Sen. McSally, the first female fighter pilot to fly in combat, says that she was raped by a superior officer while in the Air Force, and she didn't report it because "like so many women and men, I didn't trust the system at the time." https://t.co/i51x9oTSCJpic.twitter.com/9UQVe4KlCV
Capt Carroll "Lex" Lefon, USN (Ret), AKA Neptunus Lex, died in a plane crash, with his boots on. Doing what he was put here for: to be a steely eyed Naval Aviator of the highest order.
WNU Editor: He is one of the reasons why I started this blog. I loved his style of writing, his focus on the issues, and his military/political analysis of the day. One of the best bloggers that I have ever came across. It is hard to believe that 7 years has already passed. RIP Lex.
Attendants serve tea before the opening session of the National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, March 5, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee
WNU Editor: The above picture came from this photo-gallery .... China's Congress meets (Reuters)
* Alex Trebek announced on Wednesday that he's been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer * The Jeopardy! host says doctors have told him it is stage 4 cancer * Trebek, 78, announced his diagnosis in a message he posted on YouTube * The Ontario native has hosted Jeopardy! for 35 years * In December 2017, he underwent brain surgery caused by complications from a fall
Alex Trebek, the longtime host of TV quiz show Jeopardy!, announced on Wednesday that he has been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
Trebek, 78, recorded a message on YouTube, saying: 'Now, just like 50,000 other people in the United States each year, this week I was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
'Now normally, the prognosis for this is not very encouraging, but I'm going to fight this, and I'm going to keep working.
WNU Editor: In the past two years I have cut back on my travelling, preferring to work from home where I could spend more time with the GF, her family, and my mother. One of the routines that I have gotten into is to watch Jeopardy with my mother every Tuesday and Thursday. Even though she is 92, my mom is a big fan of the show (she watches every show), and this winter I found myself enjoying quality time with her watching the show to the point that I can now say that Alex Trebek is a fixture in my life with my mom between 7:00 PM to 7:30 PM. That is why the the prospect of him no longer being there is hard to swallow. My prayers are with him and his family that he will be able to defeat this horrible disease.
A satellite image shows a madrasa near Balakot, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan, March 4, 2019. Picture taken March 4, 2019. Mandatory credit: Planet Labs Inc./Handout via REUTERS
As sporadic skirmishes across the heavily militarized line of control, which separates Indian-controlled Kashmir from Pakistani Kashmir, have continued this week with casualties reported on both sides, an information war has been raging between the nuclear armed powers over just what happened during last Tuesday and Wednesday's events which saw an Indian MiG-21 shot down by Pakistani fighters after an intense dogfight, precipitating a crisis over the captured pilot, later handed back to India.
Berlin extends until end of March a ban on weapons exports to Riyadh, citing concern over kingdom's role in Yemen's war.
Germany has extended a temporary ban on arms exports to Saudi Arabia, imposed due to concerns about the kingdom's role in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The embargo was due to expire on March 9, but Germany's foreign minister said on Wednesday the ban was being extended until the end of March to give the government time to evaluate Saudi Arabia's military involvement in Yemen's war.
"We decided this with a view to developments in Yemen," Heiko Maas said after a meeting of Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet.
AL-MARASHIDAH, Syria — In a deserted farmhouse on the Deir Ezzor front line, a group of Kurdish fighters and foreign volunteers — an American, a Scotsman, an Australian and a South Korean — took up position on the edge of Islamic State territory, firing wildly from the hollow windows onto ISIS fighters hiding in the orchards below.
Unseen from the house, ISIS militants crept forward into the building's garden, launching a sudden assault on this isolated position, targeting the group with snipers, machine guns, and anti-tank rocket fire before they attempted to storm it.
* Thousands of people including ISIS brides have fled the last stronghold of the 'caliphate' at Baghouz in Syria * Many ordered out by their husbands who want to be martyred while some have refused to denounce jihad * Angry crowds streaming out of the enclave today vowed the terror group 'will remain' even as defeat loomed * A senior Syrian Democratic Forces officer said 400 jihadists were captured last night as they tried to escape
Angry crowds streaming out of the last ISIS territory in Syria have vowed the terror group 'will remain' even as defeat looms for the extremists.
More than 3,000 people have evacuated from Baghouz in the last 24 hours as US-backed forces close in on victory.
But extremists among them praised the remaining militants fighting to the death in the besieged town while some ISIS brides refused to denounce jihad as they fled from the bomb-ravaged community.
WNU Editor: No one is officially saying that the battle for this last stronghold is over .... but it looks like it is over. If there are any fighters left .... and I suspect that there are some still hiding .... they will probably be flushed out very soon.
