Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By
repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted
to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning
off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to
some ill-defined abstraction called “the Earth,” all the while
hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous, reliable
electricity.
People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off
their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and
all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the
cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.
I don’t want to go back to nature. Travel to a zone hit by
earthquakes, floods and hurricanes to see what it’s like to go back to
nature. For humans, living in “nature” meant a short life span marked by
violence, disease and ignorance. People who work for the end of poverty
and relief from disease are fighting against nature. I hope they leave
their lights on.
The debate about
Canada's military campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant returned Monday to the House of Commons as MPs gathered to vote
on whether to extend and expand the mission in Iraq.
The
Conservatives want to extend Canada's involvement in airstrikes against
ISIL militants in Iraq — and expand the mission into Syria — for up to a
year, in order to help stop the march of a "genocidal" group they
consider a threat to domestic security.
A
vote on the government's motion is scheduled for shortly after 8 p.m.,
but it's likely just a formality, given the Conservative majority in the
Commons.
In anticipation of the government introducing legislation to extend the
length – and possibly the scope – of the Canadian Forces mission against
ISIS, a new Ipsos Reid poll conducted on behalf of Global News has
found that two in three (66%) Canadians ‘agree’ (27% strongly/39%
somewhat) that they ‘support extending the Canadian Forces mission in
Iraq against ISIS past its current end date of April 7, 2015’.
Conversely, one in three (34%) Canadians ‘disagrees’ (15% strongly/19%
somewhat) with extending the mission.
Given that conflicts no longer remain stationary, wiping out ISIS (the girl-raping, church-destroying thugs) where they currently stand is prudent.
With a negotiating deadline just two days away, Iranian officials on Sunday
backed away from a critical element of a proposed nuclear agreement, saying they
are no longer willing to ship their atomic fuel out of the country.
For months, Iran tentatively agreed that it would send a large portion of its
stockpile of uranium to Russia, where it would not be accessible for use in any
future weapons program. But on Sunday, Iran’s deputy foreign minister made a
surprise comment to Iranian reporters, ruling out an agreement that involved
giving up a stockpile that Iran has spent years and billions of dollars to
amass.
As Iran is not really giving up anything, only moving at a leisurely pace to develop nuclear weapons, this isn't a setback insofar as it is business as usual with Iran.
And how does Obama (RE: 2008 elections, Iran, pre-conditions) feel about this?
In a video recording posted on the White House’s website, Obama said,
“Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a fatwa against the
development of nuclear weapons, and President Rouhani has said that
Iran would never develop a nuclear weapon.”
Saudi Arabia has accused Vladimir Putin of hypocrisy after he sent a
letter to the Arab League supporting the peaceful “resolution of all
problems” it claims Russia is fuelling in the Middle East.
In a letter read out to delegates at the summit in Egypt on Sunday,
the Russian President condemned extremist groups including Isis for
undermining regional security, attacking civilians and destroying
cultural heritage.
“We support the Arabs' aspirations for a prosperous future and for
the resolution of all the problems the Arab world faces through peaceful
means, without any external interference,” he wrote.
His comments came after Saudi-led air strikes pounded rebels in Yemen, reportedly destroying every one of their fighter jets in the country in bombing that killed dozens of people.
The Saudi Foreign Minister Prince, Saud al-Faisal, reprimanded Mr Putin for Russia’s continuing shipments of arms to the Syrian government.
It has supported President Bashar al-Assad’s forces with weapons
including armoured vehicles, drones and guided bombs, throughout the
country’s four-year civil war.
Mr Putin defended the flow of arms, which started long before Isis
emerged as a separate group, in the wake of numerous allegations of war
crimes by al-Assad’s forces.
“He speaks about the problems in the Middle East as though Russia is
not influencing these problems,” Mr al-Faisal told the Arab League after
the letter was read out.
“They speak about tragedies in Syria while they are an essential part
of the tragedies befalling the Syrian people, by arming the Syrian
regime above and beyond what it needs to fight its own people.
“I hope that the Russian president corrects this so that the Arab world's relations with Russia can be at their best level.”
