Au revoir and shalom: Jews leave France in record numbers
Updated 0330 GMT (1130 HKT) January 23, 2016
Yoav Krief remembers the day he knew it was time to move to Israel: January 9, 2015.
It was a Friday. Four Jews had just been killed in the Hyper Cacher, a kosher supermarket in Paris, two days after the Charlie Hebdo attack. One of them was Krief's friend.
"I was not good, really not good," Krief says of how he felt at the time. "I talked to my mom, and I said, 'We must go to Israel. We need to go to Israel.'"
Krief, a French Jew who had just finished high school, moved to Israel with his family six months later, as part of the largest migration of Jews from Western Europe to Israel since the modern state of Israel was created.
Nearly 8,000 French Jews moved to Israel in the year following the Charlie Hebdo attack, according to the Jewish Agency, which handles Jewish immigration, or aliyah, to Israel.
The number of French Jews moving to Israel has doubled -- and doubled again -- in the past five years.
Haiti cancels presidential election as violence erupts
Runoff vote postponed indefinitely following widespread unrest and claims from opposition leader that the entire process is mired in fraud
Haiti has called off its presidential election just two days before it was due to take place over concerns of escalating violence sparked by the opposition candidate’s refusal to take part in a vote he said was riddled with fraud.
The Provisional Electoral Council decided to postpone the runoff because there is “too much violence throughout the country,” council president Pierre-Louis Opont said at a news conference.
In recent days, a number of election offices across the impoverished nation have been burned and the capital has been rocked by violent opposition protests calling for a halt to the vote.
The council did not set a new date for the vote. It also did not say whether an interim government would take power after 7 Febuary, when president Michel Martelly is required to leave office under the Constitution, or if he would remain until a replacement is elected.
Jordan blocks Syria border leaving thousands of refugees in the desert - including hundreds of pregnant women
There are growing fears for thousands of Syrian refugees stranded in a desolate no-man’s land along the Jordanian border ahead of the first winter storms expected this weekend.
An estimated 16,000 people are penned into a rocky desert area between two long earthen banks or berms 60 miles from the nearest metalled road, village or any other infrastructure, prevented by border guards from moving further into Jordan. The group consists mostly of families, including hundreds of pregnant women, some in their third trimester. Seventeen babies have reportedly been born at the site since mid-December. There are no sanitation or medical facilities and the only water in the area is brackish, aid agencies say.
The Jordanian government has refused the group further entry into the country, citing concerns – which aid workers privately concede are legitimate – that the group may have been infiltrated by Isis.
Japan accepts 27 refugees last year, rejects 99 percent
TOKYO (AFP) Japan accepted only 27 refugees last year and rejected almost all applications, officials said Saturday, as rights groups urged the government to allow more people in.
The country has long been nervous about an influx of refugees into its homogeneous society and has tightly restricted the number it accepts.
Of the thousands seeking refugee status, five were Syrian, only three of which were accepted -- a far cry from the massive influx of Syrians into Europe from the war-torn Middle East nation last year.
The justice ministry said it received a record 7,586 refugee applications in 2015, meaning more than 99 percent of requests were rejected.
Other accepted applicants included six from Afghanistan, three Ethiopians and three Sri Lankans.
The ministry said number of refugees accepted last year was a jump from 11 in 2014 and six in 2013.
The Japan Association for Refugees said despite the progress in recent years, more applicants should be accepted.
Trial of Saad Aziz
EDITORIAL
The list of shocking and grotesque acts of violence by militants in Pakistan is a desperately long one, but few acts stand out like the Safoora Goth carnage last May.
Similarly, among the many attempts to silence civil society and those working for a progressive, tolerant Pakistan, the murder of Sabeen Mahmud was a particularly disturbing act.
The Safoora Goth bus attack, which came less than a month after Sabeen Mahmud’s assassination, triggered an intensive investigation that led to the arrest of Saad Aziz, a graduate of a well-known business university, and several of his cohorts, who were subsequently identified as assailants, facilitators and financiers.
Old albums outsold new releases for the first time ever
You can thank vinyl for that
2015 may have been a good year for the music industry, but it wasn't a great year for music released in 2015. For the first time since Nielsen began tracking music sales in the US, catalog albums (an industry term for anything released over 18 months ago) outsold new releases.
There are a number of factors that add up to catalog albums taking the sales crown. Music streaming was up 92 percent from 2014 and physical album sales for new releases dropped 14 percent, while catalog album sales only decreased by 2 percent.
Add in the revival of vinyl records to that — 12 million units were sold in the format, with records from Pink Floyd, The Beatles, and Miles Davis making up three of the five best-selling vinyl albums — and catalog albums had the juice to top new releases, despite Adele selling 7.4 million units of 25 in 2015. (And if you're thinking older people are carrying the vinyl revolution, think again; Taylor Swift's 1989 was the second biggest vinyl album of 2015.)
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