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zachcutler

Jakarta: Deadly attack in Indonesian capital; ISIS blamed - CNN.com - 0 views

  • Attackers struck in the middle of the day Thursday
  • two, wounding 19 and raising alarms about te
  • hub -- killing at least
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  • this time in the world's most populous Muslim country.
  • ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack in an official statement posted online by the terror organization, which was translated by the monitoring group Flashpoint and verified by CNN
  • The Jakarta carnage, in an area frequented by foreigners, came 6,000 miles from and two days after ISIS boasted about a suicide bombing in the heart of Istanbul
  • CNN security analyst Bob Baer likened the Jakarta attack to the November 13 Paris massacre in which terrorists linked to ISIS struck several locations at the same time. Yet the number of dead was nowhere near the toll of 130 in France, with Clarke Jones,
  • "It's concerning (to have) yet one more day and another attack in another part of the world," Gohel told CNN
  • That set in motion two militants outside the coffee shop who seized two foreigners,
  • Heavily armed police soon swarmed the scene, firing on the militants and looking for other attackers
  • Dutch national among 19 wounded
  • king for those who helped them in plotting, financing and getting weaponry, according to Charliyan, the police spokesman.By then, police had already counted five assailants dead at th
  • though they are loo
Javier E

Obama's Young Mother Abroad - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Where her children were involved, Ann was eas­ily moved to tears, even occasionally when speaking about them to friends. She preferred humor to harping, but she was exacting about the things she believed mattered most. Richard Hook, who worked with Ann in Jakarta in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said she told him that she worked to instill ideas about public service in her son. She wanted Barry to have a sense of obligation, to give something back. She wanted him to start off, Hook said, with the attitudes and values she had taken years to learn.
  • “If you want to grow into a human being,” Obama remembers her saying, “you’re going to need some values.” When necessary, Ann was, according to two accounts, not unwilling to reinforce her message. “She talked about disciplining Barry, including spanking him for things where he richly deserved a spanking,” said Don Johnston, who worked with Ann in the early 1990s, sometimes traveling with her in Indonesia and living in the same house. Saman said that when Barry failed to finish homework sent from Hawaii by his grandmother, Ann “would call him into his room and would spank him with his father’s military belt.”
  • “We were not permitted to be rude, we were not permitted to be mean, we were not permitted to be arrogant,” Maya told me. “We had to have a certain humility and broad-mindedness. We had to study. . . . If we said something unkind about someone, she would try to talk about their point of view. Or, ‘How would you feel?’ Sort of compelling us ever toward empathy and those kinds of things and not allowing us to be selfish. That was constant, steady, daily.”
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  • It was clear to many that Ann believed Barry, in particular, was unusually gifted. She would boast about his brains, his achievements, how brave he was. Benji Bennington, a friend of Ann’s from Hawaii, told me, “Sometimes when she talked about Barack, she’d say, ‘Well, my son is so bright, he can do anything he ever wants in the world, even be president of the United States.’ I re­member her saying that.” Samardal Manan, who taught with Ann in Jakarta, remembered Ann saying something similar — that Barry could be, or perhaps wanted to be, the first black president.
  • Indonesian schools in the late 1960s and early 1970s were inadequate; there were not enough of them, the government controlled the curriculum, teach­ers were poorly trained. Westerners sent their children to the Jakarta International School, but it was expensive and difficult to get into. Obama attended two Indonesian schools, one Catholic and one Muslim. The experience cannot have failed to have left a mark. The Java­nese, especially the Central Javanese, place an enormous emphasis on self-control. Even to sneeze was to exhibit an untoward lack of self-control, said Michael Dove, who got to know Ann when they were both anthropologists working in Java in the 1980s. “You demonstrate an inner strength by not betraying emotion, not speaking loudly, not moving jerkily,” he said. Self-control is inculcated through a culture of teasing, Kay Ikrana­gara told me. Her husband, known only as Ikrana­gara, said, “People tease about skin color all the time.” If a child allows the teasing to bother him, he is teased more. If he ignores it, it stops. “Our ambassador said this was where Barack learned to be cool,” Kay told me. “If you get mad and react, you lose. If you learn to laugh and take it without any reaction, you win.”
  • “She had always encouraged my rapid acculturation in Indone­sia,” he wrote in his memoir. “It had made me relatively self-sufficient, undemanding on a tight budget, and extremely well mannered when compared with other American children. She had taught me to disdain the blend of ignorance and arrogance that too often character­ized Americans abroad. But she now had learned, just as Lolo had learned, the chasm that separated the life chances of an American from those of an Indonesian. She knew which side of the divide she wanted her child to be on. I was an American, she decided, and my true life lay elsewhere.”
  • Ann uprooted Barry, at age 6, and transplanted him to Jakarta. Now she was up­rooting him again, at barely 10, and sending him back, alone. She would follow him to Hawaii only to leave him again, less than three years later. When we spoke last July, Obama recalled those serial displacements. “I think that was harder on a 10-year-old boy than he’d care to admit at the time,” Obama said, sitting in a chair in the Oval Of­fice and speaking about his mother with a mix of affection and critical distance. “When we were separated again during high school, at that point I was old enough to say, ‘This is my choice, my decision.’ But being a parent now and looking back at that, I could see — you know what? — that would be hard on a kid.”
  • he did not, he said, hold his mother’s choices against her. Part of being an adult is seeing your parents “as people who have their own strengths, weaknesses, quirks, longings.” He did not believe, he said, that parents served their children well by being unhappy. If his mother had cramped her spirit, it would not have given him a happier childhood. As it was, she gave him the single most important gift a parent can give — “a sense of un­conditional love that was big enough that, with all the surface dis­turbances of our lives, it sustained me, entirely.”
Javier E

