Donald Trump denies being a racist after reported crude remark
President Donald Trump has denied that he is racist, after a row broke out over his alleged use of the word "shithole" to describe African nations.
Mr Trump reportedly used the term last week during a bipartisan Oval Office meeting on immigration reform.
He has now told reporters: "I am not a racist. I'm the least racist person you have ever interviewed."
It is the first time the president has responded directly to the racism accusations.
He made the denial to White House press pool reporters at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach in Florida on Sunday night.
'Dementia towns': how Japan is evolving for its ageing population
With one in five elderly Japanese predicted to have dementia by 2025, entire communities are working to improve the lives of older citizens
It took a round of golf to convince Masashi Tsuda that something was really wrong with his memory. Then in his mid-50s, the sales rep couldn’t remember the four-digit number for his changing-room locker. Months earlier, he had struggled to get to grips with his office’s new computer system. On another occasion, his mind went blank as he was about to give a work presentation.
Despite twice being reassured by doctors that stress was the cause of his moments of absent-mindedness, Tsuda was eventually diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease five years ago.
His wife, Kazuko, wipes away tears as she recalls the ensuing trauma. “We had just rebuilt our house, but all of the plans we had made together were shattered in an instant,” she tells the Guardian at a cafe she runs in Matsudo city, east of Tokyo. “I lost eight kilograms in weight and all my hair fell out. When it grew back, it was white.”
How dangerous are vacations in Mexico?
The most recent US travel warnings for tourists going to Mexico have triggered confusion and criticism. But they are the result of political pressure and not a realistic assessment, as Sandra Weiss reports from Puebla.
There are very different opinions on how safe it is to travel to Mexico, and sometimes the debate about the safety of tourists can drift off into the absurd. One example: the US' most recent travel advisory for its neighbor to the south.
"No more travel warnings for most important tourist destinations," Forbes Mexico summarized the new advisory. And Mexican Tourism Minister Enrique de la Madrid rejoiced: "Eighty percent of all destinations in Mexico are safe."
But El Diario de Yucatan wrote: "Five states on the blacklist."
Unions block prisons in France after attack on guards
Three French unions demanding more secure working conditions have called for a “total blockage” of the country’s prisons on Monday after three guards were assaulted last week in northern France by an Islamist terrorist inmate.
“It’s a dead prison operation. Everything will be done at a slowed-down pace. The agents are very determined,’ Jean-François Forget, of the Ufap-Unsa Justice union, told Agence France-Presse.
Thursday’s incident saw the German Islamist convict Christian Ganczarski lightly injure three guards with a pair of scissors and a razor blade at the Vendin-le-Vieil prison, 30 kilometres south of Lille. Ganczarski is serving an 18-year sentence in connection with the attack on a synagogue on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba that killed 21 people in April 2002.
Kasur as a political failure
THE rape and murder of six-year-old Zainab in Kasur, and ensuing events and conversations in its aftermath, provide yet another exemplary display of what all is broken in Pakistan’s political system. Firstly, as the 12th such case reported over a couple of years in a two-kilometre radius, it tells us (again) just how badly compromised Punjab Police is as an institution. This was visible first through its indifferent attitude towards the investigation and then through a display of ingrained incompetence and brutality as it fired upon protesters.
Secondly, the fact that these events took place in Kasur, a city no more than half an hour away from the over-governed provincial capital, lays bare the hollow claims of political performance in the province. This wasn’t some peripheral region whose political economy and historical conditions make it difficult to run rules-based institutions; this is as heartland Punjab as it possibly gets. If this is the standard of governance that Shahbaz Sharif proclaims to champion, one shudders to imagine a not-too-distant (and wholly likely future) where the entire country is run the same way.
Does the 'Serbian Honour' force have a Russian link?
by Harun Karcic
On Friday, the Bosnian news website Zurnal published a story on the alleged existence of a paramilitary force called Srbski ponos, or Serbian Honour.
The force, the website claimed, was being trained in a Russian centre in the Serbian city of Nis.
Milorad Dodik, leader of a Bosnian Serb nationalist party and president of Republika Srpska - a semi-autonomous entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina that was created in 1995 under the Dayton peace agreement - reportedly put the force together.
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT HELPED WASHINGTON STATE PROSECUTOR TARGET FACEBOOK RECORDS OF ANTI-PIPELINE ACTIVISTS
NINE MONTHS AFTER pipeline opponents in Washington state staged a protest that blocked freeway traffic, Facebook ended a protracted legal standoff with a county prosecutor, turning over detailed records on the indigenous-led group behind the demonstration. Despite the fact that no criminal charges have been filed in connection with the February action, Whatcom County Prosecuting Attorney David McEachran repeatedly sought a warrant for the group’s Facebook page, ultimately securing private information including messages to and from the page and a list of everyone “invited” to the protest event.
McEachran’s first two warrant applications were withdrawn after the American Civil Liberties Union and Facebook raised objections. On the third try, however, the warrant was granted thanks to Facebook’s suggestion that McEachran’s office seek formal guidance from the nation’s top law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice. A public records request filed by The Intercept shows that the local agency and its federal counterpart cooperated to draft the ultimately successful warrant using a DOJ template.
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