Battle For The Last Islamic State Stronghold In Syria -- News Updates March 6, 2019
The People's Republic of China flag and the U.S. Stars and Stripes fly along Pennsylvania Avenue near the U.S. Capitol in Washington during Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit, January 18, 2011. Credit: Reuters/Hyungwon Kang
* America is using flimsy means to confront the strongest adversary it has ever faced, and needs to ask itself if it is willing to fight a hot war to maintain its position in Asia
Declaring a new cold war
against China is easy, but working out how to fight it and win it is much harder. While almost everyone in Washington these days seems to agree that resisting China's seemingly insatiable ambition is now America's highest strategic priority, the nature and scale of the task is still enveloped in uncertainty.
No one seems too worried about this, however, because they assume that a new cold war with China is going to be easy to win.
US-backed SDF says hundreds of ISIL fighters are captured or surrendered while fleeing armed group's last enclave.
US-backed Kurdish-led forces in northeastern Syria have captured 400 ISIL fighters who were trying to escape the armed group's last enclave in Deir Az Zor, according to a military commander for the group.
A senior commander for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) also said on Wednesday that hundreds more Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) fighters surrendered from the last shred of territory they control in the village of Baghouz. Read more ....
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other liberal allies stepped up their defense of the freshman Democrat.
A vote on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism in response to controversial comments by Rep. Ilhan Omar is set to slip past Wednesday amid intensifying pressure from the left both inside and outside the House Democratic Caucus.
An array of progressive groups declared their support for Omar, while both the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Progressive Caucus — two of the most important factions among House Democrats — wanted more time to review the situation, lawmakers and aides said.
A coalition of Democratic lawmakers at a signing ceremony in support of Common Defense's efforts to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Image: A.McCoy/Common Defense)
A coalition of Democratic lawmakers is backing a veteran activist organization's efforts to end the "forever wars" in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other global hot spots, and finally bring U.S. troops home.
Common Defense, a grassroots group comprised of veterans and military families that stood up after the 2016 election, has secured sponsorship from lawmakers and presidential hopefuls such as Sen. Bernie Sanders.
"American troops have been in Afghanistan for nearly 18 years, the longest war in American history," said Sanders, an independent lawmaker from Vermont.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Retired Army General John Abizaid, U.S. President Donald Trump's nominee to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia, defended the U.S.-Saudi relationship on Wednesday as lawmakers accused the kingdom of a litany of misdeeds and criticized its crown prince as going "full gangster."
Senators at Abizaid's confirmation hearing, Trump's fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, condemned the kingdom's conduct in the civil war in Yemen, heavy-handed diplomacy and rights abuses including torturing women's rights activists and the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Abizaid called for accountability for the murder of Khashoggi, a U.S. resident, and support for human rights, but repeatedly stressed the importance of Washington-Riyadh ties.
Despite increasing tension between the two countries, the United States has not had an ambassador there since Trump became president in January 2017.
President Vladimir Putin has accused foreign intelligence services of beefing up activities in Russia, announcing that hundreds of spies were stopped in 2018 alone.
Without going into details, he said "129 staff members and 465 agents of foreign special services were foiled".
Russian spies have themselves been accused of several plots, including the poisoning of ex-agent Sergei Skripal.
Dutch, Czech and Swedish intelligence all say they have foiled attacks.
Russia has also been accused by the West of trying to interfere in elections. Without naming Russia, the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, warned on Tuesday that "anti-European forces" might try to target EU Parliament elections in May.
WNU Editor: 600 spies?!?!?! Makes me wonder on how many foreign spies are in Russia. On a side note. Noticed no women FSB officials in the assembly hall when President Putin made his address.
More News On Russian President Putin's Claims That The Activities Of 600 Foreign Spies Was Foiled
U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sit down for a dinner during the second U.S.-North Korea summit at the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam February 27, 2019. Also pictured at right are U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo
Senators emerged from a closed-door briefing Tuesday on President Trump's summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un assuaged the administration has a plan going forward, even if it remains unclear whether the plan will be successful.
"I see what the strategy is," said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who called the briefing "great." "The odds of success on the strategy are not high, but I think everybody's realistic about that."
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was briefed by special envoy Stephen Biegun days after Trump walked away from his summit with Kim in Hanoi, Vietnam, without a deal on denuclearization.
North Korea has restored part of a missile launch site that it began to dismantle as part of pledge during the first summit with US President Donald Trump.
South Korea's Yonhap News Agency quoted politicians briefed by South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) as saying that the work was taking place at the Tongchang-ri launch site and involved replacing a roof and a door at the facility.
Satellite images seen by 38 North, a Washington-based North Korea project, showed that structures on the launch pad had been rebuilt sometime between February 16 and March 2, Jenny Town, managing editor at the project and an analyst at the Stimson Centre think tank, told Reuters.
President Donald Trump revoked a requirement that U.S. intelligence officials publicly report the number of people killed in drone strikes and other attacks on terrorist targets outside of war zones.
