[IsraelTimes] Nearly half of Afghanistan’s children are not attending school because of war, poverty and other factors, a new report shows.
The study, released by the Education Ministry and the UN children’s agency, says that 3.7 million, or 44 percent, of all school-age children are not attending school. It marks the first time since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 that the rate of attendance has declined, following years of steady gains in education for boys as well as girls, who were banned from attending school under the Taliban ...Arabic for students... The survey says girls account for 60% of those being denied an education.
"Business as usual is not an option for Afghanistan if we are to fulfill the right to education for every child," Adele Khodr, UNICEF’s Afghanistan representative, says in a statement. "When children are not in school, they are at an increased danger of abuse, exploitation and recruitment."
Girls’ education is still frowned upon in much of the conservative Moslem country, and is banned in the steadily expanding areas controlled by the Taliban.
#1
Girls’ education is still frowned upon in much of the conservative Moslem country, and is banned in the steadily expanding areas controlled by the Taliban.
Which is just the mirror to American progressive education, that which is to suppress male education to include drugging and punishing normative social behavior.
[All Africa] The population of mountain gorillas, which survive on the forest-cloaked volcanoes of central Africa, has increased by a quarter to over 1,000 individuals since 2010, wildlife authorities said.
That is despite the threat posed by poachers and gangs in the Virunga Massif,a spine of volcanic mountains in the western Rift Valley straddling eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material... , Uganda, and Rwanda, where most of them reside.
The latest census put them at 1,004 individuals: 604 in Virunga and 400 in Uganda's nearby Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Joel Wenga Malembe, front man for the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature, told Rooters.
The last survey, in 2010, found just 786 of this critically endangered eastern gorilla sub-species, of which 480 were in Virunga.
"These numbers are truly remarkable, far exceeding our expectations, and are the result of a collaborative, three-country effort with governments and partners all playing an important role," Mike Cranfield, of charity Gorilla Doctors, said in a statement.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/04/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
This collapsing socialist state is suffering one of the most dramatic outflows of human talent in modern history, with Aquiles Nazoa offering a glimpse into what happens when a nation begins to empty out.
Vast gaps in Venezuela's labour market are causing a breakdown in daily life, and robbing this nation of its future. The exodus is broad and deep - an outflow of doctors, engineers, oil workers, bus drivers and electricians.
So far this year, 48,000 teachers - or 12 per cent of all staff at primary and high schools nationwide - have quit, according to Se Educa, an educational group. The vast majority, according to the group, have joined a stampede of Venezuelans leaving the country to escape food lines and empty grocery store shelves.
During the first five months of the year, roughly 400,000 Venezuelans have fled the country, following 1.8 million who left over the last two years, according to the Central University of Venezuela. Yet even those numbers may not fully capture the scope of the exodus. Aid workers dealing with the crisis in bordering nations say an average of 4600 Venezuelans a day have been leaving since January 1 - putting the outflow during this year alone at nearly 700,000.
At the Jose Manuel de los Rios Children's Hospital in Caracas, 68 doctors - or 20 per cent of the medical staff - quit and left the country over the past two years. The hospital's cardiology department is now only open for a morning shift, since three of its six specialists are gone. There are 300 vacant nursing positions. Personnel shortages are so bad that the facility can only staff two of its seven operating rooms.
"It now takes eight months to a year for a surgery appointment," said Huniades Urbina, a senior staff pediatrician.
This year, thousands of blackouts have hit Venezuela, darkening cities for weeks at a time. A lack of imported spare parts to fix the poorly maintained power grid is one problem. But so is "the flight of our trained workers," said Aldo Torres, executive director of the Electricity Federation of Venezuela, an association of labour unions.
"Every day, we're receiving dozens of calls from colleagues saying they're going to Colombia, Peru and Ecuador," Torres said. "They're being replaced by people who are mostly not qualified."
#4
Just what you would expect from the bourgeoisie 'hoarders and wreckers' turning traitor! Maybe Sean Penn and Harry Belafonte could emigrate and fill the void left by these traitors to the Bolivarian Cause.
#6
Teacher, doctors, and other highly paid skilled personnel are not actually needed for the rape of natural resources. The only thing really necessary is a steady stream of cheap labor.
