Category: #Geopolitiks
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India Scours Jungle Islands for Lost Malaysia Jet
from in.reuters.com: Indian aircraft on Friday combed Andaman and Nicobar, made up of more than 500 mostly uninhabited islands, for signs of a missing Malaysia Airlines (MASM.KL) jetliner that evidence suggests was last headed towards the heavily forested archipelago. Popular with tourists and anthropologists alike, the islands form India’s most isolated state. They are best…
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UN Says Front Companies, Embassies Mask Weapons Trade
from uk.reuters.com: (Redacted) has developed sophisticated ways to circumvent United Nations sanctions, including the suspected use of its embassies to facilitate an illegal trade in weapons, a United Nations report issued on Tuesday said. It said (redacted) was also making use of more complicated financial countermeasures and techniques “pioneered by drug-trafficking organisations” that made tracking…
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Protests Rage in Venezuela, One Month On
from cnn.com: It’s been a month since violent clashes between opposition demonstrators and government forces in Venezuela first grabbed global attention. Since then, at least 23 people have been killed, according to the latest government tally. The tally did not specify whether the deaths occurred among demonstrators or government forces, or both. Protests rage on,…
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Russia Approves EU Assets Freeze If Sanctions Hit Moscow
from presstv.ir: Moscow says it will respond to any EU sanctions with its own punitive measures. This may include a freeze of foreign companies’ accounts in Russian banks and also confiscation of foreign companies’ properties in Russia. The Upper House of Parliament, the Federation Council, is preparing a new law which would allow the president…
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Train Station Massacre Labeled ‘China’s 9/11’ Kills 33
from businessweek.com: A band of 10 or more people wearing black face masks and brandishing long knives walked into a busy train station in southwestern China on Saturday night and began to indiscriminately attack civilians. Police soon began to fire on the assailants, and within a few minutes at least 29 people were dead. At…
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Ben Affleck to Testify Before Congress as Africa Expert
from blacklistednews.com: With a vicious spate of mass killings plaguing the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a Senate panel is calling on experts to appear before U.S. lawmakers next week. One of them is Hollywood actor and serial activist Ben Affleck, The Cable has learned. Affleck is slated to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations…
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Interview w/ Eva Bartlett of InGaza on Human Rights in Palestine
“Eva Bartlett follows in the footsteps of Rachel Corrie.” As she continues her US speaking tour about human rights in Palestine, activist and journalist Eva Bartlett joins us for the second episode of Geopolitiks to talk about her years spent volunteering in Gaza documenting the various angles of life under siege, from the “peace” talks…
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Kiev, Ukraine Explodes Into Violence
from usatoday.com: Weeks of calm were shattered Tuesday when protesters clashed with police outside parliament over the delay of a reform bill, leaving several dead and the police promising “severe measures” if demonstrations do not halt. Government troops attacked a protest camp and fired stun grenades and gunshots at thousands of marchers, killing at least…
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United Nations Report Catalogs North Korea’s Crimes Against Humanity
from latimes.com: Torture, deliberate starvation and other abuses carried out by North Korean authorities — possibly on the orders of leader Kim Jong Un — are crimes against humanity and should be referred to an international court or tribunal for prosecution, United Nations investigators said Monday. A 400-page report catalogs practices long cited by defectors…
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33rd Annual Cobra Gold Military Drill Kicks Off In Thailand
In its 33rd iteration, Cobra Gold is designed to advance regional security and ensure effective response to regional crises by exercising a robust multinational force from nations sharing common goals and security commitments in the Asia-Pacific region.
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Tracing Ancestry, Researchers Produce a Genetic Atlas of Human Mixing Events
from nytimes.com: The rise and fall of empires, the march of armies, the flow of trade routes, the practice of slavery — all these events have led to a mixing of populations around the world. Such episodes have left a record in the human genome, but one that has so far been too complex to…
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Venezuela’s Anti-Government Protests Turn Violent
from source: Venezuelan security forces fired rubber bullets into the air to break up a crowd of violent activists following the largest protests against President Nicolas Maduro’s government since he was re-elected almost a year ago. A group of about 100 mostly student demonstrators, many of them covering their faces, launched fragments of concrete sidewalks…
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Switzerland Vote to Limit Foreign Workers Captures Growing European Fears About Immigration
from washingtonpost.com: A tightly contested vote in Switzerland to limit workers from European Union countries brought threats of retaliation Monday from leaders across the continent. The vote also stoked fears that Swiss citizens were reflecting the zeitgeist across Europe, where right-wing populists increasingly are seizing the spotlight with an anti-immigration political agenda. Amid claims of…
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Interview w/ Michael Vail of StratRisks on Sochi, TPP, Ukraine
For our first installment of ‘Geopolitiks’ – a new series examining the real “news of the world” – we’re joined by Michael Vail of the indispensable StratRisks.com to help us look at the five-ring Sochi circus, the looming Trans-Pacific Partnership and the shaky situations in the Ukraine, South Sudan and more. “Read all about it!”…
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Violent Protests Escalate In Bosnia
from bbc.co.uk: Demonstrators in Bosnia-Hercegovina have set fire to government buildings, in the worst unrest since the end of the 1992-95 war. Hundreds of people have been injured in three days of protests over high unemployment and the perceived inability of politicians to improve the situation. Police used rubber bullets and tear gas to quell…