Wednesday, January 11, 2023

Six In The Morning Wednesday 11 January 2023

 

Brazil riots: More than 1,200 to be charged for Brazil riot


By Bernd Debusmann Jr
Brasília


More than 1,200 people have been formally arrested and are being charged in relation to the riot at Brazil's Congress.

Authorities have five days to charge suspects who have been formally arrested.

In total, more than 1,500 people were detained after the riot.

Concerns about potential further protests have prompted a large security forces deployment in Brazil's capital.


Honduran environmental defenders shot dead in broad daylight

Aly Domínguez and Jairo Bonilla, co-founders of grassroots resistance group to iron ore mine in Guapinol, murdered in street

 in Mexico City


Two environmental defenders have been shot dead in broad daylight in Honduras, triggering fresh calls for an independent investigation into the persecution and violence against a rural community battling to stop an illegally sanctioned mine.

Aly Domínguez, 38, and Jairo Bonilla, 28, from Guapinol in northern Honduras, were murdered on Saturday afternoon as they returned home on a moped after finishing work collecting payments for a cable company. They were intercepted by armed assailants and died at the scene, according to relatives.

Domínguez and Bonilla were co-founders of Guapinol’s grassroots resistance against an iron ore mine owned by one of the country’s most powerful couples. Domínguez was among 32 community leaders falsely accused of crimes by the mining company and local authorities.


ANALYSIS Trade reliance makes S. Korea easy target for China's visa retaliation: analysts


By Jack Lau

South Korea was the first country to take the brunt of Beijing's visa suspensions in retaliation against coronavirus testing requirements imposed by more than 15 countries as cases spiked inside China after the end of its zero-COVID policy.

One analyst said South Korea was targeted first because it could do little to respond to China's retaliation, mainly because of the country's heavy reliance on trade with China. China is South Korea's No. 1 trading partner.

"I think China believes that South Korea greatly relies on it economically, and therefore when China protests, South Korea will comply with its demands. But this thinking might be an illusion," Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at Renmin University of China, said.


UAE’s high-tech toolkit for mass surveillance and repression


The United Arab Emirates has pioneered the extensive use of surveillance technology to keep tabs on its own citizens. Data is being collected and also analysed on a massive and unprecedented scale, making people fear nothing they say or write is truly private.

by Eva Thiébaud

We were on the eight-lane motorway from Abu Dhabi, the wealthy, conservative capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to the more liberal city of Dubai, a tourist hotspot and international trade hub, when the taxi driver’s phone pinged. Then mine pinged too: it was an accident alert. Neither of us had signed up to this service. We kept a lookout, but the accident turned out to be on the opposite carriageway. The alert was one example of continuous digital surveillance, supposedly for UAE residents’ convenience and peace of mind.

Emiratis are the world’s biggest consumers of mobile data, averaging 18GB per person per month. ‘Digital technology is very integrated into the lives of Emiratis,’ says James Shires, a cybersecurity specialist at Leiden University in the Netherlands. ‘They are fascinated by modernity and portray themselves as technological leaders, boasting of their smart cities and the digital facilitation of daily life. But the other side of the coin is that everything is traced and collected.’ Emiratis know this, but some feel it’s a necessary evil in a country that faces so many geopolitical threats.


Southern African soldiers probed over body-burning video

A 20-second video circulating online depicting soldiers throwing bodies onto a burning pile of rubbish in Mozambique has prompted an investigation. It could amount to war crimes if verified.

The Southern African Development Community Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) was trying to determine the authenticity of a video circulating online that appeared to show its soldiers burning the bodies of dead insurgents on a pile of trash.

South African National Defense Force (SANDF) spokesperson Brigadier General Andries Mokoena Mahapa said the "despicable act" possibly took place in Mozambique in November last year.

At least one of the soldiers in the video was wearing a South African flag on his uniform. However, it was not immediately clear where the others came from.




Ocean heat hit another record high in 2022, fueling extreme weather

Published 9:31 AM EST, Wed January 11, 2023

The world’s oceans were the warmest on record for the fourth year in row in 2022, a troubling sign of the climate crisis caused by humans pumping heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.

A study by an international team of scientists from 16 institutes worldwide found that the five hottest years for oceans all happened in the past six years and that the speed at which oceans are warming is getting increasingly fast.

Published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences on Wednesday, the study looked at temperatures from the ocean surface to 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) deep, examining data going back to the 1950s.





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