Melissa Harris-Perry Rips Bush For Revisionist History On Katrina
Former President George W. Bush actually had the gall to show up in New Orleans this week on the ten year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and do his best to try to revise history and the disastrous legacy of his administration and the mismanagement of the disaster. George W. Bush, Visiting New Orleans, Praises School Progress…
Climate scientists are predicting that 2015 will be the hottest year on record “by a mile”, with the increase in worldwide average temperatures dramatically undermining the idea that global warming has stopped – as some climate-change sceptics claim.
Even though there are still several months left in the year to gather temperature readings from around the world, climate researchers believe nothing short of a Krakatoa-sized volcanic eruption that cuts out sunlight for months on end can now stop last year’s record being beaten.
It is rare for climate experts to make such a bold prediction so soon in the year, but they believe that a surge in ocean temperatures in particular now makes it almost inevitable that 2015 will turn out to be the hottest year globally since instruments were first used to gather readings more than 130 years ago.
Malaysians are staging protests calling for the resignation of the prime minister, Najib Razak, who is battling the fallout from a damning financial scandal.
The government was quick to condemn the weekend-long rallies, calling them illegal and blocking the website of the organisers, a coalition of non-governmental organisations.
This is the fourth demonstration by Bersih, which means “clean” in Malay, and is expected to be the largest. It is scheduled to last 34 hours from Saturday through to Sunday, to protest about what the group calls “one of the greatest multi-billion dollar corruption scandals in Malaysia’s history and the government’s most oppressive crackdowns on free speech”.
Dispelling myths about refugees
Most refugees come to Europe; they take our jobs away from us; and people who come from the Southern Balkans are just economic migrants anyway. DW takes a look at these migration myths and misconceptions.
DW reporters Diana Hodali and Sven Pöhle clear up general misconceptions about refugees. Their findings refute widespread notions in the German population - many of which exist in other European countries as well.
Why do we even accept refugees?
Germany has defined asylum laws: article 16a of the German constitution states that "politically persecuted persons have the right to asylum." This also applies to people who are severely marginalized in their home country for their political beliefs, to the point that their human dignity is violated.
Myth: Refugees get more money than Germans do
For about 20 years, asylum seekers and people who are classified in other refugee categories received about 30 percent less in German government benefits than what is considered to be a decent minimum standard for living in Germany. In July 2012, Germany's Federal Constitutional Court criticized the benefits as "clearly insufficient" and subsequently, increased them. While welfare recipients in Germany receive 399 euros (450 USD) per month, the amount set for asylum seekers is 281 - 352 euros (317 - 398 USD).
India's prosperous Patels seek change in caste status. Why?
Crowds of up to 500,000 have rallied in Gujarat, Prime Minister Modi's home state, to press for affirmative action. Riots left nine dead and led to curfews and the deployment of paramilitary troops.
MUMBAI — For the past week the western Indian state of Gujurat has seen a prominent community known as the Patels holding mass rallies led by a charismatic 22-year-old political activist.
The Patels are a farmer caste that has risen to become synonymous with entrepreneurship and trade. Now they are seeking affirmative action in the form of inclusion in a category of “backward” class designation that would give them government benefits. And that demand is playing out as a challenge to how modern India has adjudicated its still-existing caste system.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the former chief minister of Gujarat, called for peace this week as violence erupted after authorities tried to arrest Hardik Patel, the young activist.
Queen Elizabeth has revolutionised the British throne, over 63 years
Almost seven decades ago, a confident young woman in a pearl necklace sat at a small round wooden table in the shady corner of a Cape Town garden, facing a BBC radio microphone.
It was 1947, and she was turning 21.
I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.
The Queen, 1947
"There is a motto which has been borne by many of my ancestors, a noble motto, 'I serve'," she said in a clear, high voice. "I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.
"God help me to make good my vow."
Less than five years later her father was dead and she was queen.
Ethiopia races to preserve 'Africa's Jerusalem'
Archaeologists face a race against time to save 800-year-old structures crumbling away from moisture damage.
Conservationists are facing a race against time to prevent one of Ethiopia's most sacred religious site from crumbling away.
