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Ross Ulbricht, convicted mastermind behind Silk Road website sentenced to life in prison

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Ross Ulbricht

by Liz Fields, Vice

Ross Ulbricht, the hiking, yoga-loving libertarian convicted of masterminding and running the online black market bazaar known as Silk Road, has been sentenced to life in prison.

At the hearing on Friday, Judge Katherine Forrest, who has presided over the gnarled case that has revealed many twisted plots and shadowy secrets since it began in January, delivered her verdict in front of a packed courtroom.

“I don’t know that you feel a lot of remorse,” Forrest said to Ulbricht. “I don’t think you know that you hurt a lot of people.”

The 31-year-old Ulbricht, a former Boy Scout, sat with his lawyers. Minutes before Forrest delivered her decision, Ulbricht reportedly made a tearful last plea for leniency to the court.

“I’ve changed — I’m not the man I was when I created Silk Road,” Ulbricht said, his voice breaking with emotion. “I’m a little wiser. A little more mature and much more humble.”

The minimum sentence he could have possibly received was 20 years.

Even in the days before his sentencing, Ulbricht had denied his involvement in running the “dark” website that he had previously admitted to founding as part of a libertarian experiment — a sort of Amazon or eBay-type marketplace where users could buy or sell any description of goods, from drugs and arms to murder for hire, with the supposedly untraceable currency known as bitcoin.

In an impassioned letter to the court this week, Ulbricht made a plea for Forrest to spare him life in prison and instead sentence him to 20 years, saying that creating Silk Road turned out to be a “very naïve and costly idea that I deeply regret.”

“Silk Road was supposed to be about giving people the freedom to make their own choices, to pursue their own happiness, however they individually saw fit,” Ulbricht wrote. “What it turned into, was, in part, a convenient way for people to satisfy their drug addictions… I learned from Silk Road that when you give people freedom, you don’t know what they’ll do with it.”

Ulbricht’s mother, Lynn Ulbricht, told VICE News ahead of the sentencing the family was “preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.”

“Even the best possible is a very long prison sentence for nonviolent convictions spanning two decades of the most productive and rewarding years of Ross’ life,” she said.

To this day, Ulbricht has refuted that he operated the site under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts. During the trial, his lawyers tried to convince the court that Ulbricht was simply a patsy, and after creating the site, left it in the hands of another operator — the “real” Roberts — who turned it into the $1.2 billion underground emporium it became before the feds shuttered the site.

But from the start, the evidence against Ulbricht was manifold and damning. Screenshots of drug listings, several journals providing information on transactions in painstaking detail, fake identification documentation, and thousands of pages of chat logs were just some of the data seized by the multi-agency federal taskforce from Ulbricht’s home and laptop after his arrest in October 2013.

Some of that evidence retrieved became the subject of inquiries into authorities’ dubious investigative methods, including early allegations of an illegal search and seizure of data from Silk Road’s servers abroad. The revelation in March that two senior Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents also allegedly pilfered hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoins during the nearly two-year investigation also did nothing to allay the multiple online government-conspiracy theories surrounding the case.

But despite these setbacks, Ulbricht was ultimately convicted in February on a raft of charges, including drug trafficking, computer hacking, money laundering, and hiring assassins to take out members of Silk Road.

This week, federal prosecutors sent their own 16-page letter to judge Forrest asking her to slap Ulbricht with “a lengthy sentence, one substantially above the mandatory minimum,” to “send a clear message” to others involved in the dark website racket. Since Silk Road was shut down, many other drug marketplaces peddling similar — or worse — products have sprung up to meet demand.

“Ulbricht’s conviction is the first of its kind, and his sentencing is being closely watched,” the letter says. “The Court thus has an opportunity to send a clear message to anyone tempted to follow his example that the operation of these illegal enterprises comes with severe consequences.”

Forrest appeared to agree.

“In the world you created over time, democracy didn’t exist,” she told Ulbricht as she delivered his sentence. “You were captain of the ship — the dread Pirate Roberts.”

“Silk Road’s birth and presence asserted that its… creator was better than the laws of this country,” she added. “This is deeply troubling, terribly misguided, and very dangerous.”

The federal prosecutor’s office did not immediately respond to VICE News’s calls for comment Friday.

