5:
Aung San Suu Kyi’s party takes seats in historic session of Myanmar parliament
After half a century of military-dominated rule, Aung San Suu Kyi has led her National League for Democracy (NLD) party into Myanmar’s parliament, taking a majority of seats and starting the process of installing a democratically elected government.
Aung San Suu Kyi has waited more than 25 years for this moment, having won a parliamentary majority in 1990 that was annulled by the military leadership. In November last year, she led the NLD to another landslide victory that has been accepted by the outgoing army-aligned government.
The Guardian
4:
Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has recreated the image of drowned infant Alan Kurdi that in 2015 became the defining symbol of the plight of Syria’s refugees.
For the recreation, Ai lay on a pebbled beach on the Greek island of Lesbos. His pose was similar to that of Kurdi’s lifeless body, which washed up on a beach near the Turkish town of Bodrum and was captured in a September 2015 photo.
The Guardian
3:
Islamic State Behind Three Bombings That Killed 60 Near Syria’s Holiest Shiite Shrine
At least 60 people were reportedly killed and dozens wounded on Sunday by a car bomb and two suicide bombers in a district of Damascus where Syria’s holiest Shiite shrine is located.
The Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the attacks, according to Amaq, a news agency that supports the Sunni fundamentalist group. The report said two operations “hit the most important stronghold of Shiite militias in Damascus.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, said the casualties were expected to rise from the suicide attacks in Sayeda Zeinaba, a district of southern Damascus where the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and other Iraqi and Iranian militias have a strong presence. Twenty-five Shiite fighters were reportedly among those killed in the attack. SOHR head Rami Abdulrahman said the suicide bombers targeted a military bus carrying Shiite militias who were changing guard there.
Vice News
2:
FBI Negotiates as Defiant Holdouts in Oregon Militia Standoff Demand Immunity
The four remaining militiamen occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon are negotiating with the FBI, and have said publicly that they will only surrender if they receive a guarantee that they will not be arrested.
“If Obama can release five terrorists, ISIS-supporting terrorists, for one treasonous prisoner, then of course any deal is possible,” one militiamen said in YouTube livestream broadcast from the wildlife refuge on Saturday, apparently referring to the swap of Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay that freed Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl from five years of militant captivity in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2014.
Tensions in the standoff remain high four days after Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, a spokesman for the armed group that seized buildings at the refuge in early January, was killed in an operation that led to the arrests of occupation leader Ammon Bundy, his brother Ryan Bundy, and four others as they traveled on a nearby highway. The FBI asserts that Finicum reached for his gun during the incident, and released video footage of the encounter that shows Finicum fleeing police in a pickup truck, swerving into a snowbank to avoid a roadblock, and exiting his vehicle before being shot.
Vice News
1:
More than 10,000 refugee children missing in Europe
More than 10,000 unaccompanied refugee and migrant children have disappeared in Europe, the EU police agency Europol said on Sunday, fearing many have been whisked into sex trafficking rings or the slave trade.
Europol’s press office confirmed to Al Jazeera the figures published in British newspaper The Observer.
The number relates to the last 18-24 months.
The agency’s chief of staff Brian Donald said the vulnerable children had disappeared from the system after registering with state authorities following their arrival in Europe.
“It’s not unreasonable to say that we’re looking at 10,000-plus children,” Donald told The Observer, adding that 5,000 had disappeared in Italy alone.
“Not all of them will be criminally exploited; some might have been passed on to family members. We just don’t know where they are, what they’re doing or whom they are with.”
Aljazeera
