merchants of terror
AFP, Vienna
There were small signs that her son was changing: He prayed more and swapped jeans for traditional long tunics.
“But I wasn’t worried. Not for one second did Syria enter my mind,” Fatima Ezzarhouni told AFP.
And yet that’s where the young man was headed in June 2013 when he left his home in the Belgian city of Antwerp, a day after his 18th birthday, to join militants.
100 victims tell UN of peacekeeper
sex abuse
AFP, United Nations
More than 100 victims have come forward in the Central African Republic with appalling new accounts of sexual abuse, including bestiality, by UN peacekeepers and French troops, the United Nations said Thursday.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was “shocked to the core” by the allegations that emerged after a UN team traveled to south-central Kemo prefecture to interview the women and girls.
“We must face the fact that a number of troops sent to protect people instead acted with hearts of darkness,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Strong quake hits off Japan coast
AFP, Tokyo
A strong 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck off Japan’s southwest coast today, the US Geological Survey said, but local authorities said there was no danger of a tsunami.
The quake hit at 11:39 am (0239 GMT) off the coast of Japan’s main Honshu island, at a location about 350 kilometres (395 miles) southwest of Tokyo, USGS and the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
