Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Who benefits from the growth in the arms trade?
Stockholm peace institute says weapons sales have soared in the past five years, especially to Asia and the Middle East.
New figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute show just how much arms sales have been growing - with a 14 percent rise in the last five years compared to the previous five years.
Countries in Asia and the Middle East are the biggest buyers - India and Saudi Arabia are first and second. Currently at war with forces across the border in Yemen Saudi arms imports almost trebled compared with the period between 2006 and 2010.
China remains in the top three though interestingly its share has decreased quite dramatically as Beijing continues to pour money into developing its own arms manufacturing industry.
That's borne out in the list of the world's biggest arms exporters where China has now overtaken France and Germany sitting behind the world's top two the United States and Russia.
Monday, February 22, 2016
Australia: In the Line of Fire
Australians living in the world's most fire-prone region grapple daily with a life-or-death choice: fight or flight.
The Jacobs family is just about to sit down to Christmas lunch when they notice the smoke. The blue sky above their home is turning orange.
"When we saw the smoke directly overhead, then it was pretty apparent that we were going to get hit by the fire," says Tom Jacobs.
In Australia, summers bring bushfires - and the loss of lives and homes every year.
Six In The Monday February 22
Cyclone Winston: Clean-up begins as death toll jumps to 20
- 22 February 2016
- Asia
A clean-up operation has begun after the most severe cyclone to hit Fiji in living memory killed at least 20.
Rescue workers said that number could rise as some of the worst-hit outlying islands have yet to be reached.
Thousands are now in evacuation centres while many parts of the country remain without power.
Cyclone Winston, which hit over the weekend, brought winds of over 320km/h (200mph), torrential rain, and waves of up to 12m (40ft).
The category-five storm - among the biggest ever to hit the southern hemisphere - moved westward after making landfall at 18:30 local time (06:30 GMT) on Saturday in the north of Fiji's main island, Viti Levu.
It changed direction at the last minute, sparing the capital Suva the full force of its winds.
Bolivia: tensions rise as Evo Morales's bid to extend presidency hangs in balance
Exit polls indicate proposal to revise the constitution will be defeated, after president falls out of favour following a personal scandal
Tensions rose in Bolivia on Sunday night after a closely fought referendum on whether to allow left-wing Bolivian president Evo Morales to stand for a fourth term went down to the wire.
Following the national vote, surveys suggested Morales may have suffered his biggest election setback in 10 years, but as of midnight the final count was still too narrow to call.
Exit polls by Mori indicated the proposal to revise the constitution was defeated by 51% to 49% while an Ipsos poll had a slightly wider gap of 52.3% to 47.7%.
With the difference close to the margin of error, neither side was willing to concede defeat, but unease rose along with the uncertainty.
The story of a teacher evicted from Raqqa illustrates so much about the conflict in Syria
Can Syria be put back together again? Soon life after Isis will have to be contemplated here
A few days ago, on a hilltop above the Mediterranean city of Latakia, with the sun going down and the whisper of jets – Russian jets, of course – high in the sky, Samah Ismael told the story of her eviction from Raqqa. It is one small tragedy in a million – but it seemed to illustrate much.
This was long before Isis existed, when the Nusra Front – which represented al-Qaeda in those days – was growing in power and when the people living in the little town of al-Sabha on the banks of the Euphrates thought that even then, in 2013, the war which had consumed much of Syria might not touch them. Samah was a 39-year-old government teacher at the Ahmad al-Azawi school and had been happy taking her English classes with 17 and 18 year-olds. Education is free in Syria.
Samah, I should add, is an Alawite, the Shia minority from which Bashar al-Assad comes, although it does not dominate the teaching profession in Syria. She had been living just outside Raqqa for four-and-a-half years. But in March of 2013, she had stayed in the city until 10 at night and noticed that all the government buildings appeared to be empty. There were no police in the streets, no lights in the police station.SIPRI Report: World crises driving international arms trade
The peace research institute SIPRI has provided new data relating to the international arms trade. The biggest exporter is the US, well ahead of Russia. The main customers are in Asia and the Middle East.
Just 10 days ago the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, said at the Munich Security Conference that in his view the world was experiencing a new Cold War. 'Hot' wars are already being waged in Ukraine and, in particular, in the Middle East. In East Asia, China's aggressive behavior is worrying its neighbors, while in South Asia relations between the rivals India and Pakistan remain extremely tense.
At the same time, there is growing international insecurity because of the increased terrorist threat. The extremely tense global security situation is mirrored in the flourishing trade being done by the big armorers, as is apparent from the most recent figures provided by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
To balance out fluctuations resulting from big armaments contracts, the SIPRI experts have grouped the worldwide transfer of arms in five-year periods. Fourteen percent more arms were exported worldwide in the last five years than the five years that preceded them.Niger: Facing extreme poverty and terror attacks, a nation votes
February 22, 2016 - 4:34PMAbdoulaye Massalaki
Niamey: Niger has closed its land borders and ramped up security for an election in which President Mahamadou Issoufou is running for a second term promising to crush Islamist militants and reduce the country's deep poverty.
Security forces patrolled cities and villages on Sunday in case of unrest or militant attacks. Some voters said they had never experienced such a tense election.
Unidentified armed men attacked two electoral commission vehicles in a rural area about 100 km north-west of the capital, according to security sources, but there were few other reports of trouble.
"Niger needs strong democratic institutions. I hope that the presidential and legislative elections will permit us to reinforce our institutions," Mr Issoufou said when he cast his ballot at city hall in the capital Niamey.
Could Edward Snowden get a fair trial if he returned to the US?
The Espionage Act, a law from the World War I era, essentially prohibits defendants from arguing that their actions were made in the public interest.
"I've told the government I would return if they would guarantee a fair trial where I can make a public interest defense of why this was done and allow a jury to decide," Mr. Snowden, a US National Security Agency whistleblower, told an audience at the New Hampshire Liberty Forum, an event organized by the Free State Project, a libertarian organization.
Viewed as a traitor by some and a patriot by others after his 2013 revelations of mass surveillance by the US government, Snowden was charged with three felonies, including two under the Espionage Act. The law, dating back to World War I, has been used against federal whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg, a former US military analyst who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers, revealing to the US public that the government had misled it about the Vietnam war, and Chelsea Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst who handed over 700,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, revealing details about military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
‘The Debateful Eight’: Watch The Simpsons Skewer the 2016 Election
Coming off of South Carolina’s primary vote, the show released a clip last night that opens with Marge Simpson having a nightmare about a three-way fight between Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton. Waking up hyperventilating, she laments “basic manners are gone from politics. What is it with these ding-dongs?”
To calm her nerves, Homer asks her to visualize a different kind of America “where Republicans, Democrats and Donald Trump all get along.”
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Inside Story - Should India change its caste-based quota system?
Government under pressure following violent protests by Jat farming community complaining of discrimination.
Thousands of soldiers have been deployed to Haryana state in northern India where protesters have been killed in riots.
Jats - a traditionally rural community of farmers - are demanding more government jobs and places in state-run universities.
They complain of discrimination because of India's caste system, not because they are from a lower caste but from a higher one.
The Jats say they are being shut out because of a quota system that gives more opportunities to Indians from lower castes.
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