Jeff Mirza, who was born in Pakistan but brought up in Essex, was questioned over the use of the term in his act “Meet Abu Hamsta and Paki Bashir” at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Britain.
The complaint came from another man of Pakistani background, who claimed he was upset by a poster for the show, which attempts to “reclaim” the use of the racially offensive term.
Mr Mirza, 49, was dressed in character as a butcher, called Paki Bashir, when he was questioned at the police station on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. He was warned that he could be arrested and charged if he continued to use the poster, although he is continuing to do so.
Mr Mirza said: “How on earth can I be accused of racism against my own community?”
His act centres on jokes about Pakistan and the wider Islamic world. His main character, Bashir, tells the audience he loves his family, “otherwise of his workforce” and says of Pakistan: “We also have a thriving gay community and they are also known as clerics.”
Other characters include Hamsta, a Saudi said to be al Qaeda’s ambassador of the arts in Luton. There is also Jameela, a woman in a burka, who tells how she was widowed when her first husband blew himself up as a suicide bomber at the third attempt.
Mr Mirza was questioned after a man took a leaflet which he was handing out on the High Street in Edinburgh and went to a police station. “I followed him into the station and … told him my daughter at the age of four had been racially abused and for many years after I had been angry when I heard that word.
“But a few years ago I realised that I am a Paki and I should be proud of that. Pakistan means Land of the Pure and what’s wrong with that?
“I have been called Paki so many times that the only thing for me was to turn it around and make people laugh with me. Black people use the N word as a sort of reclaiming it in songs and on TV and I have never seen any of them arrested.”
A police spokesman said: “Police have a certain amount of room to give guidance and in this case it has been decided that there will be no further action.” – The Telegraph
Canberra doctors removed a 10-centimetre fork from inside an elderly man’s penis after a bizarre sexual mishap.
The 70-year-old arrived at the Canberra Hospital emergency department with a bleeding sexual organ.
He told doctors he had inserted the 10cm dining fork into his urethra almost 12 hours earlier in an attempt to achieve sexual gratification.
But the utensil became stuck.
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The fork was not visible but doctors were able to feel it from the outside and X-rays showed its position.
Doctors considered several retrieval options before deciding to pull the fork free using forceps and “copious lubrication” while the patient was under a general anaesthetic.
The elderly patient was then sent home.
The medical emergency was so rare the team of three doctors published the case in The International Journal of Surgery last month.
The paper, titled “An Unusual Urethral Foreign Body”, said it was rare to see objects lodged in the lower urinary tract.
It went on to list strange objects found inside other parts of the body, including needles, pencils, wire, allen keys, toothbrushes, light bulbs, thermometers, plants and vegetables, leeches, snakes, cocaine and glue.
“It is apparent that the human mind is uninhibited let alone creative,” the authors wrote.
The medical team – Krishanth Naidu, Maurice Mulcahy and Amanda Chung – said the fork case was published to create discussion among the medical fraternity “given the great management challenge faced by the oddity and infrequency with which a fork is encountered in the penile urethra”.
The doctors said the motives for inserting objects into the sensitive region were difficult to comprehend.
“The practice manifests primarily during states of pathological masturbation, substance abuse and intoxication and as a result of psychological compounders.
“Autoerotic stimulation with the aid of self-inserted urethral foreign bodies has been existent since time immemorial and have presented an unusual but known presentation to urologists.”
They said embarrassed patients usually attempted to retrieve the item themselves, risking urethral injury and foreign body migration.
The real danger was infection leading to death, because ashamed patients often delay medical treatment, they said.
Doctors generally try to avoid surgery in such situations, instead choosing an option that would minimise urothelial trauma and preserve erectile function.
The authors said self-inserted male urethral foreign bodies are rare emergencies that urological and general surgeons face on occasion.
While the insertions are unusual, the paper said “any imaginable object is known to be implicated”. – Canberra Times
Egyptian authorities have ordered hospital personnel to record some of the deaths of those with gunshot wounds as suicides.
Thirty-eight prisoners died from teargas suffocation during a riot in a prison near the capital Cairo on Sunday. At least 830 people have died in clashes with the army since Wednesday.
Around 38 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood died on Sunday in a riot at an Egyptian prison, security sources said.
