Bonjour Planet Earth

Monday, January 25, 2016

South America takes to the streets against TPP...

Citizens in Argentina, Chile and Peru took to the streets in droves Friday night to protest the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, which will affect 12 countries and has already seen major objection from citizens world wide.

“This march is informative, because this treaty was negotiated by countries in secret and behind our backs, the most affected,” said one of the leaders of the mobilization in Peru's capital Lima.

Veronika Mendoza, a congressperson from Peru's left wing Broad Front party, also attended the demonstration and reiterated the party's rejection of the treaty, saying that it would increase the price of medicines for citizens.

Mass crowds also gathered in cities across Chile, including Santiago, Concepcion, Valparaiso, Temuco, Puerto Montt and Iquique among others.

“From today, we have announced our intention to mobilize every month if necessary until congress rejects this treaty,” reads a communique by the protest organizers, which was handed to journalists in Chile's capital Santiago. Full story...

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Sunday, January 24, 2016

The great British booze problem: how a few glasses a day has led to an epidemic for the NHS...

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New Zealand students can buy beer with ... rats!!!

Man stopped for drink-driving ... on wheelchair!!!

A temple in India where the devotees offer alcohol to the deity!!!

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Japan accepts 27 refugees last year, rejects 99%...

Japan accepted only 27 refugees last year and rejected almost all applications, officials said Saturday, as rights groups urged the government to allow more people in.

The country has long been nervous about an influx of refugees into its homogeneous society and has tightly restricted the number it accepts.

Of the thousands seeking refugee status, five were Syrian, only three of which were accepted — a far cry from the massive influx of Syrians into Europe from the war-torn Middle East nation last year.

The justice ministry said it received a record 7,586 refugee applications in 2015, meaning more than 99 percent of requests were rejected. Full story...

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Germany starts confiscating refugees' valuables; Denmark finalizes bill to do same...

So Bob Geldof, where are your refugees?

Uganda bans housemaids from working in Saudi Arabia...

The Ugandan government has banned its citizens from taking jobs as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia, claiming they are often abused by their employers.

Wilson Muruli Mukasa, minister of gender, labour and social development, said on Friday that the government continued "to receive information of our people being subjected to inhumane treatment at the hands of the employers in Saudi Arabia".

"The ban will remain in force until the conditions are deemed fitting," Mukasa said in a letter sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Uganda's Independent magazine said the letter came days after an audio recording circulated on social media in which a number of Ugandan women claimed to be in prison in Saudi Arabia and shared stories of abuse. Full story...

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Saudi Arabia executes second Indonesian maid in one week...

Saudi Arabia beheads Indonesian domestic help who killed 'abusive employer'

Maid's horrible torture by Saudi woman shocks Indonesia...

Filipino maid in Saudi Arabia attacked with acid and stabbed to death...

Saudi family hammers 24 hot nails into Lankan maid's body...

The lies of Malaysia’s attorney general...

When a Malaysian deputy prosecutor named Kevin Morais disappeared on Sept. 4 last year after leaving his condominium in Kuala Lumpur on his way to work, the rumor spread that the 55-year-old Morais, who was gay, probably had tired of his job with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and had left with his lover, probably for London. And, newly-minted Attorney General Mohamed Apandi Ali said, Morais had nothing to do with the controversial MACC probe into Prime Minister Najib Razak’s tangled financial affairs.

It is widely believed that that probe got former Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail fired from his job in July, to be replaced by Apandi Ali, an UMNO stooge and loyalist who served in a variety of different capacities, including as the judge who ruled that Christians couldn’t use the word “Allah” to describe god.

What nobody expected was that Morais would turn up. The rumor about his disappearance was put to the lie when a CCTV camera, by chance, caught Morais’s car being rammed on a Kuala Lumpur street and him being dragged from it. Morais was later found in an oil drum filled with cement in a river in Subang Jaya, a Kuala Lumpur suburb. His burned car was found in a palm oil plantation in Perak. The police said it was an open and shut case. Morais had been killed by confederates of an army doctor in revenge for prosecuting a case against him. Full story...

