Thursday, March 31, 2016
Cartoon Donald Trump Tells Stephen Colbert Who Started It (video)
In the wake of accusations against his top advisor, Donald Trump has devolved into a cartoonish version of himself. So Stephen invited a slightly less cartoonish version of Trump to appear on the show: Cartoon Donald Trump.
In this clip, we also learn how Trump plans to deal with Vladimir Putin, and how he reacts to "little bombs."
What You Need To This Morning: Friday April 1
Thai woman charged with sedition over photo of 'provocative' red bowl
Bowl appears to be a promotional item for ousted former prime ministers and political enemies of the junta
'Counterfeiting is an art': Peruvian gang of master fabricators churns out $100 bills
It takes ten to 12 people to create a fake bill, says one counterfeiter, but the profits are huge in Lima – where investigators know of four sophisticated operations
Perhaps they'll have an installation soon at the MET
TEPCO starts freezing soil around Fukushima nuclear plant
Seeing how TEPCO is nothing but a bunch of lying incompetent scum bags you know this soil freezing plan will be a complete failure
AfD Head Frauke Petry: 'The Immigration of Muslims Will Change Our Culture'
Interview conducted by Susanne Beyer and Jan Fleischhauer
Why does she sound just like every other ultra nationalist They always claim their country is circling the shitter because of (insert this week's hated group)
What's the poor Donald Trump of Turkey to do He's so thin skinned that you'd might think he's made of tissue paper Perhaps he should just crawl into hidey hole and cry
How an alcoholic monk founded her own monastery
Left Behind: America's Afghan Translators
We ask why many former Afghan translators for the US military risk their lives to return to Afghanistan from the US.
During more than a decade of the US occupation of Afghanistan, tens of thousands of Afghan civilians signed up to work with the American military as translators. They often took these jobs despite fears of Taliban reprisal, including death threats.
In exchange, the United States government promised a degree of protection through a visa programme that would provide safe passage to the US when the tasks were complete.
The visas, however, are never guaranteed. More than 10,000 Afghans who risked their lives to work with the US over the past 15 years are in limbo, as their applications for Special Immigrant Visas to the US remain in process.
Six In The Morning Thursday March 31
Qatar World Cup 2022: FIFA ignoring migrant workers abuses, says Amnesty
Updated 0903 GMT (1603 HKT) March 31, 2016
He's the migrant worker busting a gut to build Qatar's shiny soccer stadiums that will host FIFA's World Cup in 2022 -- at a price.
For Prem -- a metal worker and father of three from Nepal who carried out work on the Khalifa International Stadium in Doha between February and May 2015 -- that price was the loss of his family's home after he experienced a three-month delay in being paid, according to Amnesty international.
Prem is just one example of ongoing exploitation of migrant workers in Qatar at a venue for the 2022 World Cup that soccer's world governing body FIFA can no longer turn "a blind eye" to, says the human rights organization's new report published Thursday.
From Brighton to the battlefield: how four young Britons were drawn to jihad
They started out writing plays, making music, playing football and dreaming of bright futures. Then everything fell apart. Now three have been killed in Syria – and the fourth is still fightingby Mark Townsend
Thursday 31 March 2016 06.00 BST
The play was called Don’t Judge Me, a satire that poked fun at tabloid stereotypes of British Muslims. It was written, directed and produced by a 15-year-old from Brighton named Amer Deghayes, who had taken inspiration from some of the less considered headlines of the Daily Mail and the Sun. “They were so ludicrous they made me laugh,” he told one of the adults who helped with the production. “The way they called young people feral, wow!” The play, which was set to a rap soundtrack performed by Amer’s own group, Blak n’ Deka, toured theatres on the south coast in 2010, winning awards and plenty of plaudits.
Amer, who had his sights set on becoming a serious journalist, was the eldest son in his family. Two of his brothers were twins, Abdulrahman and Abdullah, a year younger and both keen footballers.
