Neil Langmead convicted of killing estranged wife and her friend in attack in Barnstaple house A “controlling and dominating” husband has been jailed for a minimum of 30 years for the murder of his estranged wife and her friend in a frenzied sex attack. Neil Langmead, a builder aged 41, repeatedly stabbed Deborah Langmead and Donna St John, both 35 and both mothers of two children. The women were found almost side by side in the blood-soaked kitchen of a burning house in Barnstaple, Devon, in August last year. Both had been sexually assaulted and Mrs Langmead had been sexually mutilated by her husband, either as she lay unconscious or after she was dead. A 13-day trial at Exeter crowncourt heard that Langmead, who had a history of bullying behaviour towards his wife, had been unable to accept that she was starting divorce proceedings. He had been issued with a warning by police for harassing her a week before the murders. Mrs Langmead also had extra bolts put on the doors of the house to make her feel safer. The jury of nine women and three men rejected his version of events, in which he claimed that he had consensual sex with his wife, leading to an argument between the two women which became violent. He said he killed Mrs Langmead in self-defence after intervening and that she killed her friend. The jury accepted the prosecution claim that he had repeatedly stabbed the women before setting fire to the house to cover his tracks. Crime Steven Morris guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Arrest of Muhammad Sharif Malekzadeh comes amid growing rift between president and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Iran’s former deputy foreign minister, Muhammad Sharif Malekzadeh, a close ally of the hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been arrested on charges of financial corruption. Malekzadeh resigned from his post two days ago – only a week after he was appointed – after coming under pressure from the conservative-dominated parliament for his connections to Ahmadinejad’s controversial chief of staff and close confidant, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. In the face of the growing rift between Ahmadinejad and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, allies of the president and Mashaei have come under scrutiny or allegedly attempting to undermine clerical power and compromise revolutionary values. Supporters of Khamenei, who include a majority of the parliament, have launched a campaign against Mashaei and his team – who are described as a “deviant current” in the inner circle of the president. In recent weeks, at least 25 people close to Ahmadinejad and Mashaei have been arrested, including presidential aide Kazem Kiapasha, and the head of the cultural committee, Abbas Amirifar. Esmail Kowsari, the deputy head of the parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, told Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency: confirmed Malekzadeh’s arrest and said: “[Malekzadeh] was arrested this morning on financial fraud charges and because there are numerous existing cases against him.” Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, faced impeachment proceedings on Tuesday over the appointment of Malekzadeh, but the motion was withdrawn after Malekzadeh’s resignation. In his resignation letter, which was addressed to Salehi, Malekzadeh wrote: “Despite dastardly manipulations and plentiful injustices done against me, I can’t accept that you suffer from unjust pressures because of me anymore.” Malekzadeh was a deputy to Mashaei when the latter headed Iran’s cultural heritage and tourism organisation. Conservatives who say Ahmadinejad is under the spell of Mashaei are worried about the increasing influence of the chief of staff in Iran’s politics and have accused his team of anything from corruption to sorcery. Iran’s parliament, at the same time, is believed to be only waiting for Khamenei’s green light to impeach Ahmadinejad for his support for Mashaei. Analysts believe Khamenei would prefer the president to quietly end his term of office rather than confronting him in public. Many believe that the only reason Mashaei himself has not yet been arrested is because Khamenei fears Ahmadinejad might resign if his right-hand man were detained. The president’s resignation would be a blow to Khamenei, who wholeheartedly supported Ahmadinejad in the 2009 disputed presidential election, which gave him a second term in office. Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Middle East Saeed Kamali Dehghan guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Wastewater analysis project to detect legal highs and illicit drugs is turned down by festival founder Michael Eavis as ‘a cheek’ Glastonbury festival has vetoed the first major attempt to test the use of legal highs and illicit drugs at a British festival by sampling sewage. The exercise to be carried by analytical toxicologists had the backing of the police and involved the use of the emerging science of “wastewater analysis”, which can detect even very low concentrations of illicit drugs in liquids. Dr John Ramsey of St George’s medical school, University of London, who has spent months planning the project, said he was disappointed by the decision. “It would have been a golden opportunity to test the technology and find out the actual levels of the use of ‘legal highs’ and new psychoactive compounds,” he said. He said that Glastonbury, with its ethos that “British law applies, but the rules of society are a little bit different, a little bit freer” provided