Monday, July 31, 2017

Six In The Morning Monday July 31

Kabul attack: Gunfire after explosions hit Afghan capital

Afghan police say a suicide attack has taken place outside the Iraqi embassy in the capital, Kabul.
Gunfire was heard following several explosions in the central Shar-e-Naw neighbourhood.
A gun battle is said to be under way and civilians are being evacuated from the area.
So-called Islamic State said it carried out the latest attack. Kabul has seen a number of deadly assaults this year blamed on either IS or the Taliban.
One security official is quoted as saying a suicide bomber targeted the area housing a police headquarters and the Iraqi embassy compound.
Pictures on social media show black plumes of smoke rising into the sky.



Trump vows 'all necessary measures' to protect allies from North Korea, says Abe

The US president has assured Japan of total support as tensions increase in east Asia, the prime minister says

Donald Trump has vowed to take “all necessary measures” to protect United States allies from North Korea’s evolving military threat, the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has said following a phone conversation with the US president.
The talks between Trump and Abe came after North Korea conducted its second intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test on Friday – a move analysts said put most of the US within range of Pyongyang’s missiles.
On Sunday the US mounted a show of force aimed at Kim Jong-un’s regime, flying two supersonic B-1B bombers over the Korean peninsula. The commander of the Pacific air forces, General Terrence J O’Shaughnessy, warned his units were ready to hit North Korea with “rapid, lethal, and overwhelming force”.

Venezuela‘s President Nicolas Maduro claims huge victory in vote to grant socialist party virtually unlimited powers

Ten deaths reported on Sunday in clashes between protesters and police across the country

Venezuela's National Electoral Council has said more than eight million people voted to grant President Nicolas Maduro's ruling socialist party virtually unlimited powers with a constitutional assembly - a turnout more than double the estimates of both the government's political opponents and independent experts.
Council president Tibisay Lucena announced just before midnight local time (4am GMT) that turnout in Sunday's vote was 41.53 per cent, or 8,089,320 people.
But the count was met with mockery and anger from members of the opposition, who said they believed just 2-3 million people voted.

The dance programme helping Congolese survivors of sexual violence


For the past twenty years, an ongoing conflict has torn apart the lives of civilians living in the provinces of North and South Kivu, located in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this conflict, as in many others across the world, women are especially vulnerable to violence, as rape is commonly used as a weapon of war. Kivu is full of female survivors of these attacks. Recently, a French-Congolese dancer has started organizing dance workshops for these survivors, which he says is a way to help them to reconnect with their bodies and the healing process. 
There are numerous armed groups involved in the conflict that has ravaged the eastern part of the DRC. However, in South Kivu, the most frequent clashes are between the Congolese army and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a rebel group. These opposing forces are waging bloody war for control of the region’s coltan mines. Coltan is an extremely valuable mineral used as a component in cell phones

The armed groups in Kivu want full, uninterrupted control of these mines — which means clearing out civilians. They’ve embarked on a chilling campaign of terror to force local people to flee, including large-scale rape of civilian women. 


'They killed him because he was an Arab'

The family of a Palestinian citizen of Israel killed by Israeli police in Jaffa are demanding justice.




by



The family of a young Palestinian man fatally shot by Israeli police in Jaffa are demanding justice for what they believe was a "cold-blooded killing".
Mahdi al-Saadi, a 22-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel, was shot in the chest and killed in the early hours of Saturday morning. Israeli police also shot another young man at the same scene, Sleiman Abu Taleb, who was taken to hospital in critical condition.
"I was travelling, and I got a phone call from my wife telling me that they killed our boy. The police did not get in touch with us or tell us what happened. He was killed for no reason - in cold blood. They killed him because he was an Arab," Jamal, Mahdi's father, told Al Jazeera.

HACKED EMAILS SHOW UAE BUILDING CLOSE RELATIONSHIP WITH D.C. THINK TANKS THAT PUSH ITS AGENDA




THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES has one of the most repressive governments in the world. The Gulf dictatorship brutally cracks down on internal dissent and enables abusive conditions for its massive migrant labor force. It also plays a key role in the bloody war in Yemen, running a network of torture prisons in the “liberated” parts of the country.
That makes it all the more shocking that the UAE is so rarely criticized by leading U.S. think tanks, who not only ignore the Gulf dictatorship’s repression, but give a privileged platform to its ambassador, Yousef Al-Otaiba. Otaiba is a deeply influential voice in U.S. foreign policy circles, and is known in Washington for using his pocketbook to recruit allies.






No comments:

Translate