The Interior Ministry said a group of detainees had tried to escape from a prison on the outskirts of Cairo, adding that an undisclosed number had been suffocated by teargas when police moved in to free an officer who had been taken hostage.
Critics allege a possible mass execution took place where more than 830. Egyptian authorities say 70 members of the security forces have been killed.
On Sunday, Christian institutions said they were coming under attack by Islamic extremists in Egypt as Muslim Brotherhood supporters carry out a policy of intimidation against Egypt’s Christian minority in retaliation for their support for the interim government.
Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) is to re-evaluate its official position in regard to Egypt following military crackdown on Brotherhood supporters.
Another Christian institution was torched by Islamist extremists in Beni Suef in upper Egypt on Sunday bringing the number of churches and Christian institutions attacked or destroyed in Egypt since the overthrow of Muhammad Morsi to over 40.
After the Franciscan school was set on fire, three of the school’s nuns were paraded through the streets while another two women working at the school were sexually harassed and abused as they tried to escape the mob.
In the city of Minya, Islamists marked Christian businesses with red crosses and Muslim businesses with black crosses in preparation for more attacks. – SABC
Around 10,000 people took part in a demonstration in the Moroccan capital, Rabat, on Sunday in support of Islamists in Egypt locked in a deadly showdown with security forces.
The crowd carried banners condemning the police operations that have cost hundreds of lives among demonstrators demanding the reinstatement of Egypt’s army-ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and posters showing the dead in makeshift morgues in Cairo.
“Soldiers should be carrying out their duty of protecting the nation’s territory instead of killing their own people,” said Driss Leghroudi, a 33-year-old academic.
“History is repeating itself. It happened in Algeria in 1992 (with its civil war) … It’s Saudi Arabia which is behind it” in Egypt, he charged, as the crowd chanted for the expulsion of the Egyptian ambassador to Morocco.
Morocco initially adopted a neutral stand after last month’s toppling of Morsi but the authorities in Rabat have since expressed alarm over the carnage resulting from a security crackdown to remove Morsi’s supporters from the streets.
More than 750 people have been killed in violence across Egypt since Wednesday, official figures show. – AFP
Southern African leaders opened an annual summit Saturday endorsing disputed elections in Zimbabwe that extended President Robert Mugabe’s 33-year rule by another five years.
“Congratulations to comrade Robert Mugabe for conducting peaceful elections,” said the incoming head of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), President Joyce Banda of Malawi.
“We wish to offer you continued support as a member of the family,” Banda said, to wild cheers from the audience at the start of the 15-nation summit.
A smiling Mugabe acknowledged the endorsement with his traditional clenched-fist salute.
Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party said Friday he had withdrawn a legal challenge to the elections, claiming the courts would not be fair.
This removed the last hurdle to 89-year-old leader Mugabe’s inauguration for a seventh term.
The SADC’s observer mission for the July 31 elections judged the vote was free, but have not yet commented on its fairness.
The SADC will publish its report on Zimbabwe’s polls during this weekend’s summit, according to South African President Jacob Zuma.
Banda took over the rotational one-year chairmanship of the SADC from Mozambican leader Armando Guebuza, becoming the first woman to head the bloc since its inception 33 years ago.
The two-day summit is expected to be dominated by the political stand-off in Madagascar and the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to a Malawian official.
Madagascar has been suspended from the regional grouping since strongman Andry Rajoelina toppled Marc Ravalomanana in 2009.
The SADC has been pushing the rivals to follow through on a roadmap meant to steer the island nation toward elections, which Banda hinted could be due this year.
The vote has repeatedly been put on hold amid controversy over the candidacies of the three front-runners, including Rajoelina.
Regional mediators have called for Rajoelina, Ravalomanana’s wife Lalao and former leader Didier Ratsiraka to stand aside, but all three have refused.
In the DR Congo, a quarter-million people have fled their homes since last year when a rebel group calling itself the M23 took up arms against government troops in the mineral-rich but chronically unstable east. – AFP
Scene from New Zealand after its previous earthquake in 2011
Strong earthquakes shook central New Zealand on Friday, damaging homes, destroying a bridge and sending office workers scrambling for cover in the capital. No serious injuries have been reported.
