World AM News Briefs For Monday, 15 August 2016
Good Morning Australia!! - Boko Haram parades the surviving Chibok girls before its cameras - A group of Olympians are robbed at gunpoint along a Rio beach - Another US city boils over after a police-involved killing - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:
The father of one of the kidnapped Chibok school girls says he recognized his daughter in a new propaganda video released by the terrorist group Boko Haram. Around 50 girls are shown in the video, in which a masked man demands the Nigerian government release Boko Haram prisoner in exchange for the girls. The gunman also claims that many of the girls have been killed in government air raids. Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls from the Chibok boarding school in 2014, and still holds about 200 of them, forcing them to convert to radical Islam and many jihadists. At least one of the girls is seen holding a baby.
Kurdish forces are on the move in northern Iraq, moving under US air cover to capture several villages near Mosul from the so-called Islamic State (IS) terrorists. Iraq's second largest city has been under IS control since June 2014. But at least 5,000 Kurdish warriors are moving from the north and Iraqi government troops are gathered to the south with no date set for the final push. Mosul is where IS founded its "caliphate", and the loss of the city would be a massive blow to its image as a force that can actually seize and hold territory.
While Olympic commentators mansplain what female athletes from Muslim countries should and shouldn't wear, an Iranian woman has struck a nerve in Rio with her protest: Darya Safai held a banner that read, "Let Iranian women enter their stadiums," during the Mens Volleyball event featuring Iran versus Egypt. Since the revolution in the late 1970s, Iranian women have been banned from the simple act of entering stadiums to watch sport. Security tried to get her to put down her sign and leave - the IOC doesn't allow political protest at the Olympics - but she refused and plans to be there at the next volleyball game featuring Iran on Monday.
Australian Olympic officials banned our athletes from Rio de Janeiro beaches after robbers posing as armed police robbed Ryan Lochte and three other members of the US Olympic Swim Team. The Americans are reportedly shaken up but unharmed. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) denied the robbery took place, but it was later confirmed by the US Olympic Committee, which said the athletes are cooperating with police. The Aussies are also discouraged from going to nightclubs in the beachfront area where the robbers struck.
New York City police are hunting the suspect who shot an Imam and his assistant as they walked near a mosque. 55-year old Imam Maulama Akonjee and 64-year old Thara Uddin were both wearing religious garb; were shot execution-style, in the back of the head; and were carrying around US$1,000 in cash, which was not taken by the killer. Cops are not ruling out a hate crime. Muslim community leaders are blaming the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant rhetoric of fascist demagogue and US Republican party presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Wisconsin's governor activated the National Guard after a night of civil unrest sparked by the police killing of a black man on Saturday afternoon in Milwaukee. A cop was hit on the head with a brick; two gas stations, an auto parts store, and several vehicles were set on fire. City officials are pleading for calm while pointing out that unlike in other incidents across America, the suspect killed was heavily armed and had a police record. But for many people, their rage was not predicated on the character of the man who was killed, but on a lengthy history of police abuse and oppression of the black community.
More than 7,000 people have been rescued after torrential rains caused unprecedented flooding in Louisiana; at least three people are dead, but that is expected to go up as the water goes down.
Thousands of people braved the rain in Manila to oppose Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's plan to rebury Ferdinand Marcos in a cemeterey for national heroes, what with all of those killings and other human rights abuses under Marcos' rule.
One of the victims from that knife and flammable liquid attack on a Swiss train has died. She's a 34-year old woman, while a 43-year-old woman, a 6-year-old girl and 17-year-old girl remained hospitalized. Investigators say they've found nothing linking the suspect, who was shot and killed by police, to any international plot.
After 25 years and 35 million records sold, the Japanese 'boy band" SMAP is breaking up. The band and its management has been denying rumors for most of the year, since wafts of discontent began to make their way out of the SMAP camp. Despite members ages ranging from 39 to 43-years, they remained a huge force in Japanese entertainment.