Not on the same page

Pakistan's military chief is sharply criticizing a suspected U.S. drone strike that killed two key Haqqani network commanders in northwestern Pakistan earlier this week.  Pakistani security sources said Tuesday's pre-dawn missile attack destroyed a suspected militant hideout in the remote district of Hangu.  VOA  Meanwhile.... U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. administration was reviewing all policy options and aid for Pakistan, as House lawmakers criticized the U.S approach toward Islamabad.  Tillerson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on June 14 that Washington had "very complex relations with Pakistan."  Radio Free Europe

Coyotes= 'Social Service Providers'

Salvadoran ‘Coyote’: Smuggling of migrants is “social work”  A Coyote does an “honest job similar to an NGO, but charging a fee because he is a businessman” said a 32 year-old Salvadoran who has been engaged in the smuggling of migrants from El Salvador to the United States for four years.  MSN  (en espanol)

(Not so) Universal human rights

Bahrain lawyer arrested for suing over Qatar blockade.  A prominent human rights lawyer in Bahrain has been arrested after launching a lawsuit against the government over its restrictions imposed on neighboring Qatar.  Issa Faraj Arhama al-Burshaid was detained after challenging Manama's sanctions, which include blocking Qataris from staying in the country along with other economic penalties.  Al Jazeera

Building like it's 1099?

A deadly night-time fire raced through a 24-story apartment tower in London early Wednesday, killing at least six people and injuring dozens more. Some desperate residents threw their children from high windows, hoping someone on the ground would catch them.  Associated Press

Let me consult my dictionary...

Ramadan: Protests after Tunisia jails five men for 'indecency' after they ate during day.  Dozens of people have gathered in the capital of Tunisia to protest for the right not to fast during Ramadan, following the arrests of several abstainers.  Demonstrators from the group Mouch Bessif, meaning ‘not against our will’ in Arabic, held a peaceful protest in the central square in Tunis, asking the country’s government to relax its stance on those who decline to observe the fast.  Independent UK

Predictable. Also, Mother Mushroom is a great name.

Me Nam, or Mother Mushroom, the Vietnamese blogger who received the International Women of Courage Award from first lady Melania Trump in March has been formally charged by the Hanoi government for the very activities that earned her the honor, VOA Vietnamese reported.  The government charged Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, aka Mother Mushroom, with three criminal counts under Article 88 — "conducting propaganda against the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam."  VOA

And Duterte says...?

U.S. troops are on the ground near Marawi City in the southern Philippines, but are not involved in fighting Islamist militants who have held parts of the city for more than three weeks, a Philippines military spokesman said on Wednesday.  The Philippines military has previously said the United States was providing technical assistance to end the occupation of parts of Marawi City by fighters allied to the Islamic State group, but it had no boots on the ground.  Reuters

No, sorry -- even foreign diplomats may not exploit and beat their hired help in the US

Bangladesh said on Wednesday the arrest of one of its diplomats in New York on charges of labor trafficking and assault appeared to be a violation of an international treaty on the treatment of diplomats.  Mohammad Shahedul Islam, the deputy consul general of Bangladesh Consulate General in New York was indicted on Monday on charges of labor trafficking and assault for forcing his domestic helper to work without pay through threats and intimidation.  Channel News Asia

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

When you use mercenaries, er, 'peacekeepers' from countries with human rights issues, this can't be a surprise

Ugandan troops face sexual abuse charges in central Africa.   Human Rights Watch says Ugandan soldiers in Central African Republic have sexually exploited or abused at least 13 women and girls since 2015, including at least one rape.  The rights group said in a report on Monday that two of the women were girls when the abuse happened.   News24

Next, the robots take over

Officials across the globe scrambled over the weekend to catch the culprits behind a massive ransomware worm that disrupted operations at car factories, hospitals, shops and schools, while Microsoft on Sunday pinned blame on the U.S. government for not disclosing more software vulnerabilities.  Cyber security experts said the spread of the worm dubbed WannaCry - "ransomware" that locked up more than 200,000 computers in more than 150 countries - had slowed but that the respite might only be brief amid fears new versions of the worm will strike.  Reuters 

No idea what this means, but it sounds so intriguing!

