Saturday, November 28, 2020

Six In The Morning Saturday 28 November 2020

 

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh: Iran blames Israel for killing top scientist

Iran's president has blamed Israel for the killing of a top nuclear scientist on Friday, and said it would not slow down the country's nuclear programme.

Hassan Rouhani also said Iran would retaliate over Mohsen Fakhrizadeh's killing at a time of its choosing.

Fakhrizadeh was killed in an ambush on his car by gunmen in the town of Absard, east of the capital Tehran.

Israel has not commented, but it has previously accused him of being behind a covert nuclear weapons programme.



Encrypted apps and false names: new Taiwan book club takes no chances

Amid Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong, publisher says joining clubs to discuss free speech and democracy has again become an act of resistance

 in Taipei

In the early 1950s in Taiwan, 19-year-old Tsai Kun-lin was arrested and jailed after joining a book club. The young man spent more than a decade on Green Island, building the prison that held him as a political enemy of the authoritarian rulers who would hold Taiwan under martial law until 1987.

Decades later, a 90-year-old Tsai is living in Taiwan’s thriving democracy, but says a book club has once again become an act of resistance.

This month the publisher and activist, alongside exiled Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kee, will address the Katthveli book club, exploring political activism, free speech and democracy in Hong Kong and Taiwan, two places under extraordinary threat from an increasingly belligerent People’s Republic of China.


Coronavirus: How German protesters are trivializing Nazi-era persecution

This weekend will see fresh protests in Germany against measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic. The rallies have provided a backdrop for demonstrators to compare themselves to victims of Nazi persecution.

At one demonstration last weekend, a young woman, who introduced herself as "Jana from Kassel" drew a shocking parallel: "I feel," she said, "like Sophie Scholl because I've been active in the resistance movement for months." Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans founded the White Rose group in 1942. Together with other members of the group they were arrested and executed after being caught distributing anti-Nazi leaflets. 


South Korean agency says North Korea executed people, shut capital

By Hyung-Jin Kim
Updated 

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered at least two people executed, banned fishing at sea and locked down the capital, Pyongyang, as part of frantic efforts to guard against the coronavirus and its economic damage, South Korea's spy agency has told MPs.

Kim's government also ordered diplomats overseas to refrain from any acts that could provoke the United States because it is worried about President-elect Joe Biden's expected new approach towards North Korea, MPs told reporters on Friday, Seoul time, after attending a private briefing by the National Intelligence Service.

Ethiopian offensive on Tigray capital has begun: Regional leader



TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael says Makelle under ‘heavy bombardment’ as federal forces launch ‘final phase’ of the conflict.

The leader of rebellious forces in Tigray region says the Ethiopian government forces have begun an offensive to capture the regional capital, Makelle.

Debretsion Gebremichael, leader of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), told Reuters news agency in a text message on Saturday that the city was under “heavy bombardment”.

The QAnon conspiracy is fake. The harm it's doing to child welfare groups is real


Updated 1502 GMT (2302 HKT) November 28, 2020


Child welfare organizations for months have felt the full weight of the coronavirus pandemic, navigating concerns about unreported abuse and ensuring their resources are available to at-risk children.

But now, deeper into the outbreak, a new challenge is emerging that's complicating their critical outreach efforts: the QAnon conspiracy theory.
The most basic QAnon belief -- entirely divorced from reality -- casts President Donald Trump as the hero in a fight against the "deep state" and a sinister cabal of Democratic politicians and celebrities who abuse children. It features an anonymous government insider called "Q" who purportedly shares secret information about that fight via cryptic online posts.

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