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An Egyptian court has handed down death sentences to seven people convicted of carrying out attacks that killed 11 policemen in 2016. The Cairo Criminal Court on Monday also sentenced 18 others to 10-15 years in prison for the same charges. The charg…
November 25, 2019Read More
Health investigators in the state suspect norovirus is responsible for hundreds of cases of a gastrointestinal illness. One school district has already closed, and another may soon follow.
November 25, 2019Read More
A second leak of secret Chinese Communist Party (CCP) documents has revealed details of how over one million detainees in China are indoctrinated, controlled and punished in a huge network of internment camps. The papers, dated to 2017 and leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), have been dubbed The China Cables and feature instructions to “never allow escapes” from the camps. The venues, which in 2018 Beijing claimed did not exist then said were education centres, are populated mainly by Muslim members of ethnic minorities who have not been charged with crimes. The leak came a week after a different trove of CCP documents related to China’s Muslim crackdown was revealed. Both caches provide evidence that the CCP is orchestrating a widespread campaign of brainwashing and human rights abuse against Muslims, mainly in the country’s vast western Xinjiang province. The ICIJ said the documents it acquired marked the “first leak of a classified Chinese government document revealing the inner workings of the camps, the severity of conditions behind the fences, and the dehumanising instructions regulating inmates’ mundane daily routines.” Some of the newly-revealed documents are from an internment camp instruction manual issued by Xinjiang security authorities. One order in them is for staff to “strictly manage door locks and keys – dormitory doors, corridors doors and floor doors must be double locked, and must be locked immediately after being opened and closed.” According to Beijing the venues were set up as part of a crackdown on separatist terrorism stemming from Xinjiang, which is home to around 11 million members of the mainly Muslim Uighur ethnic group. Internees undergo indoctrination to denounce religion and show loyalty to the CCP and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Escapees have reported torture and rape occurring in the camps. The documents showed how internees were regularly tested on subjects including mandarin language skills, and only allowed to leave once they gained satisfactory scores. Scores were linked to “rewards, punishments and family visits”, and staff were told to “evaluate and resolve students’ ideological problems and abnormal emotions at all times.” They were also required to “promote the repentance and confession of the students for them to understand deeply the illegal, criminal and dangerous nature of their past behaviour.” Chinese officials failing to strictly follow internment camp guidelines have faced severe consequences. The documents leaked to the New York Times showed that 12,000 officials were investigating for not implementing the rules with enough vigour. Wang Yongzhi, an official in charge of the crackdown in an area of Xinjiang called Yarkand, was investigated and disappeared from public view after quietly releasing 7,000 inmates from the system. His grovelling confession, likely given under duress, was distributed as a warning to other officials. He ‘confessed’: “I undercut, acted selectively and made my own adjustments, believing that rounding up so many people would knowingly fan conflict and deepen resentment… without approval and initiative, I broke the rules.” Details about how internees, who can be sent to camps for behaviour such as using non-approved messaging apps or collecting money for mosques, were isolated from loved ones were also revealed. It was decreed that they were allowed a phone call with family “at least once a week”, but they “may not contact the outside world apart from during prescribed activities.” Adrian Zenz, senior fellow in China studies at Washington DC’s Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, said of the newly-leaked papers: “It really shows that from the onset, the Chinese government had a plan for how to secure the vocational training centres, how to lock in the ‘students’ into their dorms, how to keep them there for at least one year.” When asked about The China Cables on Monday Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said: “Some media’s conspiracy to slander China’s terrorist effort won’t succeed. Our most powerful counterattack is to maintain solidarity among ethnic groups and a peaceful society.” The documents feature a section named “Strict secrecy”, which included the order: “It is necessary to strengthen the staff’s awareness of staying secret.”
