Sunday, January 31, 2016

Teenage vampires...

Saudi Arabia is killing civilians with US bombs...

Saudi Arabia has engaged in war crimes, and the United States is aiding and abetting them by providing the Saudis with military assistance. In September 2015, Saudi aircraft killed 135 wedding celebrants in Yemen. The air strikes have killed 2,800 civilians, including 500 children. Human Rights Watch charges that these bombings “have indiscriminately killed and injured civilians.”

This conflict is part of a regional power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are bombing Yemen in order to defeat the Houthi rebels, who have been resisting government repression for a long time. Iran has been accused of supporting the Houthis, although Iran denies this. Yemen is strategically located on a narrow waterway that links the Gulf of Aden with the Red Sea. Much of the world’s oil passes through this waterway.

A United Nations panel of experts concluded in October 2015 that the Saudi-led coalition had committed “grave violations” of civilians’ human rights. They include indiscriminate attacks; targeting markets, a camp for displaced Yemenis, and humanitarian aid warehouses; and intentionally preventing the delivery of humanitarian assistance. The panel was also concerned that the coalition considered civilian neighborhoods, including Marra and Sadah, as legitimate strike zones. The International Committee of the Red Cross documented 100 attacks on hospitals.

Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions prohibits the targeting of civilians. It provides that parties to a conflict “shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.” Full story...

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The U.S. intervention in Libya was such a smashing success that a sequel is coming...

The immediate aftermath of the NATO bombing of Libya was a time of high gloating. Just as Iraq War advocates pointed to the capture and killing of Saddam Hussein as proof that their war was a success, Libya war advocates pointed to the capture and brutal killing of Muammar el-Qaddafi as proof of their vindication. War advocates such as Anne-Marie Slaughter and Nicholas Kristof were writing columns celebrating their prescience and mocking war opponents as discredited, and the New York Times published a front-page article declaring: “U.S. Tactics in Libya May be a Model for Other Efforts.” It was widely expected that Hillary Clinton, one of the leading advocates for and architects of the bombing campaign, would be regarded as a Foreign Policy Visionary for the grand Libya success: “We came, we saw, he died,” Clinton sociopathically boasted about the mob rape and murder of Qaddafi while guffawing on 60 Minutes.

Since then, Libya — so predictably — has all but completely collapsed, spending years now drowning in instability, anarchy, fractured militia rule, sectarian conflict, and violent extremism. The execution of Saddam Hussein was no vindication of that war nor a sign of improved lives for Iraqis, and the same was true for the mob killing of Qaddafi. As I wrote the day after Qaddafi fled Tripoli and Democratic Party loyalists were prancing around in war victory dances: “I’m genuinely astounded at the pervasive willingness to view what has happened in Libya as some sort of grand triumph even though virtually none of the information needed to make that assessment is known yet, including: how many civilians have died, how much more bloodshed will there be, what will be needed to stabilize that country, and, most of all, what type of regime will replace Qaddafi? … When foreign powers use military force to help remove a tyrannical regime that has ruled for decades, all sorts of chaos, violence, instability, and suffering — along with a slew of unpredictable outcomes — are inevitable.” Full story...

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The blessing and curse of the people who never forget...

For most of us, memory is a kind of scrapbook, a mess of blurred and faded snapshots of our lives. As much as we would like to cling on to our past, even the most poignant moments can be washed away with time.

Ask Nima Veiseh what he was doing for any day in the past 15 years, however, and he will give you the minutiae of the weather, what he was wearing, or even what side of the train he was sitting on his journey to work.

“My memory is like a library of VHS tapes, walk-throughs of every day of my life from waking to sleeping,” he explains.

Veiseh can even put a date on when those reels started recording: 15 December 2000, when he met his first girlfriend at his best friend’s 16th birthday party. He had always had a good memory, but the thrill of young love seems to have shifted a gear in his mind: from now on, he would start recording his whole life in detail. “I could tell you everything about every day after that.” Full story...

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30 years after explosion, Challenger engineer still blames himself...

Thirty years ago, as the nation mourned the loss of seven astronauts on the space shuttle Challenger, Bob Ebeling was steeped in his own deep grief.

The night before the launch, Ebeling and four other engineers at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol had tried to stop the launch. Their managers and NASA overruled them.