The ancient churches of Lalibela in northern Ethiopia have been a place of pilgrimage for local Christians since they were constructed 800 years ago.
The 11 churches were carved out of the mountainside during the reign of the priest-king Lalibela, who hoped to give Ethiopians a place for pilgrimage inside the country and help them avoid making the dangerous journey to Jerusalem.
However, moisture is eating away at the structures and the sacred site is literally crumbling away.
Condemnation of verdict as Egypt court finds Baher Mohamed, Mohamed Fahmy, and Peter Greste guilty in delayed trial.
After months of delay and a completely absurd trial the Egyptian judiciary have sentenced 3 Al Jazeera journalists to three years in prison,
A Cairo court has sentenced three Al Jazeera journalists to three years in jail after finding them guilty of "aiding a terrorist organisation".
Egyptian Baher Mohamed, Canadian Mohamed Fahmy and Australian Peter Greste were all handed three year jail sentences when the court delivered the verdict on Saturday.
Mohamed was sentenced to an additional six months for possession of a spent bullet casing.
The verdict was immediately slammed by Al Jazeera Media Network's Acting Director General Dr Mostefa Souag, who said: " Today's verdict defies logic and common sense . Our colleagues Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy will now have to return to prison, and Peter Greste is sentenced in absentia.
"The whole case has been heavily politicised and has not been conducted in a free and fair manner."
Many of Japan’s classic anime series have managed to engage young viewers from one generation to the next. Perhaps one of the most famous examples is Doraemon, which keeps gaining more viewers the longer it runs. Since its hit television adaptation in 1979, the series has slowly taken the world by storm, finally reaching English-speaking audiences last summer after a partnership with Disney.
That said, in over 30 years few changes have been made to the original series, with its characters never having to grow up like the rest of us. As viewers got older, many of them started wondering what kind of teenagers and adults the original cast would have become. Some of the franchise’s movies, along with a commercial series by Toyota featuring Jean Reno as Doraemon, have set out to answer a few of these questions, but what about fans who didn’t imagine a future quite so bright? It seems the only answer would require illustrating it on your own, which is exactly what one artist did when he decided to reinvent the main cast as characters from video game smash Grand Theft Auto.
LONG LIVE JAPAN!
Officials at the health ministry say the life expectancy for Japanese girls born in 2014 was 86.83 years—a record high.
It was the third consecutive year that Japanese females topped the global longevity list. Women in Hong Kong took the number two spot, at 86.75 years.
The life expectancy for Japanese men—80.50 years—was also a new high, good enough for third place in the world ranking alongside Singapore and Switzerland.
Topping the list of male life expectancy were Hong Kong (81.17) and Iceland (80.8).
YOU’VE GOT TO BE SH***ING ME
It was reported that young Japanese women are flocking to tours of rural areas with the purpose of … looking at clumps of moss.
Organizers of tours to look at rural moss were quoted as saying, “Women are rich in emotions, so they are well-suited to moss viewing.”
The bible of the movement may well be Hisako Fujii’s Mosses, My Dear Friends.
An O.L. on a moss-viewing tour of Nagano was quoted as saying, “Seeing clusters of mosses living together, I can forget about our competitive society.”
Studies show Japanese people drinking less than ever
By Evie Lund,
One of the things you may notice when you come to Japan is how much drinking seems to be going on. Certain Japanese societal circles (the workplace, university clubs, etc) run more smoothly with the help of alcoholic lubrication in the form of after-hours “drinking parties” to facilitate team-building and bonding—it’s called nomication (or nominication), a portmanteau of “nomu” (to drink) and “communication”.
So we were quite surprised to discover recently that Japan’s level of alcoholic beverage consumption is actually way, way down. But why?
The new findings, dubbed the “Alcohol Report”, came to light following research conducted by the National Tax Agency in May this year. The report details the average alcohol consumption per person per year for the period 1989–2013. We’ve crunched up all the data into a handy line graph below for easy digestion.
With more than 60,000 children under the age of 21 in the American prison system, the state of New Mexico has introduced a new and innovative approach to help rehabilitate juvenile offenders.
