The Netherlands: French forces rescue Dutch hostage held in Mali since 2011

French forces have freed a Dutch man held hostage in Mali since 2011 by al Qaeda’s north African arm, the French defence ministry said. It said Sjaak Rijke, who was kidnapped in Timbuktu in November 2011, was freed on Monday during a special operation and had been transferred “safe and sound” to a temporary base in Tessalit, north-east Mali.

French forces had also killed two militants and captured two others during fighting that took place during the early morning operation, said Lieutenant Colonel Michel Sabatier, a spokesman for Barkhane, the French counter-insurgency operation in the region.

Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said Rijke was in good condition considering the circumstances and receiving medical treatment under Dutch supervision.

“The liberation of Mr Rijke underscores France’s staunch determination to fight armed terrorist groups in the Sahel region as part of the Barkhane operation,” the French ministry said in a statement.

In November Rijke’s captors, the al Qaeda-affiliated AQIM group, issued a video of him along with French national Serge Lazarevic.

Read more: Africa - French forces rescue Dutch hostage held in Mali since 2011 - France 24

USA: Poison on your dinner table?: Strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, grapes, nuts and vine crops could be contaminated with methyl bromide

They look good, but are they poisoned with methyl bromide

The pesticide that sickened a Delaware family in the Virgin Islands is banned for indoor fumigation but U.S. growers will still legally use more than 375 metric tons of the chemical on fields this year through special waivers, federal regulators said.
 

Methyl bromide is blamed in the accidental poisonings of a mom, dad and their two teen sons at a Caribbean resort. The boys remained critically ill Monday at a Philadelphia hospital. Criminal investigators are examining how and why the bug killer got sprayed in a room beneath the family's rented villa two days before they arrived in mid-March.

U.S. law forbids exterminators from using methyl bromide but the Environmental Protection Agency grants a "critical use exemption" to certain farmers — primarily strawberry growers — letting them inject the chemical directly into their soil, the EPA said.

And some organic advocates are worried about the pesticide perhaps reaching grocery-store fruit.

"You have nurseries producing strawberry transplants — the nurseries are the main users of methyl bromide in the U.S. today. The plants in the fields are all started in nurseries.

That ground at the nursery is all fumigated," said Jonathan Winslow, field services manager at Farm Fuel, Inc., a farmer-started, organic distribution and research company on the central California coast.

"So that strawberry transplant can get pulled out of the ground at the nursery and moved to an organic field and be produced under an 'organic' certification," Winslow said. "The use of methyl bromide has diminished, yes. But I am concerned about it. That's why I work for an organic company."

The pesticide is so nasty that, in 1987, the United States and 26 other nations signed a treaty called the Montreal Protocol, vowing to phase out methyl bromide mainly because it depletes the ozone layer. Today, nearly 200 countries have signed that agreement.

But the use of the neurotoxin goes on in farming.

"In the United States, strawberries and tomatoes are the crops which use the most methyl bromide," the EPA says on its website. "Other crops which use this pesticide as a soil fumigant include peppers, grapes, and nut and vine crops."

Read more: Methyl Bromide Pesticide in Paradise Poisoning Case Still Used in U.S. Crops - MyArkLaMiss.com - KTVE NBC 10 - KARD FOX 14 - Your homepage for the latest News, Weather and Sports in the ArkLaMiss!

Spain: The Podemos revolution: how a small group of radical academics changed European politics - by Giles Tremlett

At the start of the 2008 academic year, Pablo Iglesias, a 29-year-old lecturer with a pierced eyebrow and a ponytail greeted his students at the political sciences faculty of the Complutense University in Madrid by inviting them to stand on their chairs. The idea was to re-enact a scene from the film Dead Poets Society. Iglesias’s message was simple. His students were there to study power, and the powerful can be challenged. This stunt was typical of him. Politics, Iglesias thought, was not just something to be studied.

 It was something you either did, or let others do to you. As a professor, he was smart, hyperactive and – as a founder of a university organisation called Counter-Power – quick to back student protest. He did not fit the classic profile of a doctrinaire intellectual from Spain’s communist-led left. But he was clear about what was to blame for the world’s ills: the unfettered, globalised capitalism that, in the wake of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, had installed itself as the developed world’s dominant ideology.

Iglesias and the students, ex-students and faculty academics worked hard to spread their ideas. They produced political television shows and collaborated with their Latin American heroes – left-leaning populist leaders such as Rafael Correa of Ecuador or Evo Morales of Bolivia. But when they launched their own political party on 17 January 2014 and gave it the name Podemos (“We Can”), many dismissed it.

With no money, no structure and few concrete policies, it looked like just one of several angry, anti-austerity parties destined to fade away within months.

A year later, on 31 January 2015, Iglesias strode across a stage in Madrid’s emblematic central square, the Puerta del Sol. It was filled with 150,000 people, squeezed in so tightly that it was impossible to move.

He addressed the crowd with the impassioned rhetoric for which opponents have branded him a dangerous leftwing populist. He railed against the monsters of “financial totalitarianism” who had humiliated them all.

He told Podemos’s followers to dream and, like that noble madman Don Quixote, “take their dreams seriously”. Spain was in the grip of historic, convulsive change. The serried crowd were heirs to the common folk who – armed with knives, flowerpots and stones – had rebelled against Napoleonic troops in nearby streets two centuries earlier. “We can dream, we can win!” he shouted.

Polls suggest that he is right. Since 1982, Spain has been governed by only two parties. Yet El País newspaper now places Podemos at 22%, ahead of both the ruling conservative Partido Popular (PP) and its leftwing opposition Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE).

If Podemos can grow further, Iglesias could become prime minister after elections that are expected in November. This would be an almost unheard-of achievement for such a young party.