Results from Nigeria's elections,
potentially the closest since the end of military rule in 1999, were due
to start trickling in on Monday after a weekend vote marred by
confusion, arguments and occasional violence.
The election pits President Goodluck Jonathan against
former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari for the votes of an electorate
divided along ethnic, regional and religious lines in Africa's most
populous nation.
Even before preliminary tallies were recorded, the
opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) rejected the outcome in
Rivers state, headquarters of Africa's biggest oil industry, and
denounced the vote there as "a sham and a charade".
The INEC election
commission said first results from 120,000 polling stations nationwide
should be available on Sunday evening but later pushed this back to
Monday evening.
Premier Kathleen Wynne says if the Progressive Conservatives want her
to drop a lawsuit against two of their members, all they have to do is
apologize.
Wynne launched a suit last April against then PC leader Tim Hudak and
MPP Lisa MacLeod for saying she oversaw and possibly ordered the
destruction of documents on cancelled gas plants.
MacLeod says Wynne filed the suit to quash legitimate opposition
criticism, and accuses the Liberals of killing legislation the very next
day that would have allowed her and Hudak to challenge the lawsuit.
Wynne says the bill was changed because courts don’t like retroactive
changes to laws, adding she was willing to drop the lawsuit if MacLeod
and Hudak retracted their statements and apologized.
The premier says she filed the suit because the Tory accusations,
which she calls completely untrue, were made on the eve of last year’s
election, which saw the Liberals easily defeat the Conservatives to win a
fourth term in office.
MacLeod says it looks like Wynne killed her own bill to block
strategic lawsuits against public participation for her own political
gain, and accuses the premier of acting above the law.
Andreas Lubitz, 27, apparently locked the captain out of the cabin
and deliberately flew the Germanwings jet into a mountain, killing 150
people.
The older pilot left to use the toilet and then desperately
tried to open the cockpit door during Flight 4U 9525's eight-minute
descent, according to the black box voice recorder.
Germany's Bild on Sunday newspaper said he is heard shouting "For God's
sake, open the door!" as passengers scream in the background.
Consider, therefore, what and
how great virtues Christ showed us by His human nature in this
procession: Who, while He was supreme and rich and powerful above all,
as the true Son of God according to the divinity; nevertheless, did not
display the excellence of His majesty before the people by worldly pomp:
but with much humility and meekness approached the city, rebellious
against Him. This is our King, Whom John Baptist proclaimed as the Lamb, that
was to come into the world: Who for the salvation of the human race
drew near to the place of suffering, to accomplish the work of our
redemption: as it had been revealed to the holy patriarchs and prophets.
Al-Shabab militants
blasted their way into a Mogadishu hotel on Friday and took up positions
inside, killing at least nine people and exchanging fire with security
forces seeking to recapture the facility, a Somali police official said.
One
survivor who made it safely outside the Maka Al-Mukarramah hotel in the
Somali capital said the militants were killing anyone they could find
inside. He did not give his name.
The attack started when a
suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden car at the gate of the
hotel. Gunmen then quickly moved in, Capt. Mohamed Hussein told The
Associated Press from the scene of the attack.
Hours
later, the militants were still holed up in the hotel's dark alleys and
rooms. Sporadic gunfire could be heard, but it appeared that the
security forces would wait until daybreak before trying again to
dislodge the militants.
(Sidebar: by "militants", the "reporter" means terrorists.)
The Somali
extremist group Al Shabaab have released a new video, showing civilians
being forced into the sea and murdered in a hail of gunfire.
Entitled
'In Remembrance 2',the video show Al-Shabaab coldly executing civilians
with machine guns before leaving the bodies to rot on the beach.
The chilling video is the second part of a two episode series by Al-Shabaab's main media branch, al-Kataib Foundation.
The horrific scenes show half a dozen fully clothed civilians being forced into the sea, somewhere on the Somali coast.
Al-Shabaab gunmen, armed with machine guns proceed to callously gun down the prisoners in the sea.
Videoed
from the beach, sporadic gunshot is shown hitting the exposed heads of
the struggling victims. The water is shown splashing as the hail of
gunfire continues from the beach.