A magnitude-6.5 temblor struck just after 2:30 p.m. near the small South Island town of Seddon, and at least six aftershocks were 5.0 magnitude or stronger.
Several homes near the epicenter were severely damaged, with chimneys collapsing and roofs caving in, said police spokeswoman Barbara Dunn. She said a bridge was severely damaged on the main highway near Seddon, and that rocks and debris had fallen onto the road. Police closed a section of the highway.
Some buildings in Wellington, the capital, were evacuated, and items were knocked off shelves in places.
Police said a number of people were freed from Wellington elevators that stopped working. The initial temblor also forced the nation’s stock exchange to close for more than an hour.
Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown said there was no major damage to the city’s infrastructure or office buildings. She said highways had become clogged as people left the city.
“We think this is business as usual,” she said, “but it is going to take a little while for people to get home tonight.”
The U.S. Geological Survey said the epicenter of the initial temblor was 94 kilometers (58 miles) west of Wellington at a depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles).
A quake of similar strength in the same area three weeks ago broke water mains, smashed windows and downed power lines.
Caroline Little, a seismologist with New Zealand quake monitoring agency GeoNet, said the series of quakes since July had followed an unusual pattern.
“Normally you get a big quake and then the aftershocks get smaller in magnitude,” she said.
Little said the July quake was on a fault line near Seddon that had not previously been mapped. She said it was too early to determine if Friday’s quakes were on that same fault.
A different fault line runs through Wellington, and many in the city fear a major disaster if it were to become active.
New Zealand is part of the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire” that has regular seismic activity. A severe earthquake in the city of Christchurch in 2011 killed 185 people and destroyed much of the city’s downtown.
Local authorities issued no tsunami warnings after Friday’s quakes. – AP
Egypt’s Christians are living in fear after a string of attacks against churches, businesses and homes they say were carried out by angry supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.
As police dispersed Morsi supporters from two Cairo squares on Wednesday, attackers torched churches across the country in an apparent response.
“People are terrified; no one dares leave home,” Marco, a 27-year-old engineer, told AFP by phone from the central city of Sohag.
The city has become a ghost town, he said, describing an atmosphere of terror where attackers “know where the Copts live” and torched several churches before turning to homes.
The Maspero Youth Union, a Coptic Christian youth movement, denounced what it called a “retaliation war” against the religious minority, which makes up around 10 percent of Egypt’s population.
The group accused Morsi supporters of targeting them in response to Coptic Pope Tawadros II’s support for the July 3 coup that ousted the Islamist leader.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), a local NGO, says at least 25 churches were torched on Wednesday and Thursday, and that attackers also targeted Christian schools, shops and homes across all 27 provinces.
Iraq’s Chaldean Christian archbishop Louis Sako told AFP that one of his community’s churches was among those targeted on Wednesday.
“This is a real disaster,” he said, saying the region is a “dangerous volcano.”
For Marco, the attacks against the churches were not a surprise –Christian religious buildings have been targeted before.
It was the torching of Coptic Christian homes and the looting of their businesses that shocked him.
The attackers were “people chanting pro-Morsi slogans and wearing headbands with the phrase ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ written on them,” he said.
The Maspero Youth Union, which documented abuses against Christians during Morsi’s one year in office, also laid blame for the attacks on supporters of the ousted leader.
“Maspero Youth Union condemns the terrorism Copts are facing now in Egypt after supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi waged a retaliation war against Copts and their churches, homes and businesses,” the group said.
“Copts were attacked in nine governorates, causing panic, losses and destruction for no reason and no crimes they committed except being Christians.”
Morsi’s supporters have often accused Christians of supporting president Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in Egypt’s 2011 uprising. Ironically, Christians were also targeted when Mubarak was in power.
On Thursday, the country’s interim army-installed government described attacks on Egypt’s Christians as a “red line” and pledged that authorities would “respond forcefully” to any new attack.
Shortly afterwards, the defence minister General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the army chief who led the coup, pledged that the army would pay for the rebuilding of the churches attacked on Wednesday.
On Thursday morning, interim prime minister Hazem Beblawi also announced he had met with Coptic Pope Tawadros II to express solidarity in the wake of the attacks.