the ideal demographic. Glastonbury festival’s founder Michael Eavis said in a statement: “The drug culture these days has changed beyond belief. What a cheek to even suggest there’s a problem.” More than 100,000 revellers had passed through the gates of the 900-acre site, by near the Somerset village of Pilton, by midday on Thursday. They arrived, as usual, dragging tents, sleeping bags, flags and crates of food through mud. Almost a fortnight of intermittent rain has turned most of the fields into a blanket of sludge, and tractors have already begun distributing emergency bails of straw to absorb the water. This year, though, Glastonbury has the weather forecasters on its side; while some rain is predicted for Friday, most of the weekend should be warm and dry. In total 150,000 will stomp through Worthy Farm during the three-day festival to watch headliners including U2, Coldplay and Beyoncé. When nature calls, they will be forced to use one of the notorious 4,600 portable toilets – some no more than metal boxes with a single open tank. All the festival sewage gets tipped into a huge container and then fed out slowly into the local sewage works over the next few weeks. This gives the toxicologists the opportunity to sample the “wastewater” without having to tackle the problem of sampling the output of thousands of onsite portable toilets. It also ensures the process is totally anonymous. “We can only do it if there is a central sewage system,” said Ramsey, who carried out a similar project at a festival in Antwerp. “The joy of Glastonbury is that they have their own plumbing.” He said that with the government poised to introduce a new “temporary banning system” to counter new legal highs, it was important to establish what people were actually using. Ramsey, whose company Tictac ‘s database provides the police and others with a visual identification of drugs and new substances, said that “wastewater analysis” was becoming established across Europe. The monitoring exercise can only be done if there was a large number of people and they could only identify drugs that appear in urine in the first place and remain stable in sewage. Among the candidates that qualify are mephedrone, ketamine, BZP and mCPP. Avon and Somerset police say the notion that they turn a blind eye to drug use at the festival is a “myth”, and that those caught in possession face prosecution and eviction from the site. But recreational drug-taking is rife, and the fleet of conspicuous undercover police officers only arrest a tiny fraction of people under the influence. By Thursday morning, there had been just 35 arrests. The news that festival organisers had halted the plan to test sewage for drugs prompted a mixed reaction among the hordes arriving at the site. Some conspiracy theorists worried – unjustifiably – that their own drug-taking could be traced through DNA analysis, while others questioned the scientific rigour of sample analysis. Gareth Jones, 37, from Brighton, who said his drug use had steadily declined since his first festival, in 1996, said there were various “cultures” across the festival. “What they find would depend on where exactly in the festival they test,” he said. “If you test up at the stone circle it would probably blow off the scale.” The new technique for monitoring drugs has been used on a small scale in studies of cocaine and amphetamine use in London and south Wales. A recent major project in Paris taking 24-hour samples over a week confirmed a weekend spike in cocaine use in the French capital. In another case the sewage output from a prison was analysed. But it does not always work well. A study in Spain in 2007 established a small village north of Barcelona as the European capital cocaine consumption, but the elderly villagers were relieved to discover that it was due to faulty sampling methods at the local sewage treatment works. Glastonbury 2011 Glastonbury festival Drugs Drugs Pop and rock Festivals Festivals Paul Lewis Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Admiral Mike Mullen says withdrawal of 23,000 troops by next summer was bigger than he had been prepared to back America’s most senior commander, Admiral Mike Mullen, described the troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, announced by Barack Obama, as risky. Giving evidence before the Senate’s armed services committee the day after Obama’s decision, Mullen said the withdrawal of 10,000 US troops by the end of this year and a further 23,000 by next summer was bigger than he had originally been prepared to back. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said the reductions were “more aggressive and incur more risk” than he considered prudent. Mullen, who is retiring this year, said: “More force for more time is, without doubt, the safer course. But that does not necessarily make it the best course. Only the president, in the end, can really determine the acceptable level of risk we must take. I believe he has done so.” Military commanders had hoped to hold the number of US and other international troops as close to the present 150,000 as possible, saying they were stretched and needed to protect gains made over the winter. They advised Obama to make only “modest” withdrawals. US and Nato officers will have to further rework their plans for Afghanistan after European countries announced that they would match Obama’s troop reductions, adding to the strain on military commanders in the field. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has 4,000 troops in Afghanistan, said: “France will begin a gradual withdrawal of reinforcement troops sent to Afghanistan, in a proportional manner and in a calendar comparable to the withdrawal of American reinforcements.” The German defence minister, Guido Westerwelle, who has 4,800 troops in Afghanistan, echoed the French, saying he hoped “to be able to reduce our own troop contingent for the first time” by the end of the year. Poland, which has 2,500 troops, is also to reduce its presence this year, according to the country’s head of security, General Stanislaw Koziej. Nato’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, expressed optimism that “the tide is turning” in Afghanistan and that the troop withdrawal was the natural result. Obama went to Fort Drum army base in New York state to highlight his message that America was at the beginning of the end of the war in Afghanistan, even though 68,000 American troops will remain after the planned withdrawals. Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, welcomed Obama’s decision and said that Afghan forces were ready to take over the burden from the departing troops: “The Afghan people’s trust in the Afghan army and police is growing every day and preservation of this land is the job of Afghans,” he said. The Taliban dismissed Obama’s announcement, noting that there would still be a large US presence after the pullout and calling for an immediate withdrawal: “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan once again wants to make it clear that the solution for the Afghan crisis lies in the full withdrawal of all foreign troops immediately and [while] this does not happen, our armed struggle will increase from day to day,” the Taliban said. In the US, reaction was mixed, with many Democrats expressing disappointment that the troops reductions were not bigger. Republicans were divided, with some criticising Obama for failing to heed the advice of his military commanders and others sharing the Democratic calls for bigger and faster cuts. The Democratic head of the Senate’s foreign affairs committee, John Kerry, welcomed Obama’s announcement but pinpointed Pakistan rather than Afghanistan as the bigger challenge. On Afghanistan, Kerry said the bottom line was that no number of troops would resolve the problem and that there was a need for a political solution, from reconciliation with the Taliban to shutting down extremist sanctuaries. Mitt Romney, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to take on Obama in next year’s presidential election, repeated his call for speedy withdrawal and criticised Obama for failing to listen to the advice of his commanders. “We all want our troops to come home as soon as possible, but we shouldn’t adhere to an arbitrary timetable on the withdrawal,” said Romney. “This decision should not be based on politics or economics.” US military Afghanistan Barack Obama Obama administration United States Nato Hamid Karzai Ewen MacAskill guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Anti-Immigrant Showboating By Politicians Leaves Georgia Crops Rotting In The Fields
June 23, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media (h/t Heather) In yet another example of how wingnut politicians act without thinking of the logical consequences, Georgia Republicans passed a law that’s leaving their agricultural industry in sad shape: After enacting House Bill 87, a law designed to drive illegal immigrants out of Georgia, state officials appear shocked to discover that HB 87 is, well, driving a lot of illegal immigrants out of Georgia. It might be funny if it wasn’t so sad. Thanks to the resulting labor shortage, Georgia farmers have been forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry. Barely a month ago, you might recall, Gov. Nathan Deal welcomed the TV cameras into his office as he proudly signed HB 87 into law. Two weeks later, with farmers howling, a scrambling Deal ordered a hasty investigation into the impact of the law he had just signed, as if all this had come as quite a surprise to him. And you know, here’s where the chickens really come home to roost. Politicians act as if undocumented immigrants contribute nothing to the nation’s economy, when the truth is, they do damned hard and dirty work that Americans consider beneath them: The first batch of probationers started work last week at a farm owned by Dick Minor, president of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association. In the coming days, more farmers could join the program. So far, the experiment at Minor’s farm is yielding mixed results. On the first two days, all the probationers quit by mid-afternoon , said Mendez, one of two crew leaders at Minor’s farm. “Those guys out here weren’t out there 30 minutes and they got the bucket and just threw them in the air and say, `Bonk this, I ain’t with this, I can’t do this,’” said Jermond Powell, a 33-year-old probationer. “They just left, took off across the field walking.” Mendez put the probationers to the test last Wednesday, assigning them to fill one truck and a Latino crew to a second truck. The Latinos picked six truckloads of cucumbers compared to one truckload and four bins for the probationers. “It’s not going to work,” Mendez said. “No way. If I’m going to depend on the probation people, I’m never going to get the crops up.” You’d think that someone would figure out that undocumented laborers working for crap wages are what keeps food prices low enough for the entire nation. But then, you’d be assuming that these showboating politicians are smart enough to think of anything that can’t fit on a bumper sticker.
