Members of Eagles of Death Metal, Band That Played Bataclan, Attend Paris Attacks Memorial —  Members of Eagles of Death Metal, the band that was playing at the Bataclan concert hall when the deadly Paris Attacks occurred, attended a town hall memorial in the city Saturday to remember the 130 people killed in coordinated terrorist attacks across Paris one year ago. Dozens were killed and hundreds were injured at the Bataclan after jihadists opened fire during the band's set on Nov. 13, 2015, taking fans of the band and venue workers hostage in the hall. "I wouldn't imagine anyone not wanting to be here. This city is a shining example of really the best possible way to react to something that's awful and evil," said Jesse Hughes, Eagles of Death Metal's controversial frontman. "This is the leadership core of what to do, and I'm very proud that I get to count so many people amongst my family and friends now." On Saturday, Sting, the British pop legend and former frontman of the Police, played the first show at the Bataclan since the tragedy. Hughes was not admitted entrance to the concert, according to the Agence France-Presse (AFP).   The AFP reported that the venue's co-director would not allow Hughes to enter after he told Fox Business Channel that he thought Muslim security personnel at the venue collaborated with attackers.   Hughes later apologized and retracted his statement. The band's manager, Marc Pollack, refuted the claim that Hughes was not admitted to the concert in an interview with Billboard, describing the co-director's description of the situation as false.   Hughes, at the town hall, offered his gratitude to the people of France.   "And from the second that the first bullets started flying, this country took care of us. And we are grateful forever, and I just hope everyone here knows how much we love this country and every person in it," he said.   Sting's performance at the newly restored Bataclan included a moment of silence and statement in French, saying he hoped "to remember and honor those who lost their lives in the attacks a year ago and to celebrate the life and the music of this historic venue."

After reading the article, it's great that the band members still made time to visit the people that were killed during the attack. I also feel that these attacks have been happening way too often now and is now a normal thing. We should be doing more to prevent these attacks from happening and acknowledging the people who died instead of the killers.


The person is male. Racially, the person is white. The person is 29 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 85000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 6.75 in openness, 6.75 in conscientiousness, 6.75 in extraversion, 6.75 in agreeableness, and 7.0 in stability.

All polar bears across the Arctic face shorter sea ice season —  It's no secret that Arctic sea ice is melting.                                                                                Polar bears, the poster-child for climate change, are among the animals most affected by the seasonal and year-to-year changes in Arctic sea ice, because they rely on this surface for essential activities such as hunting, traveling and breeding. A new University of Washington study, with funding and satellite data from NASA and other agencies, finds a trend toward earlier sea ice melt in the spring and later ice growth in the fall across all 19 polar bear populations, which can negatively impact the feeding and breeding capabilities of the bears. The paper, to appear Sept. 14 in The Cryosphere, is the first to quantify the sea ice changes in each polar bear subpopulation across the entire Arctic region using metrics that are specifically relevant to polar bear biology. "This study shows declining sea ice for all subpopulations of polar bears," said co-author Harry Stern, a researcher with the UW's Polar Science Center. "We have used the same metric across all of the polar bear subpopulations in the Arctic so we can compare and contrast, for example, the Hudson Bay region with the Baffin Bay region using the same metric." The analysis shows that the critical timing of the sea ice break-up and sea ice freeze-up is changing in all areas in a direction that is harmful for polar bears. Nineteen separate polar bear populations live throughout the Arctic, spending their winters and springs roaming on sea ice and hunting. The bears have evolved mainly to eat seals, which provide necessary fats and nutrients in the harsh Arctic environment. Polar bears can't outswim their prey, so instead they perch on the ice as a platform and ambush seals at breathing holes or break through the ice to access their dens. "Sea ice really is their platform for life," said co-author Kristin Laidre, a researcher at the UW's Polar Science Center. "They are capable of existing on land for part of the year, but the sea ice is where they obtain their main prey." The new study draws upon 35 years of satellite data showing sea ice concentration each day in the Arctic. NASA scientists process the data, stored at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. The center also reports each fall the yearly minimum low for Arctic sea ice. This August saw the fourth lowest in the satellite record. Across all 19 polar bear populations, the researchers found that the total number of ice-covered days declined at the rate of seven to 19 days per decade between 1979 and 2014. Sea ice concentration during the summer months -- an important measure because summertime is when some subpopulations are forced to fast on land -- also declined in all regions, by 1 percent to 9 percent per decade. The most striking result, researchers said, is the consistent trend across all polar bear regions for an earlier spring ice melt and a later fall freeze-up. Arctic sea ice retreats in the springtime as daylight reappears and temperatures warm. In the fall months the ice sheets build again as temperatures drop. "These spring and fall transitions bound the period when there is good ice habitat available for bears to feed," Laidre said. "Those periods are also tied to the breeding season when bears find mates, and when females come out of their maternity dens with very small cubs and haven't eaten for months." The researchers found that on average, spring melting was three to nine days earlier per decade, and fall freeze-up was three to nine days later per decade. That corresponds to a roughly 3 ½ week shift at either end -- and seven weeks of total loss of good sea ice habitat for polar bears -- over the 35 years of Arctic sea ice data. "We expect that if the trends continue, compared with today, polar bears will experience another six to seven weeks of ice-free periods by mid-century," Stern said. The trend appears to be linear and isn't accelerating or leveling off, Stern added. The researchers recommend that the National Climate Assessment incorporate the timing of spring ice retreat and fall ice advance as measures of climate change in future reports. The study's results currently are used by the International Union for Conservation of Nature's polar bear specialist group, which completes assessments of polar bears and issues the species' conservation status. The researchers plan to update their findings each year as new ice coverage data are available. "It's nice to see this work being used in high-level conservation goals," Laidre said

After reading the article, my initial reaction was that i felt really bad for the polar bears. They did not deserve what is happening to them. It is mainly due to climate change and i believe that is caused mostly by human activities. Because of human greed and consumption, we have to make other living things suffer. Because of this, many animals are facing extinction today.


Tragedy as father and son die after falling off a cliff during hike on a California trail —  A father and son have died after falling off a cliff during a hike. The two plunged to their death while on a trail next to Shaver Lake in Fresno, California. Though deputies attempted to get to the hikers, there was a helicopter power failure during a refueling and they made an emergency landing, meaning they couldn't get to the pair, ABC 30 reported.  The report said a search-and-rescue crew is going out Sunday morning for the two victims' bodies.   The names of the father and son have not been publicly revealed.

I thought that the article was a bit sad. I feel like being in cars is a serious situation and everyone should be safe. I also think that the parents tried the best that they could to do everything they can in the situation. The sitatuion made me feel a bit sad and a bit concerned as well. It makes me feel like doing something to help them out.


I think that the article was very sad and got me worried. The fact that they coudln't find the father and his son is very sad. To think about their family members and the mother as well as what she is currently going through makes me feel awful. The father and son were both probably just trying to bond and having this happen is traumatizing.


Nigeria investigates reports that officials raped displaced women —  Nigeria has launched an investigation into reports alleging that government officials raped and sexually abused women and girls who survived Boko Haram violence.   The move comes after Human Rights Watch published a report detailing accounts by dozens of women and girls who said they were sexually abused or coerced into sex. The women said they were raped or abused by camp leaders, vigilante group members, policemen and soldiers at camps in Borno State's capital, Maiduguri. The camps were set up to offer aid to people displaced by fighting in Nigeria's northeast. Nigeria's Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, has set up a special team "to immediately commence thorough Investigation into all cases of alleged sexual abuses, exploitation, harassments, gender-based violence and professional misconduct," a statement from the inspector general's office said Thursday. Police: Security at camps to be beefed up Some of the victims had escaped captivity by terror group Boko Haram, only to become victims at the camps where they sought refuge, the rights group said. Many of the women were impregnated by their abusers at the camps. Several victims were drugged before they were raped. The inspector general called on HRW to make available to the investigation team any additional information about the 43 cases of abuse featured in the report that could assist the police inquiry. He has taken measures to beef up security at the camps and said any acts that violate the human dignity of displaced people by individuals or groups in the camps or anywhere in the country will be handled in accordance with the law, according to the statement. Borno State governor: 'We must act now' Following the HRW report, Borno State Gov. Kashim Shettima has revealed plans to request law enforcement agencies to deploy female and male undercover detectives to all camps for internally displaced people in Borno State "to spy on culprits and bring them to book," according to a statement from his office. "Sadly and very sadly indeed, the (Internally Displaced People) camps have become avenues that horrible stories of sexual slavery, prostitution rings, drug peddling and other social vices are emanating from," the governor said. "Sexual harassment of female IDPs is a desperate situation," he said. "None of us would fold arms if his or her daughter is in position to be sexually harassed, so we must act now." Displaced by fighting Dubbed the world's deadliest terror group, Boko Haram has launched attacks in northern Nigeria and surrounding areas for years. More than 20,000 people have been killed since 2009 when the conflict began. Nearly 2.5 million have been displaced. Boko Haram, which in the local Hausa language means "western education is sin," wants to institute a strict form of Sharia law in Nigeria. Its mass abductions and attacks on soft targets, including schools, mosques and churches, have prompted stark international condemnation.

What happened in the article was very upsetting to read. I felt really bad for the women that got raped. It was also terrible because it stated that many of them were impregnated by these soldiers and there was pretty much nothing they could do about it. It's so damaging not only for the woman but for the unborn child as well.


