North Korea says it will Attack South Korea if it Carries out Live-Fire Drills Near Sea Border
PYONGYANG, North Korea — North Korea will launch “merciless” strikes if South Korea goes through with planned live-fire drills near their disputed sea border, a North Korean officer said Sunday, amid persistent tension on the divided peninsula.
North Korea doesn’t want a war but its people are always ready to “dedicate their blood to defend their inviolable territory,” officer Sin Chol Ung at the North’s Korean People’s Security Forces told The Associated Press.
“We are monitoring every movement by the South Korean warmongers. If they provoke us, there will be only merciless retaliatory strikes,” Sin said.
South Korea will stage regular one-day artillery drills Monday from front-line islands off the western coast, including one shelled by North Korea in 2010, according to Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. It said South Korea informed North Korea of its training plan on Sunday.
Soon after, the North’s military issued a statement warning of the strikes and urging all civilians living or working on the islands to evacuate before the drills start.
“Such move of the warlike forces is a premeditated military provocation ... to drive the overall situation on the Korean peninsula into the phase of war,” a North Korean western military command said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. -Source
Government Spy Programme Will Monitor Every Phone Call, Text and Email... and Details Will Be Kept for up to a Year
Details about text messages, phone calls, emails and every website visited by members of the public will be kept on record in a bid to combat terrorism.
The Government will order broadband providers, landline and mobile phone companies to save the information for up to a year under a new security scheme. What is said in the texts, emails or phone calls will not be kept but information on the senders, recipients and their geographical whereabouts will be saved.
Direct messages to users of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter will also be saved and so will information exchanged between players in online video games. The information will be stored by individual companies rather than the government.
The news has sparked huge concerns about the risk of hacking and fears that the sensitive information could be used to send spam emails and texts.
Nick Pickles, director of privacy and civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: 'Britain is already one of the most spied on countries off-line and this is a shameful attempt to watch everything we do online in the same way. 'The vast quantities of data that would be collected would arguably make it harder for the security services to find threats before a crime is committed, and involve a wholesale invasion of all our privacy online that is hugely disproportionate and wholly unnecessary. -Source
Mexico Prison Fight Leaves 44 Dead
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Violence at a prison on the outskirts of Mexico's northern manufacturing city Monterrey left at least 44 dead on Sunday, authorities said.
Victims were beaten, knifed and stoned when a fight broke out between rival gangs at the prison in the early hours of Sunday, authorities said.
Inmates at the prison in Monterrey, about 225 km (140 miles) from the border with Texas, include members of Mexico's Gulf Cartel as well as the feared Zetas cartel. Authorities could not confirm if the fight was between these two cartels.
The prison was secured by around 6 a.m. and an investigation began shortly afterward, a local government spokesman told Mexican news services. -Source
Mali Facing Worst Human Rights Crisis in 20 Years: Amnesty
Amnesty International said Friday that a Tuareg offensive raging in northern Mali is causing a humanitarian and human rights crisis, with scores killed and thousands fleeing into neighbouring countries.
"This is the worst human rights crisis in northern Mali for 20 years," said Gaetan Mootoo, Amnesty International's researcher on West Africa in a statement. "The rule of law has been markedly absent in this part of the country for years, and the region could be plunged into chaos if the fighting continues."
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Friday fighting had displaced at least 60,000 people inside Mali. The figure did not include other refugees who fled to neighbouring countries. "As clashes continue in the north, the humanitarian situation of those displaced is getting worse amid a food crisis," the ICRC said in a statement.
"In northern Mali all those people who have abandoned their homes, their fields, who lost their cattle and their daily activities are at a loss," said Juerg Eglin, who heads the ICRC's delegation for Mali and Niger.
He said that many families had difficulties finding food. -Source
What do you think it says when someone is willing to set themselves on fire, or for that matter to blow themselves up? This is a level of despair and hopelessness that few of us have ever experienced. These folks are trapped in this kind of life every day.
Isa 61:1 The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,
Isa 61:2 to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn,
Inside Story: Tibetan Discontent Smoulders
STEPPING foot on the main street in the small town of Aba, you cannot shake the ominous feeling that your every move is being watched. Heavily armed police are set up at every intersection. Security personnel holding spiked clubs stand guard beside army trucks full of soldiers in riot gear. Roadblocks cut off the town at both ends, with every vehicle entering and leaving the town closely monitored and identity cards routinely checked.
Even low-level government officials more accustomed to pushing paper have been mobilised. Wearing red armbands emblazoned with the Chinese characters for ''on duty'', they sit on stools by the road in groups of three or four for hours on end, ordered simply to keep watch.
Nestled in the heart of Sichuan's mountainous north, Aba is the epicentre of the intensifying unrest sweeping through the Tibetan regions spanning China's remote western reaches. Since last March, at least 21 ethnic Tibetans, mostly Buddhist monks, have set fire to themselves to protest against what they say has been a systematic persecution of their religious freedom by the Chinese government. More than half of the self-immolations have taken place in Aba.
Last month, police shot and killed at least seven people and wounded 60 in protests in nearby Luhuo and Seda, which coincided with the Chinese Spring Festival. The level of dissent has since intensified despite an even heavier police and military presence. Seven Tibetans have self-immolated in the past two weeks alone, including three from Aba. -Source
