Battle for Mosul: Iraqi forces push into city's east
Iraqi forces say they recaptured six districts from ISIL in city's east and open new front as fighting spikes.
Iraqi special forces stepped up attacks against ISIL in Mosul on Friday, seeking to expand the army's foothold in the east of the city after the leader of the armed group told his men there could be no retreat.
In a military statement, troops from the Counter Terrorism Service said that they had taken over the six neighbourhoods of Malayeen, Samah, Khadra, Karkukli, Quds and Karama. They raised the Iraqi flag over buildings in those neighbourhoods, and inflicted heavy losses on the fighters with ISIL, or ISIS, the statement said.
Columns of armored vehicles wound through open desert on Friday to open a new front, pushing through dirt berms, drawing heavy fire and calling in airstrikes to enter the middle-class neighbourhoods of Tahrir and Zahara - an area once named after former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Philippines mayor accused of drug trafficking killed in prison shootout
Rolando Espinosa shot dead three months after President Duterte links him to illegal narcotics trade
A Philippine mayor named by the country’s president as being involved in the illegal drug trade was shot dead in jail on Saturday, police said. He is the second local official implicated in narcotics to be killed in two weeks.
President Rodrigo Duterte, 71, won May elections in a landslide on a promise to kill tens of thousands of criminals to prevent the Philippines from becoming a narco-state, and has launched an unprecedented war on drugs that has left more than 4,000 people dead.
Duterte had named several local officials, policemen and judges as being involved in the narcotics trade and urged them to surrender.Mosul is being destroyed by, as well as ‘liberated’ from, Isis
A local community leader says that ‘my brother’s house was destroyed by an airstrike [by the US-led coalition] and my house was damaged. Daesh [Isis] burned the other houses before they left and they have all been looted a long time ago’
As the Iraqi army advanced further into east Mosul today, Isis fighters responded by firing mortar shells into the Gogjali district that had been freed earlier in the week. We met the families fleeing the mortar barrage crammed into their battered cars and pick-ups at an army checkpoint at Bartella a dozen miles down the road. We had been told we could not go any further because it was too dangerous and Isis fighters were firing at the road not far ahead between Bartella and Mosul.
“We thought we had got rid of Daesh [Isis] and then they started firing mortars at us,” said one middle-aged woman in black robes. She added that a rocket had landed on her neighbour’s house in the morning and killed him and three women. She expressed hatred for Isis and said that when Iraqi soldiers had knocked at her door and asked for information about Isis positions, her small son Yusuf, who looked about eight, had gone to show them the nearest Isis headquarters.
Turkey hit with government social media blackout as IS claims deadly car bombing
The "Islamic State" (IS) has reportedly claimed responsibility for a deadly car bomb in southeastern Turkey. A social media blackout prevented reporting of both the attack and the arrest of 12 Kurdish MPs.
Following the attack on Friday in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, internet users reported difficulties in accessing social media, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube.
Monitoring site Turkey Blocks said restrictions had also been imposed on Skype and Instagram and smartphone messaging service WhatsApp.
The site, which monitors internet restrictions in Turkey, said this had been carried out by a "throttling" at Internet Service Provider (ISP) level including national providers like TTNet and Turkcell.
Recycled soap helps kids fight poor hygiene in rural Cambodia
After witnessing firsthand the lack of knowledge about hygiene in rural Cambodia, an American student launched a project to recycle soap from hotels and make it available to local schools and NGOs. Now, his own NGO, Eco Soap Bank, employs thirty local people.
One of the main challenges facing Cambodia is sanitation. Those most affected by poor hygiene are children, who often fall victim to diarrheal and respiratory infections. An estimated 10,000 Cambodian children under the age of five die each year from diarrheal illnesses, according to UNICEF. Simple practices, such as handwashing with soap, can prevent these infections. However, many Cambodians—especially those in rural areas—do not have access to something as simple as soap.
The first few times he visited Cambodia, American Samir Lakhani wasn’t aware of this issue. He was too busy falling in love with the fascinating history of the country and the generosity of the people he met. However, during one trip, he traveled to the countryside with an NGO he was working with. There, he saw a woman washing her child… with laundry detergent. The scene shocked him.
How one engineering program used storytelling to recruit more women
BREAKING BARRIERS The mechanical engineering department at the University of Texas at Austin
has worked to expand other people's understanding of what engineers do.
As millions of students of all ages have returned to school this fall, they are making important choices that have a strong influence on their eventual career path – which college majors to pursue, which high school classes to take, even which elementary school extracurricular activities to join. Many of them – especially women, girls and members of minority groups – make choices that lead them away from professions in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
Women are just 13 percent of mechanical engineering undergraduate students. And women earn only 14.2 percent of doctorate degrees in mechanical engineering. More broadly, women make up 49 percent of the college-educated workforce, but only 14 percent of practicing engineers nationwide.
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