Security experts are investigating the possibility of a connection between the recent spate of WannaCry ransomware attacks and the notorious Lazarus Group, which has been linked to North Korea.  Google researcher Neel Mehta posted an intriguing message to Twitter yesterday: a string of numbers and letters followed by #WannaCryptAttribution.  Kaspersky Lab then confirmed in a blog post that the tweet in question is of two samples with shared code: a WannaCry cryptor sample from February 2017 which looks like a very early variant and a Lazarus Group sample from February 2015.  Info Security Magazine

Did they think this would be less obvious?

A Kazakh journalist and civic activist has been hospitalized after he was reportedly stabbed in the stomach before he planned to meet European officials to discuss media freedoms.  A nurse at a hospital in the southern Kazakh city of Shu told RFE/RL on May 14 that Ramazan Yesergepov, the former editor in chief of the independent newspaper Alma-Ata Info, was in serious but stable condition after arriving in the morning.  Radio Free Europe

It's like perpetual 1922 down there...

Italian mafia have infiltrated one of Europe's largest reception centers for migrants, creaming off state funds that were earmarked for the care of new arrivals, prosecutors said on Monday.  Police arrested 68 people in early morning raids in the southern toe of Italy, including a priest and the head of a Roman Catholic association that runs the Sant'Anna Cara immigrant center in the town of Isola Capo Rizzuto.  Reuters

You can't defend the indefensible, but there are notes of truth in madness

​Nuon Chea Defense Goes On Attack in Closing Brief   The second trial of the two highest-ranking surviving Khmer Rouge leaders was a biased, “disheartening sham” rife with political interference that stood in the way of ascertaining the truth, argues the closing brief in the defense of Nuon Chea, the regime’s second-in-command.  Scathing, fierce and at times sarcastic, the mammoth 550-page confidential document, which The Cambodia Daily obtained this week, lambasts the court for what it describes as its “blatant disinterest in the truth” and lets few of those connected to the prosecution off the hook.   Cambodia Daily​

Cooperation DOES work, go figure

11 arrested in Va. after nationwide anti-gang operation led by ICE. A recent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement anti-gang operation resulted in over a thousand arrests nationwide, and some were in Virginia. Eleven members of MS-13 were arrested at a Falls Church residence on April 26 with the help of Fairfax County police. Investigators had been watching the house, they said, after reports that it was allegedly being used for sex trafficking. Two people in the home had outstanding deportation orders, officials said. Nationwide, the operation by ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations targeted gang members and associates involved in such activity as drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, human smuggling and sex trafficking, and murder and racketeering. It netted a total of 1,378 arrested from March 26 to May 6 and brought in not only members of MS-13, but also members of the Bloods, Crips and Sureños gangs.  WTOP

The world's a little busy right now, simmer down

Lebanese Hezbollah said on Thursday that any future conflict between the Shi'ite group and Israel could take place inside Israeli territory, as tensions rise between the arch foes. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, also said in a speech televised live that the group was dismantling all its military positions along Lebanon's eastern border with Syria, and this area would now be patrolled just by the Lebanese army. Hezbollah, an ally of Tehran and Damascus, has been fighting for years in Syria's conflict against an array of rebels and Sunni Islamist fighters. The Syrian conflict has also been an arena where tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have ramped up. Recent Israeli air strikes against Hezbollah targets in Syria appeared to mark a more assertive stance toward the group.  Reuters

Let's not count our chickens just yet...

Mosul battle will be finished within days - Iraqi army chief. Iraqi security forces are only days away from completing the operation to recapture Mosul from so-called Islamic State, the army's chief of staff says. Lt Gen Othman al-Ghanimi told the BBC he hoped the jihadist group would be defeated in the city before the Islamic holy month of Ramadan begins on 26 May. Recent gains in the north meant the remaining militants were being squeezed into an ever smaller area, he added.  Mosul fell to IS in 2014 and is its last major urban stronghold in Iraq. Pro-government forces launched a major offensive to retake the city in October with the support of US-led coalition air strikes. BBC

One of too many

A human rights activist who represented more than 600 families affected by drug-related violence in San Fernando, a city in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, was killed by gunmen, a state official told EFE on Thursday.  Miriam Rodriguez Martinez was gunned down around 10:15 pm Wednesday at her home in the southern section of San Fernando, a Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office spokesman said.  The gunmen called Rodriguez by name and then opened fire, hitting her about 12 times, the AG’s office spokesman said.  Latin American Herald Tribune