Lynn Ulbricht said that her son plans to appeal the decision and that his attorneys say there are “very strong” grounds for appeal.

For now, Ross Ulbricht will remain in the Brooklyn, New York, jail he has spent more than a year in since his arrest, teaching his fellow inmates math, physics, and yoga, his mother said.

Edward Snowden a 'Total Hero,' says Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak

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“It’s almost like you can’t have any secrets anymore,” Steve Wozniak says. “And the modern generation just accepts this as the status quo.”

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and says NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is a 'total hero.' (Photo: Getty)

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and says NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is a ‘total hero.’ (Photo: Getty)

by Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams

Privacy advocate and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak considers NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to be a “total hero” and laments a missed opportunity to build more privacy protections into modern computer operating systems, according to a recent interview.

Asked about Snowden in an interview with the Middle East technology website ITP.netpublished late last week, “Woz” said: “Total hero to me; total hero. Not necessarily [for] what he exposed, but the fact that he internally came from his own heart, his own belief in the United States Constitution, what democracy and freedom was about. And now a federal judge has said that NSA data collection was unconstitutional.”

Regarding today’s privacy protections—or lack thereof—the inventor, engineer, and programmer, who designed both the Apple I and Apple II computers in the late 1970s, is unimpressed.

“It’s almost impossible [to protect yourself] because today’s operating systems generally get so huge that they can only come from a few sources, like Microsoft, Google and Apple,” he said. “And those operating systems have so many millions of lines of code in them, built by tens of thousands of engineers over time, that it’s so difficult to go back and detect anything in it that’s spying on you. It’s like having a house with 50,000 doors and windows and you have no idea where there might be a tiny little camera.”

“It’s almost like you can’t have any secrets anymore,” he added. “And the modern generation just accepts this as the status quo.”

Wozniak, known to many by his nickname Woz, also lashed out at mega-corporations like Google and Facebook, which he said “are trying to make money off knowing things about you.”

As Yoni Heisler notes for the tech website BGR, “Woz’s own views on digital privacy are particularly intriguing because Woz’s own work on the Apple I and Apple II helped kickstart the personal computing revolution, helping to establish the framework for the connected world we live in today.”

During the interview, conducted during an international tech conference in Dubai, U.A.E., Wozniak also claimed the U.S. would look like Dubai—a city known for infrastructure spending, ultra-modern architecture, and lavish wealth—if it pursued different spending priorities.

“Everything is first-class,” he said of Dubai. “The United States used to talk, when I was growing up, like that’s what we were. The U.S. would look like this if we didn’t spend all our money on the military.”

Sexual violence an 'Epidemic' on US campuses, study confirms

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Activists have long pointed to cultural and institutional "hatred of women" as a cause of rape. | Photo: Reuters

Activists have long pointed to cultural and institutional “hatred of women” as a cause of rape. | Photo: Reuters

by teleSUR

A staggering 37 percent of women have been raped, or subjected to an attempted rape, by the time they start their second year of college.

“Sexual violence on campus has reached epidemic levels,” a study published on Wednesday revealed.

The study by Brown University found that 15 percent of the 483 female college students surveyed had experienced “incapictated rape” (when alcohol or drugs are involved), while 9 percent had been subjected to “forcible rape” (when physical force is exercised) during their first year of college.

“If you swap in any other physically harmful and psychologically harmful event, a prevalence of 15 percent would be just unacceptably high,” Kate Carey, professor of behavioral and social sciences at Brown University School of Public Health and main researcher of the study, told Reuters.

Prior to starting college, 28 percent of the women surveyed had already experienced an attempted or completed rape. This increased to 37 percent by the time the time women start second year of college, the study found.

The research distinguishes itself from other studies for focusing primarily on first-year female students, examining their experiences over time, and distinguishing between “incapacitated” and “forced” cases of rape.

The study suggested four commonly used tactics by perpetrators of rape: manipulation through arguments and continuous pressure, use of physical force, physical or psychological threats, and performance of sexual acts while incapacitated by drugs or alcohol. It also looked at five types of contact the women surveyed had to report in the survey. These include caresses, kisses, or sexual touching; oral sex; attempt at sexual intercourse without success; forced sexual intercourse; anal sex or penetration with a finger or objects.

