Six In The Morning

Ankara attacks: Turkey in mourning after blasts kill almost 100

 

BBC

Turkey is beginning three days of mourning after two blasts at a peace rally in the capital, Ankara, killed at least 95 people on Saturday, the deadliest ever such attack in Turkey.

The attack left 245 people injured, with 48 of them in a serious condition.

TV footage showed scenes of panic and people lying on the ground covered in blood, amid protest banners.

The government called the blasts a “terrorist act” and angrily rejected allegations that it was to blame.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said there was evidence that two suicide bombers had carried out the attack, which comes three weeks before a re-run of June’s inconclusive parliamentary elections.

China arrests two more Japanese nationals on espionage charges – report

 The arrest of the woman and man, bringing the total held to four, is likely to further strain ties between the states following island chain disputes

Agence France Presse Sunday 11 October 2015 08.18 BST

Two more Japanese nationals have been detained in China on suspicion of spying, bringing the number of Japanese held by Chinese authorities for espionage to four, news reports said on Sunday.

A Japanese woman in her 50s has been held in Shanghai since June for her alleged involvement in spying on the country, the Mainichi Shimbun daily said.

The woman, who runs a Japanese language school in Tokyo, had visited China frequently, Kyodo News said, adding that the purpose of her visits was unknown.

  Ebola: Sierra Leone’s survivors return to daily life – but as outcasts

 Survivors must struggle against stigmatisation by a community which blamed them for bringing the disease into their midst

Cahal Milmo @cahalmilmo Saturday 10 October 2015 23:39 BST

When Abibatu and Lanphia finally returned home from the field treatment centre where they came close to losing their lives to Ebola, they hoped it was an end to the terrible price that the virus which had robbed them of their father and two brothers had exacted from their family.

Instead, what awaited them was a second battle for survival against the disease – this time the struggle against stigmatisation and rejection by a community which blamed them for bringing the disease into their midst in Sierra Leone and sought turn them into outcasts.

The lingering nature of the epidemic which has killed more than 11,000 people in three West African countries was underlined last week when the World Health Organisation announced it had recorded the first week since March 2014 with no new Ebola cases in the region.

Protesters, police clash at refugee homes in Germany

Police have been attacked by protesters at asylum seeker shelters in the German states of Saxony and Brandenburg. The overnight unrest comes after reports of a massive increase in attacks on refugee homes.

  DW-DE

A small group of protesters massed outside a planned refugee home in the eastern city of Dresden hurled stones, firecrackers and bottles at police late Friday.

The crowd chanted xenophobic slogans, as individuals in black hoods tore down a pro-asylum seeker banner from the school building to cheers from residents in a neighboring apartment block, according to the “Sächsische Zeitung.”

“It took some time for peace to be restored,” a police spokesman said, adding that it wasn’t the first time the property had been targeted.

 Carson supporter pens Fox News op-ed blaming Jewish timidity for the Holocaust

 

 Updated by Matthew Yglesias on October 10, 2015, 3:50 p.m. ET

This week, Ben Carson caused a stir by asserting that gun control laws were responsible for the Holocaust, a patently absurd myth that enjoys surprisingly widespread acceptance in some quarters of the American right. On Friday, Dr. Keith Ablow, a Fox News medical contributor and Caron fundraiser, offered a slightly different spin on the thesis in a Fox op-ed entitled “Why Ben Carson is right about Jews, the Holocaust and guns.”

Ablow’s argument is that it’s not so much that a lack of Jewish guns explains why the Holocaust happened, as that “the mindset that Jews surrendered with their guns is far more important than the hardware they turned over: they surrendered the demonstrated intention, at all costs, to resist being deprived of liberty.” According to Ablow, “[i]f Jews in Germany had more actively resisted the Nazi party or the Nazi regime and had diagnosed it as a malignant and deadly cancer from the start, there would, indeed, have been a chance for the people of that country and the world to be moved to action by their bold refusal to be enslaved.”

The bittersweet story of a 19-year-old North Korean defector who’s now a San Francisco sushi chef

 

Keegan Hamilton, VICE News

Daniel had been planning his escape for weeks. The 10-minute walk from his family’s home to the frozen river that formed the border with China would be simple.

Then he would sneak across the ice, which he thought would be solid enough to support his weight – though he couldn’t be sure. If he pulled it off, he would make it out of North Korea.

That day, the 19 year old woke up early and slipped silently out the door without saying so much as goodbye to anyone, knowing his family would try to stop him if he told them what he was about to do. It was two days before his little brother’s 11th birthday.