How Joko Widodo Responded to the ISIS Attacks in Jakarta - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • On Thursday, militants affiliated with ISIS set off a series of explosions in the Indonesian city of Jakarta, killing at least two civilians. The country’s president, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, responded in a remarkable way.
  • Three days after the rampage, the French president stood before Parliament and proclaimed that “France is at war.
  • “The people do not need to be afraid and should not be defeated by these terrorist acts,” he added. “I hope that people remain calm because it is all controllable.”
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  • On Friday, as the authorities heightened security and anti-terror forces conducted raids, Jokowi visited the site of the attack and approvingly noted that things had returned to “normal.”
  • First, notice the subdued yet serious way Jokowi describes the impact of the attacks: They disrupted public security. They disturbed the peace. The government’s response is characterized as a policing matter.
  • He focuses on counteracting the primary goal of terrorism—to terrorize the broader population, to mess with people’s heads.
  • Then there’s what Jokowi omits: He does not declare that Indonesia is at war with the Islamic State, radical Islam, or terrorism. He does not suggest the future of Indonesia is at stake. He does not sound alarms.
  • “We condemn actions that disrupt public security and disturb the peace of the people and sow terror,” Mr. Joko said
  • Linger on Hollande’s words, and they become less reassuring than they first appear: France must destroy terrorism and its otherworldly practitioners, he seems to be saying, because otherwise terrorism could destroy the Republic and endanger the world.
  • But Indonesia arguably has as much to fear from such a terrorist attack as France does, if not more. Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population, and ISIS is aggressively trying to recruit supporters there.
  • And yet Jokowi, a Muslim himself, advocates combining military might with a “soft approach” to Islamic extremism that leverages religious and cultural forces.
  • This involves working with moderate Islamic organizations in Indonesia on educational and public-awareness campaigns about Islam and the ways it can be perverted, and addressing socioeconomic sources of terrorism.
  • Asked about ISIS and how he’d assess the current terrorist threat in Indonesia, he responded, “I think [the threat is] more or less declining.” (Jokowi is more alarmist and hardline about other criminal activities in the country, such as drug trafficking.)
  • Mayor Joko Widodo told us that he continues to work on efforts to deradicalize militants and others in Solo. Widodo said he holds constant meetings with the Solo public to educate them on the threat posed by terrorists and extremists. (
  • Jokowi’s approach isn’t necessarily the “right” one, or the one he’d adopt if Indonesia were to experience an attack on the scale of Paris’s. But it serves as a reminder that there’s more than one way to respond to terrorism—that societal resilience can be emphasized just as much as military resolve, that the threat of terrorism can be scoped and contextualized alongside the various other threats a country faces.
sgardner35

