US deploys heavily armed Marines to Syria
Several hundred Marines sent to prepare for battle to push ISIL out of its de facto capital, Raqqa, in country's north.
Several hundred Marines have deployed into Syria with artillery guns, as part of the ongoing preparation for the fight to push ISIL out of its self-declared headquarters of Raqqa, a Pentagon spokesman has confirmed.
The Marines are pre-positioning howitzers to be ready to assist local Syrian forces, according to US officials.
The deployment is temporary. But it could be an indication that the White House is leaning towards giving the Pentagon greater flexibility to make routine combat decisions in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS).
Dying robots and failing hope: Fukushima clean-up falters six years after tsunami
Exploration work inside the nuclear plant’s failed reactors has barely begun, with the scale of the task described as ‘almost beyond comprehension’
Barely a fifth of the way into their mission, the engineers monitoring the Scorpion’s progress conceded defeat. With a remote-controlled snip of its cable, the latest robot sent into the bowels of one of Fukushima Daiichi’s damaged reactors was cut loose, its progress stalled by lumps of fuel that overheated when the nuclear plant suffered a triple meltdown six years ago this week.
As the 60cm-long Toshiba robot, equipped with a pair of cameras and sensors to gauge radiation levels was left to its fate last month, the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), attempted to play down the failure of yet another reconnaissance mission to determine the exact location and condition of the melted fuel.
Even though its mission had been aborted, the utility said, “valuable information was obtained which will help us determine the methods to eventually remove fuel debris”.
UN human rights chief attacks Europe's 'chilling indifference' to refugees as 2017 sees record deaths
More than 5,000 asylum seekers have died at sea over the past year
The UN’s human rights chief has attacked the “chilling indifference” to the deaths of thousands of refugees shown by European leaders as the crackdown continues across the continent.
Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that although “heroic efforts” are underway to save lives in the Mediterranean, governments are turning their backs on those who survive the treacherous journey.
“Many ordinary people in Europe have welcomed and supported migrants, but political leaders increasingly demonstrate a chilling indifference to their fate,” he told a meeting of the UN human rights council in Geneva.
The two Indians who cycled 1000km to combat pollution
India's capital Delhi was ranked the most polluted city in the world in 2014, and three years later its rubbish problem is still out of control. The authorities are often blamed for poor rubbish management, but two Indians decided to travel across the country by bike to explain to citizens how they, too, can do their part.
Sanjeeta Singh Naruka Negi, 51, and Piyush Shah, 58, cycled more than 1000km from Gandhi Ashram to Delhi in order to meet locals along the way and share tips and advice on how to deal with pollution. They completed their journey, which took ten days in total, at the end of January.
Myanmar has a drug problem
Myanmar’s war on drugs, tacitly endorsed by the UN, has failed to stem a scourge linked to the country's many unresolved ethnic armed conflicts
CHIANG MAI, MARCH 9, 2017
There is little disagreement that Myanmar, despite a recent shift from military to semi-democratic rule, remains one of the world’s largest producers of illicit drugs, including opium, heroin, methamphetamine and other synthetic narcotics.
Two recent reports promote fundamentally different approaches to the deep-seated drug problem, which has its roots in decades of civil war in frontier areas between government troops, ethnic rebel forces struggling for political autonomy and other warlord armies that are in the fight mainly for the money.
FBI and CIA launch criminal investigation into 'malware leaks'
US federal agencies have launched a criminal investigation into the public release of documents said to detail CIA hacking tools, US officials say.
They told US media that the FBI and CIA were co-ordinating the inquiry after Wikileaks published thousands of files.
These carried claims that the CIA had developed ways to listen in on smartphone and smart TV microphones.
The CIA, FBI and White House have declined to comment on the authenticity of the files leaked on Tuesday.
A CIA spokesperson told the BBC on Wednesday: "The American public should be deeply troubled by any Wikileaks disclosure designed to damage the intelligence community's ability to protect America against terrorists and other adversaries.
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