ISIS on Europe's doorstep
How terror is infiltrating the migrant route
Updated 0842 GMT (1642 HKT) May 26, 2016
The call was simple, but it changed what an already dark business meant for one smuggler.
Abu Walid knew his caller to be a devout man, a member of ISIS. And his request was chilling. Could he ship 25 of his people from Libya to Europe on a small boat for $40,000?
Abu Walid -- not his real name -- declined. But it is a request that's becoming increasingly common, he told CNN, in the past two months.
ISIS is trying to infiltrate this trade to get their people to Europe from the chaotic and near-failed state of Libya as the route from Turkey to Greece becomes more heavily policed.
China to send nuclear-armed submarines into Pacific amid tensions with US
Beijing risks stoking new arms race with move although military says expansion of the US missile defence has left it with no choice
The Chinese military is poised to send submarines armed with nuclear missiles into the Pacific Ocean for the first time, arguing that new US weapons systems have so undermined Beijing’s existing deterrent force that it has been left with no alternative.
Chinese military officials are not commenting on the timing of a maiden patrol, but insist the move is inevitable.
They point to plans unveiled in March to station the US Thaad anti-ballistic system in South Korea, and the development of hypersonic glide missiles potentially capable of hitting China less than an hour after launch, as huge threats to the effectiveness of its land-based deterrent force.
Strikes at French nuclear plants over labor reforms
Nuclear power plant workers have joined rolling energy sector strikes against labor law reforms in France. The country has mobilized strategic oil stocks to counter ongoing fuel supply and transport disruptions.
Strikes and protests were being held across France on Thursday as activists continued to voice their dismay at planned reforms to the country's labor laws.
"We have to hit where it hurts," said union official Gilles Guyomard from the site of an early morning demonstration during which activists burned tires and blocked a bridge at Le Havre, adding "And where it hurts is the bosses' wallets."
French grid operator RTE's website showed nuclear power capacity was cut by about 4 gigawatts (GW) early Thursday as nuclear plant workers from the CGT union joined the rolling nationwide strikes which have targeted the energy sector. That's about 6 percent of total production capacity. Late Wednesday, the union said its members at 16 of the 19 nuclear power stations in France had voted to join the strike. The CGT has also called for rallies in major cities and work stoppages were scheduled at many ports.
Congolese man killed in India “in row over rickshaw”
OBSERVERS
Olivier Masonda left the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2012 to study in India, and he had recently become a French teacher in New Delhi. But the life that the 23-year-old was building for himself came to an abrupt end on May 20, when he was beaten to death by locals.
The fight occurred in Vasant Kunj, a neighbourhood in a southern suburb of New Delhi. According to the Indian police, who saw surveillance footage, Masonda was trying to hail an auto-rickshaw when he got into an argument with three Indian men.
According to reports in the Indian press, which cited the police, Masonda and the men wanted to rent the same rickshaw. Masonda was surrounded and violently beaten by the three men, one of whom delivered the fatal blow by hitting his head with a large rock.
Political intimidation, oppression, beatings: welcome to today's Cambodia, refugees
May 26, 2016 - 4:28PMLindsay Murdoch
South-East Asia correspondent for Fairfax Media
Bangkok: The Turnbull government is attempting to salvage Australia's $55 million agreement to send refugees to Cambodia at a time when the country's leader, Hun Sen, has launched the worst crackdown on freedoms in recent memory.
Australian officials on Nauru have convinced two Iranian refugees to take a one-way ticket to Phnom Penh by portraying the south-east Asian nation as a kind of tropical utopia with no violent crime, refugee advocates say.
But Cambodia's security forces are behind escalating political intimidation, the suppression of political expression and restrictions on freedom of assembly, according to opposition figures and human rights groups.
As rescuers become targets, war zone medics push for consequences
PATH TO PROGRESS
The new group Medics Under Fire wants assaults on hospitals and health workers – which are war crimes – to be taken to the International Criminal Court at The Hague
PARIS — Last Wednesday, beside a dirt road in the backwoods of the Central African Republic, Arsene Bassanganam was killed in cold blood. The driver of a “Doctors Without Borders” jeep carrying patients and medicine, he was shot dead after an ambush.
Less than a month earlier in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo, Mohammed Wassim, the last pediatrician left in town, was killed by a government airstrike on his hospital. Fifty-five other medical workers and patients died with him.
“I have never seen a time when there have been so many and such intense attacks on hospitals and health workers in conflict zones,” says Susannah Sirkin, a 30-year veteran of Physicians for Human Rights, a New York based activist group.
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