Six In The Morning Sunday 4 April 2021

 

He was lured to his death in a secluded park. In a pandemic, dating can be deadly for LGBTQ+ people

By Hannah Ryan, CNN

Updated 1120 GMT (1920 HKT) April 4, 2021

David P. was a 42-year-old gay man living in Beveren, Belgium. He worked as a crane operator, was loved by his family and friends and, a few weeks ago, he was found dead in an abandoned park.

Three youths aged between 16 and 17 have been arrested on suspicion of his murder.

David P., had gone to the park after arranging a date with a man he met on the gay dating app Grindr. But when he arrived, he was ambushed and brutally attacked, according to CNN affiliates VTM, RTBF and RTL Belgium.

Kurds in 'mountain prison' cower as Turkey fights PKK with drones in Iraq

Bethan McKernan in Istanbul and Adam Gnych in Amedi, northern Iraq

Sun 4 Apr 2021 11.39 BST

As decades-old battle intensifies, civilians count cost in lives and livelihoods

It took 10 days to find Muhsin Speri’s body. The 64-year-old had left his town in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan along with friends Hassan Sadiq and Safar Sini on a dry, windy day in December last year to fish and forage for wild honey and mushrooms.

Life in the Amedi region of the Zagros mountains is hard and physical, but the area has been home to Kurdish and Assyrian communities in sync with the rhythms of the mountains for thousands of years. Many locals like to roam and camp for several days at a time, but after Speri’s family failed to reach him by phone for more than a week, a search party was launched.

The bodies of the three former peshmerga soldiers were found in the Zeri valley, torn to pieces by what is believed to have been a Turkish drone strike. Sadiq and Sini appeared to have been killed instantly, but Speri was found nearly 100 metres away, a trail of blood in his wake.

The Desperate Children of Moria

One boy has to sell his brother to the smugglers, another leaves his sister behind. DER SPIEGEL has spent months documenting the fates of four unaccompanied minors from the Moria camp on Lesbos. Not all of them make it to Germany.

By Giorgos Christides, Katrin Elger, Barbara Hardinghaus, Julia Amalia Heyer, Martin Knobbe, Steffen Lüdke, Christoph Schult, Britta Stuff, Mirjam Schlossarek und Nina Ulrich

There's no real beginning to this story. It could start in Iran, where a boy lived who left his brother work of a debt smuggler so he could get to Europe. Or in a room of the European Council building in Brussels, where, away from the meetings, like-minded people came together and made plans that ultimately were not approved.

It could also start in Moria, where children told aid workers they were offering sex to adults for a place in a tent. Or in Athens, where a prime minister made a promise to his voters to keep refugees out of the country.

France's Asian community fights back against racist attacks during pandemic

Five men went on trial in Paris last week for tweeting threatening, hateful messages about people of Chinese descent last October as activists in France’s Asian community become more vocal in their fight against the rise in anti-Asian racism during Covid-19. 

“It was just to make my friends laugh” – that’s what one of the five young men accused of tweeting threats and insults directed at Chinese people last October said in a Paris courtroom on March 24 as activists and community leaders of France’s Asian communities looked on. 

The tweets, posted just after French President Emmanuel Macron announced on October 28 that France would enter its second coronavirus lockdown, blamed Chinese people for the new stay-at-home restrictions. 

Jordan gov’t accuses ex-crown prince of ‘malicious plot’

Jordan’s deputy prime minister says King Abdullah’s half-brother, Prince Hamzah, has links with ‘foreign parties’ over plot to undermine security.

Jordan’s former crown prince, Prince Hamzah, had been liaising with foreign parties over a plot to destabilise the country, the Jordanian deputy prime minister has said.

On Saturday the military said it had issued a warning to the prince over actions targeting “security and stability” in the kingdom. Prince Hamzah, King Abdullah’s half-brother, later said he was under house arrest. Several high-profile figures were detained.

Marwa Elselehdar: 'I was blamed for blocking the Suez Canal'

By Joshua Cheetham
BBC News

Last month, Marwa Elselehdar noticed something strange.

News had broken about a huge container ship, the Ever Given, that had become wedged across the Suez Canal, bringing one of world's major shipping routes to a halt.

But as she checked her phone, online rumours were saying she was to blame.

"I was shocked," says Marwa, Egypt's first female ship's captain.