Six In The Morning Sunday February 25

IONA CRAIG WON A POLK AWARD FOR HER INVESTIGATION OF A SEAL TEAM RAID THAT KILLED WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN YEMEN. HERE’S HOW SHE DID IT.

Peter Maass

A LITTLE MORE than a year ago, on January 29, 2017, Iona Craig was at the tail end of a month-long reporting trip to Yemen. On that day, special operators from the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team 6 launched a surprise raid in a remote part of Yemen, apparently trying to capture or kill an Al Qaeda leader. This was the first covert assault of the Trump era, and the White House, which was not challenged in the U.S. media, hailed it as “highly successful.”

Except it wasn’t.

Craig, who was based in Yemen from 2010-2015 and had continued to make reporting trips to the country since a civil war broke out, quickly learned from local media that the raid killed civilians. As she began planning for an arduous and risky journey to the site of the assault, local sheikhs she knew from her previous work in the country told her that the U.S. was getting the story wrong. A large number of women and children had been killed, and the targeted village did not appear to have had a standing Al Qaeda presence.

Can a tourist ban save DiCaprio’s coral paradise from destruction?

South-east Asian idylls – from Philippine islands to the Thai bay made famous in The Beach – plan to turn tourists away so that devastated coral reefs have some time to recover. Will it be enough?

Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Thailand and the Philippines

Sun 25 Feb 2018 06.00 GMT

Our Thai tour guide, Spicey, takes a drag on her cigarette and gestures sadly towards the beach. “The problem with people is that they are too greedy. They see a beautiful place and they want it. They take, take, take from nature. And then they destroy it.”

The golden sands of Maya Bay where Spicey stands are some of the most famous in the world. This once-idyllic cove, on the tiny Thai island of Koh Phi Phi Leh, was the paradise location of The Beach, Danny Boyle’s 2000 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. It was then pushed by tourism officials in advertising campaigns to entice more wealthy visitors to Thailand.

But mass tourism has since taken a vast toll on the fragile coral reefs here: 80% of the coral around the bay has been destroyed, the result of millions of boats dropping anchor on it, tourists treading on and picking it, or poisoning by rubbish and suncream.

North Korea's Winter Olympics cheerleaders 'forced into sex slavery'

Dancers and singers forced to strip at Central Politburo parties, claims former soldier

• Peter Stubley 

The North Korean cheerleaders at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang are used as sex slaves by top politicians, a defector has claimed.

Lee So-yeon, a 42-year-old former military musician who fled to South Korea in 2008, said dancers and singers were forced to strip and provide sexual services at parties held every day for the country’s Central Politburo.

Members of the decision-making committee include North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the President Kim Yong-nam.

The Palm Oil Problem

Everyone wants sustainably produced palm oil, but few are willing to pay for it. A multimedia story about greed, avarice - and hope.

By Vanessa Steinmetz and Karl Vandenhole

A sandy track leads toward the jungle. The workers' two four-by-four vehicles splash through deep puddles as they pass the long lines of palm trees and the bushes that grow in between.

The men have affixed metal poles to the beds of the pickups, each with a sickle-shaped blade screwed onto the end.

After three-quarters of an hour, the vehicles come to a halt. Pon Churom, who goes by Pot, is the leader of the team, members of which now begin to cut ripe leaves and fruit bunches from the tops of the palm trees. Each time one of the heavy bunches plummets to earth, the ground shakes. The fruits are ready for harvest once they have turned bright red:

WH official: Peña Nieto calls off visit to White House after confrontational call with Trump

By Jeff Zeleny and Devan Cole, CNN

Updated 0526 GMT (1326 HKT) February 25, 2018

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has called off an official trip to Washington to meet with President Donald Trump after a tense phone call brought the two leaders to a policy-driven standstill.

Peña Nieto was tentatively planning the trip for March, a White House official said, but the official confirmed to CNN that the trip was put on hold following the phone call, which took place on February 20.

According to The Washington Post, which first reported the cancellation, officials from both countries told the paper that Peña Nieto "called off the plan after Trump would not agree to publicly affirm Mexico's position that it would not fund construction of a border wall."

Why (almost) no one wants to host the Olympics anymore

The spectacular impracticality of putting on the party could cause hosting bids to vanish altogether.

By Zeeshan Aleem @ZeeshanAleemzeeshan.aleem@vox.com

Pyeongchang, South Korea, built a brand new Olympic stadium to host the Winter Games this year. The 35,000-seat stadium cost $109 million to build. And it will be used just four times before it’s demolished.

The cost of the stadium will come out to an astonishing $10 million per hour of use, according to Judith Grant-Long, a scholar of sports at the University of Michigan.

The reason Pyeongchang plans to destroy the arena is pretty straightforward: The county it’s situated in has about 40,000 people; in order to fill the stadium after the Olympics and the Paralympics are over, almost every single person living in the area would have to attend an event there simultaneously to fill it up. The stadium will soon be useless for locals.