Jakarta attack: 12 arrested, police chief says - CNN.com - 0 views

  • Indonesian police have arrested 12 people in connection with Thursday's deadly attack in front of a Starbucks in central Jakarta, including one accused of having received a wire transfer from the alleged ISIS-linked operative suspected of orchestrating the assault, the country's police chief said Saturday.
  • one is suspected to have received a money transfer from the alleged mastermind, Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian militant who authorities believed to have conducted the operation from ISIS' headquarters in Syria, national Police Chief Badrodin Haiti said.
  • They also opened fire at people on the street. One of the injured was also a foreigner.
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  • Naim has formed a Southeast Asian branch of ISIS named Katibah al Nusantara, Indonesia authorities said. His vision is to join, to unite all ISIS supporting elements in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
  • ammunition and was brought to justice. Naim was sentenced to at least 2½ years in prison.
  • He was apprehended in 2010 for illegal possession of
  • In recent weeks, Indonesian police have been on high alert, while military operations focus on hitting the East Indonesian Mujahadeen, helmed by Indonesia's most-wanted terrorist, Santoso, who has pledged support for ISIS.One major worry is that Indonesians fighting in Syria and Iraq will return home, having gained training and combat experience.
horowitzza

Jakarta attacks: ISIS considers Indonesia un-Islamic - CNN.com - 0 views

  • Three days after ISIS militants carried out a deadly terror attack in broad daylight, Indonesians poured out by the thousands onto the streets of this tropical city for an exuberant day of recreation.
  • Thursday's attack did not approach the scale of carnage caused by the 2002 al Qaeda-linked bombing on the Indonesian island of Bali, which killed more than 200 people.
  • In fact, counter terror experts here say ISIS only attracts a fringe minority of support in the world's most populous Muslim country.
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  • "We are your brothers from Indonesia who have come to join the Islamic state," says a man identified as Abu Muhammad al Indonesi. Speaking in Bahasa Indonesia, he urges fellow Muslims in Indonesia to drop familial and professional obligations to emigrate to Syria.
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    Indonesia: The Muslim country ISIS considers un-Islamic
anonymous

Indonesian plane crashes after take-off with 62 aboard | Reuters - 0 views

  • A Sriwijaya Air plane crashed into the sea on Saturday minutes after taking off from Indonesia’s capital Jakarta on a domestic flight with 62 people on board, and their fate was not known.
  • The nearly 27-year-old Boeing 737-500 was much older than Boeing’s problem-plagued 737 MAX model, one of which crashed off Jakarta in late 2018, killing all 189 people aboard the Lion Air flight. Older 737 models are widely flown and do not have the system implicated in the MAX safety crisis.
  • There were no immediate clues on what may have caused the sudden descent and safety experts stress most air accidents are caused by a cocktail of factors that can take months to establish.
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  • 62 people had been aboard Flight SJ 182, including 12 crew.
lilyrashkind