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Embattled Malaysian PM Najib drops speech to global anti-corruption gathering...

The music has stopped in Malaysia...

Norway’s largest bank calls for total end to cash...

Norway’s largest bank, DNB, has said that cash has fallen out of favour with everyday Norwegians and is instead primarily used on the black market and in laundering schemes.

“Today, there is approximately 50 billion kroner in circulation and [central bank] Norges Bank can only account for 40 percent of its use. That means that 60 percent of money usage is outside of any control. We believe that is due to under-the-table money and laundering,” bank executive Trond Bentestuen told VG.

"There are so many dangers and disadvantages associated with cash, we have concluded that it should be phased out," he added.

Bentestuen said that only around six percent of the Norwegian population uses cash daily, with the numbers higher amongst the elderly. Full story...

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Germany starts confiscating refugees' valuables; Denmark finalizes bill to do same...

Germany's southern states are confiscating refugees' valuables in order to pay for their stay, according to local authorities. It comes as Denmark moves ahead with a plan to do the same, part of a controversial bill aimed at curbing asylum seekers' rights.

"Cash holdings and valuables can be secured [by the authorities] if they are over €750 (US$810) and if the person has an outstanding bill, or is expected to have one,” Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told Bild newspaper on Thursday.

The government of Baden-Württemberg has implemented a stricter process, with police confiscating cash and valuables above €350 ($378).

The average amount per person confiscated by authorities in the southern states has so far been "in the four figures,” according to Bild.

By confiscating the personal belongings of refugees, the states are implementing federal laws that require asylum seekers to use up their own resources before receiving state aid. Full story...

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So Bob Geldof, where are your refugees?

Friday, January 22, 2016

Ultimate cat lady: Woman shares her home with 1,100 felines...

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Report highlights plight of DRC's 'cobalt children'

Children as young as seven are being sent down dangerous mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to extract highly valued cobalt for batteries to power the world's electronic devices.

Laptops, mobile phones and electric cars all require the mineral for lithium batteries, and half the world's cobalt supply is found in the DRC, a report by Amnesty and the NGO Afrewatch published on Tuesday said.

In 2014, about 40,000 children worked in mines across the country, according to UNICEF.

At least 80 artisanal miners died underground in southern Congo between September 2014 and December 2015, but that number could be far higher, according to the report. Full story...

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Leaked Savile report slams BBC culture & Thatcher...

A leaked report condemning the BBC over Jimmy Savile’s sexual abuse of minors has warned that another child predator could be present at the national broadcaster.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was among those who received criticism in the report for ignoring warnings about the celebrity from an honor committee and proposing him for knighthood in recognition of his charitable work.

Extracts from the leaked draft report compiled by retired judge Janet Smith were published on the website Exaro Wednesday.

The leaked inquiry found that Savile abused victims on “virtually every one of the BBC premises at which he worked.”

In the afterword of the report, Smith writes that she thinks “it is possible” that a predatory child abuser is lurking in the BBC today. Full story...

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France: Woman 'stops gang rape by biting attacker's penis'

A woman in northern France managed to fight off a gang of sex attackers by biting the penis of one the men.
The incident occurred in the northern France city of Amiens inside a small apartment, reported the local Courrier Picard newspaper.

The woman, aged 30, had been set upon by two men on Saturday afternoon, while a third man was nearby. The paper noted that alcohol had been involved.

The woman is believed to have managed to stop the attack by biting one of the men on the penis, until she drew blood, reported the paper.

In response, one of the men is understood to have struck the woman, hard enough to leave her in hospital in a "serious condition". Full story...

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The former CEO of Mozilla is launching a web browser that blocks all ads by default...

Brendan Eich is making a comeback.

He’s the creator of JavaScript and one of the founders of Mozilla, the organisation behind the Firefox browser, so he knows a thing or two about the web.

But in 2014, after being appointed CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, he found himself at the middle of a firestorm. Eich had donated to Proposition 8, a failed Californian ballot initiative that aimed to define marriage as between one man and one woman. When news of the donation became public, he was highly criticised, and ultimately resigned from the role.

