Six In The Morning Sunday 15 May 2022

 

Finland will apply to join NATO, leaders say, ditching decades of neutrality despite Russia's threats of retaliation

By Tara John and Chandler Thornton, CNN

Updated 1440 GMT (2240 HKT) May 15, 2022

Finland's government announced Sunday it will apply to join NATO, ditching decades of wartime neutrality and ignoring Russian threats of possible retaliation as the Nordic country attempts to strengthen its security following the onset of the war in Ukraine.

The decision was announced at a joint press conference by President Sauli Niinistö and Prime Minister Sanna Marin, who said the move must be ratified by the country's parliament before Finland can formally apply for membership with NATO.

"We hope that the parliament will confirm the decision to apply for NATO membership," Marin said in Helsinki on Sunday. "During the coming days. It will be based on a strong mandate, with the President of the Republic. We have been in close contact with governments of NATO member states and NATO itself."

Use of Pegasus spyware on Spain’s politicians causing ‘crisis of democracy’

Targeting of Catalan independence leaders and Spanish ministers must be independently investigated, says cybersecurity expert

Sam Jones in Madrid

@swajones

The use of Pegasus spyware to target both Catalan independence leaders and Spanish politicians – including the prime minister – has plunged Spain into a “crisis of democracy” and national security that can only be tackled with an independent investigation, a leading cybersecurity expert has warned.

Last month, researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab revealed that at least 65 individuals connected with the Catalan independence movement had been targeted with spyware between 2017 and 2020.

A fortnight later, the Spanish government announced that the phones of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the defence minister, Margarita Robles, had been hacked with Pegasus in May and June last year.

North Korea reports 15 more suspected Covid deaths as outbreak escalates

Fresh casualties in the hermit kingdom took the total death toll to 42 on Sunday

Arpan Rai

At least 15 more people have died of suspected Covid in North Korea, state media said on Sunday, while hundreds of thousands more cases of “fever” were recorded in the country as it continued to battled its first Covid-19 outbreak.

The announcement comes just days after North Korea confirmed it had detected its first ever case of the virus, more than two years after the pandemic began and spread rapidly across the globe.

Fresh casualties in the hermit kingdom took the total death toll to 42 on Sunday. A total of 820,620 cases of the virus have been recorded in the country, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

Escaping the TalibanThe Last Way Out of Afghanistan

Every day, thousands of people are fleeing the Taliban through the last open route out of Afghanistan. It's their last hope to escape poverty and desperation – but not everyone makes it.

By Christoph Reuter and Julian Busch (Photos) in Zaranj, Afghanistan

Quietly, quickly and with no light: Such are the orders from the young man as they prepare to set off. A group of 40 men, women and children are gazing at him in this bare, pitch-black room – frightened, exhausted faces in the wan glow of two flashlights. Those who fall back will be left behind.

They have come to Nimruz from many different provinces in Afghanistan, to this arid and austere southwestern corner of the country. Only from here is flight across the border still possible for those who aren’t rich enough to buy a visa or who don’t have relatives in Europe or America. Neighboring countries have tightly secured their borders to the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," but the frontier is difficult to control here. The last path out of desperation and poverty leads through the desert. If you survive.

Many of Iraq's IS victims were buried in mass graves. Exhumations are too slow and politically biased, critics warn

The "Islamic State" group is gone but many of their Iraqi victims are still missing. They may well be buried in mass graves the extremists left. But critics say exhumations are too slow, and possibly politically biased.

"My brother was arrested by Daesh," explained Abdullah Ramadan Mohammed, using the colloquial name of the extremist group known as the "Islamic State."

Mohammed lives in the central Iraqi city of Hawija and his brother had worked for the Iraqi government. The extremists accused him of spying when they took over the city by force in early summer 2014. "That was such nonsense," Mohammed told DW.

But after the nighttime arrest, his brother disappeared. Mohammed tried for months to get information, visiting different prisons run by the "Islamic State", or IS, group, but he found out nothing.

‘Why should I leave?’: Palestinian Bedouins decry expulsion

Local families are battling to stop what would be one of the largest single displacements of Palestinians by Israel in decades.

By Louy Alsaeed

Published On 15 May 202215 May 2022

Outside the city of Hebron, already an example of encroaching Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory, sits what appears to be an unassuming grouping of Palestinian Bedouin homes.

But here, in Masafer Yatta, local families are battling to stop what would be one of the largest single displacements of Palestinians in decades, as Israeli forces attempt to forcibly expel them.

Muhammed Musa Shahada and his family are among the dozens threatened with expulsion.

“I was born here in the village of Al-Majaz, why should I leave my land against my will? Why should I have to live through another Nakba?” the 61-year-old Shahada told Al Jazeera, referring to the forced displacement and death of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that came as a result of the creation of Israel in 1948