And state news agency MENA reported that 80 Morsi loyalists had been arrested and turned over to military courts for their alleged involvement in torching churches in Suez province on Wednesday.
The Muslim Brotherhood had little to say on the issue, with spokesman Gehad el-Haddad suggesting the authorities were behind the violence.
“Military coup regime is resorting to instigating sectarian violence exactly as they did when Mubarak was about to fall,” he tweeted.
The government’s promises have so far failed to convince Christians and activists that authorities would prevent future attacks.
“The state must intervene to protect the population. Concrete action is needed after all the big speeches,” said Ishak Ibrahim, an EIPR researcher on religious issues.
He described a “discourse of hatred” against Christians throughout the country, more from the Salafists, the most conservative of Islamists, rather than members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
And he pointed out that most of the attacks had taken place outside the major cities, in areas where security presence is often minimal.
“Families who are too scared to go out to get supplies are waiting for something concrete,” added Karem, another resident of Sohag.
“Right now as we speak, attacks against Christians are continuing,” he said.
Namibia will airlift 10 rhinoceros and five elephants to Cuba in September, concluding a massive translocation project of 135 animals taken from its national parks, the environment ministry said Wednesday.
The 15 animals will be captured from the Etosha National Park in northern Namibia — one of the country’s major tourist attractions — plus a nearby smaller game reserve, the Waterberg Plateau, environment and tourism deputy-minister Pohamba Shifeta told AFP.
The ambitious project, dubbed Noah’s Ark II, has populated Cuba’s 342-hectare National Zoo outside Havana.
A total of 120 animals of 23 species — including endangered black and white rhinos, cheetahs, leopards and lions — were already transported to the Caribbean island nation in November.
Animal rights groups have protested the capture of wild animals.
But Shifeta defended the translocation as Namibia’s “token of appreciation” to Cuba for its support.
Cuba gave the southern African country political and military backing during its struggle for independence from South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s.
“Cuban people were not complaining when their government was supporting us,” Shifeta told AFP.
The donation is also aimed at helping Cuba establish a “proper wildlife programme”, he added.
Several other species including the warthog, waterbuck, wildebeest and zebra did however not make the cut for veterinary reasons, according to local media reports.
Authorities are now racing to complete the translocation by September 6.
Meanwhile, the Namibian government has ordered over 400 springboks, kudus — another kind of antelope — and other non-endangered animals to be culled from four national parks to feed people threatened with hunger from a severe drought.
Authorities estimate that at least 400,000 people are facing hunger while Unicef has said more than 778,000 people — including 109,000 children under the age of five — are at risk of malnutrition. – AFP
Brazilian actors perform in Rio on Tuesday in front of the legislative parliament, where a public hearing on cases of disappearing people was taking place.
Police officers investigating the death of a teenager clashed with residents of a Rio de Janeiro slum, police said Wednesday amid a series of protests on issues ranging from alleged police brutality to low wages.
Rio police said in a statement that three buses were torched and a police car damaged in Tuesday’s clash in the sprawling Penha slum.
Police were called in to investigate the death of a 17-year-old boy, whose body was found in the neighborhood. “As the military police approached, a group of locals began a violent protest,” the statement said.
The teen, whose name was not released, went missing Monday. His body showed no bullet wounds, and the cause of death was not immediately clear, police said. But news reports suggested the protesters suspected the youth died in a confrontation with police.
Police killings are not unusual in Rio, where officers are sometimes linked to armed militias.
A demonstration was called for Wednesday in another Rio slum, Rocinha, to call for light to be shed on the disappearance of a local bricklayer who was last seen in police custody.
The protest came on the one-month anniversary of the disappearance of Amarildo de Souza, a 42-year-old father of six who was hauled into a Rocinha police station for questioning July 14. Police have said he was released shortly after, but video surveillance shows no trace of Souza after he entered the police station.
His family and supporters say they suspect he was killed by police and his body dumped in a clandestine graveyard.
Souza’s disappearance has become a hot-button issue in Rio, particularly among slum dwellers and critics of Rio de Janeiro state Gov. Sergio Cabral.
