Saudi Arabia executes 47 people in one day including Shia cleric
Scores of ‘terrorists’ put to death amid warning from Iran that executing prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr would ‘cost Saudi Arabia dearly’
Saudi Arabia has executed 47 people for terrorism, including the prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.
Most of those executed on Saturday were involved in a series of attacks carried out by al-Qaida from 2003-06, the interior ministry said.
However, it also detained hundreds of members of its Shi’ite minority after protests in 2011-13, during which several policemen were killed in shooting and petrol bomb attacks. Several of those held had been sentenced to death.
The interior ministry statement began with Koranic verses justifying the use of execution and state television showed footage of the aftermath of al-Qaida attacks in the last decade. Saudi grand mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh appeared on television soon after to describe the executions as just.
Iran’s Shia leadership has warned that executing Nimr “would cost Saudi Arabia dearly”.
Waves of change and degradation: How surf tourism dumped on Bali and Indonesia
January 2, 2016 - 12:15 AMJewel Topsfield
Indonesia correspondent for Fairfax
In 1980, Bali hosted its first international pro surfing contest, the Om Bali Pro, at Uluwatu on the Bukit Peninsula. The competition, sponsored by surfer Stephen Palmer's clothing brand at the time, was a huge success.
And yet Palmer – who surfed Bali in the 1970s when there was "bush all the way between Legian and Kuta" – confessed to a niggling regret in the book Bali: Heaven and Hell.
"After the success of the first one, they built a road into the break (at Uluwatu).I used to love walking in along the track – this narrow goat track with cactus either side, and stiles you had to climb over. I always regretted that we inadvertently caused that."
Somali al Shabaab militants use Donald Trump in recruiting film
REUTERS
Somalia's militant group al Shabaab has released a recruitment film in the form of a documentary about racial injustice in the United States featuring Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, SITE Monitoring reported on Saturday.
Trump, the billionaire developer, former reality TV star and Republican front runner, was shown in the 51-minute film making his December call for the United States to bar all Muslims from the country as his supporters cheered.
It was shown between two clips of militant leader Anwar al-Awlaki, killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011, saying Muslims in the United States would face a choice between leaving for Islamic countries or staying at home to fight the West.
Another Hong Kong bookseller goes missing: wife
A Hong Kong employee of a publishing firm known for producing books critical of the Chinese government has gone missing, his wife said Friday, following the earlier apparent disappearance of four colleagues.
It is the latest incident to fuel growing unease in Hong Kong at the erosion of freedoms in the semi-autonomous Chinese city, with fears that the five men may have been detained by Chinese authorities.
Lee Bo, the chief editor of a publisher which produces books on Chinese politics, was a colleague of the four others.
A source said Lee, 65, was last seen in Hong Kong on Wednesday at the publisher's warehouse, which he is in charge of.
Lee's wife Sophie Choi also said he was in Hong Kong Wednesday but went missing that night.
Obama pledges to act unilaterally on US gun control
President indicates he will bypass Congress to implement stricter gun laws, and will talk options with attorney general.
United States President Barack Obama has indicated he may bypass Congress in his bid to increase gun control in the final year of his presidency.
In his weekly radio address on Friday, Obama said he will meet Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Monday to discuss what options he can take, saying his New Year's resolution was to move forward on tackling the US epidemic of gun violence.
"Last month, we remembered the third anniversary of Newtown," Obama said, referring to the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 that left 20 children and six adults dead.
Shostakovich's symphony played by a starving orchestra
In the summer of 1942, Leningrad was starving. It had been under siege and bombardment by German forces for nearly a year. And yet an orchestra managed to perform a new symphony by the composer Dmitri Shostakovich, and broadcast it across the city.
When conductor Karl Eliasberg received instructions to rehearse Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony he had a problem.
After a performance the previous December of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture - which depicts the Russia's victory over Napoleon's invading army - the only remaining orchestra in the city, the Leningrad Radio Orchestra, had shut down.
A note in the ensemble's log records: "Rehearsal did not take place. Srabian is dead. Petrov is sick. Borishev is dead. Orchestra not working."
So it was no surprise that when Eliasberg recalled his musicians for a rehearsal, only 15 turned up.
No comments:
Post a Comment