Six In The Morning Tuesday June 9

The Journey

Syrian refugee Hashem Alsouki risks his life crossing the Mediterranean, his sights set on Sweden – and freedom for his family

In the darkness far out to sea, Hashem Alsouki can’t see his neighbours but he can hear them scream. It’s partly his fault. They are two African women – perhaps from Somalia, but now is not the time to ask – and Hashem is spreadeagled on top of them. His limbs dig into theirs. They would like to him to move, fast, and so would he. But he can’t – several people are sprawled on top of him, and there’s possibly another layer above them.

Dozens are crammed into this wooden dinghy. If anyone tries to shift, a smuggler kicks them back into place. They don’t want the crammed boat to overbalance, and then sink.

It is perhaps 11 o’clock at night, but Hashem can’t be certain. He’s losing track of time, and of place. Earlier in the evening, on a beach at the northernmost tip of Egypt, he and his companions were herded into this little boat. Now that boat is who knows where, bobbing along in the pitch darkness, lurching in the waves, somewhere in the south-eastern Mediterranean. And its passengers are screaming.

Isis sex slaves 'sold at market for as little as a pack of cigarettes' as life under jihadis is exposed

Barack Obama admits there is no 'complete strategy' to fight advance of group

ADAM WITHNALL 

 

 

Tuesday 09 June 2015

Women captured as sex slaves by the Isis militant group are sold at markets for “as little as a packet of cigarettes”, according to the UN.

Zainab Bangura, the UN envoy on sexual violence, said she had been to Syria and Iraq in recent months and found a war “being fought on the bodies of women”.

Ms Bangura has previously spoken out about the horrific treatment of women captured by the Isis regime, stripped naked and shipped around the territories it controls “like cattle”.

And speaking on Monday, she said: “This is how they attract young men: we have women waiting for you, virgins that you can marry.”

Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan should quit, but don't hold your breath

June 9, 2015 - 5:08PM

Paul McGeough

Chief foreign correspondent

Washington: There's something in the political air in Turkey that we've not sensed in a long while – the notion that with risk, there is consequence.

So how does the nation's president and former prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan respond to the humiliation of Sunday's national vote, a poll all about him even though he was not a candidate?

Without a parliamentary majority, his Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish acronym AKP, now confronts a walk on the wild side – either it soldiers on as a minority government which will achieve little, or it calls another election – and maybe takes a bigger thumping than it did on Sunday.

There's talk of a coalition government. But while they will be tempted privately, all three likely candidates as bedfellows for the AKP have publicly sworn off – and certainly won't change their minds as long as Erdogan sticks to his grandiose imitation of the scam that Vladimir Putin pulled off in Moscow, making all politics about himself while shifting between the offices of prime minister and president.

Eritrea 'tortured, enforced child labour' - UN report

09 JUN 2015 00:00 AFRICAN MEDIA AGENCY

The Eritrean government may have committed crimes against humanity and was responsible for systematic human rights abuses, cites a UN report.

The year-long United Nations report says the abuses by the Eritrean government were on a “scope and scale seldom witnessed elsewhere”.

The UN commission of inquiry on the human rights situation in Eritrea also found the government was responsible for forcing hundreds of thousands of Eritreans to flee their country, and detailed extrajudicial killings, widespread torture, sexual slavery and enforced child labour, according to the report released on Monday

The UN probe named the main perpetrators of the violations as the Eritrean Defence Forces, in particular the Eritrean army, the National Security Office and the country’s police force.

The ministries of information, justice and defence were also accused in the report, in addition to the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) party and President Isaias Afwerki.

Should you be worried about MERS?

By Madison Park, CNN

| Video Source: CNN

The numbers sound scary as cases and deaths of MERS mount daily in South Korea.

People are commuting with face masks in a densely crowded Asian capital, schools are shutting doors and mandatory quarantines are in effect. But what really are the risks and dangers to the general public?

As one official said, South Korea is fighting two battles: MERS and public fear.

Should I be worried about getting MERS?

Not really.

"It's not a very contagious disease," said Dr. Stanley Perlman, one of the authors of a comprehensive MERS review published in the journal Lancet this month. "Personally, people shouldn't be worried, but I can understand the fear factor."

The Global Struggle to Respond to the Worst Refugee Crisis in Generations

By PATRICK BOEHLER and SERGIO PEÇANHA JUNE 8, 2015

Eleven million people were uprooted by violence last year, most propelled by conflict in Syria, Iraq, Ukraine and Afghanistan. Conflict and extreme poverty have also pushed tens of thousands out of parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Here’s a look at the international response to what has become the worst migration crisis since World War II, according to the United Nations.

TAXING THE NEIGHBORS

Years of violence in Iraq and Syria have stretched the capacities of neighboring countries to accommodate the displaced. In Jordan, unemployment has almost doubled since 2011 in areas with high concentrations of refugees, according to a recent International Labor Organization study. Lebanon began to require visas from Syrians in January. Refugees now make up about 20 percent of Lebanon’s population. In March, Turkey announced it would close the two remaining border gates with Syria.