Tuesday, September 2, 2014
RUSSIA TO REVIEW MILITARY DOCTRINE AGAINST NATO
Moscow will review its military doctrine in the face of NATO expansion to countries that border Russia. Mikhail Popov, a Russian National Security Council official, said the military alliance was “one of the external military threats,” RT reports. This comes after the announcement yesterday that NATO planned to deploy a 4,000-men “spearhead” in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states as a response to “to Russia’s aggressive behavior,” The Guardian quoted officials as saying.
At least half a million people have had to flee their homes since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, including 260,000 displaced inside the country, according to the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR. Its spokesman added that another 260,000 are believed to have sought asylum in Russia. Read more from AFP.
ISIS ACCUSED OF “ETHNIC CLEANSING”
Citing “hair-raising accounts” from survivors, a new report from Amnesty International says the group has uncovered evidence indicating that ISIS fighters had launched a “systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in northern Iraq” against ethnic and religious minorities. The NGO also warns that “hundreds, possibly thousands” of Yezidi women and children have been abducted from the Sinjar region. The report’s release Tuesday follows the UN’s decision to send investigators to Iraq to examine the crimes committed by ISIS.
FIRE THROAT
Ecuador volcano Tunguharua, a.k.a. “Throat of Fire,” erupts.
U.S. STRIKES ISLAMIST LEADER IN SOMALIA
The Pentagon announced the U.S. had carried air strikes in Somalia against leaders of the al-Qaeda-linked al -Shabab group, with at least four missiles fired by drones, according to Voice Of America. The Pentagon spokesman said they were “assessing the results” and did not specify whether the targets had been killed. The Washington Post reports that one of the main targets may have been Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr, the Islamist group’s primary leader and alleged mastermind of the attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi a year ago.
WORLDCRUNCH-TO-GO
Not the same imminent threat as Vladimir Putin, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is posing a bold challenge to the very idea of Western democracy. A speech this summer in Romania that flew below the radar may be his blueprint for dismantling the status quo. “According to Orban, Hungary must turn towards societies that are “not Western, not liberal, that are not liberal democracies in fact, maybe not democracies at all.” Liberal democrats are not capable of “protecting the necessary public assets for the self-preservation of the nation” and the “interests of people that must be seen as being closely linked to the life of the community, the life of the nation.”
Read the full article, courtesy of Die Welt/Worldcrunch: Viktor Orban’s Assault On Democracy Quietly Got Much Scarier This Summer.
BY THE NUMBERS
In Pyongyang, a hamburger sells for 10,000 North Korean won — $76, i.e. three to five times an average worker’s monthly wage.
HONG KONG CRACKS DOWN ON PRO-DEMOCRACY PROTESTERS
At least 22 pro-democracy demonstrators were arrested by the Hong Kong police amid protests over China’s controversial decision to approve the candidates prior to the 2017 election, AFP reports. That election was supposed to be the first in which Hong Kong voters would directly choose their leader, but Beijing’s move has sparked calls to occupy the city’s financial district. A protest leader however told Bloomberg that the support for the protest was smaller than expected “because of the very pragmatic thinking of Hong Kong people.”
FUKUSHIMA WORKERS TO SUE TEPCO
Four workers employed to decommission the reactors at Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant Fukushima will file a lawsuit against the plant’s operator TEPCO to obtain the payment of millions of yen in “dangerous work” benefits, The Japan Times reports. The four men, of whom two are still working at the plant, are demanding 91 million yen ($870,000).
MY GRAND-PÈRE’S WORLD
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VERBATIM
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has urged the country’s clerics to be more tolerant of the Internet and new technologies.“We cannot close the gates of the world to our younger generation,” he said.
THE CASE OF THE MISSING WATER
A lack of water due to a short hose pipe might have just given archaeologists the answer to a very old question: Did Stonehenge use to be a complete circle?