Intervention to prevent the epidemic of sexual violence on university campus was urged by the researchers. They suggested that “risky drinking behavior” ought to be one site for rape prevention.

Activists for gender justice, however, have long pointed at structural root problems causing rape and femicide. In a 2014 article for Salon, Katie Mcdonough called on people to “examine our culture of misogyny and toxic masculinity, which devalues both women’s and men’s lives and worth, and inflicts real and daily harm. We must examine the dangerous normative values that treat women as less than human, and that make them (…) deserving of death.”

Six months later, Pentagon admits (maybe) we killed some kids in Syria

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While notable for admitting the possibility it killed two young children, admission called “too little, too late” by expert who says deathtoll of innocent people far exceeds Pentagon statement

Five year old Daniya Ali Al Haj Qaddour and her father, alleged militant Ali Saeed Al Haj Qaddour, both killed in a US air strike at Harem, November 5th 2014 (via SNHR)

Five year old Daniya Ali Al Haj Qaddour and her father, alleged militant Ali Saeed Al Haj Qaddour, both killed in a US air strike at Harem, November 5th 2014 (via SNHR)

by Jon Queally, Common Dreams

In what one journalist described as the “first near-confirmation” of civilian deaths caused by U.S.-led airstrikes inside Syria, an official announcement by the Pentagon on Thursday that one of its bombs “likely led” to the death of two young children was met by derision and suspicion by experts who say the real deathtoll of innocent people killed in such strikes far exceeds the U.S. military’s tepid admission.

The acknowledgement of the deaths was included in a report stemming from an internal investigation conducted by the Pentagon into specific bombings that took place on or around November 5 of last year near the Syrian town of Aleppo. According to the U.S. military, the strikes were aimed not at Islamic State (ISIS) militants—the group used by President Obama to initially justify U.S. airstrikes in the Syria—but rather another militant group operating in the country known as the Khorasan group. Despite early and repeated denials surrounding the incident and a six-month long probe, the report itself states that a “preponderance of the evidence” found by the investigators suggest the bombing “likely led to the deaths of two non-combatant children.”

However, in the wake of the official statement, investigative journalist Chris Woods, who has extensively tracked the civilian impact caused by U.S. drone attacks and airstrikes around the world, was quoted by the Guardian as saying the U.S. admission was simply “too little, too late.”

Woods, who has reported for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and more recently founded Airwars.org, a not-for-profit transparency project aimed at tracking and archiving the international air war against ISIS, said its inconceivable that U.S. military needed six months to investigate the incident and that its finding ignore widely available and key evidence. Citing his own research, Woods said last November’s attack may have killed up to four children, including five-year-old Daniya Ali al-Haj Qaddour.

“I am absolutely sure that Daniya was killed [in the November strike],” Woods said, adding that her mother and brother were also severely wounded in the bombing. The facts about this case “have been in the public domain for six months,” Woods continued, pointing to images and details of the children’s deaths which circulated on social media in the days immediately following their deaths. “I can’t see a conceivable benefit to to waiting six months to confirm this.”

According to the Guardian:

Thursday’s admission comes after several months of denials by the US that any civilians had been killed in either Syria or Iraq during the coalition’s campaign. But watchdog groups, like the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, warn that many more civilian casualties have gone uncounted. By SOHR’s count, at least66 civilians have been killed by coalition air strikes in Syria alone since last September.

A family of five was killed in April in a suspected coalition-led air strike in Iraq,the Guardian has reported.

Since 8 August, the US-led coalition, which includes, Canada, Britain, France, Jordan and other countries, has carried out several thousand air strikes as part of the campaign to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State militant group, which last year declared it had established a caliphate across vast swaths of Iraq and Syria. The coalition has launched nearly 4,000 air strikes in both Iraq and Syria.

Earlier this month, Al-Jazeera was among those who reported on a U.S. airstrike in northern Syria which may have killed more than fifty civilians. In a response to the Pentagon’s Thursday anouncement posted on Airwars.org, the monitoring group said it will soon publish its own major report on civilians allegedly killed by the coalition since U.S.-led bombing in both Iraq and Syria began last August. It said:

Our provisional findings show that between 384 and 753 civilians have been reported killed in some 97 problem incidents, according to local and international media, and Iraqi and Syrian monitoring groups.