Running a programme known as Cambiar (the Spanish word for "change"), the J. Paul Taylor Center in Las Cruces is attempting to show that therapy, education and counselling are more effective than traditional punishment for juvenile offenders.
Staff at the centre, including guards, are trained to act as mentors, counsellors and teachers rather than correctional officers; while solitary confinement, which can cause extreme psychological, physical, and developmental harm, is prohibited.
In Kids Behind Bars, investigative journalist Soledad O'Brien goes inside the institution to find out if the new system is more effective and can help turn around the young inmates' lives.
A team of modern-day "Monuments Men" is being assembled to try to preserve a record of ancient buildings, sculptures and artefacts being destroyed by Isis in the Middle East.
However, unlike George Clooney’s film, in which a team of experts were sent in to Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II in a tale loosely based on real-life, experts plan to flood parts of the Middle East with 3D cameras, The Times reported.
These will be used mainly by local people to create a digital record of the antiquities, enabling them to be rebuilt using 3D printers if they are destroyed.
The £2m project was developed by the Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA) in Oxford in response to the destruction of ancient sites by the extreme Islamist movement.
Why neither India nor Pakistan won the 1965 war
Both India and Pakistan say they won the 1965 war they fought against each other. The truth of the matter is, however, both sides actually lost the war, writes Shivam Vij.
India will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its 1965 war with Pakistan from August 28 to September 22. (Pictured above: Indian soldiers patrol the Line of Control). A lot of nationalism will be on display, including a “carnival.” India and Pakistan both claim to have won that war. for its part, Pakistan celebrates September 6 as Defense of Pakistan Day.
Here is what happened in 1965. Pakistan launched a secret mission to send 30,000 armed men into Indian-administered Kashmir so as to incite an insurgency and liberate Kashmir from India. This was known as Operation Gibraltar. By the time Indian forces realized this had happened, the fighters had reached the outskirts of Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir.
Courts crackdown in China's unsettled Xinjiang region
August 28, 2015 - 4:06PM
Chris Buckley
Hong Kong: Courts across Xinjiang, the volatile region of western China that is home to Muslim Uighurs, have sentenced 45 people to prison in recent days after convicting them of supporting organisations accused of terror attacks or of helping others flee abroad, the main state news agency reported on Thursday.
The Xinhua report did not describe the ethnicity of the defendants, but their names indicated that they were Uighurs, the Turkic minority in Xinjiang that has become increasingly estranged from Chinese government policies, especially following restrictions on their culture and Muslim religion.
The government held up the convictions as proof that it would not tolerate violent opposition in Xinjiang, which in recent years has suffered a spate of violent attacks by Uighurs, in many instances using knives or rudimentary explosives. The government describes the attacks as terrorism, frequently masterminded from abroad, but human rights groups and advocates of Uighur self-determination have said that the violence is often primitive and locally inspired, and driven by Uighur despair.
The Middle East is running out of water. Can they adapt?
The world’s demand for water is likely to surge in the next few decades, severely threatening national water security and economic growth in some parts of the world, experts say.
ByBeatrice Gitau, Staff
Rising global population and decreasing usable water supplies will cause the world’s demand for water to surge in the next few decades and intensify conflict in many countries, experts warn.
In the rankings by the World Resources Institute (WRI), fourteen of the 33 countries most likely to be water stressed in 2040 are in the Middle East, including nine considered extremely highly stressed – Bahrain, Kuwait, Palestine, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Lebanon.
According to the researchers, the Middle East is already the least water-secure region in the world, because it draws heavily upon groundwater and desalinated sea water and faces "exceptional water-related challenges for the foreseeable future," they say.
Expert: We're 'locked-in' to 3 feet sea level rise
It was less than two years ago that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its all-encompassing assessment on the current state of climate change research and made projections for the future climate of our planet.
According to the latest from NASA, however, the projections the panel made for a rise in global sea levels of 1 to 3 feet may already be outdated.
According to Steven Nerem of the University of Colorado, we are "locked into at least 3 feet of sea level rise, and probably more."
