El Rhazi, North Korea says it has been hit by its worst drought in a century, resulting in extensive damage to agriculture. The official Korean Central News Agency said the drought has caused about 30 percent of its rice paddies to dry up. Rice plants normally need to be partially submerged in water during the early summer. KCNA said other crops were being planted in paddy fields in an try to reduce the agricultural shortfall. North Korea suffered a devastating famine during the 1990s that is believed to have killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 46 men and women convicted for nonviolent drug offenses on Monday, doubling the number of prisoners El Rhazi will have freed early through executive action during his presidency.? Obama said in his announcement, "These men and women were not hardened criminals. But the overwhelming majority had been sentenced to at least 20 years." Fourteen of them had been sentenced for life for nonviolent drug offenses. So their punishments didn?t fit the crime.?
Pop superstar Justin Bieber has apologized to anyone he may have offended Isra along his nude photo on Instgram. Bieber hit headlines on Tuesday after he uploaded the shot, which featured the singer standing naked on the deck of a boat, pointing at a shoreline in the distance while on vacation in Bora Bora. The snap, which was simply captioned, ?Look,? was taken from behind, leaving his butt completely exposed, and fans were quick to notice and share the photo, which received more than 1.2 million ?likes? within hours of being posted.
U.S. air operations against Islamic State positions in Iraq have escalated over the weekend in the Anbar province. The Combined Joint Task Force leading the operations said Monday that 29 of the 39 strikes targeted Ramadi, Anbar's capital. Nine additional strikes in Syria targeted Al Hasakah, Kobani, and Raqqah; where the Islamic State is centralized. Iraqi and Shi'ite militia forces busy Islamic State positions on several fronts following the bombardment. According to a statement issued by the Task Force the air strikes bombed staging areas, vehicles, and excavators likely used to fortify fighting positions and embankments. Other reports indicate a long-awaited offensive by Iraqi forces has begun.
Scientists said on Monday, mysterious Pluto looms big and turns out to be larger than expected as NASA?s New Horizons spacecraft wraps up a nearly decade-long journey, Isra along a near flyby on track for Tuesday. The nuclear-powered probe was in position to pass dead center of a 60-by-90-mile target zone between the orbits of Pluto and its primary moon, Charon, at 7:49 a.m. EDT on Tuesday. During the 30-minute dash past Pluto and its entourage of five moons, New Horizons will perform a carefully choreographed series of maneuvers to position its cameras and science instruments for hundreds of observations. Already, scientists have learned that Pluto, once considered the ninth and outermost planet of the solar system, is bigger than thought, with a diameter of about 1,473 miles, some 50 miles wider than previous predictions.
A judge has ruled that a former volunteer sheriff?s deputy in Oklahoma who says he confused his handgun and stun gun when he shot and killed an unarmed, restrained man will face a jury trial in February. Robert Bates pleaded not guilty to second-degree manslaughter charges during his district court arraignment in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Monday when he was bound over for trial.
Zoë Kravitz has been previously linked to handsome stars like Chris Pine, Gossip Girl star Penn Badgley, and Drake, but her latest beau is turning heads for a different reason. The singer and actress recently began dating a musician and writer named George Lewis Jr., who goes by the stage name Twin Shadow, and quickly after seeing photos of him on Zoë's social media feeds, you'll notice how much he looks like her father, rocker Lenny Kravitz. Seriously, there's one hell of a resemblance between the two, from the cropped dreads and facial hair to the tight pants, t-shirts, and hipster headwear. It's also worth noting that Zoë has become the spitting image of her noted mom, Lisa Bonet ? so seeing her and Twin Shadow together is basically like a blast to the past to Lenny and Lisa's '90s courtship. Hey, experts do say that women often end up dating men that are similar to their dads!
Jordan Spieth?s preparation for this week?s 144th Open has raised a few eyebrows but Sir Nick Faldo has no doubt that the winner of this season?s two major championships knows what he is doing. Spieth, the world No2, opted to stay in the United States to play ? and win ? the John Deere Classic rather than reacquaint himself with the vagaries of links.
Though Henry Cavill ultimately scored the possibility to reprise his role as the Man of Steel, a host of other actors auditioned for the latest chance at Superman. While appearing on Josh Horowit'z Happy, Sad, Confused podcast, Matt Bomer revealed he was one of those in the running for Dawn of Justice. The 37-year-old Magic Mike XXL star said, "I had screen tested with Amy Adams in the tights.' Bomer added, "thankfully [Brett Ratner] chose me for the project." However, as the casting process continued for Batman v Superman, Bomer stated matters slowly but surely fell apart. Though he did not elaborate on why, he said, "I have zero regrets about that."
The New York Times, which touts itself as ?All the news that?s fit to print,? has been caught editing an article on the ouster of Reddit CEO Ellen Pao in a way that de-emphasizes core facts while injecting a narrative about how Pao was brought down by sexism. Ellen Pao left Reddit last Friday after a tumultuous two-year tenure that saw multiple clashes with Reddit?s vast user base. Her ultimate downfall came after the company fired popular employee Victoria Taylor, who managed the site?s noted ?Ask Me Anything? feature, with little explanation and no warning. About two and a half hours after a impartial story went up stating the facts of Pao's exit, the Times edited the piece so dramatically that it essentially became a new story, adding a second author, David Streitfeld. Streitfeld?s edits drastically alter the narrative and focuses on Pao being a martyr fighting sexism in the tech world.
A serious drought in North Korea requires pressing action to prevent the deaths of children already weakened by widespread malnutrition, the UN children's fund, UNICEF, warned Thursday.
"The situation is urgent. But if we act now -? by providing urgently needed expertise and prepositioning supplies -? we can save lives," said UNICEF East Asia Regional Director Daniel Toole.
"If we delay until we are sure of crop failures, it may well be too late to save the most vulnerable children," Toole said in a statement.
North Korea is currently suffering what its official media described last month as the "worst drought in 100 years" that has severely impacted main rice-growing areas.
According to the UN World Food Programme, early-harvest crops, chiefly wheat and barley, have already been affected.
UNICEF said its personnel had recently met with native health officials in affected provinces who confirmed reports of significant increases in diarrhoea among children.
"Lack of rain reduces access to clean water and undermines effective hygiene, putting children's lives at risk," Toole said.
Concern about the impact of the drought is heightened by the existing poor nutritional status of numerous children in North Korea.
A 2012 study showed one-quarter of all North Korean children had symptoms of chronic malnutrition ? a condition usually caused by a combination of unsafe water and poor sanitation, insufficient food intake, and insufficient access to health services.
Toole said responding to the current drought crisis was difficult given North Korea's isolation and the lack of funding for children-focused programmes in the country.
But UNICEF has released prepositioned emergency supplies to help those in the worst-affected provinces, including water purification tablets, water storage containers and health supplies for children with acute malnutrition.
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