TDB Top 5 International Stories: Wednesday 5th October 2016

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5: Donald Trump’s Business Partner in India Wants to Jail Christians for Spreading Their Faith

DONALD TRUMP HAS deep ties to India’s right-wing, anti-Muslim Bharatiya Janata Party.

Trump has praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the nationalist BJP leader who gained international infamy for his role in stoking anti-Muslim riots in 2002 that reportedly killed nearly 2,000 people. The New York Times wrote that Hindu mobs skewered mothers “on swords as their children watched” while young women were raped in broad daylight, “then doused with kerosene and set on fire.”

And Shalabh “Shalli” Kumar, known as a close Modi ally and the BJP’s consigliere in U.S. politics, has emerged as a prominent backer of Trump’s candidacy. Kumar has organized multiple fundraising efforts within the Indian American community for Trump and donated $898,800 to Trump Victory, the joint fundraising committee formed to support his presidential campaign.

Trump is also in business with a prominent BJP politician, having signed a licensing deal in 2014 to construct the Trump Tower Mumbai with Mangal Prabhat Lodha, a real estate mogul and BJP state legislator. The 75-story building is now under construction, scheduled to be completed in 2018.

The Intercept

 

4: UN rights chief warns Russia over Syria raids

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein warned Russia on Tuesday over the use of incendiary weapons in Syria’s besieged rebel enclave of eastern Aleppo, and said crimes by one side did not justify illegal acts by the other.

Hundreds of civilians have been killed or injured in air strikes since the collapse of the latest ceasefire and the Syrian government’s announcement last month of a Russia-backed offensive to retake Aleppo.

Repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, have drawn international condemnation – and accusations of war crimes.

Aljazeera

 

3: New South Wales’ Indigenous Prison Population Has Doubled in the Past 15 Years

The number of Indigenous people held in New South Wales prisons has doubled in the past 15 years, according to data released by the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR). This comes despite the fact that Indigenous arrests have fallen by around a third over this same time period.

The two reports show that the rate of Indigenous arrest for violent offences declined by nearly 37 per cent, and by almost 33 per cent for property crime. And the research actually suggests that Indigenous crime rates will continue to fall, as younger Indigenous men—traditionally at high risk of incarceration—offend in lower numbers than ever before.

In the past 15 years, arrests of Indigenous men aged 15-19 for violent crime fell by almost 56 percent, and by around 58 percent for those between 20 and 24 years old.

Vice News

2: ‘Great Pacific garbage patch’ far bigger than imagined, aerial survey shows

The vast patch of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean is far worse than previously thought, with an aerial survey finding a much larger mass of fishing nets, plastic containers and other discarded items than imagined.

A reconnaissance flight taken in a modified C-130 Hercules aircraft found a vast clump of mainly plastic waste at the northern edge of what is known as the “great Pacific garbage patch”, located between Hawaii and California.

The density of rubbish was several times higher than the Ocean Cleanup, a foundation part-funded by the Dutch government to rid the oceans of plastics, expected to find even at the heart of the patch, where most of the waste is concentrated.

“Normally when you do an aerial survey of dolphins or whales, you make a sighting and record it,” said Boyan Slat, the founder of the Ocean Cleanup.

“That was the plan for this survey. But then we opened the door and we saw the debris everywhere. Every half second you see something. So we had to take snapshots – it was impossible to record everything. It was bizarre to see that much garbage in what should be pristine ocean.”

The Guardian 

 

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

1: Does Donald Trump Pay Taxes? Records Given to NYT Show How He May Have Avoided Taxes for 18 Years

With just over a month until Election Day, The New York Times has dropped a bombshell report that suggests Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump may have avoided paying any federal income taxes for 18 years. Trump’s campaign has not challenged the authenticity of the leaked tax documents used in the story. We get the details from three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Barstow, who led the Times’ investigation, and David Cay Johnston, another Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and author of the new biography, “The Making of Donald Trump.”

Democracy Now