TDB Top 5 International Stories: Monday 6th August 2018

5: The wise-cracking judge in Paul Manafort’s case may be starting to chill out

On Thursday, the acid-tongued judge in Paul Manafort’s trial announced that he’d heard lawyers were rolling their eyes behind his back, and they’d better cut it out.

“Lawyers on both sides need to rein in their facial expressions,” Judge T.S. Ellis proclaimed from the bench, or risk signaling to others in the courtroom that they might be wondering: “‘Why do we have to put up with this idiot judge?’”

Vice News

4: Indonesia: Major earthquake in Lombok kills scores

At least 82 have been killed after a major earthquake hit Indonesia‘s popular tourist island of Lombok, an official has said.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) said Sunday’s magnitude-6.9 quake struck 3km from Loloan about 31km underground.

In a Tweet, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman for Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, said that by 02:30am local time (19:30GMT) the death tally stood at 82, with hundreds injured and thousands of homes damaged.

Muhammad Rum, the head of the local disaster agency, earlier said most of the deaths were caused by falling debris.

Aljazeera

3: Chilling Testimony in a Tennessee Trial Exposes Lethal Injection as Court-Sanctioned Torture

JULIE HALL SMILED on the witness stand as she recalled a memory of her old client Joseph Wood. He had spent most of the last two decades living in solitary confinement, with his recreation confined to a cage, when the Arizona Department of Corrections began to loosen some restrictions over people on death row. A basketball court was built outside his unit on the sprawling desert prison complex in Florence, about an hour south of Phoenix. At 55, Wood was relatively healthy — “he loved going out and playing,” Hall said. A prison sergeant even played a round of basketball with Wood, which meant a lot. “He felt like he was being treated like he was human for the first time in a long time.”

The Intercept

2: A Slaughter in Silence: How Trump’s “America First” Policy Enabled Ethnic Cleansing in the DRC

The Democratic Republic of Congo is facing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world as a wave of extreme violence sweeps the country. Some 2 million Congolese fled their homes last year, nearly 7 million Congolese are now internally displaced, and another 500,000 have fled to other parts of Africa. According to the United Nations, 13 million Congolese are in urgent need of humanitarian aid. The international media has largely ignored what’s happening, but this week Vice News published a shocking investigation into a recent case of ethnic cleansing. Hundreds of machete-wielding militiamen swept through areas in Congo near the Ugandan border, attacking around 120 communities. Hundreds were killed, thousands of homes were destroyed, and some 350,000 people were displaced. The violence came after the U.S. abruptly cut support for peacekeeping efforts in the Congo and elsewhere last year as part of President Trump’s “America First” policies. We speak with Vice News contributor and author Nick Turse. His article is titled “A Slaughter in Silence: How a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign in DRC was made worse by Trump’s ‘America First’ policies and the world’s neglect.”

Democracy Now

1: Far-right protesters ‘ransack socialist bookshop in London’

The owners of Britain’s largest socialist bookshop, Bookmarks, have said the store was attacked by far-right protesters wearing masks who wrecked displays and ripped up books and magazines.

Posting on Facebook and Twitter, Bookmarks said staff were closing the shop on Bloomsbury Street in central London on Saturday evening when about a dozen people descended on it.