Six In The Morning Sunday October 30

Italy quake: Powerful tremor near Norcia destroys buildings

A strong earthquake has struck near Norcia in central Italy, destroying numerous buildings.

The quakes come nearly two months after a major earthquake killed almost 300 people and destroyed several towns.

Sunday's quake measured magnitude 6.6, larger than August's quake and aftershocks last week, and was at a depth of only 1.5km (0.9 miles).

There were no immediate reports of casualties. Many local people had been evacuated after last week's quakes.

Tremors were felt in the capital Rome, and as far away as Venice in the north.

The US Geological Survey said the epicentre of the quake was 68km south-east of the regional centre of Perugia and close to the small town of Norcia.

Monks at the monastery of San Benedetto, an international Benedictine community in Norcia, tweeted an image of the Basilica of St Benedict destroyed by the earthquake.

The cunning and cruel explosive devices Isis improvises to stall Mosul attack

Booby traps hidden in brightly coloured children’s toys are among the terrorist group’s many ploys


Emma Graham-Harrison

The teddy bear, garish but cuddly, is propped on top of the explosives it was designed to hide and detonate. An adult would probably have walked by, but to a child the wide eyes and fuzzy orange fur would have been irresistible.

“Why would Isis use something nice, like a bear or a rabbit? They used this toy because they know the peshmerga [Kurdish fighters] will not touch it, but children will,” said Colonel Nawzad Kamil Hassan, an engineer with the Kurdish forces, who says his unit has cleared more than 50 tonnes of explosives from areas once controlled by the militants.

As a broad coalition of forces tries to push Isis out of Mosul, its last major stronghold in Iraq, Hassan has decided to preserve some of the most creative, cruel and unusual of those homemade bombs to use as training aids for new recruits to one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. The homemade explosive devices provide a lesson in the depths of ingenuity, intelligence and resources that Isis devotes to spreading murder and fear even when its fighters can no longer terrorise in person.

Brazil saw more violent deaths than civil-war torn Syria in 2015, report says

'As the world is discussing how to avoid the tragedy that has taken place in Aleppo, in Brazil we pretend that the problem does not exist'

• Will Worley 
• @willrworley 

More people died from violent crime in Brazil than in the Syrian conflict in 2015, a Brazilian monitor has claimed.

There were 58,383 violent deaths in Brazil that year, according a report by the Brazilian Forum for Public Security, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented 55,219 deaths in the conflict-ridden country.  

However, Syria is a much smaller nation with a pre-war population of 22 million – now believed to be around 16 million – while Brazil is home to 200 million people. 

The report demonstrated the grim extent of violence in the Latin American country. The Forum’s numbers did not just include murders but also other violent deaths, such as people who died at the hands of the police. 

Social media in Iran: 'Good Shia kids' can be cool, too

OBSERVERS

shima

You can be an observant Muslim and also want to have fun on social media. In Iran, more and more young conservatives are blending religion and Internet culture and sometimes breaking taboos while doing so. Some of them have been creating faith-based emojis and stickers that also show physical contact between men and women, which is officially banned in Iran and which has not made religious authorities too happy.

While Facebook and Twitter are officially banned in Iran, they and other social media sites  – especially Instagram and Telegram  – are hugely popular in the country. Facebook has an estimated 17 million users in Iran (many of them connecting via VPN to get around the ban). Some 33 Million Iranians are active on Instagram and more than 20 million on Telegram, an instant-messaging site prized for its speed and security.

Instagram and Telegram are both fully legal in Iran, for now. While most of the younger users appear to be from the moderate, secular part of Iranian society, more and more accounts are appearing with religious symbols and themes. Portraits of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei adorned with hearts find themselves next to tips on how to be a “good Shia kid”, with drawings inspired by Disney cartoons and Japanese manga. Young religious users push the boundaries of what is acceptable, designing emojis and Telegram “stickers” that depict physical contact between (married) men and women. 

Texas on trial for using fictional character in death penalty cases

The US state of Texas has come under fire for its use of a character from "Of Mice and Men" in determining if defendants are mentally ill. The so-called "Lennie Standard" has put several men on death row.

In November, the United States Supreme Court will hear a case that might shock even those familiar with Texas' reputation for being hawkish when it comes to capital punishment. Although the court outlawed execution of the mentally incompetent in 2002, Texas has continued to use the murky legal definitions of sanity and disability to execute mentally ill prisoners.

At the center of the upcoming "Moore versus Texas" is not only the state's reliance on outdated medical parameters, but the use of the so-called "Lennie Standard." This is the name Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Cathy Cochran gave "an unscientific seven-pronged test … based on the character Lennie Smalls from John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men,'" according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

• OCTOBER 30 2016 - 1:30PM

'Eight fairies' and a shaman could spell the end for South Korea's president Park

• Anna Fifield and Yoonjung Seo

South Korea's president is engulfed in a political scandal with plotlines straight out of a soap opera: rumours of secret advisers, nepotism and ill-gotten gains, plus a whiff of sex. There's even a Korean Rasputin and talk of a mysterious clique called the "Eight Fairies".

Park Geun-hye, South Korea's first female president and daughter of the military dictator who turned the country into an industrial powerhouse, is facing the biggest challenge of her turbulent tenure.

It has emerged that Park, notoriously aloof even to her top aides, has been taking private counsel from Choi Soon-sil, a woman she's known for four decades. Despite having no official position and no security clearance, Choi seems to have advised Park on everything from her wardrobe to speeches about the dream of reunification with North Korea.