6 Times the Olympics Were Boycotted - HISTORY - 0 views

  • Some Games, such as the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Berlin, saw countries (including the U.S. and the U.K.) threaten to pull out, before deciding to participate. World Wars I and II forced the cancellation of three Olympic Games—in 1916, 1940 and 1944. And other countries have been banned for a variety of reasons: Germany and Japan in 1948 because of their roles in WWII, South Africa during the era of apartheid and Russia in 2020, due to a doping scandal (although individual athletes were ultimately allowed to compete.)
  • The Details: Australia’s first hosting stint also marked the first Olympic boycott, with numerous countries withdrawing for a variety of political reasons. Less than a month before the opening ceremony, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to stop the Hungarian Revolution against the Communist regime; in protest, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland all refused to participate. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China also withdrew—and would not return until the 1980 Winter Games—because Taiwan, which it considers a breakaway province, was allowed to participate as a separate country. And, finally, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon boycotted the 1956 Olympics due to the Suez Canal Crisis following the British-Israel-French invasion of Egypt to control the waterway.
  • ‘Blood in the Water’: Despite other countries’ boycott against the Soviets, Hungary competed in the Olympics, and its athletes received support from fans, while Soviet athletes faced boos. A violent water polo match between the two teams left one Hungarian player bleeding from the head and led to a fight among spectators and athletes. Hungary, up 4-0 at the start of the brawl, was named the winner and the team eventually won the gold medal. The Soviets, for their part, went on to win the most medals for the first time. Of Note: In a show of peace, the Olympic athletes, for the first time, marched into the closing ceremony mixed together, rather than as separate nations—a tradition that continues today.
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  • The Details: China, North Korea and Indonesia chose to boycott the first Games held in an Asian country after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) declared it would disqualify athletes who competed in the 1963 Jakarta-held Games of the New Emerging Forces, created as an alternative multinational amateur competition. The boycotting countries sent many of their top athletes to the Jakarta games.
  • The Details: When New Zealand’s national rugby team defied an international sports embargo against South Africa and toured the apartheid nation earlier in the year, 28 African nations—comprising most of the continent—declared a boycott of the Olympics, which was allowing New Zealand to participate. Led by Tanzania, the boycott involved more than 400 athletes. In a separate action, Taiwan withdrew from the Games when Canada refused to let its team compete as the Republic of China. Of Note: The boycott led to hotel and ticket refunds totaling $1 million Canadian dollars. It especially affected several track and field events, where nations such as Kenya and Tanzania were frequent medal winners.
  • Afghani athletes, notably, competed in the Games. Some countries did not forbid athletes from competing as individuals under the Olympic flag, but American athletes attempting to compete faced losing their passports. A group of American athletes sued the U.S. Olympic Committee to participate but lost the case. The boycott resulted in just 80 countries competing in the Olympics, the fewest since 1956.
  • In retaliation for the U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Games four years earlier, 14 nations, led by the Soviet Union and including East Germany, boycotted the Los Angeles-held Olympics. Joined by most of the Eastern Bloc nations, the Soviets said they feared physical attacks and protests on American soil. "Chauvinistic sentiments and anti-Soviet hysteria are being whipped up in this country,” a government statement read.
  • and Joan Benoit, along with Mary Lou Retton, the first American gymnast to win the gold for all-around, became instant stars. And the Games were considered a huge financial success, with almost double the ticket sales of Montreal and earning the title as the most-seen event in TV history.
  • Angered over not being allowed to co-host the Games with South Korea, North Korea refused to attend the 1988 event in neighboring Seoul. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, accepted the IOC's invitation to compete, along with China and Eastern Bloc nations, leaving just Cuba, Ethiopia and Nicaragua joining North Korea in the boycott. “To have the Olympics in Seoul would be like having them at the Guantanamo naval base occupied by the United States," Cuba President Fidel Castro told NBC News at the time. "I wonder that, if Socialist countries refused to go to (the 1984 Olympics in) Los Angeles for security reasons, if really there is more security in Seoul than in Los Angeles.”
  • candals tarnished the Seoul Games, including reports of residents being forced from their homes and homeless people being detained at facilities in preparation for the Games. Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson made global headlines when he was stripped of his world-record-setting 100-meter victory after testing positive for steroids, and controversial boxing calls that went against South Korean athletes caused outrage.
  • North and South Korean leaders met following the events, and agreed to send a combined team to the 2021 Tokyo Summer Games. However, North Korea announced in April 2021 that it would not participate because of the coronavirus pandemic. 
ethanmoser

Indonesia, Japan affirm deeper ties during Abe's Asian tour | Fox News - 0 views

  • Indonesia, Japan affirm deeper ties during Abe's Asian tour
  • Japan and Indonesia have affirmed a deepening of economic and political ties during a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is using a four-nation tour of Asia to underscore his government's role in countering China's assertiveness in the South China Sea.
  • they established in 2015 to increase maritime cooperation.
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  • Jokowi said there were agreements on development of a deep sea port and the Masela gas field in Indonesia, and for preliminary discussions of a Jakarta-Surabaya rail line.
maxwellokolo

At Least 45,000 Homeless After Aceh Quake in Indonesia - 0 views

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    JAKARTA, Indonesia - At least 45,000 people have been displaced by the powerful earthquake that hit Indonesia's Aceh province, authorities said Saturday, as the government and aid agencies pooled efforts to meet the basic survival needs of shaken communities.
Javier E

By 2047, Coldest Years May Be Warmer Than Hottest in Past - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • for a given geographic area, “the coldest year in the future will be warmer than the hottest year in the past,”
  • “Go back in your life to think about the hottest, most traumatic event you have experienced,” Dr. Mora said in an interview. “What we’re saying is that very soon, that event is going to become the norm.”
  • The models show that unprecedented temperatures could be delayed by 20 to 25 years if there is a vigorous global effort to bring emissions under control. While that may not sound like many years, the scientists said the emissions cuts would buy critical time for nature and for human society to adapt, as well as for development of technologies that might help further reduce emissions.
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  • “If current trends in carbon dioxide emissions continue, we will be pushing most of the ecosystems of the world into climatic conditions that they have not experienced for many millions of years,”
  • Dr. Mora and his students divided the earth into a grid, with each cell representing 386 square miles. Averaging the results from the 39 climate models, they calculated a date they called “climate departure” for each location — the date after which all future years were predicted to be warmer than any year in the historical record for that spot on the globe.
  • The results suggest that if emissions of greenhouse gases remain high, then after 2047, more than half the earth’s surface will experience annual climates hotter than anything that occurred between 1860 and 2005, the years for which historical temperature data and reconstructions are available.
  • climate departure for New York City will come in 2047, the paper found, plus or minus the five-year margin of error. But lower emissions would push that to 2072.
  • Under high emissions, the paper found a climate departure date of 2031 for Mexico City, 2029 for Jakarta and for Lagos, Nigeria, and 2033 for Bogotá, Colombia.
Javier E

