Revolutionary pride: Iraq protesters bring in trained pet lions to fight riot police dogs

Revolutionary pride: Iraq protesters bring in trained pet lions to fight riot police dogs

In response to reports that security forces would be using dogs to contain protesters, the unnamed Iraqi unleased a more fearsome animal with him while walking the streets of his hometown, in Iraq’s Babel province, south of Baghdad.

Photos and video emerged online showing the man walking his lion - conveniently draped in an Iraqi flag – who reportedly roared and lunged at passers-by. Fortunately, the lion was contained using a heavy chain for the entirety of the incident.
Iraqi lions were of the Asiatic variety which today are an endangered species and can only be found in India’s Gujarat state. Lions are no longer native to Iraq, and the last known native Iraqi lion was killed in 1918 in the south of the country.

Protests against the Iraqi government began on October 1 in response to rampant corruption, high levels of poverty and youth unemployment, poor public services, and sectarianism.

The protests have been described as the greatest threat to the Iraqi government since the defeat of the Islamic State extremist group in Iraq in 2017.

More than 330 people have been killed and tens of thousands injured since the protests began and human rights groups have condemned security forces for using live fire and deadly military-grade tear gas grenades which have inflicted horrific injuries on protesters.


Iraqi protesters were out in force in Baghdad on Saturday, despite overnight violence against them, retaking four bridges in the capital from security forces.
Iraq’s foremost Shia Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani on Friday called on the government to enact “real reforms” without “stalling and procrastination”.
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We are tired, we do not like this South Africa anymore, says asylum seeker

We are tired, we do not like this South Africa anymore, says asylum seeker

Therese Walu's eyes welled up as she recalled the last time she shared dinner with her whole family, 19 years ago, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The next morning, soldiers raided her village of Mukakira, in the country's north-east - where a civil war that killed millions raged between 1998 and 2003.
She grabbed her youngest daughters and fled into the surrounding forest, not knowing whether the rest of the family survived.

With nothing but the clothes on her back, Walu started a perilous 10-year journey that would eventually take her more than 3 000km to South Africa's capital, Pretoria.
But like millions of displaced Africans, she reached a country boasting one of the world's most progressive refugee policies only to find herself knocking on closed doors.
"The only thing they ever gave us were [temporary] asylum papers," said Walu who has been battling for refugee status since 2010.

Fed up, she joined hundreds of asylum seekers on October 8 for a long-running sit-in in front of the offices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) offices in Pretoria.
On Thursday, the protesters forced their way onto the UNHCR's premises after being served a court order evicting them from the street in front of the offices.
A similar protest was broken up in Cape Town after demonstrators were forcefully evicted from the building last month.

High hopes
"We are tired, we don't like this South Africa anymore," said Walu, 41, who wants the UNHCR to help relocate her family.
She told AFP the sit-in - sparked by a wave of xenophobic violence in September - was "the only chance" to protest against her situation.

South Africa is one of the few countries in the world that allows asylum seekers to work, have access to health care and study while their applications are being processed.
That reputation helped attract more than a million asylum seekers between 2007 and 2015, one of the world's highest, according to the government.

With high hopes to begin with, most have faced a lengthy, confusing and increasingly backlogged process.
"When I first arrived in South Africa I thought 'finally'," said another Congolese asylum seeker Esther Kabinga, 46.

After losing her husband in a plane crash and being gang-raped by soldiers, Kabinga left her home in the south-eastern Katanga Province in 2011, and walked into neighbouring Zambia with her three small children.
Kabinga then paid truck drivers to smuggle them into South Africa.

Stuck in limbo

She recalled having to leave home at 03:30 to queue for the processing of her application at the Department of Home Affairs.
"They give you a number and you wait. At the end of the day they tell you to come back tomorrow, come back next week."

Like most asylum seekers, both Kabinga and Walu's initial applications were rejected, marking the start of a lengthy appeal process.

"Currently there is a 99% [initial] rejection rate," human rights lawyer Jessica Lawrence told AFP, adding that thousands were stuck in limbo.
The UNHCR has also voiced concern about the number of "pending cases".

Despite the backlog, South Africa has reduced the capacity of some of its refugee application offices.
Human rights lawyer Sharon Elkambaram lamented the lack of "political will" to process applications.