That night, he told his wife, Darlene, "It's going to blow up."

When Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, Ebeling and his colleagues sat stunned in a conference room at Thiokol's headquarters outside Brigham City, Utah. They watched the spacecraft explode on a giant television screen and they knew exactly what had happened.

Three weeks later, Ebeling and another engineer separately and anonymously detailed to NPR the first account of that contentious pre-launch meeting. Both were despondent and in tears as they described hours of data review and arguments. The data showed that the rubber seals on the shuttle's booster rockets wouldn't seal properly in cold temperatures and this would be the coldest launch ever. Full story...

Moscow's young homeless seek refuge in sewers...

We had been invited by a group of homeless people to see their 'winter hideout' - the spot where they hunkered down through the long and bitter Russian winter.

But it was difficult to imagine a secret hideout in a part of the city dominated by factories and distribution centres.

The second thought I had, as the wheels of our car slipped and spun in the heavy snow, was "how do they manage to survive at all?"

The temperature was plunging and it was snowing so hard, we could barely see where we were going.

Nonetheless, we saw two young men emerge from the roadside and beckon us towards a little wood, sandwiched between a several walled compounds. We followed the pair down a well-trodden path and wondered what we would find at the end. Full story...

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The power of privacy...

Finally! French act in Altantuya murder case...

The former boss of a French defense company has been indicted in Paris on charges of bribing Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, involving one of the most notorious scandals in Malaysian history, including sex, corruption, murder and political chicanery.

Bernard Baiocco, 72, former president of Thales International Asia (Thint Asia), a unit controlled by the French munitions manufacturer DCN, was indicted on Dec 15. for “active bribery of foreign public officials on people including Najib Razak,” according to Agence France Press, quoting judicial sources.

Najib is enmeshed in yet another monumental scandal in Malaysia today over US$681 million mysteriously deposited in his personal account in AmBank Malaysia in 2013 that has nothing to do with the affair when he was defense minister, although both cases illustrate the depth of corruption that has overtaken Malaysia. At least four questionable deaths, three of which were outright murder, have been linked to various cases involving Najib.

As stories have increasingly tied him to wrongdoing, he has sought to intimidate the domestic press, most of it owned by government-aligned political parties. He has sought vainly to buy up opposition websites and has blocked two of the toughest international critics, Asia Sentinel and Sarawak Report, as well as Medium, a popular blog platform used as a mirror site for opposition publications. Full story...

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How India fell in love with a porn star named Sunny...

Five years ago, Sunny Leone was a moderately successful Canadian porn star. Today she is one of Bollywood’s most in-demand actresses, earning millions of rupees as she fills cinemas, hosts her own television shows and endorses lucrative brands.

Her new film, Mastizaade, opened in around 2,000 cinemas, after its trailer had been viewed a record 13 million times on YouTube. Despite terrible reviews, a sequel is already planned.

India – a country where matrimonial ads placed by parents in newspapers are listed by caste, homosexuality remains illegal, and even public displays of affection are strictly taboo – appears to have fallen in love with a porn star.

 “We never had someone like Sunny Leone before, that’s for sure,” said Prabhat Choudhary, who runs leading Bollywood talent agency Spice PR. Full story...

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Despite abuses, Saudi Arabia aims to recruit 15000 Somali maids...

In Saudi Arabia, employers have a history of abusing foreign domestic workers lured by the promise of well-paid jobs in what former workers described as an exploitation of desperate Africans facing grim choices.

New cases of abuses against Somali domestic workers in Saudi Arabia are still being reported, with employers often beat, and deny food and payments of Somali maids. In some cases male employers rape them in addition to reports of Somali maids who had their eyes gouged out by their employers.

Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda have recently banned their citizens from seeking jobs in Saudi Arabia in a bid to end the exploitation, making domestic workers from Somalia the only alternative left for Saudi employers after most of African and Asians rejected their recruitment request.

Pushing for a new mass recruitment drive, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Labor on Tuesday announced the opening of recruiting operations of domestic workers from Somalia while setting terms and conditions.

According to the Saudi newspaper Arab News, Somali maids would have fulfill conditions set by the ministry as that applicants are acquire to have a certificate from the Somali Ministry of Security stating they have no previous criminal records, besides vaccination certificates against contagious diseases. Full story...

