Six In The Morning

Migrants crisis: More than 2,000 people rescued near Libya coast

 



More than 2,000 migrants and refugees have been rescued from boats off the coast of Libya in one of the biggest single-day operations mounted, Italy’s coastguards have said.

Distress calls came from more than 20 vessels, AFP reported.

More than 2,000 people have died this year in attempts to reach Europe in overcrowded, unseaworthy boats.

The route from Libya to Italy is one of the busiest for those trying to enter Europe.

Of the 264,500 migrants the United Nations says have crossed the Mediterranean so far this year, close to 104,000 have landed in Italy. Another 160,000 arrived in Greece.

Two Italian navy ships were involved in Saturday’s rescue effort. Responding to two wooden boats in danger of sinking, the Cigala Fulgosi picked up 507 people and the Vega 432, the navy said.

 Auschwitz survivor Bejerano sues abusive Facebook user

 Esther Bejarano, one of the last survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp, is suing a Facebook user for making disparaging remarks. She says he mocked her by putting her in a class with Nazi officials.

 DW-DE

Bejarano, a Jewish artist from Hamburg who has been campaigning tirelessly to keep the memory of the horrors of the Nazi regime alive, is suing the Facebook user for libel and slander, according to a report by German public broadcaster NDR.

The man, who has not been identified, had commented on a post pertaining to a concert she attended in the central German town of Fulda on Bejarano’s Facebook page. He mocked Bejarano’s efforts to combat far-right extremism, calling it “the great Esther Bejarano show,” according to the report.

He went on to say that “strangely, people everywhere are being sued for and convicted of being an accessory to mass murder because they collaborated with the Nazi regime. But that’s exactly what this woman did, who ‘sang for her life.'”

 Deliberate Deception: Washington Gave Answer Long Ago in NSA Case

  For months, the German government sought to create the impression it was still waiting for an answer from the US on whether it could share NSA target lists for spying with a parliamentary investigation. The response came months ago.

By Matthias Gebauer, René Pfister and Holger Stark

The order from Washington was unambiguous. The United States Embassy in Berlin didn’t want to waste any time and moved to deliver the diplomatic cable without delay. It was May 10, 2015, a Sunday — and even diplomats aren’t crazy about working weekends. On this day, though, they had no other choice. James Melville, the embassy’s second-in-command, hand delivered the mail from the White House to Angela Merkel’s Chancellery at 9 p.m.

The letter that Melville handed over to Merkel’s staff contained the long-awaited answer to how the German federal government could proceed with highly classified lists of NSA spying targets. The so-called “selector” lists had become notorious in Germany and the subject of considerable grief for Merkel because her foreign intelligence agency, the BND, may have helped the NSA to spy on German firms as a result of them. The selector lists, which were fed into the BND’s monitoring systems on behalf of the NSA, are reported to have included both German and European targets that were spied on by the Americans

 North, South Korea hold first round of talks amid ongoing tension



 By Euan McKirdy and Kathy Novak, CNN

Updated 0647 GMT (1347 HKT) August 23, 2015

At a time of mounting tensions and heated rhetoric on the Korean peninsula, the two sides concluded nearly 10 hours of talks early Sunday at the historic “truce village” inside the Demilitarized Zone with plans to meet again later in the day, South Korean officials said.

The talks are scheduled to begin again 3 p.m. local time (2 a.m. ET).

Kim Jong Un’s deputy, Hwang Pyong So, a member of Kim Jong Un’s inner circle and political director of his country’s army; and Kim Yang Gon, a veteran of negotiations with South Korea since Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, ruled the secretive regime, were present.

Mammoth ivory trade: Should the prehistoric species be protected – to save the elephant?

  Some Chinese ivory traders pass off illegal elephant tusks as mammoth ivory

 STEVE CONNOR  SCIENCE EDITOR  Sunday 23 August 2015



Thousands of prehistoric mammoth tusks are being dug out of the melting permafrost of the Arctic. They are then shipped to China for the ivory-carving industry, causing some scientists to question whether this perfectly legal trade should be banned.

Evidence has also emerged that some Chinese ivory traders are passing off illegal elephant tusks as mammoth ivory, to evade export controls.

One palaeontologist has suggested that the mammoth should be listed under the convention on international trade in endangered species (Cites) – even though the species is already extinct – to help save the African elephant.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood chief gets new life term

  Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie, who has been sentenced to death, was handed another life term in prison Saturday for an attack on a police station.

AFP

A criminal court sentenced Badie, the Islamist movement’s spiritual leader, over the attack in the northeastern city of Port Said on August 16, 2013.

Eighty-eight co-defendants were also handed life terms, which in Egypt is 25 years in jail. Only 18 of them were in court with Badie, however, and the rest were sentenced in absentia.

Twenty-eight others received 10 years in prison and 71 were acquitted.

The attack came two days after a bloody crackdown by security forces in Cairo on supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi that left hundreds dead in Rabaa al-Adawiya Square.