Six In The Morning

Fighting in Iraq’s Ramadi displaces thousands

    Tents, food and other aid sent to residents fleeing capital of Anbar province as ISIL fighters gain new territory.

19 Apr 2015 06:43 GMT

Thousands of families continue to flee the Iraqi city of Ramadi as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group closes in on the capital of Anbar province, clashing with Iraqi troops.

The UN has announced that more than 4,000 families fled Ramadi and its suburbs in the past few days due to the ongoing clashes between ISIL and Iraqi forces, which has turned the city into a ghost town.

The UN also confirmed on Wednesday deaths among those trying to flee – including newborn babies – due to the lack of proper necessities and harsh conditions. Families have left their homes with little or nothing on their backs.

   World’s mountain of electrical waste reaches new peak of 42m tonnes

 The biggest per-capita tallies were in countries known for green awareness, such as Norway and Denmark, with Britain fifth and US ninth on the UN report’s list

Agence France-Presse Sunday 19 April 2015 03.54 BST

A record amount of electrical and electronic waste was discarded around the world in 2014, with the biggest per-capita tallies in countries that pride themselves on environmental consciousness, a report said.

Last year, 41.8m tonnes of so-called e-waste – mostly fridges, washing machines and other domestic appliances at the end of their life – was dumped, the UN report said.

That’s the equivalent of 1.15m heavy trucks, forming a line 23,000km (14,300 miles) long, according to the report, compiled by the United Nations University, the UN’s educational and research branch.

 El Salvador’s dirty warriors to face justice for 1989 massacre of six Jesuits priests, their housekeeper and her daughter

  Senior commander Colonel Montano Morales could appear in court next year on charges of terrorism, murder and crimes against humanity

Nina Lakhani Mexico City Sunday 19 April 2015

Colonel Orlando Inocente Montano Morales was working in a sweet factory on the outskirts of Boston when his inglorious war record finally caught up with him.

Col Montano Morales, a senior commander during El Salvador’s brutal civil war, had been quietly living in the United States for a decade when in May 2011 he and 19 former colleagues were indicted by a Spanish court on suspicion of participation in the 1989 massacre of six Jesuits priests, their housekeeper and her daughter.

Young and loud in Nigeria

   The doubling of petrol prices in 2012 was a turning point, sparking the biggest protests since independence.

 by Alain Vicky

Nigeria has 65 million Internet users, so it’s not surprising that social media are often ablaze. That’s what happened on 7 February, when Reuters in Dakar (Senegal) put out the news that the Nigerian presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for 22 February – a duel between the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, and retired general and former dictator Muhammadu Buhari – had been postponed until 28 March. The independent national electoral commission had decided that the army, fighting Boko Haram in the north of the country (1), could not guarantee that the elections would pass off safely. “Ever since then I’ve felt scared,” said singer and activist Aduke Ayobamidele Aladekomo. “The social networks are full of increasingly violent messages.”

  The Terror Strategist: Secret Files Reveal the Structure of Islamic State

  An Iraqi officer planned Islamic State’s takeover in Syria and SPIEGEL has been given exclusive access to his papers. They portray an organization that, while seemingly driven by religious fanaticism, is actually coldly calculating.

   By Christoph Reuter

Aloof. Polite. Cajoling. Extremely attentive. Restrained. Dishonest. Inscrutable. Malicious. The rebels from northern Syria, remembering encounters with him months later, recall completely different facets of the man. But they agree on one thing: “We never knew exactly who we were sitting across from.”

In fact, not even those who shot and killed him after a brief firefight in the town of Tal Rifaat on a January morning in 2014 knew the true identity of the tall man in his late fifties. They were unaware that they had killed the strategic head of the group calling itself “Islamic State” (IS). The fact that this could have happened at all was the result of a rare but fatal miscalculation by the brilliant planner. The local rebels placed the body into a refrigerator, in which they intended to bury him. Only later, when they realized how important the man was, did they lift his body out again.

80% of workers with premature dementia get fired or quit: health ministry survey

 

Kyodo

About 80 percent of premature dementia patients have either had to quit their jobs or been fired by their employer, a health ministry survey showed Saturday.

The finding raises doubts about whether companies are helping employees under the age of 65 with dementia to continue working, for instance by shortening their work hours or transferring them to different sections.

The average age of people who develop premature dementia is 51.3. Symptoms vary among individuals, but patients who receive proper treatment at an early stage may be able to slow the advance of the disease.