Food, water fears remain year after Brazil mine dam disaster —  COLATINA, Brazil — One year after a dam ruptured and sent a giant wave of metal-laden mud gushing into one of Brazil’s most important rivers, people who live along the banks won’t drink the water and fishermen are afraid to eat their catch. Upward of 10 billion gallons of mud filled with mining waste buried towns in the Nov. 5 dam break that has been described as the worst environmental disaster in Latin America’s largest country. Nineteen people perished. Across 5,000 acres — about six times the size of New York City’s Central Park — the onslaught of mud crushed thousands of trees and wildlife. In the river, more than 14 tons of fish died, mostly after mud got stuck in their gills. An equally large amount of aquatic plants died when turbid waters blocked out the sunlight needed to survive. The environmental damage was so vast that even a year later, many people in the area won’t drink or cook with water from their faucets because, unlike the groundwater, it’s connected to a network of reservoirs the Doce River feeds into. On a recent day, construction worker Samuel Alves de Andrade was among several people lining up outside a hut for well water sourced by an aquifer in the city of Colatina, about 407 miles (655 kilometers) northeast of Rio de Janeiro. “This water is a lot better than what comes from the river. We have to do what’s best for us,” he said as he filled plastic jugs for family members. Fishermen say they’re staying away from the river because they keep finding fish with red spots and wart-like bumps, prompting environmental authorities to launch their own studies. A judge has ordered Samarco— a venture between giants Vale of Brazil and BHP Billiton of Australia— to pay for independent studies, but it’s unclear when results will be released. “I have been fishing in the Doce River waters for more than 30 years, but now I don’t have the guts to eat that fish,” said Jose de Fatima Lemes, president of the Colatina fishermen’s association. Residents and environmental experts say subsequent cleanup efforts by mega mining company Samarco have been slow and ineffective. Doubts also persist about the local government’s assurances that Doce River’s water is safe to consume. “The mud is still all over the banks,” said Andre Dos Santos, a biologist at the Federal University of Sao Carlos who has collected samples along the Doce River since the disaster. “The river will never be the same.” Rich in history and commerce, the Doce River had long been a reliable source of water and food for millions of residents and thousands of companies along its banks. Samarco’s chief officer for sustainable projects, Maury de Souza Jr., said the company is advancing in its cleanup and has not found any water quality problems. Ubaldina Isaac, of Brazil’s environmental ministry, said a key government priority now is to reforest the banks to prevent rainwater from dragging back into the river the mine waste that remains wedged in the dirt. One recent morning, Isaac gestured to some recently planted bushes that had already died or rooted out even before the rainy season had fully kicked off in November. She said the plants should have lasted through the wet season that stretches into the first months of the year. Without sufficient vegetation “we have no system to hold the waste, and so it continues flowing into the river,” she said. Rio Doce was initially feared by Portuguese gold explorers because of the difficulties they encountered navigating its zig-zagging path. But in the 19th century, communities formed along the river’s path through the thick Atlantic rainforest as mining activity and cattle ranching gradually increased. Today, many businesses operate along the Doce, including fishing, steelmaking and companies that produce paper and charcoal. Hundreds of fishermen who lost their livelihood in the disaster receive a monthly compensation of about $400 from Samarco, plus $80 more for each of their dependents. Some say they used to sell their fish for as much as $1,200 a month. On a recent afternoon, fisherman Diomar Lordes visited the river with his son and they sat on the broken wooden boat that carried him through the waters for decades. “I have no hope I will fish here again,” Lordes said. “It’s like we lost a relative. A life ended.” Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

It's really sad what happeend to the people after reading the article. I felt like the people that were living in that area did not deserve what happened to them. They must have been struggling deeply. They probably had no water for a long time and the children there were probably very thirsty. I also think that climate change has a big factor in this.


'They Were Just Like Us, and They Lost Everything' —  Can empathy for refugees be taught? A few weeks ago, I scrambled to evacuate my area with the only five items I could grab—my phone, passport, water, money, and medicine—in the 30 seconds before I had to flee. Many of the roughly 65 million refugees, asylum-seekers, and internally displaced people around the world today have had to make panicked choices like these; more than 4,000 have died at sea in overcrowded boats and rafts attempting to reach Europe from the Middle East. On Thursday last week, more than 200 additional people lost their lives in two separate shipwrecks off Libya. But my own “escape” was far away from that, on the safety of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) had organized the Forced From Home exhibit. The aim was, in part, to put the staggering numbers of the crisis into tangible terms for those of us who don’t have to contemplate actually being forced from home. So I took on the identity of an asylum-seeker from Honduras while my tour guide, Ahmed Abdalrazag, pled with the group to hurry up. If we were really fleeing, he explained, our time would be up and it might be too late. We got on a raft like the ones in which so many have risked, and lost, their lives in recent years—though this one stayed on dry land—and later, we were detained at a fenced border where our various legal classifications determined our future. At each stop, hardships from the journey forced us to give up one item, until we were left empty-handed in front of staged refugee tents—where in real life another series of ordeals await those who make it that far. MSF, or Doctors Without Borders, the international aid group and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is touring the exhibit through five U.S. cities this fall, with a series of West Coast stops planned for next year. So far, according to an MSF spokesman, more than 17,000 people have attended, including over 3,400 students. MSF provides medical and related humanitarian aid in over 60 countries, often in dangerous circumstances—the group describes its mission as assisting “victims of conflict, natural disasters, epidemics, or healthcare exclusion.” In Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan recently, MSF-supported hospitals and the people who work there have themselves been victims of conflict. With the Forced From Home exhibit, MSF is trying to communicate, in concrete terms, the reality of people fleeing from those places and elsewhere, including Burundi, South Sudan, and Central America. Official action to mitigate this reality has been frustratingly slow. It has been more than two years since the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) first reported that the number of displaced people worldwide had surpassed the figures following World War II.  But as my colleague Uri Friedman wrote in September, the UN General Assembly only recently held its inaugural Summit for Refugees and Migrants, and the declaration that emerged from the meeting delays specific measures by UN member states for two more years. The timeline of the UN plan is not comforting to the refugees or concerned observers. The crisis figures are familiar, but remain unfathomable—one in 113 people displaced “by conflict and persecution in 2015;” and 54 percent of 21 million refugees from just three volatile countries: Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia. It’s easy to be numbed by the numbers. Or even actively repelled—across Europe and the United States, 2016 has seen a surge of anti-refugee protests and rhetoric conflatingrefugees and terrorists—sentiments that influence elections and produce significant legislative and societal results. In a sense, the refugee crisis has helped generate a corresponding crisis in empathy. But if national and international political solutions seem sluggish or even impossible, what hope is there for refugees in the meantime if not for the empathy of individuals? Where there is a confluence of human suffering and nationalistic backlash, can empathy be taught, sparked, or successfully deployed? The MSF exhibit can be seen as a test of these questions. It creates an empathetic response by tying the visitor’s experience to an individual’s—each participant is assigned a specific displaced person’s identity, and each tour is given by an aid-worker who has served in an MSF camp. Throughout the journey, the guides share their own personal stories about people they lived with, worked with, and ministered to, further illuminating the individual suffering behind the numbers. Abdalrazag, a physician with MSF originally from Iraq, first got involved with the organization when he was in a camp as a refugee. On his tours, he talks about a friend of his who, after living in a refugee camp tent for years, so desperately missed a wall to lean his back on that he hugged the first wall he saw in his new home. After the tour, Abdalrazag admitted that this was his own experience, one he sometimes obscures because his memories are painful to recount. Another guide, Sarah Khenati, a psychologist with MSF-France who has worked in the Central African Republic (CAR) and the West Bank, shares a story on her tours about a woman who was raped and impregnated while fleeing her home, then involves her groups in the ensuing MSF discussion about how best to treat the woman after her psychotic breakdown. Tatiana Chiarella, an MSF nurse from Brazil who has been touring with the exhibit, explained how she sees the value of these kinds of personal stories: “For people living in the U.S., or even my people in Brazil, we are so far from the situation that you may hear their stories but you don’t realize it could happen to any one of us.” The people she treated “were just like us, they were doctors, nurses, engineers, lawyers, and suddenly this happened—they have war in their countries and they have to flee for their life and for their families—and they lost everything.” Maybe it’s strange to shift the discussion of a massive problem down to the granular level, especially when the world needs a response to match the scale of the crisis. Yet individuals generate a human response that statistics can’t. Updated crisis figures from UNHCR don’t go viral. Images of a drowned Syrian toddler on a beach in Turkey, or a wounded boy in an Aleppo ambulance, do. And they focus observers, however briefly, on the human cost of conflict.   Still, the problem is bigger than the tragedies of Alan Kurdi and Omran Daqneesh, so the question remains whether concentrating on a single victim can generate an empathy that expands to include others suffering outside those particular frames. According to Jamil Zaki, assistant professor of psychology and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Laboratory, even though empathy is a fundamental human emotion, people are not exactly wired for a globalized response. “When we evolved, we were in small groups of interdependent individuals, so the people that you would run into and subsequently empathize with were probably family or extended family,” he explained. “And nowadays, we’re given the unprecedented opportunity to empathize, reach out to and help, not just the people who are right around us, but people all around the world. That’s a really enormous challenge as well as an opportunity, and I think that sometimes, our more evolutionarily old or primitive … emotional responses are not really perfectly designed for the modern world.” This is even true of people who are already inclined to be sympathetic to refugees—the people, in other words, likely to visit an exhibit like MSF’s in the first place. On the tour I took, I met Cameron, a student from Charleston, South Carolina, who said: “It pains me to see how unaccepting communities can be of refugees especially when a good amount of people in the U.S. can trace their ancestry to people who left their home because of economic or political issues.” He added, “I think it definitely made me more empathetic and understanding because you only get so much information from the news and other media sources.” U.S. President Barack Obama, in his 2006 Northwestern University commencement speech, called attention to what he saw as a national “empathy deficit.” He advised the graduates that, in a culture that does not encourage empathy, “as you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier.  There’s no community-service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You’ll be free to live in neighborhoods with people who are exactly like yourself, and send your kids to the same schools, and narrow your concerns to what’s going in your own little circle.” That warning came 10 years ago; five years before the Syrian Civil War began, and eight years before UNHCR first identified a new record in the number of refugees worldwide. As David Desteno wrote for The Atlantic last summer, a recent study from the University of Michigan found, based on empathy assessments of 13,000 college students between 1979 and 2009, that “levels of compassion and empathy are lower now than at any time in the past 30 years, and perhaps most alarming, they are declining at an increasing rate.” If we think of empathy as malleable, it’s an emotion that we can actively choose to engage with and develop. The barrier that the MSF exhibit and other calls to empathy might bump up against is our basic wiring: If our relationship to empathy is naturally individual and impulsive—Zaki describes it as “staccato”—how do we create the sustained empathy suited to an ongoing and outsized crisis? Will the impact of an exhibit like Forced from Home—or photos of children whose lives have been ended or upended by war—be momentary or lasting? And what difference does any one person’s feelings make to finding a genuine solution? Some of the answers may lie in the way we think about empathy. If we think of it as malleable, it’s an emotion that we can actively choose to engage with and develop. Zaki emphasizes that empathy can be strengthened with practice: “Empathy is under our control more than we think it is. ... It’s our responsibility to exercise empathy responsibly, and it’s an opportunity for us to connect with more and more people if we work hard at building it.” Most importantly, Zaki says, “convincing people that they can build their empathy actually helps them to build [it].” He points to training programs that can change people’s responses to others’ suffering. A sampling of these empathy interventions across the country range from increasing care for homeless people in the Bay Area, to teaching empathy in middle schools to prevent bullying, to training police officers in Washington state to have compassion for citizens with mental illness so that they can be helped or hospitalized rather than arrested, though it’s too early to judge their effects. The refugee and the empathy crises can—but don’t have to—leave us with an action crisis. Even if MSF succeeds in generating empathy, the feeling by itself is not a solution. Still, it’s hard to see how there can be a solution without it.