Eich is now launching a new startup, called Brave, that aims to “fix” a problem with the modern internet — adverts.

Advertising is sick, Eich says. It’s intrusive, tracking users with “cookies, tracker pixels, fingerprinting, everything,” and slowing the internet down to boot — and as a result, users are increasingly turning to ad blocking software to eliminate them altogether. Full story...

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Microsoft has finally ended support for Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10...

Free NSA-proof email is finally available to the public...

The inside story of Tor, the best anonymity software the government ever built...

Greek community creates an off-the-grid Internet...

Firefox plug-in warns users of NSA surveillance...

Evidence of a ninth planet...

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What if we are really in a “Matrix”-like simulation?

India launches spacecraft to Mars...

Astronomer insists there is a Planet X lurking at the edge of our solar...

Strange sky phenomena escalating worldwide...

President Putin 'probably' approved Litvinenko murder...

The murder of ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 in the UK was "probably" approved by President Vladimir Putin, an inquiry has found.

Mr Putin is likely to have signed off the poisoning of Mr Litvinenko with polonium-210 in part due to personal "antagonism" between the pair, it said.

Home Secretary Theresa May said the murder was a "blatant and unacceptable" breach of international law.

But the Russian Foreign Ministry said the public inquiry was "politicised".

It said: "We regret that the purely criminal case was politicised and overshadowed the general atmosphere of bilateral relations." Full story...

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The tsar shows mercy, but the message remains the same: Don’t mess with me...

Vladimir Putin creating 'worst human rights climate since Soviet times'

Russian activist sent to mental institution, echoing Soviet era...

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Bahraini court sentences teenage boy to 130 years in prison...

Ahmad al-Arab will be 147 years old after serving his jail term handed down by a Bahraini court.

The High Criminal Court in the capital Manama on Tuesday sentenced the 17-year-old to an additional 10 years in prison on charges of protesting against the ruling Al Khalifah royal family and charges of alleged terror acts, Arabic-language Manama Post online newspaper reported.

The court also ruled that Arab, who was arrested on April 13 last year, will no longer be a Bahraini national at the end of his prison term.

The Tuesday ruling is the latest in a series of harsh punishments handed down to dissidents in Bahrain, a tiny Persian Gulf island nation that has seen years of anti-regime protests.

Meanwhile, anti-government protesters staged a fresh pro-democracy rally in the northern village of Abu Saiba and called on the Bahraini regime to heed calls by the United Nations and human rights organizations to resolve the political crisis in the country and release all political prisoners.

Anti-regime protesters have been holding demonstrations on the streets of Bahrain since mid-February 2011, calling for the Al Khalifah family to relinquish power. The regime's ongoing heavy-handed crackdown on peaceful demonstrations has left scores of people dead and hundreds injured, and many more incarcerated. Source...

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Bahrain: more bloodshed...

Bahrain spends $95million yearly on protest crackdown...

UK arms sale to Bahrain triples...

Bahrain arrests top human rights activist...

Monsanto has terminated 16% of its workforce in recent months, as demand for GMO crops continues to plummet...

Those opposed to GM agriculture in favor of healthy, organic food have a lot to celebrate as we enter the new year. It's just been announced that Monsanto plans to eliminate another 1,000 jobs, in addition to the 2,600 it slashed last fall, resulting in a 16 percent decrease in its total workforce.

Meanwhile, sales of organic products are on the increase, as consumers learn more about the benefits of a diet consisting of healthy, natural food.
Not so long ago, it seemed as if the GMO-pushing agricultural giant Monsanto was nearly invincible. With its deep pockets, the Frankenfood machine was able to buy off politicians, judges and scientists, who all became complicit in an evil plot – the goal of which was to take over and control nearly the entire global agricultural industry.

Monsanto's grand scheme involved replacing traditional farming techniques with a poisonous, environmentally-unsound, laboratory-engineered substitute, based on the cultivation of genetically-modified plants – a system which also happened to require the use of carcinogenic pesticides just to function.

