Six In The Morning

Obama praises Selma ‘heroes’ 50 years after march

      7 hours ago

BBC

US President Barack Obama has marked the 50th anniversary of the Selma civil rights march in Alabama by paying tribute to the “heroes” who took part.

He delivered a speech commemorating “Bloody Sunday” on 7 March 1965, when security forces attacked black demonstrators in the city.

Mr Obama said the marchers, who were campaigning for equal voting rights, had “given courage to millions”.

His wife Michelle and about 100 members of Congress also attended the event.

“Because of what they did, the doors of opportunity swung open not just for African-Americans, but for every American,” he said, standing in front of the Edmund Pettus Bridge where the violence took place.

 MH370 report: underwater locator beacon battery had expired a year before  

 Malaysian authorities release the first comprehensive report into the disappearance of the missing plane but sheds little light on the mystery

Associated Press Sunday 8 March 2015 07.54 GMT  

The first comprehensive report into the mystery of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 has revealed that the battery of an underwater locator beacon had expired more than a year before the plane vanished in March 2014.

Apart from that anomaly, the detailed report released on Sunday devoted pages after pages to describe the complete normality of the flight, shedding little light on aviation’s biggest mystery.

“The sole objective of the investigation is the prevention of future accidents or incidents, and not for the purpose to apportion blame or liability,” said the report, which was released in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday.

 India is in denial about its rape culture – but then so are we

 The banning of a documentary about a horrific attack on a young woman in Delhi has terrible echoes elsewhere

Joan Smith Sunday 8 March 2015

The Indian government is up in arms. It has banned a documentary, India’s Daughter, which includes a reconstruction of the notorious gang rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in Delhi. Ministers can’t stop Leslee Udwin’s film being shown elsewhere – you might have seen it on BBC Four last week – but they would like it to be consigned to oblivion. It reflects badly on India, you see.

The rape of the 23-year-old student took place just before Christmas 2012, bringing thousands of people on to the streets to demand greater protection for women. All of this happened before the current prime minister, Narendra Modi, took office, but he would like the entire subject to just go away. Last month, his government shelved a plan drawn up after the Delhi gang rape to set up 660 rape crisis centres across India; the figure has been slashed to 36 because the Prime Minister believes that the Indian police are “sensitive enough” to deal with rape cases. His confidence in the authorities isn’t universally shared, leading to a dreadful incident in north-east India last month when a suspected rapist was dragged from jail and lynched.

 Hong Kong’s domestic workers ‘treated worse than the dogs’

Many of the hundreds of thousands of migrant domestic workers looking for a better life in Hong Kong end up exposed to abuse at the hands of their employers. Zigor Aldama reports with three women’s stories.

 DW-DE

Kamsiah (pictured above) was one of the 334,000 foreign domestic workers registered in Hong Kong. She is also one of the many who have suffered abuses at work. At 41, she left her hometown in Indonesia to work her way to a better life. However, she found herself in a nightmare.

“This is the second time I have worked in Hong Kong, and with my previous employers I had no problems,” she said. “But this family treated me worse than their five dogs.”

Kamsiah said she had to sleep with the animals and was barely fed with a daily bowl of rice with some vegetables. The pets, however, received all kinds of care from five o’clock in the morning.

“I had to get up at that hour to walk them,” she said. “Then I would prepare breakfast, clean the house, do laundry, make lunch, do shopping, hang and iron the clothes, cook dinner, and then the lady would ask me to give her massages until the wee hours of the morning.”

Saudi Arabia rejects rights criticism after flogging blogger Raif Badawi

 

    March 8, 2015 – 7:19PM

Riyadh: Saudi Arabia defended its human rights record in its first public reaction to international criticism over last year’s sentencing of liberal Saudi blogger Raif Badawi to 1000 lashes and 10 years in jail for “insulting Islam”.

The first 50 of Mr Badawi’s lashes were carried out in January, prompting strong criticism of the kingdom’s rights record from Western countries, including its laws on political and religious expression and the status of Saudi women.

“Saudi Arabia expresses its intense surprise and dismay at what is being reported by some media about the case of citizen Raif Badawi and his sentence,” a statement attributed to an unnamed “Foreign Ministry official” said.

Four suicide bombings in Nigeria. Is this Boko Haram’s last gasp?

Five attacks – including four suicide bombings – that have left 54 people dead in Maiduguri, Nigeria, Saturday have been attributed to Boko Haram, which pledged allegiance to ISIS on Saturday. Is Boko Haram trying to keep a dying insurgency alive, or simply shifting in tactics?

     By Jessica Mendoza, Staff Writer

Four suicide bombings in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri Saturday left at least 54 people dead and 143 injured, according to The Associated Press.

The attacks occurred over a four-hour period in locations that included a fish market and a bus station, both very crowded places, Police Commissioner Clement Adoda told the wire service.

A fifth blast from a car bomb at a military checkpoint outside the city wounded one soldier and two members of a civilian self-defense unit. The worst of the attacks killed 18 people after one suicide bomber set himself off in a tricycle taxi at the entrance to the Baga fish market, according to the same report.