Donald Trump attacks US media at 100-day Pennsylvania rally
US President Donald Trump has launched a scathing attack on the media during a rally marking 100 days in office.
He told supporters in Pennsylvania that he was keeping "one promise after another", dismissing criticism as "fake news" by "out of touch" journalists.
Mr Trump decided to skip the White House Correspondents' Dinner - the first US leader to miss the event since an injured Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Mr Trump's approval ratings hover at around the 40% mark - believed to be lower than any other president at the 100-day marker.
At the rally in Harrisburg, the president said the media should be given "a big, fat, failing grade" over their coverage of his achievements during his first 100 days and told the cheering crowd he was "thrilled to be more than 100 miles from Washington".
'Hundreds of us will die in Raqqa’: the women fighting Isis
Kimberley Taylor from Blackburn is part of the all-female Kurdish force battling to rout Islamic State. Driving them on is the chance to free women enslaved by the extremists: ‘It starts with fighting Daesh, then the mentality of the male’
Sunday 30 April 2017 08.30 BST
She had heard the stories about how Islamic State fighters could glide like ghosts into Kurdish militia bases during the dead of night, but nothing prepared her for the bedlam when it happened. It was 3.40am on 12 February when Isis attackers scrambled over the perimeter defences of the base north of Raqqa. Kimberley Taylor was convinced it would be overrun. Grabbing her Kalashnikov, she began firing at the shapes. Beyond the corner of the nearest building cowered an enemy fighter. Suddenly he rushed towards her. As their eyes met, he yanked the cord on his suicide belt.
Night-time along the shifting frontline of northern Syria is a fraught affair. Absolute silence, punctured by periods of pandemonium. Isis can strike from anywhere, shadows that melt in and out of the darkness. Taylor’s base was six miles behind the front, among the lush floodplains of the Euphrates. Everyone there knew that the Isis fighters’ latest tactic was tiptoeing into the huts of sleeping Kurdish fighters and blowing themselves up. Taylor, who survived the suicide attack, counted herself lucky.
After his first 100 days in office, we should fear Trump more than ever
America's political, economic and ideological power is declining, so it's turning to military power to keep its world status
Politicians and establishment media have greeted what they see as President Trump’s return to the norms of American foreign policy. They welcome the actual or threatened use of military force in Syria, Afghanistan and North Korea, and praise his appointment of a bevvy of generals to senior security posts. A striking feature of Trump’s first 100 days was the way in which the campaign to demonise him and his entourage as creatures of the Kremlin was suddenly switched off like a light as soon as he retreated from his earlier radicalism.
In reality, the Trump administration should be more feared as a danger to world peace at the end of his first 100 days in office than it was at the beginning. This is because Trump in the White House empowers many of those who, so far from being “a safe pair of hands”, have led the US into a series of disastrous wars in the Middle East in the post 9/11 era. There is no reason to think that they have changed their ways or learned from past mistakes.
More sackings in Turkey, dating shows banned
Another 4,000 Turkish public officials have been sacked by President Erdogan's administration. It has also decreed the closing of television dating programs.
Turkey issued a set of decrees Saturday, one announced the firing of 3,974 officials while the second imposed a ban on popular dating programs on Turkish television channels.
Another decree gazetted also reinstated 236 people to their jobs, according to the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, the Turkish clampdown on Wikipedia access from early Saturday was described by the Turkey's BTK technologies authority as a "protection measure" ordered by an Ankara court to halt "a smear campaign against Turkey."
'Fundamental' right, says Wikipedia's Wales
The online encyclopedia's founder Jimmy Wales tweeted that he would stand by Turks over their "fundamental" right to access.
Indian men speak out against racist skin-lightening creams
Adverts for skin-lightening creams in India are increasingly targeting a male audience, when previously these products were the domain of women. These creams promise to make dark skin lighter – which in India is synonymous with beauty and success. Our Observer is taking a stand against these racist stereotypes.
In Indian supermarket aisles there is an abundance of different skin-lightening products: moisturisers, soaps and cleansers. Now skincare brands are moving away from the saturated market of products aimed at women, and are directly targeting a male customer base. In their adverts, white, or whiter, skin is associated with success – in one's professional as well as romantic life.
There has already been a backlash against these skin-lightening creams that market whiter skin as a standard of beauty. The organisation Women of Worth started the "Dark is beautiful" campaign in 2009, as a way of promoting darker skin.
Japan divided over revising Article 9
Japanese people remain divided over whether to amend the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution, but supporters of a change slightly outnumbered opponents amid concerns over North Korea and China's military buildup, a Kyodo News survey showed Saturday.
According to the mail-in survey conducted ahead of the 70th anniversary of the enforcement of the post-World War II Constitution next Wednesday, 49% of respondents said Article 9 needs to be revised against 47% opposing a change.
While Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been eager to rewrite the supreme law, including Article 9, 51% were against any constitutional amendments under the Abe administration, compared with 45% in favor.
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