A tale of two Brussels
How terror shaped the capital of Europe before the attacks — and after
Updated 0324 GMT (1124 HKT) March 26, 2016
Every time Haroun Zamouri leaves his house, there's a chance he will be searched. It's getting to him, and when he's finished with university, he's gone.
Inga Skaara moved to Brussels recently from the West Bank because she was fed up with the violence. But it feels like the bloodshed followed her here.
Alicia Gabam was expecting this to happen, she just didn't know when. Now she is wondering if it will happen again.
It was Brussels' darkest hour -- three explosions heralding the arrival of pure, unbridled terror in the heart of Europe.
Chinese activist's family 'taken away' over letter calling for Xi Jinping to quit
Wen Yunchao says his parents and younger brother have disappeared days after the government harassed his family over the letter he denies writing
A New York-based Chinese activist has said that China’s authorities have detained three members of his family in connection with an open letter calling for the resignation of president Xi Jinping.
Speaking from New York, Wen Yunchao said his parents and younger brother were “taken away” by the authorities on Tuesday and have disappeared, days after the government “harassed” his family over his suspected involvement in distributing the letter.
Wen denied writing the online letter, which was signed by “a loyal Communist Party Member” and circulated widely at the beginning of China’s parliament session this month. Wen also said he did not help distribute the letter, and had only linked to it on his Twitter account after the letter had been published by a Chinese news website.
Khalid Zerkani, Brussels’ jihadist preacher who ‘perverted a generation’
Thursday’s arrest near Paris of a man alleged to have been in the “advanced stages” of plotting a terrorist attack has cast the spotlight back on a Brussels-based jihadist recruitment network that Belgian authorities cracked but failed to neutralise.
Reda Kriket, whom French police arrested in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil on Thursday, had been convicted in absentia by Belgian authorities for his role in the so-called “Zerkani network” – which radicalised Muslim youths and pushed them to wage jihad in Syria.
The network’s leader, radical preacher Khalid Zerkani, has been described by Belgian investigators as the country’s “biggest recruiter” of jihadist fighters.
The Moroccan-born Belgian national operated from underground mosques in the now notorious Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, which has been linked to a string of terrorist attacks ranging from the 2001 killing of Afghan hero Ahmad Shah Massoud to the recent attacks in Paris and Brussels.
On paper, electrified villages — in reality, darkness
The Centre claims to be fulfilling the Prime Minister’s plan for full rural electrification. But a close check of its own real-time data shows that the gap between official claims and ground reality is stark
Haldu Khata, a village in Bijnor district of Uttar Pradesh, is one of the 7,008 villages that the government claims to have “electrified” in the last year, under the Modi government’s flagship scheme of rural electrification, Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana. However, according to the government’s own field engineers, there is no electrical infrastructure in the village. Similarly, Dimatala in Assam, Kadam Jheriya in Chhattisgarh, Buknari in Bihar and Sunwara in Madhya Pradesh are misclassified as electrified villages in government books. These are not exceptional cases. The Hindu’s analysis of rural electrification data shows that the number of villages said to be electrified in the last year is exaggerated.
Brazil Has Had A Crazy Month In Politics. Here’s What’s Going On.
With her presidency at risk, Dilma Rousseff’s decision to bring former President Lula da Silva back into the fold has further inflamed her critics.
HuffPost Brazil
On Sunday, March 13, approximately 3 million Brazilians hit the streets to protest against President Dilma Rousseff as accusations of corruption built up against her administration.
Days later, outrage over the corruption allegations that have engulfed much of the Brazilian government, as well as former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, surged again when Rousseff decided to appoint Silva as a Cabinet minister.
Lula’s appointment has divided the country, sparking protests and counter-protests by Brazilians both weary of corruption and critical of impeachment proceedings against Rousseff that many liken to a coup. Meanwhile, the fates of both the former and current presidents remain up in the air.
Record number of asylum seekers protest over rejected applications
TOKYO —
A record 3,120 people lodged protests last year against the government’s rejection of their applications for asylum in Japan, while only 27 people—or 0.4% of applicants—were granted asylum, according to figures released Saturday by the Justice Ministry.
The ministry attributed the increase in the number of those who lodged protests and sought for their cases to be reconsidered—up by 587 from a year earlier—to the rise in the overall number of asylum seekers.
Japan received applications for refugee status from a record 7,586 people in 2015. The number of applicants and of those granted asylum in the final data announced Saturday were unchanged from preliminary figures released in January.
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