'Protocol headache' for Winter Olympics as Mike Pence and Kim Jong-un's sister arrive
US vice-president and North Korea’s Kim Yo-jong have ‘no intention’ of meeting but seating plan for opening ceremony could put them metres apart
US and senior North Korean officials say they have no intention of meeting each other at the Winter Olympics – even though vice-president Mike Pence and Kim Jong-un’s younger sister will be seated just metres apart at the opening ceremony.
Friday’s VIP seating arrangements are seen as a “protocol headache” for the South Korean hosts, who have been pushing for the Games in Pyeongchang to be known as a “peace Olympics”.
Instead, the opening ceremony could prove to be an awkward and frosty affair. Pence is to be accompanied by the father of Otto Warmbier, the American student who was imprisoned by North Korea and died just days after being returned to the US in a coma last year.
Turkey accused of recruiting ex-Isis fighters in their thousands to attack Kurds in Syria
Exclusive: Former Isis fighter tells The Independent that Turkey is using the name of the now defunct, Western-backed Free Syrian Army to conceal its use of jihadi mercenaries
Turkey is recruiting and retraining Isis fighters to lead its invasion of the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northern Syria, according to an ex-Isis source.
“Most of those who are fighting in Afrin against the YPG [People’s Protection Units] are Isis, though Turkey has trained them to change their assault tactics,” said Faraj, a former Isis fighter from north-east Syria who remains in close touch with the jihadi movement.
In a phone interview with The Independent, he added: “Turkey at the beginning of its operation tried to delude people by saying that it is fighting Isis, but actually they are training Isis members and sending them to Afrin.”
Rio police use vans to break up the favelas' 'funk balls'
Born in the late 1980s, "funk carioca" serves as the soundtrack of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and as an anthem for favela youth, most of whom are poor and black and face violence and discrimination. This musical genre, which is a blend of electro and hip-hop, is often played at the big street parties organised in the favelas. However, Brazilian police have been using armoured vehicles to break up these parties, claiming that they disturb public order. Our Observer documented this repression in 2017.
On March 17, 2017, residents of Barrio Carioca – a neighbourhood in the north of the Brazilian capital – set up a stage and chairs for a concert in a public square. But at one point during the evening, after the party had already started, police officers deliberately drove an armoured vehicle into the stage. Several people caught the incident on film.
Military silently starving and abducting Rohingya, Amnesty finds
Lindsay Murdoch
Myanmar’s military is forcing thousands of Rohingya Muslims remaining in violence-wracked Rakhine State to flee through starvation, abductions and looting, according to testimonies of refugees reaching Bangladesh.
Instead of terrorising Rohingya through mass killings, rapes and burnings as they did last year, the military has embarked on a more subtle campaign to squeeze them out by “making life so intolerable that they have little option other than to leave,” Amnesty International says in a new report.
Scores of Rohingya continue to stream across the border into Bangladesh each day saying persistent persecution, including denying them access to their rice fields at harvest time, forced them to breaking point.
A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION into the death of Army Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar, who was killed last June while deployed in Bamako, Mali, has prompted a broad internal military audit and investigation into SEAL Team 6, according to a military official and two others briefed on the case.
Investigators suspect the two SEALs being investigated in the Melgar case were stealing cash from operational funds used for informants and other contingencies while deployed. The new investigation aims to determine whether such thefts are a routine practice among the members of the elite counterterrorism unit, according to the military official and two other people familiar with the financial investigation. All three sources requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation. The SEALs have denied stealing the cash.
Female temp worker's fight for labor equality a full-time job
On a Wednesday in early December 2017 Teruko Watanabe left home for her office job of more than 16 and a half years at a consulting firm in Tokyo's Bunkyo Ward. But that was to be the last time she made the commute, as when she got there she was informed her contract had been terminated.
The news, which came from the staffing agency, hit Watanabe hard. The client asked that she turn in her ID badge at the end of the day despite her having dedicated a significant part of her life to the business.
That same evening, Watanabe, 58, gave her badge to a colleague and left the office for the last time.
For temp workers like Watanabe, there are no bonuses, no reimbursements for transportation fees and no severance payouts.
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