Saturday, January 6, 2018

Six In The Morning Saturday January 6


China's Tiangong-1 space lab to plunge to Earth by March


By Katie Hunt, CNN

China's Tiangong-1 space lab was billed as a potent symbol of the country's rise when it launched in 2011.
Now, the lab is out of control and expected to crash-land on Earth by the end of March -- posing a minuscule risk to humans but inflicting a blot on the nation's bold push to become a space superpower.
    "They have a PR embarrassment on their hands," said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "The actual danger is small, but it is accepted international best practice nowadays that objects that big shouldn't be able to fall out of the sky in this manner."


    The missing of Raqqa: families search for loved ones disappeared by Isis

    Relatives plead for help tracing hundreds of people detained during Islamic State’s reign of terror in Syrian city

    The families of hundreds of civilians who were kidnapped by Islamic State and held in its notorious jails have urged the military factions that ousted the group from Raqqa, its de facto capital, to help them find their loved ones.
    Relatives say hundreds and possibly thousands of people detained during Isis’s reign of terror in Syria remain unaccounted for despite the group’s loss of territory and retreat to desert hideouts.
    “We have hundreds of names, pictures, and arrest dates. There is no full list but we are discovering new names every day,” said Amer Matar, a documentary filmmaker from Raqqa who lives in Germany and started an online campaign to raise awareness about the detainees. Matar’s brother, Muhammad Nour Matar, was detained by Isis in August 2013 and remains missing.



    When it comes to the Iran protests, be careful who you put your trust in


    A vacuum of information is created which, at a moment of intense international interest, is going to be filled with dubious stories from partisan sources




    The international media has a poor record in reporting protests and uprisings in the wider Middle East since 2011. These complex struggles were presented as simple battles between good and evil, like a scene out of Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. Surprise and anguish were expressed when the supposed dawning of freedom and democracy in Libya, Syria and Yemen instead produced savage civil wars while Egypt and Bahrain became strikingly more authoritarian and repressive than before.
    Whatever the causes of the failure of news organisations to understand developments in these countries, they had clearly got something very wrong about what was happening.  

    Erdogan in Paris: Journalists are 'gardeners' of terrorism

    During a tense press conference in Paris, Turkey's Erdogan said journalists are "gardeners" of terrorism and got into a spat with a French reporter. France's Macron said he raised concerns about human rights in Turkey.
    French President Emmanuel Macron said that during talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Paris on Friday, the two had disagreements about how they viewed human rights. 

    Macron said he'd raised concerns with the Turkish leader about the fates of teachers, students, and journalists who have been targeted by a widespread crackdown following a failed 2016 coup attempt, some of whom are currently imprisoned.
    "Our democracies must be strong standing up to terrorism ... But at the same time, our democracies must completely protect the
    rule of law," Macron said at a strained joint press conference with Erdogan.

    To be or not to be Charlie: Parisians debate free speech three years after attack


    As France prepares to commemorate the third anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attack, FRANCE 24 visited the Parisian neighbourhood where the shootings took place to ask locals if they still stand by, “Je suis Charlie.”

    When she sees the graffiti with the murdered Charlie Hebdo cartoonists’ smiling faces, Lidya Tchilinkirian breathes a sigh of relief. "The little Hitler moustache that someone had drawn on the faces of Charb, Cabu, Wolinski and Tignous has finally been removed. Just in time for the commemoration of the attack,” says the pensioner as she walks by the satirical paper’s former office, where jihadist gunmen killed 11 people on January 7, 2015.
    As France prepares to mark the third anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the defacement of commemorative graffiti in rue Nicolas Appert is a sign that the "Je suis Charlie" spirit has diminished since the January 11, 2015 demonstrations where millions of people took to the streets across the country to support freedom of expression.

    Controversial dengue vaccine in spotlight after death of Filipino children



    Philippine authorities are investigating the deaths of 14 children vaccinated in the world's first wide-scale dengue vaccine program amid growing fears about its safety and anger over its use on 837,000 children.
    The administration of former president Benigno Aquino approved use of Dengvaxia in early 2016 to combat the potentially deadly mosquito-borne virus despite objections from government experts.
    President Rodrigo Duterte's administration continued the vaccination drive after he took office in June 2016 despite a warning from the World Health Organisation.


    'World's most expensive vodka' found on Danish building site


    A stolen bottle of vodka thought to be the world's most expensive at $1.3m (£960,000) has been found empty on a construction site, Danish police say.
    The bottle, made from gold and silver and with a diamond encrusted cap, was on loan to a Copenhagen bar which had a collection of vodkas on display.
    CCTV released on Wednesday showed an intruder, who grabbed the Russo-Baltique vodka and fled the bar.
    The bottle was found unbroken on a construction site in the city.
    "I don't know what happened with the vodka, but the bottle was empty", Riad Tooba, spokesman for the Copenhagen police, told AFP news agency.





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