In BNP Paribas Case, an Example of How Mighty the Dollar Is - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • f you are a bank in Paris or Jakarta or São Paulo, you can’t really serve your clients unless you are able to connect them to the global market for dollars. And you can’t do that unless you are in good standing with United States regulators. And you will very much not be in good standing with them if there is evidence you facilitated financing of terrorism or governments that the United States considers global threats.
  • That’s one of the important reasons that United States-led economic sanctions against Sudan or Iran carry weight. Those countries cannot easily gain access to the global financial system by going to a bank in a more sympathetic country.
  • the potential rivals for this position have problems of their own. The euro is only a couple of years removed from an existential crisis.China is pushing to internationalize the renminbi, and while its currency is being used more for trade within Asia, it has a long way to go to become a truly global currency. (Among other things, China would need to develop a much deeper market for bonds denominated in its currency than now exists, and start allowing the freer transfer of capital into and out of the country.)
Javier E

From Indonesia, a Muslim Challenge to the Ideology of the Islamic State - The New York ... - 1 views

  • The campaign by Nahdlatul Ulama, known as N.U., for a liberal, pluralistic Islam also comes at a time when Islam is at war with itself over central theological questions of how the faith is defined in the modern era.
  • In a way, it should not be surprising that this message comes from Indonesia, the home of Islam Nusantara, widely seen as one of the most progressive Islamic movements in the world. The movement — its name is Indonesian for “East Indies Islam” — dates back more than 500 years and promotes a spiritual interpretation of Islam that stresses nonviolence, inclusiveness and acceptance of other religions.
  • he theology developed organically in a place where Hinduism and Buddhism were the primary religions before Islam arrived around the 13th century. Indonesian Islam blended with local religious beliefs and traditions, creating a pluralistic society despite having a Muslim majority.
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  • Indonesia today has more than 190 million Muslims, but also has a secular government and influential Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities.
  • “We are directly challenging the idea of ISIS, which wants Islam to be uniform, meaning that if there is any other idea of Islam that is not following their ideas, those people are infidels who must be killed,” said Yahya Cholil Staquf, general secretary to the N.U. supreme council. “We will show that is not the case with Islam.”
  • N.U. has established a nonprofit organization, Bayt ar-Rahmah, in Winston-Salem, N.C., which will be the hub for international activities including conferences and seminars to promote Indonesia’s tradition of nonviolent, pluralistic Islam, Mr. Yahya said.
  • N.U. is also working with the University of Vienna in Austria, which collects and analyzes ISIS propaganda, to prepare responses to those messages, which N.U. will disseminate online and at conferences.
  • In scene after scene, they challenge and denounce the Islamic State’s interpretations of the Quran and the Hadith, the book of the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings, as factually wrong and perverse.
  • The Islamic State’s theology, rooted in the fundamentalist Wahhabi movement, takes its cues from medieval Islamic jurisprudence, where slavery and execution of prisoners was accepted. The filmmakers accept the legitimacy of those positions for the time but argue that Islamic law needs to be updated to 21st-century norms.
  • “The problem with Middle East Islam is they have what I call religious racism,” said Azyumardi Azra, an Islamic scholar and former rector of the State Islamic University in Jakarta. “They feel that only the Arabs are real Muslims and the others are not.”
  • Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and the main source of financial support for Wahhabism worldwide, has had more success in imposing its interpretation and has even made inroads in Indonesia. Analysts say a steady flow of money from Persian Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, supports an active and growing Wahhabist movement here.
  • Hedieh Mirahmadi, president of the World Organization for Resource Development and Education, an organization based in Washington that works to combat extremism, said that, according to open source data, supporters of the Islamic State were sending an average of 2.8 million messages a day to their followers on Twitter.“Who’s going to counter that?” she asked.
johnsonma23

