Six In The Morning

Nepal quake: Airport customs holding up aid relief – UN

   

BBC

The United Nations has urged Nepal to relax customs controls which it says are holding up deliveries of aid to survivors of last week’s earthquake.

UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said Nepal had a duty to provide faster customs clearance for relief supplies.

Many people are yet to receive the aid, which is piling up at Kathmandu airport, a week after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake on 25 April.

More than 7,000 have died. Authorities have ruled out finding more survivors.

   Isis on the run? The US portrayal is very far from the truth

 The map issued by the Pentagon to prove that Isis had lost territory shows how false optimism dominates the actions of the outside powers towards the Middle East

PATRICK COCKBURN

A graphic illustration of Western wishful thinking about the decline of Islamic State (IS) is a well-publicised map issued by the Pentagon to prove that the self-declared caliphate has lost 25 per cent of its territory since its big advances last year.

Unfortunately for the Pentagon, sharp-eyed American journalists soon noticed something strange about its map identifying areas of IS strength. While it shows towns and villages where IS fighters have lost control around Baghdad, it simply omits western Syria where they have been advancing in and around Damascus.

  What people smugglers tell migrants seeking to cross into Europe

 

 01/05/2015 / TURKEY – LIBYA

Social media has become the new way for people smugglers to advertise their services. They often post ads on Facebook promising migrants a comfortable, safe journey to European shores. To find out more, a journalist from the Observers team posed as someone seeking to help his friend enter Europe and contacted the smugglers via phone numbers brazenly posted on the ads.

Many of these smugglers advertising their services are based in Mersin and Izmir, two cities on the Turkish coast; their clients are mainly Syrian refugees fleeing their war-torn country. Other smugglers are based in Libya, where they take advantage of the reigning chaos and complete lack of surveillance at the country’s borders. After reaching the northern Libyan coast, most migrants seek to cross the Mediterranean and enter Italy, often via the now-notorious Italian island of Lampedusa, the gateway to Europe.

On Facebook, smugglers resort to all sorts of methods to lure potential clients, often sharing photos that promise a luxurious, comfortable trip across the Mediterranean on a yacht.

India’s new norm of semi-arranged marriages

   May 3, 2015 – 4:21PM

Gardiner Harris

New Delhi:  Each year, roughly 8 million mostly teenage brides in India marry men chosen entirely by their parents, with many meeting their grooms for the first time on their wedding day. Refusals can be met with violence and, sometimes, murder. In one case in November, a 21-year-old New Delhi college student was strangled by her parents for marrying against their wishes.

The shift away from fully arranged marriages is being driven in good part by simple market dynamics among Indians who have long seen marriage as a guarantor of social status and economic security.

For centuries, fathers sought matches among their social connections, often with the help of local matchmakers who carried resumes door to door. But village-based kinship networks are fading as more families move to cities, and highly educated women often cannot find men of equal standing in those circles. Under such strains, families have sought larger networks, increasingly through matchmaking sites.

Group presses Paraguay to allow abortion for raped girl, 10

 

    By Jason Hanna and Rafael Romo, CNN

An international rights group is pressing the Paraguayan government to allow an abortion for a 10-year-old girl who allegedly was impregnated by her stepfather — a procedure that health officials in the South American country have so far blocked.

At issue is Paraguayan law, which bans abortions except in cases where the pregnancy endangers the mother’s life. The Paraguayan Ministry of Health says there’s no indication that the health of the girl — now 22 weeks’ pregnant — is at risk.

Texas Governor Deploys National Guard To Stave Off Obama Takeover

 

WADE GOODWYN

Since General Sam Houston executed his famous retreat to glory to defeat the superior forces of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Texas has been ground zero for military training. We have so many military bases in the Lone Star State we could practically attack Russia.

So when rookie Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced he was ordering the Texas National Guard to monitor a Navy SEAL/Green Beret joint training exercise, which was taking place in Texas and several other states, everybody here looked up from their iPhones. What?