I think what these people are going through is terrible. I think that empathy being taught in school and other places would be a good idea to some extent. I think that people really have to hvae that trait inside them in order for it to work. I think that teaching someone empathy is useless if they don't really believe in it.


TRAGEDY: Tampa man lost wife, 2 children, in horrific crash that killed 5 —  TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — The heartache of losing a loved one in a sudden, unexpected moment is devastating.   The shock is jarring and confusing. Families and friends are left with broken hearts and aching spirits. Losing one person is painful. But, for a Tampa husband, the grief is paralyzing and unbearable.   On Wednesday night, John Bernal lost his wife, his youngest daughter and his youngest son in a horrific car accident on MLK.   Mother Marianela Murillo and her two youngest children, John Bernal, Jr.  and Isabell Bernal, along with her teenager, Lina Bernal, were returning home from church when they were hit head-on in a fiery crash.   Their minivan burst into flames with the family trapped inside. The teenage daughter and her cousin visiting from Colombia, Luisa Louisa, were the only ones to survive in that van.   A relative began sobbing as she recalled the events while speaking to WFLA at Tampa General Hospital.   “My biggest thing is, I hope they didn’t suffer,” Gisela Martinez cried. “The car did catch on fire, and there were children in that car.”   While eyewitnesses claim it was street racing, the Florida Highway Patrol says there’s no evidence to prove it.   However, troopers say that the young man who caused the accident, 22-year-old Pablo Cortes III, was traveling at a high rate of speed when he lost control of his Volkswagen Golf. Both he and his passenger, Jolie Bartolome, were killed.   Family members are heartbroken and their hearts go out to the husband who lost his wife and two children.   “He’s suffering right now. He’s in pieces. I don’t wish this upon anybody at all. I mean, he is really in pieces,” said Mizrah Medina, a cousin.

It's quite sad what happened to the family. I can't even imagine what everyone is going through especially family members. Losing someone to an accident is something you never expect and something that will hurt for a long time. I felt really sad while reading the article because the children were so young and had so much ahead of them.


DAKOTA FANNING PARENTS SPLIT ... Hot Dad Back on the Market —  Dakota Fanning's mom and dad are done after almost 27 years ... TMZ has learned.  Dakota's dad, Steven Fanning, just filed for divorce from his wife, Heather, citing irreconcilable differences. Their kids are both of age, so child support isn't an issue -- Dakota's 22, Elle is 18.  As for spousal support, it's as a bit of a mystery ... Steve didn't check any boxes asking for support from Heather.  That said, he says he still needs to figure out how he and Heather are going to split their property. But we're guessing this stud will be just fine when it's all said and done.

It's pretty sad what Dakota Fanning and her sister had to go through. Going through a divorce with your parents is always hard and never a fun thing. I can't even begin to imagine how Dakota and her sister felt knowing that one of her parents will not always be with them. Things will never be the same as their childhood.


Civilians shot, bodies hung from poles in Mosul, Iraqi sources say —  As fighting continued in and around Mosul on Friday, civilians caught in crossfire have a stark choice: whether to flee or stay huddled inside their homes.   Many residents tell CNN the intensity of the fighting and the airstrikes in eastern parts of the city limited their options. Still, tens of thousands have chosen the escape route. More than 47,730 people have been displaced because of the ongoing military operations to retake Mosul from ISIS, according to the International Organization for Migration. Roughly 12,800 people have fled since Tuesday, the organization said. Other residents of Mosul have simply chosen to heed the Iraqi Security Forces instructions to stay in their homes if they feel safe enough inside. Still others are too scared to leave their homes, because of ISIS' campaign of terror against the civilians. Witnesses told CNN among the dozens executed this week, more than 30 people were shot in the head for having cell phones. Their bodies were left at various intersections across Mosul as a warning. The bodies are not being removed as residents fear reprisals from ISIS militants, witnesses said. Here are some of the latest developments in the battle for Mosul: The UN human rights office released a report Friday, confirming that at least 60 civilians have been killed in Mosul this week, and reported new details of alleged atrocities by ISIS fighters. On Wednesday evening, ISIS reportedly killed 20 civilians at the Ghabat military base in northern Mosul on charges of leaking information, the UN body said. "Their bodies were also hung at various intersections in Mosul, with notes stating: 'decision of execution' and 'used cell phones to leak information to the ISF.' " On Tuesday, ISIS shot and killed 40 civilians in Mosul after accusing them of "treason and collaboration" with Iraqi security forces, according to a report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR. "The victims were dressed in orange clothes marked in red with the words: 'traitors and agents of the ISF.' Their bodies were then hung on electrical poles in several areas in Mosul city," the report said.   Local ISIS commanders have started fleeing in some neighborhoods, residents said, leaving behind trained teenage ISIS combatants to fight Iraqi forces. Mosul residents said they fear these young fighters as much, if not more, than other ISIS militants because they have been brainwashed, have no fear and have a great amount of zealotry after being indoctrinated and trained for two years. The UNHCR report said ISIS had "deployed what it calls the 'sons of the caliphate' in the alleys of the old town of Mosul, wearing explosive belts. We are concerned that these may be teenagers and young boys." ISIS posted video footage Wednesday, "showing four children, believed to be between 10 and 14 years old, shooting to death four people for spying for the ISF and the Peshmerga," the report said, referring to Iraqi and Kurdish forces. UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein cited "heartbreaking images" of ISIS forcing children to carry out executions and reports of women being "redistributed" among ISIS fighters, as evidence of the "numbing and intolerable" suffering of civilians in Mosul and other ISIS-held areas. He called on Iraqi authorities to ensure the perpetrators of such abuses are dealt with according to the rule of law so as to limit revenge attacks and help communities rebuild. Senior ISIS leader killed In another development, Mahmoud Shukri al Nuaimi, a senior ISIS commander, has been killed in the battle for Mosul, the terror group's last major stronghold in Iraq, Iraqi military intelligence sources tell CNN. Al Nuaimi, also is known as Sheikh Faris, was killed Tuesday in an Iraqi-led coalition airstrike in western Mosul, the sources said. ISIS confirmed his death in a video montage, referring to him as "the martyr of the battle." The Iraqi sources told CNN that Nuaimi was formerly a high-ranking intelligence officer in Saddam Hussein's intelligence services. In Mosul's east, residents said ISIS militants were forcing them from their homes, either to booby trap the houses or to take them over as fighting positions. Militants have reportedly left barrels of crude oil at major intersections, ready to be set afire to hamper Iraqi advances. ISIS has also used white flags to disguise suicide car bombs in Mosul, according to Saban Al Numan, an Iraqi counterterrorism official. The battle for Mosul is difficult, slow and complicated, Numan said. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi vowed victory last month at the start of the long-awaited offensive on Mosul, but he warned the effort could take time. ISIS, an agile enemy, has been preparing its defenses for two years. It takes advantage of the terrain, a network of tunnels and booby-trapped buildings, to great effect. US military officials estimate some 3,000 to 5,000 ISIS fighters are in Mosul. An additional 1,500 to 2,000 fighters may be waiting outside the city limits.