Trump ended the requirement with an executive order on Wednesday. A law Congress passed last year requires the Defense Department to provide Congress a report of civilian casualties, though parts of it may be classified.
A soldier said to be from US.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces is seen firing a rifle from a rooftop towards IS targets in Baghouz, Syria, in this screen grab taken from video said to be shot March 4, 2019, and uploaded to social media website on March 5, 2019. Social Media Website/ via REUTERS
NEAR BAGHOUZ, Syria (Reuters) - Hundreds of Islamic State fighters surrendered on Wednesday and hundreds more of their jihadist comrades were caught trying to escape the hardline group's last, tiny scrap of land in eastern Syria, said a commander in the militia besieging it.
Islamic State fighters holed up in the enclave at Baghouz near the Iraqi border have been giving up in large numbers this week following a ferocious assault on their enclave on Saturday and Sunday, though it is unclear how many more remain inside.
NEW DELHI/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - High-resolution satellite images reviewed by Reuters show that a religious school run by Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) in northeastern Pakistan appears to be still standing days after India claimed its warplanes had hit the Islamist group's training camp on the site and killed a large number of militants.
The images produced by Planet Labs Inc, a San Francisco-based private satellite operator, show at least six buildings on the madrasa site on March 4, six days after the airstrike.
Until now, no high-resolution satellite images were publicly available. But the images from Planet Labs, which show details as small as 72 cm (28 inches), offer a clearer look at the structures the Indian government said it attacked.
Illegal immigration continues to break records on the southwestern border — and they're not good ones.
The number of families snared trying to sneak into the U.S. soared by 50 percent in one month alone, setting an all-time record with more than 36,000 family members apprehended, Homeland Security officials announced Tuesday.
The government has also encountered some 70 groups of at least 100 migrants during the first five months of the fiscal year, shattering records and placing new challenges on Border Patrol agents.
Someone's loss is always someone else's gain. As the US continues with its de facto ban on import of crudes from Venezuela, the Latin American nation which is in the middle of a political crisis after Opposition leader Juan Guaido challenged President Nicolas Maduro to proclaim himself as the interim president, India has gained.
It may be mentioned here that India came under immense pressure to maintain its oil trade with Iran after the latter came under America's wrath.
According to a report in Bloomberg, India has emerged to be the No.1 buyer of Venezuelan crude in February after exports to the US came to nought. The quantity of exports to India has jumped 66 per cent to 620,000 barrels a day and the boost is being driven by refiners like Reliance Industries Ltd and Nayara Energy Ltd, backed by Rosneft, Russia.
WNU Editor: Apparently the discount on Venezuelan oil is beyond good, hence the purchases by Indian companies. So much for Venezuelan sanctions and India respecting U.S. wishes.
Late last month, as U.S. officials joined Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido near a bridge in Colombia to send desperately needed aid to the masses and challenge the rule of Nicolas Maduro, some 200 exiled soldiers were checking their weapons and planning to clear the way for the convoy.
Led by retired General Cliver Alcala, who has been living in Colombia, they were going to drive back the Venezuelan national guardsmen blocking the aid on the other side. The plan was stopped by the Colombian government, which learned of it late and feared violent clashes at a highly public event it promised would be peaceful.
Almost no provisions got in that day and hopes that military commanders would abandon Maduro have so far been dashed. Even though Guaido is back in Caracas, recognized by 50 nations as the legitimate leader of Venezuela, the impromptu taking up of arms shows that the push to remove Maduro -- hailed by the U.S. as inevitable -- is growing increasingly chaotic and risky.
GREECE will never recover as long as it is a member of the eurozone because Germany, under the leadership of Angela Merkel, made it impossible for Athens to repay its debt, George Soros claimed in a throwback interview.
THE world must be braced for an "adverse shock" in the economy as forecasters slashed their global growth forecast amid unpredictable political climates in countries including Britain, the US and Germany.
RUSSIAN air force chiefs scrambled an Su-27 fighter jet to intercept an American spy plane heading for its airspace just days after Moscow's top general warned of a growing threat from the US, Kremlin officials have confirmed.
FEARS of nuclear conflict in the Korean Peninsula surged following reports North Korea is rebuilding a rocket launch site in a direct rebuff to Donald Trump, leading the US President to declare himself "very, very disappointed".
CHINA has banned imports of canola from a key Canadian company, and vowed to step up inspections on all canola entering China from Canada, as the diplomatic spat between the two countries continues.
New activity was detected at the Pyongyang factory which produced the country’s first intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of reaching the U.S. mainland, Reuters reported Thursday.
Lawmakers briefed by Seoul’s intelligence service said cargo vehicle movement was seen at the Sanumdong factory.
South Korean spy chief Suh Hoon told the lawmakers that he perceives the activity as missile-related, Reuters reported, citing local Korean media.
Sanumdong produced “North Korea’s longest-range missiles which can fly over 13,000 km (8,080 miles),” according to Reuters.
