Friday, July 5, 2024

Six In The Morning Friday 5 July 2024

Iran presidential election 2024 live: Pezeshkian faces Jalili in run-off

By Maziar Motamedi and Virginia Pietromarchi

Electoral authorities announce extension of voting time in Iran’s presidential election run-off pitting Masoud Pezeshkian against Saeed Jalili.
Pezeshkian is viewed as a moderate, reform-minded candidate while Jalili is seen to represent the conservative establishment.
In the first round on June 28, Pezeshkian came out on top with about 42.5 percent. Jalili was second, with some 38.7 percent.
The snap election is to succeed Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May.
Interim President Mohammad Mokhber says more voters are out so far today than in the first round.
Voter turnout in last week’s polls stood at 40 percent, the lowest in any presidential election since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Who was Mahsa Amini?

Mahsa Amini was a 22-year-old woman from the northwestern province of Kurdistan who in September 2022 had travelled to Tehran with her family.

She was coming out of a metro station in the capital with family members when she was arrested by morality police for alleged non-compliance with the country’s mandatory hijab rules that have been in place since shortly after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

Ex-president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro could face money-laundering charges

Indictment, which includes embezzlement and criminal association charges, stems from a gift from Saudi Arabia

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro faces possible charges for money laundering, embezzlement and criminal association in connection with undeclared diamonds the far-right leader received from Saudi Arabia during his time in office, local media has reported.

Brazil’s supreme court has yet to receive the police report with the indictment. Once it does, the country’s prosecutor-general, Paulo Gonet, will analyze the document and decide whether to file charges and force Bolsonaro to stand trial.

Russia: Putin critic Kara-Murza taken to hospital, says wife

Prominent Russian opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza has been transferred to a prison hospital, his wife has said. He is serving a 25-year sentence for alleged treason.

Russian opposition politician and outspoken Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza has been moved to a prison hospital, his wife Evgenia said on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, on Friday.

"Vladimir Kara-Murza was transferred to a prison hospital. His lawyers weren't allowed access to him," she wrote, adding that she was unaware of his conditio

Kara-Murza, 42, is currently serving a 25-year jail sentence for treason in an Omsk prison after he repeatedly condemned Russia's war in Ukraine and urged Western sanctions against Moscow.

Racism and xenophobia on the rise as French voters gear up for crucial election

France’s far-right National Rally (RN) has its best chance yet of clinching power in a second round of legislative elections on July 7, running on a platform that proposes restricting the rights of immigrants and dual nationals. The party’s surge is in step with a broader rise in racism and xenophobia, spurred by the preeminence of far-right ideas in public debate.

A firefighter chased out of a building near Lille to cries of, “This is France, out with the Arabs”; a bakery in Avignon sprayed with racist and homophobic slogans, and then set on fire, for employing an Ivorian apprentice; a teenager beaten and almost drowned in a canal near Nîmes by four men yelling, “Go back to Jihad City”; a shopkeeper in Perpignan summoned, in a letter, to “leave for Africa” before her neighbourhood is “mercilessly cleansed”; a bus driver in a Paris suburb assaulted and run over by man shouting: “I’m tired of people like you, Bougnoules (derogatory term for Arabs) and Blacks – I vote National Rally, I’ll kill you, I’ll massacre you, I’ll eradicate you.”

These are but a few of the dozens of racist attacks documented by local media in France in the three weeks of chaotic and often virulent campaigning that preceded France’s two-round legislative elections, which saw Marine Le Pen’s National Rally top a first round of voting on June 30 on the back of its triumph in European elections earlier in the month.

Court orders refugee status for gay African who fears family

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

July 5, 2024 at 15:45 JST

In an epoch-making ruling, the Osaka District Court ordered the government to grant refugee status to an African who fears his family in his home country will kill him because he is gay.

The court on July 4 ruled that the man in his 30s “has a realistic fear of being harmed by his family and could not receive protection from his country’s government.”

Therefore, the ruling said, he should be protected as a refugee.

Earth’s core has slowed so much it’s moving backward, scientists confirm. Here’s what it could mean

By Mindy Weisberger, CNN

7 minute read

Updated 10:00 AM EDT, Fri July 5, 2024

Deep inside Earth is a solid metal ball that rotates independently of our spinning planet, like a top whirling around inside a bigger top, shrouded in mystery.

This inner core has intrigued researchers since its discovery by Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann in 1936, and how it moves — its rotation speed and direction — has been at the center of a decades-long debate. A growing body of evidence suggests the core’s spin has changed dramatically in recent years, but scientists have remained divided over what exactly is happening — and what it means.

Part of the trouble is that Earth’s deep interior is impossible to observe or sample directly. Seismologists have gleaned information about the inner core’s motion by examining how waves from large earthquakes that ping this area behave. Variations between waves of similar strengths that passed through the core at different times enabled scientists to measure changes in the inner core’s position and calculate its spin.

Ignoring Asia