Six In The Morning Tuesday April 7

Yemen's humanitarian crisis worsens as aid delayed

Fierce clashes in Aden as Red Cross faces delays in delivering vital supplies, with water and food starting to run out.

07 Apr 2015 07:15 GMT

Rebels fighting for the control of Yemen and forces backing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi have engaged in fierce clashes in the country's south, leaving more than 140 people dead in 24 hours, as the Red Cross faces delays to deliver vital supplies.

Monday's clashes happened in Aden, a power base for Hadi, who fled to Saudi Arabia as the rebels, known as Houthis, expanded their control across the country.

Citing unnamed officials, the AFP news agency reported that 17 civilians were among more than 140 people killed in Aden, where fighting continued as rebels tried to seize a port in the city.

Bodies of soldiers killed by Isis exhumed from Tikrit mass grave

Teams in the newly liberated Iraqi city have started excavating a mass grave believed to contain hundreds of soldiers killed by militants

Associated Press in Baghdad

Tuesday 7 April 2015 09.36 BST

An Iraqi official says teams in the newly liberated city of Tikrit have started exhuming bodies from a mass grave believed to contain hundreds of soldiers killed by Islamic State militants last year.

About 1,700 soldiers were captured by the extremists in June as they were trying to flee Camp Speicher, an air base on the outskirt of Tikrit that previously served as a US military facility, following an onslaught that stunned security forces and the military, which melted away as the militants advanced and captured key cities and towns in the country’s north and west.

Then, the extremist group posted graphic photos that appeared to show its gunmen massacring scores of the soldiers after loading the captives onto flatbed trucks and then forcing them to lay face-down in a shallow ditch, their arms tied behind their backs. Other videos showed masked gunmen bringing the soldiers to a bloodstained concrete river waterfront inside the presidential palaces complex, shooting them in the head and throwing them into the Tigris.

US prisoners of war subjected to live experiments during WWII, new Japanese exhibit shows

Nine US servicemen are believed to have had parts of their brain and liver removed in vivisections

ROSE TROUP BUCHANAN 

 

 

Tuesday 07 April 2015

A Japanese university museum will break taboo with an exhibition on the infamous live vivisections of American POWs during the Second World War.

Kyushu University’s medical school will for the first time publicly acknowledge that captured US troops had parts of their brains and livers removed in a series of macabre experiments carried out by the university’s medical personal during WWII.

The dark chapter, explained by two items out of 63 in the exhibit, follows nine American air force personnel, who bailed out of their damaged B-29 aircraft over the Kumamoto and Oita prefectures on 5 May, 1945, before their were captured by Japanese troops.

Malaysia anti-terror law revives detention without trial

Parliament has passed a new law in Malaysia which allows terrorism suspects to be held without trial or charges. Critics have argued it's merely a renewal of an old law used to silence opposition to the government.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning Malaysia's parliament passed a tough new anti-terrorism law that critics argue revives detention without trial.

The Prevention of Terrorism Act was passed after twelve hours of intense debate with a final vote of 79 legislators for and 60 against the bill. Opposition lawmakers expressed fears that the new law would be used against critics and opponents of the current administration, but the government argued that the law was necessary to protect the country from extremists.

The bill allows authorities to detain terrorism suspects indefinitely without trial and without court charges. The government maintained that the law was imperative because dozens of Malaysians have been arrested since 2013 for suspected links to the "Islamic State" (IS) terrorist group.

Syria: Besieged Yarmouk refugee camp a test for international community

April 7, 2015 - 12:03PM

Ruth Pollard

Middle East Correspondent

Beirut:  The fate of 18,000 civilians trapped in the besieged Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria – now mostly controlled by the Islamic State – remains in the balance, with the United Nations describing the situation as "catastrophic".

Those left are slowly starving to death as the fighting rages around them, with aid agencies unable to negotiate a safe passage into the Palestinian refugee camp, which lies on the southern outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus.

Most residents were reduced to a food intake of just 400 calories per day, well below the World Health Organisation-recommended minimum of 2100 calories, warned Pierre Krähenbühl, commissioner-general of the United Nations Reliefs and Works Agency.

Turkey turns off Twitter and Facebook as censorship grows

Twitter and Facebook were temporarily banned in Turkey Monday until they promised to censor an image from their networks.

By Michael Holtz, Staff writer

Turkey's temporary ban on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube Monday didn't come out of the blue. In recent years Turkish politicians have passed laws expanding the government's ability to censor the Internet, and more and more those new laws are being brought into play. 

A Turkish court ordered the three social media giants blocked because users were circulating a picture of prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz being threatened by the two Marxist gunmen who took him hostage last week. Mr. Kiraz and the militants were killed in a failed police raid to free him.

Agence France Presse reports that the government lifted the ban on Twitter and Facebook after several hours, following the companies' promise to remove the offending content. The news agency reported that negotiations with YouTube were ongoing.