On Wednesday, Suh Hoon told Yonghap News Agency that he believes uranium enrichment facilities at the Yongbyon nuclear complex are continuing to operate normally.
New work was also spotted on the Sohae missile launch. where Pyongyang reportedly began repairs late last week. President Donald Trump told reporters that he would be “very disappointed” if North Korea had started re-building the launch site.
The reports of new activity come just days after the collapse of a second nuclear summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi. According to the account from the U.S., the two sides parted without a deal after North Korea wanted all sanctions lifted in exchange for shutting down the Yongbyon site. Trump said that Kim had promised no further testing of rockets or missiles.
Pyongyang’s most recent recorded test of an ICBM was in November 2017.
How do other planets smell? Like a refrigerator at 3AM? Like the box new sneakers come in? Or the inside of an astronaut’s space suit? A three-day exhibition held in the crypt of a 19th century English church this weekend promised answers. “The Scent of Other Worlds” would present eight “sniffable” sculptures—one for each of the other planets in our solar system, plus the sun — and feature an “interplanetary soundscape” along with cosmic-themed cocktails.
On Saturday, a group of Londoners eager to smell other worlds filed into the shabby-chic vestibule of St. John’s church in the city’s East End. In the crypt below, each sculpture stood on a plinth — inscribed with facts about the planet it represented and connected to the sort of foot pump used to inflate mattresses. When stepped on, the pumps spritzed perfume through the sculptures above. Some would be brought to MIT Space Week March 13, for a 50th anniversary celebration of the first Moon landing, where famous astronauts might sniff them.
Rather than literal renderings of each planet’s smell, it turned out perfume company Design in Scent had used information about their surface composition and atmosphere as inspiration for a selection of fragrances. There hadn’t been a “slavish” devotion to physics, the project’s organizers admitted. Jupiter’s swirling gases were represented by “iso E super and aldehydes that bring a diffusive lightness,” according to one description, while “ambroxan and frankincense bring a spark of rich orange.” Whatever those things were, they smelled pleasantly musky: nothing like rotten eggs, cat pee, or bitter almonds—more likely associations of the layers of sulfur, ammonia, and hydrogen-cyanide that shroud Jupiter.
At an earlier press launch, somebody had banged a gong and a man in a silver jacket stepped out from between the planets to address the crowd. He introduced himself as Sam Bompas. “The exhibit is drawing a line between your nose and the heavenly bodies,” Bompas said. Beside him, Jupiter glowed milky above its plinth. The three chunks of quartz-like rock that made up Venus glittered. You could see all the way through Saturn, which was made from hand-blown glass. This, though, was not the point. “We spend so much of our time articulating the visual world” Bompas continued. But the Scent of Other Worlds, offers “a rich experience with the Aristotelian lower senses.”
Bompas is one half of the duo behind Bompas & Parr, a food design company that made its name shaping gelatin desserts like famous buildings and claims to be the first group to have recorded the sound of jelly wobbling. Other projects have included developing vaporized alcohol that audiences “drink” through their skin and eyes, and taking people “food tripping” with an African berry that tricks the tongue into tasting sour flavors as sweet.
More recently, Bompas has become obsessed with humans’ sense of smell: the brain decodes odors differently depending on which nostril sniffs them; which of the two nostrils is dominant switches throughout the day; and shortly after shaking somebody’s hand, we find a way to sniff our own. “There’s mysteries and wonders to the universe,” he said, “but there’s also mysteries and wonders in your own body.”
James Riley—The Scent of Other WorldsJames Riley—The Scent of Other Worlds
In the east London crypt, repeated stomping on the foot pumps made the place smell like a fancy candle shop. Lucy Hardcastle, the London-based artist who designed each planet’s sculpture was smelling their associated fragrances for the first time. Did they match her idea of how the planets would be? “I don’t know if I can say that for sure,” she said, “but I do know that humans, in terms of psychology, are very accepting of what is presented to them.”
Hardcastle likes working with scents because they have the power to transport audiences in unpredictable, uncontrollable ways. “You don’t really have a say in that. You’re there, even if you don’t mean to be.”
There are some first-hand accounts of the scent of other worlds. Humans have gone to the moon and rovers to Mars and Venus. “It smells like spent gunpowder,” Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan said of Moondust he’d tramped back into his lunar module in 1972, That’s likely on account of lunar soil’s being rich in silicon dioxide. The sulfuric acid clouds on Venus might make it stink of rotten eggs. Meanwhile, the nitrogen and benzene haze that swirls Saturn’s largest satellite Titan probably gives off a gas station funk. Uranus, it was confirmed last year, smells terrible.
But even with spectrometer readings and light-signature analysis, distilling the scent of a planet is a lot of guesswork. Would Jupiter’s poles be different from its tropics? Would the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility and Ocean of Storms smell the same? The visitors to Bompas & Parr’s exhibit this Saturday were none the wiser. But they had stepped through a plywood door on a dreary London evening, and briefly visited another world.