Argentina approves historic agreement to pay US creditors
Ending years of financial isolation and court battles, Buenos Aires has acceded to repaying its creditors. If the senate rejected the payment deal, the debt would have likely gone "viral," an opposition lawmaker said.
The Argentine Senate on Thursday approved a deal to pay back US creditors, effectively ending a 14-year court battle after defaulting on $100 billion (88.35 billion euros) in debt in 2001.
Following over 13 hours of debate, the deal - which passed Argentina's lower house two weeks ago - passed the Senate vote with 54 in favor and 16 against.
Under the deal, Argentina is expected to pay out over $4 billion (3.53 billion euros) in claims related to court cases.
It also allows Argentina to take on $12.5 billion in debt to settle the holdout creditors' disputes.
In 2005 and 2010, several US creditors agreed to swap their holdings for bonds worth far less than their original stakes.
Athens' airport to nowhere: Migrants stranded in Greek limbo
For decades, Ellinikon International Airport has connected Athens to wealthier EU capitals. Now the abandoned structure has been taken over by thousands of migrants desperate to make their way further north into Europe.
It's been 15 years since the last plane took off from the Greek capital's former international airport, which stretches along the Aegean Sea and lies a short drive south of the city centre. If things had gone according to plan, Ellinikon (also known as Hellinikon) might have become Athens' equivalent of Tempelhof Airport in Berlin: a sprawling and much-loved communal area where families, cyclists, skaters and kite-flyers whiz along the disused runways and revel in unkempt meadows that stretch out to the horizon.
How bribe factory Unaoil tried to stop us telling their secrets
March 31, 2016 - 5:56PMMichael Bachelard
Until the moment Fairfax Media and The Huffington Post hit the publish button at 10pm on Wednesday, AEDT, revealing how the oil industry really works, our investigative team was on tenterhooks.
This was more than simple pre-publication nerves, the questions we invariably ask ourselves about whether we have got it right, and what we had missed in the hundreds of thousands of documents we'd read over the previous months.
No, our concern was more specific: that an Australian court, an unsympathetic judge, might stop us publishing this global story. It would have left The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers with seven blank pages each, and thousands of words of crucial information unable to be published online.
It may have meant a story that Fairfax Media's reporters had worked on solidly for months would be broken overseas by our collaborator, The Huffington Post, not by the reporters who sourced, corroborated, combed and read hundreds of thousands of emails.
In Mississippi, a glimpse of ISIS run by women
UNDERSTANDING ISIS
In the Middle East, female ISIS recruits play specific, gender-defined roles. But a Mississippi case shows how, in the West, women can be jihadi leaders.
On the surface, the arrest of a young Mississippi couple at an airport last year, as they were on their way to join the Islamic State in Syria, looks no different than numerous other cases of Western men and women caught trying to join the terrorist group in recent years.
But the couple’s farewell letters revealed an unusual role reversal. Jaelyn Young acknowledged that she was "the planner of the expedition and that [her fiancé] was going as her companion of his own free will," according to court documents.
Ms. Young and her fiancé, Muhammad Dakhlalla, were arrested Aug. 8 trying to board a plane from Columbus, Miss., to Istanbul. This week, both pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to support a terrorist organization.
Pentagon plans more prisoner transfers from Guantanamo
The development marks the latest push in Obama's bid to shut down the facility before he leaves the White House.
| United States, Guantanamo Bay , Barack Obama
The Pentagon plans to transfer about a dozen inmates of the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba to at least two countries, a US official has said.
The first of the transfers were expected in the next few days and the others in the coming weeks, said the official on Wednesday who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The transfers are part of President Barack Obama's latest push to close down the facility, which opened the US to accusations of torture.
Tariq Ba Odah, a Yemeni man who has been on a long-term hunger strike and has lost about half of his body weight, will be among the prisoners being transferred.
I am a Syrian Child (video)
The impact of the Syrian civil war seen through the eyes of refugee children at risk of becoming a lost generation.pact of the Syrian civil war seen through the eyes of refugee children at risk of becoming a lost generation.