Graphic
closeup footage of the dead bodies are shown, floating fully clothed in
the water. The lifeless bodies appear to be left unburied, with footage
later showing one of the corpses rotting on the sand.
The government will
propose a handful of amendments to the proposed anti-terror bill when it
goes to clause-by-clause review on Tuesday, CBC News has
learned, including a proposal that would protect protests from being
captured by the new measures.
"Many witnesses were concerned that by saying "lawful" protests
would not be considered terrorist acts, it meant that protests which
were not necessarily terrorist, but not necessarily legal, could be,"
CBC News correspondent Chris Hall explained in an interview on CBC News
Network on Friday afternoon.
"For example, incidents of chaining yourself to a fence to protest, a logging decision or mine development."
That section will be changed to narrow the scope of what might be captured as a terrorist-related activity, he said.
A total of 111,438
public sector workers in Ontario were paid more than $100,000 in 2014,
according to details included in the so-called Sunshine List released
this morning.
The annual sunshine list, which includes nurses, teachers,
police and firefighters, in addition to provincial civil servants, grew
by more than 13,600 workers over 2013.
Reporters are still poring through the six-volume report of
big earners, but it appears Ontario Power Generation CEO Tom
Mitchell topped the list again with $1.55 million in salary and
benefits.
There are about 12,500 employees from OPG, Hydro One and
their subsidiaries on the 2014 list, up by nearly 1,000 over 2013,
when the auditor general warned those salaries were driving
up electricity rates.
Premier Kathleen Wynne was paid just over $209,00 last year, up about $10,000 from 2013.
The Public Salary Disclosure Act
requires organizations that receive public funding from the Province of
Ontario to disclose annually the names, positions, salaries and total
taxable benefits of employees paid $100,000 or more in a calendar year.
The act was brought in under the
Mike Harris-led Progressive Conservative government in 1996. At the
time, Harris said it served as an important check on the public
payroll. If the list was adjusted for inflation since 1996, the real
benchmark salary would now be around $145,000.
Because Ontario Liberal voters don't have a problem with bloated, useless public sector workers, it is unlikely that this will change any time soon.
The abysmal turnout among
Millennials in the last two federal elections has been singled out to
Elections Canada as one of the main culprits in the overall demise in
voting numbers.
But the problem is not that young voters are any less civically engaged or politically aware than their older compatriots.
“When we ask why they don’t vote, a lot of them say the biggest
reason is not because they don’t know about politics,” David McGrane, a
professor of political science at the University of Saskatchewan and
author of the report, tells Yahoo Canada News.
“They know every bit as much as older Canadians. They know where to vote; they know how to vote.”
But young voters across the country tend to lean to the left of the
political spectrum, says McGrane, who was among a team that surveyed
more than 8,100 voters across the country over the past four years.
They are more socially progressive and they’re looking for an
activist government, says his report.
They support social spending and
they’re in favour of higher taxes if it means better public services.
Compared to older Canadians, they are less likely to favour economic
growth over the environment. Health and education are priorities for
them, not crime and justice, McGrane says.
“So, they’re really describing a
policy agenda and a set of political priorities that I think are quite
different from Stephen Harper,” he says.
President Park Geun-hye paid tribute Thursday to the dozens of fallen
soldiers who died in a North Korean torpedo attack five years ago,
saying she will build a strong defense posture to prevent similar
tragedies.
On March 26, 2010, the 1,200-ton warship Cheonan sank
near the western maritime border with North Korea, killing 46 of the 104
sailors on board. A South Korean-led investigation, including experts
from the U.S., Australia, Britain and Sweden, concluded that the
corvette was downed by a North Korean torpedo, but Pyongyang has denied
any responsibility.
Speaking at a memorial ceremony in Daejeon
National Cemetery, 164 kilometers south of Seoul, Park vowed to push for
reunification of the two Koreas to honor the fallen soldiers.
"The
government will expand our national defense capabilities and establish a
firm war deterrent based on our solid alliance with the United States,
and ensure that incidents similar to the attack on the Cheonan never
happen again," Park said in her address to the more than 5,000 people
gathered, including the bereaved families, survivors, top government
officials and citizens.
