Dozens of white balloons drifted over Vancouver’s harbor to honor the young Syrian boys whose deaths at sea sparked worldwide outrage about the refugee crisis.
The boys’ aunt, Tima Kurdi, stood looking at the sky on Saturday after she and other mourners let go of the balloons, which had photographs attached of three-year-old Alan and five-year-old Ghalib.
With tears in her eyes, she tossed a bouquet of yellow flowers into the water.
Kurdi said she hopes to bring the rest of her family to Canada, which she made home more than two decades ago.
Her brother, Abdullah, is not ready to leave his Syrian hometown of Kobane, where his sons and wife, Rehanna, were buried on Friday, Kurdi said.
They drowned after piling into an overloaded boat in Turkey headed for the Greek island of Kos. Her brother was among the survivors.
“One day, I will bring him here. He cannot be by himself there,” Kurdi said.
Family, friends and strangers on Saturday packed a small theater for a memorial service.
Kurdi tearfully recalled the last phone call Ghalib ever made to his grandfather, the night before he boarded the boat.
“He said to him: ‘Can you bring your truck here and take me? I don’t want to go with them to the water,’” she said.
Kurdi said his grandfather reassured Ghalib not to worry and that he would be OK.
Kurdi has said she wanted to bring both her brothers to Canada, but she applied first for her eldest sibling, Mohammed, whose application was rejected because it was incomplete.
Kurdi said she does not blame the Canadian government.
She said the failed application prompted Abdullah to embark on the journey with his family.
She said she sent him C$5,000 to pay smugglers to take them in a boat.
“I blame myself because my brother does not have money,” she said.
She said the trip was the “only option” left for the family to have a better life in a European nation.
They were fleeing horrors in Syria, where militants from the Islamic State group had beheaded one of her sister-in-law’s relatives.
Kurdi spoke to both her brothers by phone on Friday. Her grieving brother is proud of his children for becoming a symbol of the dire situation facing Syrian refugees and hopes to see leaders step in to end human smuggling, she said.
“He said: ‘I don’t need anything from this world anymore. What I have is gone,’” Kurdi said. “But my kids and my wife — it’s a wake-up call for the world. And hopefully they step in and help others.”
A bomb on a motorcycle exploded just outside a Hindu shrine in the center of the Thai capital yesterday, killing at least 27 people in an attack the government said was aimed at destroying the economy and the tourism industry.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast. Thai forces are fighting a low-level Muslim insurgency in the predominantly Buddhist country’s south, but those rebels have rarely launched attacks outside their ethnic Malay heartland.
The Erawan Shrine, on a busy corner near top hotels, shopping centers, offices and a hospital, is a major attraction for Thais and foreigners, especially for visitors from East Asia.
The government would set up a “war room” to coordinate the response to the blast, the Nation TV quoted Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha as saying.
Police said the bomb had killed 27 people and wounded 78, many of whom were taken to the nearby police hospital. Five Taiwanese were at the site when the bomb went off, leaving two injured.
when-2015/08/18
where-Bangkok
how- The bomb had killed 27 people and wounded 78, many of whom were taken to the nearby police hospital. Five Taiwanese were at the site when the bomb went off, leaving two injured.
what-A bomb on a motorcycle exploded just outside a Hindu shrine in the center of the Thai capital yesterday, killing at least 27 people in an attack.
The Yangtze
River is the world's third longest river and through much of its history it has
been China's
physical and spiritual lifeline.
From its source on the high Tibetan plateau it runs
through 18 provinces and major cities on its way to the East
China Sea and over recent years it has become a major attraction
for millions of Chinese tourists.
The country's domestic tourism industry, which has
grown alongside its rising middle class wealth, now keeps dozens of boats
afloat on the Yangtze's waters.
The Eastern Star was one of them.
An online advert offers a 13-day voyage from the
eastern city of Nanjing, west against the
current, to the inland megacity
of Chongqing.