Cabral has been the target of protests since June, when a wave of mass demonstrations against government corruption and calling for improved public services swept the country. Protesters allege Cabral is corrupt and have been calling for an investigation into spending on projects linked to next year’s World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, which Brazil is hosting.
A separate demonstration was scheduled outside the Guanabara Palace later Wednesday.
Several thousand mostly university professors also marched through central Rio on Wednesday demanding higher pay and better working conditions, and people calling for improved legislation for the disabled staged a protest in the capital, Brasilia. – AP
Egypt was under a tense state of emergency Thursday after security forces stormed the Cairo protest camps supporting ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, in a bloody assault that sparked violence across the country which officials said claimed 278 lives.
The army-backed interim government imposed a month-long nationwide state of emergency, and curfews in Cairo and 13 other provinces after the violence on Wednesday.
Gory photographs and video images of the Cairo bloodbath dominated social media networks, as world powers called for restraint and condemned the show of force by security forces.
At least four churches were attacked, with Christian activists accusing Morsi loyalists of waging “a war of retaliation against Copts in Egypt”.
Hours after tear gas canisters first rained down on tents of protesters in the sprawling Rabaa al-Adawiya camp in eastern Cairo, an AFP correspondent counted at least 124 bodies in makeshift morgues there.
In a field hospital, its floors slippery with blood, doctors struggled to cope with the casualties, leaving the hopeless cases, even if still alive.
The health ministry said 235 civilians were killed in the Cairo crackdown and in subsequent clashes across Egypt. The interior ministry added that 43 security personnel had lost their lives.
Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood spoke of 2,200 dead overall and more than 10,000 wounded.
Among those killed in Cairo was 17-year-old Asmaa al-Beltagui, daughter of wanted Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed al-Beltagui, a spokesman for Morsi’s movement said.
Britain’s Sky News said a veteran cameraman, Briton Mick Deane, was shot and killed while covering the assaults.
The violence prompted vice president and Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei to resign, saying his conscience was troubled over the loss of life, “particularly as I believe it could have been avoided”.
“It has become too difficult to continue bearing responsibility for decisions I do not agree with and whose consequences I fear,” he said.
The state of emergency went into effect at 4:00 pm (1400 GMT) on Wednesday, with daily overnight curfews from 7:00 pm to 6:00 am.
The dramatic descent on the squares shortly after dawn came as a surprise to many. Security officials had originally spoken of gradually dispersing the sit-ins over several days.
Shortly after dawn on Wednesday, witnesses and an AFP correspondent said security forces fired tear gas before surging into Rabaa al-Adawiya, sparking pandemonium among the thousands of protesters who had set up the camp soon after Morsi was ousted in a military coup on July 3.
Men in gas masks rushed to grab each canister and dunk them in containers of water, as the main stage near the mosque of the camp blared Islamic anthems and protesters chanted “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest).
Many Morsi supporters were given safe passage out of the camp, some flashing victory signs as they left through a security corridor.
A security official told AFP that hundreds of people were taking advantage of the safe passage offer, but that some diehards had stayed behind to fight on.
By Wednesday evening, a security official said Rabaa al-Adawiya was “totally under control”, adding: “There are no more clashes”.
In the smaller of the protest camps, at Al-Nahda square in central Cairo, police said they had control of the area after two hours.
Television footage showed flattened tents, as women and children flanked by police and army troops were led out of the square.
Dozens rounded up in the dispersal were shown sitting on the ground, handcuffed and surrounded by security forces.
Authorities later said calm had been restored across the country.
Use of force widely condemned
Europe’s leading powers, along with Iran, Qatar and Turkey, strongly denounced the use of force by the interim government.
The White House said Washington, which provides Egypt with $1.3 billion in annual military aid, “strongly condemns” the violence against the protesters and opposes the imposition of a state of emergency.
Interim prime minister Hazem al-Beblawi praised the police for their “self-restraint” and said the government remained committed to an army-drafted roadmap that calls for elections in 2014.
The Muslim Brotherhood urged Egyptians to take to the streets in their thousands to denounce the “massacre”.
“This is not an attempt to disperse, but a bloody attempt to crush all voices of opposition to the military coup,” Brotherhood spokesman Gehad al-Haddad said on Twitter.
Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim said no more protests would be tolerated.
