Briefsfromshittu

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Kim Kardashian West and Amber Rose Take a Selfie Together

Kim Kardashian West has taken the selfie game to a whole new level. Early on Tuesday, the reality star posted an Instagram snap of herself alongside Amber Rose, just one week after Amber lashed out at Kim’s husband Kanye West for dissing her young son.

The 35-year-old included a simple caption: “Tea anyone?”

Rose, 32, posted the selfie on her own Instagram account, writing, “Swingers” alongside the photo.

The selfie comes just days after West got into a heated Twitter feudwith rapper Wiz Khalifa – who is Rose’s ex-husband and the father of her son, Sebastian.

It all started when Khalifa, 28, began criticizing West’s new album title, Waves. Kayne also misconstrued one of Khalifa’s tweets and thought Wiz was disrespecting Kim. The offending tweet: “Hit this kk and become yourself.”

The feud eventually reached a fever pitch when West seemingly referenced Rose – who used to date both Kanye and Wiz – and Rose’s son, prompting Rose to respond with a sexually explicit diss aimed at West.

Days later, in a tweet, West apologized for mentioning Sebastian, who turns 2 this month. Meanwhile, Rose slammed West’s decision to mention her son in the Twitter feud.

However, Rose and Kardashian West’s recent selfie seems to suggest that there is no bad blood between the two ladies.

Pope Francis to Appear in Spiritual Movie

Pope Francis speaks as he leads an audience with religious, nuns and priests, for the conclusion of the Year of Consecrated Life at Paul VI hall at the Vatican on Jan. 02, 2016.

Giuseppe Ciccia—Pacific Press/LightRocket/Getty ImagesPope Francis speaks as he leads an audience with religious, nuns and priests, for the conclusion of the Year of Consecrated Life at Paul VI hall at the Vatican on Jan. 02, 2016.

The Vatican has downplayed suggestions that the Pope will make his acting debut in a spiritual film aimed at children.

According to a press release by Rome-based distribution and production company AMBI, reports Reuters, the pontiff will play himself in upcoming Italian film. The movie, Beyond the Sun,is described as a “family adventure story where children from different cultures emulate the apostles while searching for Jesus in the world around them.”

The Guardian says there were initially conflicting reports on the scale of the Pope’s involvement, with some reports suggesting he would feature significantly throughout the movie. However, AMBI’s website mentions that the film will only feature “an epilogue from Pope Francis telling children how and where to find Jesus.” And on Monday, a Vatican spokesman responded, noting: “the Pope is not an actor.”

Petition calls for Nobel Peace Prize for Greek islanders

More than half a million people have put their names to an online petition calling for Greek islanders on the front lines of Europe's refugee crisis to be awarded the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize.

In a similar move, noted academics from prestigious universities around the world reportedly drafted their own submission before the Feb. 1 deadline for Nobel nominations, in a move that has won support from European MPs, artists, politicians and the Greek media.

And several prominent Greek figures have sent a letter to the Nobel nominating committee, recommending a Greek pensioner, Emilia Kamvysis, and a fisherman, Stratis Valiamos, for the award, along with Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon, the Athens News Agency reported.

Kamvysis, 85, and Valiamos, 40, have become local celebrities for their volunteer work, and Sarandon has raised awareness about the refugee crisis through her visit to the island of Lesbos and volunteer work there.

By Monday, the number of signatures on the petition, on the Avaaz website, topped 600,000.

"The native populations of the Greek Islands in the Aegean Sea have done and are doing anything possible to help the displaced Syrian refugees, despite being subjected to a severe economic crisis for many years," reads the petition, which was created by Alkmini Papadaki, an architect from Crete. "Their acts and sacrifices shall not go unnoticed, because they are significant contributors to world peace and stability."

Nikos Voutsis, the president of the Greek parliament, has also backed the islanders' nomination. "The citizens of the Aegean Islands, and especially Lesbos, constitute an example for European civilization," he said.

According to the International Organization for Migration, over 800,000 migrants and refugees arrived on Greece's shores in 2015.

So far this year, a daily average of more than 1,900 people have landed on the Greek islands after making a perilous journey by sea from Turkey, U.N. figures show. More than half of them — over 31,000 — have been registered in Lesbos.

Bangladesh sentences two to death for war crimes

Defence lawyers said they would seek to overturn the International Crimes Tribunal ruling [Mahmud Hossain Opu/Al Jazeera]

A Bangladeshi tribunal has sentenced two pre-independence figures to death for war crimes during the 1971 conflict which culminated in the dismemberment of Pakistan.

Lawyers for 66-year-old Obaidul Haque and Ataur Rahman, 62, immediately announced that they would seek to overturn Tuesday's ruling by the International Crimes Tribunal, a domestic court which lacks international oversight.

Both men were convicted of killing seven people and raping a woman in the northern district of Netrokona, and of torturing six others to death after abducting them.

A total of 23 prosecution witnesses had testified against the pair since charges were laid against them last year.

The court has so far convicted two dozen people of atrocities in the conflict, in what was then East Pakistan, which broke away from the rest of the country to become Bangladesh.

Following Tuesday's verdict, Mokhlesur Rahman Badal, a prosecutor, told Al Jazeera: "The prosecution is satisfied with this judgment."

Ziad al-Malum, another prosecutor, told Al Jazeera that with the verdict, the tribunal "made it clear that there can be no more debate over the number of three million martyrs whose sacrifices have given us an independent state".

Prosecutors had told the tribunal that Haque was not only one of the leaders of an anti-independence political party in 1971, but also the head of an armed group behind a series of attacks on civilians.

Rahman was accused by witnesses of being a member of the same armed group.

"We will challenge the verdict with the Supreme Court and hope our clients will be proved not guilty and be acquitted," Gazi Tamim, a defence lawyer, said after the sentence was handed down.

Sheikh Hasina's government says the trials are needed to heal the wounds of the conflict [Mahmud Hossain Opu/Al Jazeera]

Twenty-four people have so far been convicted of war crimes by the International Crimes Tribunal.

Most of them were senior figures in Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest Islamist party.

Three of the Jamaat leaders have so far been executed, along with a senior leader of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

Previous convictions and sentences handed down by the court have set off deadly violence, with up to 500 people killed, mainly in clashes between opposition activists and police over the past three years.

The government of Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the prime minister, says the trials are needed to heal the wounds of the conflict.

Jamaat, which was banned from contesting the 2014 general elections, said the executions were part of a strategy "aimed at eliminating" its leadership.

Bangladesh has been plagued by political violence for much of the last three years since a domestic tribunal began delivering its verdicts on opposition figures accused of orchestrating massacres during the 1971 war.

The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) accused Hasina Wajed of presiding over a politically motivated killing.