Florida shooting survivors rally for stricter gun controls
Survivors of a Florida school shooting that left 17 people dead have travelled to the state capital to press lawmakers to take more action on gun control.
About 100 students arrived in Tallahassee hours before the state legislature rejected a ban on assault rifles like the one used in the attack.
They are due to stage a rally at the statehouse later and meet legislators.
It is the first organised protest of the youth-led anti-gun movement that has swept the US since the attack.
Under pressure to act, President Donald Trump on Tuesday backed a move to ban devices that can enable rifles to shoot hundreds of rounds a minute. This bump-stock accessory was used by a gunman in Las Vegas to kill 58 concert-goers last year.
Al-Shabaab steps up extortion and indoctrination as morale dips
Intelligence papers and interviews lay bare severity of terror group’s rule in Somalia
Al-Shabaab militants in Somalia are extorting huge sums from starving communities and forcibly recruiting hundreds of children as soldiers and suicide bombers as the terror group endures financial pressures and an apparent crisis of morale.
Intelligence documents, transcripts of interrogations with recent defectors and interviews conducted by the Guardian with inhabitants of areas in the swath of central and southern Somalia controlled by al-Shabaab have shone a light on the severity of its harsh rule – but also revealed significant support in some areas.
Systematic human rights abuses on a par with those committed by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are being conducted by the al-Qaida-affiliated Islamist militants as the west largely looks away because most analysts do not see the group as posing a threat to Europe, the UK or the US.
This could be the last siege of the Syrian war
Eastern Ghouta has held out longest because it was large, strongly held and could grow part of its own food. But last year the government tightened the siege
Syrian artillery and aircraft are bombarding Eastern Ghouta, the last big rebel enclave which is just to the east of Damascus. Some 127 people were reported to have been killed on Monday alone. By Tuesday evening that figure was said to have doubled. The strength of the attack by shellfire, bombs and missiles is more intense than anything seen in the area for several years, suggesting that an all-out ground assault is in prospect or, as in East Aleppo just over a year ago, there will be a last minute attempt to negotiate a mass evacuation.
The siege of Eastern Ghouta could be the last of the big sieges that have characterised the war in Syria for the last five or six years and has made it such a destructive conflict. Early on in the war, government forces adapted the strategy of abandoning opposition strongholds, surrounding them and concentrating pro-government forces in defence of loyalist areas, essential roads and important urban areas. The rebel enclaves were sealed off with checkpoints and the people inside were subjected to regular bombardment.
Can a group of Florida high school students change America's cycle of gun violence?
One week after the deadly school shooting in Florida, it is too early to tell whether the powerful protests by surviving students will produce a lasting impact. But they are doing a lot of things right.
But, for many who heard the powerful words spoken so eloquently by grieving teenagers who had just survived a shooting at their Florida high school that left 17 of their friends and teachers dead, it felt like this time was different.
The palpable determination of these young people to simply not accept the status quo, the articulate accusations of inaction and complicity leveled against the older generations and the forceful simplicity of their key arguments that they ought to be protected went viral and made it impossible not to listen to them – and for their message to resonate.
'The petro is born': Venezuela launches its cryptocurrency
Rachelle Krygier
Crisis-ridden Venezuela is launching an oil-backed cryptocurrency on Tuesday that it hopes will help circumvent US financial sanctions and resurrect the country's moribund economy.
The pre-sale of the "petro," which will represent a barrel of crude from a specific division in the country's Orinoco oil belt, started on Tuesday morning. Investors were offered US$60 "tokens" at discounted rates that they can exchange for petros during what is being dubbed an "initial coin offering," or ICO, in March.
'Father of defectors' on life after North Korea
In part one of the series on North Korean defectors, Al Jazeera speaks to YH Kim who fled his country in 1988.
Around 31,000 North Koreans have defected into South Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953.
Almost 71 percent of those defectors are female, most in their 20s and 30s.
Only a few take the most dangerous route through the Korean Demilitarized Zone that a North Korean soldier took late last year.
Most of the North Koreans defect via the long and expensive journey that takes them into China after crossing the Yalu River.
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