Needless to say, this scheme was opposed by many – from farmers, to scientists, to consumers – but Monsanto's intense lobbying and propaganda efforts succeeded in allowing the company to spread its poisonous tentacles throughout the globe, before the opposition could do anything about it.

But then, over the past couple of years, things have begun to change. Full story...

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Rice, wheat, mustard… India drives forward first GMO crops under veil of...

Cambodia asks Interpol to hunt down culprit of ‘disrespectful’ Facebook post about PM’s wife...

Offended by a Facebook post? Who are you going to call? Interpol, of course. Cambodian police have enlisted the help of the international crime-fighting organization to arrest a user who posted a “disrespectful” photo of the PM’s wife.

The photo of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s spouse, Bun Rany, posted on the social network tries to damage her “honour and dignity,” according to a government official.

The snap, which shows the prime minister on holiday with his wife and grandchildren, was grabbed from his Facebook page and altered to spread the legs of Bun Rany, who is wearing three quarter length trousers, apart.

(...)

In conservative Cambodia this is seen as a highly inappropriate way for a woman to stand."The act damages the honour and dignity of the First Lady of a nation," General Khieu Sopheak, spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, told AFP.

"Haknuman Leung," the individual who posted the image, which briefly went viral before being removed, has been identified by authorities as a Cambodian national who lives abroad. Authorities are working with Interpol to issue a “Red Notice” for his arrest - the highest alert to Interpol member states to find and arrest a suspect, with a view to extradition.This is normally used for serious criminals. Full story...

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Astronomers say a Neptune-sized planet lurks beyond Pluto. Planet X?

The solar system appears to have a new ninth planet. Today, two scientists announced evidence that a body nearly the size of Neptune—but as yet unseen—orbits the sun every 15,000 years. During the solar system’s infancy 4.5 billion years ago, they say, the giant planet was knocked out of the planet-forming region near the sun. Slowed down by gas, the planet settled into a distant elliptical orbit, where it still lurks today.

The claim is the strongest yet in the centuries-long search for a “Planet X” beyond Neptune. The quest has been plagued by far-fetched claims and even outright quackery. But the new evidence comes from a pair of respected planetary scientists, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, who prepared for the inevitable skepticism with detailed analyses of the orbits of other distant objects and months of computer simulations. “If you say, ‘We have evidence for Planet X,’ almost any astronomer will say, ‘This again? These guys are clearly crazy.’ I would, too,” Brown says. “Why is this different? This is different because this time we’re right.”

Outside scientists say their calculations stack up and express a mixture of caution and excitement about the result. “I could not imagine a bigger deal if—and of course that’s a boldface ‘if’—if it turns out to be right,” says Gregory Laughlin, a planetary scientist at the University of California (UC), Santa Cruz. “What’s thrilling about it is [the planet] is detectable.” Full story...

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What if we are really in a “Matrix”-like simulation?

India launches spacecraft to Mars...

Astronomer insists there is a Planet X lurking at the edge of our solar...

Strange sky phenomena escalating worldwide...

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Newlywed couple comes home to cocaine-fueled orgy on New Year's Eve, raunchy revelers rented Canadian pad on Airbnb...

A couple came home to a coke-fueled orgy on their wedding night after hosting some gutsy guests through Airbnb.

Justine Smith and Francisco Peres tied the knot on New Year’s Eve, the same night they let a young couple to stay at their Montreal apartment through Airbnb after forgetting to disable instant booking.

The mistake would lead to an unforgettable wedding for all the wrong reasons — spending their first night as a married couple with a cocaine-fueled orgy in their own living room.

When the newlyweds first returned, they saw the place was a mess, with half the food in their kitchen eaten and the living room filled with garbage, Smith revealed in a tell-all she wrote for Vice Canada.

The raunchy renters — who booked the pad last minute on Airbnb and begged to stay on New Year’s Eve — were missing, but wouldn’t stay gone for long. Full story...

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Blood and minerals: Who profits from conflict in DRC?

When Papa Mukendi started his business in 2002, the Democratic Republic of Congo was experiencing one of the bloodiest peaks of its more than two-decade-long war.

"There have been moments when the work has multiplied, and we've had to hire more staff," he says.

