Syria war: Thousands flee twin offensives in Afrin and Ghouta
As many as 50,000 people have fled separate offensives against rebel forces in northern and southern Syria in recent days, activists say.
About 30,000 have left the northern town of Afrin as Turkish forces and their allies stepped up a siege.
In the Eastern Ghouta region outside Damascus, some 20,000 have left areas targeted by Syrian government forces.
The mass movements come seven years into a war which has driven nearly 12 million people from their homes.
At least 6.1 million are internally displaced while another 5.6 million have fled abroad.
Japan cronyism scandal linked to Shinzo Abe and wife worsens with suicide note
Japanese official who took his own life said he was forced to alter records linked to sale of public land at 85% discount
A cronyism scandal engulfing the Japanese government has taken a dark turn, with reports that a finance official left a note before his suicide saying that he was forced to rewrite crucial records.
The finance ministry admitted this week that it had altered 14 documents surrounding the sale of public land at an 85% discount to a nationalistic school operator with links to prime minister Shinzo Abe’s wife Akie.
The revisions, made early last year, included removing references to Abe and the first lady before the records were provided to parliamentarians investigating suspicions of influence-peddling.
Turkish forces fire on Kurdish-controlled Afrin in northern Syria killing 18 civilians
Turkish shelling of the Syrian town of Afrin overnight has killed at least 18 civilians, Kurdish forces and a war monitor have said.
The Turkish army and allied forces have encircled the Kurdish-controlled town and are attempting to storm it from the north, YPG militia spokesperson Brusk Hasakeh said.
Hundreds of families have fled the town for Syrian government controlled areas, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as the YPG and its female affiliate the YPJ battled to keep control of the town.
In Saudi Arabia, domestic workers are auctioned online
When Moroccan website Yabiladi published images of social media posts by people in Saudi Arabia putting up Moroccan domestic workers “for sale”, there was an outpouring of shock and outrage. This is an illegal but apparently tolerated deviation of Saudi Arabia’s “kafala” system of guardianship, where foreign domestic workers are completely dependent on their sponsors – who are often also their employers.
Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are the new playing fields for recruitment agencies that deal with foreign domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. The very first site that the international press discovered was the Twitter account “Moussaouqa Oum Ghada” (in English, “Oum Ghada Market”), where domestic workers are sold and bartered. The account, which has close to 2,000 followers, has been going strong since October 2013. The ads for domestic workers are usually screengrabs of WhatsApp conversations, illustrated with photos.
There’s a brief description of the worker, highlighting her strengths and weaknesses. Usually the description is followed by the hashtag (in Arabic) “#DomesticWorkerToLetGo” and an explanation of why the employers are “letting go” this particular worker.
Exclusive: Former US envoy says North Korea surprised Trump said yes to talks
Updated 0006 GMT (0806 HKT) March 16, 2018
The man who spearheaded US diplomatic efforts on North Korea until his unexpected retirement earlier this month said the North Koreans were "surprised" that President Donald Trump agreed to meet with leader Kim Jong Un so quickly.
"To be frank with you, I think they were a little bit surprised that Washington, President Trump readily accepted," Ambassador Joseph Yun told CNN. "They thought it would take a little time."
Yun told CNN's Elise Labott in an exclusive interview -- his first since stepping down as US special representative for North Korea policy -- that he welcomes plans for the meeting between Trump and Kim, expected to take place in May.
WASHINGTON BREAKS OUT THE “JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS” NAZI DEFENSE FOR CIA DIRECTOR-DESIGNATE GINA HASPEL
Jon Schwarz
DURING THE NUREMBERG TRIALS after World War II, several Nazis, including top German generals Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel, claimed they were not guilty of the tribunal’s charges because they had been acting at the directive of their superiors.
Ever since, this justification has been popularly known as the “Nuremberg defense,” in which the accused states they were “only following orders.”
The Nuremberg judges rejected the Nuremberg defense, and both Jodl and Keitel were hanged. The United Nations International Law Commission later codified the underlying principle from Nuremberg as “the fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
Teacher in Ghana who used blackboard to explain computers gets some Microsoft love
Devin Coldewey,TechCrunch
Teaching kids how to use a computer is hard enough already, since they're kids, but just try doing it without any computers. That was the task undertaken by Richard Appiah Akoto in Ghana, and his innovative (and labor-intensive) solution was to draw the computer or application on the blackboard in great detail. His hard work went viral and now Microsoft has stepped in to help out.
Akoto teaches at Betenase Municipal Assembly Junior High in the small town of Sekyedomase. He had posted pictures of his magnum opus, a stunning rendition of a complete Microsoft Word window, to Facebook. "I love ma students so have to do what will make them understand wat am teaching," he wrote. He looks harried in the last image of the sequence.
The post blew up (9.3K reactions at this point), and Microsoft, which has for years been rather quietly promoting early access to computing and engineering education, took notice. It happened to be just before the company's Education Exchange in Singapore, and they flew him out.
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