Now let's work on 'constructive' communication

North Korea sends rare letter of protest over new U.S. sanctions. North Korea sent a rare letter of protest to the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday warning that a new package of tougher sanctions would only spur its development of nuclear weapons, North Korea's state media reported. The protest was lodged by the recently revived Foreign Affairs Committee of North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly, which said the U.S. House of Representatives was "obsessed" with a sense of disapproval and warned it of dire consequences. "The U.S. House of Representatives should think twice," the committee said in its letter, a copy of which was published by the KCNA state news agency. Reuters

Rule of law problem, human rights problem, absolute travesty problem -- take your pick

Anti-Muslim Violence in Myanmar is ‘Rule of Law’ Problem. Calling Myanmar “a new democracy,” the U.S. ambassador to Myanmar told VOA the latest manifestation of increasing anti-Muslim sentiment in the Southeast Asian nation is a problem rooted in “the rule of law.” The early morning confrontation Wednesday began late Tuesday night when a group of nationalists complained to police that several Rohingya were illegally hiding in a house in a Yangon neighborhood, according to local press accounts. Police who investigated refused to arrest the men, saying they were local, non-Rohingya Muslims allowed to be there. VOA

Off the GD rails

The leader of a powerful Indonesian Islamist organization that led the push to jail Jakarta's Christian governor has laid out plans for a new, racially charged campaign targeting economic inequality and foreign investment.  In a rare interview, Bachtiar Nasir said the wealth of Indonesia's ethnic Chinese minority was a problem and advocated an affirmative action program for native Indonesians, comments that could stoke tensions already running high in the world's largest Muslim-majority nation.  Reuters

People don't make this choice because it is easy. They make this choice because they have no choice.

​​Seventy per cent of migrants to US suffer violence en route, MSF says  Bertrand Rossier, MSF’s head of mission in Mexico, said: “The unrelenting violence and emotional suffering endured by a significant number of people on the move from the Northern Triangle of Central America is not unlike what is experienced by people in conflict zones where MSF has been working for decades. “Attempts to stem migration by strengthening national borders and increased detention or deportation, as we have seen in Mexico and in the US, ignore a genuine humanitarian crisis and do not curb smuggling and trafficking. These strategies have devastating consequences on the lives and health of people on the move.   MSF    Independent

It's that bad.

South Sudanese refugees are pouring across the border into neighboring Sudan, seeking safety in the country from which South Sudan seceded a few years ago.  Sovereignty was achieved in 2011 after 99 per cent of South Sudanese voted to break away from Sudan following a decades-long war for independence.  Daily Nation

Prolly not.

Somalia's president has called on the international community to lift an arms embargo on his country as government soldiers battle to regain territory from the armed group al-Shabab.  Speaking on Thursday at a Somalia conference held in London and attended by world leaders, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known as Farmajo, said government forces would defeat the al-Qaeda linked group in "a few years" - but troops had to be better equipped.  All Africa

News?

Security situation in Afghanistan likely to get worse: U.S. intel chief. The security situation in Afghanistan will further deteriorate even if there is a modest increase in U.S. military support for the war-torn country, the top U.S. intelligence official said on Thursday, as President Donald Trump's administration weighs sending more forces to Afghanistan.  Afghan army units are pulling back, and in some cases have been forced to abandon more scattered and rural bases, and the government can claim to control or influence only 57 percent of the country, according to U.S. military estimates from earlier this year.  Reuters

Sometimes paranoia is real

Saudis paid for US veteran trips against 9/11 lawsuit law.  After Congress passed a new law allowing Sept. 11 victims’ families to sue Saudi Arabia in U.S. courts, opponents mounted an expensive political campaign, including paying American military veterans to visit Capitol Hill and warn lawmakers about what they said could be unintended consequences.  What few people knew, including some of the recruited veterans themselves, was that Saudi Arabia’s government was largely paying for the effort, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.   WTOP

In 1999, who had money on 2017 for Belgrade as refugee destination? Anyone??