For this country's misfortune is his fortune. After all, if there is an industry that prospers in Goma, it is death. And Mukendi's speciality is coloured coffins.

When business is good, Mukendi sells three a week. When the conflict calms down, days can pass without a sale.

He used to make more money, he says, when he was the only one to envelop the dead in felt and wood. But as the conflict drew on, many carpenters reinvented themselves as coffin makers. For in this land soaked with the blood of the more than 5.4 million killed since 1998, coffins, not furniture, are the luxury on which people will spend their limited money.

"When there's conflict or a plane crashes, I sell a lot more. I don't like war, but if it comes I take advantage. It is work, and I welcome it," laughs Mukendi. Full story...

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Why are India's Dalit students taking their lives?

"My birth is my fatal accident...I always was rushing. Desperate to start a life... I am not sad. I am just empty. Unconcerned about myself. That's pathetic. And that's why I am doing this."

These are excerpts from the last letter - "this kind of letter for the first time" - that Rohith Vemula, a PhD student at the Hyderabad Central University wrote before he killed himself on Sunday.

It is, at once, an eloquent and chilling suicide note: a young man who loved "science, stars, nature and people", and aspired to become a science writer like Carl Sagan, ended up defeated and crushed by discrimination and apathy.

(...)

The probe found most of the Dalit and tribal students complaining that they "did not receive the kind of support other students received from their teachers". Examiners asked about their caste backgrounds. The students said teachers did not give them the marks they deserved in exams, and their papers were not evaluated properly. More than 90% of the students said they were routinely humiliated by examiners in practical and oral examinations.

"There is systemic persecution of Dalit students in Indian universities. They are often failed by their teachers deliberately," Apoorvanand told me. Full story...

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Hindu temple in India purified after low-caste chief minister visits...

Dalit women in Tamil Nadu narrate tales of atrocities...

Sunny Leone wows web over grilling about porn past...

A Bollywood actress has a new film coming out so she appears on TV to be questioned by one of India's leading interviewers. What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty it seems, when the interviewee is Sunny Leone, the Canadian-born former porn star who is a hugely controversial figure in India, where for the past few years she has been the most Googled person in the country.

But in this case the recipient of the bad publicity was not Leone - who has previously faced campaigns demanding she leave India.

Instead it was the veteran interviewer, Bhupendra Chaubey, who has been feeling the heat after a social media backlash for an interview on his CNN-IBN's talk show, The Hot Seat, which many commentators saw as "misogynistic". Leone, meanwhile, seems to have won admiration for the calm and dignified way she dealt with his questions. Such has been the response that a video of Leone, expressing her gratitude for the support she has received, was viewed more than 200,000 times in the first hour after it was posted on Facebook. Full story...

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Hindu group wants Sunny Leone banned from India...

Sunny Leone: Being a porn star is not being a prostitute...

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

62 world’s richest people own same wealth as half the world...

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The shocking amount of wealth and power held by 0.001% of the world population...

Hyderabad university shut after protests over Dalit student's death...

A university in southern India has been temporarily shut after fresh protests over the death of a Dalit PhD student.

Rohith Vemula killed himself on Sunday inside the campus of Hyderabad Central University.

Mr Vemula's friends have blamed the university's top officials and a federal minister for his death.

He was one of five Dalit, formerly known as untouchables, students who were protesting against their expulsion from the university's housing facility.

Mr Vemula's friends want action to be taken against the university's officials as well as federal minister Bandaru Dattatreya, who is accused of pressurising university officials to take action against the Dalit students.

Students in Mumbai and Delhi have also been holding protests over the incident. Full story...

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Hindu temple in India purified after low-caste chief minister visits...

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Monday, January 18, 2016

Behind the dirty, sexy, saga of the Spanish crown...

The sister of the King of Spain, the glamorous Infanta Cristina, is accused of being part of a network of industrial-level corruption and tax evasion.

In one of the most humiliating events to strike European royalty in living memory, the Infanta Cristina, the once-glamorous little sister of the king of Spain, this week became the first Spanish royal ever to appear in court charged with a criminal act.

