We begin with an update on the case of prominent immigrant rights advocate Ravi Ragbir, whom we interviewed Thursday on Democracy Now! right before his check-in with a deportation officer. Ragbir, originally from Trinidad, immigrated to the United States legally but has a 15-year-old criminal conviction. He’s avoided deportation since 2011 due to a series of stays that could end under President Trump. After he left our studios, Ragbir spoke at a press conference and rally, where hundreds gathered to support him before he went inside, unsure if he would come back out. He was accompanied to his check-in by his wife, his attorney, pastors and four elected officials. He emerged with mixed news. Even though he has a stay in place until 2018, he was told to return for another check-in next month. Officials also instructed Ragbir, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a U.S.-born daughter, to prepare his travel documents, which are often the first step toward deportation.
Democracy Now
4: Trump Unleashed 40 Airstrikes Over Five Days in Yemen
Here’s what’s happening on the ground.
The U.S. military unleashed 40 airstrikes on al-Qaida targets over a five-day period in Yemen last week, more strikes than the Obama administration dropped in the war-torn nation in any given year of the civil war there, according to Foreign Policy magazine.
Vice News
3: Netherlands revokes landing rights for Mevlut Cavusoglu
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused the Dutch government of being “Nazi remnants” after the Netherlands barred the Turkish foreign minister from flying to the country, as a diplomatic dispute between the two countries escalated.
The row first erupted after Dutch officials on Friday said they would not welcome a visit by Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu if he was to address a political rally in Rotterdam on Saturday.
There are some 300,000 people of Turkish origin in the Netherlands, and the rally was aimed at generating support among expats for an April 16 referendum over whether to give Turkey’s president greater powers.
Aljazeera
2: ROGUE TWITTER ACCOUNTS FIGHT TO PRESERVE THE VOICE OF GOVERNMENT SCIENCE
IN EARLY NOVEMBER, shortly after Donald Trump was elected president, a career scientist working for the federal Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management began having muted conversations with colleagues about what the new presidential administration meant for dedicated agency staffers.
The Bureau of Land Management is not as high-profile a target as the Environmental Protection Agency, but the agency’s effectiveness is also deeply threatened by the Trump administration’s suspicion of science. BLM performs a precarious balancing act, managing the conflicting goals of conservation and profit extraction on millions of acres of public lands. It makes decisions on behalf of the American public about which acres of sagebrush, pine forest, and rocky mountain should be preserved and which should be harvested for fossil fuels, timber, and minerals. “There’s been a great deal of influence historically from the industry, especially mining. There are managers with the agency, and they see their job as trying to permit as much mining as possible,” the scientist said. “BLM is an agency that I think depends on internal debate and depends on a tolerance for dissent.”
The Intercept
1:World faces worst humanitarian crisis since 1945, says UN official
The world faces the largest humanitarian crisis since the end of the second world war with more than 20 million people in four countries facing starvation and famine, a senior United Nations official has warned.
Without collective and coordinated global efforts, “people will simply starve to death” and “many more will suffer and die from disease”, Stephen O’Brien, the UN under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told the security council in New York on Friday.
He urged an immediate injection of funds for Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and northeast Nigeria plus safe and unimpeded access for humanitarian aid “to avert a catastrophe.”
The Guardian