Many in the Puerta del Sol longed to see that day. “Yes we can! Yes we can!” they chanted. Other onlookers shivered, recalling Iglesias’s praise for Venezuela’s late president Hugo Chávez and fearing an eruption of Latin American-style populism in a country gripped by debt, austerity and unemployment.

But without Podemos, supporters feared, Spain faced the prospect of becoming like Greece, with its disintegrating welfare state, crumbling middle class and rampant inequality.

Read more: The Podemos revolution: how a small group of radical academics changed European politics | Giles Tremlett | World news | The Guardian

Britain: Democracy v Psychology: why do people keep electing idiots ? - by Dean Burnett

The British 2015 election campaigns are under way, and it’s clear that doing or saying unintelligent things is no barrier to political success. Unfortunately, there are several psychological mechanisms that lead to apparent idiots being elected into powerful positions. 

Read more: Democracy v Psychology: why people keep electing idiots | Dean Burnett | Science | The Guardian

British Labour Leader Ed Miliband's Easter message highlights persecuted Christians in Syria and Iraq - by Ruth Gledhill

Ed Miliband

British Labour leader Ed Miliband has used his Easter message to express his concerns for the fate of persecuted Christians around the world.

The brief and to-the-point seasonal message of Miliband, an atheist, contrasts with the overtly Christian offerings from Conservative politicians such as David Cameron and Michael Gove.

Miliband says he is looking forward to sharing the weekend with his family in Doncaster, where he was MP for Doncaster North until Parliament was dissolved at the end of March.

"In the midst of the Easter celebrations our hearts goes out to those who face difficult times both overseas and closer to home. My thoughts are particularly with Christians in Syria, Iraq and other countries where the church suffers terrible persecution," he wrote.

Miliband cites statistics from the International Society for Human Rights which state that Christians are the victims of 80 per cent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today.

"We must all do everything we can to speak out against this evil and work to alleviate the suffering of those who are persecuted simply for their creed," he says.

"But we don't need to travel far to find families facing fear and uncertainty. Over two million children are now living in poverty in the UK. I have admiration for those church members and Christian charities that provide support and hope to those in need."

Noting that over the Easter weekend millions of Christians will attend Easter services and events up and down the country, he acknowledges that through such gatherings, the church shares the story of the resurrection, and spreads the good news of Easter.

"In the months to come I hope that we will all stand up for justice, serve the most vulnerable and work to positively transform our communities together."
 
Read more: Ed Miliband's Easter message highlights persecuted Christians in Syria and Iraq | Christian News on Christian Today

EU-US Trade Negotiations Not Transparent: New British parliamentary report on TTIP highlights its dangers - by Polly Jones

TTIP

With just a few days left before the British Parliament dissolves ahead of the general election, a flurry of select committees are publishing reports on inquiries which have been held in recent months. Among them is the Business Innovation and Skills Select Committee’s report on the Transatlantic Trade and investment Partnership (TTIP), published yesterday.

I gave evidence to the TTIP inquiry on behalf of Global Justice Now.

TTIP is an ambitious neoliberal trade agreement being negotiated between the EU and USA. Its purpose is to create new trading opportunities for EU and US business by reducing tariffs, removing unnecessary regulation, liberalising some sectors and giving new protection for investors.

The controversy around TTIP is about what regulation is deemed unnecessary, which sectors will be liberalised and that business will benefit at the expense of governments.

The gravity of these concerns has ignited a furious public campaign on TTIP from trade unions, environmental organisations, international development groups and NHS campaigners, united in their call for the negotiations to stop.

The findings of the BIS select committee report vindicate the public’s concerns.

Many of the arguments for TTIP rest on the benefits it will bring to the UK, European and US economy, often breaking this down to a £400 benefit to every UK family every year. The economic models used to churn out these figures are fundamentally flawed (http://blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk/featured/2013/12/the-false-promise-of-eu-us-trade-talks/) and present a best case scenario which would not deliver any benefits until 2027 and then only £2 per person a week - equivalent to a packet of fishfingers.

The 11 British MPs from across the political spectrum find that “it is impossible at this stage to quantify those benefits in any meaningful way”. They are critical of the figures the UK government uses to promote TTIP and instruct it to undertake a comprehensive assessment of the likely economic benefits of various possible outcomes on TTIP.

Read more: New parliamentary report on TTIP highlights its dangers | openDemocracy

Middle East - UN says 25,000 foreigners have joined IS group, al Qaeda

The panel of experts monitoring U.N. sanctions against al-Qaida said in the report obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press that its analysis indicates the number of foreign terrorist fighters worldwide increased by 71 percent between mid-2014 and March 2015.

It said the scale of the problem has increased over the past three years and the flow of foreign fighters “is higher than it has ever been historically.”

The overall number of foreign terrorist fighters has “risen sharply from a few thousand ... a decade ago to more than 25,000 today,” the panel said in the report to the U.N. Security Council.

The report said just two countries have accounted for over 20,000 foreign fighters: Syria and Iraq. They went to fight primarily for the Islamic State group but also the Al-Nusra Front.

Looking ahead, the panel said the thousands of foreign fighters who traveled to Syria and Iraq are living and working in “a veritable ‘international finishing school’ for extremists,” as was the case in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

A military defeat of the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq could have the unintended consequence of scattering violent foreign terrorist fighters across the world, the panel said.

 And while governments are focusing on countering the threat from fighters returning home, the panel said it’s possible that some may be traumatized by what they saw and need psychological help, and that others may be recruited by criminal networks.

Read more: Middle East - UN says 25,000 foreigners have joined IS group, al Qaeda - France 24