Syrian army on the ISIS frontline: 'Russian intervention a blessing'
Updated 0445 GMT (1245 HKT) February 16, 2016
Driving along a bumpy road on the eastern fringes of Syria's Hama province, dozens of government army personnel watch from hills overlooking the desert.
Finally we reach a fork in the road -- to the left lies Aleppo, to the right Raqqa, the self-declared capital of ISIS. In this barren place we are escorted to a large military base, where artillery cannons are firing intermittently. We're taken to see the commanding general.
The general did not want to appear on camera and did not allow us to use his name, but he did speak openly about the Syrian army's operations here -- combating ISIS but also al Qaeda's wing in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra.
The conspiracy theorists who have taken over Poland
Jarosław Kaczyński has convinced Poland that it is threatened by a shadowy leftwing cabal – and become the country’s most powerful manIn late January 1993, three years after the abolition of the Soviet-imposed Polish People’s Republic, a crowd of 5,000 demonstrators marched on the Warsaw residence of Lech Wałęsa. As the chairman of Solidarity, the independent trade union and mass opposition movement that negotiated communist Poland’s demise, Wałęsa is widely credited with initiating the chain of events that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and a peaceful resolution to the cold war. But after he became post-communist Poland’s first democratically elected president, his critics circulated rumours that he had been a communist collaborator all along. Chanting “We want a president, not an agent,” the demonstrators burnt the Nobel peace prizewinner in effigy.
Their leaders included a former Solidarity functionary called Jarosław Kaczyński. Armed with a megaphone, he angrily denounced his former leader: “He was supposed to be ourpresident, but he turned out to be their president, the president of the reds!”
Cancer breakthrough: T-cell therapy offers prospect of lasting cure, say scientists
Scientists finds ways of commandeering the natural killing capacity of T-cells to identify, memorise and attack tumour cells
A revolutionary cancer therapy that uses the body’s own immune cells to attack metastatic tumours that have spread is being hailed as a “paradigm shift” in treatment of the disease.
Patients with advanced blood cancers who were not expected to live beyond five months have shown complete remission after 18 months of follow-up checks with no signs of the disease returning, scientists have revealed.
In one trial of a patient’s own T-cells – a type of white blood cell – that were engineered in the laboratory to identify and attack tumour cells, more than 90 per cent of the 35 patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia went into complete remission.‘Voodoo magic’ brings traffic to standstill in Benin
A procession of villagers and voodoo priests armed with talismans and lucky charms brought traffic grinding to a halt in northern Benin last week to protest against their village's lack of electricity. Our Observer says that whether the voodoo magic worked or not, either way the road stayed blocked for several long hours.
On Tuesday, villagers from Kokoro spilled onto the main road linking the coastal town of Cotonou to Parakou in the north to protest their village's lack of electricity. They managed to bring traffic to a complete standstill, but not only by throwing up barricades or staging a sit-in. Instead, voodoo priests took their place at the head of the procession, laying down lucky charms and little statues.
Our Observer, A T Sy (not his real name), is an independent video journalist working in Benin. He was in a bus that was held up for four hours by the protest.
They were angry because their village still doesn’t have any electricity while the neighboring village has just been hooked up to the grid. They had a placard that read ‘Yayi wants to leave without giving us electricity’ [Editor’s note: President Yayi Boni, whose term finishes in April, has decided not to run for reelection].
In Mexico, Pope Francis preaches against the exploitation of native peoples
The Pope highlighted Mexico's indigenous people during a visit to Chiapas state, ceberating a Mass that involved elements of native culture.
Pope Francis denounced the centuries-old exploitation and social exclusion of Mexico's Indians on Monday, saying the world should instead learn from their culture and appreciation of nature.
Francis celebrated Mexico's Indians during a visit to the southern state of Chiapas, a center of indigenous culture. He presided over a Mass in three native languages approved for use recently by the Vatican in a service that also featured a traditional dance of prayer and other indigenous elements.
In his homily, history's first Latin American pope melded two of his core concerns: appreciation for indigenous cultures and the need to care for the environment.
Earning a living on border of Morocco's Spanish enclave
For Moroccan porters, smuggling goods through the border of Melilla exacts heavy toll and brings a meagre income.
Jose Colon | | Human Rights, Poverty & Development, Africa, Crime, Spain
Melilla, Spain - At 6:30am, the sun has not made its appearance yet and the border of Melilla’s Chinatown quarter is illuminated by the orange glow of street lamps.
The border crossing is a maze of wires and winches that convey a sense of unease and fear.
The six metre-high border fence across the road, contributes to the feeling of a hostile environment that surrounds Melilla, the tiny Spanish enclave in the northeast of Morocco. Ahead, on the Moroccan side, the murmur of distant shouts and blows can be heard.
At 6:45am the sound increases and moving silhouettes of nervous police officers can be seen on the metal structures. A large crowd gathers at the gates waiting to pass to the Spanish side. Moroccan guards shout and beat the people back from the entrance with wooden sticks. With every passing minute the blows and screams combine in a crescendo, like a symphony of noises and yowls.
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