Iran plane downing: Pressure mounts on officials amid protests
Iran's leaders are facing growing calls to dismiss senior officials after a Ukrainian passenger plane was shot down killing all 176 people on board.
Thousands of protesters demanded accountability on Saturday after the military said it had mistakenly downed the jet, having earlier denied it.
Riot police have been deployed and there are reports that protesters have gathered for a second day of action.
The plane was shot down amid rising tensions with the US.
It happened shortly after Iran launched missiles at two airbases housing US forces in Iraq. Those strikes were a response to the US killing of senior Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad on 3 January.
Dominic Raab warns Iran of 'pariah' status after ambassador arrest
UK’s representative in Tehran held during demonstrations for ‘inciting’ protesters
The foreign secretary has condemned the arrest of Britain’s ambassador in Iran during anti-government protests as a “flagrant violation of international law” and said the country was marching towards “pariah status”.
Dominic Raab’s strongly worded statement came after the ambassador, Rob Macaire, was arrested on Saturday during demonstrations near Amirkabir University in Tehran for “inciting” the protesters. He was held for more than an hour on suspicion of organising, provoking and directing radical actions before he was released, the Iranian Tasnim news agency said.
Raab said in a statement: “The arrest of our ambassador in Tehran without grounds or explanation is a flagrant violation of international law.The U.S. Versus IranA Dangerous New Era in the Middle East
By killing top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, the U.S. has injected even more unpredictability into an already unstable region. Both sides have insisted they don't want war. But the conflict is likely to continue in the shadows.
By Markus Becker , Konstantin von Hammerstein , Christiane Hoffmann , Peter Müller , René Pfister , Maximilian Popp , Tobias Rapp , Christoph Reuter , Alexandra Rojkov , Marcel Rosenbach , Raniah Salloum , Christoph Scheuermann , Fidelius Schmid , Christoph Schult und Wolf Wiedmann-SchmidtU.S. President Donald Trump was determined to get revenge. But on Dec. 28, he still wasn't sure exactly how to go about it. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley traveled from Washington, D.C. to Florida, where Trump was vacationing in his luxury property, Mar-a-Lago. Outside, tourists were strolling along the beach. Inside, U.S. leadership was discussing how best to effectively punish Iran.
The day before, Tehran allies had carried out a rocket attack on a military base in northern Iraq, killing an American. The U.S. was certain that Tehran had ordered Kataib Hezbollah, one of the Shiite militias Iran cooperates with, to carry out the assault.
Haiti remembers victims of 2010 quake as economists lament rebuilding efforts 'at square one'
Haiti on Sunday will remember the thousands who died in the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010, as grief mixes with anger and bitterness over failed reconstruction efforts and continuing political instability.
Over 35 agonizingly long seconds, a magnitude-7 quake transformed capital city Port-au-Prince and the nearby cities of Gressier, Leogane and Jacmel into dusty ruins, killing more than 200,000 and injuring some 300,000 others.
More than a million and a half Haitians were left homeless, leaving island authorities and the international humanitarian community with a colossal challenge in a country lacking either a land registry or building rules.
"It's a lost decade, totally lost," Haitian economist Kesner Pharel told AFP.
Australian Prime Minister admits mistakes in bushfire crisis amid mounting criticism
Updated 1039 GMT (1839 HKT) January 12, 2020
Australia's beleaguered prime minister, Scott Morrison, has admitted there were things he "could have handled much better" in the bushfire crisis and will propose a royal commission into the disaster.
The prime minister has been heavily criticized for his tone-deaf interactions with fire-ravaged communities and inaction over climate change.
In a lengthy interview with the ABC's Insiders host, David Speers, Morrison said the fires had made his government "think a little harder" on how to provide comfort and consolation to the victims.
The war addiction of American cable TV
The same people justifying the 2003 disaster war in Iraq are once again on screen justifying US aggression.by Andrew Mitrovica
US cable news networks are addicted to war.
War is their intoxicating elixir of choice. It has also become their raison d'etre. There are only two stories that matter to CNN, MSNBC and Fox News: presidential politics and war.
The two are, of course, inextricably linked. One not only informs but can also define the other. In this narrow context, the real, lasting and graphic human consequences of war are rarely given attention or exposure. Rather, war is considered solely through the antiseptic prism of its domestic political and international geopolitical ramifications.
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