ISIS steps up attacks far from its 'caliphate' - CNN.com - 0 views

  • ISIS steps up attacks far from its 'caliphate'
  • Istanbul, Jakarta, Philadelphia, multiple locations in Libya, the Russian republic of Dagestan: within the past two weeks all have been the target of attacks by ISIS supporters or affiliates, killing and wounding dozens of people.
  • Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is spreading its wings as it comes under greater pressure in its Iraqi-Syrian heartland
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  • Abu Bakr al Baghdad
  • rusader" countries and beyond.
  • indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets
  • , symbols of Western power or decadence
  • Beyond ISIS "branded" attacks -- those launched by affiliates and members -- ISIS also seeks to make political capital out of individuals who claim to be "inspired" by it, such as those in San Bernardino, California, in December and last week in Philadelphia.
  • stage of the investigation, there is no evidence accused gunman Edward Archer was part of an organized cell or that other attacks were in the works.
  • here is no doubting ISIS' lure to a fringe of extremist Muslims and Muslim converts
  • A year ago, ISIS was focused almost exclusively on carving out its self-declared caliphate. Overseas terror attacks in the style of al Qaeda did not appear high on the agenda
  • An early indication that ISIS' leadership favored overseas attacks came when the Belgian jihadist Abdelhamid Abaaoud -- a high-profile member of the group, if only a lieutenant -- plotted a series of gun and bomb attacks against police stations
  • "Know that we want Paris -- by Allah's permission -- before Rome and before Spain, after we blacken your lives and destroy the White House, Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower."
  • the "caliph" himself, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, suggested ISIS will look for further opportunities to export its war to the "far abroad."
  • Throughout 2015, there was a steady stream of terror attacks that could be linked firmly to ISIS-associated groups, even if the relationship between them and the group's central leadership was often opaque
  • What, if any, role the central ISIS leadership had in the bombing of the Metrojet plane is still unknown. Its Sinai affiliate claimed the attack, and it was some time before the ISIS online publication Dabiq referred to it.
  • The suicide bomb attacks in Ankara were likely ordered by ISIS itself
  • The Paris attacks in November were a landmark: the first clearly organized and claimed by ISIS itself from Syria rather than the autonomous actions of affiliates or individuals.
  • t has a growing network of wilayat, or provinces -- places where it has an established presence such as Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan -- where government is weak and conflict endemic. In some instances it has sent fighters from Syria and Iraq to expand its presence in these places, most notably in Libya.
  • It also has a pool of experienced foreign fighters
  • The disappearance of one of the Paris attackers, Salah Abdeslam, and several alleged co-conspirators suggests ISIS may have a network of safe houses and travel facilitators in Europe
Javier E

Tougher climate policies could save a stunning 150 million lives, researchers find - Th... - 0 views

  • According to the study, premature deaths would fall on nearly every continent if the world’s governments agree to cut emissions of carbon and other harmful gases enough to limit global temperature rise to less than 3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That is about a degree lower than the target set by the Paris climate agreement.
  • The benefit would be felt mostly in Asian countries with dirty air — 13 million lives would be saved in large cities in India alone, including the metropolitan areas of Kolkata, Delhi, Patna and Kanpur. Greater Dhaka in Bangladesh would have 3.6 million fewer deaths, and Jakarta in Indonesia would record 1.6 fewer lives lost. The African cities of Lagos and Cairo combined would register more than 2 million fewer deaths.
  • In the United States, the Clean Air Act has improved air quality over the years. Still, more than 330,000 lives in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta and Washington would be spared
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  • “Americans don’t really grasp how pollution impacts their lives,” said Drew Shindell, a professor of Earth science at Duke University and the study’s lead author. “You say, ‘My uncle went to the hospital and died of a heart attack.’ You don’t say the heart attack was caused by air pollution, so we don’t know. It’s still a big killer here. It’s much bigger than from people who die from plane crashes or war or terrorism, but we don’t see the link so clearly
  • The models calculated about 7 million deaths per year if governments fail to work toward zero emissions by the end of the century, starting today.
  • they “calculated the human health impacts of pollution exposure under each scenario all over the world — but focusing on results in major cities — using well-established epidemiological models based on decades of public health data on air-pollution related deaths,”
  • Shindell used an automaker’s problem with faulty ignition switches in 2014 to further illustrate his point. When the switches failed, more than 3 million recalls were involved and auto executives were summoned to Washington to testify before Congress. “But the combined tailpipes of automobiles kill dozens and dozens more people than faulty ignition switches,” the researcher said. “We should be far more worried about pollution than the things we actually worry about.
  • “There’s got to be a significant amount of progress within the 2020s or it’s too late,” Shindell said. Even for the researchers, it’s a pie-in-the-sky goal, given that South Asian nations such as India, where pollution is among the worst in the world, argue correctly that their per-capita use is small compared with historical use in the Western Hemisphere and that they should be allowed time to develop just as other countries did.
anonymous