Continue reading …
Experts warn damage to morale in civil service may put government reforms at risk There has been a 20% year-on-year reduction in the number of civil servants earning more than the prime minister as the government has enacted the biggest jobs cull in Whitehall ever, new figures show. The number of Whitehall mandarins fell from 113 to 90 this year as the government embarked on plans to cut central administration costs by 30% over four years. But researchers have warned that the coalition is risking its reforms by attempting such a major reorganisation at the same time as making huge policy changes, claiming there is a growing morale problem at the heart of government. In the 1980s, the Thatcher government cut 10% of the central civil service over a period of four years. Figures released last week show that, since the autumn, the number of employees in central government departments has shrunk by 4.2%. An analysis by the Institute for Government thinktank (IFG), reveals that, at the top of the civil service, senior positions have shrunk by 14.5%. Ministers last week published “organograms” showing the employment structure across every Whitehall department. A Guardian analysis of those figures reveals the significant decline in the number earning in excess of £142,500 – the level of the prime minister’s salary. Julian McCrae, the head of research at the IFG, said: “By any scale, it’s about three times more ambitious than Margaret Thatcher’s radical proposals from the 1980s. This is definitely a very ambitious programme, and it’s also taking place incredibly quickly. “If you look at most of the studies on organisational change, they say it is difficult to avoid demoralisation. The big risk is that you get obsessed by cost and not by quality. “There is the biggest financial consolidation since at least the second world war going on, the biggest reforms in a generation, and you’re going to take out three times more of your central administration resources. “One should never underestimate how ambitious this is. Some companies do manage to turn themselves around in this way – but it’s a difficult process to get right, and the success rates are something like 30-40%.” Jonathan Baume, the general secretary of the FDA union, which represents senior public servants, said: “There is a growing morale problem. It feels solemn. People feel bruised by all of this. There’s a professionalism, you get on with the job. But all around you can see people are applying for their own jobs, being tapped on their shoulder and told perhaps it’s time to go. “Below the surface there is a lot of churn, and people feel very unhappy about it. It is the most difficult period since the 1980s. We went through a retrenchment in the 1990s and it didn’t feel as radical.” Civil service Liberal-Conservative coalition Public sector cuts Public sector pay Polly Curtis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Rached Ghannouchi, leader of main Islamist party in Tunisia, says former elite is trying to ‘escape the ballot box’ The gains of the revolution in Tunisia could be lost if the election is further postponed or disintegrates amid politically inspired violence, according to the leader of the country’s largest party. Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of al-Nahda, the main Islamist party, warned that the deferral of polling day – from 24 July to 23 October – may not be the last postponement, and the staging of an election at the start of the academic year and at a time of student protest and workers’ strikes could present an opportunity to foment chaos. He described the postponement as an attempt by parties who had cohabited former president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s dictatorship to regain their posts. Ghannouchi, who returned to Tunisia in January after more than 20 years in exile, said: “They [the former elite] are trying to escape the ballot box. Those whose weight is low do not want to stand on the scales.” As it is, al-Nahda and the leading liberal faction, the Progressive Democratic Party, have made compromises to keep the electoral process on track in the hope that the democratic transition was more important that the result. Al-Nahda agreed reluctantly to the deferral of the election, after all other parties accepted it, but they are not confident the reasons stated are genuine. “There is now talk of organising presidential elections, or amendments to the constitution and organising a referendum, or turning this Council for the Achievement of the Aims of the Revolution into a parliament, which would promulgate rules,” Ghannouchi said. “Actually it is doing this already, before the election of the constituent assembly, which shows that this assembly for some people is an undesirable thing.” In an interview with the Guardian, Ghannouchi said he was proud that the uprising in Tunisia had lit the flame that ended the long