In March 2011, protests broke out in Syria which have led to arguably the worst refugee crisis since World War Two. While millions of the Syrians affected by the uprising remain internally displaced, the majority have fled the country, seeking refuge in neighbouring Jordan and Lebanon.
According to official figures from UNICEF, children currently account for just over half of the total number of refugees. These children are now at the real risk of becoming a 'lost generation'
"If we don't provide them with education, they're lost. This is the generation that's going to re-build their country in a few years. They are the future. The children feel that they can't dream, that they can't hope. They are the future generation who are supposed to re-build. The children feel their horizons and hopes are limited," says Soha Bsat El Boustany, UNICEF, Lebanon.
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
What You Need To Know This Morning: Thursday March 31
University tells students Britain 'invaded' Australia
A top Australian university has rejected claims it is trying to rewrite the nation's colonial history.
Pro-Qadri demonstrators ignore govt ultimatum as Red Zone sit-in runs into fourth day
AFP | DAWN.COM —To silence its critics abroad, China goes after their families at home
PATTERN OF COERCION
Beijing is trying to smoke out the authors and publishers of a widely disseminated anonymous letter calling for the resignation of President Xi Jinping.
North Korea Tells its People to Prepare For Famine
'The road to revolution is long and arduous,' an editorial in the state-run newspaper read.
Watch: the weird German music video that infuriated Turkey's president
Updated by Zack Beauchamp on March 30, 2016, 9:30 a.m. ET @zackbeauchamp zack@vox.com
Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is really pissed at Germany.
Kaduna State Religious Preaching Bill: Resolving The Constitutional Controversy By Inibehe Effiong
Permit me to begin this legal discourse by expressing unreserved gratitude to the Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the Executive Governor of Kaduna State,Six In The Morning Wednesday March 30
Myanmar swears in first elected civilian president in 50 years
Myanmar's new president has been sworn in, the first elected civilian leader in more than 50 years.
Htin Kyaw from the National League for Democracy (NLD) takes over from Thein Sein, who introduced wide-ranging reforms during his five years in power.
Although NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi is barred from the presidency, she has said she will rule by proxy.
The handover completes the transition that began after the NLD won a landslide win in elections in November.
Htin Kyaw, 69, said he would be "faithful" to the people of Myanmar, as he took the oath of office in a joint session of parliament in the capital Nay Pyi Taw.
Sherpa: Norbu Tenzing on the Everest 'circus' and the inevitability of another disaster
Film-maker Jennifer Peedom and the son of history’s most famous Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, on how his people are stuck between a rock and a hard place
It was a little before 7am on 18 April 2014 when Jennifer Peedom was woken up by the sounds of an avalanche.
The Australian film-maker was in her tent on Base Camp at Mount Everest, on location with a camera crew to make a documentary exploring the lives and working conditions of Sherpa people. They are the Nepalese climbers who for decades have escorted tourists up and down the mountain: incredibly risky work for a very small share of the reward.
Peedom, 40, was told there had been an accident but only learned the extent of it later. Sixteen Sherpas had been killed, at the time the worst tragedy in Everest history (a year later 18 people perished in another avalanche). The director and her team, specialists in high altitude photography, picked up their cameras and continued filming.
Police watch as locals attack migrants in Algeria
Dozens of migrants were injured last Friday when they were attacked by locals in the town of Béchar, some 1,000 kilometres south of the Algerian capital, Algiers. Our Observer says that despite the presence of police officers, it was several hours before they did anything to stop the violence.
Towards midday on Friday, March 25, dozens of people from Béchar began throwing rocks at an abandoned shopping centre where a group of migrants were living. The violence kicked off after a local resident accused one of the migrants of trying to rape a little girl. But no crime was ever reported to police officers, and according to a local journalist covering the story, no one has pressed charges for attempted rape in any of the town's police stations.
