Catching up

I went on a wonderful vacation to Europe and obviously took a break from the blog.  many of these news stories will be a bit dated by now, but I am posting them anyhow b/c not everyone pays attention to some of these places, but their stories should be known nonetheless.  more and more in this world, ignorance is no excuse for the things that go on with hardly a word spoken against them.

Also, the 'm' key no longer works on my computer, which is truly delightful, believe me.

Now *that* is an unexpected twist

University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier, said to be in a coma, released from North Korea.  A plane carrying University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier, who had been detained in North Korea for 17 months and was in a coma for most of it, touched down in Cincinnati on Tuesday night.  Washington Post PS: It did not end well.

Even worse than being in an IDP camp -- getting poisoned by your food ration in an IDP camp

A mass food poisoning at a camp for the displaced near the northern city of Mosul killed at least two people and sickened over 700, Iraq's health minister said Tuesday, becoming the latest battleground in the crisis engulfing Qatar and a string of other Arab nations.  A woman and a girl died and at least 200 people were rushed from the desert tent camp to hospitals in the nearby city of Irbil.  An Iraqi lawmaker who visited the camp overnight and Saudi state television quickly accused a charity from Qatar of providing the tainted food. The claims could not be independently confirmed and Qatari officials did not immediately answer calls for comment.  Associated Press

What is this, Soviet Russia?!?...Oh, wait...

Vladimir Putin's most vocal critic, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has been arrested after he urged his supporters to join him at anti-corruption protests across Russia on Monday (12 June), a national holiday.  Navalny, who hopes to unseat Putin in next year's elections, was detained at home ahead of the demonstrations, his wife said on Twitter.  "Alexei has been arrested in the entrance to our block of flats," Yuliya Navalny wrote, adding "our plans haven't changed."  She also shared a photo of several police cars waiting outside their apartment.  IBT The United States, the European Union, and human rights groups have condemned the detention of hundreds of peaceful protesters across Russia.  An estimated 1,560 supporters of opposition leader Aleksei Navalny were detained during the June 12 anticorruption demonstrations in cities and towns nationwide, including 866 detained in Moscow and 548 detained in St. Petersburg.  Radio Free Europe

Day late, dollar short, blah blah...

A suspected North Korean drone photographed a U.S. missile defense system in South Korea before it crashed near the border where it was found last week, Seoul's Defense Ministry said Tuesday.  The finding came four days after North Korea tested new anti-ship missiles in a continuation of weapons launches that have complicated new South Korean President Moon Jae-in's push to improve ties frayed over the North's nuclear ambitions.  Associated Press

Perhaps it is no London tower fire, but it is still unacceptable

An eight-story building has collapsed in a low-income area of Nairobi and 10 people are missing, witnesses and officials in Kenya said Tuesday.  The collapse occurred late Monday night, Nairobi Police Chief Japheth Koome said.  Associated Press

Can we just leave children out of this nonsense?

A top Boko Haram commander was among many insurgents killed on Sunday as soldiers fought to rescue nine children being trained at a secret camp, a Nigerian official said on Monday.  Soldiers on their way to an Islamic extremist camp in Jarawa village in Borno State, ran into an ambush by Boko Haram fighters, said Nigerian army spokesperson Brigadier General Sani Usman.  News 24

Yeah, okay.

The UN envoy for Central African Republic says the country is "on a path to incremental peace" that will be achieved if United Nations peacekeepers keep responding strongly against armed groups.  But Parfait Onanga-Anyanga told the Security Council on Monday an upsurge in violence that erupted in May in several areas involving rival groups was very worrying, including "systematic aggression against peacekeepers".  News 24

That's cool, but not sure we should all know that

Israeli government spies hacked into the operations of Islamic State bomb makers to discover they were developing a laptop computer bomb to blow up a commercial aircraft, the New York Times reported Monday.  The Times said the work by Israeli cyber operators was a rare success of western intelligence against the constantly evolving, encryption-protected and social-media-driven cyber operations of the extremist group.  Security Week

Prolly just a flaming bag of excrement

S. Korea fires shots at N. Korea after object crosses border.  South Korea fired warning shots Tuesday after an unidentified object flew south from rival North Korea, Seoul’s military said. Local media said it may have been a North Korean military drone.  South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the military broadcast a warning to North Korea in response to the object before firing the warning shots. It said the military also bolstered its air surveillance. The statement provided no other details.  WTOP 

'Scrambling' implies some level of activity -- unlikely in this case

UN Security Council Scrambles to Address Latest N. Korean Missile Launch.The United Nations Security Council has called another emergency session to address North Korea's latest ballistic missile test. Uruguay's mission to the world body said the meeting, the second in as many weeks, is set for Tuesday and was requested by the United States, South Korea and Japan. South Korean analysts said the latest missile was fired Sunday afternoon from South Pyeongan province and traveled about 500 kilometers before landing in the Sea of Japan.A South Korean joint chiefs statement said, "Our military is closely monitoring signs for additional provocation by the North Korean military and we are keeping a full military readiness." A separate statement from the U.S. Pacific Command highlighted "our ironclad commitment to the security of our allies in the Republic of Korea and Japan." VOA

This happened right outside of Washington, DC, 'center of the free world'

FBI investigating U. Md. Fatal stabbing as possible hate crime.  Investigators believe race could be the key motivator in the death of 23-year-old Richard Collins III, who is a black student from Bowie State University.  Sean Christopher Urbanski, 22, of Severna Park, Maryland, has been charged with first- and second-degree murder in the case. Urbanski, who is white, is a member of a white supremacist Facebook group, according to University of Maryland police Chief David Mitchell.  WTOP

Maybe he forgot which country he was in?