Sultan of Yogyakarta: A feminist revolution in an ancient kingdom - BBC News - 0 views

  • The Sultan of Yogyakarta holds a powerful political and spiritual position on the Indonesian island of Java. He is manoeuvring to make his eldest daughter his heir, sparking a bitter feud, as the BBC's Indonesia editor Rebecca Henschke reports.
  • In Javanese culture, things are not said directly, but instead conveyed by symbolism.
  • The Javanese royal rule stretches back to the 16th Century and while the family is now Muslim like most Indonesians, the rituals they carry out are steeped in mysticism, a product of Hinduism, Buddhism and animism of the past.
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  • Fingernail clippings and locks of the sultan's hair are offered to the sea goddess every year. They are also offered to the ogre Sapu Jagat inside Mount Merapi, one of Indonesia's most active volcanoes that looms over the city.
  • So Yogyakarta is the only place in Indonesia where residents don't get to directly elect their leader. When it was suggested by Jakarta that this should change in 2010 there were angry protests on the streets of Yogyakarta and the central government backed down.
  • Veneration of objects or idols, and hints to polytheism, run in conflict with the Wahhabis strain of Islam that is growing in popularity in Java.
  • Recently the daughter of Indonesia's first President Sukarno, Sukmawati, was reported to the police for blasphemy and forced to apologise for saying in a poem that the Javanese hairbun was more beautiful than a Islamic chador.
  • The sultan's extended family accuses the queen, who is a senator in the national parliament, of leading the revolt against tradition.
Javier E

New U.N. climate report: Massive change already here for world's oceans and frozen regi... - 0 views

  • Climate change is already causing staggering impacts on the oceans and ice-filled regions that encompass 80 percent of the Earth, and future damage from rising seas and melting glaciers is now all but certain, according to a sobering new report from the United Nations.
  • Wednesday’s report on the world’s oceans, glaciers, polar regions and ice sheets finds that such effects only foreshadow a more catastrophic future as long as greenhouse gas emissions remain unchecked.
  • Given current emissions levels, a number of serious impacts are essentially unavoidable
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  • Extreme floods that have historically struck some coastal cities and small island nations once every 100 years will become an annual occurrence by 2050
  • if emissions continue to increase, global sea levels could rise by more than three feet by the end of this century — around 12 percent higher than the group estimated as recently as 2013
  • Melting glaciers could harm water supplies, and warming oceans could wreck marine fisheries.
  • “The conclusion is inescapable: The impacts of climate change on the ocean are well underway. Unless we take very serious action very soon, these impacts will get worse — much, much worse.”
  • More than 100 scientists from around the world contributed to the latest report by the IPCC, which found that profound and potentially devastating consequences lie ahead for marine life, Arctic ecosystems and entire human societies if climate change continues unabated.
  • While dozens of smaller nations did unveil plans for coming years, the world’s largest emitters have stopped short of committing to transformational changes.
  • Sea level rise is accelerating, and the world could see 3.6 feet in total sea level rise by the year 2100 in a very high-emissions scenario. In 2013, t
  • The ocean is losing oxygen, growing more acidic, taking up an increasing amount of heat, and becoming more stratified, with warm water at the surface preventing cooler, nutrient rich waters from rising. All of these changes have profound consequences for marine ecosystems.
  • when scientists behind the report looked at an alternative method for gauging how much seas could rise — simply canvassing the views of experts — even larger estimates emerged. The group’s findings only highlight “likely” amounts of sea level rise, meaning they do not represent worst-case scenarios.
  • For some major coastal cities, a historical 100-year flood event will happen annually by the year 2050. That includes large cities such as Jakarta, Manila, Bangkok, Lima, Singapore, Barcelona and Sydney, the report says
  • “Even our language has to adapt: What once was called ‘climate change’ is now truly a ‘climate crisis.’ … We are seeing unprecedented temperatures, unrelenting storms and undeniable science.”
  • “The world’s coasts provide a home to around 1.9 billion people and over half of the world’s megacities — all of which are in grave danger if we don’t act immediately to prevent rising temperatures and sea levels,”
  • “Extreme high temperatures, coastal flooding, and more frequent natural disasters are becoming the new normal. ... This is what the climate crisis looks like now.
  • the system could still tip toward very large ice losses from Greenland and Antarctica. If that happens, the rate of sea-level rise could become truly catastrophic, especially by the years 2200 and 2300, when it could exceed 10 feet.
  • Permafrost, which contains enormous amounts of carbon that can be released as it thaws, has warmed to “record high levels.” Summer Arctic sea ice extent is now probably lower than at any time in “at least 1,000 years,” and the oldest, thickest ice has already declined by 90 percent.
  • “Over the 21st century, the ocean is projected to transition to unprecedented conditions,”
  • In the United States, cities facing fast-moving sea-level danger include Los Angeles, Miami, Savannah, Honolulu, San Juan, Key West and San Diego.
  • One of the most shocking findings involves “marine heat waves,” which have been blamed for mass deaths of corals, kelp forests and other key ocean organisms. The large majority of these events are already directly attributable to climate change, and by the year 2100, they will become 20 times more common in the best case, and 50 times as common in the absolute worst case, compared with the late 1800s
  • Many of these changes to oceans and ice are unfolding in parts of the Earth where few people live, and so the shifts are not always readily visible to most humans. But the changes taking place there ultimately will affect people around the globe, in the form of rising seas and other impacts. And as those impacts worsen, so does the difficulty of adapting to them.
  • the grim findings in Wednesday’s report should be a call to action.
  • "We must not let these climate change impacts paralyze us,” she said in an email. “We must address root causes of climate change by slowing and eventually stopping accumulation of greenhouse gas emissions.”
  • There is much that humans can do to blunt the expected impacts in the meantime, she said, such as restoring mangroves and protecting reefs and marshes to reduce storm impacts on coastal communities.
  • “Alone, these measures cannot meet all the challenges of climate change to oceans and coasts, but they are doable, cost-effective and make a difference,”
anonymous

