Briefsfromshittu

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Mexican President Says Donald Trump’s Language Is Like Hitler’s

(MEXICO CITY) — Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto compared the language of Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump to that of dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in an interview published Monday, and said it has hurt U.S.-Mexico relations.

Asked about Trump, Pena Nieto complained to the Excelsior newspaper about “these strident expressions that seek to propose very simple solutions” and said that sort of language has led to “very fateful scenes in the history of humanity.”

“That’s the way Mussolini arrived and the way Hitler arrived,” Pena Nieto said.

Pena Nieto until now had avoided direct comments on Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the two countries’ borders. Trump also has said Mexican immigrants bring crime and drugs to the U.S. and are “rapists.”

But as the New York businessman has built a lead in the GOP primary, current and former Mexican officials have begun to publicly express alarm. Former Presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon also have alluded to Hitler in describing Trump.

In the interview with Excelsior, Pena Nieto said “there is no scenario” under which Mexico would pay for the border wall, as Trump proposes.

But he said he would work with whoever eventually wins this year’s U.S. presidential election and to maintain a climate “of mutual respect and joint agreements.”

In another interview published Monday, with the newspaper El Universal, the president said he would be “absolutely respectful” of the U.S. political process, but said, “It appears to me that (Trump’s comments) hurt the relationship we have sought with the United States.”

Turkey’s Biggest Newspaper to Publish in Exile After Government Seizure

Turkey’s highest-circulating newspaper has effectively gone into exile after the government seized control of the paper’s offices and began publishing flattering stories about President Tayyip Erdogan.

The opposition-aligned Zamanwould continue to exist in the form of its German edition, Sueleyman Bag, editor-in-chief of Zaman Almanya (Zaman Germany), told Reuters. “We will print an independent newspaper. We still have not addressed the question of how we do that. This is a new challenge for us,” Bag added.

Authorities took control of Zaman‘s Istanbul headquarters on Friday after a court ruled that the paper’s management must be replaced by court-appointed administrators. The move is part of a wider crackdown on domestic supporters of U.S.-based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, a political opponent that Erdogan’s administration has branded a terrorist. According to Al Jazeera, the front page of Sunday’s Zaman — the first edition published since the takeover — lead with a soft-ball story about Erdogan overseeing the construction of a bridge.

Nigeria hosts President Jacob Zuma

South Africa's President Jacob Zuma has arrived on a two-day state visit to Nigeria, a move observers see as an attempt to improve soured relations between the two African giants. During the visit that began on Tuesday, Zuma is expected to address the Joint Session of the National Assembly of Nigeria, and will together with President Muhammadu Buhari address the South Africa-Nigeria Business Forum. Clayson Monyela, South Africa's head of Public Diplomacy, told Al Jazeera the South African government believes the "historic visit" will "send a powerful political message to the continent".

"This will inject new life and energy into this important strategic relationship between the two countries and resolve the perceived tensions," Monyela said.Zuma said Nigeria-South Africa's relations were "underpinned by strong historical ties dating back from the years of the liberation struggle".

Relations have been strained over the past few years. South Africa's telecom giant MTN's Nigeria operation was handed a $3.9bn penalty in October 2015 for failing to disconnect 5.1 million unregistered SIM cards.

The company, which is trying to negotiate a settlement, has so far paid out $250m but its headline earnings for last year have taken a hit as a result. Other South African firms in Nigeria have reportedly complained of being targeted. There have also been official criticism of Nigeria's response to a deadly building collapse in Lagos in 2014. Eighty-one of the 116 victims were South African nationals. Pretoria said their bodies were not repatriated quickly enough. On the Nigerian side, there have been complaints about South African visa restrictions while in April last year the two nations became embroiled in a spat over the recall of Nigeria's two top diplomats.

In Abuja for a historic state visit. HE J Zuma is the 1st Head of State hosted by HE M Buhari since his inauguration. #SANigeriaRelations
— Clayson Monyela (@ClaysonMonyela) March 8, 2016

The return of the high commissioner to Pretoria and consul-general in Johannesburg came in the wake of xenophobia attacks, about which Nigeria said it was "deeply concerned". Zuma will be accompanied to Nigeria by his ministers of trade and industry, international relations, defence, home affairs, and mineral resources, as well as captains of industry.

Observers have taken the presence of a strong ministerial delegation as a sign of a desire to resolve mutual complaints and possible deals to help Nigeria diversify its economy away from oil. Nigeria under President Muhammadu Buhari's predecessor Goodluck Jonathan became Africa's leading economy after a re-basing exercise of the GDP. But the global fall in oil prices has slashed government revenues, severely weakening the naira currency and driving up the cost of living.

Ex-US missionary jailed for abusing Kenyan orphans

A former US missionary has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for sexually abusing children at an orphanage in Kenya.

Matthew Lane Durham, 21, had committed "heinous crimes on the most vulnerable victims", the US court said.

Durham targeted orphans while working as a volunteer at the Upendo Children's Home in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, between April and June 2014.

He is the latest charity worker in Kenya to be convicted of sex crimes.