November 25, 2019Read More
This Week in Mid-Major: Meet Albany’s point guard/firefighter, Missouri State’s tough schedule and the updated… The Athletic
November 25, 2019Read More
A majority of European Union lawmakers were hoping to symbolically declare a “climate emergency” on Monday, a week before a U.N. climate conference in Madrid. Members of the European Parliament said the declaration would increase pressure on the incom…
November 25, 2019Read More
Videos have begun emerging of Iran’s brutal crackdown on protesters after the internet was restored following a week-long government-imposed blackout. The protests began on November 15 after a petrol price hike was announced. Demonstrations quickly grew into a wave of anti-government unrest that saw at least 100 banks and dozens of buildings torched in the worst violence since Iran put down a “Green Revolution” in 2009. In one video, machine gun fire answers rock-throwing protesters. In others, motorcycle-riding Revolutionary Guard volunteers chase after demonstrators, while in a different location plainclothes security forces grab, beat and drag a man off the street. Another video in Kermanshah, some 260 miles southwest of Tehran, purportedly shows security forces wearing civilian clothes and wielding nightsticks, dragging one man off by the hair of his head. The detained man falls at one point. An Iranian protester shows the bullets shot by security forces during protests in Tehran, Iran Credit: REX “Look, (the agents) wear styles like the youth,” one man off-camera says, swearing at them. Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president, claimed on Thursday that uprising had been contained. With the internet down, it was difficult to immediately prove otherwise. Since the blackout was eased over the weekend, however, a flood of videos have been published on social media sites. Iran, which has a highly developed and isolated domestic internet network, was for nearly a week completely shut off from the world. The Iranian government can throttle or block access because there are just two principal gateways, known as exchanges, that connect the country to the global internet, and the government controls both. This is what’s been happening in Iran during the near-total internet shutdown. Security forces have shot and killed at least 106 people with complete impunity in nationwide protests. This is what they don’t want the rest of the world to see. pic.twitter.com/M4Jw17Xj1g— Amnesty International (@amnesty) November 21, 2019 While other authoritarian regimes have used the tactic to stifle dissent, Iran’s shutdown is unprecedented in its scale. Amin Sabeti, a researcher with digital security NGO Digital Impact Lab, said that no other shutdown has been implemented across such a large country, for such a length of time, and been so effective in preventing the dissemination of information. Citing recent shutdowns, Mr Sabeti explained: “In Kashmir, Iraq or Sudan, you could still find journalists, they could report back – for instance from the BBC. For Iran it wasn’t the case.” On Iranian state TV, officials allege that foreign conspiracies and exile groups instigated the unrest. There is little mention of the demonstrations in any of Iran’s main newspaper. Iran has used every opportunity to blame its protests on foreign powers. A spokesman for the Revolutionary Guards Corps, the elite force responsible for national security, said that several leaders of the unrest with dual citizenship and ties to foreign governments had been arrested. BREAKING: This horrific video was leaked now shows Police of Iran’s Islamic Regime constantly shooting at an injured & unarmed protester & then beating him with metal bar in-order to arrest him during the second day of IranProtests in Gorgan! The protester died later. pic.twitter.com/4yljMYgSG4— Babak Taghvaee (@BabakTaghvaee) November 24, 2019 The semi-official Fars News Agency reported that rioters had looted and burned chain stores in a number of Tehran suburbs, and that some had “received $60 for each place set on fire.” Amnesty International last week said at least 100 have been killed, but Iran analysts said that with access to the country limited the number was likely to be conservative. Reports have also emerged that wounded and dead protests are being removed by Iranian intelligence officers to hide the true scale of Tehran’s crackdown. One of the videos published online over the weekend appeared to show security forces unarmed protesters in close range in the head before carrying their corpses into trucks.
November 25, 2019Read More
The director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has expressed confidence in a report into a deadly attack in Syria last year that has been called into question by a leaked letter. Fernando Arias used his opening statem…
November 25, 2019Read More
Collins is the defending regional champion and has a new coach in Jeff Rogers; Titans senior guard Olivia Federle is one of the region’s best
November 25, 2019Read More
The Times asked the presidential candidates for their views on codifying Roe v. Wade, over-the-counter abortion pills and other policies.
November 25, 2019Read More
The Democratic presidential candidates don’t want to simply defend abortion rights. They want to go on offense.
November 25, 2019Read More
Pope Francis appealed on Monday to world leaders to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used again, a day after he visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only cities ever to be hit by atomic bombs. Nuclear disarmament has been a key theme of the pope’s…
November 25, 2019Read More
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