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Friday, January 29, 2016

Stalin 'used secret laboratory to analyse Mao's excrement'

By the sound of things, it was a top secret and rather smelly experiment.

According to Russian newspaper reports, in the 1940s Stalin's secret police had set up a special department to get its hands on people's faeces.

The ambitious aim: to analyse samples of foreign leaders' stools.

In other words, espionage via excrement.

It is former Soviet agent Igor Atamanenko who claims to have uncovered this unusual project, while doing research in the archives of the Russian secret services.

"In those days the Soviets didn't have the kind of listening devices which secret services do today," he told the paper. Full story...

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112-year-old woman puts her age down to smoking 30 cigs a day...

A 112-year-old woman has credited her old age to chain smoking 30 cigarettes a day – for 95 years.

Batuli Lamichhane was born in March 1903 – and took up smoking when she was 17.

She claims it’s her daily habit that has helped her outlive almost everyone else in her village – and her own children.

She said: ‘I dont really care how old I am. But I am old nonetheless. I have seen a lot of things change during my lifetime.’

But despite her age, Batuli continues to be a chain smoker. She smokes as many as 30 cigarettes a day. Full story...

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Indonesian man rides motorbike through streets with 9 passengers...


Is the dreaded Zika virus another giant scam?

Hysteria sells and…

It’s hysteria time again. Let me run it down for you.

This is the word: The dreaded Zika virus! Watch out! It’s carried by mosquitos! It can cause birth defects—babies are born with very small heads and impaired brains!

Here are a few scare headlines that were running on Drudge as of 1/26:

“Brazil sends 200,000 soldiers to stop spread of Zika.”

“Stay away from Rio if you’re pregnant.”

“’Losing battle’ against mosquito.”

“Virus threatening two continents.”

Want more hysteria? The Daily Mail indicates pregnant women are being warned not to travel to 22 countries in Latin America and Africa. Several Zika cases are being reported in Italy, the UK, and Spain. Full story...

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The world of Nigeria's sex-trafficking 'Air Lords'

It's 08:00 in the Catalan Police Headquarters on the outskirts of Barcelona and Xavi Cortes, head of the anti-trafficking unit, waits patiently for his 22 teams to confirm they are in position. Finally, he gives the order.

Two-hundred-and-fifty officers quietly climb out of their police vans. Single file, each team approaches a residential building watched by a few surprised neighbours.

On reaching the door, one of the masked police officers uses his fingers to count down. Three, two, one. The door is knocked down, the silence shattered, the officers rush inside.

The raid results in the arrest of the leaders of a Nigerian-based group running an international sex-trafficking ring in Barcelona. It's known as the Supreme Eiye Confraternity (SEC), or the Air Lords, and 23 people are now behind bars, with European Arrest Warrants issued for those who have left the country. Full story...

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India, Egypt say no thanks to free Internet from Facebook...

Connecting people to the Internet is not easy in this impoverished farming district of wheat and millet fields, where working camels can be glimpsed along roads that curve through the low-slung Aravalli Hills.

So when Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg helicoptered in about a year ago to visit a small computer lab and tout Internet for all, Osama Manzar, director of India’s Digital Empowerment Foundation, was thrilled.

But when Manzar tried Facebook’s limited free Internet service, he was bitterly disappointed. The app, called Free Basics, is a pared-down version of Facebook with other services, such as weather reports and job listings.

“I feel betrayed — not only betrayed, but upset and angry,” Manzar said. “He said we’re going to solve the problem with access and bandwidth. But Facebook is not the Internet.”

Zuckerberg launched his sweeping Internet.org initiative in 2013 as a way to provide 4 billion people in the developing world with Web access, which he sees as a basic human right. Full story...

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The truth about smart cities: ‘In the end, they will destroy democracy'

A woman drives to the outskirts of the city and steps directly on to a train; her electric car then drives itself off to park and recharge. A man has a heart attack in the street; the emergency services send a drone equipped with a defibrillator to arrive crucial minutes before an ambulance can. A family of flying maintenance robots lives atop an apartment block – able to autonomously repair cracks or leaks and clear leaves from the gutters.