#10
The rate of emigration is about 3-5% per year. At some point soon something's gotta break, large scale. I haven't heard about how the neighboring countries are handling the inflow of refugees -- probably not bad if they are mostly the productive people.
Posted by: si vis pacem, para bellum ||
06/04/2018 21:32 Comments ||
Top||
#11
If the soldiers are quitting who is protecting the country from being invaded? Hint, hint.
[DAWN] North Korean leader Kim Pudge Jong-un ...the overweight, pouty-looking hereditary potentate of North Korea. Pudge appears to believe in his own divinity, but has yet to produce any loaves and fishes, so his subjects remain malnourished... is known for pushing the envelope with threats and bluster as he seeks to leverage his nuclear weapons programme into security and economic benefits for his country. But lately he’s gained notoriety for his envelopes alone. President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... on Friday declared that his on-and-off summit with Kim was on again. The announcement came after Trump hosted a senior North Korean envoy at the White House and he delivered a personal letter from Kim that was inside a white envelope nearly as large as a folded newspaper.
Trump has not yet revealed what was written in the letter, but he sure seemed happy to get it. A photo showed a grinning Trump holding up the envelope alongside Kim Yong-chol, the most senior North Korean to visit the White House in 18 years, as they posed in the Oval Office in front of a portrait of Thomas Jefferson. The photo made rounds on social media, where theories abound about why Kim would have sent Trump what seemed like a comically oversized letter.
Did Kim, a third-generation heredity leader, think Trump would share his love for lavish gestures and things grandiose? After spending months trading insults and war threats with him, has Kim learned that the way to influence Trump is to appeal to his ego something South Korean President Moon Jae-in seemed to try in April when he openly vouched for Trump as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize? No one outside North Korea likely knows the real reason for the letter’s size. It could just be that’s how Kim likes it.
Moon, who lobbied hard for nuclear negotiations between Trump and Kim, received a letter of similar size from Kim during February’s Winter Olympics in which he expressed a desire for an inter-Korean summit. Kim’s to letter to Moon was personally delivered by Kim’s sister, who attended the Olympics as a special envoy, and was covered by a blue folder emblazoned with a golden seal.
Analysts say the gesture of sending the letter itself is part of the meticulous steps North Korea is taking to present Kim as a legitimate international statesman who is reasonable and capable of negotiating solutions and making deals. Following a provocative 2017 in which his engineers tested a purported thermonuclear warhead and long-range missiles that could target American cities, Kim has engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity in recent months in what’s seen as an attempt to break out of isolation and obtain relief from sanctions decimating his country’s economy.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/04/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
#1
It's a formal diplomatic letter. Jesus, people are fucking ignorant. Victims of Lockerbie got a similar letter from Libya.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
06/04/2018 3:31 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Since Trump's involved, someone has to question it.
#5
Hopefully if the US ever gives any money to North Korea as part of the peace plan we'll send one of those game-show sized checks that require two hands (or a model) to hold.
#7
No mystery. Diplomats use A4 for routine communicatinos, and A3 for specials. So this is likely an ISO Size A3 document, likely parchment considering the possible historical nature of the letter. The envelope is large enough to hold parchment paper without folding or creasing it.
2 minutes with google, and there is the answer. A perfect chance to REPORT the news and educate the populace.
Instead, they acted like idiot partisans and spun it like a political smear mill. Goebbels would be proud.
When will the press be held personally responsible for this malpractice?
#8
When will the press be held personally responsible for this malpractice?
Overtly? Never. Nonetheless, their share of news seeking eyeballs continues to drop, resulting in ever loser advertising revenue, staffing, and individual salaries, while Rantburg,
Breitbart, etc. see increases of eyeballs and —for those on the profit-making side — all the rest of the list.
[PRESSTV] US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says North Korea will receive sanctions relief only after it has taken "irreversible" steps to abandon its nuclear program, a demand that Washington has made previously and alternatively as a condition for a possible meeting between US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... and North Korean leader Kim Pudge Jong-un ...the overweight, pouty-looking hereditary potentate of North Korea. Pudge appears to believe in his own divinity, but has yet to produce any loaves and fishes, so his subjects remain malnourished... Mattis made the comment on the sidelines of a security conference in Singapore on Sunday, stressing that it was vital for the international community to uphold the United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... -imposed sanctions regime against North Korea until the country ended its nuclear activities.