I felt like what i read in the article was very disturbing. The things that are going on around the world is very troublesome. It is terrible to know that people are being hung from poles and innocent people are just being killed left and right. It is so inhumane and something i can never even imagine.


Haze from Indonesian fires may have killed more than 100,000 people – study —  Harvard and Columbia universities estimate tens of thousands of premature deaths in areas closest to blazes clearing forest and peatland A smog outbreak in Southeast Asia last year may have caused over 100,000 premature deaths, according to a new study released Monday that triggered calls for action to tackle the “killer haze”. Researchers from Harvard and Columbia universities in the US estimated there were more than 90,000 early deaths in Indonesia in areas closest to haze-belching fires, and several thousand more in neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia. The new estimate, reached using a complex analytical model, is far higher than the previous official death toll given by authorities of just 19 deaths in Indonesia. “If nothing changes, this killer haze will carry on taking a terrible toll, year after year,” said Greenpeace Indonesia forest campaign Yuyun Indradi. “Failure to act immediately to stem the loss of life would be a crime.” A spokesman for Indonesia’s environment ministry did not immediately have any comment. Indonesian authorities have previously insisted they are stepping up haze-fighting efforts, through such actions as banning the granting of new land for palm oil plantations and establishing an agency to restore devastated peatlands. The haze is an annual problem caused by fires set in forest and on carbon-rich peatland in Indonesia to quickly and cheaply clear land for palm oil and pulpwood plantations. The blazes occur mainly on Indonesia’s western Sumatra island and the Indonesian part of Borneo, with monsoon winds typically blowing the haze over Singapore and Malaysia. But last year’s fires were among the worst in memory and cloaked large parts of the region in choking smog for weeks, causing huge numbers to fall ill and sending diplomatic tensions soaring. The new study to be published in journal Environmental Research Letters, which combined satellite data with models of health impacts from smoke exposure and readings from pollution monitoring stations, estimated that 100,300 had died prematurely due to last year’s fires across the three countries. They estimated there were 91,600 deaths in Indonesia, 6,500 in Malaysia and 2,200 in Singapore. Greenpeace hailed a “groundbreaking” study they said for the first time gave a detailed breakdown of deaths from last year’s fires, but cautioned that the figure was a “conservative estimate”. It only looked at health impacts on adults and the effect of dangerous fine-particulate matter, known as PM 2.5. It did not examine the effect on youngsters or of the other toxins produced by the blazes. In reality, infants are some of the most at risk from the haze, said Nursyam Ibrahim, from the West Kalimantan province branch of the Indonesian Medical Association on Borneo. “We are the doctors who care for the vulnerable groups exposed to toxic smoke in every medical centre, and we know how awful it is to see the disease symptoms experienced by babies and children in our care,” said Ibrahim. The study found an increase in the number of fires in peatland and in timber concessions in 2015, compared to the last haze outbreak considered major, in 2006, and that the number of fires in palm oil plantations fell. Shannon Koplitz, a Harvard scientist who worked on the study, said she also hoped the model they had developed could help those involved with tackling the annual blazes make quick decisions “as extreme haze events are unfolding”. Last year’s haze outbreak was the worst since 1997 due to a strong El Nino weather system, which created tinder-dry conditions in Indonesia and made peatland and forests more vulnerable to going up in flames.       Article Title:Samoa hit by hail storm so rare residents thought it was a hoax   Article URL:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/19/samoa-hit-by-hail-storm-so-rare-residents-thought-it-was-a-hoax   Article author(s)Eleanor Ainge Roy   Article date:Monday 19 September 2016 00.11 EDT   News source: theguardian    Meteorologist forced to release satellite images of the storm to convince some locals that the hail wasn’t part of a practical joke Samoa has been hit by a hail storm so rare that it was believed to be a hoax by many of the island’s inhabitants. The tropical nation of Samoa lies in the Pacific Ocean, where the average temperature at this time of year is 29C. But on Friday evening an unexpected hail storm struck the eastern side of the island of Savai’i, accompanied by heavy rain and strong wind gusts. It was only the second time since records began that hail has fallen on Samoa, the first was in 2011. The storm lasted 10 to 15 minutes and produced hail stones roughly 2cm wide. “The ice was very small and there were no reports of damage,” said Luteru Tauvale, principal meteorologist for the Samoan Meteorology Service. “Because it was so unexpected a lot of people thought it had been invented. We had to release satellite images of the conditions that led to to the hail for people to believe it was real.” Samoans took to social media to share their photos of the hail, many voicing disbelief at the incident, and then saying it was the “first time” they had been convinced of the the phenomenon of climate change. “Climate change is here!” wrote one Samoan on Facebook. “More like we have just woken up to the fact it had been with us for a while but we refuse to accept/believe it.” Hailstorms form within a unusually unstable air mass in which the temperature falloff with height is much greater than normal.       Article Title:Dozens dead and missing after typhoon lashes eastern China     Article URL:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/18/dozens-dead-and-missing-after-typhoon-lashes-eastern-china   Article author(s)   Article date:Saturday 17 September 2016 22.40 EDT   News source: theguardian    Typhoon Meranti has damaged more than 18,300 houses and caused direct economic losses of more than 16.9bn yuan ($2.5bn)   The strongest typhoon to hit China this year has left 28 people dead and 15 others missing in the east of the country. Typhoon Meranti made landfall early Thursday in Fujian province after winds and rains associated with it pounded Taiwan, leaving one person dead and more than 50 injured. Authorities in Fujian said Saturday that the typhoon had left 18 people dead and 11 missing, damaged more than 18,300 houses and caused direct economic losses of more than 16.9 billion yuan ($2.5bn).   Authorities in neighboring Zhejiang province say that 10 people died and four remained unaccounted for following landslides and flash floods in rural areas. Taiwan saw wind and rain from a second typhoon, Malakas, that caused no apparent deaths.

I think what hapepend in Indonesia is terrible. The haze and fire really damaged lots of people's homes as well as took lives. I can't even imagine to think what it would be like if everything i had was just engulfed in flames and burned. I feel really bad for the families as well as people that have lost a loved one in this.


Family loses home and two pets in D.C. fire —  A fire displaced a family of five and killed two cats inside their Northwest Washington rowhouse, D.C. fire and emergency services officials said. Firefighters were called to the two-story home in the 5000 block of Illinois Avenue NW about 1 p.m., said Vito Maggiolo, a fire department spokesman. All the residents escaped without injury, but two family pets did not. The Red Cross was notified to help two adults and three children who cannot reenter the home due to fire damage, officials said. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

The tragedy that happened in DC was definitely very terrible. Anytime you lose your loved ones or anything to a fire, it can be  very traumatizing. It is also very hard to recover from something like that in my opinion. I think the article said that cats were taken away by the fire. This is tough because i have pets and i love them to death.


After reading the article, i felt really bad for the family that was involved in the fire. It is unfortunate because it was something accidental and something that could have happened to anyone. I am also glad that they are okay though and nobody died. I did feel unfortunate and sad for their cats because it stated that they were killed in the fire.


Visitors bring trouble to Norway's polar bears —  Officials in Norway say an increasing number of visitors to their Arctic region have triggered an increase in the number of endangered polar bears killed. Diane Hodges reports on efforts to protect the bears. Video provided by Reuters

What i read in the article about the tourists hurting the polar bears really angers me and makes me sad at the same time. It is terrible that a human being is able to harm an animal and be able to sleep at night. I think that people should be nowhere near polar bears to be honest. They should be left alone where they want to be.


Saudi women file petition to end male guardianship system —  A petition signed by more than 14,000 Saudi women calling for an end to the country's male guardianship system is being handed to the government. Women must have the consent of a male guardian to travel abroad, and often need permission to work or study. Support for the first large-scale campaign on the issue grew online in response to a trending Twitter hashtag. Activist Aziza Al-Yousef told the BBC she felt "very proud" of the campaign, but now needed a response. In the deeply conservative Islamic kingdom, a woman must have permission from her father, brother or other male relative - in the case of a widow, sometimes her son - to obtain a passport, marry or leave the country. Many workplaces and universities also demand a guardian's consent for female employees and students, although it is not legally required.   Renting a flat, undergoing hospital treatment or filing a legal claim often also require a male guardian's permission, and there is very little recourse for women whose guardians abuse them or severely limit their freedom. How much do you know about life as a woman in Saudi Arabia? WATCH: Are Saudi women really that oppressed? The 'Rosa Parks' of Saudi Arabia 'Flabbergasted' In July, an Arabic Twitter hashtag which translates as "Saudi women want to abolish the guardianship system" went viral after a Human Rights Watch reportwas published on the issue. Saudi women tweeted comments, videos and artwork calling for change. Bracelets saying "I Am My Own Guardian" appeared. The women counted on the petition all gave their full names, though more signed anonymously. Hundreds of women - one estimate suggests as many as 2,500 - bombarded the Saudi King's office over the weekend with telegrams containing personal messages backing the campaign. Human Rights Watch researcher Kristine Beckerle, who worked on the report, described the response as "incredible and unprecedented". "I was flabbergasted - not only by the scale, but the creativity with which they've been doing it," she said. "They've made undeniably clear they won't stand to be treated as second-class citizens any longer, and it's high time their government listened."    However, there has been opposition from some Saudi women, with an alternative Arabic hashtag, which translates as #TheGuardianshipIsForHerNotAgainstHer, gaining some traction, and opinion articles, like this one on the Gulf News website, arguing that the system should be reformed and applied better. Ms Yousef, who was stopped by police in 2013 for breaking the country's ban on women driving, said she did not expect any negative consequences from the petition: "I'm not worried, I'm not doing anything wrong," she said. She and another activist took the petition to the Royal Court in person on Monday, but were advised to send it by mail. She said a key demand is that an age between 18 and 21 be designated, above which a woman be "treated like an adult". "In every aspect, the important issue is to treat a woman as a full citizen," she said. She and other activists first raised the issue five years ago. "We never had a problem with campaigning, but the problem is there is no answer. But we always hope - without hope, you cannot work," she said. There has been no official response to the petition yet.