Verifying these claims can be extremely difficult. Most areas being bombed by the coalition are occupied by Islamic State. Civic society has often collapsed, and local people live in fear of retaliation for speaking out. Even so, evidence linking the coalition to civilian deaths can often be compelling.

“The first claims of civilian deaths from coalition actions emerged just days after air strikes began in August 2014,” said Woods. “Since then, hundreds of likely non-combatant deaths have occurred, many in incidents better documented than the November 5th incident which CENTCOM has now conceded.”

Despite the fact the children were killed during the airstrike, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. James Terry, commander of the military operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, said that “From the investigation it can be determined that sound procedures were followed and must be followed in the future.”

UN says Burundi refugees cholera epidemic worsening

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At least 3,000 cases of cholera have been reported in Tanzania since last week and the outbreak has claimed 31 lives.

Thousands of Burundian refugees have crossed into Tanzania during nearly a month of political unrest [Azad Essa/Al Jazeera]

Thousands of Burundian refugees have crossed into Tanzania during nearly a month of political unrest [Azad Essa/Al Jazeera]

by Al Jazeera

Kigoma: The cholera epidemic in the remote Tanzanian fishing village of Kagunga where about 50,000 refugees are still stranded on the shore of Lake Tanganyika is worsening, the UN refugee agency has said.

At least 3,000 cases of cholera have been reported since last week and the outbreak has claimed 31 lives to date.

The UNHCR said on Friday the cholera outbreak had become “a new, worrying, and growing additional complication” for the tens of thousands of refugees seeking refuge in Tanzania.

“At this rate, further cases can be expected over the next days and until the situation can be brought under control,” the agency said in a statement.

The influx of Burundian refugees into Tanzania has been steadily increasing during nearly a month of political unrest and a failed military coup in the East African state.

More than 300 cases of cholera were reported on Thursday across the Lake Tanganyika region and there are concerns the epidemic is yet to peak.

There is still no confirmation of the source of the epidemic, though there is some speculation that refugees carried it across the border, with cases of cholera already been reported in the southern Burundian town of Makamba.

But with the overcrowding and widespread unsanitary conditions in Kagunga, the UNHCR said it was likely the current epidemic was sourced by the lake itself.

Sanitation challenges

On Thursday, the WHO told Al Jazeera the lake was “most certainly” contaminated. Tens of thousands continue to consume water from the lake though the UNHCR together with Tanzanian authorities have arranged up to 8 litres of drinking water per person per day.

“While our priority is to get the refugees out of Kagunga because of the dire situation, we are still working on better access to safe water and promote hygiene there,” Celine Schmitt, UNHCR’s senior regional external relations officer, told Al Jazeera.

Tanzanian authorities also told Al Jazeera that there were moves to build more latrines, in an urgent bid to curb new infections. There were currently just 94 latrines servicing the entire refugee population, with 24 already full.

The UNHCR have supported the transfer of over 15,000 refugees from Kagunga to Nyagurusu near the town of Kasulu. The camp now has 35,000 Burundian refugees, according to the camp’s manager.

Meanwhile the UNHCR said it feared that the number of refugees could double in the next six months because of the continuing political crisis in Burundi.

“We are launching an appeal that aims to protect and assist up to 200,000 refugees in Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC,” Schmitt said.

Two Tanzanians have ready died from cholera over the past week and authorities are mindful of the larger implications on the local community if the epidemic is not curbed.

Those suffering from cholera and acute diahorroea are being treated at a set of treatment centres operated by the International Rescue Committee.

The WHO declared cholera a level one emergency in the region on Wednesday, though officials said that case management and awareness could save lives.

“We have enough drugs and we are putting our resources into this and ensuring this does not spread”. Christopher Kamugusha, programme officer for WHO in Tanzania, said.

“The situation can be managed with adequate amount of medication and swift action.” he added.

Cholera kills Burundi refugees as aid agencies struggle

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At least 33 people die amid worsening medical conditions while tens of thousands stranded on Tanzania’s Kagunga Island.