Such utopian, urban visions help drive the “smart city” rhetoric that has, for the past decade or so, been promulgated most energetically by big technology, engineering and consulting companies. The movement is predicated on ubiquitous wireless broadband and the embedding of computerised sensors into the urban fabric, so that bike racks and lamp posts, CCTV and traffic lights, as well as geeky home appliances such as internet fridges and remote-controlled heating systems, become part of the so-called “internet of things” (the global market for which is now estimated at $1.7tn). Better living through biochemistry gives way to a dream of better living through data. You can even take an MSc in Smart Cities at University College, London.

Yet there are dystopian critiques, too, of what this smart city vision might mean for the ordinary citizen. The phrase itself has sparked a rhetorical battle between techno-utopianists and postmodern flâneurs: should the city be an optimised panopticon, or a melting pot of cultures and ideas? Full story...

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Malaysia's utterly bonkers corruption scandal, explained...

If your neighbor told you that the Saudi royal family had wired $681 million to his personal bank account and that they expected nothing in return, you'd probably conclude that was not the full story and be left a bit baffled.

This is something like what Malaysians are going through now, after revelations that Saudi royals wired Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak $681 million — with Najib citing the Saudi "donation" as part of his defense in a corruption inquiry.

Sure enough, on Tuesday morning Malaysia's attorney general cleared Najib of any wrongdoing in accepting the funds.

To even begin to follow this saga, you need to see the history of Malaysia's truly strange corruption scandal — which remains very far from resolved. So here's a brief, simple guide to one of the world's wackiest scandals: how it began, what we know, and how it ties into some bigger global issues. Full story...

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Italy claims Google dodged $248 million in taxes...

The Italian finance police believe Google evaded 227 million euros ($247.5 million) in taxes in Italy between 2009 and 2013, investigative sources said on Thursday.

The finance police report was due to be delivered to the Internet giant later in the day and comes amid an increasingly angry debate across Europe over taxation of multinationals who park earnings in low-tax nations.

Asked about the Italian report, a Google spokesperson said: "Google complies with the tax laws in every country where we operate. We are continuing to work with the relevant authorities."

Google's latest figures show it paid 2.2 million euros of tax in Italy in 2014 on revenues of 54.4 million euros generated in the country. Italy's Communications Authority estimates Google's Italian revenues at around 10 times higher. Full story...

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Thursday, January 28, 2016

The privileged world of Thailand's supernatural dolls...

Their name, "luk thep", literally translates as "child angels" and people believe they bring good fortune and they are pampered by their owners as if they were children.

But the privileges lavished upon them have also drawn a backlash and warnings from Thai authorities.

After purchasing a doll, the owner brings it to a monk who conducts a prayer and an anointing ceremony known as "plook sek".

Such prayers are normally used to bless lucky amulets, which are also popular in Thailand, where ancient beliefs in magic are still prevalent.

In the case of "luk thep", it is often seen as a way of animating the doll, where a wandering spirit is invited to inhabit it and give it a soul. Full story...

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George Orwell's 11 tips for proper tea making...

If you look up 'tea' in the first cookery book that comes to hand you will probably find that it is unmentioned; or at most you will find a few lines of sketchy instructions which give no ruling on several of the most important points.
This is curious, not only because tea is one of the main stays of civilization in this country, as well as in Eire, Australia and New Zealand, but because the best manner of making it is the subject of violent disputes.

When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup of tea, I find no fewer than eleven outstanding points. On perhaps two of them there would be pretty general agreement, but at least four others are acutely controversial.

(...)

Lastly, tea—unless one is drinking it in the Russian style—should be drunk without sugar. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tea lover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.

Some people would answer that they don't like tea in itself, that they only drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar to take the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again. Full story...

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3% tax rate? Google accused of playing UK taxpayers for ‘fools’

MPs have launched an inquiry into Britain’s tax arrangements amid allegations that governments have allowed Google to miniscule amounts of corporation tax since 1996. Critics say the internet giant has taken Britons for fools and sullied the name of capitalism in the process.

In the face of mounting criticism over Google’s tax payments in Britain, the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee has confirmed it will examine whether the state’s tax laws require reform.

Although the inquiry is not focused directly on Google, it will investigate Britain’s waning corporate tax base and whether the UK’s tax regulator HMRC is doing enough to clamp down on tax avoidance.