After reading this article, my immediate reaction is that it makes me a bit angry. I am angry at the fact that women still have to go by rules like this in today's day and age. It makes me angry that women need the permission of a man in order to be able to do what she wants. In today's world, anyone should be able to do anything and their freedom should not be restricted.


Study reveals why seabirds eat plastic in the ocean —  The human sense of smell is important. It alerts us to different dangers including spoiled food, poison, fire, and so on. But other species on this planet have no sense of smell like humans have. In fact, a new research revealed that the sense of smell of seabirds, which they use to hunt for food, have put them in danger. Not surprisingly, humans ARE to blame.   Published last week in the PNAS, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers said that ninety percent of seabirds eat plastic flowing in oceans. By 2050, the team revealed that virtually all seabirds will be eating it.   So the question now is why do seabirds eat plastic?   The paper said plastic in the ocean emit the scent of a sulfurous compound which seabirds have relied upon for thousands of years. It tells them where to hunt for food.   In other words, the compound trick them into confusing marine plastic with food.   Lead researcher Matthew Savoca said–via the UC Davis website–that in order to understand the problem, we have to think about how animals look for food.   Researchers learned what plastic in the ocean smell like by putting beads–made of the three most common types of plastic beads–into the ocean at Monterey Bay and Bodega Bay in California. They placed it in mesh bags to protect the species there, and tied them to an ocean buoy before collecting them about three weeks later.   Then, the team brought the beads to UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology where scientists are often found analyzing wine chemistry. Using the chemical analyzer provided by food-and-wine chemist Susan Ebeler, the research team confirmed that the beads emit the sulfur compound dimethyl sulfide, or DMS, a chemical cue released by algae, which coats floating plastic.   Co-author and UC Davis professor Gabrielle Nevitt had previously established that the said compound triggers seabirds to search for food. DMS is released when algae is eaten by animals (like crustaceans). So while the algae doesn’t smell like food itself, it does emit the scent of food being eaten which works like a dinner bell of the birds.   The paper also revealed that birds that track the scent of the compound to look for food are about six times more likely to consume plastic than those that don’t.   Professor Nevitt said their research gives spotlight to species that don’t receive a lot of attention, like petrels and species of shearwaters, which are impacted by plastic ingestion. These species, she added, are hard to study as they nest in underground burrows. So they’re often overlooked.   Apart from that, the study could open the door to new steps to address the growing plastic pollution in oceans which not only plague the seabirds, but also sea turtles, fish and other marine animals.   Apparently, the problem starts on land. According to NOAA, one of the biggest sources of ocean pollution is called nonpoint source pollution which occurs as a result of runoff. It includes many small sources like boats, septic tanks, cars, etc, and larger sources like farms, forest areas, etc.   A study published last year said that the top five countries that dump plastics into oceans are China, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand. It projected that by 2025, plastic consumption in the region will increase by eighty percent.

After reading the article, i can't help but feel bad for the birds that are eating the plastics. I feel bad for them and i also feel guilty as well because i know that i somehow contributed to that as well because it's not just one person's fault. I feel like it's a collective fault that we should try to fix to try and help out these animals before they go extinct.


3,800 dead ... and more on the way —  (CNN)Rickety boats that should never have sailed. Unscrupulous smugglers with no regard for life. And desperate people risking everything. That mix of fear, hope and greed has now produced a horrifying record. More people have drowned in the Mediterranean this year than ever before: at least 3,800. That's about 90 a week. It's nearly 13 every day. Here's a look at how we got to this point. Why are they doing it? They have no choice. They are Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, escaping war. They are Nigerians and Eritreans in search of a better life. More than 65 million people have fled their homes; 1 in 3 of them are refugees. We're in the midst of the largest migration of refugees since World War II. The sheer number dwarfs the population of many countries. Would you risk these odds? Even though fewer people are crossing this year than in 2015, more people are dying as they try to make the journey. One person out of every 88 has been lost at sea trying to reach the shores of Greece, Italy or Spain. That means they're 90 times more likely to die on the journey than an American is likely to die of gunshot wounds. Where are they heading? There are three main routes across the Mediterranean. Eastern Route: Last year, the route from Turkey to Greece was the busiest by far, but a deal between the European Union and Ankara has brought the numbers down. Still, it remains a heavily trafficked route. Central Route: Libya has no government, which gives people smugglers plenty of freedom to operate out of north Africa. Traffic has been busy this year between Libya and Italy. Central Route: Libya has no government, which gives people smugglers plenty of freedom to operate out of north Africa. Traffic has been busy this year between Libya and Italy. Western Route: West Africa is far from the Middle Eastern hotspots and poor sub-Saharan African countries that produce most migrants to Europe. And relatively small numbers of people try to reach the continent from there. But even so, a steady trickle crosses the sea at the narrow point south of Spain.  Where are they fleeing from? More than a million people have fled Somalia. Nearly three million have escaped Afghanistan. But it is Syria, wracked by civil war for more than five years, that produces the most refugees: nearly five million. Just how bad is it in Syria? The Syrian refugees may outnumber any other country's refugees, but they make up less than half the number of Syrians driven from their homes by the war. Far more are internally displaced -- still in Syria, but living like refugees in the country. And then, of course, an unknown number of people have been killed in the war. International agencies stopped trying to count the dead years ago. The latest estimates by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the number somewhere around 430,000. If that's right, it means about one out of every 50 people in the country has been killed. Where do they go? President Obama vowed that the United States would resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees this year, and by August, the administration was saying it would surpass the target. Justin Trudeau vowed Canada would take 25,000 when he became prime minister last year. But far more are claiming asylum in Europe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country would take one million refugees. And all across Europe, refugees from Syria are claiming asylum. But far more stay in the Middle East. Syria's own neighbors host the vast majority of people trying to escape the war. And there's little hope the war will end any time soon -- so the refugees will keep fleeing. And they will keep dying.

When you read an article like this, you can't help but feel bad for all the people that died. They were all risking their lives to try and find a better life for their families. They were mainly trying to escape from war and poverty but unfortunate events happened and they never made their way. Hopefully they find a better place in the afterlife. It's very unfortunate what happened to them.


A humanitarian crisis looms in Afghanistan as the number of displaced climbs —  KABUL — Abdulhalim fled the northern city of Kunduz this month after militants and security forces had been clashing for days. Now he’s 200 miles away in Kabul, sleeping in a tent and living on aid. He is part of a looming humanitarian crisis aid agencies here are struggling to contain. Before the current crisis, more than a million people had already been uprooted last year. This year, at least another million Afghans are “on the move” inside Afghanistan and across its borders, in what the United Nations warns is an alarming new wave of displaced people. Many, like Abdulhalim, fled violence or conflict; others escaped hardships such as poverty or drought. Still others were forced to return from Pakistan and Iran. Even as the numbers grew, Afghanistan agreed to accept Afghan asylum seekers deported from the European Union. The deal, signed in October, could lead the E.U. to construct a separate terminal for deportees at Kabul’s international airport, and as many as 100,000 Afghans could return. “This sudden increase [in the displaced] has put a lot of pressure on Afghanistan, which has had 30 years of war,” said Nader Farhad, spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency in Kabul. “It’s not easy to put together the infrastructure, to provide the services that are required,” he said, adding that the displaced need everything from food and blankets to jobs and health care. “To the European countries, we say: Instead of investing in the return of Afghans to Afghanistan, tackle the root causes,” Farhad said. If the United Nations and other aid agencies fail to provide emergency assistance, “it will be a humanitarian crisis,” he said. Massive displacement has plagued Afghanistan for years, beginning with the Soviet invasion in 1979. That conflict kindled two decades of war. When the United States invaded in 2001, some 4 million Afghans were living in Pakistan and Iran. [Europe pressing harder on countries to take back deported migrants] Many of those refugees later returned, driven by hopes for stability and peace. But now, Afghanistan is witnessing some of its worst violence since the United States helped to topple the Taliban. More than 1,600 civilians were killed in the first six months of 2016, according to a U.N. report released in July. That was the highest number of civilian casualties in the first half of a year since the United Nations began keeping track in 2009. The violence has been driven by Taliban assaults on Afghan cities, putting more civilians in the crosshairs. And the clashes have pushed even more people from their homes. “The fighting was intense. There was artillery, rockets, aerial bombardment,” Abdulhalim, 38, said of this month’s days-long battle between Afghan and Taliban forces in Kunduz city. Insurgents briefly seized the city at the same time last year. “My children were screaming, our neighbors’ houses destroyed,” said Abdulhalim, who like many Afghans goes by one name. “We had no option but to leave.” In Helmand province, in the restive south, more than 60,000 people have been displaced this year, according to the United Nations, and militants have fought pitched battles in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. At least 5,000 of those displaced in Helmand were forced out only in the past two months, the United Nations says, and thousands more have fled to neighboring provinces and beyond. “In some provinces, the [armed] groups have more power there, and the government, it is very difficult for us to reach” the affected population, said Sayed Rohullah Hashemi, an adviser to the minister of refugees and repatriation. “We don’t have the capacity to do so, especially in our ministry. The government cannot reach everyone on its own.” In a dusty lot east of Kabul, the U.N. refugee agency has erected a center for the hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees arriving from Pakistan. At least 5,000 refugees cross the border from Pakistan every day. The United Nations gives them a small stipend and vaccinates the children against measles and polio. [Afghan refugees, settled in Pakistan for decades, are being ordered to leave] The influx began after Pakistani authorities announced a deadline for Afghan refugees — of which there were 1.7 million registered with the United Nations — to leave. Many of the refugees had lived in Pakistan for decades, or were even born there after their parents had fled Afghanistan. Jumauddin, 27, was born in Pakistan to Afghan parents. Now he is heading to Kunduz province, to the Khanabad district, where Taliban fighters hold sway. He says he has no choice. “Kabul is too expensive, and maybe in Kunduz I can plow a plot of land,” Jumauddin said. “I know that there was fighting there even last week, but I have no other option.” The government is worried about the return of refugees to areas where insurgents are active. But right now, the Taliban controls more territory than at any time since 2001. “We are facing the return of tens of thousands of Afghans each month. . . . This will add very much to the vicious cycle of insecurity and joblessness,” said Bashir Bezhen, an Afghan analyst and political commentator. Reports have already surfaced of returning refugees clashing with locals over resources and land. The displaced are often rejected, or pushed into squalid camps. They also face the threat of forced eviction and rarely have access to clean water or food. “They are the poorest of the poor. They often live in open air,” the U.N.’s Farhad said. “But they should go back [to their homes] when they feel secure. It has to be voluntary and of their own accord.” In the area where Abdulhalim took shelter, the displaced worried that the government would force them out. The fighting in Kunduz city had subsided, but they couldn’t just pack up and go home. “They want us gone from here, but we don’t have anything, not even the money to get back,” Abdulhalim said. He first fled Kunduz on foot, with his children and the clothes on his back. Bezhen said that the government “is incapable of creating jobs for these people or of improving the economy in the remote places where they live.” He said criminal and terrorist networks will seek out the jobless and displaced youths. “It will push Afghanistan into deeper crisis,” Bezhen said. Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.