(CARACAS, Venezuela) — A U.S. journalist was seized by security forces at his apartment Wednesday amid Venezuela’s escalating political turmoil, then was freed several hours later and deported, executives at his Miami-based TV station and union representatives said.
Cody Weddle was taken to the airport outside Caracas for a flight back to the United States, said ABC affiliate Local 10 News, a station he sent dispatches as a freelance correspondent. Venezuela’s National Union of Press Workers said on Twitter that he had been deported.
It wasn’t clear why he was detained. Government officials did not comment on the case.
Early Wednesday, a squad of five men dressed in black uniforms and carrying a written order demanded entry into Weddle’s Caracas apartment building, neighbors said. The officers emerged two hours later with the Virginia-born Weddle carrying a large suitcase and equipment bag.
“He didn’t say anything,” said the building’s doorman, Juan Jose Araque. “He went quietly.”
Since the start of the year, Venezuela has been shaken by political unrest sometimes erupting in violence after U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido announced he was invoking the constitution as head of congress to wrest power from President Nicolas Maduro.
Weddle’s apparent arrest came the same day as Maduro ordered the expulsion of Germany’s ambassador after the envoy expressed support for Guaido, escalating a diplomatic standoff with a group of about 50 nations that recognize the opposition leader as Venezuela’s interim president.
Weddle had reported from Venezuela for more than four years, most recently working as a freelance journalist for the ABC affiliate in Miami, a stronghold of Venezuelan exiles, although he also contributed to the Miami Herald and The Telegraph in Britain. He arrived in the country as an English-language correspondent for state-run network Telesur.
Also freed was Weddle’s Venezuelan assistant, Carlos Camacho, who had been swept from his home across town in a similar manner, local media reported.
Marco Ruiz, head of Venezuela’s National Union of Press Workers, said on Twitter before the release that officials with the Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence confirmed to him that the journalists were taken into custody of the agency, which is responsible for dealing with national security threats.
Both men were interrogated, Ruiz said. He said officials provided no further details.
Foro Penal, a lawyer co-op that handles politically sensitive cases, said Weddle was held at a prison in Caracas alongside some of Maduro’s fiercest opponents as well as five other American citizens — all of them dual nationals — who worked at Houston-based Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-run oil monopoly.
Espacio Publico, a Caracas-based media advocacy group, said 49 media workers have been detained in Venezuela over the past two months in a sign of an eroding environment of free speech. Many were released after a few hours, although at least one reporter, German-born Billy Six, has been held since November on what his family says are trumped-up charges of spying .
A team of American journalists led by Univision’s Jorge Ramos in late February said they had their camera equipment and phones seized at Venezuela’s presidential palace after Maduro abruptly ended an interview.
Ramos, one of the most influential Spanish-speaking journalists, said Maduro cut short the interview after 17 minutes when he was shown video on an iPad shot a day earlier of young Venezuelans eating food scraps out of the back of a garbage truck.
Weddle’s mother, Sherry Weddle of Meadowview, Virginia, said she sent her son a text messages early Wednesday, a daily routine they have kept since turmoil began increasing in the South American country. This time there was no reply, she said.
“Usually I get back: ‘I’m fine. Are you OK?'” she said. “I’m just very concerned.”
She told the Miami ABC affiliate that she was relieved to learn her son had been let go.
The U.S. State Department had said in a statement that “the world is watching” Maduro’s handling of the case.
“Being a journalist is not a crime,” the State Department said. “Freedom of expression remains under threat in Venezuela by the Maduro regime.”
E. R. Bert Medina, CEO of ABC’s South Florida affiliate, said in a statement that being unable to reach Weddle was unsettling. “Cody has been dedicated and committed to telling the story in Venezuela to our viewers,” Medina said.
(GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip) — Gaza’s Health Ministry says a 15-year-old Palestinian has died from Israeli gunfire during nighttime skirmishes along Gaza-Israel frontier.
Saif Abu Zaied was wounded in the head Wednesday and died at a hospital, the ministry said early Thursday.
The circumstances were not immediately known, but the incident occurred as dozens of youths engaged in “nighttime confusion,” a more violent form of protests involving firebombs and laser lights directed at Israeli forces along the border fence.
The night skirmishes are complementary to the weekly daytime protests that Gaza’s Hamas rulers have staged for a year.
The Islamic militant group wants an end to a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade on the Palestinian enclave.
On Wednesday, the Israeli military said a projectile was fired from Gaza and activated warning sirens in southern Israel.
(UNITED NATIONS) — An estimated 11 million people in North Korea — over 43 percent of the population — are undernourished and “chronic food insecurity and malnutrition is widespread,” according to a U.N. report issued Wednesday.
