US to boost military presence in Syria with 250 staff
Obama says ISIL squeezed as he prepares to announce move officials say aimed at backing groups fighting it.
| War & Conflict, US, Syria's Civil War, Middle East, Syria's War
US President Barack Obama will announce plans to send 250 more troops to Syria, a sharp increase in the American presence working with local Syrian forces, White House adviser Ben Rhodes have said.
Obama will explain his decision in a speech in Hanover on Monday morning, after discussing the war in Syria with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The deployment, which will increase US forces in Syria to about 300, aims to accelerate the process of driving back of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), Rhodes said.
ISIL controls the cities of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq and is proving a potent threat abroad, claiming credit for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March.'Time was running out': Honduran activist's last days marked by threats
Berta Cáceres, the environmental advocate shot dead in her home in March, told friends of a hitman boasting about his plans as she ‘worked frantically’
In her final days, Berta Cáceres was bombarded with texts and calls warning her to give up the fight against the Agua Zarca dam, or else.
The Honduran indigenous leader told trusted friends and colleagues that some of the death threats were from a suspected sicario – or hitman – who was terrorizing community members near the dam and openly boasting of his intention to kill her.
Cáceres started making arrangements to move from her isolated bungalow on the outskirts of the city of La Esperanza to a bustling lodging house run by her organisation, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations ofHonduras (COPINH), where she wouldn’t be alone.
Kurdish PPK rebels warns of escalation of violence across Turkey
'The Kurds will defend themselves to the end' - PKK leader Cemil Bayik
Kurdish rebels warned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan they will "escalate the war" if the rights of Kurds are not accepted.
The leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Cemil Bayik, said the group is willing to negotiate but not surrender.
A spokesman for the Turkish President has stated there is no chance of negotiation with the PKK "at the moment".
Mr Bayik said: "The Kurds will defend themselves to the end, so long as this is the Turkish approach - of course the PKK will escalate the war.
"We don't want to separate from Turkey and set up a state.
Report: Mexican police hampered probe, tortured suspects in trainee teacher case
A panel of international experts has accused Mexico's government of undermining their probe into the fate of 43 trainee teachers apparently massacred in 2014. The report also alleges that several suspects were tortured.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) began its inquiry at the request of the victims' parents in March 2015. Its mandate was renewed once, but the government refused a second extension, saying they had been given ample time.
The year-long investigation revolved around the fate of 43 students from a teacher-training college who disappeared in the city of Iguala in September 2014. Mexican authorities allege the students were detained by local police who handed them over to a drug cartel. Members of the gang then allegedly killed the students and incinerated their bodies at a rubbish dump in the nearby town of Cocula.
Nigeria's missing girls: Infiltrating the forest Boko Haram calls home
Updated 0513 GMT (1213 HKT) April 25, 2016
As night falls, the curfew comes into effect. Nobody is allowed on the streets. Anxiety hangs in the air.
Those unable to make it home before sunset are shepherded to roundabouts to wait until day breaks.
This is Maiduguri -- a city on the edge.
The capital of Borno state, it is at the heart of the Nigerian Army's battle to retake Boko Haram territory. A place where no one is above suspicion. Where young girls, packaged as suicide bombers, are sent by militants
Why Chernobyl will take 3,000 years to recover
Three decades after the world's worst nuclear disaster, the city of Pripyat, Ukraine, is still thousands of years away from resettlement.
Tuesday will mark 30 years since the world’s worst nuclear accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in Pripyat, Ukraine.
“The Chernobyl disaster caused irreversible damage to the environment that will last for thousands of years,” says Greenpeace in their 2016 study of the accident. “Never in human history has such a large quantity of long-lived radioisotopes been released into the environment by a single event.”
Although three decades have passed since the accident, the town of Pripyat is no closer to being repopulated. The immediate area around Chernobyl will have to remain empty for at least 3,000 years because of dangerously high contamination levels, proof, say some opponents, of nuclear energy’s long-term dangers.
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