The sixth-in-line to the throne made her reluctant appearance on Monday alongside her husband, Iñaki Urdangarin, a former Olympic handball player, amidst tight security.

The two stand accused of being part of a network of industrial-level corruption and tax evasion, and of effectively robbing the country of several million euros while it was experiencing its worse financial crisis in decades, which resulted in a national bail-out by the European authorities. Full story...

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Hatton Garden heist leader found sick pictures of Tory child abuser in deposit box on earlier job...

Hatton Gardens heist boss Brian Reader was horrified when his gang broke into a bank vault and found sickening photos of a leading politician abusing children.

But the notorious crook was shocked further when the thieves left the pictures for police to find – only for the Tory Cabinet minister’s crimes to be hushed up.

Reader, known as The Guv’nor, is facing jail for planning last year’s £14million Hatton Garden raid and claims about his previous high-profile break-in can now be revealed for the first time.

The images are said to have been found stashed in a safety deposit box in 1971 when the gang tunnelled into a branch of Lloyds in Baker Street, Central London, and escaped with a £3million haul.

A close confidant of 76-year-old career criminal Reader said: “It was a shock for them when they found photographs of a famous politician abusing children. Full story...

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ISIS: US-Saudi plague reaches Indonesia?

Coordinated bombings and mass shootings struck Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta on Thursday leaving several dead and many more wounded. The pattern matched that of attacks carried out last year in Paris, France, where known terrorists Western intelligence agencies were tracking, some for years, were somehow allowed to mobilize large caches of weapons in Belgium and execute their coordinated mass murder with virtually no effort to stop them ahead of the attacks.

The so-called “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” quickly claimed responsibility for the attack and the Western media has begun stoking fears that the terrorist organization has now spread to Southeast Asia.

A pattern is beginning to develop. Wherever the US wants to put its military, ISIS shows up and conveniently justifies it. And whenever the US is having a problem persuading a foreign government to do what Washington desires, ISIS shows up. In fact, pretty much everywhere US foreign policy is in trouble, ISIS and similarly state-sponsored terrorism seems to show up and save the day. Full story...

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Japan to remove swastikas from maps as tourists 'think they are Nazi symbols'

Swastikas could be erased from Japanese maps after a survey revealed that most tourists associate it with Nazi Germany instead of Buddhist temples.

The ancient Sanskrit symbol was used to denote religious buildings long before it was appropriated by the Nazi regime, but it continues to spread confusion among Western visitors to Japan.

It has prompted the country's tourism authorities to announce plans to update their maps, replacing the swastika with a more conventional image of a three-tiered pagoda.

But the proposals have prompted outrage in some quarters, with one Japanese academic calling for tourists to be better informed about the history of the countries they visit.

"We have been using this symbol for thousands of years before it was incorporated into the Nazi flag, so I believe it would be better for us to keep it on our maps and ask others to understand its true meaning", Makoto Watanabe, a communications expert at Hokkaido Bunkyo University, told The Telegraph. Full story...

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Norwegian comic strip likens Israel to Nazis, North Korea...

New book reveals the secret meaning of neo-nazi codes in Germany...

Jewish doctor refuses to operate patient with Nazi tattoo...

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Tennis match fixing: Secret files allege corruption at top levels of world tennis...

Secret files which allegedly contain evidence of widespread match fixing at the top levels of world tennis, including at Wimbledon, have been revealed.

An investigation by the BBC and BuzzFeed News alleges that dozens of top world players are suspected to have been involved in match fixing, with some reported to tennis officials over suspicions that they deliberately lost matches.

All of these reported players, some of whom are alleged to be Grand Slam title winners, were allowed to continue playing.

The news organisations were passed the documents by anonymous whistleblowers inside the world of tennis. These documents included the findings of a 2007 investigation by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), which was set up to look into claims of match fixing and suspicious gambling. Full story...

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Andre Agassi admits to using dope...

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Indian villagers destroy toilets that the government had built for them...