The anger against the Islamist movement was evident as residents of several neighbourhoods clashed with Morsi loyalists.
Clashes also erupted between security forces and Morsi supporters in the northern provinces of Alexandria and Beheira, the canal provinces of Suez and Ismailiya, and the central provinces of Assiut and Menya.
In Alexandria, hundreds of angry Morsi supporters marched through the streets armed with wooden clubs chanting “Morsi is my president”.
An AFP reporter said they set fire to tyres and tore down pictures of army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who led the coup against Morsi.
It was a dramatic turn of events for the Muslim Brotherhood, who just over a year ago celebrated Morsi’s victory as Egypt’s first elected president.
His turbulent year in power, marred by political turmoil, deadly clashes and a crippling economic crisis, turned many against the Islamist movement, with millions taking to the streets on June 30 to call for his removal. – AFP
Egypt declared a month-long state of emergency on Wednesday as violence raged across the country following a crackdown on supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi.
The nationwide state of emergency, announced by a presidency statement read out on state television, began at 4pm (2pm GMT).
The exceptional measures came as “the security and order of the nation face danger due to deliberate sabotage, and attacks on public and private buildings and the loss of life by extremist groups,” the presidency said.
Interim president Adly Mansour “has tasked the armed forces, in cooperation with the police, to take all necessary measures to maintain security and order and to protect public and private property and the lives of citizens.”
The emergency was imposed come as clashes raged around the country after police moved in to disperse two pro-Morsi camps in Cairo.
At least 124 were killed in the Rabaa al-Adawiya camp alone, according to an AFP count.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has created an anti-CNN for Western audiences with the international satellite news network Russia Today. With its recipe of smart propaganda, sex appeal and unlimited cash, it is outperforming its peers worldwide.
Russia Today uses the source material America supplies to its rivals untiringly and with relish. Even Washington’s relatively minor peccadilloes don’t escape notice. For instance, the show also includes a story about Gabonese dictator Ali Bongo Ondimba, whom US President Barack Obama supports.
Many in the West are also interested in seeing critical coverage of the self-proclaimed top world power. Russia Today is already more successful than all other foreign broadcast stations available in major US cities, such as San Francisco, Chicago and New York. In Washington, 13 times as many people watch the Russian program as those that tune into Deutsche Welle, Germany’s public international broadcaster.
Two million Britons watch the Kremlin channel regularly. Its online presence is also more successful than those of all its competitors. What’s more, in June, Russia Today broke a YouTube record by being the first TV station to get a billion views of its videos.
The station was even more triumphant when it signed Larry King, a legend of American radio and TV journalism who began working for Russia Today this summer. “America’s best known TV interviewer is defecting to the Russians,” wrote the London-based Times in May.
King and his new colleagues have a simple assignment: They are to “break the monopoly of the Anglo-Saxon mass media,” President Vladimir Putin said during a studio visit a few weeks ago. The Russians’ recipe for success has three ingredients: sex appeal, which has been atypical for most news channel; a rigidly anti-American stance; and a never-ending flow of money from the Kremlin.
The Ministry of Media Defense
Since 2005, the Russian government has increased the channel’s annual budget more than tenfold, from $30 million (€22.6 million) to over $300 million. Russia Today’s budget covers the salaries of 2,500 employees and contractors worldwide, 100 in Washington alone. And the channel has no budget cuts to fear now that Putin has issued a decree forbidding his finance minister from taking any such steps.
The Moscow leadership views the funds going to the channel as money “well invested,” says Natalya Timakova, the press attaché to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. “In addition, Russia Today is — and I hope the Germans will forgive me for this remark — significantly more modern than Deutsche Welle, for example, and it also has more money.”
The government has also spent a lot of money on the new broadcasting center in northeast Moscow, which Russia Today moved into in May. The station, citing confidentiality requirements, isn’t willing to quote an exact price tag. On the grounds of a former Soviet tea factory, the broadcaster is now creating programming in Arabic, English and Spanish. In 2009, it rebranded its English- and Spanish speaking divisions as simply “RT.” The evening news is currently focused on the euro crisis, social protests in Portugal and the NSA surveillance scandal.