She also ordered the military to be on the alert against unexpected provocations and block all such possibilities.
"I
hope North Korea also abandons its reckless provocations and belief
that nuclear weapons can protect it," Park said. "Only when North Korea
abandons its isolation and stagnation for the road to true change will
we be able to build a new Korean Peninsula."
This year marks the
70th year since Korea gained independence from Japanese colonial rule
and came under U.S. military occupation in the South and Soviet
occupation in the North.
"Realizing a unified homeland where
people of both the South and North are happy is sure to be an earnest
wish of our patriotic martyrs and a way to ensure that the sacrifices of
the Cheonan soldiers were not in vain," Park said.
North Korea on Wednesday again denied responsibility for sinking the
South Korean navy corvette Cheonan in 2010 and blamed the U.S. for
"fabricating" the incident.
Ignoring the
captain's frantic pounding on the door, the co-pilot of the Germanwings
jet barricaded himself inside the cockpit and deliberately rammed the
plane full speed into the French Alps as passengers screamed in terror, a
prosecutor said Thursday.
In a split second, all 150 people aboard were dead.
Andreas
Lubitz's "intention (was) to destroy this plane," Marseille prosecutor
Brice Robin said, laying out the horrifying conclusions French
investigators reached after listening to the final minutes of Tuesday's
Flight 9525 from the plane's black box voice data recorder.
The turmoil in Yemen
grew into a regional conflict Thursday, with Saudi Arabia and its
allies bombing Shiite rebels allied with Iran, while Egyptian officials
said a ground assault will follow the airstrikes.
Iran denounced
the Saudi-led air campaign, saying it "considers this action a dangerous
step," and oil prices jumped in New York and London after the
offensive.
The military action turned impoverished and chaotic Yemen into a new front in the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Obama has made overtures to both Saudi Arabia and Iran. Either he knows no loyalty and is hedging his bets or has not thought his alliances through.
Well, when one lives in northern communities and doesn't find sources of vitamin D, a diagnosis of ricketsshouldn't be a surprise:
Rates of rickets continue to rise among aboriginal children in the North, a trend that has researchers increasingly concerned.
Dr. Leanne Ward, who works with the Children's Hospital of
Eastern Ontario in Ottawa, did a 2007 study examining rates of rickets
in aboriginal children in the Northwest Territories, Yukon, Nunavut and
Alaska between the ages of one and two.
The study found incidences of rickets that were six to 12 times
higher than the rest of Canada, a trend that Ward says hasn't changed.
"We are all very concerned that we are seeing rickets in 2015,"
says Ward. "This is a global health problem we shouldn't be seeing
anymore."
She says public health's efforts to stop the resurgence is an "abysmal failure."
Rickets is caused by a lack of vitamin D. It is categorized as a
"rare disease" in developed countries, meaning that it affects less than
one in 200,000 people on average. It can lead to bone, muscle and teeth
development issues and an increased possibility of fractures.
"Infants can present in the first year of life, with seizures,"
says Ward. "They'll often show up in the emergency room. Older children
will present with fractures, significant deformity of the lower limbs,
so they have a waddling gait."
Ward says rickets isn't just
caused by a lack of sunlight. She blames poor diets, and the lack of
access to rich in vitamin D "country foods" such as char and caribou for
the increased instances of the disease in the Northern aboriginal
population.
A Europe-based anti-Islam, anti-immigration group called PEGIDA is
making its Quebec debut this weekend — and local politicians and
community members want to tell the group its views aren't welcome in
Montreal.
The United States
made it clear Canada's precision-guided bomb arsenal and expertise would
be welcome in Syria, Jason Kenney said Wednesday — a narrow glimmer of
clarity in the Harper government's murky reasons for expanding its
Middle East campaign to include the war-torn region.
The
defence minister would not go so far as to say the Americans asked
Canada to expand the scope of its airstrikes outside of Iraq, but did
indicate that Washington left the option open for consideration.
Accused B.C.
terrorist John Nuttall promises to do better after an undercover officer
chastises him for proposing a poorly researched plan to hijack a Via
Rail passenger train in Victoria that no longer exists, his trial has
heard.