"We will continue to implement all UN Security Council resolutions on North Korea. North Korea will receive relief only when it demonstrates verifiable and irreversible steps to denuclearization," Mattis said before a meeting with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/04/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
[PRESSTV] Scuffles erupted when coppers stepped in to separate nationalist activists and counter-protesters in Kawasaki on Sunday, as the city reportedly became the first in the country to introduce laws to prevent the spread of hate speech in public.
Initially, the nationalist group was scheduled to hold a meeting at a Kawasaki education hall, but were prevented by the counter-protesters, who performed a sit-in at its entrance.
The passing of the anti-hate speech regulations follow a reported increase in anti-migrant protests in the city, which has a significant Korean community.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/04/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
[DAWN] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... ’s President Tayyip Erdogan has said ride hailing app Uber is finished in Turkey, following pressure from Istanbul taxi drivers who said it was providing an illegal service and called for it to be banned.
About 17,400 taxis operate in Istanbul, home to about a fifth of Turkey’s population of 81 million people, and since Uber entered the country in 2014 tensions have risen sharply.
Erdogan’s statement came after new regulations were announced in recent weeks tightening transport licensing requirements, making it more difficult for drivers to register with Uber and threatening a two-year ban for violations.
"This thing called Uber emerged. That business is finished. That does not exist anymore," he said in a speech in Istanbul late on Friday. "We have our taxi system. Where does this (Uber) come from? It is used in Europe, I do not care about that. We will decide by ourselves," added Erdogan, who is running for re-election in three weeks.
Uber had no immediate response to his comment. After the transport licensing changes were announced it said it wanted to work with all sides to improve transport and to be "a true partner to Turkey for the long term".
Uber said that about 2,000 yellow cab drivers use its app to find customers, while another 5,000 work for UberXL, using large vans to transport groups to parties, or take people with bulky luggage to Istanbul’s airports. It declined to reveal the number of Uber users in Turkey, where it operates in Istanbul, and in the resort towns of Bodrum and Cesme in the summer months.
Earlier this year, Istanbul’s taxi drivers took Uber to court accusing it of hindering their business and operating illegally.
Several reports said that Uber vehicles, drivers and customers were either mistreated, threatened or faced violence by yellow taxi drivers.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/04/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
#1
off the pile
Sez Erdogan, shopping for war,
"Just open the store, like before!
When Turkey comes knocking,
Should partners be blocking
The Porte that the Turks all adore?"
[DAWN] Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar on Saturday told the father of Zainab that the appeal of the convict against his sentence had been fixed for hearing before a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court.
The chief justice said the bench to be headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa would resume its hearing on the appeal next week.
The chief justice also ordered the police to withdraw security from Haji Amin Ansari, the father of Zainab, who was kidnapped, raped and killed, saying that convict Imran Ali who could harm him was in jail now.
An anti-terrorism court handed down death penalty to Imran while the Lahore High Court dismissed his appeal against the sentence.
Meanwhile, ...back at the dirigible, the gondola was dangling by a single thread of rope.
Jack! Cynthia cried. I just realized I'm afraid of heights! I don't even like high heels!... the chief secretary told the court that another minor rape victim had been receiving necessary medical care at Children Hospital. He regretted that the condition of the minor was not satisfactory as her treatment was not possible in Pakistain or abroad. That covers pretty much everywhere.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/04/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[DAWN] Police on Sunday jugged Please don't kill me! a man accused of stripping naked a 16-year-old girl in the Hashtnagri area of Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. , officials told DawnNewsTV.
SSP City Farooq Kokab said that the accused had left the city after the incident and lived in Rawalpindi, Hassan Abdal, Wah Cant and Mardan for short intervals.
"Police were following the accused and conducting raids to arrest him. Finally, he was intercepted and arrested from Chamkani area of Peshawar upon his return to the city," he added.
According to Wajid Shah, station house officer (SHO) of Shaheed Gulfat Hussain Police Station, the girl was allegedly assaulted by the man, who also stripped her naked and paraded her near her home.