The probe will also seek to uncover whether Britain’s tax regulations are robust enough to cope with an increasingly mezzanine global economy. Full story...

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Denmark named least corrupt country; Somalia, North Korea the most...

Public-sector corruption is still a major problem around the world but more countries are improving than worsening and the United States and United Kingdom have reached their best rankings ever, an anti-corruption watchdog said Wednesday.

Denmark remained at the top of Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, a closely watched global barometer, for the second consecutive year as the country perceived as least corrupt. It scored 91 points out of a possible 100 while North Korea and Somalia remained at the bottom with unchanged scores of 8.

Canada was ranked ninth with 83 points, just ahead of a three-way tie for 10th spot by Germany, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom with 81 points each.

The U.S. rose one spot this year to 16th place with a score of 76, tying with Austria.

The index is based on expert opinions of public sector corruption, looking at a range of factors like whether governmental leaders are held to account or go unpunished for corruption, the perceived prevalence of bribery, and whether public institutions respond to citizens' needs. Full story...

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Gates Foundation accused of 'dangerously skewing' aid priorities by promoting 'corporate globalisation'

They are among the richest people on earth, have won plaudits for their fight to eradicate some of the world’s deadliest and prolific killers, and donated billions to better educate and feed the poorest on the planet.

Despite this, Bill and Melinda Gates are facing calls for their philanthropic Foundation, through which they have donated billions worldwide, to be subject to an international investigation, according to a controversial new report.

Far from a “neutral charitable strategy”, the Gates Foundation is about benefiting big business, especially in agriculture and health, through its “ideological commitment to promote neoliberal economic policies and corporate globalisation,” according to the report published by the campaign group Global Justice. Its influence is “dangerously skewing” aid priorities, the group says.

“The world is being sold a myth that private philanthropy holds many of the solutions to the world’s problems, when in fact it is pushing the world in many wrong directions,” the report claims. The Gates Foundation is “being allowed to speak too loudly, and too many actors in international development are falling into line with the foundation’s misguided priorities.” Full story...

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Corbyn asks David Cameron if ordinary people can pay the same rate of tax as Google...

Jeremy Corbyn has asked David Cameron if ordinary people can pay the same rate of tax as Google.

Corbyn, leader of the opposition, opened Prime Minister's Questions with a request from Geoff, a working man over the age of 30.

"Geoff speaks for millions of people when he says to me, 'Is there a scheme that I can join that has the same rate of tax as Google?'" Corbyn said.

Cameron answered: “What I would say to Geoff is that his taxes are going down under this Government and Google’s taxes are going up under this Government."

Cameron said Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling are to blame for Google's low rate of tax, not him. Corbyn reminded Cameron that he is the Prime Minister currently responsible for addressing taxes. Full story...

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United Nations panel finds evidence that Saudi-led coalition has conducted widespread air strikes against civilian targets in Yemen, in violation of international law...

A United Nations panel investigating the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen has uncovered “widespread and systematic” attacks on civilian targets in violation of international humanitarian law, raising questions over UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia and the role of British military advisers.

The final 51-page report by a panel of experts on Yemen, which was sent to the UN security council last week but had not yet been published, has been obtained by the Guardian.

Human rights groups and the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn – who described the leaked report as disturbing – called for an immediate inquiry and a suspension of arms sales to Saudi pending its outcome.

 David Cameron said he would look at the report but insisted Britain had one of the strictest set of rules governing arms sales almost anywhere in the world, adding that the UK was not directly involved in the Saudi-led airstrikes. Full story...

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Wednesday, January 27, 2016

The caste system has left its mark on Indians’ genomes...

Over 1,500 years ago, the Gupta emperors ruled large parts of India. They helped consolidate the nation, but they also popularized India's caste system, making it socially unacceptable for people to marry outside their castes. Now, a new analysis of genetic variation among contemporary Indians has revealed that this social shift left a distinctive genetic signature behind.

A group of researchers in India conducted this analysis by comparing the genomes of hundreds of Indians from throughout the country. As they write in a paper published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, samples came from "367 unrelated individuals drawn from 18 mainland and two island (Andaman and Nicobar Islands) populations selected to represent geographic, linguistic, and ethnic diversities." Previous studies had suggested that today's Indians came from two ancestral populations, but the new analysis revealed four distinct "haplotypes," or bundles of genetic elements that travel through generations in a package. People with the same haplotypes likely came from the same ancestral groups. The researchers also found a fifth haplotype among people of the Andaman archipelago.

