Homeland Security Increasingly Means Putting Agents Outside the Homeland
By RON NIXON
ABOARD A P-3 ORION, over the Pacific Ocean — The Department of Homeland Security is increasingly going global.
An estimated 2,000 Homeland Security employees — from Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents to Transportation Security Administration officials — now are deployed to more than 70 countries around the world.
Hundreds more are either at sea for weeks at a time aboard Coast Guard ships, or patrolling the skies in surveillance planes above the eastern Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
The expansion has created tensions with some European countries who say that the United States is trying to export its immigration laws to their territory. But other allies agree with the United States’ argument that its longer reach strengthens international security while preventing a terrorist attack, drug shipment, or human smuggling ring from reaching American soil.
Aung San Suu Kyi ‘avoided’ discussion of Rohingya rape during UN meeting
Myanmar state counsellor refused to engage in substantive talks about alleged violence against the Muslim minority, says envoy
Aung San Suu Kyi avoided
discussing reports of Rohingya women and girls being raped by Myanmar troops and police when she met a senior UN official, according to an internal memo seen by the Guardian.
Pramila Patten, the special envoy on sexual violence in conflict, travelled to the country for a four-day visit in mid-December to raise the crisis with government officials.
But she said Aung San Suu Kyi, a state counsellor in the Myanmar government, refused to engage in “any substantive discussion” of reports that soldiers, border guard police and Rakhine Buddhist militias carried out “widespread and systematic” sexual violence in northern Rakhine state.
Politician hurls abuse at Palestinian families on their way to visit relatives in Israeli prison
Controversial Knesset member Oren Hazan told one woman her son was a 'dog' and an 'insect' during bus confrontation
Oren Hazan shared footage of the confrontation online on Monday, in which he branded one woman’s son a “dog” and an “insect”.
Mr Hazan, a controversial, right-wing Knesset member for
Israel’s ruling Likud party,
said on Twitter the prisoners were “terrorists who belong in the ground”.
The clip shows several heated exchanges with bus passengers, one in which Mr Hazan tells a mother her son is a “dog” and an “insect”.
Spanish government begins withdrawal of thousands of police from Catalonia
Spain has announced it will begin to pull out police reinforcements sent to Catalonia ahead of the region's contested October independence vote. As many as 10,000 additional officers are thought to have been deployed.
Spain's Interior Ministry and the Spanish police union said the withdrawal should be completed by Saturday.
India to become fifth largest economy in 2018
India is set to overtake the United Kingdom and France to become the world's fifth largest economy next year, a report said Tuesday.
Currently ranked seventh, India will move up to fifth place in 2018 and vault to third spot by 2032, the Centre for Economics and Business Research, a London-based consultancy, said in its annual rankings.
The Indian
economy hit a three-year low in the first quarter of the current financial year, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's snap decision in November 2016 to scrap high-value banknotes and following a tax overhaul.
Growth slumped to 5.7 percent for the three months ending June but recovered slightly to 6.3 percent for the quarter ending September.
Aid groups evacuate critically ill from Eastern Ghouta
Aid agencies are evacuating critically ill Syrians from Eastern Ghouta, a region home to around 400,000 people that has been under government siege since 2013.
One of the last rebel strongholds in the country, medical supplies and food have been in short supply.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Syrian Red Crescent, Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) are among the organisations involved.
Robert Mardini, ICRC regional director, wrote on Twitter that he was "encouraged to see the beginning of a lifesaving operation".