Used to the "comfortable fields", 90 families quietly demolished the toilets inside their house that was built under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA), preferring to go back to defecating in the open. Authorities, who sent notices to these "defaulters", reckon there may be many more in India's rural and semi-urban belts doing this, unable to break decades of habit. A bunch of others had removed the toilet seat and converted the space into a small store room..
.
Building toilets in rural India was one of the major promises Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made during his Independence Day speech last year.

The government has since moved fast on this and now claims to have constructed lakhs of toilets in India's countryside..
.
But if the Bareillly experience, probably the first such incident of its kind that has come to light, is any indication, there is a tough job ahead for India's Swachh campaigners. According to a World Health Organisation and UNICEF report of 2014, already 82% of the 1 billion people practising open defecation in the world live in India. With 597 million, India holds the top slot, leaving the number 2 in this dubious list, Indonesia (54 million), far behind. Pakistan (41 million), Nigeria (39 million) and Ethiopia (34 million) take up the third, fourth and fifth places. Full story...

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Sunday, January 17, 2016

India tops list as country with 'most selfie deaths in the world'

While it is a cool thing to click selfies while hanging out with your buddies, it seems like we Indians are terrible at it, at least when it comes to the safety aspect.

According to the Washington Post in 2015, some 27 cases of deaths were reported from across the world while trying to take selfies. Out of the 27 more than half were reported from India.

In 2015, Indians taking selfies died while posing in front of an oncoming train, in a boat that tipped over at a picnic, on a cliff that gave way and crumbled into a 60-foot ravine and on the slippery edge of a scenic river canal. Also, in September, a Japanese tourist trying to take a selfie fell down steps at the Taj Mahal, suffering fatal head injuries. More + photos...

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Saturday, January 16, 2016

Switzerland seizing assets from refugees to cover costs...

Refugees arriving in Switzerland have to turn over to the state any assets worth more than 1,000 Swiss francs (£690) to help pay for their upkeep, the broadcaster SRF has reported.

SRF’s 10 vor 10 news programme showed a receipt a Syrian refugee said he received from authorities when he had to turn over more than half the cash his family had left after paying traffickers to help them get to the neutral Alpine country.

It also showed an information sheet for refugees that stated: “If you have property worth more than 1,000 Swiss francs when you arrive at a reception centre you are required to give up these financial assets in return for a receipt.”

Stefan Frey, from refugee aid group Schweizerische Flüchtlingshilfe, was quoted as saying: “This is undignified ... This has to change.”

Swiss authorities rejected criticism of the practice, saying it was based on a decades-old law and only applied in a fraction of cases. Authorities also noted that the law called for asylum seekers and refugees to contribute where possible to the cost of processing their applications and providing social assistance. Full story...

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So Bob Geldof, where are your refugees?

Bill aiming to ban child marriages shot down in Pakistan as ‘anti-Islamic’ and ‘blasphemous’

Another move to ban child marriages in Pakistan has fallen at the first hurdle. The bill to prohibit underage marriages has been withdrawn after the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) declared it un-Islamic.

The ruling party lawmaker, who moved the bill, withdrew her proposal on Thursday following staunch resistance from the council, which advises the legislature whether or not a certain law is Sharia-compliant.

The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony rejected the Child Marriage Restraint (Amendment) Bill 2014 after the CII dubbed it ‘anti-Islamic’ and ‘blasphemous’.

The committee meeting, which was presided over by its Chairman Hafiz Abdul Karim, unanimously rejected the bill on ‘purely religious grounds’. Afterwards, PML-N’s Marvi Memon also withdrew her proposal.

The proposed legislation had recommended harsher punishments for those entering conjugal contracts with minors.

Last week, lawmakers in the Gilgit-Baltistan Assembly had also blocked a bill seeking ban on child marriages over similar concerns. Full story...

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Iranian child bride faces execution for killing the man she was forced to marry...

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Friday, January 15, 2016

Denmark moves to make refugees hand over valuables...

Denmark is poised to pass a law requiring newly arrived refugees to hand over valuables, including gold or jewelry, to help pay for the costs of lodging them. Under the proposal, asylum seekers who enter the country with more than 10,000 kroner, or about $1,450, in assets would have to help finance their stay.