My overall reaction is that i felt really bad for the people in that country. They are nothing but innocent civilians but they have to be the ones that suffer the wrath of war and issues in the government. it's terrifying to not know where your home is and sleep whereever you can. These people are basically just wandering around hoping they can find a safe place.


Aleppo residents get warning by text message: You have 24 hours to leave —  Residents in war-ravaged eastern Aleppo received a dire warning early Sunday: Prepare for your city to be bombed and evacuate in the next 24 hours.   The warning came via text message, urging the sick and wounded to flee before a "strategically planned assault using high precision weapons occurs within 24 hours." Rebels were also given an ultimatum to lay down their arms and renounce their leadership, or be killed. The message was likely sent by the Syrian government as the regime is likely the only party capable of sending a mass text to the entire population. While there were no reports of a bombardment by Monday afternoon, witnesses told CNN that fighter jets had been spotted in the city, as deadly skirmishes were reported all over Aleppo. Who is left in Aleppo? Russian warplanes have since September last year backed the regime with airstrikes over rebel-held positions, pounding eastern Aleppo, where schools and hospitals have been crushed. The text message warning is seen as a response to Syrian rebels launching an offensive last month to break the regime's siege on eastern Aleppo. Assad: Go back to Turkey, or die Russia is the most powerful sponsor of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, and its air power has been a key factor in helping the government solidify its control over the city. What would make you care about Aleppo? Assad has insisted that he has no option but to "to clean" Aleppo and press on with the offensive. "You have to keep cleaning this area and to push the terrorists to Turkey ... to go back to where they come from, or to kill them," he said. "It's going to be the springboard, as a big city, to move to other areas, to liberate other areas from the terrorists. This is the importance of Aleppo now." Fresh clashes broke out Sunday, with regime shelling killing at least 11 people in the al-Salehin neighborhood, according to the Aleppo Media Center activist group. Several other neighborhoods were shelled by ground artillery and heavy machine gunfire from helicopters, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said. Rebel factions targeted army positions on the northern front line, causing casualties among Syrian troops, the SOHR said. The Syrian Army accuses rebels in eastern Aleppo -- who they call terrorists -- of using civilians as human shields. Humanitarian crisis The UN warned last week that eastern Aleppo was on the brink of starvation ahead of a "killer" winter. Residents there told CNN that their food stocks were running out, and that markets that once sold fruit and vegetables were now empty. A kilogram of meat, they said, costs around $40, a price that most in Aleppo simply cannot pay. The last significant aid delivery was in July, and the area is extremely low on medicine and much-needed fuel to run hospital generators and ambulances. The city has seen considerable death and destruction wrought by the civil war that has raged for more than five years. About 1.5 million people still live in the regime-held parts of Aleppo, while 250,000-275,000 residents are in the devastated rebel-held east, according to the UN. In July, about 200,000 people fled the city over a two days, according to a UN official, citing the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Turkey eyes Kurdish-held city Turkey has been carrying out airstrikes in northern Syria to back the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is currently moving in on the ISIS-held city of al-Bab. The city lies strategically between Aleppo and the ISIS heartland of Raqqa. The Turkish Army said it hit 15 targets on Sunday, including two ISIS "headquarter" buildings, an ammunition storage and 10 defense fronts. Ankara has said once the city is liberated, it plans to move on to Manbij, stirring sectarian tensions that complicates internationally backed operations to free Syrian cities from ISIS control. Manbij was in August freed from ISIS rule by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab groups. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month said Ankara would not allow the Kurds to hold any territory west of the Iraqi city of Mosul. Manbij is just 40 kilometers south of the Turkish border. Turkey considers some of the Kurdish militia groups in the alliance as terrorists, including the YPG. But the SDF is supported and armed by the US, further complicating the conflict, which has already put Washington at loggerheads with Moscow. The former Cold War enemies, both of which are carrying out airstrikes in Syria, have long feuded over which groups should be targeted. The US supports and arms groups that it considers "moderate rebels," while Russia calls any rebel group that is opposed to the regime "terrorists."

After reading the article, you really can't help but feel bad for all the people that are required to leave the area. It feels as though there is always war and people will never feel safe. They always are on the lookout and can never live a stable and happy life like others do. I feel really bad for them and i hope that their future is better than it is now.


Hate crimes against Muslims hit highest mark since 2001 —  Hate crimes against Muslims spiked last year to their highest level in more than a decade - an increase experts and advocates say was fueled by anger over terrorist attacks and anti-Islam rhetoric on the campaign trail.   Law enforcement agencies across the country reported 257 anti-Islamic incidents in 2015, up nearly 67 percent from the year before, according to FBI data released Monday.   That is significant in its own right, but even more so in historical context. The last time the FBI saw more than 160 anti-Islamic incidents was in 2001, when it reported 481. That was the year that radical Islamist terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, killing thousands and sparking a wave of anti-Muslim incidents.   Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that he believed that the anti-Muslim rhetoric that came out of the presidential campaign was to blame and that he feared there will be more hate crimes this year. "Whenever you have one of the nation's leading public figures in the person of Donald Trump mainstreaming and empowering Islamophobia in the nation, it's the inevitable result," he said.   A Trump campaign spokeswoman did not immediately return an email seeking comment.   Hate crimes overall increased about 6.7 percent from 2014 to 2015, but that increase still left such incidents below what they were a decade earlier. Anti-black incidents rose by about 7.6 percent, anti-Jewish incidents rose by about 9 percent, and incidents based on sexual orientation rose by about 3.5 percent during that time frame.   Before and after Trump's election, there were reports of hateful acts across the country. The Southern Poverty Law Center, drawing on news accounts, social media postings and direct reports, said it had tallied 201 incidents of election-related harassment and intimidation as of Friday. Last week, a Muslim student at San Diego State University reported that she was robbed by two men who made comments about Trump. Police believe she was targeted because she was wearing a hijab. The week before the election, a black church in Mississippi was burned and spray-painted with the words "Vote Trump." During his campaign, Trump vowed to have law enforcement conduct surveillance at mosques and called for at least a temporary ban on Muslims immigrating to the United States, measures that he suggested might prevent terrorist attacks. Asked on "60 Minutes" about reports of supporters harassing Latinos and Muslims, he said: "I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, 'Stop it.' "   Notably, the data from 2015 does not show an increase in anti-Latino incidents from the year before. Still, advocates say Trump's rhetoric is at least partly to blame for the spike in other incidents.   "I don't think there's any question at all that the Trump campaign contributed and contributed mightily to these numbers," said Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center.   The data available is somewhat limited, analysts say, because law enforcement agencies provide numbers voluntarily to the FBI, and many did not report hate crimes. Bureau of Justice Statistics surveys show a far greater number of hate crimes than what is reported - hundreds of thousands each year.   The data largely confirms the findings of Brian Levin, a professor at California State University at San Bernardino, who wrote earlier this year about a surge in crimes against Muslims. In an interview Monday, Levin said he attributed the spike to three factors - anger after terrorist attacks like those in San Bernardino, Calif., and Paris; a generally elevated level of prejudice against Muslims; and "the coalescence of a sociopolitical movement that labels Muslims as an enemy."   Levin said he found a spate of anti-Muslim incidents in the weeks immediately following the attacks in San Bernardino and Paris. After Paris, for example, a Florida man threatened violence at two mosques in two anti-Islamic diatribes.   But Levin said he did not expect that those would make 2015 an anomaly. Based on 2016 data in places such as Ohio, Texas, Delaware and New York, he estimated that anti-Muslim hate crimes are "either at or above the levels of 2015."

