Warning after North Korea sets off biggest atomic blast
Philip Wen
Beijing. North Korea says it is now capable of mounting nuclear warheads onto its arsenal of ballistic missiles after it conducted its fifth and most powerful atomic test to date.
Friday morning's nuclear test triggered a magnitude 5.3 earthquake and sent world leaders scrambling to condemn the North's latest act of aggression, as Kim Jong-un's isolated regime continues to defy international sanctions.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye said the North Korean leader was showing "maniacal recklessness" in ignoring the world's call to abandon his pursuit of nuclear weapons. US President Barack Obama said the test would be met with "serious consequences".Mark Zuckerberg accused of abusing power after Facebook deletes 'napalm girl' post
Norway’s largest newspaper published a front-page letter to the Facebook CEO lambasting the company’s decision to censor a photograph of the Vietnam war
Norway’s largest newspaper has published a front-page open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, lambasting the company’s decision to censor a historic photograph of the Vietnam war and calling on Zuckerberg to recognize and live up to his role as “the world’s most powerful editor”.
Espen Egil Hansen, the editor-in-chief and CEO of Aftenposten, accused Zuckerberg of thoughtlessly “abusing your power” over the social media site that has become a lynchpin of the distribution of news and information around the world, writing, “I am upset, disappointed – well, in fact even afraid – of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society.”
“I am worried that the world’s most important medium is limiting freedom instead of trying to extend it, and that this occasionally happens in an authoritarian way,” he added.
Saudi Arabia cannot pay its workers or bills – yet continues to fund a war in Yemen
In Saudi Arabia itself, the government seems unable to cope with the crisis. The 'Arab News' says that 31,000 Saudi and other foreign workers have lodged complaints with the government’s labour ministry over unpaid wages. On one occasion, the Indian consulate and expatriates brought food to the workers so that their people should not starve
Almost exactly a year after Salman bin Albdulaziz Al Saud, king of Saudi Arabia, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and head of the House of Saud, hurriedly left his millionaire’s mansion near Cannes with his 1,000 servants to continue his vacation in Morocco, the kingdom’s cash is not flowing so smoothly for the tens of thousands of sub-continental expatriates sweating away on his great building sites.
Almost unreported outside the Kingdom, the country’s big construction magnates – including that of the Binladen group – have not been paid by the Saudi government for major construction projects and a portion of the army of Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan and other workers have received no wages, some of them for up to seven months.
Rare flying rays endangered by fishing in Congo-Brazzaville
In Pointe-Noire, a Congolese coastal city, mobula rays are routinely caught in fishermen's nets and then sold in local markets. It's a dangerous practice, since mobula rays, cousins to the famous manta ray, have been classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) since 2009.
A resident of Pointe-Noire brought this to the attention of the France 24 Observers. He often goes to Songolo beach, where he sees the rays being butchered.
"They sell the rays on the markets"
I often go running on Songolo beach, where I see traditional fishermen killing the rays they've caught.
There are women on the beach who buy the ray from the fishermen, to resell at markets in Pointe-Noire. A whole ray there goes for between 40,000 and 50,000 CFA francs [between about 60 and 76 euros], depending on the size. There are a lot of people who buy them, even though they’re more expensive than most of the other fish.
Russian polling agency is victim as Kremlin opts to shoot the messenger
MODES OF THOUGHT
Just ahead of elections, bad news about support for the ruling party likely was seen as posing a threat.
MOSCOW — With less than two weeks to go before parliamentary elections, and the ratings of the ruling United Russia party dropping fast, the Kremlin has apparently decided to shoot the messenger.
The Levada Center, Russia’s only independent public opinion agency, was forced to stop work this week, a move that critics of the Kremlin read as an effort to block public perceptions that the ruling party’s popularity is plunging – even though nobody is directly disputing the highly respected organization’s findings.
The Kremlin has pledged that voting on Sept. 18 will be open and transparent, so as not to lead to the kind of mass protests that erupted following allegedly fraud-tainted elections five years ago.
Turkey conducting 'largest ever' operations against PKK
At least 186 PKK fighters killed, military says, as thousands of teachers with alleged links to the group are suspended.
Turkey is conducting the largest military operations in its history against Kurdish fighters in the southeast of the country, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said.
His statement on Thursday came as the government suspended thousands of teachers over suspected links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the army reportedly killed scores of PKK fighters.
Erdogan said in a speech to provincial governors in Ankara that the operations targeting civil servants with links to the PKK was a key element of the fight against the armed group.
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