The report by Tapan Mishra, the head of the U.N. office in North Korea, said that “widespread undernutrition threatens an entire generation of children, with one in five children stunted due to chronic undernutrition.”
With only limited health care and a lack of access to clean water and sanitation, “children are also at risk of dying from curable diseases,” the report added.
Mishra said that last year’s U.N. appeal for $111 million to help 6 million of North Korea’s most vulnerable people was only 24 percent funded, one of the lowest levels in the world.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters Wednesday that the U.N. humanitarian team in the country is calling for $120 million “to urgently provide life-saving aid to 3.8 million people.” Without adequate funding this year, some agencies providing desperately needed help to North Koreans will be forced to close down, he said.
Dujarric said North Korea’s government asked last month for help from international humanitarian groups to combat food shortages. He said food production figures provided by North Korea showed “there is a food gap of about 1.4 million tons expected for 2019, and that’s crops including rice, wheat, potato and soybeans.”
Mishra’s report said North Korea faces annual shortfalls in agricultural production because of a shortage of arable land, lack of access to modern agricultural equipment and fertilizers, and recurrent natural disasters. Last year, it said, there was a severe heat wave in provinces considered to be the country’s “food basket,” and the food situation was further aggravated by Typhoon Soulik in late August.
Many North Koreans don’t eat an adequately diverse diet, which reinforces their poor nutrition, Mishra said.
Although the national rate of stunting has dropped significantly from 28 percent in 2012 to 19 percent in 2017, Mishra cited major regional differences varying from 10 percent in the capital area of Pyongyang Province to 32 percent in Ryanggang Province in the northwest bordering China.
He said an estimated 3 percent of children under age 5 — approximately 140,000 — “suffer from wasting or acute malnutrition” and “have a higher risk of mortality.”
“The main underlying causes of wasting are poor household food security, inadequate feeding and care practices, as well as poor access to health, water, hygiene and sanitation services,” Mishra said.
The report was issued days after a summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump ended without any agreement on the North’s nuclear program.
While U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs are supposed to exempt humanitarian activities, “humanitarian agencies continue to face serious unintended consequences on their programs,” Mishra said. He cited “lack of funding, the absence of a banking channel for humanitarian transfers and challenges to the delivery of humanitarian supplies.”
North Korea’s banking channel has been suspended since September 2017 and attempts to find a replacement have been unsuccessful, Mishra said.
He welcomed new procedures approved by the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against North Korea last August to streamline and expedite requests for exemptions from sanctions for humanitarian programs.
However, Mishra said, “the continued risk-averse approach taken by suppliers and some authorities in transit countries … continues to cause significant delays in the delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance.”
(Bloomberg) — Carnival is a beloved institution in Brazil, a wild, sensual celebration that dates back centuries. But to the country’s new socially conservative president, Jair Bolsonaro, it is a scandalous affair that symbolizes just how much the country has lost its moral compass.
And so he wasn’t about to let his first Carnival come and go without lashing out at its more extreme elements. Late Tuesday night, just as the festivities were winding down, Bolsonaro posted a video showing a scantily dressed man in leather appearing to touch himself in front of a crowd before bending down to be urinated on by another reveler during a Carnival procession.
“I don’t feel comfortable showing this but we have to expose the truth so that people are aware and can take precaution,” Bolsonaro wrote when posting the video on Twitter. “This is what many street processions have become in Carnival. Draw your own conclusions.”
On Wednesday morning, after his tweet went viral, Bolsonaro riled up Brazilians further with a follow-up tweet in which he asked, “What’s a golden shower?”
Ever since he launched his presidential campaign last year, Bolsonaro has been a lightning rod of controversy in Brazil. His comments on race, gender and education have deepened the divide on social media and in the traditional press between his ultra-conservative base and the socially liberal left.
(SAN FRANCISCO) — Facebook, which grew into a colossus by vacuuming up your information in every possible way and using it to target ads back at you, now says its future lies in privacy-oriented messaging that Facebook itself can’t read.
Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO, announced the shift in a Wednesday blog post apparently intended to blunt both criticism of the company’s data handling and potential antitrust action. Going forward, he said, Facebook will emphasize giving people ways to communicate in truly private fashion, with their intimate thoughts and pictures shielded by encryption in ways that Facebook itself can’t read.
But Zuckerberg didn’t suggest any changes to Facebook’s core newsfeed-and-groups-based service, or to Instagram’s social network, currently the fastest growing part of the company. Facebook pulls in gargantuan profits by selling ads targeted using the information it amasses on its users and others they know.
“All indications that Facebook and Instagram will continue growing and be increasingly important,” Zuckerberg said in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press.
Critics aren’t convinced Zuckerberg is committed to meaningful change.
“This does nothing to address the ad targeting and information collection about individuals,” said Jen King, director of consumer privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. “It’s great for your relationship with other people. It doesn’t do anything for your relationship with Facebook itself.”
