GOP opponents of nuclear deal couldn't find Iran on a map, says Rouhani
By Mick Krever, CNN
The Republican candidates for U.S. president who are attacking the nuclear deal with Iran could hardly find the country on a map, or know that Tehran is the capital, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Sunday.
"Sometimes when I would have time, some of it was broadcast live and I would watch it -- some of it was quite laughable. It was very strange, the things that they spoke of," he said through an interpreter.
"Some of them wouldn't even know where Tehran was in relation to Iran. Some of them didn't know where Iran was geographically, not distinguishing that one is the capital of the other."
"So what they spoke of was quite far away from the truth. So the people of Iran were looking at it as a form of entertainment, if you will, and found it laughable."
Shell abandons Alaska Arctic drilling
Oil giant’s US president says hugely controversial drilling operations off Alaska will stop for ‘foreseeable future’ as drilling finds little oil and gas
Shell has abandoned its controversial drilling operations in the Alaskan Arctic in the face of mounting opposition.
Its decision, which has been welcomed by environmental campaigners, follows disappointing results from an exploratory well drilled 80 miles off Alaska’s north-west coast. Shell said it had found oil and gas but not in sufficient quantities.
The move is a major climbdown for the Anglo-Dutch group which had talked up the prospects of oil and gas in the region. Shell has spent about $7bn (£4.6bn) on Arctic offshore development in the hope there would be deposits worth pursuing, but now says operations are being ended for the “foreseeable future.”
Shell is expected to take a hit of around $4.1bn as a result of the decision.
Germany finds Rwandan rebel leaders guilty of war crimes
Ignance Murwanashyaka and his deputy Straton Musoni have been sentenced to 21 years in jail collectively by a court in Germany. Their four-year trial heard multiple cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Murwanashyaka was sentenced to 13 years behind bars for aiding and abetting war crimes, while Musron was given an eight year jail term, in a landmark case by a court in Stuttgart.
The pair who led the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) were arrested in Germany in 2009 and went on trial in 2011.
The court heard how their ethnic Hutu rebel group, which was formed in the 1990s, raped and massacred hundreds of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo as their fighters resisted an assault by the Congolese and Rwandan army in 2009.
Hutu militiamen terrorized civilians in the Kivu region of Congo while exploited the area's precious minerals. Several villages were attacked and many people were killed when their huts were set on fire.
Scientists worried about cold 'blob' in North Atlantic amid record hot spell
Chris Mooney
It is an extremely warm year for our planet.
Last week we learnt from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that the first eight months of 2015 were the hottest such stretch yet recorded for the globe's surface land and oceans, based on temperature records going to 1880.
It's just the latest evidence that we are, indeed, on course for a record-breaking warm year in 2015.
Yet, if you look closely, there's one part of the planet that is bucking the trend. In the North Atlantic Ocean, south of Greenland and Iceland, the ocean surface has had very cold temperatures for the past eight months. What's up with that?First of all, it's no error. Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring branch at NOAA's National Centres for Environmental Information, confirmed what the map above suggests - some parts of the North Atlantic Ocean had record cold in the past eight months.
Israeli troops clash with Palestinians at Al-Aqsa
Soldiers storm the mosque compound and fight with Muslim worshippers who have barricaded themselves inside.
28 Sep 2015 08:21 GMT
Clashes have erupted for a second day in a row at Al-Aqsa, after Israeli security forces stormed the mosque and fought with Palestinian worshippers.
Witnesses on the ground in occupied Jerusalem told Al Jazeera that the Israeli police entered the mosque shortly before 7am local time (0400 GMT) on Monday.
Sources told Al Jazeera the officers used the al-Maghareba gate to enter the compound.
They reportedly fought with the worshippers, who have barricaded themselves at the mosque.
Al Jazeera's Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from Jerusalem, said clashes continued and tensions "are high" as far-right Jewish groups prepare to enter the mosque compound.
He said several police officers were spotted at the roof of the mosque.
Foreign lawyers fight for reform in Japan
By Allison Bettin for EURObiZ japanBUSINESS
In 2009, the Japanese Ministry of Justice (MoJ) was set to pass legal reforms that would help foreign law firms expand their businesses in Japan. It was an exciting moment for people like James Lawden, a partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, who had been fighting for years for such liberalisation. But before the law was passed, things went sour. A group of “benrishi” (patent attorneys) went to the Diet to lobby for the elimination of the bill. “I don’t know why they were upset,” says Lawden, “but I think they had some problems in America trying to get registered as patent attorneys in California.” Whatever the cause, the law passed — but with massive restrictions that rendered it almost entirely useless.
Such are the setbacks of the foreign law community in Japan, whose members argue that rules and restrictions here are discriminatory and outdated. Take, for example, the legislation that effectively bans foreign legal firms from forming corporations. Rika Beppu, partner at Hogan Lovells and chairman of the EBC Legal Services Committee, explains that, in Japan, one must form a “hojin,” or corporation, to establish branches across the country. “At the moment, a firm is a gathering of foreign-qualified lawyers on their own, [and] we have to all be in one location. There’s no branch. So if you have ambitions to have an office in Osaka, Fukuoka, etc. we’re prohibited,” she says.
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