the line-up of a television panel show. But the emergence of these maverick contenders reflects a growing sense of disillusionment, which has been compounded by a high-profile movement to boycott the elections.

Enrique Peña Nieto, who has the lowest approval rating of any president in the past two decades, still has three years left in office, but there are more than 1,200 positions at stake in the mayoral and congressional contests to be decided on 7 June.

This is the first time independent candidates have been allowed to participate in Mexico, an unwelcome development for the three major parties that have been tarred by years of bloodshed. An estimated 100,000 people have been killed since 2006 and at least 23,000 have disappeared, including 43 students who were infamously abducted in southern Mexico last September.

US filmmakers unveil FBI tactics to snare Muslims

Text by Sophie PILGRIM

In the wake of 9/11, the FBI recruited thousands of informants to spy on the country’s Muslim communities. In a thrilling exposé, two filmmakers follow a felon-turned-informant as he tries to snare an alleged terror suspect, with devastating results.

(T)ERROR opens to footage of part-time school cook Saeed Torres cursing about being on camera. “I told you I didn’t want my face on this shit,” he tells filmmakers Lyric Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe. Minutes later, he’s showing off on the sidelines of the school basketball court.

That contradiction is the first of many 63-year-old Saeed demonstrates in the 90-minute documentary, which offers unprecedented access into the unsettling work of an FBI informant during an active operation.

Bali prohibition battle as Muslim conservatives increase their influence

April 26, 2015 - 12:15 AM

Jewel Topsfield

Indonesia correspondent for Fairfax

Foreigners are spooked as Indonesia's Islamic parties gain ground in their campaign to ban booze.

Jakarta: In 1918, the Dutch government established the Alcoholbes trijdings Commissie​ to investigate the abuse of alcohol in the Dutch East Indies. Its findings were alarming. "The smell of alcohol filled the red light districts of Batavia [the former name for Jakarta]", according toDrunkenness in History by University of Indonesia history lecturer Kasijanto Sastrodinomo​. 

The Dutch police banned the locally-made "black" liquor popular among indigenous Indonesians. Between 1920 and 1925 they tried to eradicate arak, badeg and ciu from several areas of Java. Spying villagers were given prize money for dobbing in local alcohol producers, leading to overzealous tip-offs of fermented cassava cake makers. (The fermentation process produced ethanol.)

"This led to conflicts among people," Kasijanto writes. Meanwhile, Dutch and Indonesian police officers assigned to crack down on liquor sold in coffee shops had a tipple themselves.  "As a result the fight against liquor was apparently not very effective," Kasijanto notes drily.

A Third-Grade Rap Portraitist’s First Visit to New York, for His Tribeca Film Festival Debut

CULTURE, TRAVEL 

BY LAURA NEILSON

When 8-year-old Lenox Buringrud, known by the name Yung Lenox, was asked about his first impressions of New York City, during a visit to town last weekend, he responded with appropriate candor: “It’s kinda smelly,” he said. Despite it being the hometown of several of his favorite rap artists — Action Bronson and A$AP Ferg, for example — the city’s trademark characteristics, such as the steady noise and unidentifiable odors, were clearly less impressive for the Seattle-based third grader who had arrived for the premiere of “Live Fast, Draw Yung,” a lighthearted, 16-minute documentary which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival last Friday.

The film, directed by Stacey Lee and Anthony Mathile, highlights Lenox as a then 7-year-old hip-hop portraitist and artist, whose illustrated likenesses of rappers such as Cam’ron, Kool Keith and Raekwon have turned the subjects into fans themselves — thanks to a sizable Instagram following. His work appeared at the Frieze Art Fair last year, and was shown at Lenox’s first solo exhibit in Los Angeles last May.