After reading the article, you can't help but feel bad for all the Muslims that are currently living in America. You feel bad for them because of what they are going through and all the discrimination they are facing. It's unfair that the ones that are innocent are being stereotyped as well and lumped into the same group as the terrorists when not everyone is like that.


Man kills two sons, himself, police say —  A man shot his two young sons and then killed himself in an apparent murder-suicide on Saturday, police said.   The father, identified as Christopher Cadenbach, said St. Louis County Police Department's Deputy Chief Kenneth Cox. He was wanted for domestic violence in Franklin County, Missouri, Cox said. As a result, the St. Louis County police had been looking for him. On Saturday afternoon, Cadenbach, 43, visited his mother and his two children. Amber Alert leads police to dad His mother became worried after hearing him say that he wasn't going to be taken alive, Cox said. She alerted police, who then issued an Amber Alert for his two abducted sons, Ethan, 5, and Owen, 4. Later that evening, a park ranger spotted a 2006 Ford Focus matching the Amber Alert description in a local park and alerted police. As soon as the officers arrived, shots rang out, Cox said. "He was apparently shooting his children. We tried to engage him and it appears he took his own life."

After reading this article, i felt really disturbed. I just couldn't believe that there is someone out there that can kill his own children. I wonder what kind of mental illness the man had because nobody in their right mind can just kill their own children. I felt really bad for the mother as well who is left alone iwth nobody now and can only suffer.


The treatment of Calais camp children isn’t just neglectful – it’s abusive —  The Calais camp lies in limbo, with most of its inhabitants long gone. Those who remain face hardship beyond anything the camp has previously known. Before, there was shelter – now hundreds sleep on the fringes of its dirt tracks. Before, there was at least some sense of ease – now shocked and abandoned refugees live in a state of constant tension. Fire is a constant threat, and the bulldozers are coming.   Volunteers grapple not only with the urgency of the situation, but also with the knowledge that it should – and easily could – have been prevented.     When the French authorities began the registration and resettlement of refugees, those of us involved felt an initial sense of relief. But after three days of relatively smooth action the warehouse where the registration took place closed its doors. It did not open them again. This was despite previous assurances that all refugees would be accommodated. Those left behind had no chance of safely reaching asylum centres. Most minors, registered separately, were confined to a fenced-in yard and housed in shipping containers. The rest were left homeless alongside the adult population of the camp.   Despite being provided with up-to-date and detailed census information from my organisation, Help Refugees, and the local charity, l’Auberge des Migrants, the authorities chose not to take heed of these estimates. The 50-person, four-day census operation identified exact numbers of men, women, and children within the camp, and put the total population at 10,188. Though promised over 12,000 spaces in accommodation centres throughout France, almost 2,000 refugees have been abandoned once again by an uncaring government, and are left behind in the ruins of the Calais camp.   Over two weeks ago Help Refugees warned authorities at a local tribunal in Lille that housing minors in the “container camp” would be tantamount to exposing them to fire, violence, and extreme trauma. My colleague’s words went unheeded, and now seem almost prophetic. There are now approximately 1,500 children subjected to these conditions.   Children housed in the containers report choking on the smoke that blows in from their burning former homes. They say there is no drinking water, that the toilets are never cleaned and the showers are not working. Food is served only from 3pm to 5pm, and there is only one meal a day.   There is no drinking water. The toilets are never cleaned. The showers are not working. There is only one meal a day The authorities have utterly failed to safeguard these young people, and show little to no regard for their wellbeing, health, or mental states. The children in this camp are starved of care and attention, and are in constant danger. Their treatment is not just neglectful – it’s abuse.   The lack of organisation has permeated every aspect of these children’s lives. The crippling hunger pangs reported by many are alleviated only when groups of volunteers are allowed to distribute food. Without an identification wristband, children are not permitted to use the few still-working shower facilities – a fact made worse by the decision of the authorities to register some children without providing wristbands.     The stories you need to read, in one handy email  Read more Arbitrary security measures mean that services such as the Refugee Info Bus – founded by long-term volunteers to provide refugees with WiFi and legal services – are barred from approaching the container camp, cutting the children off from means of communication and legal assistance. With this, and the recent banning of human rights lawyers acting as observers from entry into the camp, it is feared that the mistreatment of the camp’s children will go unchecked.   Volunteers are banned from putting up tents to house the homeless adult and child refugees outside the container camps, in yet another example of the restrictions that serve only to further endanger refugees’ lives. With a large portion of the camp in flames, many are sleeping on the dunes surrounding the camp, exposed to the rain, the cold, and the people smugglers.   Despite desperate conditions and daily heartbreak, the volunteers of Help Refugees and other organisations continue to provide food, water, and some comfort to the refugees who are left. Many volunteers are from the UK, and express their devastation that their country is not answering France’s calls and the refugee children it is failing – at present, it seems unlikely that the UK will take in more than the 274 children it already has. Many other volunteers are French, and must bear witness, distraught, to their nation’s mistreatment of refugees already so weakened by months of subsistence in the camp.   On 1 November charities operating within the camp received notice from the French authorities promising that all children in the container camp would be transferred by bus to accommodation centres across France this week. A representative from the UK Home Office on each bus will ensure that any children legally eligible for asylum within the UK are able to apply for transfer to the UK. It is unknown how long this legal process will take.   This is a testament to the work of the volunteers and legal workers in the camp, and presents an opportunity for these children to leave behind the trauma and misery of life in a refugee camp. However, there are no guarantees, and charities must continue to work to ensure that refugees throughout France are given a far better standard of care than was provided for the children of the Calais container camp.

After reading the article, i can't help but feel bad for the people and children in the camps. I feel bad for them because nobody should have to be living in those type of conditions. Everyone should be able to have shelter, food, and a nice place to sleep on. I feel like these people are almost being treated like dirt and it's very unfair.


This Is What It’s Like on the Front Lines of Nigeria’s Unseen Hunger Crisis —  Millions of Nigerians survived Boko Haram, but now a humanitarian catastrophe is putting their lives at risk again. ABUJA, Nigeria ― After her father died two years ago during a Boko Haram raid on her village in Yobe, Nigeria, 16-year-old Zulyatu, her younger siblings and their mother fled to Biu, a town in northeast Nigeria’s Borno state. A year ago their mother left for another town to get treatment for high blood pressure from a traditional healer, leaving Zulyatu alone to care for her siblings, 12-year-old Abubakar and 8-year-old Amira. Zulyatu said hunger affects every part of their lives. They only eat once or twice a day, and they often feel dizzy from hunger. In their home village, before Boko Haram came, their father was a butcher, so the family always had enough meat to eat. The hunger makes her long for her father, and Zulyatu said that if he were still alive they wouldn’t be having this experience. The focus on their struggle for food also leaves the siblings with little time or access for education. Before they came to Biu, Zulyatu was interested in studying to become a doctor, but they have been unable to attend school since the move. Sadly, experiences of hunger and desperation, like those of Zulyatu and her siblings, are the rule rather than the exception in conflict-weary Nigeria and in the greater Lake Chad Basin area. The hunger has become so strong, that one woman recently told us that she had become so desperate to feed her children that she took to boiling grass. The militant group Boko Haram emerged in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, in 2002, but much of the world first became familiar with the terrorist group when it kidnapped 276 schoolgirls in 2014. Years of violence and destruction, combined with widespread and underestimated drought conditions, have created an ongoing crisis here. But as the Nigerian army retakes territory held by Boko Haram, another problem has emerged in the country ― a horrific and massive humanitarian crisis is revealing itself. More than 4 million people are food insecure, not knowing from where their next meal will come. In August, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that in Borno state, where Zulyatu lives, nearly a quarter of a million children are severely malnourished, and one in five will die if they aren’t treated. Mercy Corps, the global organization I work for, is one of the organizations mounting a response to this urgent and largely overlooked humanitarian situation. Our team has accessed remote villages and towns in south Borno state, where regular army checkpoints serve as a reminder of the serious threat Boko Haram still poses. But despite efforts from aid organizations like ours, there are still 2.2 million people living in unreachable areas in northeast Nigeria, with no contact to the outside world ― and no guarantee of safe passage for aid workers. We don’t yet know the full extent of the crisis ― the Nigerian military and humanitarian organizations like Mercy Corps are still trying to push into these parts of the country ― but based on what we’ve seen so far, we fear the worst.  “The carnage becomes more glaring as we gain access to newer areas, and it has become a struggle for those of us in the forefront to comprehend how to help the thousands we come across who need our support,” said Michael Mu’azu, our humanitarian projects manager. “What keeps me going is the fact that I can contribute to making a difference, and because I work with an amazing team of men and women who have dedicated their lives to providing lifesaving assistance, I wake up every day and go to work knowing more people will get to smile.” For now though, many of the people we come across are not smiling. “When I see the people in these communities, I see hunger and suffering in their faces,” Umar Shuaibu, our operations officer, said. In our internal assessments this past July, we found that in the area of Damboa more than 80 percent of shelters were destroyed or partially destroyed, with no roof or doors. Of the people we interviewed, 97 percent reported that they could not afford to buy food in the previous four weeks. Because of continued insecurity, many farmers cannot reach the land where they cultivate food to eat and sell. People in these communities survive by selling foraged firewood and begging or laboring for less than the equivalent of $1 per day. Others have resorted to transactional sex.  The Nigerian military must clear and secure new areas before aid can get in, to make sure humanitarian workers have safe passage and aid does not end up in the wrong hands. And we have also not seen the amount of funding needed to mount a response of this size. Right now, less than one-third of current United Nations appeals for the crisis has been funded, a shortfall of $542 million. As a sovereign nation, Nigeria has a duty to provide for its people. It is ultimately responsible for leading the response to this emergency, establishing strong coordination and allowing for safe and organized access to deliver assistance to people in need. But it is also the humanitarian imperative of the international community to help people in crisis. At Mercy Corps, we are working quickly to meet urgent needs. In south Borno state we have been providing financial assistance, such as cash and vouchers that can be exchanged for food in local markets, as well as grants to jump-start businesses. We are repairing water points and latrines to ensure access to clean water and prevent the spread of waterborne illness. We also provide protection for vulnerable civilians, particularly women and children, and mobilize and train community members to recognize and respond to gender-based violence. We know that the needs are massive, and are going unmet, and we are working as quickly as possible to scale up our operations. Already in the past several months we have shifted to new locations and tripled our financial and staffing resources to reach upwards of 100,000 people. But it is a herculean task for any single organization to tackle on its own, and a risky one because insurgents could attack us unexpectantly. All organizations responding to this crisis in Nigeria face stretched capacity and daunting logistics. But we aren’t giving up. Already we see the benefit of one small act. With the e-voucher she received during Mercy Corps’ first distribution, Zulyatu bought a month’s worth of rice and cooking oil in the local market. When asked what she hopes for the future, Zulyatu said, “I just want to see everyone happy. Everyone would have enough to eat and abundance.” We can make that hope possible, if we act urgently.

