North Korea nuclear: State claims first hydrogen bomb test
6 January 2016
North Korea says it has successfully tested a miniaturised hydrogen bomb which, if confirmed, would be its fourth nuclear test since 2006.
It came after a 5.1 magnitude quake was detected close to its nuclear test site at Punggye-ri, indicating a test may have been conducted.
This is North Korea’s first claim to have tested a hydrogen bomb which is more powerful than a basic atomic bomb.
International experts have cast doubt over the North’s nuclear capabilities.
Suspicion of an underground test was first raised after the US Geological Survey said the epicentre of the quake – detected at 10:00 Pyongyang time (01:30 GMT) – was in the north-east of the country, some 50km (30 miles) from Kilju city, near Punggye-ri.
Then in a surprise announcement, a newsreader on North Korean state TV said: “The republic’s first hydrogen bomb test has been successfully performed at 10:00 am on January 6, 2016.”
Israeli-Arab and Palestinian abandon plane after passenger complaints
Flight from Athens to Tel Aviv delayed after Jewish passengers demand pair disembark amid security fears
Agence France-Press in Athens
Two passengers with Israeli documents left an Aegean Airlines flight after other Israelis protested about their presence, the company has said.
Israeli media identified the two as an Israeli-Arab and a Palestinian, and said the protesting passengers were Jewish. The incident occurred on Sunday night, delaying the flight from Athens to Tel Aviv by more than 90 minutes.
Aegean said: “An initially small group of passengers very vocally and persistently asked for two other Israeli passengers to be checked for security issues.”
The airline said one of the men held an Israeli passport and the other had a valid Israeli residence permit. It did not mention their ethnicity.
Isaiah Owens: Harlem undertaker on how death still divides Manhattan by race
Homicides have fallen in the last 20 years, but for most black families living north of 110th Street, open-coffin funerals and interment remain a must, while white Manhattanites prefer direct-to-cremation affairs with minimum fuss
David Usborne New York
Isaiah Owens does not discriminate when accepting business at his funeral home in the heart of Harlem, in New York City.
“Catholic, Pentecostal, different religions, some Muslims, anyone,” he says.
It happens, though, that of the more than 400 funerals which he’s arranged this year, barely a dozen were for white families.
A few things have changed since Mr Owens, the son of South Carolina sharecroppers, first opened shop in the city in 1971, though not at his current location on a bustling stretch of Lenox Avenue.
Far fewer men are being taken by Aids too early in their lives. Or, indeed, by bullets.
“Homicides I see very seldom. Thirty – no, 20 – years ago, it would be 10 homicides every three weeks,” he said.
Venezuela opposition takes congress, vows to oust Maduro
Latest update : 2016-01-06
Venezuela’s opposition on Tuesday broke the government’s 17-year grip on the legislature and vowed to force out President Nicolas Maduro, despite failing for the time being to clinch its hoped-for “supermajority”.
The National Assembly swore in deputies to 163 of the 167 seats, with four lawmakers—three opposition and one pro-government—suspended pending a lawsuit over alleged electoral fraud.
The new opposition speaker of the assembly, Henry Ramos Allup, said his side soon would take steps to force Maduro from office.
“Here and now, things will change,” he said.
The head of the opposition group in congress, Julio Borges, vowed it would find “a method, a system to change the government through constitutional means.”
South Africa rings in new year with racial slurs. A tipping point?
A series of racist comments posted online have angered South Africans and led to calls for legal action. The controversy sparked the viral hashtag, #RacismMustFall.
South Africa is grappling with a series of incidents that have laid bare the racial divisions that continue to plague the country – especially online – more than two decades after the end of apartheid.
Racism has been top news in the rainbow nation this week after Penny Sparrow, a real estate broker from Durban, posted a complaint on Facebook Monday about a mess left behind on a beach by black revelers over New Year’s.
“These monkeys that are allowed to be released on New Year’s eve and New Year’s day on to public beaches towns etc obviously have no education what so ever [sic],” she wrote in the post, which went viral. “So to allow them loose is inviting huge dirt and troubles and discomfort to others.”
Soon after, a similarly racist post by fitness entreprenuer Justin van Vuuren, in which he called black South Africans “animals” for the state in which the same beach was left, also went viral.
Hong Kong missing booksellers push hidden industry into spotlight
Updated 0121 GMT (0921 HKT) January 6, 2016
A government investigation into the mysterious disappearance of five Hong Kong publishers and book sellers this week thrust an unusual publishing industry into the media spotlight.
In this free-wheeling, specially-administered corner of China, several publishing houses and bookshops have spent years churning out books banned on the Chinese mainland.
Speciality bookseller Paul Tang says the books focus on taboo topics: politics, religion and sex. “All forbidden in China,” he adds.
Tang spoke to CNN within the tight confines of the People’s Bookstore, his book-lined shop and coffee-house perched overlooking Hong Kong’s high octane Causeway Bay commercial district.
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