The incident followed a fight between two families ‐ the accused's and the victim's ‐ who had both filed a complaint at the cop shoppe, said Shah.
Taking matters into his own hands, the accused ‐ a relative of the victim ‐ had assaulted and stripped her while she was returning home with her mother from the cop shoppe
Posted by: Fred ||
06/04/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Now she must be executed or at least lashed many times for her indecent exposure.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) The Iraqi parliament will send a message to the Ottoman Turkish parliament urging postponement of filling Ilisu dam for three months.
A statement issued by the office of Hammam Hammoudi, deputy of parliament president, said "parliament will send an urgent message to the Ottoman Turkish parliament to postpone filling Ilisu dam for three months and form a ministeriel parliamentary negotiation delegation to visit The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... in order to agree on the issue."
Earlier on Sunday, the Iraqi Water Resources Minister Hassan al-Janabi said Turkey violated the bilateral joint coordination agreements on storing the water in Ilisu dam, established by Turkey on Tigris River.
In a session in the parliament, Janabi said "there was agreements between Iraq and Turkey to coordinate in advance over filling the dams, however, Turkey started filling the dams starting March 1, unfortunately."
"Half of the revenues of Tigris and Euphrates in Iraq depend on Turkey," he said adding that "the ministry’s efforts are based on reducing the harms as the dam issue hs become a fact,"
The general secretariat of the Iraqi cabinet said the latter decided taking urgent measures to handle the water shortage at several regions across the country."
In a statement, the secretariat said "cabinet decided allocating 7.9 billion dinars from the emergency reserves for 2018 to carry out the works of the first phase of a project to set up pumps on al-Thirthar lake."
Posted by: trailing wife ||
06/04/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iraq
[Rudaw] ERBIL, Kurdistan Region ‐ The water crisis has spread in southern and central provinces of Iraq and the Kurdistan Region as dams built by The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire.... and Iran, irrespective of international laws, slow the flow of rivers into Iraq to a trickle.
There are growing fears up to seven million people will be displaced due to the dramatic fall in water resources.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
06/04/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
In 2007 dozens of water Wells were dug on FOB Speicher at Tekrit. Absolutely lovely water from the gravel at a depth of 85 meters.
#4
Procopius, there is a whole system of US water law based on 'prior appropriation' which says the first user of a surface water system has a right to the percentage of the flow he was using when another user starts drawing on it, and so on. These rights are transferable, so an urban water system may buy out a farmer who had been using a lot of water rights for irrigation.
#5
Not just the Rio Grande. There's a constant water war in the west over who gets to use the most water from the Colorado, Rio Grande, Arkansas, and Platte watersheds.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
06/04/2018 22:32 Comments ||
Top||
[Rudaw] ERBIL, Kurdistan Region ‐ With the threat of ISIS decreased and the restoration of stability, Kurdistan Region has seen 20 percent growth in international trade, according to an official from the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
Trade steadily grew year-over-year within the Region and federally after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Kurdistan saw an increase from $4.28 billion in trade in 2004 to $17.2 billion in 2013.
With the arrival of the terror group ISIS, however, trade plummeted in 2015, to $12.9 billion.
The numbers are now on the way up again.
"Because the war on ISIS is finished and stability has been restored to the Kurdistan Region, business exchanges in the Kurdistan Region have once again increased. For example, trade exchanges increased by 20 percent last year, compared to 2015," Nawzad Adham, an official from the KRG ministry of trade and industry, told Rudaw.
Food, clothing, medicines, cars, and gold were the main imports.
"This means that people mostly purchase essential goods due to low income," Adham explained.
According to the KRG’s trade ministry’s data, the Kurdistan Region spent $15.928 billion on imports in 2016 and $16.133 billion in 2017.
Kurdistan’s biggest trading partners are its neighbours ‐ The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire.... and Iran ‐ with a collective $9.67 billion in trade. This is followed by Arab states, especially the United Arab Emirates with $2.9 billion in trade, then China with $966 million, and EU countries $469 million.
Sheikh Mustafa Sheikh Abdulrahman, head of the union of importers and exporters in the Kurdistan Region, agrees that the end of the main war with ISIS and the restoration of business ties with Iraqi provinces have boosted trade.