Serbia moves migrants out of Belgrade.  Serbian authorities say they have moved to asylum centers most of the migrants who were staying in parks and abandoned warehouses in downtown Belgrade.  The government’s refugee agency says several hundred migrants have been transported by buses to asylum centers outside the capital. Aid workers at the scene say a few hundred have fled to avoid leaving the city.  WTOP

2 million signatures are hard to ignore...unless you just make them disappear

Several activists have been detained in Moscow as they prepared to submit signatures they have collected to protest arbitrary detentions and torture of gay men in Chechnya.  LGBT activist Igor Yasin said five people were detained Thursday morning outside the Prosecutor General's Office as they brought about 2 million signatures collected to protest the treatment of gay people in Chechnya in Russia's south.  Associated Press

'I believe the children are our future'

The European Union's statistical agency says that more than 63,000 children traveling without adult company applied for asylum last year, more than half of them Afghan and Syrian nationals.  Eurostat said Thursday that 63,300 unaccompanied minors applied for international protection in the 28 EU nations plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.  New York Times

Aging infrastructure: Not just bridges and trains

The collapse of an underground tunnel containing radioactive waste that forced workers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation to shelter in place is the latest incident to raise safety concerns at the sprawling site that made plutonium for nuclear bombs for decades after World War II.  Officials detected no release of radiation Tuesday and no workers were injured, said Randy Bradbury, a spokesman for the Washington state Department of Ecology.  Associated Press

Didn't this just happen a few months ago? Are cool explosive light thingys really worth as much as human life?

At least 14 people were killed and about 30 others injured in an explosion at a fireworks warehouse in Puebla, a state in central Mexico, officials said Tuesday.  The explosion occurred Monday night in San Isidro, a town outside the city of Chilchotla, while dozens of residents were working on preparations for the celebration of the feast day of the town’s patron saint on May 15, the Puebla state government said in a statement.  People in the street fired a rocket that hit a two-story house being used to store fireworks next to San Isidro’s main church, setting off the blast, investigators said.  Latin American Herald Tribune

Tit for tat -- OR, Children know this game

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Tuesday criticized what he called a destabilizing Russian military build-up near Baltic states and officials suggested the United States could deploy Patriot missiles in the region for NATO exercises in the summer.  U.S. allies are jittery ahead of war games by Russia and Belarus in September that could involve up to 100,000 troops and include nuclear weapons training -- the biggest such exercise since 2013.  Reuters

Good luck with that

South Korea's new liberal President Moon Jae-in was sworn in on Wednesday and vowed to immediately tackle the difficult tasks of addressing North Korea's advancing nuclear ambitions and soothing tensions with the United States and China.  Moon said in his first speech as president he would immediately begin efforts to defuse security tensions on the Korean peninsula and negotiate with Washington and Beijing to ease the row over a U.S. missile defense system being deployed in the South.  Reuters

And who comes after?

South Sudan's army chief of staff, who had been proposed for UN sanctions and accused of directing last year's fighting in the capital that left hundreds dead, has been removed from his post, a presidential spokesperson said on Tuesday.  Paul Malong's removal comes after months of government infighting and as ethnic violence in the country's civil war has dramatically increased. Malong has long been considered a hardliner in the government of President Salva Kiir, and diplomats repeatedly have accused him of undermining the country's 2015 peace agreement.  News 24

So many interpretations, so little popular interest...

One of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014 and who had the opportunity to be released on Saturday chose to stay with her husband, the spokesman for Nigeria's president said Tuesday.  Presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said officials originally had been negotiating for the release of 83 girls, but one said she wanted to remain.  

BBC

Quite the logical leap...

Cambodia’s Hun Sen Alludes to Peacekeeper Killings as Warning of Civil War  Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday condemned the killing of four Cambodian United Nations peacekeepers in Central African Republic (CAR) earlier this week, and warned similar violence and civil war is likely to descend on Cambodia if his ruling party loses local elections in June.  Radio Free Asia

Technology and/vs. Democracy

The National Security Agency in Washington picked up the signs. So did Emmanuel Macron’s bare-bones technology team. And mindful of what happened in the American presidential campaign, the team created dozens of false email accounts, complete with phony documents, to confuse the attackers.  The Russians, for their part, were rushed and a bit sloppy, leaving a trail of evidence that was not enough to prove for certain they were working for the government of President Vladimir V. Putin but which strongly suggested they were part of his broader “information warfare” campaign.  New York Times

