The videos ISIS didn’t want you to see: How grainy security footage could help hold abusers to account
The footage is mundane and revelatory all at once.
The hallway, filmed from an unmoving closed-circuit camera, appears unremarkable. It’s the point in time, and the people in the former children’s hospital, that make the hours and hours of video from this and other cameras on site extraordinary.
ISIS fighters roamed the hallways of this building complex in the Syrian city of Aleppo, which they had claimed as a headquarters. They moved blindfolded prisoners. They struck them with sticks. They walked past a man being tortured – straining to stand, arms tied aloft behind his back.
They felt at ease.
Ukraine promises ‘retribution’ as market attack kills 17
Number of dead rises to 17
The number of people killed in Konstyantynivka has risen to 17, with 32 injured, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko has said in a post on Telegram.
The search and rescue operation has been completed, he added.
Kostyantynivka the latest in a series of attacks on civilians
There have been countless civilian attacks on Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Here are some of the worst attacks on civilians over the last few months:
- 6 September: 16 civilians, including one child, killed in Kostyantynivka
- 23 August: Three elderly people killed in Russian artillery fire near the eastern Ukrainian city of Lyman
- 19 August: Seven people, including a six-year-old child, killed and 110 injured in a strike in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv
- 8 August: Seven killed in a Russian missile attack on residential buildings in the eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk
- 31 July: Six killed, including a 10-year-old girl and her mother, by a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih
- 27 June: 11 killed in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine – among them 14-year-old twin sisters Yuliya and Anna Aksenchenko
- 18 May: Three people– including a five-year-old boy – killed in Kherson, and five more killed in occupied Donetsk
- 14 April: 11 civilians – including a two-year-old child – killed in Slovyansk in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region
- 2 April: Six killed, also in Kostyantynivka, with missiles and rockets damaging 16 apartment blocks and a nursery school
Syrian refugee deported from Greece loses case against EU border agency
Ruling against man who claimed family were ‘pushback’ victims seen as blow to efforts to make Frontex accountable
A Syrian refugee has lost a landmark case against the EU’s border protection agency, Frontex, after he and his family were forcibly deported from Greece before his asylum application was processed.
The ruling is seen as a major blow to efforts to make the operations of Frontex in Greece and other countries more transparent and accountable to the member states who employ them.
The Syrian man and his wife and four small children made the perilous journey via people-smugglers from war-torn Aleppo to Greece in 2016 but 11 days after making landfall they were flown to Turkey by Frontex.
UN warns of ‘climate breakdown’ after record heat
UN chief Antonio Guterres says “climate breakdown has begun” after the Northern Hemisphere saw its hottest summer on record. August was the third month in a row to set a global monthly heat record.
This year has seen the hottest Northern Hemisphere summer ever measured, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
“Our planet has just endured a season of simmering — the hottest summer on record. Climate breakdown has begun,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday.
Scientists have said the burning of coal, oil and natural gas for human activity is driving ever-higher temperatures around the globe as greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere and hold in heat. This year, El Nino, a temporary warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean that occurs naturally, has also played a role in raising the global temperature.
As parents migrate, Venezuelan kids fall prey to abuse
Venezuelan children, left behind by parents seeking a better life elsewhere and forsaken by a crumbling schooling system, are increasingly falling victim to sexual predators.
In some cases, experts say, the abuse even happens with the consent of caretakers desperate for “payment” in food or cash.
Reported cases of child sex abuse in the economic crisis-hobbled South American country rose to more than 5,500 in 2022 — up nearly 30 percent from a year earlier, according to official data, and a ten-year high.
Some 10 million of Venezuela’s 30 million inhabitants are children or teenagers.
According to criminologist Magally Huggins, emigration is leaving children vulnerable as they are handed off to grandparents, other family members or even neighbors.
Another cause is the crisis in the education system, with public schools open only one or two days a week as teachers work fewer hours to compensate for low salaries.
India or Bharat: What’s behind the dispute over the country’s name?
A change to the Sanskrit name is backed by PM Narendra Modi’s BJP, which says the word ‘India’ is a symbol of colonial slavery.
Controversy has gripped India after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government referred to the country as Bharat on official invitations, leaving many wondering whether the name will be changed.
In dinner invitations sent on Tuesday to guests attending this week’s Group of 20 (G20) summit, Droupadi Murmu is referred to as “President of Bharat” instead of the usual “President of India”.
On the same day, a tweet by a senior spokesman of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said Modi was attending a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Indonesia as the “prime minister of Bharat”.
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