It
is not yet confirmed whether that is the same itinerary that was being followed
this time, but if it was, then those on board would have been on their way to
the Three Gorges Dam, just a little further upstream from where the boat has
now gone down.
Many of the passengers, according to Chinese state
media, are over 50 years old and would have paid around $300 (£200) for a shared, economy class,
cabin.
That's still a lot of money for many - not far off China's average monthly wage - but nowadays
quite within reach of the comparatively wealthy senior citizens with their
pension funds and stock-market portfolios in the big eastern-seaboard cities of
Shanghai and Nanjing.
No doubt for some of those on the Eastern Star it
would have been the trip of a lifetime.
And
the Three Gorges Dam, a place of pilgrimage in its own right and a powerful
symbol of China's
rising economic might attracting around two million visitors a year, now has
its part to play in the rescue.
The dam's engineers have been ordered to reduce the
water volume flowing through the giant turbines.
The sinking of the Eastern Star will resonate widely.
A boatful of everyday Chinese tourists - from
grandmothers and grandfathers down to the youngest listed passenger at just
three-years-old - has been lost in the waters of the country's best loved
river.
Tens of millions of comments are being posted online,
with the emoticon of two hands clasped together in prayer featuring prominently.
More than 500 people were injured when fire ripped through crowds at a party at an amusement park outside Taiwan's capital Taipei.
Saturday's incident at the Formosa Water Park is believed to have happened when a coloured powder ignited after being discharged onto the crowd.
Footage showed people panicking and screaming. Inflatable water toys were shown being used as stretchers.
Some 190 people are seriously hurt - 182 are in intensive care.
Some of them breathed in the powder, causing respiratory problems.
Local media said organisers of the Color Play Asia event had been taken in for questioning by prosecutors.
Skin 'gone'
Footage of the incident shows a party in full swing when suddenly fire erupts.
It was "hell", a male student who sustained minor injuries said, according to AFP news agency.
"There was blood everywhere, including in the pool where lots of the injured were soaking themselves for relief from the pain."
His girlfriend added: "I saw lots of people whose skin was gone."
Image captionThe incident occurred during a concertImage captionA trolley was used to rush one young man with leg burns to an ambulance
The fire was quickly brought under control, but the cause of the incident is still under investigation.
The authorities believe something that caught fire caused the coloured powder spray or dust - used to create a party atmosphere - to explode.
The substance is also used in other countries. It is made of dried corn and can be highly flammable, our correspondent says.
The 519 victims were sent to 41 hospitals, and 413 are still in hospital, say municipal authorities.
The incident occurred about 20:30 (12:30 GMT). More than 1,000 people were near the stage at the time.
The fire department said: "Our initial understanding is this explosion and fire... was caused by the powder spray. It could have been due to the heat of the lights on the stage".
Soaring temperatures
Many people flocked to water parks on Saturday as temperatures reached 36.6C (98F) in Taipei and as high as 38C in other parts of Taiwan, says the BBC's Cindy Sui in Taipei.
New Taipei City's mayor, Eric Chu, ordered an immediate shutdown of the water park pending an investigation.
Taiwan has suffered a series of deadly fires in the past couple of years due partly to poor enforcement of building and fire safety codes and illegal construction, our correspondent adds.
A fire earlier this year killed six firefighters, prompting orders to rectify illegally constructed buildings and upgrade firefighters' equipment and training.
Structure of the Lead：
who-The young people who attended the color party
when-28 June 2015
what-More than 500 people were injured when fire ripped through crowds at a party at an amusement park outside Taiwan's capital Taipei.
Saturday's incident at the Formosa Water Park is believed to have happened when a coloured powder ignited after being discharged onto the crowd.
where-Taipei
how- Fire was caused by the powder spray. It could have been due to the heat of the lights on the stage.