Margarita Simonyan
Margarita Simonyan is the woman who shaped Russia Today into Russia’s most effective weapon in the battle for influencing the opinions of the global public. In her office on the eighth floor of its headquarters in Moscow, the editor-in-chief has Orthodox icons on her desk and a dozen flickering screens around it. Putin made Simonyan the head of the new station in 2005. At the time, she was only 25 and derided as an unknown reporter from the crowd of journalists that accompany the president at meetings.
Simonyan’s mission is to prevent Russia from ever losing a war of images.
CNN showed images of destroyed buildings, allegedly taken after a Russian bomb strike on the Georgian provincial city of Gori. According to Russia Today, however, they were actually shots of the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali after a Georgian attack. “There is no objectivity,” Simonyan says today, “only approximations of the truth by as many different voices as possible.”
Mistrust of the domestic media is also greater than ever in the United States. CNN, for example, is struggling to cope with a massive loss of viewers. – Der Spiegel
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe vowed Tuesday to intensify his controversial drive to transfer economic wealth to blacks and scoffed at calls to reform the security services following his disputed re-election.
“The indigenisation and empowerment drive will continue unabated in order to ensure that indigenous Zimbabweans enjoy a larger share of the country’s resources,” Mugabe told thousands of people at a rally in the capital to mark defence forces day.
“Now that the people of Zimbabwe have given us a resounding mandate in the governance of the country we will do everything in our power to ensure our objective of total indigenisation, empowerment, development and employment is realised.”
Mugabe was declared winner of the July 31 election with 61 percent of the vote against his main rival Morgan Tsvangirai’s 34 percent. Tsvangirai is challenging the victory, alleging vote rigging.
Zimbabwe passed an indigenisation law in 2007 forcing foreign-owned companies to cede 51 percent of shares to local investors in what Mugabe calls “the final phase of attaining total independence”.
Critics of the programme say it has benefitted Mugabe’s allies and frightened away potential investors.
In his second public speech after last month’s elections extended his 33-year rule, Africa’s oldest leader resisted opposition calls to rid the security forces of partisan officers.
Instead he praised the security forces for the peace that Zimbabwe has enjoyed over the past three decades.
He said the military has been “such a reliable pillar” of his government that he found it “surprising that some misguided fellow countrymen, at the behest of their Western allies, blatantly disregard the good work done by the (military) in maintaining peace and tranquility in the country.”
Mugabe said calls for reforms of the security sector were a disguise because “the enemy’s real ploy is to dilute the efficiency of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces”.
Some security chiefs have publicly declared their allegiance to Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party and vowed never to accept a leader who did not take part in the country’s 1970s liberation war. – AFP
A British war ship set sail for the Mediterranean on Tuesday amid diplomatic tensions between Britain and Spain over the contested British overseas territory of Gibraltar. The HMS Westminster frigate will dock in Gibraltar as part of a Royal Naval deployment of ten vessels to the Mediterranean and Gulf.
The departure of the ship from Portsmouth, played down by the British and Spanish governments as part of a long planned, routine exercise, has underscored heightened tensions over the territory.
A helicopter carrier also left Portsmouth for Gibraltar on Monday.
Britain has warned Spain it might take legal action to try to force Madrid to abandon tighter controls at the border with Gibraltar in what it called an “unprecedented” step against a European ally.
A spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said the Spanish border checks, imposed after Gibraltar created an artificial reef which Spain said blocked its fishing vessels, were “disproportionate” and “politically motivated”.
Tensions over the rocky outpost at the mouth of the Mediterranean, to which Spain lays claim, have turned into one of the worst rows in years between the two European Union states.
Opposition politicians in Spain have accused Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of using the situation to distract Spaniards from the country’s severe recession and a corruption scandal.
Spain has said it will not back down over the border controls, which it says are a legal and proportionate step to prevent money laundering and the smuggling of tobacco and other products.
If Britain chooses to test whether those restrictions breach EU law on freedom of movement, the case is likely to end up in the European Court of Justice. Judgments there can take years, although special cases can be fast-tracked. – SABC
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Jeff Mirza, who was born in Pakistan but brought up in Essex, was questioned over the use of the term in his act “Meet Abu Hamsta and Paki Bashir” at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Britain.