Some refugees have been transferred to Kigoma, where they are processed at the Lake Tanganyika stadium [Azad Essa/Al Jazeera]

Some refugees have been transferred to Kigoma, where they are processed at the Lake Tanganyika stadium [Azad Essa/Al Jazeera]

by Al Jazeera

Kigoma: Humanitarian agencies are struggling to cope as tens of thousands of Burundian refugees stranded on Kagunga Island in Tanzania face worsening medical conditions.

UNICEF officials told Al Jazeera on Thursday that conditions at Kagunga were “tough” and that a cholera outbreak had made conditions even more dire.

At least 33 people have died, with 27 deaths believed to have been cholera related.

The World Health Organization declared cholera a level 1 emergency in the region on Wednesday.

“It is very, very tough in Kagunga, and our focus now is to try and save those living in these very poor conditions,” said Thomas Lyimo, a health officer at UNICEF.

More than 100,000 people have crossed into Tanzania since political unrest began in Burundi on April 26.

At last count, some 70,000 refugees were still in Kagunga, waiting to be transferred to the Nyarugusu camp outside Kigoma.

Christopher Kamugusha, programme officer for WHO in Tanzania, said it was now a matter of case management and establishing a treatment centre in Kagunga.

“We have enough drugs and we are putting our resources into this and ensuring this does not spread”.

Authorities say there are just 94 latrines for use by the 70,000 people currently in the fishing village of Kagunga.

The arrival of so many refugees in a village with a population of no more than 11,000 has overburdened every health and social service facility.

“It is better than earlier, and it is in a manageable state, but there is so much to be done,” Lyimo said.

With just two boats operational, only 2,000 refugees are transferred each day to Kigoma, where they are processed at the Lake Tanganyika stadium in the town.

“Assuming the numbers don’t change in Kagunga, it will take a month to transfer all of them to safety at the camp,” Lyimo said.

But the refugees continue to arrive; at least 150-200 people continue to arrive every day in Kagunga, which is not the only entry point for them.

There are at least five other points but Kagunga is by far the busiest.

Many families have been separated from each other, with some cases of unaccompanied children making their way in to Tanzania.

US releases trove of Bin Laden letters

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More than 100 documents taken from late al-Qaeda chief shed new light on his mindset before he was killed by US troops.

Osama bin Laden

by Al Jazeera

The US has published a trove of declassified documents that shed new light on the mindset of Osama bin Laden, the late al-Qaeda leader, before he was killed by US Navy Seals in 2011.

Hunkered down in his Pakistani compound, Bin Laden pleaded with his followers to stay focused on attacking the United States instead of being dragged into Muslim infighting.

“The focus should be on killing and fighting the American people and their representatives,” Bin Laden wrote in one of the documents revealed on Wednesday.

The letter was among thousands of files found by US Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011 when they descended on Bin Laden’s hideout in the garrison town of Abbottabad and shot him dead.

US intelligence agencies have now declassified more than 100 of these documents taken from Bin Laden’s archive, after politicians ordered the move and critics accused the CIA of withholding material.

The AFP news agency was given exclusive access to the documents ahead of their release.

CIA translations

Jeff Anchukaitis, spokesman for the US Director of National Intelligence’s office, said the release of “a sizeable tranche of documents recovered during the raid” was in keeping with US President Barack Obama’s call for “increased transparency”.

It was also in accordance with a law obliging the spy agencies to review all the Bin Laden materials for possible release, he said.

The documents are Central Intelligence Agency translations of the originals in English, and AFP had no way to independently verify the materials or the accuracy of the translation.

The release came shortly after US journalist Seymour Hersh alleged that Washington’s official account of the hunt for Bin Laden and the raid that led to his death was a lie.

But CIA spokesman Ryan Trapani said the declassification had been long planned and had not been intended as a response to Hersh’s report.

From the strategic and theological discussions to the mundane details of domestic funding and security measures, the documents show Bin Laden once again attacking the West in a spectacular fashion.

Mindful of drone strikes taking out senior leaders, Bin Laden frequently referred to security headaches and advised against communicating by email.

He scolded his followers for gathering in large groups and fretted about a microscopic bug being inserted in his wife’s clothes.

He laid out plans to groom a new cadre of leaders willing to risk the dangers of joining al-Qaeda, and his associates discussed arrangements for smuggling Bin Laden’s favourite son and likely heir, Hamza, to Pakistan.