Facebook’s new orientation follows a rocky two-year battering over revelations about its leaky privacy controls. That included the sharing of personal information from as many as 87 million users with a political data-mining firm that worked for the 2016 Trump campaign.
Since the 2016 election, Facebook has also taken flak for the way Russian agents used its service to target U.S. voters with divisive messages and being a conduit for political misinformation. Zuckerberg faced two days of congressional interrogation over these and other subjects last April; he acknowledged and apologized for Facebook’s privacy breakdowns in the past.
Since then, Facebook has suffered other privacy lapses that have amplified the calls for regulations that would hold companies more accountable when they improperly expose their users’ information.
As part of his effort to make amends, Zuckerberg plans to stitch together its Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram messaging services so users will be able to contact each other across all of the apps.
The multiyear plan calls for all of these apps to be encrypted so no one but senders and recipients can see the contents of messages. WhatsApp already has that security feature, but Facebook’s other messaging apps don’t.
Zuckerberg likened it to being able to be in a living room behind a closed front door, and not having to worry about anyone eavesdropping. Meanwhile, Facebook and the Instagram photo app would still operate more like a town square where people can openly share whatever they want.
While Zuckerberg positions the messaging integration as a privacy move, Facebook also sees commercial opportunity in the shift. “If you think about your life, you probably spend more time communicating privately than publicly,” he told the AP. “The overall opportunity here is a lot larger than what we have built in terms of Facebook and Instagram.”
Critics have raised another possible motive — the threat of antitrust crackdowns. Integration could make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to later separate out and spin off Instagram and WhatsApp as separate companies.
“I see that as the goal of this entire thing,” said Blake Reid, a University of Colorado law professor who specializes in technology and policy. He said Facebook could tell antitrust authorities that WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger are tied so tightly together that it couldn’t unwind them.
Combining the three services also lets Facebook build more complete data profiles on all of its users. Already, businesses can already target Facebook and Instagram users with the same ad campaign, and ads are likely coming to WhatsApp eventually.
And users are more likely to stay within Facebook’s properties if they can easily message their friends across different services, rather than having to switch between Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram. That could help Facebook compete with messaging services from Apple, Google and others.
As part of the process, Zuckerberg said Facebook will meet with privacy experts, law enforcement officials concerned about the new encryption making it impossible to uncover illegal activity being discussed on the messaging service and government officials.
Creating more ways for Facebook’s more than 2 billion users to keep things private could undermine the company’s business model, which depends on the ability to learn about the things people like and then sell ads tied to those interests.
In his interview with the AP, Zuckerberg said he isn’t currently worried about denting Facebook’s profits with the increased emphasis on privacy.
“How this affects the business down the line, we’ll see,” Zuckerberg said. “But if we do a good job in serving the need that people have, then there will certainly be an opportunity” to make even money.
(LONDON) — A jury in central England on Wednesday convicted a father of enlisting men to attack his 3-year-old son with a corrosive acid amid a custody battle with the child’s mother.
The jury found the 40-year-old man and five others guilty of conspiracy with intent to “burn, maim or disfigure.” The boy suffered serious injuries on his face and arm when sulfuric acid was thrown on him inside a store in July.
Prosecutors alleged the father wanted more contact with his son and organized the plot to manufacture evidence the child’s mother was unfit to care for him.
The father was sentenced to 16 years in prison. The five co-defendants received prison terms of 12 to 14 years. A seventh defendant was acquitted.
Judge Robert Juckes told the men they committed a “monstrous” crime that had been carefully planned and executed.
“It is an extraordinary thing, in this case, that not one of you, most of whom have no previous convictions, most of whom with families of your own, at any stage stood back and asked the question of yourself and others, ‘What are we doing?'” Juckes said.
A statement from the mother was read out loud in court. She said she would be in serious danger when the father is released from prison.
Protests continue to rock Algeria, an energy-rich country that hasn’t experienced demonstrations of this magnitude in decades. The trigger is the decision of the sitting president—Abdelaziz Bouteflika—to run for a fifth term. In defiance of the protests, Bouteflika went ahead and filed the paperwork to run again for Algeria’s presidency this week. Or rather, a proxy of his did—more on that below.
Why It Matters:
Bouteflika managed to escape the 2011 Arab Spring unscathed by significantly upping the government’s welfare spending to help buy peace. That’s no longer an option. Why? The most pressing reason is that oil prices aren’t at the level where Algeria’s government can do that anymore (Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro can certainly commiserate). A second reason has to do with the fact that Algeria’s youth—like many other young populations in the region—suffers from high unemployment. Youth unemployment will take risky reforms and years to fix; it can’t be resolved over the next couple of months.