Careful examination of the variations between these haplotypes, compared with haplotypes of other people throughout the world, revealed that India's ancient populations probably came first from Africa. Later waves of settlement came from people who shared genetic similarities with populations in South Central Asia and East Asia. These groups remained genetically distinct, and the linguistic history of India suggests they spoke languages with dramatically different origins. Nevertheless, it appears there was a good deal of intermarriage, which shows up in genomes of people who possess genetic sequences typical of two or more haplotypes.

But then there is a sea change about 1,500 years ago. Full story...

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The Kohistan story: Killing for honour...

Rome's nude statues covered to spare Rouhani's blushes...

As the visit to Europe of the Iranian President got underway on Monday, Italy showed its respect for Islamic traditions by covering up the Capitoline Museum's racier exhibits.

Hassan Rouhani visited the Capitoline Museums with premier Matteo Renzi, having signed contracts worth up to €17 billion ($18.4 billion) on Monday.

And Renzi was clearly keen to avoid offending his new business partner. The nude statues and sculptures in the museum were completely covered by large white boxes, as can be seen in the video below.

 The decision to cover up nudity was seen as a mark of respect for the traditions of the Muslim country, which has only just had its trade sanctions lifted. Full story...

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Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Mutant mosquitoes to be deployed to stop Zika outbreak in Brazil...

A Brazilian town plans to release millions of genetically modified mosquitoes to suppress the wild mosquito population responsible for Zika and Dengue outbreaks.

Genetically modified male mosquitoes were released in parts of Piracicaba city in Southern Brazil as a pilot project in April 2014. Studies have shown that these GM mosquitoes have reduced the wild mosquito population by 82% in areas covered under the pilot project.

The city now plans to expand the program to other neighborhoods. Oxitec, a company that breeds genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes, is opening a factory in Piracicaba to produce millions of genetically modified mosquitoes after getting approval from Brazil's National Biosafety Committee for releases throughout the country. Full story...

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Monday, January 25, 2016

Poor women are subjected to 'bicycle pump' sterilizations by desperate pushers of population control agenda in state-run camps...

Different cultures and different governments don't often look at social and sexual issues the same as Americans do, and that's fine - the world is a diverse place. But some practices by some governments are just grotesque and inhuman, and that includes using unorthodox (and dangerous) methods to carry out a social policy.

Britain's Telegraph newspaper recently published a graphic photo of a team of Indian physicians carrying out a sterilization procedure on a poor woman using a foot pump that was designed to inflate a bicycle tire.

The paper, in its online edition, noted:

Surgeons at a sterilization camp in the village of Banarpal in Odisha state are understood to have used the device to inflate the abdomen of 56 women to make it easier to carry out the operation.

The picture has surfaced just a couple of weeks after reports that 13 women - most presumed to be Indian women - had died in a mass sterilization program in neighboring Chhattisgarh state, where officials there confessed that equipment used by a doctor carrying out the tubectomy procedures was rusty, while medicines he used were contaminated. Full story...

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Saudi Arabia buys 'international silence' about its atrocities in Yemen...

Since March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition has been bombing Yemen after Houthi rebels toppled its government. According to political analyst Catherine Shakdam, the international community turns a blind eye on Riyadh's war crimes in Yemen.

At least 20 people, including rescue workers and an ambulance driver, were killed recently in a series of airstrikes Saudi Arabia carried out on one target in the Yemeni province of Saada.


The "Medecins Sans Frontieres" (Doctors Without Borders) humanitarian-aid organization said a driver of one of its hospitals was killed.

This is not the first time the Saudi-led coalition has carried out a series of airstrikes against one target. The sports events center in the capital Sanaa was destroyed in seven bombardments. The operation was carried out to support the Yemeni government-in-exile in its fight against Houthi rebels.

Coalition representative Ahmad Assiri said the kingdom is not responsible for victims of the war. Full story...

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China's social media search for stolen children...

