Six In The Morning Friday 13 August 2021

 

Afghanistan: What has the conflict cost the US and its allies?

By Reality Check team
BBC News

The Taliban are making rapid advances in Afghanistan as US and other foreign forces withdraw after 20 years of military operations.

President Biden has said he wants all US troops out by 11 September.

We've been looking at how much the US and its Nato allies have spent in Afghanistan since the war began.

What forces were sent in?

The US invaded in October 2001 to oust the Taliban, whom they said were harbouring Osama Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda figures linked to the 9/11 attacks.

US troop numbers grew as Washington poured in billions of dollars to fight a Taliban insurgency and fund reconstruction, peaking at about 110,000 in 2011.

North Korea military threats ‘intended to deflect from economic crisis’

Regime looking to shift focus from domestic problems with rhetoric around US-South Korea military drills, say analysts

Justin McCurry in Tokyo

Fri 13 Aug 2021 10.36 BST

North Korea’s threat to boost its military capacity to counter hostility from Washington before joint US-South Korea military drills is intended to divert attention from its economic crisis but could lead to a resumption of missile tests, according to analysts.

While there is nothing unusual about North Korean opposition to the summer exercises involving American and South Korean forces, its warning this week that Seoul and Washington faced “greater security threats” comes from a position of weakness not seen since Kim Jong-un came to power a decade ago.

97-year-old Auschwitz survivor's TikTok goes viral

Aged 97, Lily Ebert has become a star on the TikTok video sharing platform. She has gained more than a million followers for her clips - in which she answers people’s questions about surviving the Holocaust, when she was a prisoner at the notorious Nazi death camp, Auschwitz.

UK mass shooting suspect named as debate over ‘terrorism’ simmers

Jake Davison, who described himself as an ‘incel’, killed five people in a rare mass shooting, including a young girl.

A man who killed five people during a six-minute shooting spree in the United Kingdom has been named as 22-year-old Jake Davison, though police said the motive for the murders was unclear.

Davison, a crane operator, started shooting with a pump-action shotgun at about 6pm (17:00 GMT) on Thursday, first killing a woman he knew in a house in Biddick Drive in the southern English city of Plymouth, police said.

He ran out of the house and immediately shot dead a young girl who was walking her dog in the street along with her male relative.

Tens of thousands urged to evacuate as heavy rain hits western Japan

Tens of thousands of people were urged to evacuate on Friday as unprecedented levels of torrential rain hit western Japan, raising the risk of floods and landslides, the weather agency said.

The downpours are forecast to continue for several days over a large swathe of the country, from the northern Tohoku region to Kyushu in the south.

"There is a possibility that a grave disaster will occur" in the coming days, a Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) official told an emergency news conference shown live on public broadcaster NHK.

Beijing has denied taking political hostages. Experts say the fates of two Canadians suggest otherwise

By Nectar Gan, Jessie Yeung and Steve George, CNN

Updated 0656 GMT (1456 HKT) August 13, 2021

After spending nearly 1,000 days in a Chinese jail cell, Canadian businessman Michael Spavor has finally received his court verdict — yet there is still no clarity on how much longer he will actually remain behind bars.

Spavor, an entrepreneur with business ties in North Korea, was sentenced Wednesday to a prison term of 11 years for spying and illegally providing state secrets overseas. But the Chinese court also said he would be deported, without giving details on when, or how.

Spavor's fate, observers say, could hinge on the results of a court case unfolding on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, as a Canadian judge mulls over whether to proceed with the extradition of a Chinese tech executive wanted by the United States for fraud charges related to alleged Iran sanction violations.