SIx In The Morning Saturday August 8

West Bank arson: Dead Palestinian child's father dies of wounds

• 57 minutes ago
 
• From the sectionMiddle East

A Palestinian man whose child was killed in an arson attack blamed on Jewish settlers has died of his injuries.

Saad Dawabsha, 32, died in an Israeli hospital where he was being treated for second-degree burns to most of his body.

His son Ali, 18 months, died in the attack in the village of Duma in the occupied West Bank on 31 July.

His mother and his four-year-old brother remain in critical condition.

Relatives said the funeral would take place on Saturday.

'Price tag attack'

The family's small home was firebombed in the night, and daubed with slogans in Hebrew, including the word "revenge".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the attack an act of terrorism. Israel has vowed to catch the arsonists.

Five women killed in India by villagers suspecting witchcraft

Around 50 villagers arrested over killings in Jharkhand where there are frequent attacks on women believed to have cast curses

Jason Burke in Delhi and Manoj Chaurasia in Patna

Saturday 8 August 2015 09.16 BST

Five women have been killed in eastern India by villagers who believed they were witches, according to local officials.

The killings took place in a rural community in the state of Jharkhand, where there are frequent reports of fatal attacks on women who locals say have cast curses that are blamed for poor crops, illness or misfortune. The killings often disguise family feuds or land disputes.

In the latest incident villagers with sticks and knives attacked the five women on Friday night in the town of Kanjia, police officials said.

“The women were dragged out of their home while asleep and beaten to death by the villagers suspecting them to be witches … some were even stoned to death,” said Jharkhand police spokesperson SN Pradhan.

Ebola: 'Detective work' is key to ending epidemic once and for all

Nearly 2,000 people are currently being actively monitored in Sierra Leone and Guinea

CHARLIE COOPER 

 

 

Saturday 08 August 2015

A matter of months ago, Dr Marc Forget’s job, at the front line of the fight against the deadliest Ebola epidemic, was best summed up by two words: “damage control.”  “The priority then was just to increase bed capacity and to provide safe burials,” he says. “We were just reacting to the magnitude of the disaster.”

Now, one year to the day since the World Health Organisation (WHO) – belatedly – declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a public health emergency of international concern, Dr Forget’s work with the aid charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), is very different, but no less arduous.

Efforts to end the epidemic, which has killed more than 11,000 people, once and for all in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia now centre on a meticulous process, akin to detective work, of tracing, contacting and monitoring every single person who could possibly have contracted the virus.

Macedonia’s ‘Wild District’ still scarred after battle

Many believe deadly police operation was intended to ease pressure on government

Daniel McLaughlin in Kumanovo

As Macedonian police launched raids this week against what it said were suspected Islamist radicals, many in the crisis-ridden Balkan state thought back to a recent, bloody gun battle that is still shrouded in mystery.

The northern town of Kumanovo, 13km from the Serbian border, was one of several targets for police units on Thursday, but the special operation was low-key in comparison to a deadly onslaught that reduced much of one district to rubble in May.

“There was no warning. We woke up to gunfire at 5am,” said Kumanovo resident Fazli Shabi Asani. “Our house was destroyed, as were 16 in this neighbourhood,” he said, looking around at streets of tightly packed buildings from one of several dusty spaces that mark where houses were demolished.

Islamic State contagion growing in Indonesia

August 8, 2015 - 4:30PM

Tom Allard

National Affairs Editor

Jakarta: In the upmarket Jakarta suburb of Menteng, home to former presidents and diplomats and their enormous mansions, al-Fataa mosque is an incongruous building.

A former Dutch colonial hall converted into a place of worship in the 1950s, the mosque, painted in a faded lime green, is tucked down a ramshackle alley dotted with makeshift restaurants and kiosks.

Next door is a Defence Ministry building. On the other side, a swanky new apartment complex. Barely 200 metres away is the fortified compound for US embassy workers. Less than one kilometre away, the US embassy itself.

UN opens door for Syria chemical attacks inquiry

UN Security Council backs resolution to probe chlorine gas attacks as monitor says nearly 250,000 have died in the war.

08 Aug 2015 01:52 GMT

The United Nations Security Council has unanimously passed a United States-drafted resolution laying the groundwork for an inquiry that would assign blame for chemical weapons attacks in Syria's long and bloody civil war.

Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, said following the passage of the resolution on Friday that it will now be sent to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Ban has 20 days to form the panel and make recommendations about how the investigation will be conducted. The panel would then make its first report within 90 days.

Our correspondent said the unanimous vote was "important and very significant" given the political divisions at the UN on the Syria issue.