Colombia rejects deal to end FARC conflict: What happens next?
Updated 0708 GMT (1508 HKT) October 3, 2016
A narrow win for Colombia's opponents to a government peace deal with FARC rebels has thrown the country into disarray, leading one journalist to starkly declare, "Nobody really knows what will happen tomorrow."
Likened to the fallout from the United Kingdom's "Brexit" referendum, the vote's unexpected failure has left the Colombian political classes reeling and unsure how to respond in order to save four years of hard negotiation with the Marxist militia.
And while a meeting of the deal's principals is scheduled for Monday morning, FARC's financial disclosures -- and possibly a disarmament campaign that began last week-- have been questioned.
'I need peace': seven-year-old Bana tweets her life in besieged Aleppo
Twitter account @alabedbana picks up 4,000 followers in weeks as Bana and mother Fatemah vividly describe their ordealWhen seven-year-old Bana al-Abed woke up from her evening nap, she asked her mother if it was morning already. Light was streaming through their window. But this was no natural illumination: their neighbourhood was ablaze with the fire of phosphorus bombs.
“When those bombs strike, our hearts shake before the buildings do,” said her mother, Fatemah, speaking on Skype with her daughter nestled next to her in their dimly lit room, the sound of machine gun fire clearly audible in the background.
Over the past 10 days, bombs have rained down upon the ruins of eastern Aleppo – the besieged districts of Syria’s largest city. Unrelenting carnage perpetrated by Russian and Syrian warplanes has left hundreds dead and more than 1,000 wounded, overwhelming the few hospitals still in operation, which are themselves repeatedly bombed out of service.
Refugee crisis: 600 children have died crossing Mediterranean in 2016
Figures not normally broken down by age, but new Save The Children analysis shows scale of crisis for young people fleeing conflict
At least 600 children have died this year trying to cross the Mediterranean sea in a bid to escape war, poverty and persecution, Save the Children has said.
Data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and newly-analysed by the charity, highlights two children a day on average have died or disappeared between January 1 and September 26 2016.
The figures have been released by Save the Children to coincide with the third anniversary of a shipwreck off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy, in which more than 300 people were killed trying to reach Europe's shores.
COMMENT
Why the world is cheering for Hillary Clinton in the US presidential election
Josef Joffe
For a country supposedly in decline, the United States is getting a lot of attention these days. Millions of people around the world, not counting 84 million in the United States, were glued to screens watching the Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump bout on Monday.
Go through a pile of European newspapers, and you'll see the US electoral battle unfolding on page one. Same for the lead stories on TV. Russia is outmaneuvering the United States in Syria, China is expanding in the Western Pacific, but Clinton and Trump get the ratings worldwide.
Why? First, whatever Trump spouts about has-been America, the United States remains the one and only global power: No. 1 in terms of economic, military and cultural clout. What it does, and what it doesn't do, affects the entire world. Hence, the American president is "our" president, too.Philippines president apologizes to Jews after comparing himself to Hitler
The tough-on-crime head-of-state had vowed to kill as many drug addicts as the Nazis killed Jews during World War II.
Public officials are frequently compared to Adolf Hitler by their opponents for supporting any policy that can be construed as authoritarian. But it’s rare for a politician to compare himself to the Nazi leader.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte took the even rarer step Sunday of apologizing to Jewish communities worldwide for likening his tough-on-crime campaign to the Holocaust.
“Hitler massacred 3 million Jews … there’s 3 million drug addicts. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them,” Mr. Duterte had said Friday, sparking outrage. (As many as 6 million Jews were killed during World War II, according to estimates cited by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.)
Dutch journalist Jeroen Oerlemans killed in Libya
ISIL sniper fire blamed for death of Jeroen Oerlemans while covering government offensive against the group in Sirte.
Prominent Dutch journalist Jeroen Oerlemans has been killed covering a government offensive against ISIL in the group's Libyan stronghold of Sirte, a city 450km east of Tripoli.
Dr Akram Gliwan, spokesman for a hospital in Misrata where pro-government fighters are treated, told the AFP news agency that Oerlemans, a photographer, was shot in the chest by an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group sniper.
Gliwan said his body had been transferred to Misrata, 200km west of Sirte.
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