Cuba's Fidel Castro dead aged 90
Cuban revolutionary icon led rebels to improbable victory, embraced Soviet communism and defied the US for decades.
Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary leader who built a communist state on the doorstep of the United States, has died aged 90.
Raul Castro, Fidel's brother and current president of Cuba, announced his death on state television in Havana early on Saturday.
The leader of the 1959 revolution, which overthrew the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, defied the US efforts to topple him for five decades, before ill health led him to make way for his brother Raul, 84, in 2006.
In his final years, Fidel lived in relative seclusion, but occasionally wrote opinion pieces or appeared meeting with visiting dignitaries.
Australian government concedes evidence against asylum seeker was obtained by torture
Exclusive: Sayed Abdellatif is still held in detention in Sydney even though immigration minister Peter Dutton was briefed 18 months ago that evidence used in Egypt to convict him was discreditedBen Doherty and Sarah Malik
Sayed Abdellatif’s horizons are low already, and narrowing still.
Where once he could wave to his family through a wire fence, he has been told by guards – without explanation – that the behaviour was a security risk and prohibited.
Now the only time he has with his wife and six children are the crowded hours spent in the overfull and noisy visitors’ area of Villawood detention centre in Sydney; a cavernous and impersonal room where guards wearing black vests and body cameras with listening devices quietly loiter to electronically eavesdrop on conversations. His children must wear brightly coloured wristbands to see him. The wristbands mean they can leave. His wrists are bare.
Despite the New York Times liberal wishful thinking, Donald Trump is still in favour of waterboarding
Trump did indeed say that General Mattis never found waterboarding to be useful, but the President-elect went on to explain that ‘I’m not saying it changed my mind about torture’
Where does Donald Trump stand on the use of torture by US security agencies? During the presidential election campaign he notoriously recommended a return to waterboarding, the repeated near-drowning of detainees that was banned by President Obama in 2009. But last week The New York Times reported that in an interview with its senior staff, he said that he had changed his mind after talking with retired Marine Corps General James Mattis, who is a leading candidate to be the next secretary of defence.
Trump quoted Gen Mattis as saying that “I’ve never found it [waterboarding] to be useful”. He had found it more advantageous to gain the cooperation of terrorist suspects by other means: “Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers, and I’ll do better.” Trump recalled that he was very impressed by the answer, adding that torture is “not going to make the kind of difference that a lot of people are thinking”.
Germany planning to 'massively' limit privacy rights
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere is planning a major limitation of privacy rights in Germany, say data protection groups. Germans will no longer have the right to know what data about them is being collected.
A draft law released by the German union for data protection (DVD) this week revealed that the interior ministry was proposing to drastically limit the powers of Germany's data protection authorities, banning them from investigating suspected breaches of people's medical and legal records.
As well as expanding video surveillance with facial recognition software, the bill would limit the government's own data protection commissioners to checking that the technical prerequisites are in place to ensure that doctors' and lawyers' files are secure, but it stops them from following up when citizens report concerns that their data has been leaked.
Tit-for-tat action against India ruled out
SYED IRFAN RAZA
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan reiterated on Friday that it would not respond in kind to Indian aggression but vowed to defend its borders, waters and space against any attacks by the neighbouring country.
Defence Minister Khawaja Asif and Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz presented policy statements in the National Assembly on Friday hinting that Pakistan was ready for talks with India provided that the Kashmir issue was included in the agenda.
They said the government was taking up the matter of Indian aggression along the Line of Control with the United Nations and the rest of the world to press India to stop the ongoing escalation in held Kashmir and along the LoC.
Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates
By Bianca Britton, CNN
A legal tug-of-war between Ugandan authorities and a for-profit international chain of schools has led to the education provider being ordered to shut down in a matter of weeks, leaving the lives of thousands of pupils in limbo.
Uganda's High Court has described the Bridge International Academies (BIA) -- which is funded by the likes of Microsoft's Bill Gates and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg -- as unsanitary and unqualified, and has ordered it to close its doors in December because it ignored Uganda's national standards and put the "life and safety" of its 12,000 young students on the line.
The Director of Education Standards for the Ministry, Huzaifa Mutazindwa, told CNN that the nursery and primary schools were not licensed, the teachers weren't qualified and that there was no record of its curriculum being approved.
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