Inside Trump's two days of fury
Updated 0523 GMT (1323 HKT) January 4, 2018
President Donald Trump started 2018 in a fury partly fueled by anger at his legal team for offering shifting timelines about when the Russia investigation would end, according to two sources familiar with the President's mindset.
The anger continued until midday Wednesday as Trump helped draft his blistering break-up letter to former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who offered a scathing attack on Trump and his family's handling of the Russia investigation.
That followed his taunting tweet Tuesday evening directed at North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which caught many top administration officials off guard and prompted renewed worry among staff and allies about whether the President fully comprehends the risks he's taking in provoking adversaries. After Trump's North Korea broadside, aides inside the White House reached out to some of Trump's allies seen as having influence over the President to talk to him about his tweets and the risks they carry.
The ecological catastrophe that turned a vast Bolivian lake into a salt desert
What was once the country’s second largest lake is now a salt flat and the vanishing waters are taking an indigenous community’s way of life with them
The remainder of an ancient sea at the heart of South America is fast becoming a memory: a white expanse of salt stretches for miles, with just a smear of red, brackish water at its southern edge.
Lake Poopó was once Bolivia’s second largest body of water, but when asked how to get to the lake today, locals correct a visitor.
“You mean the ex-lake; the salt flat,” says Arminda Choque, 23, as she waits outside a mobile dental clinic in Llapallapani, a community of crumbling adobe-and-thatch houses inhabited by the indigenous Urus-Muratos, who have lived off the lake’s abundant fish since time immemorial. “I want my children to leave and go to college. There’s no future for them here.”
Nuclear buttons: How easy is the beginning of the end?
Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un recently referred to their "nuclear buttons," with the US leader boasting that his was "bigger" than Kim's. The US nuclear briefcase, however, doesn't really have a big red button...
The image of a president unleashing Armageddon with a press of a button is well established in modern culture, and is now reinforced by world leaders themselves.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un said this week that a "nuclear button" was always on his desk. According to the North Korean leader, his nuclear arsenal could reach the entire US mainland.
"This is reality, not a threat," he said in his New Year speech.
US President Donald Trump quickly shot back at Kim Jong Un at Twitter, saying that his own button was "much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!"
Days-long unrest in Iran dies down
Iran's Revolutionary Guards chief announced the "end of the sedition" Wednesday as tens of thousands rallied in a show of strength for the country's Islamic rulers after days of deadly unrest.
But even as state television aired footage shot from helicopters of the support for Iran’s clerically overseen government, videos emerged showing the anti-government unrest that has swept major cities has also spread to the countryside in the nation of 80 million people. It was unclear however when the videos were taken.
Protests over economic problems broke out in Iran’s second city Mashhad last week and quickly spread across the country. At least 21 people have been killed in the unrest and some five hundred have been arrested by authorities.
Logan Paul, and the toxic YouTube prank culture that created him, explained
Paul’s decision to post footage of a suicide victim stems from many popular pranksters’ “film first and think later” ethos.
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YouTube star Logan Paul, a popular vlogger from a family of popular vloggers, drew a massive backlash on Monday and Tuesday for posting a video showing a dead body he stumbled upon in Japan's notorious "suicide forest."
The video, which Paul uploaded on December 31 and ultimately deleted late on January 1, chronicles a visit by Paul and a few companions to Aokigahara Forest, located on the northwestern side of Mt. Fuji. Upon seeing the body, Paul calls out, “Yo, are you alive?” and then, “Are you fucking with us?” He then continues to film his reaction to the discovery, complete with laughter and joking, which he later explains is his way of trying to cope with the shock of the situation.
While Paul added a preface to the video before posting it in which he gravely insisted that “this is not clickbait,” he also advised viewers to “Buckle the fuck up, because you’re never gonna see a video like this again!” and used a shot of the body for the video’s promotional thumbnail.
Japanese TV show featuring blackface actor sparks anger
A Japanese TV programme has sparked accusations of racism and cultural insensitivity after a comedian painted his face to impersonate Eddie Murphy.
The New Year's Eve show featured celebrity comic Hamada appearing in a Beverly Hills Cop skit with his face blacked up.
Using makeup to lampoon black people - a practice known as blackface - is seen by many to be deeply offensive.
Protest over the show have grown over the past days.
US-born writer and columnist Baye McNeil - who is black and has lived in Japan for 13 years - drew attention to the show on Twitter, arguing that black people were "not a punchline nor a prop".
"Need a black actor, get a black actor that speaks Japanese," he urged.
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