Shocking image of dead child washed up on Turkish beach lays bare Europe's migrant crisis

September 3, 2015

Ankara, Sep 3: An image of a drowned toddler washed up on the beach in one of Turkey's prime tourist resorts swept across social media on Wednesday, after at least 12 presumed Syrian refugees died trying to reach the Greek island of Kos.

child

The picture showed a little boy wearing a bright red t-shirt and shorts lying face-down in the surf on a beach near the resort town of Bodrum. In a second image, a grim-faced policeman carries the tiny body away.

The hashtag "KiyiyaVuranInsanlik" - "humanity washed ashore" - became the top trending topic on Twitter after the picture was retweeted heavily.

The two boats, carrying a total of 23 people, had set off separately from the Akyarlar area of the Bodrum peninsula, a senior Turkish naval official said.

The confirmed dead included five children and one woman. Seven people were rescued and two reached the shore in lifejackets. The official said hopes were fading of saving the two people still missing.

Television images showed the lifeless body of a small boy dressed in a red t-shirt and blue shorts lying face-down on the sand in Bodrum, one of Turkey's most popular beach resorts.

Tens of thousands of Syrians fleeing the war in their homeland have descended on Turkey's Aegean coast this summer to board boats to Greece, their gateway to the European Union.

The official said almost 100 people in all had been rescued by Turkish vessels overnight as they tried to reach Kos.

Aid agencies estimate that, over the past month, about 2,000 people a day have been making the short crossing to Greece's eastern islands on rubber dinghies.

A ship bringing about 1,800 migrants and refugees from one of the islands arrived at the port of Piraeus near Athens on Tuesday night, the Greek coastguard said.

Thousands of people, mainly Africans, have also been trying to reach Europe via boat from Libya to Italy. The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said four bodies had been pulled from the central Mediterranean on Tuesday and 781 migrants rescued, mostly from Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal.

So far this year, more than 2,500 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean, the UNHCR said.

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Agencies
July 17,2020

Washington, Jul 17: US President Donald Trump's economic adviser Larry Kudlow has said that TikTok may cut off ties to its Chinese parent and become a 100 per cent American company to circumvent demands to ban it as India has done.

"I think TikTok is going to pull out of the holding company which is China-run and operate as an independent American company," he told reporters at the White House on Thursday.

The US has not made a final decision on whether to ban it - which has been suggested by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he said.

TikTok being divested by ByteDance Technology Company "is a much better solution than banning or pushing away", said Kudlow, who is the Director of the National Economic Council.

He said that its services will be located in the US and "it will become an hundred per cent American company".

If it becomes a US company without Chinese links, India may have to reconsider the ban on the short video app wildly popular in the country.

India banned TikTok along with 58 other Chinese apps on June 29 citing threats to its defence and national security.

The ban came after a deadly clash between Indian and Chinese troops along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.

Under Beijing's National Security Law, all Chinese companies have to provide intelligence requested by the government, creating risks for users and their countries.

India was TikTok's biggest market outside of China, where it operates as Douyin.

There were about 200 million users in India and over 300 million downloads.

The US comes next with over 30 million users for the app.

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News Network
June 30,2020

Washington, Jun 30: Indian-American Medha Raj has been named by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as his digital chief of staff, a key role in his election campaigns which are entirely going virtual due to the Covid-19 pandemic in the US.

In this capacity, Raj will work across all facets of the digital department to streamline and coordinate how to maximise the impact of its digital outputs, the Biden campaign said.

“Excited to share that I've joined Joe Biden's campaign as the Digital Chief of Staff. 130 days to the election and we're not going to waste a minute!” she said on LinkedIn.

Raj comes from Pete Buttigieg's campaign, who has now endorsed Biden.

The news was first reported by CNN, which the news channel said is part of the efforts of the Biden campaign to adapt to an almost entirely virtual campaign trail brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

The US is the hardest-hit country by the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 2.64 million official cases and over 128,000 deaths.

According to CNN, Clarke Humphrey, who previously worked on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, will act as the Biden campaign's new deputy digital director for the grassroots fundraising.

Jose Nunez is the campaign's new digital organising director.

He is from the Kamala Harris' campaign. Christian Tom is the new director of digital partnerships. Over the past few months, Biden has been relying more and more on digital campaigning and raising funds virtually.

A graduate in international politics from Georgetown University, Raj has earned her MBA from Stanford University.

Biden, 77, is challenging the 74-year-old Republican incumbent President Donald Trump in the November 3 presidential elections.

Former US vice president Biden would formally accept his Democratic presidential nomination at the party’s scaled back convention in Wisconsin’s Milwaukee city on August 20.

In view of the coronavirus pandemic, the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) on Wednesday announced its convention plan to broadcast from Milwaukee and across the nation to reach out to all Americans.

According to some of the latest opinion polls, Biden is leading by more than eight percentage points over Trump.

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Agencies
January 25,2020

Pentagon, Jan 25: Thirty-four US troops had been diagnosed with concussions and traumatic brain injury (TBI) as a result of the January 8 Iranian missile attack on two military bases in Iraq housing American soldiers, the Pentagon said.

"Eight service members who were previously transported to Germany have been brought to the US, they would continue to receive treatment in the US either at Walter Reed or their home bases," Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman told the media on Friday.

Hoffman said that nine service members were still undergoing treatment in Germany, and the rest of the 17 injured troops have already returned to duty in Iraq, reports Xinhua news agency.

Lat week, the US military had said that 11 service members were treated for concussion symptoms due to the missile attacks.

Hoffman noted that the symptoms "are late developing and manifested over a period of time".

In retaliation for the killing of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani in an American drone attack on January 3 in Baghdad, Tehran launched over 13 ballistic missiles on the two military bases in Anbar and near the city of Erbil.

US military initially said that no casualty was reported from the Iranian attack. President Donald Trump then downplayed the seriousness of those injures.

"I heard that they had headaches and a couple of other things, but I would say and I can report that it's not very serious," Trump told reporters on Wednesday at a press conference in Davos, Switzerland.

More than 5,000 US troops are deployed in Iraq to support the country's forces in the battle against Islamic State militants.

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