Sunday, March 10, 2019

Six In The Morning Sunday 10 March 2019


North Koreans vote in 'no-choice' parliamentary elections


North Koreans are voting to elect the country's rubber-stamp parliament, the second such election since Kim Jong-un took power.
Voting for the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) is mandatory and there's no choice of candidates. Any kind of dissent is unheard of.
Turnout is always close to 100% and approval for the governing alliance is unanimous.
North Korea is an isolated state, ruled by the Kim family dynasty.
Citizens are required to show complete devotion to the family and its current leader.


The final indignity for ‘El Negro’, laid to rest in wrong country

Body stolen from grave for ‘shameful’ display reburied far from his South African home



 






For more than a century, the stuffed body of an African man was displayed as a grotesque exhibit in European museums. His body had been stolen from his grave by a pair of French taxidermists who dug him up in the dead of night and had him shipped to France, along with a collection of similarly preserved animals.
In 2000, following a vociferous campaign for common decency to prevail, the man’s remains were reburied in African soil.
Except, it transpires, it was the wrong African soil. While the man who became known as El Negro was “returned” to Botswana, where he supposedly died, new research suggests he should have been interred in South Africa.

A German Prisoner's AccountForced Labor and Torture in a Chinese Jail

Robert Rother spent almost eight years in a Chinese prison after being convicted of financial fraud. Now that he's out, he told DER SPIEGEL about the forced labor and torture he witnessed while behind bars.

By  and 

It was a meteoric rise. He made his first stock deal at age 13 at the Sparkasse bank in the small town of Unna, near Dortmund. At age 17, he bought his first stake in a company, located in Frankfurt. He had his first Ferrari when he was 26 and bought a second a year later in China. On his wrist, he wore a Hublot Big Bang. But then, it all came crashing down -- and at age 30, he found himself in a prison in Shenzhen, sharing a cell with 15 other prisoners. A hole in the floor served as the toilet.

Rotting away in the cell in summer 2013, Robert Rother saw no way out. Except for one: The plastic cup they had given him. The cup had a lid with an edge that was just sharp enough and the camera in the cell had a blind spot. His plan was to kill himself at night when the others were sleeping. Rother wrote to his mother: "I no longer have any hope. They do what they want. If my case isn't in the media by my birthday on Sept. 12, 2013, then I will be dead. I will take my own life on my birthday."

Venezuela's Guaido calls for march on Caracas as blackout crisis results in deaths

Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido on Saturday announced a nationwide march on Caracas as thousands of people took to the capital’s streets to crank up the pressure on beleaguered President Nicolas Maduro.
Guaido told thousands of supporters he would embark on a tour of the country before leading a nationwide march on the capital.
“Once we’ve finished the tour, the organization in every state, we’ll announce the date when all together, we’ll come to Caracas,” said the 35-year-old leader of the legislature, who is recognized as interim president by more than 50 countries.

An unvaccinated child contracted tetanus. It took two months and more than $800K to save him


By Amy Wang
For more than 30 years in Oregon in the US, cases of tetanus in children were almost mythical - studied in textbooks but never seen in person - thanks to the effectiveness of paediatric vaccination programs.
That streak ended in 2017 when an unvaccinated six-year-old boy arrived at a hospital in the state, experiencing jaw spasms and struggling to breathe, according to a case study from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention published last week.
The child was playing on a farm when he cut his head on something, the report said. His parents cleaned and stitched the wound at home, but alarming symptoms emerged six days later. The boy's jaw began clenching, and his neck and back were arched - a trademark indication of tetanus called opisthotonus that is caused by involuntary muscle spasms.

Is the United States about to lose control of its secretive Diego Garcia military base?

Updated 0620 GMT (1420 HKT) March 10, 2019


The secretive Diego Garcia military base may be 1,000 miles from the nearest continent, but it has all the trappings of a modern American town.
The troops here can dine on burgers at Jake's Place, enjoy a nine-hole golf course, go bowling or sink a cold beer at one of several bars. The local command has nicknamed the base the "Footprint of Freedom."
    But while cars here drive on the right side of the road, this is not American soil: It is, in fact, a remote remnant of the British Empire.














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