She's only 12, but her father is already planning her wedding
By Hakim Almasmari and Sarah El Sirgany, CNN
Sanaa, Yemen — When Halima's father told her he was planning her wedding, the 12-year-old firmly refused.
"My father married off my sisters, and wants to marry me off by force, but I don't want to get married," said Halima, whose father asked CNN not to use his family's surname.
Child marriage is entrenched in Yemen, a symptom of crippling poverty and a deeply conservative culture. It's a traditional practice preserved in proverbs like, "Marry an 8-year-old girl, she's guaranteed" -- an assurance of a child's virginity. And the country's three-year civil war has only exacerbated the problem. Today, more than two-thirds of Yemeni girls are married off before they reach 18, a staggering leap from half of all girls before the conflict.
But Halima, with her quick laugh and infectious smile, is determined not to be a part of that mounting statistic.
Somali citizens count cost of surge in US airstrikes under Trump
The Guardian has investigated scores of reports of US-led strikes targeting al-Shabaab, which have risen to unprecedented levels
Dozens of civilians have been killed and wounded in Somalia as US-led airstrikes against Islamist militants increase to unprecedented levels, a Guardian investigation has found, raising fears that Washington’s actions could bolster support for extremists.
The escalation in strikes is part of the Trump administration’s broader foreign policy strategy in Africa and the Middle East. There have been 34 US airstrikes in Somalia in the last six months – at least twice the total for the whole of 2016.
Regional allies active in the campaign against Islamic extremists in the east African country have conducted many missions too. These appear to be the most lethal for civilians.
Kurdish forces in Syria launch powerful counterattack to set up extended battle against Turkey
Rex Tillerson claimed US presence would stabilise the country but it has done the opposite
Turkey is hoping for a quick victory in Afrin, but its soldiers and allied Syrian militiamen are facing counter-attacks by Kurdish forces on villages close to the border. The Kurds are reported to be readying reinforcements to join the battle from their bases in north east Syria where they have thousands of troops who until recently were fighting Isis.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan says there would be “no stepping back from Afrin” which means that the campaign, bizarrely named ‘Operation Olive Branch’, will continue. But it will take time to drive the Kurdish YPG paramilitary forces out the Afrin enclave north of Aleppo. So far the Turkish offensive has captured only a few villages close to the border in three days of fighting and there are a total of 350 villages in Afrin.
Facebook vows to tackle social media threat to democracy
Facebook acknowledged Monday that the explosion of social media poses a potential threat to democracy, pledging to tackle the problem head-on and turn its powerful platform into a force for "good".
The comments from the world's biggest social network were its latest response to intense criticism for failing to stop the spread of misinformation among its two billion users -- most strikingly leading up to the 2016 US election.
In a blog post, Facebook civic engagement chief Samidh Chakrabarti said he was "not blind to the damage that the internet can do to even a well-functioning democracy."
"In 2016, we at Facebook were far too slow to recognize how bad actors were abusing our platform," he said. "We're working diligently to neutralize these risks now."
HOUSE SCIENCE COMMITTEE WANTS TO INVESTIGATE A GOVERNMENT SCIENTIST FOR DOING SCIENCE
REPUBLICANS ON THE House Science Committee are accusing Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, of lobbying. In letters sent to the Inspector General and acting secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Reps. Lamar Smith and Andy Biggs wrote that they were “conducting oversight” of Birnbaum’s activity in response to a editorial she wrote in a scientific journal.
Birnbaum’s editorial, which the journal PLOS Biology published in December, addressed the gaps in the regulation of toxic chemicals. Though there are more than 85,000 chemicals approved for use in commerce, she noted in the piece, “U.S. policy has not accounted for evidence that chemicals in widespread use can cause cancer and other chronic diseases, damage reproductive systems, and harm developing brains at low levels of exposure once believed to be harmless.”
Avalanche kills one in Japan ski resort after volcanic eruption
A Japanese soldier has been killed in an avalanche in central Japan that may have been triggered by a volcanic eruption.
At least 11 people have also been injured, several of them critically.
The eruption sent rocks raining down over a kilometre-wide area near Kusatsu in central Japan, say local media.
Mount Kusatsu-Shirane, 150km (93 miles) north-west of Tokyo, erupted on Tuesday but officials are still investigating whether it caused the avalanche.
Images of the volcano showed a vent on its side appeared to have blown out, while video footage shows a large cloud of black ash and rock being thrown down the mountainside.
No comments:
Post a Comment