Covert police video played in B.C. Supreme Court on
Wednesday shows the undercover officer telling Nuttall he will help
track down whatever supplies are needed but that Nuttall must be
realistic.
"This thing has to be prepared. It has to be
researched," says the officer, posing as an Arab businessman and whose
identity cannot be revealed.
"I'm here to make what you have in your head become true, what you want in your heart to be reality. That's what I'm here for."
Footage has emerged showing terrified tourists fleeing as Islamic State gunmen launched a deadly assault on a museum in Tunisia.
Italian tourist Maria Rita Gelotti was filming during a guided tour of
the Bardo Museum in Tunis when a first explosion rang out, quickly
followed by another.
Ms Gelotti is heard asking her husband Marcello Salvatori "did they
shoot?" as gunfire echoed through the building and holidaymakers and
staff ran for cover.
The couple hid in a fire escape while three gunmen attacked the
renowned Tunis museum, killing 21 people, the deadliest attack on
tourists in Tunisia in 13 years.
"Food insecurity", as in food is insecure or prone to theft or seizure? It's a clever distracting term for the problem of food inaccessibility in Canada's North:
About 1.1 million Canadian households did not have enough food to eat in 2012, says a new report from Statistics Canada.
Five per cent of Canadian children and eight per cent of adults
experienced “food insecurity,” meaning they could not afford enough
nutritious food, says the report released Wednesday.
“We weren’t surprised by the results that we got. They have been
consistent,” analyst Shirin Roshanafshar tells Yahoo Canada News.
In Nunavut, almost 37 per cent of households reported going without.
That’s more than four times the national average of 8.3 per cent.
“Nunavut had the highest rate of food insecurity amongst all Canadian provinces and territories,” Roshanafshar says.
The report by Roshanafshar and analyst Emma Hawkins looked at data
from 65,000 Canadian Community Health surveys filled out annually from
2007-2012, focusing on 2012.
While Nunavut reported the
highest rate of food insecurity, all the territories were hit harder
than their provincial counterparts to the south. ...
Almost 14 per cent of households
in the Northwest Territories reported that they’d been unable to afford
the quality or quantity of food they needed at some point in the
previous 12 months. A little more than 12 per cent of Yukon households
reported the same.
In southern Canada, Maritime provinces had the highest rates of
hunger: Nova Scotia 11.0 per cent, Prince Edward Island 10.6 per cent,
New Brunswick 10.2 per cent.
“Among various household types in
2011–2012, lone-parent families reported the highest rate of food
insecurity, while couples with no children reported the lowest,” it
says.
Star Wars fans aren't thrilled the popular nerd destination of
Tataouine is now a backdrop in Tunisia's struggle to keep ISIS
terrorists out.
According to CNN,
“This struggling town on the fringes of the Sahara still draws a few
fans of the movie but now finds itself part of a real conflict, as a
way-station for jihadists crossing the Libyan border 60 miles to the
east.”
“A lot of my friends read my blog and ask, ‘Are you vegan now?’ It’s how
I eat most of the time, and it’s how I enjoy eating, but it doesn’t
mean I can’t eat a bite of chicken now and then, when I want. I was
vegan for a little while, and I just realized it wasn’t for me. I still
craved meat sometimes! I’ve been trying to stay away from the word
‘vegan,’ because it’s like a huge lifestyle choice and people take it
very seriously.”
In the initial panic
to flee the besieged city, one Kobani resident who fled with his family had to
make the painful decision to leave his beloved cat behind.
Merrof Ekary had rescued his cat from the city’s streets
when it was only a few days old, he told BuzzFeed News through a translator,
local freelance journalist Jack
Shahine, who is also Ekary’s neighbor.
Ekary named the cat Gewre, which is Kurdish for “the white
one,” and fed her milk and fish oil until she put on weight.
Shahine said his
friend was devastated to have to leave Gewre behind in Kobani when he fled in
mid-September, but that he needed to concentrate on getting his family out of
the city. …
Shahine said Ekary
returned to the city a few days after fleeing to rescue Gewre and bring her to
Turkey, but found she had since given birth to a litter of three kittens.