Citing domestic US public opposition to the Vietnam War, Bin Laden argued that the only way to alter US foreign policy was to “start striking America to force it to abandon these rulers and leave the Muslims alone”.

But the documents also highlight deep divisions among his followers over how to wage their campaigns.

Bin Laden warned that conflict with regimes in the Middle East would distract the extremists from hitting hard at what as far as he was concerned was the real enemy – America.

“We should stop operations against the army and the police in all regions, especially Yemen,” he wrote.

The correspondence reflected Bin Laden’s “worry that disunity within the global jihadist movement could spell its demise,” said a senior US intelligence analyst.

The letters also show Bin Laden was stunned by the Arab uprisings that erupted across the region from 2010 and urged his deputies to seize the moment of “revolution” and rally Muslim youth.

ISIL and Bin Laden

Al-Qaeda’s branch in Iraq, which would later morph into the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group – and which now increasingly overshadows al-Qaeda – also came up in the documents.

Bin Laden and his then deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, received a scathing rebuke in a letter from some Iraqi supporters, who demanded they denounce the bloodletting in Iraq.

The Jihad and Reform Front warned Bin Laden that God would hold him to account “for blessing the work done by the al-Qaeda in Iraq organisation without disavowing the scandals that are committed in your name”.

“If you still can, then this is your last chance to remedy the jihad breakdown that is about to take place in Iraq, that is mostly caused by your followers,” said the letter dated May 22, 2007.

Bin Laden wrote of the need for large-scale terror operations, even though some of his deputies were finding it difficult to organise massive attacks as they tried to avert drones overhead and US eavesdropping.

One document recently declassified in a terrorism trial in New York but not released on Wednesday quotes Abu Musab al-Suri, an al-Qaeda veteran, who advocated going after smaller targets of opportunity as a more realistic approach, intelligence officials said.

“Bin Laden at the time of his death remained focused on large-scale operations while other al-Qaeda leaders believed smaller operations, or inciting lone terrorist attacks, could succeed at bleeding the West economically,” the intelligence analyst said.

Bin Laden failed to win the argument. After his death, al-Qaeda’s leadership called for lone-wolf attacks, and Suri’s idea of “individual jihad” won out.

ISIL, which was officially excommunicated from al-Qaeda, now controls vast swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria and its online propaganda has been blamed for inspiring attacks from Paris to the Dallas suburbs.

Philippines may open doors to Rohingya migrants

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Government indicates willingness to provide welfare for boat people, after other SE Asian nations reject new migrants.

Students in Indonesia have protested the government's policy to reject further Rohingya migrants [EPA]

Students in Indonesia have protested the government’s policy to reject further Rohingya migrants [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

Manila: The Philippine government has said it is willing to open the country’s doors to minority Rohingya migrants who have fled Myanmar and Bangladesh, saying that it is committed to the United Nations pledge to protect asylum seekers and refugees.

“Let us not fall short of providing humanitarian relief and assistance that is asked of us, as we pride ourselves to be a compassionate and hospitable people,” Senator Paolo Aquino said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

“We call on the proper international agencies to process the legal issues immediately for the welfare of the boat people,” said Aquino, a cousin and political ally of President Benigno Aquino.

The statement came after Philippine Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said on Monday that the country has an obligation to admit and protect asylum seekers, even when the refugees do not have documents to prove their status.

“If there are boat people who come to us seeking the protection of our government, there is a process, there are existing mechanisms on how to handle these refugees or asylum seekers,” de Lima said in a statement.

The Philippine justice secretary’s remarks came after a spokesman of the president was earlier quoted as saying that the refugees could be turned away because they do not have the necessary documents.

The statements were issued as other Southeast Asian nations continued to reject taking in more migrants stranded on boats off Southeast Asia’s shores, despite growing international pressure.

Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia have been in high-level talks in an attempt to solve the refugee crisis after boats holding more than 2,000 migrants, including many Rohingya Muslims and Bangladeshis, landed in their countries in recent weeks.

UN agencies urged the three regional powers on Tuesday to step up their sea rescue operations and let desperate migrants reach land.

In a joint statement, joined by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the agencies called on the three countries to stop trying to push boats away from their territorial waters.