Mexican mob attacks Russian over insults in Cancun.  A Russian man has been put into protective custody in hospital after he was attacked by a crowd of angry Mexicans in Cancun, authorities say.  Police rescued Aleksei Makeev, 42, on Friday night after the crowd stormed his apartment in the Caribbean resort.  The man had allegedly posted disparaging and insulting remarks about local people in videos on social media.  BBC

This is how all fair and transparent trials start, right?

Trial opens in Turkey against 221 suspected coup instigators.  The trial has opened in Turkey’s capital against the alleged instigators of last summer’s failed military coup.  A total of 221 people, including 27 ex-generals, went on trial on Ankara’s outskirts Monday at a courthouse built especially to try suspects of the failed July 15 uprising. They face life imprisonment.  The suspects were forced to march along a lane to the courthouse, as pro-government protesters called for the death penalty to be reinstated.  WTOP

Land of Smiles...most of the time

Police say bomb at Thai hospital wounds more than 20 people.  A bomb exploded at an army-run hospital in Bangkok on Monday, the third anniversary of a military coup, and authorities said more than 20 people were wounded.  Investigators found remnants of batteries and wires at the scene of the blast on the ground floor of Phramongkutklao Hospital, said Srivara Ransibrahmanakul, the deputy national police chief.   WTOP

Nothing like a little compassion

Australia Game is up for ‘fake refugees.’  Australia Sunday gave 7,500 boatpeople until October to file a claim proving they are genuine refugees or be kicked out, declaring the "game is up" for illegal arrivals ripping off taxpayers.  Before the conservatives took power and adopted a tough line on the issue in 2013, an estimated 50,000 asylum-seekers flooded into Australia on more than 800 boats over the previous five years.  Hundreds more, many from war-torn Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Middle East, died at sea during the treacherous journey.  Daily Times

Could be worse!

A fourth person is believed to have died of Ebola in an outbreak of the disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization said on Sunday.  The WHO first confirmed the discovery of the new outbreak on May 12, after a 39-year-old man who had died on his way to the hospital in a remote region of Bas-Uele province in late April was confirmed to have suffered from the deadly disease.  Since then, there have been 37 suspected cases, Eugene Kabambi, the WHO’s spokesman in Congo, told Reuters on Sunday. Four of those 37 cases have resulted in death and two have been confirmed as Ebola, another two cases, including the latest death, are considered probable, the spokesman added.  Huff Post

Bet ya didn't know about this

Angolan apartheid troops battle to survive in SA.  Angolan soldiers recruited by South Africa's apartheid government to fight against their homeland now live in squalor, forgotten and unwanted.  Without healthcare, jobs or basic services, at least 3 000 Angolan-born men call home the town of Pomfret on the edge of the Kalahari Desert.   News24

Too much for our feeble brains

Passwords have become a necessity in today’s world and are relied upon by a variety of different services to ensure safe and secure access.  However, users complain about the burden of coming up with complex passwords, and the even bigger challenge of remembering multiple passwords.  What’s more, passwords can be an expensive burden for enterprises of all sizes. According to the Gartner Group, between 20% to 50% of all help desk calls are for password resets, while Forrester Research states that the average help desk labor cost for a single password reset is about $70.  Info Security Magazine

Yet another

Mexican drug trade reporter Javier Valdez killed.  Mexican journalist Javier Valdez, known for his award-winning coverage of the drug trade, has been shot dead.  Unidentified attackers opened fire on him on Monday in Culiacan city in the north-western state of Sinaloa, where he lived and worked.  Valdez, 50, received the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in 2011 for his work.   BBC

Best case scenario: They bombed themselves

Azerbaijan hits Armenian missile system in Nagorno-Karabakh.  Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry says it has destroyed an Armenian air defense missile system in Nagorno-Karabakh.  Nagorno-Karabakh is officially part of Azerbaijan, but since a separatist war ended in 1994 it has been under the control of forces that claim to be local ethnic Armenians but that Azerbaijan claims include regular Armenian military. Efforts to negotiate a settlement have failed, and frequent clashes have continued.  WTOP

Seems more effective than jumping people in airports

Expert finds more possible North Korea links to cyberattack.  A South Korean cybersecurity expert said Tuesday there is more circumstantial evidence that North Korea may be behind the global “ransomware” attack: the way the hackers took hostage computers and servers across the world was similar to previous cyberattacks attributed to North Korea.  WTOP 

'Ooooo, I'm so scared.'

‘This is a democracy’: Int’l court may be next for Duterte.   Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte acknowledged Tuesday that allegations he induced extrajudicial killings in his war on drugs could be raised to the International Criminal Court after an impeachment case failed in the House of Representatives.  “Yeah, he can go ahead. He is free to do it. This is a democracy,” Duterte said in reaction to a lawmaker saying he was considering bringing a case against the Philippine leader to the court in The Hague, Netherlands. WTOP

Hurting the helpers

Four Malian Red Cross employees have been kidnapped in the country's restive centre, the organization said Monday, while a local official said negotiations were underway for their release. The Red Cross briefly suspended operations in the northern city of Kidal following a burglary at its offices last month, and has suffered kidnappings of its staff in the past by jihadist groups. "Colleagues of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Red Cross Mali were kidnapped in the Tenekou area, Mopti region, on Sunday May 14 around 7pm," a Red Cross Facebook post said.  AFP