What You Need To Know This Morning: Saturday April 16

Japan's demographic time bomb, in one chart

Updated by Zack Beauchamp 

There are more people 65 and older in Japan than there are between 18 and 35

Angela Merkel agrees to prosecution of comedian over Erdoğan poem

Jan Böhmermann accused Turkish president of ‘repressing minorities, kicking Kurds and slapping Christians’ in sketch

Nothing says freedom of speech and expression like prosecuting someone for exercising those rights  

Ted Cruz supports one of the most controversial and discriminatory anti-LGBT laws in recent history

The bill passed in North Carolina makes it legal for someone who is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender to be discriminated against and has caused national outrage  

 Joseph McCarthy has returned reincarnated as Ted Cruz   Instead of seeing communists in every government office and under every rock Ted Cruz is going after racial, sexual and religious minorities  The era may change but the hate remains the same

Sex Slave Legacy: The Children of Islamic State

By Katrin Kuntz and Maria Feck

What is it with religious fundamentalists  Always railing against the evils of sex while at the same moment committing sexual abuse on a grand scale

Smoking dead scorpions is KP's latest dangerous addiction

Wondering where the high comes from The venom 




Beirut's very own Cinema Paradiso

How a cinema showing alternative films brings Lebanese together across religious and political divides.