RLY THIS MORNINGinZurich(or late last night for those of us stateside),
Swiss plainclothes police entered the Baur au Lac; the five-star hotel was the
site of this week’s annual meeting of FIFA, soccer’s global
governing body. The officers ascertained room numbers from the front desk,
headed upstairs, and arrested six FIFA executives.
Hours
later, across the Atlantic in New York City, the Justice Department unsealed a47-count indictmentagainst14
defendants—including FIFA bigwigs, sports marketing executives, and the owner
of a broadcasting corporation—with charges of
racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering. But there’s a lot of background here, so let’s get
into it.
What exactly did these people do?
The
Justice Department’s announcement primarily cites deals between FIFA, sports marketing
groups, and broadcast corporations for the television rights to air the World
Cup and other international soccer tournaments. Dating back to 1991, the
indictment alleges, those involved conspired to receive bribes from marketing
firms in exchange for exclusive television contracts—to
the cumulative tune of more than $150 million. As Attorney General Loretta
Lynch stated, “It spans at least two generations of
soccer officials who, as alleged, have abused their positions of trust to
acquire millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks.”
I thought I’d heard other, more recent, whispers about FIFA.
In 2010,
FIFA awarded the 2022 World Cup toQatar, which led
toreports of vote buying,
but that’s not a focus
of this particular investigation. This is a federal case, and the indictment
deals chiefly with alleged fraud and corruption in North andSouth
America. Until now, FIFA has deflected widespread corruption
allegations by finding andsuspending
scapegoats, rather than acknowledging any problems at an institutional
level.
So who got arrested?
Most of
the defendants are from CONCACAF and CONMEBOL, the organizations that run North
and South American soccer, respectively. Those arrested inZurichhailed from the Cayman Islands,Trinidad
and Tobago,Nicaragua,Costa Rica,Uruguay, andVenezuela, among others.
In addition, the Justice Department announced unsealed guilty plea deals with
four other individual and two corporate defendants, including former FIFA
executive Charles Blazer (the subject of afascinating investigative
profilelast
year, and an unbelievably corrupt official in his own right), and José Hawilla,
“the owner and founder of a Brazilian sports marketing conglomerate.” Hawilla
in particular will forfeit $151 million as a part of his plea, which
illustrates just how much these guys do not want to go to prison.
While the defendants are a who’s-who of senior FIFA executives
and their broadcast partners who benefited from kickbacks, there’s one big fish not named in the case: FIFA president Sepp Blatter.
Wait, isn’t he a Bond villain?
Joseph “Sepp” Blatter
has been president of FIFA since 1998; under his watch, football has increased
in global popularity and become financially successful beyond imagination. But
while he maintains that FIFA is but a humble nonprofit doing humanitarian work
to bring sport to the world, he’s basically the head of
a shadow nation-state that doesn’t “govern” world soccer so much as it plunders
countries that want to host the World Cup. (Like, say,Qatar.) He’s also enough of a charmer to have said
that women’s soccer would be more popular if the
playerswore tighter shorts.
But in 2013, FIFA covered 90% of the£16 million budget for the filmUnited Passions, a deluge of fictional propaganda about FIFA’s history in which Tim Roth (Pulp Fiction,Reservoir Dogs)
portrays Blatter. Imagine if Oakland A’s general
manager Billy Beane shook down the city of Oakland for enough tax dollars to
pay Brad Pitt’s salary for playing Beane inMoneyball—that’s
what Roth playing Blatter looks like on a grander scale. Blatter is basically
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, if heacted
like a foreign dictator.
How did FIFA get this corrupt?
It all
comes down to how FIFA is organized. Each of the 209 member nations gets a
single vote when it comes to electing a federation President and executive
committee. That means that theMaldives, Trinidad & Tobago, orAndorrahave the same say in federation decisions asBrazil,Germany, orEngland. The smaller countries, and the (mostly) men who
run their countries’ federations, also receive an equal cut of FIFA’s revenues—which means there’s no incentive for them to change any of the structure to the voting
process.