“ISIS was close to
the city and it was chaos and everyone was frightened, including us,” Shahine
said. “When we saw the cat had babies, we couldn’t bring it with us, so we left
her behind and my friend was very upset.”
In making the
painful decision, Ekary rationalized that the cats’ best chance for survival
was if they remained together.
Months later, after
Kobani had been liberated, Ekary returned to his home in early February to
inspect the damage, but found someone waiting for him.
“He loves her so
much and he was so relieved to find her,” Shahine said, noting how agonizing
the original decision had been.
“The connection
between Merrof’s three children and Gewre was very strong,” Shahine told BuzzFeed News from
Kobani. “He was always telling us that the whole family was so close to the cat
and that she was just like person, except she didn’t talk.”
Gewre is now being
cared for by Ekary’s brother in Kobani, as the city is still too devastated for
Ekary to return with his family.
Texas junior Senator
Ted Cruz, a Tea Party favourite, announced early Monday that he's
running for the presidential nomination for the Republican Party.
The move would make Cruz the first high-profile Republican to
formally announce his presidential bid, ahead of other likely contenders
such as former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott
Walker.
What differentiates Cruz from his competition, however, is that he
was born in Canada — Calgary, Alta., in fact — to an American mother and
a Cuban-born father. His heritage made Cruz a dual citizen at birth.
Under U.S. law, being born to an American mother automatically gives you
American citizenship, while being born on Canadian soil makes you a
Canadian.
The U.S. Constitution doesn't preclude dual citizens from running for
the presidency, but it requires presidents to be "natural born"
citizens, which is commonly believed to be Americans born with
citizenship even if they weren't born on U.S. soil.
So, Cruz is perfectly eligible for the White House. Two lawyers who
represented presidents from both parties at the U.S. Supreme Court also
recently wrote in the Harvard Law Review that Cruz meets the
constitutional standard to run.
However, things are not so straightforward in the game of politics.
News of Cruz's Canadian birth surfaced in the U.S. media in mid-2013
— the same time he said he learned that he had Canadian citizenship,
according to the paper that broke the story — and his opponents quickly
jumped on the opportunity to call him "Canadian Ted." If the "birthers"
who nagged Barack Obama about his citizenship were any indicator,
it potentially could have caused a political headache for Cruz.
But any blossoming problem was quickly nipped in the bud.
Nine months after realizing he could have a passport emblazoned with
the Arms of Canada and maybe even run for elected office in Canada, he
officially renounced his Canadian citizenship in May 2014.
According to Cruz's spokeswoman,
he said he was "pleased to have the process finalized" and that it
"makes sense he should be only an American citizen."
Obama could go either way. His era of screwing things up for the US term ends in a couple of years. If Warren were to win, the White House will remain in the incompetent hands of a Democrat. If Cruz were to win, he would inherit a fractured and economically depressed mess that Obama made. This would ensure that voters sour from anyone who is not a Democrat.
The United States will never be what it was. As with all empires, Pax Americana is gone. Obama was the nail in that coffin. United States does, however, have a chance to get back on its feet, something it cannot do with appeasement-ready statists.
The State Department closed the Embassy in Yemen in mid-February
and evacuated all State employees and security personnel after al Qaeda
seized the Yemeni Army’s 19th Infantry Brigade’s Base. The Americans
who were left behind were U.S. Navy SEALS and Delta Force commandos.
Today, they too are exiting the country. According to major news
networks there are approximately 100 U.S. troops evacuating the al-Anad
Air Base in Yemen.
Hey, remember when people said that worries about terrorism were just bits of alarmism?
Members of Parliament, senators and their staff were told Monday to be leery when
opening the mail after envelopes with unusual markings were delivered.
Protective services for the House of Commons and Senate issued
separate warnings after the envelopes containing white powder arrived at
the offices of two senators.
A later update confirmed that the
substance in the envelopes, which carried a return address that read
"Ottawa Shooting," was non-toxic.
