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Police in Malaysia say they have uncovered more evidence of human smuggling, with the discovery of at least 139 graves along the country's border with Thailand.

The bodies were found in 28 abandoned forest camps that authorities believe smugglers built to hide migrants who are from Myanmar and Bangladesh. Refugees are sometimes held by smugglers until their relatives come up with more money.

Malaysia's national police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said investigators searching the dense jungle found crudely erected barbed-wire pens and wooden cages. They also found a teddy bear and small-sized sandals, a sign that children were held in the camps.

"It is a very sad scene," Khalid told reporters at a police outpost in the town of Wang Kelian several miles from the camps, one of which appeared large enough to hold about 300 people. "I am shocked. We never expected this kind of cruelty."

The first mass graves of migrants were discovered earlier this month in southern Thailand. Rohingya migrants Burma typically travel by boat to Thailand, hoping to make their way to Malaysia, which is more tolerant of the Muslim refugees.

Autopsies conducted on those remains indicate the victims had starved to death or had died of disease. Investigators say the graves likely contain the remains of Burmese fleeing harsh conditions in Myanmar.

Rohingyas are considered one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. Though they have lived in Myanmar for generations, they are denied citizenship and are segregated from the rest of the population in Rakhine state. Many are prevented from holding jobs, traveling or even marrying.

The United Nations estimates that more than 100,000 Rohingya have fled since clashes in 2012 between Myanmar's Buddhist community and the Rohingya minority. They usually leave in overcrowded boats and, amid a region-wide crackdown on human traffickers, are increasingly abandoned on the high seas. As no country in the region wants them, they are prevented from landing. The Thai Army has been known to tow refugee boats out to sea and set them adrift.

After images of starving migrants adrift in the seas off Southeast Asia emerged this month, several countries loosened their stands on helping survivors. Malaysia and Indonesia have agreed to temporarily take in migrants at sea. Thailand refuses to allow migrant boats to land, but will now allow its navy to assist with medical needs.

Though many refugees have been rescued since the change in policy, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that more than 3,500 migrants are still at sea in perilous conditions.

Malaysia

Rohingya Muslims

human trafficking

Thailand

воскресенье

Defense Secretary Ash Carter says that Iraqi forces lack the "will to fight" the self-declared Islamic State and that they lost western Anbar province to the extremist group despite outnumbering their opponents.

Speaking on CNN's State of the Union, Carter said that although Iraqi forces, or ISF, "vastly outnumber" ISIS in western Anbar, and in their loss of the provincial capital, Ramadi, last week, "What apparently happened is the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force."

The capture of Ramadi was followed quickly by the fall of the ancient city of Palmyra to ISIS.

"We can give them training, we can give them equipment — we obviously can't give them the will to fight," Carter tells CNN.

As The Associated Press notes: "The harsh assessment [raises] new questions about the Obama administration's strategy to defeat the extremist group that has seized a strategically important swath of the Middle East."

The defense secretary's remarks echoed those made by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said last week that "The ISF was not driven out of Ramadi ... They drove out of Ramadi."

But Iraqi lawmaker Hakim al-Zamili, the head of the parliamentary defense and security committee, fired back at Carter's comments. He was quoted by the AP as calling them "unrealistic and baseless."

"The Iraqi army and police did have the will to fight IS group in Ramadi, but these forces lack good equipment, weapons and aerial support," he told the AP.

The BBC reports that the Iraqi government has deployed Shiite militias to the area and that on Saturday those forces had retaken Husayba, east of Ramadi and that heavy fighting was continuing in the area.

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter

palmyra

Islamic State

Gen. Martin Dempsey

Ramadi

Iraq

суббота

In what is being described as an embarrassing release of a confidential email, the Bank of England has inadvertently revealed that it is making financial plans for the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union, should that ever come to pass.

Earlier this month, the newly reelected British Prime Minister David Cameron reiterated his party's commitment to hold a referendum by the end of 2017 on continued membership in the EU.

