Orlando shootings: Club attacker had 'hatred in his heart', father says
The father of a gunman who killed 50 people in an Orlando gay club says he did not know that his son had "hatred in his heart".
Omar Mateen killed 50 people and wounded 53 more in the deadliest mass shooting in recent US history, before being shot dead by police.
Seddique Mateen said he did not understand why his son carried out the shooting at the Pulse nightclub.
He had earlier said his son was angered after seeing two men kissing in Miami.
In a statement posted online and addressed to people in his native Afghanistan, Seddique Mateen said his son was "a very good boy", who had a wife and a child.
"I don't know what caused it," he said. "I never figured out that he had hatred in his heart....I am grief-stricken."
Traffickers exploiting young refugees in French camps, says Unicef
Report says children have been subjected to sexual violence, and open letter calls on UK to act more quickly
Young people in refugee camps in Calais and Dunkirk are being sexually exploited and forced to commit crimes by traffickers, according to a Unicef report.
The document, which draws on six months of interviews and is due to be published on Thursday, paints a disturbing picture of the abuse of unaccompanied minors in camps in northern France. It says children are being subjected to sexual violence by traffickers who promise passage to the UK.
Children in the camps also told researchers they have been forced to work and commit crimes such as opening lorry doors to enable adults to be smuggled across the Channel.
Building 'tiny houses' for homeless veterans in Kansas City
Across the United States, thousands of veterans, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other issues, end up on the streets after they finish their service. Three veterans in Kansas City who work with this homeless population felt like traditional services weren’t working for them. So they decided to build a village of tiny houses to offer homeless vets a new start. They inaugurated the first “tiny house” last month.
The US Department of Veterans Affairs does provide support to veterans facing homelessness, but, as our Observers found, the system is often complicated to navigate and vulnerable people often fall through the cracks.
The US Department of Veterans Affairs does provide support to veterans facing homelessness, but, as our Observers found, the system is often complicated to navigate and vulnerable people often fall through the cracks.
“We needed a place that says ‘yes’ first, no questions asked”
Chris Stout served in the US Army from 2001 to 2007. He was injured while serving in Afghanistan and medically retired. Now, he is the president of the Veterans Community Project, which he co-founded with fellow veterans Mark Falman, a Navy reservist, and Kevin Jamison, who spent 20 years serving with the Marines.
Orlando shooting: For Republicans, it's easier to ban Muslims than guns
June 13, 2016 - 4:22PMNick O'Malley
Senior writer
In December last year Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik armed themselves with AR-15s - the same type of weapon used to kill 50 people in Orlando - and murdered 14 people at a Christmas party in San Bernardino, California, in what was soon classified as a terrorist attack.
Over 40,000 Americans are dying each year partly because the they live in a society in which it is more politically viable to propose banning Muslims than regulate gun sales.
The following day Republicans in Congress blocked a bill that would have banned people who were on the terrorist watch list from buying guns. The National Rifle Association opposed the ban on the grounds the list might contain mistakes, and some people might unfairly have their right to bear arms infringed upon.
Iran steps up recruitment of Shiite mercenaries for Syrian war
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS
Iran opened a recruiting center in Herat, Afghanistan, last fall and has persuaded – and sometimes coerced – thousands of Afghans to fight in Syria.
HERAT, AFGHANISTAN — With gelled hair spiked high and wearing a Dolce & Gabbana shirt, the young Afghan man looks more like a fashionista than a religious warrior ready to give his life for jihad in Syria.
The man wanted to leave Afghanistan for personal reasons, but the Afghans and Iranians who facilitated his trip to Iran, and hosted him in Tehran, saw a recruiting opportunity. For two and a half months, an Iranian recruiter visited nearly every day to convince him to fight on the Syrian frontline with an all-Afghan unit in exchange for promises of a better life.
As he felt the pressure grow, he finally acquiesced.
Asia’s New Battlefield: The South China Sea Disputes
Note: This article was based on the author’s recent participation at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Singapore, which hosted the world’s leading defense officials and experts.
Singapore - “The vast Pacific Ocean has enough space for two large countries like the United States and China,” claimed Chinese President Xi Jinping during his intimate retreat in Sunnylands with his American counterpart, Barack Obama, back in 2013. Optimistic about a new era of cooperation, Xi espoused a “new model of great power relations.” Three years on, the two superpowers are on a collision course in the South China Sea.
Four centuries after the publication of British jurist John Selden’s “The Closed Sea,” which made a (dubious and self-serving) case for great powers’ exclusive sovereign control of international waters, China is inching closer to transforming the world’s most important waterway —- hosting a third of global maritime trade, four times oil trade than Suez Canal, and a tenth of global fisheries resources —into a domestic lake.
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