Yeah, but shady sports organizations are everywhere. What about
the International Olympic Committee? Hell, what about the NFL?
FIFA is
uniquely positioned for this kind of epic legal takedown because the Justice
Department kind of gets off on this heavy-lifting display of authority even
outside American borders over the past decade. Also, it helps that Americans
don’t really care
about soccer.
Sure,
soccer has been riding a growing wave of popularity, and the World Cup is now a
more visible event, but it still lags behind many other sports in mainstream
popular consciousness. Because of that, American culture just doesn’t revere soccer enough to
consider FIFA sacrosanct. But consider the basketball version of this: let’s say FIBA, the world organization for basketball, decided to hold
an international tournament in December that meant the NBA would have to
suspend its season for a month. American superstars wouldn’t show up, the best team in the world wouldn’t be properly represented, and the world’s
biggest TV market for the sport would be in open revolt against the event.
That’s essentially what FIFA is doing to European professional soccer leagues
when itshifted the 2022 World CupinQatarto the winter. Because the rest of the
world adores soccer so much, other prominent countries weren’t willing to take
a stand for fear of backlash against its teams. TheUnited Statesis just mediocre enough not to inspire
the same reverence for the sport, which means the Justice Department cares more
about the rampant financial corruption. Endemically American sports leagues—the
NFL, NBA, MLB for instance—can get away with holding cities hostage for
taxpayer money to rebuild stadiums, or locking out players to get a larger
share of league revenue, because Americans care too much about seeing the sport
to rise up against the shady business.
As for the IOC, countries are increasingly
hesitant to even bid for the games because the data is so prevalent that the
financial concessions are not worth the hassle. So many countries refused to
enter or cancelled bids for the 2022 Winter Games that only two cities remain:Almaty,KazakhstanandBeijing,China, which
hosted the Summer Games in 2008. But the vast majority of Olympic sports aren’t as popular year-round as
soccer, so the ire at the IOC hasn’t quite reached the
same fever pitch.
So what happens now?
Well,
Blatterreleased a statementsaying FIFA “will continue to work with the relevant
authorities…to root out any misconduct.” At best, this sounds insincere; at worst, it’s more of the same bald arrogance that took FIFA down this road.
(Ironically enough, an vote is scheduled for later this week that would extend
Blatter’s presidency to a fifth term.)
For the
Justice Department, the next steps are to extradite those arrested back to theU.S.and enact harsh punishments that would serve as
deterrents for future corruption. But it should be notes that theU.S.isn’t the only country rooting around; Swiss
officialsraided FIFA's headquarters
todayas part of an investigation into how the 2018 and
2022 World Cups were awarded. And the clamor continues for FIFA to do something
about the alleged human rights violations swirling aroundQatar’s World Cup construction
efforts.
Will any of this actually lead to change within FIFA?
Only time
will tell. Still, Lynch and the Justice Department will keep coming—and once they’re through that door, other European authorities can’t be far behind.
Structure
of the Lead：
WHO- CONCACAF and CONMEBOL, the organizations
that run North and South American soccer, respectively
WHEN-25 September 2015
WHAT-Swiss
plainclothes police entered the Baur au Lac; the five-star hotel was the site
of this week’s annual
meeting of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. The
officers ascertained room numbers from the front desk, headed upstairs, and
arrested six FIFA executives.
WHY-those involved conspired to receive bribes from
marketing firms in exchange for exclusive television contract
WHERE-Zurich
HOW-It all comes down to how FIFA is
organized. Each of the 209 member nations gets a single vote when it comes to
electing a federation President and executive committee. That means that theMaldives, Trinidad & Tobago, orAndorrahave the same say in federation decisions
asBrazil,Germany, orEngland. The smaller countries, and the (mostly)
men who run their countries’ federations, also receive an equal cut of FIFA’s revenues—which means there’s no incentive for them to change any of the structure to the voting
process.
