Six In The Morning

Nepal earthquake: Rescue effort intensifies

   

BBC

Rescue efforts in Nepal are intensifying after nearly 2,000 people were killed on Saturday in the worst earthquake there in more than 80 years.

Many countries and charities have offered aid to deal with the disaster.

Seventeen people have been killed on Mount Everest by avalanches – the mountain’s worst-ever disaster.

Meanwhile a powerful aftershock was felt on Sunday in Nepal, India and Bangladesh, and more avalanches were reported near Everest.

The 6.7 magnitude tremor sent people running for open ground in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu.

   Migrant boat crisis: the story of the Greek hero on the beach

 One compelling image has come to represent all the Greek people who treated desperate migrants like fellow human beings

 Helena Smith in Athens  Sunday 26 April 2015 00.43 BST

It was an image that came to symbolise desperation and valour: the desperation of those who will take on the sea – and the men who ferry human cargo across it – to flee the ills that cannot keep them in their own countries. And the valour of those on Europe’s southern shores who rush to save them when tragedy strikes.

Last week on the island of Rhodes, war, repression, dictatorship in distant Eritrea were far from the mind of army sergeant Antonis Deligiorgis. The world inhabited by Wegasi Nebiat, a 24-year-old Eritrean in the cabin of a yacht sailing towards the isle, was still far away.

 Syria conflict: The illicit art trade that is a major source of income for today’s terror groups is nothing new

 Exclusive: While posing as a buyer’s agent in a Turkish border town, Isabel Hunter is offered looted antiquities which look destined for Europe

 Isabel Hunter  Sunday 26 April 2015

“I’ve taken this out so many times,” said Hani, as he deftly unzips a black laptop case. From two side pockets the Syrian remove a statue, some beads and an assortment of stones and arrange them for viewing.

Nestled in the bag is an intricately carved 4,000-year-old limestone tablet covered in hieroglyphics. The markings record the success of two Mesopotamian kings, and were carved a stone’s throw from Babylon, the cradle of civilisation.

US filmmakers unveil FBI tactics to snare Muslims

   In the wake of 9/11, the FBI recruited thousands of informants to spy on the country’s Muslim communities. In a thrilling exposé, two filmmakers follow a felon-turned-informant as he tries to snare an alleged terror suspect, with devastating results.

Text by Sophie PILGRIM

(T)ERROR opens to footage of part-time school cook Saeed Torres cursing about being on camera. “I told you I didn’t want my face on this shit,” he tells filmmakers Lyric Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe. Minutes later, he’s showing off on the sidelines of the school basketball court.

That contradiction is the first of many 63-year-old Saeed demonstrates in the 90-minute documentary, which offers unprecedented access into the unsettling work of an FBI informant during an active operation.

A former Black Panther, Torres was arrested on larceny charges more than 20 years ago and has been working for “the agency” ever since. His biggest coup came in 2005 when he drew Brooklyn jazz musician Tarik Shah into an admission that would see him jailed for 13 years. Shah’s mother, who appears in the film, is still campaigning to have him released, 10 years into his sentence. Torres says he has “no feelings” for the POI, or “Person of Interest” he’s sent to ensnare. But later in the film he says of Shah: “I liked and trusted the brother.”

 A Third-Grade Rap Portraitist’s First Visit to New York, for His Tribeca Film Festival Debut

 

    By Laura Neilson

When 8-year-old Lenox Buringrud, known by the name Yung Lenox, was asked about his first impressions of New York City, during a visit to town last weekend, he responded with appropriate candor: “It’s kinda smelly,” he said. Despite it being the hometown of several of his favorite rap artists – Action Bronson and A$AP Ferg, for example – the city’s trademark characteristics, such as the steady noise and unidentifiable odors, were clearly less impressive for the Seattle-based third grader who had arrived for the premiere of “Live Fast, Draw Yung,” a lighthearted, 16-minute documentary which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival last Friday.

Russian ‘Night Wolves’ bikers banned from Germany

 

 By Jim Heintz, Associated Press

Moscow – Riders from a Russian nationalist motorcycle group on Saturday began their run commemorating the Red Army’s offensive against Nazi Germany, despite Poland’s announcement that it would refuse to let them into the country. Germany also planned to ban some of the riders.

About 20 bikers including members of the Night Wolves group set off from Moscow with the aim of crossing into Poland before eventually reaching Berlin on May 9. Poland, alarmed by the aggressive nationalism of the NightWolves, on Friday said it wouldn’t allow them entry.