Kyoto Animation fire: Thirteen dead after suspected arson attack

At least 13 people are dead and dozens injured after a suspected arson attack at an animation studio in Kyoto, Japan, local emergency officials have said.

Local media quoted police as saying a man broke into the Kyoto Animation Co studio on Thursday morning and sprayed an unidentified liquid around.

Some 30 people still remain unaccounted for, broadcaster NHK reported.

The suspect, an unidentified man, has been detained and was taken to hospital with injuries.

How did the incident unfold?

The fire broke out at the three-storey building at around 10:30 local time (01:35 GMT) on Thursday. Rescue operations are still ongoing.

Trump rally crowd chants ‘send her back’ after president attacks Ilhan Omar

Chant follows Trump’s racist tweets targeting Omar and three other Democratic congresswomen of color

Tom McCarthy in New York

Thu 18 Jul 2019 06.07 BST

Goaded on by the president, a crowd at a Donald Trump rally on Wednesday night chanted “send her back! send her back!” in reference to Ilhan Omar, a US congresswoman who arrived almost 30 years ago as a child refugee in the United States.

Trump used the 2020 campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina, to attack Omar and three other Democratic congresswomen – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan – calling them “hate-filled extremists”. The group, which calls itself “the Squad”, has been the focus of racist attacks by the president this week, kickstarted by tweets posted Sunday in which he said the lawmakers, all women of color, should “go back” to other countries.

Latin America confronts anti-Semitism, 25 years after deadly terrorist attack

Twenty-five years ago, the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association fell victim to a gruesome terror attack in Buenos Aires. Today, Jewish communities are concerned about growing anti-Semitism on the internet.

July 18 marks the 25th anniversary of the bombing of the Buenos Aires Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building. A van loaded with explosives was detonated, killing 87 individuals and injuring over 100. It was the deadliest terror attack Argentina ever witnessed. To this day, the real perpetrators have not been identified, and it took almost 21 years until Argentina’s parliament voted to compensate the victims and their relatives.

The anniversary has revived public debate on intolerance, discrimination and anti-Semitism in Latin America. “Latin America has not seen the physically violent anti-Semitism that other parts of the world have experienced through terrorist attacks,” says Ariel Seidler of the World Jewish Congress Latin American branch. “There are anti-Semitic incidents, but in general Jewish communities can freely practice their faith.”

WHO declares DR Congo’s Ebola epidemic a ‘public health emergency of international concern’

The World Health Organization on Wednesday declared the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo a “public health emergency of international concern,” a rare designation only used for the gravest epidemics.

Privacy concerns over viral photo apps are totally valid. But they’re also often overblown.

The panic about FaceApp’s old-person filter isn’t wrong, exactly. It’s just tinged with xenophobia and devoid of context.

By Kaitlyn Tiffany

If you’ve been on Twitter or Instagram recently, you may have noticed that every person you know is suddenly 80 years old. There’s been a huge spike in use of the Russian photo-editing application FaceApp, which allows a user to submit a photo of their face and be shown an elderly version of themselves.

Of course, there is a moment in every fad where someone loudly points out that the fad is bad, and that moment has come for FaceApp this week because of a heated conversation around the app’s terms of service and privacy policy.

Thousands protest at mass rally in San Juan, demanding Puerto Rico governor’s resignation

“If he does not leave now, this is going to get worse,” said reggaeton star Residente ahead of the massive protest.

By Nicole Acevedo

With chants of “Ricky, renuncia!” (“Ricky, resign!”) thousands of Puerto Ricans marched and rallied in Old San Juan on Wednesday in a massive protest calling for the resignation of Gov. Ricardo Rosselló.

Puerto Ricans from across the island gathered in the U.S. commonwealth’s capital, joined by high-profile stars such as Ricky Martin, reggaeton stars Bad Bunny and Residente, award-winning actor Benicio Del Toro and beloved island celebrities like Tommy Torres, Karla Monroig and PJ Sin Suela, who rallied the crowd amid a sea of Puerto Rican flags, bullhorns and signs.

Late Wednesday, protesters threw items, including bricks, glass and fireworks, at police. Police responded by firing tear gas in an attempt to clear the streets. They also shot rubber bullets into the crowd.

We are so damn bad at it I can’t make money even when I cheat. How do you know that? I told you so, how much proof do you need?

And I have never ever minimized my Income so I could cheat on Taxes and never ever maximized it to get a Fraudulent Loan.

Ever.

Cody’s Showdy

US House condemns Trump attacks on congresswomen as racist

The US House of Representatives has voted to condemn President Donald Trump after a series of attacks aimed at four congresswomen.