This image of a three-year-old girl being abducted has been widely shared across Chinese social media. The girl has now been found, but the search sheds light on the country's huge digital campaigns trying to track down tens of thousands of missing children and return them to their parents.

The screengrab from a security camera video went viral last week after it was released by police and published on Weibo, China's answer to Twitter. It shows a woman strolling hand in hand with a young girl - but the woman is not her mother.

The girl had been out walking with her grandfather in Guangdong, in southern China, when a woman approached the pair asking for something to eat. When the grandfather obliged, and went to buy her some food nearby, the woman took the child's hand and disappeared.

"I couldn't find [my granddaughter] and felt like I wanted to throw myself in a river," he later told a Chinese reporter.

When the photo of the abduction appeared the reaction was a mixture of alarm and fury - but few expressed surprise. Full story...

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Thaipusam 2016 Singapore...

Over 80% of engineering graduates in India unemployable...

There seems to be a significant skill gap in the country as 80% of the engineering graduates are "unemployable," says a report, highlighting the need for an upgraded education and training system. .
.
 Educational institutions train millions of youngsters but corporates often complain that they do not get the necessary skill and talent required for a job. .
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According to Aspiring Minds National Employability Report, which is based on a study of more than 1,50,000 engineering students who graduated in 2015 from over 650 colleges, 80% of the them are unemployable.

"Engineering has become the de-facto graduate degree for a large chunk of students today. However, along with improving the education standards, it is quintessential that we evolve our undergraduate programmes to make them more job centric," Aspiring Minds CTO Varun Aggarwal said. .
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 In terms of cities, Delhi continues to produce the highest number of employable engineers, followed by Bengaluru and the western parts of the country, the report said. Full story...

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At 15.6m, India tops list in migrants living in other countries...

In the five-year period from 2010 to 2015, India displaced Russia as the country with the largest diaspora in the world, as per UN data on migrants for 2015. While the UAE, with its job opportunities for all sections of people, tops as the preferred destination for India-born migrants, the US that lets in only highly qualified professional Indians, is today home to nearly 20 lakh people born in India.

Australia, which is on the other corner of the globe, comes high up on the list with 4 lakh Indians. Even tiny Bermuda hasn't escaped the attention of emigrating Indians. Some 500 Indians live there. Between 1990 and 2010, Russia was topping the list of migrants but its diaspora was concentrated in a few countries like Israel..
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 Paradoxically enough, the spike in Indian migration happened after the country's economy moved into a high-growth path. In 2000, India equalled Russia in migrant outflow with 10.8 million each. Between 2000 and 2005, the number of migrants from India dipped by 0.3% but after 2005, the number has been increasing steadily. .
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 Today, a total of 15.6 million people born in India are living across all continents. The rate of migration to foreign countries has increased by half compared to 10 years ago. Full story...

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Disquiet grows over French state of emergency...

When a state of emergency was imposed in France after the November attacks, numb and terror-weary citizens welcomed the show of force.

But a sense of creeping unease over civil liberties has turned to outright opposition in many quarters as French President Francois Hollande indicated this week he would seek to renew the measure for another three months.

The state of emergency was imposed after gunmen and suicide bombers attacked a string of Parisian cafes and restaurants, a concert hall and football stadium, leaving 130 dead and hundreds injured on November 13.

It has led to over 2,500 police raids and hundreds of arrests under emergency policing powers that government wants written into the constitution.

The French Human Rights League (LDH), one of many bodies now questioning the efficacy of the harsher measures, said recently that only four legal procedures relating to terrorism had emerged from the spate of police operations. Full story...

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S Africa girls given student grants to remain virgins...

Women's rights activists have criticised a South African municipality for a scholarship programme that funds studies for young women if they can prove they are virgins.

On Friday, the uThekela municipality, in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), announced that 113 students would receive scholarships to pursue higher education in the country.

Sixteen scholarships were specifically designated for sexually inactive students, as part of a programme called Maiden's Bursary Awards. The programme started in January 2015, but it is unclear how many students were awarded the scholarship in 2015.

Sisonke Msimang, a policy development and advocacy consultant for the Sonke Gender Justice project in Johannesburg, said the municipality's decision was "a terrible idea [that] had so many layers of ridiculousness".

"Being sexually active and seeking an education have nothing to do with each other," Msimang told Al Jazeera. Full story...

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