The BBC's Abdinoor Aden in Nairobi says that Upendo Children's Home, where Durham was accused of abusing more than 10 children - some as young as four years, has welcomed the sentence by an Oklahoma court.

It has put up a video on YouTube with the headline: "Upendo Children Celebrate Justice!!", showing the orphanage's founder telling her colleagues in Nairobi about the sentencing, which she had attended.

"It is a new beginning for them," Eunice Menja said.

In court, Ms Menja fought back tears as she read a statement, saying that the sexual abuse carried out by Durham was "not only a betrayal of the Upendo mission but of the trust Upendo placed in him", the Associated Press news agency reports.

"Matthew Durham defiled the children. Matthew has no remorse. After he got caught, he still denied [the charges],'' she is quoted as saying.

'Worst nightmare'

Although Durham said he was innocent of the charges, he added that he was sorry that the accusations against him had damaged the orphanage.

"The Upendo kids do not deserve this,'' Durham said, AP reports.

Judge David Russell said Durham, who appeared in court in a prison-issued orange jumpsuit, was the abused children's "worst nightmare come true", it reported.

The court also ordered the former charity worker, who was arrested in 2014 at the home of his parents in the US after fleeing Kenya, to pay restitution of $15,863 (£11,000).

Last year, UK charity boss Simon Harris was jailed for more than 17 years by a UK court for abusing street children between 1996 and 2013 in the agricultural town of Gilgil in Kenya's Rift Valley.

Last week, British Airways agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to children who were sexually abused by one of its pilots, Simon Wood, in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

The mystery over the @ sign

The @ character is the symbol of the internet age, crucial for emails and social networking. But no-one really knows where it came from, writes Claire Bates.

The "at sign" was once an obscure symbol known only to book-keepers. That changed thanks to Ray Tomlinson, the man widely regarded as the inventor of the email.

He plucked it from his keyboard in 1971 to go between the user name and destination address when sending a message between two computers in his office. Tomlinson chose @ because it was then rarely used in computing, so wouldn't confuse early programs or operating systems. In a happy coincidence, the English name of the symbol was already "at".

"The @ symbol appeared on typewriters before the end of the 19th Century," says Keith Houston, author of Shady Characters: Secret Life of Punctuation. "It seemed to be a general symbol that meant to readers 'this is this many items at this price'. It didn't have a use beyond this."

As typewriters had it, so did the first proper keyboards for computers.

"The @ symbol made it on to keyboards because it was a business tool and had a business use," says Houston.

Those business users understood it as a symbol to indicate unit price eg 12 batteries @ £1 each.

In 2000, the Italian academic Giorgio Stabile observed that many nations use different words for the @ symbol that describe how it looks. In Turkish it means "rose", while in Norwegian it means "pig's tail". In Greek it is "duckling", while in Hungarian it is "worm".

But Stabile noticed in French, Spanish and Portuguese, it referred to arobase or arroba - a unit of weight and volume. In Italian the name for the symbol was "amphora", referring to long-necked pottery storage jars that had been used since ancient times.

Stabile discovered a letter sent from Seville to Rome in 1536, which discussed the arrival in Spain of three ships sailing from the New World. It stated that an amphora of wine was sold and "amphora" was replaced with the @ symbol as an abbreviation. Stabile concluded the @ symbol was a common medieval shorthand for units of measure in southern Europe, even if the precise units differed.

Spanish journalist Jorge Romance then found an even earlier use. "I read about the 16th Century example of @ and remembered I had seen the symbol before when I was a history student at the University of Zaragoza. I went through my old papers and found customs records between Aragon and Castile in the 15th Century. It meant 'arroba' as a weight measure, and in this instance one arroba of wheat."

But the earliest yet discovered reference to the @ symbol is a religious one. It features in a 1345 Bulgarian translationof a Greek chronicle. Held today in the Vatican Apostolic Library, it features the @ symbol in place of the A in the word Amen. Why it was used in this context is a mystery.

It seems fitting then that the first email to be sent with the @ symbol has also been lost to time. When Tomlinson sent the first message to tomlinson@bbn.tenexa, he didn't realise what a game-changer it would be and so didn't bother writing it down.

AC/DC Halts Tour Over 'Total Deafness' Fears

AC/DC have postponed the 10 remaining shows of their US tour after lead singer Brian Johnson was told he risked total deafness if he continues to perform.

In a statement, the band said those rescheduled gigs will likely be with a guest vocalist.

The cancellations have left fans uncertain of whether the long-running group are going to play the European leg of their Rock Or Bust tour, which is due to begin on 7 May in Lisbon.

Johnson had been advised to stop touring immediately by doctors.

He had joined AC/DC in 1980 after the band's former lead singer, Bon Scott, died following a night of heavy drinking.

Concerns over the 68-year-old's hearing are the latest problem to hit the group's ageing members.

In September 2014, one founding member of AC/DC, Malcolm Young, left permanently at the age of 61 after he was diagnosed with dementia.

Last July, the band parted ways with Phil Rudd after he was convicted of threatening to kill an employee, and pleaded guilty to possessing marijuana and methamphetamine.

The drummer was sentenced to eight months of home detention by a judge in New Zealand.