In 2016,Turkey arrested Abdulkadir Yapcan, a prominent Uighur political activist living in the country since 2001 and initiated his extradition. In 2017, Turkey and China signed an agreement allowing extradition even if the purported offense is only illegal in 1of the 2️⃣countries

On this day in 2007, the bomb blasts in Samjhauta Express killed 68 people including 44 Pakistanis. The immediate investigations revealed irrefutable evidence about the masterminds. In this thread, I would share some Indian newspaper clips which covered the investigations.

1. Lt Col Prasad Purohit, a serving Indian army officer, was arrested for terror conspiracy in the Malegaon blast case. He was the co founder of Abhinav Bharat, a right wing Hindu organisation. He admitted that he was the mastermind.

(The Times of India, Pune, 7 November 2008)

2. Lt Col Purohit met Pragya Thakur on 5 Oct 2008 to tell her that "Our People" had carried out the killings in Orissa, burnt down two churches and also carried out the Malegaon blast.

(The Indian Express, Pune, 24 Nov 2008)

Ironically, Pragya is BJP's MP today.

3. During his narco analysis test, Lt Col Purohit told officers that Praveen Togadia was responsible for the “Samjhauta Express Blasts”. He asked me to find out from Dr Dev, how much RDX was remaining after the blast.

(Pune Mirror, 19 Nov 2008)

4. In his narco analysis test, Lt Col Purohit gave sensational information that he supplied explosives for Ajmer and Malegaon blasts at the instance of Mahant Dayanand Pandey.

(Sakal, Pune and Pudhari, Pune, both of 15 Nov 2008)

Bellingcat and its investigative partners have established that Russian politician, Vladimir Kara Murza, was followed by a specialist FSB team prior to his suspected poisonings in 2015 and 2017.

Members of the same FSB team, some of whom have medical and chemical weapons backgrounds, tailed Alexey Navalny before he was poisoned with a Novichok substance in August 2020.

Kara-Murza is a well-known Russian politician, film-maker and an outspoken critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin. The circumstances around his suspected poisonings have long remained a mystery.

Travel details of FSB team members show they followed Kara-Murza on a campaign trip outside Moscow that ended less than 48 hours before his first poisoning incident in May 2015.

Kara-Murza recovered in the US before returning to Russia. Yet the same team began tailing him again just five months after he came back. He was poisoned for the second time in February 2017.

Why I am disgusted by the human species.

Speciesism Part 2: Marine Life

It is estimated that up to 3 trillion fish are caught from the wild & killed globally every year: This doesn’t include the billions of fish that are farmed. Fish account for 40% of animal products consumed

Fish farming is forecast to overtake wild-caught fish production in 2021: For context, farmed fish accounts for 70% of all farmed animals worldwide. This presents a host of problems. For example, shrimp farming has led to the destruction of three million acres of coastal wetlands

Like all captivity of sentient life fish farming is creating disease. This ends up in the wider ecosystem damaging and polluting wildlife.

Worldwide demand for seafood is expected to double in the next two decades A recent global survey in has estimated that we could see sea life vanish altogether by 2048. Due to the relentless fishing and relentless pollution. The corals are dying.

Whales:

Despite a moratorium on commercial whaling and a ban on international trade of whale products, three countries-Iceland, Japan, and Norway—continue their commercial whale hunts.
16,000 whales have been murdered every year for 83 consecutive years.

Portugal is famous for its mild climate and sunny beaches, but each year hundreds of people freeze to death and millions struggle to survive frigid winter weather.

Here's a quick thread based on my @POLITICOEurope story on Portuguese energy poverty

When I lived in Lisbon my friends and I joked that although the Portuguese were famous for melancholia, uncharacteristic (and unrealistic) optimism defined their approach to thermal insulation: homes seemed to be built as if the weather was expected to be perfect year-round.

While the weather is, indeed, really great for most of the year, it can also be really awful sometimes. In the Summer temperatures can shoot up to truly unbearable levels for weeks on end, and in the Winter the icy humidity can easily make you feel like you're freezing 24/7.

This reality is a huge problem precisely because so many Portuguese people live in homes that don't have the capacity to shelter them from the heat when temperatures rise and the cold when they drop. And that means that every year that means people die because of the weather.

This issue can be traced back to the rural exodus that took place during the second half of the XX century, when millions fled the interior to seek better futures either outside the country — immigrating to France, Germany and Luxembourg — or in cities like Lisbon and Porto.