Syria chemical attack: Investigators allowed to visit site after delay
Five days after their arrival, chemical weapons inspectors in Syria will on Wednesday be given access to an alleged chemical attack site, Russia said.
The team has been in the country since Saturday but has been denied access to the site in the town of Douma.
US officials have raised concerns that Russia may have tampered with the site while inspectors were denied access.
Syria and its ally Russia deny responsibility for the attack, with Russia claiming that it was "staged".
Activists on the ground in Syria say the attack killed more than 40 people and injured hundreds more sheltering from bombing in basements beneath the city. Video footage and witness testimony suggests that gas seeped down into the basements, suffocating the victims
Philippines sends in riot police to lock down 'cesspool' Boracay
‘Crowd dispersal unit’ among measures to keep out tourists during six-month shutdown
The Philippines is to deploy hundreds of riot police to the holiday island Boracay to keep out tourists and head off potential protests ahead of its six-month closure to visitors.
Rodrigo Duterte has described the tiny central island and its white-sand beach as a “cesspool”. The Philippine president ordered visitors to be kept away from 26 April to enable facilities to treat raw sewage to be set up and illegal structures to be torn down.
On Tuesday, authorities unveiled a lockdown plan to keep out all foreign and Filipino tourists using more than 600 police officers, including a 138-person “crowd dispersal unit”.
Russian hackers targeting millions of devices around the world, US and UK warn
Intelligence agencies say spying could be preparation for future attacks
Russian hackers are targeting millions of devices around the world to spy, steal information and build networks for potentially devastating future cyberattacks, the US and UK have revealed.
The first ever joint “technical alert” from the two countries urged members of the public and businesses to help combat vulnerabilities with basic security precautions.
Ciaran Martin, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) – an arm of British intelligence agency GCHQ – said Russia was its “most capable hostile adversary in cyberspace”.
Poland violated EU law by logging in ancient forest, rules European Court of Justice
Warsaw failed in its obligations to protect the Bialowieza Forest when it authorized the tripling of logging activities. The forest is one of Europe’s last remaining primeval forests and protected under EU law.
Poland's decision to beef up logging in the country's protected Bialowieza Forest — a UNESCO World Heritage site — is in breach of European Union law, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on Tuesday.
"The forest management operations concerning the Puszcza Bialowieska Natura 2000 site that have been undertaken by Poland infringe EU law," the ECJ said in a statement.
The ECJ said that the Polish government must stop logging "without delay" or face financial penalties. Poland said in a statement that it would respect the ruling by the bloc’s top court.
Mud in this small Japanese island could change the global economy
Updated 0250 GMT (1050 HKT) April 17, 2018
A small island in the Pacific Ocean is the site of a huge discovery that could change Japan's economic future. How huge? One economist called it a "game changer." The researchers who helped find it said it had "tremendous potential."
It's mud. A whole bunch of mud -- an estimated 16 million tons, to be exact. And in that mud, there are massive, "semi-infinite" stores of valuable rare earth minerals.
Rare earth minerals contain rare earth elements (located here on the periodic table) that are used in high-tech devices like smartphones, missile systems, radar devices and hybrid vehicles. For instance, yttrium, one of the metals included in this recent discovery, can be used to makecamera lenses, superconductors and cell phone screens.
‘They Eat Money’: How Mandela’s Political Heirs Grow Rich Off Corruption
With loudspeakers blaring, city officials drove across the black township’s dirt roads in a pickup truck, summoning residents to the town hall. The main guest was a local figure who had soared up the ranks of the governing African National Congress and come back with an enticing offer.
Over the next few hours, the visiting political boss, Mosebenzi Joseph Zwane, sold them on his latest deal: a government-backed dairy farm that they, as landless black farmers, would control. They would get an ownership stake in the business, just by signing up. They would go to India for training, all expenses paid. To hear him tell it, the dairy would bring jobs to the impoverished, help build a clinic and fix the roads.
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