Most of the sub-Saharan migrants living in Béchar arrived in the city fairly recently from Mali, Gabon, Senegal and Cameroon.
Venezuela's congress approves amnesty bill for political prisoners
The landmark bill takes a "major step forward in rescuing democracy," said the wife of a detained opposition leader. But scores of political prisoners may not see the light of day after the president vowed to veto it.
Venezuela's opposition-dominated legislature late Tuesday local time passed an amnesty bill to release scores of political prisoners in a landmark move that President Nicolas Maduro has vowed to strike down.
"With this amnesty law, we are taking a major step forward in rescuing democracy and liberty," said Lilian Tintori, the wife of imprisoned opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez.
"I cannot wait to arrive home and tell my children that only a few days remain until their daddy returns," Tintori said in a tweet following the bill's approval.
Leopoldo Lopez, who was sentenced to 13 years in prison for alleged involvement in anti-government riots, and several other opposition figures have been arbitrarily detained for voicing criticism of the government, according to UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein.
Somalia's Sufi revival
After years of war and devastation, Somalia's Sufi community regroups to begin recovery process.
Hamza Mohamed | | Africa
Mogadishu, Somalia - As the last rays of the afternoon sun bounced off the coloured tin roofs of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, a group of Sufis came out of a gated house, singing hymns while holding hands, black prayer beads dangling from their hands and necks.
They were making a short but a symbolic slow walk to a nearby mosque in the Bakara area of the seaside city to continue their afternoon prayer programme.
Crowds stopped to look and take photos with their phones; the odd person opened a window to see what was happening. These scenes - Sufis walking down the streets and chanting - are rarely seen in Somalia these days.
GROWING INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT SEEKS TO PLACE ARMS EMBARGO ON SAUDI ARABIA
A LAWSUIT FILED last week in Canada is seeking to halt a major $15 billion sale of light-armored vehicles to the government of Saudi Arabia, part of a growing international movement to stop arms sales to the Saudi government over its alleged war crimes in Yemen.
The suit, filed by University of Montreal constitutional law professor Daniel Turp, argues the vehicle sales to Saudi Arabia violate a number of Canadian laws, including regulations on the export of military equipment, which prohibit arms sales to countries where human rights are “subject to serious and repeated violations” and there is a reasonable risk exported equipment “will be used against the civilian population.” Saudi Arabia, which has adeplorable human rights record at home, has inflicted considerable civilian casualties in Yemen as part of its yearlong bombing campaign in support of the contested government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Is Thailand on its way back to democracy?
Thailand's new constitution was unveiled on Tuesday and a referendum is scheduled in August.
It has been two years since the Thai military overthrew Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, a move it said was necessary to restore stability after years of political uncertainty.
But since then, Thailand's military rulers have been accused of rolling back democracy.
They have now unveiled the final draft of a controversial new constitution, that many argue will enshrine the military's powers.
Thais will get to decide for themselves, when they vote on the draft, in a referendum in August.
So, will this constitution put Thailand on a path to democracy? Or further political uncertainty?
So, will this constitution put Thailand on a path to democracy? Or further political uncertainty?
What You Need To Know This Morning: Wednesday March 30
Australia's Great Barrier Reef hit by 'worst' bleaching
If ask you America's conservatives they'll tell you that global warming is all hoax even though that's what exacerbates the bleaching of coral reefs
China clamps down on foreign place names to preserve 'national dignity'
Beijing wants to put an end to American and European-inspired names for streets and developments because it ‘erodes a sense of home’They should go all the way and remove all scary foreign names Even if that means changing the names of recognized international brands Why? Because their foreign
Govt airs video of Indian spy admitting involvement in Balochistan insurgency
There just isn't enough fear mongering and mistrust between India and Pakistan The respective governments really need to work on this
There are several challenges here First is getting the taxi to stop Second is telling the driver where you want to go Which is usually followed by the taxi taking off Third hopefully you aren't a person who's easily frightened
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