If you want to fix your 'problems,' you have to start at the beginning

Central American turmoil fuels many illegal US border crossings  United States security is generally tied to the actions of countries like North Korea and Syria. But the American people also have a direct stake in what happens in Central America’s Northern Triangle — Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Being some of our closest neighbors, their fate and prosperity bear immediate repercussions on U.S. interests, from unauthorized migration to the transit of illegal drugs.  The Hill

Sure, a neutral party would be just silly here

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moallem said on Monday his country would reject any UN role in monitoring the implementation of four “de-escalation” zones.  “We do not accept a role for the UN or international forces to monitor the agreement,” Al-Moallem told reporters in Damascus.  Arab News

How retro

Germany arrests second soldier in alleged far-right plot.  German authorities have arrested a second soldier on allegations he was part of a far-right plot to assassinate prominent political figures and blame the attack on refugees.  Federal prosecutor’s spokeswoman Frauke Koehler said that 27-year-old Maximilian T. was arrested in the southwestern city of Kehl on Tuesday on charges of preparing an act of violence.  WTOP PS: This kept going...

Not sure that's a compliment

China’s No. 3 official lauded Macau’s anti-subversion legislation during a visit to the city Tuesday in a message that appeared aimed at nearby Hong Kong. Similar legislation proposed there has stalled because of opposition from pro-democracy supporters.  Zhang Dejiang made the comments to local officials and business leaders in the former Portuguese colony, which has been a special Chinese administrative region since 1999.  Washington Post

If this was test, it got an F

Jakarta's Christian governor was sentenced to two years in jail for blasphemy against Islam on Tuesday, a harsher than expected ruling in a trial that was seen as a test of religious tolerance in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority nation.  The guilty verdict comes amid concern about the growing influence of Islamist groups, who organized mass demonstrations during a tumultuous election campaign that ended with Basuki Tjahaja Purnama losing his bid for another term as governor.  Reuters

Anyone else missing Condee right about now?

Condoleezza Rice's new book, Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom, is a full-throated endorsement of overseas engagement and democracy building. It comes at a time of widespread distrust of government and institutions.  NPR

This is a real problem, but this will be the 210th effort to solve it, so...bonn chans, mezami

A recent report advocates increasing legal assistance for Haiti's prisoners awaiting trial, an initiative that could lessen some of the human and financial losses incurred by the island nation's broken justice system.  The research, published by the Copenhagen Consensus Center's Haiti Priorise project, argues that targeting Haiti's pretrial detention issue could incur financial benefits worth nearly three times the cost of the program.  Insight Crime

EuroVision is very serious business!!

Ukraine has blocked entry to the country of two Russian journalists who were going to Kyiv to cover the Eurovision Song Contest.  Two reporters from the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, both accredited to work at the contest, were detained at the border and eventually turned away and barred from entering Ukraine for three years, according to border service spokesman Oleh Slobodyan.  Radio Free Europe

'Alternative facts' goes global

There has been no new wave of killings prompted by the Philippines' war on drugs, and reports to the contrary are "alternative facts", an ally of President Rodrigo Duterte told the U.N. Human Rights Council on Monday.  Duterte has received widespread condemnation in the West for failing to curtail the killings and address activists' allegations of systematic, state-sponsored murders by police of drug users and dealers, which the authorities reject.  Reuters

People don't make this choice b/c it is easy. They make this choice b/c they have no choice.

In just one county [of Texas], the bodies and remains of more than 500 migrants have been found since 2009.  NYTimes More than 6,000 migrants have been rescued attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe in the past two days, European Union and Italian naval officials say.  The Italian coastguard said about 3,000 people were picked up on May 6, about the same number of migrants rescued the day before.  Radio Free Europe The bodies and remains of more than 550 undocumented migrants have been discovered in Brooks County since January 2009. Those bodies were only those reported to the authorities. “I would say for every one we find, we’re probably missing five,” said Sheriff Urbino Martinez, adding that the scale of the problem often gets overlooked “because it doesn’t happen all in one bulk. It’s spread out through months, years.”  NYTimes