Authorities should “provide for effective, predictable disembarkation to a place of safety with adequate and humane reception conditions” and establish screening procedures to identify those in need of international protection as refugees, the statement added.

The Philippines has a long history of hosting refugees from other Asian countries, and as far as Europe.

During World War II, then Philippine President Manuel Quezon ordered the admission of 1,500 Jewish refugees fleeing from the Holocaust in Europe.

Following the war and the communist victory in the civil war in China, thousands of Chinese refugees also settled in the Philippines.

In the 1970s, as Vietnam was engaged in a civil war, the Philippines also provided sanctuary to Vietnamese “boat people” building a Vietnamese village in the western island of Palawan. Most of the refugees were eventually resettled in other countries, many of them in the US.

Saudi to purchase Pakistani nuclear weapons

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The Saudi-Pakistan talks come amid the P5+1 negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. (AFP/File)

The Saudi-Pakistan talks come amid the P5+1 negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. (AFP/File)

Saudi Arabia has reportedly held talks with Pakistan for the purchase of nuclear weapons amid the ongoing nuclear negotiations between world powers and Iran, according to a US senior official who spoke with The Sunday Times.

Tensions in the region have escalated in light of the framework agreement the United States and the other world powers have made with the Islamic Republic, with Saudi Arabia increasingly concerned with the repercussions of a deal that may see the easing of sanctions leaving Iran more legroom to continue developing weapons of mass destruction.

The strain in relations was evident when Saudi Arabia’s King Salman skipped a major summit in Washington this week, along with the leaders of three other Gulf nations.

“For the Saudis the moment has come,” The Sunday Times quoted a former US defense official as saying.

“There has been a long-standing agreement in place with the Pakistanis and the House of Saud has now made the strategic decision to move forward.”

Saudi Arabia is skeptical that any final, comprehensive deal with Iran will curb its nuclear ambitions, with the West’s engagement  having actually “opened the door to nuclear proliferation,” a military source told The Sunday Times

The agreement allows Iran to keep 5,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges at Natanz, and another 1,000 centrifuges at its underground enrichment facility in Fordow.

According to one senior British official who also spoke with The Sunday Times, military leadership from all Western countries “assume the Saudis have made the decision to go nuclear.”

“The fear is that other Middle Eastern powers — Turkey and Egypt — may feel compelled to do the same and we will see a new, even more dangerous, arms race.”

US court sentences Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death

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Jury decides Tsarnaev should be executed for his role in 2013 marathon bombing after 14 hours of deliberations.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

by Al Jazeera

A US jury has decided Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should die for his role in the Boston marathon bombing in April 2013.

The sentence on Friday came after 14 hours of deliberations on whether Tsarnaev, who was a teenager when he carried out the attacks with his elder brother Tamerlan, should be imprisoned for the rest of his life or be executed.

The 21-year-old did not react when the sentence was read out, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Tsarnaev was convicted last month of all 30 federal charges against him, 17 of which carried the possibility of the death penalty.

Three people were killed and more than 260 were injured when two pressure-cooker bombs packed with shrapnel exploded near the marathon finish line on April 15, 2013. Dzhokar and Tamerlan also killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer days later.

Tsarnaev’s lawyer, Judy Clarke, admitted from the beginning that he participated in the bombings, bluntly telling jurors in her opening statement: “It was him.”

But the defence sought to show that most of the blame for the attack fell on his older brother, who wanted to punish the US for its actions in Muslim countries. They said Dzhokhar was an impressionable 19-year-old who fell under the influence of a brother he admired.

Prosecutors portrayed Tsarnaev as an equal partner in the attack, saying he was so heartless he put a bomb behind a group of children, killing an 8-year-old boy.

Carmen Ortiz, prosecutor for Massachusetts, commended the jurors, saying the verdict was “fair and just”.

Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said that he hoped “the verdict will bring with it a significant level of comfort and solace to all hurt”.

“Regardless of how you feel about the death penalty, today was also about sending a message. And, the message sent is one that says terrorism in our city will not be tolerated,” Evans added.

“Our thoughts and prayers remain with families of [victims] Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell, Lingzi Lu and MIT Police Officer Sean Collier.”

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