According to The Guardian, on Friday, the Bank of England, the U.K.'s central bank, "accidentally emailed details" the newspaper details of a contingency plan in the works on how to extricated the U.K. from the EU, "including how the bank intended to fend off any inquiries about its work."

The plan has been dubbed "Operation Bookend," according to the newspaper.

The Guardian reports that "The email, from [Deputy Governor for Financial Stability Sir Jon] Cunliffe's private secretary to four senior executives, was written on 21 May and forwarded by mistake to a Guardian editor by the Bank's head of press, Jeremy Harrison.

"It says: 'Jon's proposal, which he has asked me to highlight to you, is that no email is sent to James's team or more broadly around the Bank about the project.'

"It continues: 'James can tell his team that he is working on a short-term project on European economics in International [division] which will last a couple of months. This will be in-depth work on a broad range of European economic issues. Ideally he would then say no more.'"

While the United Kingdom is one of 28 EU member states, it maintains its own currency and is not part of the Eurozone.

banking

United Kingdom

European Union

пятница

On why he leaves in brand names and clothing labels

Why take it out, would be the real question? The brands that people wear are a serious business. I remember growing up as a kid in South Central Los Angeles, back in the 1980s, when people were being killed for Jordan sneakers. Branding says a lot about luxury, and about exclusion, and about the choices that manufacturers make, but I think that what society does with it after it's produced is something else. And the African-American community has always been expert at taking things and repurposing them toward their own ends. This code-switching that exists between luxury and urban is something that was invented in the streets of America, not Sixth Avenue.

On the painting "Mugshot Study"

Wiley: Well, what this painting is is a portrait of a young black man, possibly between the ages of 18 and 26, I can't really say. He has these beaded necklaces around his neck; nothing more than a wife-beater. It's a painting that's cropped, and in fact, the way that I found this image was, I was walking down the street in Harlem, and I found this crumpled piece of paper. And on it as a mug shot. Presumably it fell out of a police car, and it got me thinking about portraiture, about the choices that one has to make in order to be in a portrait of this type.

"It's a rebuke of the mug shot, it's an ability to say 'I will be seen the way I choose to be seen.'"

- Kehinde Wiley

Cornish: It's also the antithesis of the work people may recognize ... if anything, your work, for a lot of people, has been a rebuke of the mug shot when it comes to black men.

Wiley: It's a rebuke of the mug shot, it's an ability to say "I will be seen the way I choose to be seen." All of the models are going through our history books and deciding, out of all the great portraits of the past, which ones do they feel most comfortable, which ones resonate with them. And so I go through the studios with individuals who go through art history books and choose how they want to perform themselves.

On why he chooses to work in traditional forms rather than create something new

My love affair with painting is bittersweet. I love the history of art — you asked me about that moment that I first looked at the stuff and when I first fell in love with it. It was only later that I understood that a lot of destruction and domination had to occur in order for all of this grand reality to exist. So what happens next? What happens is the artist grows up and tries to fashion a world that's imperfect. Tries to say yes to the parts that he loves, and to say yes to the parts that he wants to see in the world, such as black and brown bodies — like my own — in the same vocabulary as that tradition that I had learned so many years before.

It's an uncomfortable fit, but I don't think that it's something that I'm shying away from at all. In fact, I think what we're arriving at is the meat of my project, which is that discomfort is where the work shines best. These inconvenient bedfellows that you're seeing all over this museum are my life's work.

On the gut feeling of vulnerability that informs his work

What I wanted to do was to look at the powerlessness that I felt as — and continue to feel at times — as a black man in the American streets. I know what it feels like to walk through the streets, knowing what it is to be in this body, and how certain people respond to that body. This dissonance between the world that you know, and then what you mean as a symbol in public, that strange, uncanny feeling of having to adjust for ... this double consciousness.

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