"The quality of the decision-making is shocking," she added.
South Africa processed more than 630 000 applications over the past decade, less than 10% of which were granted refugee status.
Home Affairs spokesman Siya Qoza told AFP the majority were "not genuine cases" that were "clogging the system" by lodging appeals.

"Why would we need to increase the capacity when most of the world is stable?" he asked. "You would do that if the entire world was at war."

'Just a loser'
Walu and Kabinga have been living with temporary asylum permits for almost a decade.
That paper needs to be renewed every three to six months - a process that can take up to three weeks.
Asylum seekers also said the document branded them as foreigners, making them vulnerable to police bribes and discrimination.

Walu claimed her daughters were given a different high school diploma from a normal refugee because of their asylum-seeking status, and have since been refused access to university.
"Schools are instructed not to register foreign nationals or anyone who doesn't have a [South African] bar-coded ID," said Elkambaram.
"Same with hospitals," she added.

Last month, Johannesburg's High Court granted a public hospital the right to deny dialysis treatment to an Ethiopian asylum seeker on the basis that she was not a South African citizen.
Alem Ereselo, 36, feared persecution in Ethiopia after being involved with a once-banned political group as a student.

She fled to South Africa in 2010 and developed kidney failure in January.
"I feel shame for South Africa," said Ereselo, almost too frail to speak after spending 14 consecutive days without treatment.

"After 10 years, being sick shows me that [as an asylum seeker] you are just a loser."

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Drugs worth R1.1m seized after arrest of alleged Cape Town dealer

 Drugs worth R1.1m seized after arrest of alleged Cape Town dealer

November 16 - South African Police Service officers in Milnerton in Cape Town have arrested an alleged drug dealer and confiscated drugs worth about R1.1 million and a substantial amount of cash. Photo: SAPS

CAPE TOWN - Police officers in Milnerton in Cape Town have arrested an alleged drug dealer and confiscated drugs worth about R1.1 million and a substantial amount of cash, Western Cape police said on Saturday.

"In an effort to reduce the levels of drug-related crime in the Western Cape, members of SAPS conducted a search operation at an apartment situated in Century City in Milnerton this afternoon [Saturday]," Colonel Andrè Traut said in a statement.
Intelligence information led the officers to believe that a drug dealer was using the flat as his storage facility.

During the raid of the residence, 3.15kg of tik (crystal methamphetamine) with an estimated street value of R1.1 million and a substantial amount of cash comprising various currencies were confiscated.

The suspect, a 49-year-old man, was arrested and was due to appear in the Cape Town Magistrates' Court on Monday, Traut said.
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Saudi officials 'disappointed' by level of foreign interest in Aramco IPO

Saudi officials 'disappointed' by level of foreign interest in Aramco IPO

Two sources who spoke to the Financial Times said those behind the much-delayed public offering said that domestic demand was not matched by that of foreign investors.
“The issuer expressed high levels of dissatisfaction with what they were hearing,” said one of the FT sources familiar with the matter.
“The issuer expressed high levels of dissatisfaction with what they were hearing,” said one of the FT sources familiar with the matter.

Aramco's long-awaited public offering will begin on Sunday and will close for individual investors on November 28 and for institutional investors on December 4. The company's shares will be priced on December 5, according to the prospectus, and trading could begin as soon as December 11 according to state-linked media.

Aramco has not yet unveiled plans to list more of the company on an international exchange, although there have been talks with major world exchanges in recent years.

The company has stated its plans to pay out an annual dividened of at least $75 billion starting in 2020, but questions linger over Aramco's real worth.
While the kingdom's controversial de-facto leader and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has priced the company's value at $2 trillion, analysts estimate the value is closer to $1.5 trillion.

“Two or three weeks ago there was still hope of [a valuation] above $1.5tn, now I don’t know,” said one banker who spoke to FT.
Based on a $1.5 trillion valuation, a two percent stake sale would help Aramco raise $30 billion.
In the run-up to the long-awaited IPO, reports suggest Saudi Arabia is pressuring its wealthy citizens to invest in the upcoming Aramco IPO
Among those approached by the kingdom's government to buy stock in Aramco are the wealthy Olayan family and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

Prince Alwaleed, who was ranked by Forbes as the world's 45th richest person in 2017, was the most high-profile detainee among 350 suspects rounded up by Saudi authorities in a 2017 anti-corruption drive and held in Riyadh's Ritz-Carlton hotel.
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Facebook is watching you through your phone and computer cameras without your permission

Yes, Facebook is watching you through your phone and computer cameras without your permission

(Natural News) Mark Zuckerberg is hilariously blaming a “bug” for secretly provisioning his Facebook platform to record users’ faces from their smartphone and laptop cameras, without their permission, every time they browse the social media site.

