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Turkey celebrates return of hostages and opens border to Kurds fleeing Isis
Government refuses to reveal how 46 captives seized at Turkish consulate in Mosul in June were released
Turkey opens border to 45,000 Kurds fleeing Isis in Syria
Obama: ‘No US troops on ground against Isis’
French planes carry out air strikes on Isis targets in Iraq
Isis video shows UK hostage delivering propaganda message
A wave of assassinations in Benghazi has led to the day on which they happened being dubbed ‘Black Friday’. Photograph: Abdullah Doma/AFP/Getty Images
Libya ‘black Friday’: teenage peace activists among dead
Militants assassinate rights workers and army officers while mystery jets launch raids on Tripoli
A charity worker from the GOAL Ireland humanitarian agency educates children on how to prevent and identify the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone Photograph: Michael Duff/AP
‘Ebola makes you a risk to yourself: touching your face can infect you’
20 Sep 2014: As Sierra Leoneans endure a lockdown to contain the virus, Monica Mark reports from Freetown on her own anxiety visiting hospitals and villages, and the key role of charities in fighting the epidemic
What would ordinarily be brushed off as a case of mistaken identity takes me 21 days – the incubation time of the Ebola virus – to get over.
Hospital waiting rooms are miserable places at the best of times, but in the middle of an Ebola outbreak Freetown’s Princess Christian Maternal Hospital is suffocating. Corridors that would normally bustle with children and harried parents are sepulchral. Nurses whisper in forlorn huddles in empty rooms. Then a shriek of joy shatters the silence. “Jessica! You’re back from America!”, a tiny elderly woman cries, rushing towards me with open arms. Before I have time to react, she throws her arms around me in a vice-like embrace…………
Latest
Afghanistan 25min ago
Afghan leaders sign power-sharing deal
21 Sep 2014: Abdullah Abdullah takes newly created role of chief executive, while Ashraf Ghani will be president, ending months of turmoil
Kurds 39min ago
Kurds call on ‘all Middle East’ to help defend stronghold from Isis
21 Sep 2014: Tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees have fled to Syria-Turkey border region of Kobani to escape onslaught of Islamist militants
Climate change 3hr 19min ago
Climate change rallies held across Australia urge Tony Abbott to act now
21 Sep 2014: Tens of thousands of people take part in the first leg of a global wave of protests ahead of the UN climate summit in New York
Environmental sustainability 3hr 53min ago
Scientists reveal ‘fair system’ for countries to tackle climate change
21 Sep 2014: Rich nations should make biggest commitment to ensuring that temperatures are held to a 1.5C rise by 2025, says study
G20 5hr 12min ago
G20 countries agree to exchange tax information to stamp out evasion
21 Sep 2014: Meeting of G20 finance ministers in Australia endorses plan to automatically exchange information on a reciprocal basis by end of 2018
Opinion
For all the terrible things the Bush administration did, at least it went to war the legal way: he got congressional approval first Photograph: DonkeyHotey / Flickr via Creative Commons
Is Obama really going back to war with a worse legal rationale than Bush? He still won’t say
Trevor Timm: Whatever the administration’s tortured and torture architect-approved logic for combatting Isis, one thing is clear: the public isn’t allowed to see it
It was equal parts ironic and tragic watching US Secretary of State John Kerry testify before the Senate Foreign Relations committee this week, as he shamelessly made the case for a war without end against Isis. It was the same place he sat 43 years ago, as a young soldier, bravely and eloquently calling for an end to American fighting in Vietnam, his generation’s endless war – the same war that led to Congress passing the War Powers Resolution, the law the Obama administration has now decided it can completely disregard.
As with much of the White House’s secret and possibly illegal march back to Iraq and beyond, almost every aspect of Kerry’s testimony on Wednesday was riddled with holes. The Obama administration’s case for intervention begins and ends with the fantastical idea that it thinks it can use a law passed 13 years ago – before Isis even existed, and meant for the perpetrators of 9/11 – to start a war that White House officials freely admit will last for years, yet is aimed at a group that virtually all intelligence analysts agree is not an imminent threat to the United States…………….
International
Explosions rock east Ukraine as rivals agree to a buffer zone
Representatives from Kiev and rebel-held areas sign memorandum on how to implement shaky cease-fire
Topics:
Ukraine
International
Russia
Ukraine Crisis
Opinion
Climate change is war – and Wall Street is winning
We shouldn?’t reward polluters with profit
by Nathan Schneider @nathanairplane
Among the most iconic images to emerge from Hurricane Sandy’s assault on the Eastern Seaboard in 2012 were those of the Goldman Sachs building lit up like a torch by its own generator while a blackout left the rest of lower Manhattan in the dark. This proved a sign of things to come: Within days, the financial district was back to work, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg seemed far slower to notice what had befallen other areas of the city. He sought to go through with the annual New York Marathon just a week after the storm, until residents and runners rallied to inform him that coastal neighborhoods of his city had been devastated.
The images stuck in my mind from that period are of the devastation: Whole blocks burned down by electrical fire, overturned cars in the streets, sick people trapped in pitch-black buildings without medication, ruined furniture stacked in the front yards of uninhabitable homes, neighbors uniting around makeshift supply depots in church halls.
I no longer saw the warming oceans that exacerbate storms such as Sandy as abstractions or a matter of merely the environment or nature. Climate change is a crisis of justice among human beings. We all depend on this planet, but some are more insulated from its undoing than others. Some will be bailed out, but most won’t. Some will find a way to profit as the waters rise, but many more will drown. The challenge of stemming climate change is not just a matter of raising consciousness and spreading awareness; it is a struggle for democracy and survival…………………
Topics:
Climate Change
Wall Street
Environment
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