"The completion of the war on ISIS and reopening of roads between the Kurdistan Region and Iraqi cities have had immense impact on the growth of trade exchanges in the Kurdistan Region. And this is because many of the goods imported to the Kurdistan Region are exported to Iraqi cities," Sheikh Abdulrahman said.
Kurdistan serves as an international gateway for Iraq as the bulk of its imports continue on to Iraqi cities.
"Due to our facilitations for traders, the Kurdistan Region has become a center for Iraq’s trade. Because of this, 30 percent of Iraq’s imports come through the Kurdistan Region’s border gates. We have noticed that 75 percent of imported goods are exported to Iraqi cities. This has become a big source of revenue for the Kurdistan Region," Adham detailed.
"But the Iraqi government is trying to undermine these business exchanges by setting up customs checkpoints and taxing traders," he added.
Some imports into Kurdistan also make their way to Iran.
"We have noticed that some of the items imported by Kurdistan Region’s traders are exported to Iran in different ways, especially gold, electrical and other home appliances, fabric and clothing, and other items. That is why we can say that the Kurdistan Region’s border gates have become an avenue that accounts for needs of some cities in Iran," said the union’s Abdulrahman.
He is optimistic that Kurdistan’s international trade will develop further.
"We hope that business exchanges between the Kurdistan Region and other countries enter a new stage after a government is formed, the Iraqi government sends Kurdistan Region’s budget share, salaries of babus government employees are paid in full, and a budget is allocated to investment projects," he said.
[AlAhram] Angry protests rocked cities across Jordan overnight against IMF-backed austerity measures including a new income tax draft law and price hikes, hours after the government and unions failed to reach an agreement to end the standoff.
Around 3,000 people faced down a heavy security presence to gather near the prime minister's office in central Amman until the early hours of Saturday morning, waving Jordanian flags and signs reading "we will not kneel".
Protests have gripped the country since Wednesday, when hundreds flooded the streets of Amman and demonstrated in other cities to demand the fall of the government.
Last week the government proposed an income tax draft law, yet to be approved by parliament, aimed at increasing taxes on employees by at least 5 percent and on companies by between 20 and 40 percent.
It is the latest in a series of economic reforms and repeated price hikes on basic goods since Amman secured a $723-million three-year credit line from the International Monetary Fund in 2016.
The Economist Intelligence Unit earlier this year ranked Jordan's capital as one of the most expensive in the Arab world.
Since January, Jordan -- which suffers high unemployment and has few natural resources -- has seen repeated price rises including on bread, as well as tax hikes on basic goods.
Overnight, protestors outside premier Hani Mulki's office shouted slogans including "the ones raising prices want to burn the country" and "this Jordan is our Jordan, Mulki should leave".
The prime minister met on Saturday with trade union representatives who demanded the income tax law be revoked, but failed to reach an agreement.
The head of Jordan's federation of unions, Ali Obus, demanded that the state "maintain its independence and not bow to IMF demands".
King Abdullah II called on parliament to lead a "comprehensive and reasonable national dialogue" on the new tax law.
"It would not be fair that the citizen alone bears the burden of financial reforms," he told officials on Saturday evening.
A majority of 78 out of parliament's 130 representatives have pledged to vote against the income tax law introduced by the government last month.
The speaker of Jordan's senate called a consultative meeting for Sunday.
Mulki told news hounds on Saturday that meetings would continue, adding: "Sending this bill to the house of representatives does not mean that the house of representatives will approve it".
#2
The buyer's well hidden - only named as 'the county', but at a sales price of $1, someone made out on this deal; likely someone in their upper management's a good buddy of Cuomo.
#2
Interesting talk on how espionage has changed over time from people spying on people, to signals/computer hacking, to hybrid warfare and disinformatsiya. Mentions Clifford Stole and The Cuckoo's Egg which, if you have not read it, is a fascinating story about the early days of hacking into computer networks.
Warning: contains some of the usual lefty tropes like Scooter Libby outing Valerie Plame, and Russian interference and disinformation getting Trump elected. Just offhand snarks, the speaker doesn't belabor the point.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka 
[DAWN] 
North Korea
...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire.