Reports indicate that multiple users were shocked to discover that their device cameras were secretly recording them “in the background” as they scrolled through their newsfeeds, even though they had never given the Facebook app permission to do this.

Many of these individuals took to Twitter to report the disturbing news, which quickly sent a shockwave across the social mediasphere reminding people that personal privacy is now a thing of the past, at least if you own electronic devices that have access to the internet.

According to CNET, which successfully replicated the “bug” using its own tests, the issue is easily identifiable when a user switches out of full-screen mode after looking at a photo or video. A bug in Facebook’s mobile layout shifts the screen slightly to the right upon minimization, and in the open space to the left it becomes apparent that the user’s camera was mysteriously activated.
As news about this “bug” started to circulate, Guy Rosen, Facebook’s “Vice President of Integrity,” took to Twitter to announce that his company is now looking into the matter.

“We recently discovered our iOS app incorrectly launched in landscape,” Rosen wrote in his tweet.
“In fixing that last week in v246 we inadvertently introduced a bug where the app partially navigates to the camera screen when a photo is tapped. We have no evidence of photos/videos uploaded due to this.”
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In a later statement, Rosen flat-out declared that Facebook had not captured any photos or videos as a result of this “bug.”

Every Apple “upgrade” these days is just another bug-ridden scam to further erode users’ privacy protections

But not everyone is convinced, including Daryl Lasafin, Creative Director at the marketing agency Dame Digital in the Philippines.
After initially dismissing the issue as the mere “glitch” that Facebook claims it was, Lasafin noticed that all throughout the day as he was using Facebook on his mobile phone, the camera kept being activated in the background.

“I thought it was just my phone or the app acting up,” Lasafin is quoted as saying. “Then I observed it became more persistent that evening.”
Lasafin tried to troubleshoot the problem on his own by uninstalling and reinstalling the Facebook app, as well as removing all permissions for Facebook to access his phone’s camera. But none of this fixed a thing, as the Facebook app continued to turn on his camera without his permission.
Interestingly, after Lasafin revoked all permissions for the Facebook app on his phone, the only thing that popped up was a black screen.

Not at all surprising is the fact that this “bug” is only occurring on Apple iPhones that have the latest iOS version installed on them. According to Next Web, the “bug” did not appear in iOS 12, suggesting that Apple’s latest “upgrade” is nothing more than a scam – as is Apple’s latest “upgrade” for MacOS, known as “Catalina,” which is similarly ridden with “bugs.”

Android users are reportedly not affected in any way by this Facebook camera “bug.”
This latest violation by Facebook only adds insult to injury when it comes to the company’s total disregard for people’s personal privacy. As you may recall, Facebook had no choice but to fork out $5 billion in fines back in the summer for various other privacy violations, which has made the company one of the least-trusted tech giants in Silicon Valley.

“Facebook’s reputation on privacy is so worrying that many people still believe the social network is secretly recording people through their microphones,” notes Alfred Ng from CNET.
For more related news about corruption at Facebook, be sure to check out Facebook.Fetch.news.

33-year old French tourist falls to his death while taking selfie in Thailand

33-year old French tourist falls to his death while taking selfie in Thailand

 

A 33-year-old French tourist died on Friday, November 15th after falling from a 260ft waterfall while trying to take a selfie at the Na Mueng 2 waterfall, Thailand.
The accident happened on Thursday afternoon on the resort island of Ko Samui in southern Thailand. Local Police said the French holidaymaker was with a friend, Thomas Mechin, who witnessed the incident.
A Spanish tourist died in the same spot several months ago, Samui tourist police officer Poowadol Wiriyanarangkul said.

“There are already signs saying ‘No entry’ as the area is quite dangerous. Some tourists may want to get better photos, but it’s quite steep and slippery there and he slipped. A friend that accompanied him saw the man take pictures and fall’’ about a height equivalent to a three-storey house, he said.

Police have already contacted the deceased relatives.  Although a preliminary coroner’s report has yet to be issued, Police believe the tourist died from a fractured skull.
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