Arab night, but warned that for this reason the election in Tunisia was being keenly watched in Egypt. It is due to hold its own parliamentary elections in September, but has yet to decide voting rules or electoral boundaries. There are no dependable opinion polls on what will happen to the 80 political parties in Tunisia. Ghannouchi said the dominant representative of old political elite was the Ettajid party, the former Tunisian socialist party for whom his party was enemy No 1: “They have no confidence in their ability to compete with al-Nahda. Hence they seek one postponement after another,” he said. “Placing the date of the election at the start of the academic year could be a cause for postponing them again, because we have seen great instability and unrest with the student and worker movement.” Ghannouchi believed that the revolution was irreversible: “The Tunisian people have liberated themselves and will never accept a new dictator, under any name, Islamic or any other. “But there is a fear of chaos if the transition period is long and the country loses time.” Tourism has halved and unemployment doubled since the uprising. Life for most Tunisians was harder now, but, he said their smiles were wider. “They feel confident and on a psychological level we can already see this boost,” he said. “There are fewer road accidents, lower rates of divorce, and fewer people going to psychiatric clinics. Tunisians feel more hopeful of the future and there is more social solidarity and cohesion.” But the Islamist leader was bitter about the transitional government’s pusillanimous attempts to deal with the legacy of dictatorship. Transparency International put Ben Ali’s personal wealth at $5bn (£3bn) and his family’s at $12bn, which together is the size of the government’s budget. Ghannouchi said the interim government was putting more effort into seeking crippling foreign loans than it was in recovering its own stolen assets from banks abroad. This week the ousted president and his wife were sentenced to 35 years in prison and fined $66m after a trial in absentia for embezzlement and misuse of public funds. Ben Ali and wife Leila Trabelsi fled to Saudi Arabia, which has refused to extradite them. But the former dictator has yet to be tried on criminal charges of murder and treason. Ghannouchi, who returned to a hero’s welcome after his years in exile in London, heads the most liberal Islamic party in the region. He said he was confident of his party’s ability to function in a pluralist multiparty democracy. “When the electoral law was being discussed, the demand that half of each party list had to include women candidates was expected to cause us Islamists embarrassment,” he said. “It did the opposite, because we were able to mobilise more women into our movement in rural areas than any other party could do.” Tunisia Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali Arab and Middle East unrest Africa Islam David Hearst guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Poor economic news from US, China, UK and eurozone push shares down sharply, while $8 is wiped off oil price World stock markets suffered another bout of heavy losses on Thursday, driven down by fears over the eurozone debt crisis and fresh evidence that global economic growth is faltering. A flood of poor economic news from the US, China, the UK and the eurozone helped to push shares down sharply, and send the euro to record lows. The oil price also slumped, wiping more than $8 off the cost of a barrel of Brent crude at one point, as extra supplies were released in an effort to prevent the world economy stagnating. In London the FTSE 100 shed more than 100 points in afternoon trading to 5666, a fall of more than 1.7%. Wall Street also saw early losses, with the Dow Jones losing 1.8% when trading began to 11,889 points. Across Europe, equity markets were also in retreat as European leaders met in Brussels to discuss creating a new rescue package for Greece. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, set the early direction with his warning on Wednesday night that the US economy would grow more slowly than expected in 2011 , and again next year. Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank, raised the stakes by warning that risk signals for financial stability across the eurozone were flashing “red”. “Everyone is running away from any sort of risk today,” explained David Jones, chief market strategist at IG Index. “The big cloud is Greece, but every day something else comes along [to knock confidence].” Reports from America that talks to raise the US debt ceiling had collapsed also alarmed traders. The euro lost nearly two cents against the dollar, touching a low of $1.4133. The pound also took a pummelling in the foreign exchange markets, falling by more than one cent against the dollar to $1.594. Economists said that the minutes of the Bank of England’s last