Lava Flows Again As Indonesian Volcano Erupts : NPR - 0 views

  • Indonesian officials are monitoring the country's most active volcano after it erupted again Saturday morning, launching hot ash clouds high into the air, and sending lava spewing down the side of the mountain.
  • Ash plumes shot more than 600 feet into the air as volcanic debris spilled down the slopes of Mount Merapi in Yogyakarta on the densely populated Indonesian island of Java, about 250 miles east of Jakarta. The name "Merapi" loosely translates to "Mountain of Fire."
  • The volcano erupted hot clouds of ash at least eight times, and sent several pyroclastic flows down its slopes, according to the Indonesia's Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation. No injuries were reported, but local officials are cautioning of more activity to come. The volcano has erupted regularly for hundreds of years.
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  • Based on observations of the volcano begun in early November, "it is concluded that the volcanic activity of Mount Merapi is still quite high in the form of effusive eruptions," said Raditya Jati of the Indonesian National Board for Disaster Management. "Effusive" eruptions are those in which lava steadily flows onto the ground.
  • But the more cataclysmic "explosive" eruptions are still likely, Jati said, with the potential for erupting volcanic material up to about 2 miles from the summit. Lava avalanches and hot clouds could reach more than 3 miles to the southwest.
  • Mining companies have been advised to temporarily suspend work in the river that originates at Mount Merapi, and tourism companies have been asked to temporarily stay away from "areas of potential danger and crater openings" up to 3 miles away.
anniina03

Single-use plastic: China to ban bags and other items - BBC News - 0 views

  • China, one of the world's biggest users of plastic, has unveiled a major plan to reduce single-use plastics across the country. Non-degradable bags will be banned in major cities by the end of 2020 and in all cities and towns by 2022.
  • In 2017 alone, China collected 215 million tonnes of urban household waste. But national figures for recycling are not available.
  • The National Development and Reform Commission on Sunday issued the new policy, which will be implemented over the next five years.
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  • The production and sale of plastic bags that are less than 0.025mm thick will also be banned. The restaurant industry must reduce the use of single-use plastic items by 30%. Hotels have been told that they must not offer free single-use plastic items by 2025.
  • Thailand announced earlier this year that single-use plastic bags would be banned in major stores, with a complete ban across the entire country in 2021.
  • Indonesia's capital Jakarta also is banning single-use plastic bags in department stores, supermarkets and traditional markets by June 2020.
  • The Indonesian island of Bali has also banned single-use plastic.
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