These two issues—falling oil revenues and high youth unemployment—plague several countries. In Algeria, they’ve fueled a combustible political situation. The fact that Algeria is also a major oil producer also means that sustained political unrest in the country has the potential to affect global oil markets as well. And its geographic location in North Africa means that a politically stable Algeria has been an important player in stabilizing migration flows from Africa into Europe. If the situation spirals out of control there, there are no guarantees as to what will happen.
Then there’s Bouteflika himself, who just celebrated his 82nd birthday on Saturday. Bouteflika has been running Algeria since 1999 and until 2011 was doing so under emergency rule (a holdover from a bloody civil war with an Islamic insurgency that left more than 200,000 people dead). In 2013, he suffered a stroke and has been seen very rarely in public ever since; his last public speech was in 2014. The reality is that his handlers (which include his brother and certain key military officials) have been running the country in his absence. The prospect of reelecting an infirm, largely incapacitated elderly person—which in effect means electing his patronage network—is too much for Algerians already aggrieved by the country’s political and economic situation to bear.
What Happens Next:
The hundreds of thousands of protestors aren’t united on much beyond the fact that Bouteflika must step down. That’s a problem for Algeria in the long run, but a much bigger problem for Bouteflika and his patronage network in the short term. Authorities are bracing for more large marches later this week.
The announcement by Algeria’s ruling coalition on Sunday that Bouteflika would indeed run for a fifth term, but wouldn’t serve the full term marked a concession to protestors—and a sign that the elites propping him up are grasping at straws to cling to power in any way they can. Some question why they don’t just offer up another puppet candidate instead. The reason is there is nobody else who can ensure balance among the factions that have been profiting from Bouteflika’s presidency for years now — not to mention that anyone with a pulse now seems to pose an unacceptable risk to those same competing interests.
The Key Statistic That Explains It:
High youth unemployment is a problem under the best of circumstances. It’s an existential threat when nearly 70 percent of the country is under the age of 30.
The Key Quote That Sums It All Up:
“I am not saying this to scare people, no. I am not trying to take advantage of the past, but we should also remember that in Syria it also began with roses,” Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia. When you’re invoking Syria to calm the political situation in your own country, you know things are getting out of control.
The One Major Misconception About It:
That this is an unabashedly strong sign for democracy in Algeria. Only a subset of the protestors want to reform the country’s politics in the direction of Western liberal democracy. Most just want corruption to be addressed in some way, and that starts by showing Bouteflika the door. In other words, an Arab Spring 2.0 this is not.
The One Thing to Say About It:
From Algeria to Venezuela, petrostates are unequipped to buy off their populations like they once could. It’sgoing to be even harder as renewables become ever-cheaper. And we haven’t even gotten to the part where climate change forces millions of people to search for better lives beyond their own borders. Algeria is a unique case to be sure, but it’s also part of a narrative that’s only going to grow larger in the decades to come.
Justin Trudeau’s government never directed Canada’s attorney general to intervene in a Quebec construction company’s legal case but did suggest she seek an outside opinion on the matter, a former top aide said.
In televised testimony Wednesday in Ottawa, Gerald Butts laid out his version of events that have put the Canadian prime minister in political jeopardy ahead of an election. His comments come a week after former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould alleged Trudeau, Butts and others pressured her to help SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. settle corruption charges out of court.
Trudeau’s former principal secretary said the prime minister’s marching orders to staff were to bear in mind potential job losses at the Montreal-based firm, and to work with the public service to consider all legal options. Wilson-Raybould was merely asked to consider a second opinion, he said, adding the final decision was hers to make.
Butts says he has 3 points to make: 1- Everyone knew decision on DPP was AG's alone 2- Cabinet shuffle had nothing to do w/ SNC-Lavalin 3- PM & JWR did their jobs to best of their abilities, but a breakdown in trust occured: "I take responsibility for that breakdown." #cdnpolipic.twitter.com/Ej6Du6LhXv
“We felt that outside advice was appropriate because of the extraordinary circumstances,” Butts told lawmakers on the House of Commons justice committee. “We also made clear that if the attorney general accepted our proposal and took external advice, she was equally free to reject that advice.”
The former top prime ministerial aide, in his opening remarks, detailed conversations with Wilson-Raybould and said the topic of SNC-Lavalin came up only rarely. She never made her concerns plain to him early on, or wrote to Trudeau saying her decision was final, he said.
Wilson-Raybould was shuffled to a different job in January. Butts said that decision had nothing to do with SNC-Lavalin, and that her objections around SNC only ramped up around that time.
The story broke Feb. 7, when the Globe and Mail newspaper reported — citing anonymous sources — that Wilson-Raybould felt pressured to intervene. She then quit cabinet and gave her version of events in explosive testimony last week. A second minister, Jane Philpott, resigned this week over Trudeau’s handling of the matter.
Butts left his job as principal secretary on Feb. 18, saying it was in the best interest of the government for him to step down.
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