Six In The Morning Tuesday 31 May 2022

 

Ukraine war: Refugee from Popasna spots looted possessions on Russian tank

By Robert Greenall
BBC News

A Ukrainian refugee in the UK says she recognises items apparently looted from her house sitting on top of a Russian tank in a recent photo.

Alina Koreniuk says the box in the photo contains a new boiler she planned to install before the war started.

She and her children left Ukraine on 8 April and are staying with a British couple in Nottinghamshire.

The picture, taken in late May, shows the tank moving past bombed residential buildings in the town of Popasna.

Japan to approve abortion pill – but partner’s consent will be required

Delay in approving pill, and the possible $780 cost, reflect priorities of male-dominated parliament, say critics

Justin McCurry in Tokyo

Women in Japan could be forced to seek their partner’s consent before being prescribed the abortion pill, which will reportedly be approved late this year – three decades after it was made available to women in the UK.

Under Japan’s 1948 Maternal Protection Law, consent is already required for surgical abortions – with very few exceptions – a policy that campaigners say tramples over women’s reproductive rights.

“In principle we believe that spousal consent is necessary, even if an abortion is induced by an oral medication,” Yasuhiro Hashimoto, a senior health ministry official, told a parliamentary committee earlier this month, according to Bloomberg.

'The coverage continues': Palestinian journalists vow to carry forward Abu Akleh's legacy

Israelis and Palestinians started separate inquiries into the killing of a prominent US-Palestinian reporter. Those who knew Shireen Abu Akleh worry no one will be held to account for her death.

It's been almost two weeks since Faten Elwan woke up to the dreadful news that her colleague and close friend Shireen Abu Akleh had been fatally shot in the early morning of May 11. Abu Akleh, a senior correspondent with Al Jazeera Arabic, was covering an Israeli military raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on that fateful day. 

"Now we start to realize and it just doesn't make sense," says Elwan, a Palestinian journalist who lives in Ramallah and currently works for a youth website. "We just pick up the phone and call her, we are not over that habit yet." 

Daniel Defense, the US gunmaker notorious for ‘aggressive marketing’ targeting young adults

The perpetrator of the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 children and two adults lost their lives on May 24 – the worst US school shooting in a decade – used a semi-automatic weapon manufactured by the US firm Daniel Defense, one of the most aggressive marketers of assault weapons, notably targeting young adults.

A week after the Uvalde school shooting, Daniel Defense shied away from attending the National Rifle Association convention.

“Daniel Defense is not attending the NRA meeting due to the horrifying tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, where one of our products was criminally misused,” the company’s vice president of marketing Steve Reed said in a statement. “We believe this week is not the appropriate time to be promoting our products in Texas at the NRA meeting.”

In Ethiopia, mass detention signals shrinking press freedom

Twenty-two media employees have been arrested across Ethiopia this year alone.

By Zecharias Zelalem

Published On 31 May 202231 May 2022

On April 26th, an official from the Ethiopian attorney general’s office took to state media to lament what he called a lack of police action in clamping down on disinformation and hate speech.

A number of journalists in the country saw that as a bad omen.

“When I heard the call, I knew a crackdown on the press was imminent,” an Addis Ababa-based journalist told Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted. “I had already heard rumours that the government was keen on reining in the press, especially producers of digital content. The only question now was how many of us would be jailed.”

Math books outrage China with 'ugly, sexually suggestive, pro-American' images

By Nectar Gan, CNN

Updated 0455 GMT (1255 HKT) May 31, 2022

China has ordered a nationwide review of school textbooks after illustrations deemed ugly, sexually suggestive and secretly pro-American caused public uproar.

The news has alarmed some experts and parents who fear the campaign is turning into a political witch hunt and represents an unnecessary tightening of the country's already stringent censorship of cultural publications.

The drawings, found in a series of math textbooks that have been used by Chinese primary schools for nearly a decade, are controversial for various reasons.