Scripted Trump does little to convince skeptics on border wall
Updated 0639 GMT (1439 HKT) January 9, 2019
President Donald Trump delivered his scripted response to the deepening Washington stalemate over his border wall on Tuesday night. But when he's free to tweet and with cameras rolling during a Wednesday morning appearance, America could find out what he really thinks.
Penned in by the formal stagecraft of his first Oval Office address, the President did little to pry open the partially shuttered government or bring the ultimate monument to his political movement -- a wall along the southern border -- any closer to construction.
But Trump's behavior in the wake of a big set piece moment is often dictated by his reaction to how everybody else scores his performance.
China 'to let thousands of ethnic Kazakhs leave Xinjiang'
Kazakh foreign ministry says they will be allowed to drop their Chinese citizenship
China is allowing more than 2,000 ethnic Kazakhs to abandon their Chinese citizenship and leave the country, the Kazakh foreign ministry has said, in a sign that Beijing may be starting to feel a mounting backlash against its crackdown on Muslims in the far west region of Xinjiang.
The detention of Uighur, Kazakh and other ethnic minorities in internment camps has been an issue in neighbouring Kazakhstan, a Central Asian country of 18 million people. China is a major trading partner, and Kazakhstan’s state media had generally avoided reporting on it. But activists say pressure for action has slowly built following international media coverage.
Iguanas reintroduced to Galapagos island after almost 200 years
Iguanas were last sighted on Santiago island by Charles DarwinZamira Rahim
Iguanas have been re-introduced to an island in the Galápagos archipelago for the first time in almost two centuries.
An initiative developed by the Galápagos National Park authority saw 1,436 land iguanas moved to Santiago Island from neighbouring North Seymour Island between 3 and 4 January.
The project involved 25 park rangers and is part of the ecological restoration of Santiago Island.
Land iguanas were last sighted on the island by Charles Darwin in 1835.
UN refugee agency assesses case of Saudi teen who fled to Thailand
The asylum claim of a young Saudi woman who resisted deportation from Thailand in a gripping, live-tweeted ordeal will take “several days” to assess, the UN’s refugee agency in Bangkok said Tuesday.
Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun arrived at Bangkok’s main airport over the weekend on a flight from Kuwait after running away from her family who she alleges subjected her to physical and psychological abuse.
The 18-year-old said she had planned to seek asylum in Australia, fearing she would be killed if sent back by Thai immigration officials who stopped her at the airport on Sunday.
Saudi Arabia’s parlous rights record has been under heavy scrutiny since the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year.
Initially, Thai authorities said Qunun would be sent back to Saudi Arabia.
Suspicious packages sent to more than 10 consulates in Melbourne
By Anthony Colangelo, Bianca Hall, Liam Mannix & Joe Hinchliffe
More than 10 international consulates and embassies in Melbourne and Canberra have been sent suspicious packages containing white powder, some reportedly marked with the word "asbestos".
A worker at the Pakistani consulate in Melbourne opened one of the packages about 10am on Wednesday.
It is understood the envelope, which looked like a normal letter, was addressed to the Consulate-General of Pakistan.
Initial suspicions were raised by a spelling mistake on the envelope, with "consulate" misspelled.
ISIS is far from being defeated as a fighting force or ideology
Updated 0403 GMT (1203 HKT) January 9, 2019
On December 19, President Trump declared: "We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency." US troops there, he said in a video the same day, are "all coming back, and they're coming back now."
On January 7, the President revised "now" to "leaving at a proper pace while at the same time continuing to fight ISIS," though he claimed it was no different from what he'd said before.
But in between both statements, his Defense Secretary James Mattis and the US special envoy on fighting ISIS, Brett McGurk, had resigned. Senior Republican Senators had openly criticized the abrupt withdrawal.
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