After reading the article, you can't help but feel bad for these people. We're so far into humanity and we are still seeing people suffer from hunger and thirst. We should not be having these problems today. I think that the world should try to do more to take notice of these situations and try to help out whenever possible because we all have that right.


After Traveling More Than 700 Miles, A Young Wolf Was Gunned Down By A Government Sniper —  A young male wolf who was in search of a mate and had travelled more than 700 miles, has been gunned down by a government sniper.   This wolf was a member of the Huckleberry pack which is a family that lives in Washington state and had been saved from extermination by the Center for Biological Diversity as well as it’s allies when the wolf was a pup back in 2014.   The wolf was collared in February and began his journey east, surviving the wolf-killing fields in Idaho.   On Septemer 29th, he was gunned down at Judith Gap, Montana near Wildlife Services which is the deadly federal killing program that had wiped out more than 3 million wild animals just last year.   This was a special collared wolf whose journey was well documented and whose life was carelessly taken away at the hands of trigger-happy exterminators who must be held accountable for their actions.   Wolves often leave their pack in search of a mate and new territory when they come of age. Sadly, in states such as Colorado, Iowa, Wyoming and Utah these wandering wolves end up dying brutal deaths due to acts of cruelty and indifference.   For this reason, the Center for Biological Diversity has lawyers, scientists and activists who are in court, congress and on the streets every day fighting for the lives and safety of wolves.

After reading the article, i felt really bad for the wolf and animals that get hunted in general. I think that there should definitely be some sort of punishment for people who decide to kill animals, especially endangered species of animals just for fun. I think it is so inhumane and twisted that someone can kill a beautiful animal like that with no type of remorse whatsoever.


After reading something like that, you can't help but feel extremely sad. You feel sad for the wolf and you also feel angry that humans would do such a thing. It's terrible that humans just kill and use animals as they wish. I think that animals have all the right in the world to live as well and we can't just use them as we please.


Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi under fire as alleged military abuse follows militant attack —  SITTWE, Burma — A security crackdown following militant attacks has exacerbated the humanitarian situation in a predominantly Muslim region of Burma and focused international attention on the new government of Aung San Suu Kyi. Burmese troops launched a wide-ranging manhunt last month in a troubled area of northern Rakhine state populated largely by Rohingya Muslims, leaving scorched homes and displaced residents in their wake. The manhunt followed an Oct. 9 attack on police posts that left nine policemen dead. The government has accused members of the Rohingya community of being behind the attack. Another police officer was killed in what may have been a second militant attack last week, according to state media. Renata Lok-Dessallien, the United Nations resident coordinator in Burma, was among a team of United Nations officials and diplomats who visited the affected area last week. She said authorities had assured the U.N. that aid would resume after being effectively cut off for weeks. But how soon is not clear. U.S. Ambassador Scot Marciel has called for a “thorough investigation” into alleged abuse and for the restoration of humanitarian access, the State Department said. An estimated 15 members of the security forces — roughly 10 police and five soldiers — have died and more than 30 Muslim residents have been reported killed in the security crackdown. Burma is also known as Myanmar. Human Rights Watch has reported that satellite data shows villages that have been burned, and the Reuters news agency and the Myanmar Times newspaper have chronicled the alleged rape of Muslim women by soldiers. The Myanmar Times reporter was fired following her report on the issue. “Any allegation of rape or sexual violence is a profound concern to us,” Lok-Dessallien said. Residents in Rakhine describe a landscape of fear in which members of the Rohingya community have allegedly been barred from going to mosques or work. “We can’t go anywhere, as we’re not allowed to,” Min Hlaing, a Muslim businessman in a restricted area near Maungdaw, said last week by telephone. He said food prices had risen as a result of roadblocks and claimed that at least one community leader was held by security forces. The crisis marks the first major test of Suu Kyi’s new democratically elected administration, which took over March 31 after decades of military rule. Analysts say she must find a way to work with Burma’s powerful military, which still controls the country’s security forces. Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has been accused of not doing enough to address the Rohingya crisis despite her lifelong commitment to Burmese freedom. In an interview with The Washington Post in New Delhi on Oct. 18, Suu Kyi said border security posts must be strengthened, rule of law followed and a development plan created for the area. “So many things have to be done simultaneously. It’s not an easy job,” she said. “But we are, of course, determined to contain the situation and to make sure that we restore peace and harmony as soon as possible.” Suu Kyi’s government has said the men who attacked police posts on Oct. 9 were from a little-known group with foreign backing. In YouTube videos, the group has called itself the Movement of Faith. There are about 1 million Rohingya Muslims in Burma who are essentially stateless, and many in the Buddhist-majority country consider them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. More than 120,000 Rohingya remain confined to dirty camps in the area after violent clashes with their Buddhist neighbors in 2012. Rohingyas said they do not believe that there was a militant group operating in the state. “This is a rumor. This is not true. This is the deliberate assassination from the government,” said Mohamed Amin, 21, a Rohingya who lives in the heavily guarded Muslim neighborhood in Sittwe. More than 16,000 people from both faiths have been displaced by the search, and 100,000 are without their regular food assistance, according to Pierre Peron, of the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Health services have been suspended, and weeks have passed without access to mobile health clinics and emergency referrals. “You have a very vulnerable population that is even more vulnerable now,” Peron said last week. The state government spokesman, Tin Maung Shwe, said the matter was “an internal affair, not an international affair.” Residents in the crowded camps said that in the days after the attacks, doctors who normally visit a few times a week did not show, although some visits have resumed. Suu Kyi blamed the health-care deficit on the security situation. “It’s even difficult for us to provide enough security to give them the health care that they need,” she said. “It is another big problem, because doctors and nurses who go to camps [for displaced people] are not treated well by the communities when they go back.” She added, “The whole thing is a rigmarole.” At a community health clinic in the Muslim neighborhood in Sittwe one day recently, there were no doctors, just a weary-looking pharmacist and several patients waiting in a dimly lit room. “We are doing as much as we can,” said Maung Htun, 54, the pharmacist. “But now we are only capable of healing small things.” Suu Kyi said that the government must create a resettlement program. A controversial citizenship-verification process that has been criticized by rights groups has been stymied because, Suu Kyi said, many Rohingya refused to participate. “We can’t fix a time frame, because it depends on how much everybody is prepared to cooperate,” she said. “We started off this movement for citizenship verification in order that we might move forward, but then, if there is no cooperation, it has been very difficult for us.” On the ground, the latest flare-up has frayed hope and diminished an already low level of confidence in Suu Kyi’s government. Maung Aye Shwe, 18, a volunteer teacher in one of the camps, said nothing has changed since Suu Kyi’s historic election a year ago. “There is no improvement within this year. We are having just oppression — no changes or improvement,” he said. Maung Kyaw Win, 42, said that he once worked as a goldsmith in his village, and that he does not know when he and his family will be able to return home. But he does know that relations with his Muslim neighbors will not be the same. “No one will trust each other until the end of the universe,” he said. Gowen reported from New Delhi. Aung Naing Soe contributed from Sittwe.

After reading the article, i just feel so bad for the people that are in the war as much as the people that were affected and killed in this war. I feel like war overall is just terrible and we should do all we can to try and stop it. All it induces is hate and death. The people are that are the war has family at home and they can do nothing but grieve and worry abotu them.


After reading the article, i couldn't help but feel disappointed in people and humanity. I feel bad because i read that the people in the community were killing police officers. It's terrible that police have to be viewed as a bad thing in society today when police were the ones we use to run to for help. I hope things turn out for the better for the country in the future.