Nov 09 2015

Six In The Morning Monday November 9

Myanmar elections: ruling party ‘has more losses than wins’ says chairman – live

 

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Results broadcast on Periscope

Here’s a symbol of how much has changed in Myanmar – the election results are being broadcast on Periscope by the official election commission.

 

A NLD candidate who died last week during a rally in Sagaing, near Mandalay, is reportedly still leading polls.

(From Reuters)

Myanmar’s ruling party conceded defeat in the country’s general election on Monday as the opposition led by democracy figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi appeared on course for a landslide victory.

“We lost,” Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) acting chairman Htay Oo said in an interview a day after the Southeast Asian country’s first free nationwide election in quarter of a century.

The election commission has not yet announced any results from Sunday’s poll, but Suu Kyi’s National League of Democracy (NLD) said that partial counts showed it had won more than 80% of votes cast in the densely populated central regions.

Announcement of first results brought forward

Myanmar’s election commission appears to have brought forward the announcement of the first results to 4pm local time (9.30 GMT). The first result had been due to be made at 6pm local time.

You cannot honour the dead without honouring the bodies themselves

While we come together to remember fallen soldiers, the remains of orphaned survivors of the Armenian genocide are about to make way for a luxury hotel

Do we honour the dead or the corpses? I’m not talking about those poppy fashion accessories worn by the BBC’s clones, or PR Dave’s obscene bit of crimson Photoshopping, but the real, actual remains of the human beings slaughtered in the Great War of 1914-18. And, in this particular case, I’m talking not of the soldiers but of the civilians buried in 33 graves which I looked down upon last week from a windy hilltop beside the old Roman city of Byblos in Lebanon. Beneath those tombstones lie the bones of some survivors of the greatest war crime of that titanic conflict, the genocide of a million and a half Armenian Christians by the Turks in 1915. They died in one of the huge orphanages opened for thousands of children amid cholera and disease by European doctors and NGOs after the Great War ended, and were buried in the orphanage grounds.

Many of them saw their parents slaughtered in front of them, but escaped the massacre only to die in Lebanon. Some lived on to work among the orphans and died of old age. But they are the “honoured” dead, as surely as the soldiers who lie today in the cemeteries of the Somme and Verdun and the graves of those who endured the conflict. Or are they? For these individual Armenian graves, most of them bearing the names of the survivors, are soon to be disinterred and buried – mixed together – in a “common grave” beside the nearest Armenian church. Their names already appear on a marble stone near the hole where their bones will be placed – but their individuality will disappear, skulls and backbones and femurs jumbled together. What is left of their bodies will have lost their uniqueness.

Reports: Rioters take over Australia’s Christmas Island detention center

Riots have reportedly broken out in one of Australia’s remote detention centers for asylum seekers. New Zealanders with revoked visas are said to have joined forces with the refugees.

Fences were torn down and fires broke out at Australia’s Christmas Island detention center early Monday. Following the death of an asylum seeker at the facility, rioters allegedly took control of the compound as security guards fled.

Canberra said it was not aware of injuries on the remote Indian Ocean territory, but that it could “confirm a disturbance at Christmas Island Immigration Detention Center,” according to a statement.

“The department and its service providers are working together to resolve the situation,” the statement continued, without elaborating further.

One detainee told Radio New Zealand (RNZ) that the catalyst for the riot was the discovery on Sunday of the body of an Iranian Kurdish asylum seeker, identified by the Australian media as Fazel Chegeni.

“We’re sick of it. We see it all the time, people trying to hurt themselves, kill themselves,” the detainee told RNZ. He asked to remain anonymous, but spoke with a New Zealand accent. RNZ also reported that the rioters had armed themselves with bats and poles to resist attempts by guards to re-take the compound.

Nine killed in Burundi attack as police launch crackdown

AFP | 09 November, 2015 10:12

Gunmen executed nine people in Burundi’s capital hours before police launched house-to-house searches for weapons on Sunday, amid international fears of fresh bloodletting in the central African nation.

Hundreds of police and soldiers ringed the opposition flashpoint Mutakura district of the capital Bujumbura early Sunday to start a widely feared crackdown on “enemies of the nation.”

Residents said security forces were going door-to-door in the raids, which came on the eve of a special meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss a surge in violence and ethnic tensions in Burundi.

City mayor Freddy Mbonimpa said police were hunting for “hidden weapons,” following an arms amnesty, insisting the searches were being “done professionally, because the police are using weapon detectors.”

Officers later displayed around a dozen rifles and grenades they said had been seized in the raids, which officials said would continue in coming days.

 

Is the anti-immigration right on the rise in Sweden?

As arson attacks at the Scandinavian nation’s refugee centers continue, historically tolerant Swedes worry that anti-immigrant views are winning acceptance.

In October alone, ten homes for asylum seekers in Sweden have burnt in suspected arson attacks.

On Saturday, yet another proposed refugee center was burned in the southwest town of Floda, raising Swedes’ anxiety that pushback against immigration has made country of 10 million, long welcoming to immigrants, an inviting home for xenophobia as well.

The attacks have led authorities to keep center locations secret, but a shortage of security guards has left some immigrants to nervously patrol grounds on their own.

“This is not the Sweden we know, not the Sweden that I am proud of,” Prime Minister Stefan Löfven told reporters in late October, after yet another attack.

Millions of his countrymen seem to agree, and they are increasingly concerned about those who do not.

Fierce contest for world robot supremacy

World’s smartest young scientists and engineers show off their designs in Qatar for the 12th World Robot Olympiad.

Tarek Bazley | | Science & Technology, Qatar, India

Doha – From robot football to volcanic ash-mining robots, the Qatari capital has this weekend been hosting more than 3,000 young robot enthusiasts.

The students, from more than 45 countries, designed, built and programmed robots, largely from plastic Lego blocks.

These were then tested against a number of challenges including one which required the robots to read a basic colour code, then deliver the correct blocks to the top of the correct mountain – no easy feat, when it has to operate without human intervention.

If that was not challenging enough, the teams had just 2.5 hours to finalise their designs and then build the robot.

In another competition, teams were asked to design robots to extract resources from potentially dangerous places.

These ranged from an Iranian robot designed to produce water on Mars, to Philippine volcanic-ash-mining robots.

 

 

 

 

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