Saturday, November 5, 2022

Six In The Morning Saturday 5 November 2022

 






Itaewon crowd crush: thousands join vigil as anger grows in South Korea

Law enforcement concedes insufficient planning as president belatedly expresses regret for disaster


Raphael Rashid in Seoul and agency


Thousands of people gathered near Seoul’s city hall on Saturday to commemorate the 156 people killed in a Halloween crowd crush in Itaewon last weekend.

Christian and Buddhist leaders spoke on stage, demanding President Yoon Suk-yeol step down and asking how the country could mourn without knowing the truth behind the deaths.

People of all ages, including foreign nationals, were present holding signs that read “The people are dying, do you call this a country?” and “Your resignation is our grief”.


UK immigration center attack was 'terrorist incident'

British police have said last week's arson attack on a migrant processing center in Dover was motivated by "extreme right-wing" ideology. The 66-year-old suspected assailant was later found dead.

British police said on Saturday evidence showed that right-wing extremist ideology motivated a firebomb attack on an immigration center in the southern English port city of Dover on October 30.

"Counter Terrorism Policing South East (CTPSE) ... have recovered evidence that indicates the attack at an immigration centre in Dover on Sunday, 30 October 2022, was motivated by a terrorist ideology," authorities said in a statement.

The evidence recovered suggested that "there was an extreme right-wing motivation behind the attack," police added.


Iran has ‘tested satellite launcher successfully’ amid rising hostility with US

Iran announced Saturday the successful test flight of a rocket capable of propelling satellites into space, three months after launching a satellite with the help of Russia. This comes amid rising tensions with Western countries as Tehran is alleged to have provided Moscow with military equipment to help its Ukraine war efforts. 

The United States has repeatedly voiced concern that such launches could boost Iran's ballistic missile technology, leading  to the potential delivery of nuclear warheads.

But Iran insists it is not seeking nuclear weapons and that its satellite and rocket launches are for civil or defensive purposes only.

Climate emergency: Will polluting rich nations pay reparations?

At COP27, negotiators and civil society groups will lobby not just for more money on the table, but also new avenues for capital to make a faster impact.



After decades of slow progress on climate action, with political leaders dragging their heels on finance or debating whether climate change is even real, this year’s extreme weather proved a stark reminder that the world has reached some of the tipping points climate scientists have been warning us about.

The deaths of more than 1,700 people in Pakistan’s floods as well as the 4,000 casualties caused by drought and floods across the African continent are only some of the dire events that will shape the conversation around climate finance, and in particular around climate reparations, at the upcoming COP27 climate summit in Egypt.


With Twitter in chaos, Mastodon is on fire

Updated 8:19 AM EDT, Sat November 5, 2022


In the week since Elon Musk took over Twitter, the number of people signing up for a small social network called Mastodon has surged.

You may not have heard of Mastodon, which has been around since 2016, but now it’s growing rapidly. Some are fleeing Twitter for it or at least seeking out a second place to post their thoughts online as the much more well-known social network faces layoffs, controversial product changes, an expected shift in its approach to content moderation and a jump in hateful rhetoric.

There may be no clear alternative to Twitter, a uniquely influential platform that is fast-moving, text-heavy, conversational and news-oriented. But Mastodon scratches a certain itch. The service has a similar look to Twitter, with a timeline of short updates sorted chronologically rather than algorithmically. It lets users join a slew of different servers run by various groups and individuals, rather than one central platform controlled by a single company like Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.


Russians said they’d take my baby: A medic’s story


By Ben Tobias
BBC News


Late one night in early April, Ukrainian military medic Mariana Mamonova was travelling towards a combat position in Mariupol, south-east Ukraine, with soldiers from her unit.

The fighting was close; the sound of gunfire and bombs came from every direction. One of them could have hit their vehicle at any moment. It was freezing and pitch dark, but at times the sky lit up with what looked like phosphorous weapons, illuminating the road ahead.

Mariana had been serving on the front line in Mariupol since the war began in February, but now the stakes were even higher than usual - she had discovered she was pregnant two weeks earlier.







No comments:

Translate