WHO reports sharp rise in Ebola deaths
New toll of 6,928 shows a leap of about 1,200 since Wednesday and appears to include previously unreported deaths.
Last updated: 30 Nov 2014 05:40
The death toll from the worst Ebola outbreak on record has reached nearly 7,000 in West Africa, according to the World Health Organisation.The toll of 6,928 dead showed a leap of just over 1,200 since the WHO released its previous report on Wednesday, according to a Reuters news agency report.
The UN health agency did not provide any explanation for the abrupt increase, but the figures, published on its website, appeared to include previously unreported deaths.
Red Bull-drinking jihadists, crucifixions and air strikes: inside Raqqa, the Islamic State’s capital
Activists tell of the Isis elite living in relative luxury as civilians face poverty, hunger, inflation and power shortages
Mark Townsend
The Observer, Sunday 30 November 2014
The beleaguered inhabitants of Raqqa, self-proclaimed capital of the Islamic State (Isis), are suffering widespread hunger, crippling inflation, chronic power shortages and poverty so acute that emergency soup kitchens have been set up.With no journalists, local or foreign, able to operate inside Syria’s sixth-largest city, courageous local activists have given the Observer a detailed account of life under the jihadists’ totalitarian regime, a rare glimpse of everyday life in the city.
Bhopal 30 years on: The women of India are battling the poisonous legacy of the world’s worst industrial accident
Thirty years ago, the world’s worst industrial accident exposed 500,000 people to a toxic gas in Bhopal, India. So far, 25,000 have died as a direct result. But what of the survivors? Andrew Johnson meets three generations of women who have turned the disaster into a force for good
ANDREW JOHNSON Sunday 30 November 2014
The children at the Chingari Trust Rehabilitation Centre in old Bhopal are as polite as any you would find anywhere in the world. They approach without hesitation and hold out their arms for a hearty handshake. They look you right in the eye with a mix of curiosity and boldness.Their mums sit on the floor along the corridor as they wait for the special education classes, physiotherapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy to finish. For Chingari is a school for some of the hundreds of children born with physical and mental problems such as cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy in this part of the city- the capital of the state of Madhya Pradesh, slap-bang in the middle of India.
The Jihad Cult: Why Young Germans Are Answering Call to Holy War
Hundreds of young German Islamists have traveled to Syria to fight with the terrorist group Islamic State. SPIEGEL explored the extremist scene in Germany and the fascination with jihad in order to find answers about what drives people to join the murderous cult.
By SPIEGEL Staff
Whenever Ismail Cetinkaya runs into one of those young men who want to leave Hamburg to fight in Syria, he asks: “Have you ever slept without heat in the winter? Do you know what it’s like to live without electricity and running water? Do you think a Kalashnikov works like the controller for your PlayStation 4?”He also asks whether the young man is leaving his mother behind. And then he quotes the words of the Prophet Mohammed, and says: “Paradise lies at the feet of your mother.” The implication being that those who leave their weeping mothers behind won’t enter paradise.
Death and the goddess: The world’s biggest ritual slaughter
By Manesh Shrestha, for CNN
November 29, 2014
Motilal Kushwaha had promised the Hindu goddess Gadhimai that he would offer her a male goat if one of his children found a job.
Last year his son was successful — and on Saturday he was one of tens of thousands of people killing the animals at the temple of Gadhimai in southern Nepal as part of the biggest religious mass slaughter in the world.
“From my village everyone has made a vow [to offer animals],” says Kushwaha from Bariyarpur, a community in Bara district about 60 miles south of Kathmandu. Some, he explains, are glad they have got a son or a daughter, others that a different form of good fortune has befallen them.
‘Putin’s Kleptocracy,’ by Karen Dawisha
By RAJAN MENON
Now in his third (nonconsecutive) presidential term, Vladimir Putin presents himself as the strong and virtuous leader who rescued Russia from the chaos, corruption, penury and weakness of the 1990s.State-controlled news media and Kremlin spin doctors disseminate this message diligently – and to good effect, judging from Putin’s 80 percent approval rating. But with “Putin’s Kleptocracy,” Karen Dawisha, a respected scholar of Soviet and Russian politics at Miami University in Ohio, seeks to shred this carefully constructed narrative.