Thursday, 26 October 2017

*Lazio to wear image πŸ“· of Anne Frank on shirts after fans' anti-Semitic slogans

On Sunday, during a leading football match in Europe, fans of Italian club Lazio posted stickers around Rome's Stadio Olimpico depicting Holocaust victim Anne Frank wearing the shirt of city rivals Roma alongside anti-Semitic slogans. 
The head of Rome's Jewish community, Ruth Dureghello, tweeted a picture of the stickers, writing: "This isn't the terraces, this isn't soccer, this isn't sport. Kick anti-Semitism out of the stadiums." 
Italian President Sergio Mattarella was widely reported to have called the case "alarming for our country," while Lazio players will wear an image of Frank on their shirts during the warm-up to Wednesday's Serie A match against Bologna.

In a statement on the club website, Lazio president Claudio Lotito said the move showed the team's commitment to fighting "all forms of racism and anti-Semitism." 
According to Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport, Lotito has also promised that the club would organize an annual trip for 200 young fans to Auschwitz, where more than one million people were murdered in a Nazi concentration camp. 
Italian police is investigating Sunday's incident, and using the stadium's surveillance cameras, has identified 15 people, two of which are minors. All are possibly facing charges of incitement to racial hatred.

*Saudi πŸ‡ΈπŸ‡¦ Crown Prince πŸ‘‘ calls Qatar embargo a 'small issue' 😱*

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince downplayed his country's months long dispute with Qatar in rare comments about the diplomatic and economic boycott.

"Qatar is a very, very, very small issue," Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said late Wednesday in a Reuters interview about the tiny gas-rich Gulf Arab country that has been the target of a major embargo since June.

"We're pursuing (the Yemen war) until we can be sure that nothing will happen there like Hezbollah again," bin Salman told Reuters, referring to the Iran-backed Lebanese Shia group.

Saudi Arabia, backed by a coalition of Arab states, launched a military operation in March 2015 against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who toppled the internationally recognized leadership in Yemen.

I appeal to the parties to make the necessary concessions that can help paving the way for a long-lasting peace, and to the international community to ensure unity of purpose in supporting these much-needed initiatives," said UN envoy Ould Cheikh Ahmed.

*Twitter bans RT and Sputnik ads amid election interference fears

Twitter is banning two of Russia's biggest media outlets from buying advertising amid fears they attempted to interfere with the 2016 US election.

Twitter said the decision "was based on the retrospective work we've been doing around the 2016 US election and the US intelligence community's conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government".

The statement, published on the social media platform's blog, continued: "We did not come to this decision lightly, and are taking this step now as part of our ongoing commitment to help protect the integrity of the user experience on Twitter."

The decision has provoked an angry response in Russia, with the country's foreign ministry accusing Twitter of bowing to pressure from the US intelligence services, saying the move was "another aggressive step" aimed at blocking Russian media in the US.

It added "retaliatory measures" would follow, according to RIA Novosti news agency [in Russian], Meanwhile, responding to the allegations, RT's deputy editor-in-chief Kirill Karnovich-Valua said the outlet "has never been involved in any illegal activity online, and that it never pursued an agenda of influencing the US election through any platforms".

*Ancient skull πŸ’€ may belong to earliest known tsunami 🌊 victim❗*

An ancient skull dating back more than 6,000 years may have belonged to the earliest known human victim of a tsunami, scientists say.

"The geological similarities between the sediments at the place where the skull was found and sediments laid down during the 1998 tsunami that hit this same coastline have made us realize that human populations in this area have been affected by these massive inundations for thousands of years."

"If we are right about how this person had died ... we have dramatic proof that living by the sea isn't always a life of beautiful golden sunsets and great surfing conditions," said its co-author John Terrell, Regenstein curator of Pacific anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago.

Terrell, who has conducted extensive research in Papua New Guinea, also noted that the skull might help convince skeptics "that all of us on earth must take climate change and rising sea levels seriously."

"Many people in the world today face the threat of rising sea levels and (the) increasing numbers and power of climatic events, like tsunamis," added Marta Mirazon Lahr, from the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge, noting that almost 80% of the world's population today lives near the coast.

*At least 47 killed πŸ’ in Indonesia fireworks πŸŽ† factory explosion πŸ’₯*


At least 47 people were killed and dozens others injured in a fireworks factory explosion near the Indonesian capital of Jakarta on Thursday.

Regional police spokesman Argo Yuwono said 103 workers were believed to be in the building at the time of the blast and that 10 remained unaccounted for, according to CNN Indonesia, a CNN affiliate. Moreover

"We don't know, however, if those 10 workers were actually in the factory at the time, or whether they may have been ill and not come to work," he said. Officials said that a large explosion took place, followed by a smaller one, and that a fire then broke out, leaving some of the victims with burns.

The explosion occurred Thursday morning in Tangerang, a satellite city on Jakarta's western outskirts, where there are several industrial park.

The Kenyan πŸ‡°πŸ‡ͺ elections - what's happened so far?*

Kenya is holding a presidential election rerun because the Supreme Court nullified the results of the August 8 poll, which was won by President Uhuru Kenyatta. Opposition leader Raila Odinga, who got 45 percent of the vote last time round, has called for a boycott. President Kenyatta has urged voters to turn out, but also said those who wished not to vote were protected by the country's constitution.

The election re-run has been marred by isolated clashes and a boycott by the main opposition. A teenage boy was shot by police and later died amid clashes in the opposition stronghold of Kisumu, one of four counties hit by violence. The electoral commission said voting in those areas would be postponed until Saturday.

Tens of thousands of police and other security staff deployed to protect voters and polling stations, which closed at 17:00 local time (14:00 GMT). International observers have scaled down their missions for security reasons. The electoral commission has seven days to declare the results. 
After casting his vote in the town of Gatundu, Kenyatta had urged people to cast their ballots so the country could move on. "We're tired as a country of electioneering. It's time we moved forward," he said, adding that most of the country was "calm and peaceful".

More than 19 million Kenyans are registered to vote in the election rerun.