Six In The Morning Wednesday 19 April 2023

 

Teenagers charged with murder over Alabama shooting

By Brandon Drenon

BBC News, Washington

Two teenage boys have been charged with murder after the shooting at a 16th birthday party in Alabama that killed four and injured 32 over the weekend.

Ty Reik McCullough, 17, and Travis McCullough, 16, were arrested on Tuesday night, police said.

Authorities said the suspects are each being charged with four counts of reckless murder and that more charges are coming. 

They said they expect the pair to be charged as adults.

At a press conference on Wednesday, officials told reporters that these were the very beginning stages of the investigation into the shooting on Saturday in Dadeville and offered very few details. No information was given about a motive or the type of firearm used.

Severe heatwave engulfs Asia causing deaths and forcing schools to close

Extreme temperatures described as ‘worst April heatwave in Asian history’ as records threatened in India, China, Thailand and Laos

Rebecca Ratcliffe in Bangkok and Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi

Wed 19 Apr 2023 08.42 BST

A severe heatwave has swept across much of Asia, causing deaths and school closures in India and record-breaking temperatures in China.

Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist and weather historian, described the unusually high temperatures as the “worst April heatwave in Asian history”.

In China, local media reported that record temperatures for April had been observed in many locations, including Chengdu, Zhejiang, Nanjing, Hangzhou and other areas of the Yangtze River delta region.

The Russian ships accused of plotting sabotage in the North Sea

Joint investigation uncovers alleged Kremlin plans to knock out Nordic comms

Liam James

Russia is developing plans to sabotage wind farms, gas pipelines and power cables in the North Sea, according to a joint investigation.

Public broadcasters in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland report that Russia has deployed ships to carry out underwater surveillance and map key sites for possible disruption to European communications and energy supply.

The boats are disguised as fishing trawlers and research vessels but are feeding information to the Kremlin which could be used to paralyse Nordic countries in the event of conflict between Russia and the West, intelligence sources are cited as saying.

Brazil struggles to protect Amazon amid booming beef demand

Brazil's cattle farmers have been exporting more beef than ever before. But what's good for the economy, is bad for nature.

Beef production is considered one of the biggest drivers of man-made climate change. Brazil, as one of the world's leading beef exporting nations, has boosted exports massively in recent years, encouraged by rising global demand for beef and a government policy that more often than not turned a blind eye to beef production's environmental downsides.

Under the right-wing government of former President Jair Bolsonaro between 2019 and 2022, Brazil returned to clearing huge swathes of Amazon rainforest to make way for new pastureland, defying international calls to stop the controversial practice. The government's reluctance to stop the destruction of the Amazon led to boycotts of Brazilian beef by some major global retailers.

"As international retailers with global supply chains, we want to play our part in taking responsibility to counteract the destruction of threatened forest areas," Germany's ALDI Group, for instance, said in a press release just over two years ago.

Iraq's Yazidis mark New Year still haunted by IS horrors

One by one, members of Iraq's minority Yazidi community light oil lamps to mark their New Year at a sacred shrine, but for Omar Sinan the celebration cannot erase the atrocities of jihadist rule.

In 2014, the Islamic State (IS) group swept across swathes of Iraq, carrying out horrific violence against the Kurdish-speaking community whose non-Muslim faith the extremists considered heretical.

IS massacred thousands of men and abducted thousands of women and girls as sex slaves.

Tuesday night as the sun set over the Lalish stone shrine in northern Iraq, Yazidis began lighting oil lamps, 365 of them, one for each day of the year.

Hundreds came to mark the Yazidi New Year -- which to the faithful commemorates the creation of the universe by angels and celebrates nature and fertility.

'I screamed so loud, I blacked out': Afghans tell of the Taliban's return to their old torture playbook

By Zahid Mahmood, CNN

Updated 0631 GMT (1431 HKT) April 19, 2023

Mohammad Zafri says his memory is patchy after surviving relentless beatings by the Taliban.

But one event that's hard to forget is being summoned last spring to the militant group's headquarters to collect documents he had left behind, having been an employee of the previous, internationally-backed administration. Not wanting to cause trouble, he went -- only to realize too late that it was a trap.

Zafri -- whose real name CNN is withholding for security reasons -- said he was outside the Taliban's offices when he felt a sharp punch to the back of his head. He fell to the ground and was then dragged indoors, he recalled.

"There were about 12 Taliban members surrounding me, they tied me to a chair and started beating me from all sides," Zafri told CNN.