meeting, released on Wednesday, had shown that Threadneedle Street was taking a more dovish approach to monetary policy. UK interest rates may now not rise until 2012. The weak state of the UK economy was highlighted by the CBI’s monthly snapshot of the retail sector. For the first time since June 2010, more retailers said that business was deteriorating than those who said it was improving . “After a year of growth, high street sales volumes fizzled out in June,” said Judith McKenna, chair of the CBI’s distributive trades panel. “Consumers are really feeling the pinch as disposable incomes continue to be squeezed by rising prices and weak earnings growth.” In America, the number of new jobless claims rose by 9,000 to 429,000, confounding expectations of a weekly fall to 415,000. China reported that its manufacturing output has barely grown so far in June, an indication that economic growth may have slowed significantly in recent weeks. This was followed by data from the eurozone, where manufacturing and services output slowing sharply to a 20-month low in June. “Tighter fiscal policy is increasingly kicking in across the region, the ECB has started raising interest rates and sovereign debt tensions have intensified, centred on Greece’s woes,” said Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight. The oil price fell after the International Energy Agency announced that it would release 60m barrels of oil on to the market, at a rate of 2m barrels per day. The move was criticised by members of the Opec cartel, who called the move unjustifiable. The cost of a barrel of Brent crude fell as low as $105.72, down more than $8, while US crude dropped to $90 a barrel. Global economy Economics Stock markets Oil Commodities United States FTSE Graeme Wearden guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …I dare anyone to watch this video and read the amazing story of Jose Antonio Vargas , Pulitzer-prize winning writer while at the Washington Post, and an undocumented immigrant who was sent here from the Philippines to the United States by his mother to make a better life. You cannot understand the shame or the fear these people endure because of decisions made when they were children and over which they had no control. Before he knew he was undocumented, he watched television shows to learn how to speak English without an accent, worked hard in school, earned his way to college and through college, and has established himself as a quality journalist in a time where we lack quality journalists. He pays taxes just like the rest of us. And he will be deported if Republicans have their way. It’s a stupid, idiotic political stance, this xenophobic Republican whitebread ideal. It ignores the fact that undocumented workers are the ones breaking their backs in the fields to pick the food that ends up in our supermarkets and fattens the corporate farmers’ profit margin. It ignores the fact that children of those undocumented workers actually go to school and actually learn something, because their parents have raised them to believe that if they work hard in school they can have a better life. How would it feel to have to write this as a truth you live with every day? There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own. Ironically, Vargas’ hope of unraveling his immigration status came when Orrin Hatch and Dick Durbin introduced the original DREAM Act in 2002. I was hopeful. This was in early 2002, shortly after Senators Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, and Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat, introduced the Dream Act — Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors. It seemed like the legislative version of what I’d told myself: If I work hard and contribute, things will work out. And here we are today in 2011, with wildly xenophobic Republican TeaBirchers waggling their finger and showing up on Fox News, wailing about “illegals” and ginning up fear and loathing. I challenge any of them to actually read Vargas’ story with an open mind, and stand in front of him and the countless others in his situation and tell them they aren’t welcome here. I’ll wait.
Continue reading …
About 100 women attacked in villages near Fizi in Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Médecins sans Frontières At least 60 women were raped and dozens of other people beaten by suspected rebels during a two-day attack on a pair of villages in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this month, according to an aid agency and local officials. The mass rape occurred in Abala and Nyakiele, near the town of Fizi in South Kivu province, during 10-12 June , Médecins sans Frontières said on Thursday. MSF sent a team to the area this week after hearing reports of sexual violence in the villages, which are in a relatively remote area with no mobile phone coverage. “We have seen at this point over 100
Continue reading …