Hundreds marched
Monday in the Afghan capital, demanding justice for a woman beaten to
death last week by a Kabul mob over false allegations she had burned a
Qur’an — a vicious killing that shocked many Afghans and renewed calls
for authorities to ensure women's rights to equality and protection from
violence.
The killing has also drawn condemnation from
Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani, now in Washington on his first
state visit to the United States since taking office in September, who
denounced it as a "heinous attack" and ordered an investigation.
On
Thursday, a mob of men beat a 27-year-old religious scholar named
Farkhunda to death, threw her body off a roof, ran over it with a car,
set it on fire and at the end, threw it into the Kabul River near one of
the Afghan capital's most renowned mosques, the Shah Doshamshera.
The attack was captured by cellphone cameras and has been widely distributed on social media.
Farkhunda,
who like many Afghans had just one name, was buried amid a huge public
outcry on Sunday, her coffin carried by women's activists who defied the
tradition of men-only pallbearers and funerals.
Protesters
who gathered near the Shah Doshamshera mosque on Monday demanded the
government prosecute all those responsible for the death.
Kabul's
police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said 18 people had been arrested and
all had confessed to their role in Farkhunda's death.
Rest assured that those responsible will not pay for their crime as a woman in Afghanistan is worth much less than a man. If Farkhunda was on equal legal footing, the men would never have confessed knowing that doing so would seal their fate.
A fire broke out in North Korea on Monday and was rapidly spreading to
the South Korean side of the inter-Korean border, South Korean
authorities said.
The blaze started at around 11 a.m. near a
North Korean guard post located about 600 meters north of the
Demilitarized Zone, military officials said.
By 3:45 p.m., it had spread close to the Dora Observatory in Paju, north of Seoul, a popular tourist destination.
The observatory was closed to visitors on the day, and no casualties or damage was reported, officials added.
More
than 50 South Korean firefighters were putting out the fire, Paju city
and military officials said, adding that three helicopters were awaiting
the approval of the United Nations Command to aid in the process.
The cause of the fire was unknown, according to an official at the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Along with yellow dust from China in spring, ultrafine dust or
particulate matter 2.5 ― particles 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter ―
have become a major threat to public health.
Last year, the
Seoul Metropolitan Government issued ultrafine alerts 11 times, triple
the number from the year before, city officials said.
The
capital also saw an average ultrafine dust concentration of 25.2
micrograms per cubic meter in 2012, which is more than double the safe
level advised by the World Health Organization, according to the
Environment Ministry. ... While China has generally been blamed for the murky air in the case of
yellow dust, the significantly lesser-known cause of the ultrafine dust
comes from home, experts say.
Recent studies have found that the majority of PM 2.5 here originates from within the peninsula.
In
2013, ultrafine dust from China only accounted for 30 to 50 percent of
the total, the government’s data showed. The rest was triggered by local
coal-fired power plants and diesel cars.
The new Chinese ambassador to North Korea, Li Jinjun, is expected to
make efforts to warm relations with the wayward ally, while
"facilitating" long-stalled multilateral talks aimed at persuading
Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambition, a state-run Chinese newspaper
said Friday.
The appointment of Li, former vice minister
of the Chinese Communist Party's International Department, which has
been closely engaged in contacts with North Korea's ruling party, comes
as political ties between the two nations remain strained because of
Pyongyang's defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons.
North Korean
leader Kim Jong-un has yet to visit China since taking the helm of the
reclusive state in late 2011. Kim is likely to visit Russia in May in
what would be his international debut and an apparent message of affront
against China.
Li "is on a mission to warm up relations
between the neighbors against a backdrop of the DPRK's recent outreach
to Russia," the state-run China Daily said, using an acronym for North
Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
It is almost comical to watch China and Russia play political football. When in collusion, they are the best of friends. Then they take out the knives.
With the number of foreigners in Korea increasing steadily, celebrations of overseas festivals are becoming quite familiar.
On
St. Patrick’s Day ― Irish cultural and religious festival ― Koreans and
foreigners wore green and drank Guinness together, celebrating the
onset of spring.
If all nations could put down their guns and wear green, we might have fewer wars or at least be colour-coordinated.