The proposal, which has outraged humanitarian activists and raised the ire of United Nations officials, is the latest in a series of migrant-deterring steps taken recently by Denmark, which once prided itself on its openness to foreigners. The government took out newspaper ads in Lebanon informing would-be asylum seekers that welfare benefits for refugees had been cut in half. Its prime minister warned that the 1951 United Nations treaty governing the rights of refugees might have to be revised. And last week, it imposed temporary controls along its border with Germany.

Critics say the latest measure evokes Europe’s darkest hours, when the Nazis seized valuables from Jews during the Holocaust. The government has amended the bill to exempt from confiscation “objects with sentimental value,” like wedding and engagement rings and family portraits. A vote is scheduled for Jan. 26, and approval with wide cross-party support is expected. Full story...

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Thursday, January 14, 2016

Thailand’s institutionalized slavery...

I recall watching a 1985 American film recently, “The Color Purple” which tells the life of a poor African American woman named Celie Harris. By the time she is 14, she is sexually abused repeatedly by her own father and is later forced to marry a wealthy young local widower who treats her like a slave. The film shows the problems African American women faced during the early 1900s, including poverty, racism, and sexism.

Celie Harris reminds me of the real-life story of a childhood friend of mine named Jaa, whose poverty-stricken mother in Korat, in the northeast of the country, sold her. I was growing up in Thailand when I first met Jaa. She was washing dishes at the kitchen of the home of a grade school friend named Mali.

Looking back, I now realize that Jaa was a child slave. I befriended Jaa because we were close in age. I often questioned why Jaa had to do such tedious housework when girls her age went to school early in the morning, every day.

Defying my friend’s mother, who often told me not to talk to Jaa, I treated her as a friend. I would visit her in her tidy storage room with a torn mattress, which Mali’s mother provided for her. I was not aware then of the issue of child slavery because I was a child myself. Full story...

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Airbnb accused of breaking UK laws by hotel lobbyists...

The global regulatory battle between hospitality industry lobbyists and Airbnb has landed in the UK, where members of parliament have been told almost half of lettings on the US company’s site are illegal.

Professional landlords are accused of using the ‘sharing economy’ to avoid taxes and planning laws by operating “pseudo-hotels” without providing adequate protection for consumers.

The British Hospitality Association (BHA), which lobbies politicians for lower taxes and wages on behalf of its multinational corporate clients, argues sites like Airbnb are made up of large-scale landlords rather than individual homeowners.

BHA CEO Ufi Ibrahim provided evidence to the Business, Innovation, and Skills Committee on Tuesday that estimates 40 percent of home sharing website links for London are professional landlords and half of all listings are for entire properties as opposed to rooms in a host’s home.

Patrick Robinson of Airbnb was also at the hearing and said: “Airbnb is providing more choice to consumers in what is already quite a busy space for tourism accommodation.” Full story...

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The zombie masses of America reach new record for emergency room visits due to walking into traffic while distracted by mobile devices...

Addiction to mobile devices is a growing problem in America. It's gotten to the point where people are so distracted that they will walk right into traffic, fall off train platforms, or even fall right off a cliff.

As Americans plug their entire existence into their mobile devices, they give away the now, sacrificing the present moment, and sometimes sacrificing their lives.

Mobile devices have become the heart, mind and soul of a generation that is infatuated with distraction. Mobile devices are replacing the very spirit of the people, turning the masses into oblivious clones that will walk out into traffic without taking their eyes off their screens.

The devices have become a dark form of hypnosis, bringing people under a digital trance, as reality fades into the background. It's almost as if Americans have given their souls to this meaningless state of nonstop digital existence. It's almost as if the masses have undergone surgery, as if their hearts have been cut out and replaced with computer chips. Gone are the days of authentic connection and heart-based interaction. Eyes are glassed over now, sunken in, as retinas reflect the images of a digital world. Full story...

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Mumbai plans ‘no selfie zones’ after two die in ocean photograph tragedy...

Why you should put down your smartphone and talk to strangers...

Get off the phone...

I forgot my phone...