The resolution denounced Mr Trump’s “racist comments that have legitimised fear and hatred of New Americans and people of colour”.

Mr Trump had been accused of racism and xenophobia for telling the members of congress to leave the country.

The president has since tweeted: “I don’t have a Racist bone in my body!”

Tuesday’s debate in the Democratic-controlled chamber was a highly polarised debate, with various Republicans insisting the vote itself was a breach of decorum.

A city suffocating: most polluted city in Americas struggles to change

Wood smoke smothers Coyhaique, Chile, in June and July. Yet despite the WHO ranking its air worst in the Americas, residents are reluctant to alter their habits

Photographs by Claudio Frías

by John Bartlett in Coyhaique

Wed 17 Jul 2019 06.01 BST

“Iwas born and raised beside a roaring fire,” says Yasna Seguel proudly, as wet snowflakes tap against the kitchen window behind her and orange flames warm an outstretched palm. A tobacco-yellow stain soaks into the table cloth as she sets her mate gourd down to select a fresh log for the fire.

Every evening through the bitterly cold winter months of June and July, the southern city of Coyhaique, the most populous in the region of Aysén in Chilean Patagonia, is smothered by a thick, fragrant blanket of damp wood smoke that clings to the hillsides.

With the city lying between two mountainous ridges – to the east lies the Pacific Ocean and behind the steep rise on the other side of the valley is Argentina – there is very little wind to sweep the smoke down the valley and away. Instead, heat inversion compresses the cloud into a dense shield that suffocates the city.

Overcrowded destinations reduced to stage sets

The tourist paradox

Getting onto Unesco’s World Heritage List means mass tourism. It can make things better or worse.

by Geneviève Clastres

Marie-Eve Cortés, cultural affairs and international relations director for Albi, in southern France, clearly remembers 31 July 2010, when the Episcopal City was added to the Unesco World Heritage List and life changed for its 52,000 inhabitants: ‘The next day, there were crowds in the streets. People were making a detour to come and see it.’ Since then tourist numbers have more than doubled, from 700,000 to 1.5 million in 2016, though there was a slight drop in 2017.

Inscription is often a seal of approval for sites that are already popular, but the ‘Unesco effect’ is real. ‘Inscription recognises the site’s quality, whether it is natural or cultural. For potential visitors, it’s like a guarantee,’ said Maria Gravari-Barbas, coordinator of the Unesco Culture, Tourism and Development chair at University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. One or two sites are added to the list each year and France has 44: 39 cultural, four natural, one mixed.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: British-Iranian woman moved to Tehran mental ward

The family of a jailed British-Iranian woman says she has been taken to the psychiatric ward of a hospital in Tehran. The case has fueled tensions between Iran and the UK amid attempts to salvage a 2015 nuclear deal.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 40, was transferred from Evin prison to the psychiatric ward at Imam Khomeini hospital, where she is being held by the Revolutionary Guard, her father said Wednesday.

The British-American aid worker was detained in April 2016 at a Tehran airport as she was leaving the country to return to the United Kingdom with her young daughter after a family visit. She was subsequently sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly trying to overthrow the Iranian government.

She has denied all charges.

What happens when parts of South Asia become unlivable? The climate crisis is already displacing millions

Analysis by James Griffiths, CNN

Updated 0615 GMT (1415 HKT) July 17, 2019

“DO WE BELIEVE IN ASYLUM? IF WE DO, WE NEED TO STOP THIS RULE”: TRUMP POLICY UPENDS PROTECTIONS AT U.S.-MEXICO BORDER

July 17 2019

THIS WEEK, THE Trump administration announced an unprecedented rule that would deny tens of thousands of asylum-seekers the chance to find refuge in the United States, imposing a bar to asylum for anybody who has passed through another country without applying for protection and being denied it there. The rule went into effect Tuesday, the day after it was announced, and set off an immediate storm of criticism and outcry.

Heather Axford, an attorney with Central American Legal Assistance, told The Intercept that the rule would apply to almost all of her clients. Axford described the case of Blanca — a pseudonym — who fled El Salvador after she had been “green lit” to be killed by MS-13 because she had testified against the gang members who had murdered her uncle. Blanca initially went to Mexico but was tracked down by a woman from MS-13 in the migrant shelter where she was staying. Blanca and her infant daughter were forced to continue their flight to the United States, where, this March, she was granted asylum. Axford put it simply: “She should not be required to seek asylum in Mexico if she has not found safe haven there.”