SAN FRANCISCO — Google has removed dozens of YouTube channels it says are linked to an influence operation run by Iran’s state broadcaster.

The disclosure comes just days after Facebook, Instagram and Twitter purged hundreds of accounts that originated in Iran that were spreading disinformation in the United States and abroad.

In all, Google says it shut down 58 accounts on its video service YouTube and other sites. Each of the accounts had ties to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, or IRIB, according to Kent Walker, Google’s senior vice president for global affairs.

“We identified and terminated a number of accounts linked to the IRIB organization that disguised their connection to this effort, including while sharing English-language political content in the U.S.,” Walker wrote in a blog post.

Google removed 39 channels on YouTube, which had more than 13,000 views in the United States, 13 accounts on the social networking service Google Plus and six accounts on blogging service Blogger, the company said. 

Google also said it took down 42 additional channels on YouTube linked to the Internet Research Agency, which has ties to the Kremlin.

Cybersecurity firm FireEye tipped off Google, which says it has briefed law enforcement officials and shared its findings with lawmakers.

Earlier this week Facebook disclosed it had uncovered a network operated by Iranian state media and removed 652 pages, groups and accounts for “coordinated inauthentic behavior” on Facebook and Instagram.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg hinted more revelations of nation-state disinformation campaigns may come to light in coming months. “I think it’s safe to say we have a number of investigations going on, and we’ll update you when we know more,” he said.

Twitter said it removed 284 accounts for engaging in “coordinated manipulation.” The accounts in question also appeared to originate from Iran. Microsoft disclosed it had uncovered a Russian military intelligence-backed effort to hack visitors of the websites of conservative think tanks which had broken with President Trump and were advocating tougher policies with Russia.

A 2018 report from the Oxford Internet Institute found disinformation campaigns on social media in 48 countries, up from 28 in 2017, despite efforts to combat the spread of false information.

Lawmakers plan to question executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter at a hearing next month. 

In his blog post, Walker said Google recently took similar actions to block state-sponsored actors from targeting political campaigns, journalists, activists, and academics around the world and notified Gmail users who had received suspicious emails from a “wide range” of countries.

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Sears and Kmart are running out of time to pull off an improbable comeback.

The parent company of the two chains, Sears Holdings, announced Thursday that it would close about 5 percent of its remaining stores, all of which it said were losing money.

The retailer plans to close 33 Sears and 13 Kmart locations in November, which will leave it with fewer than 800 full-line stores nationwide. As recently as 2012, the company had 1,305 Kmart stores and 867 full-line Sears stores in the U.S. 

While the store closures mean it will be harder to find a Sears or Kmart this holiday season, both retailers are likely to survive to see the new year.

“I don’t think the company will have disappeared by then as it is doing enough to keep its head above water,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of retail consultancy GlobalData.

But shoppers may find shelves that are far from full. “Stock levels will likely be down as vendors are cautious,” Saunders said.

The company’s finances look increasingly untenable, with a whopping debt payment due in January as losses continue to mount.

Sears stock fell 5.4 percent percent to $1.12 a share in afternoon trading Thursday, and the entire company had a stock market value of less than $124 million.

S&P Global Market Intelligence estimated Sears lost about $251 million in its second fiscal quarter. Those losses are likely to continue barring an unexpected turnaround in fortunes for the retailer.

More: Another 46 Sears and Kmart stores closing in November: Here’s the list

More: Sears, Kmart stores ailing as CEO Eddie Lampert’s hedge fund gets hundreds of millions

More: Sears CEO Eddie Lampert offers ‘critical’ deal to buy Kenmore brand for $400 million

With about $466 million in total cash as of May 5, the company may be running out of options.

On the horizon: More than $400 million in debt payments are coming due in the company’s fourth fiscal quarter, which goes through January, according to Debtwire, a provider of news and analysis of corporate and municipal debt. 

Sears declined to comment. But Chief Financial Officer Rob Riecker said in a statement in May that the company would pursue “repayments, refinancings and extensions of” near-term debt “to support our transformation efforts.”

As investors await details of the company’s second-quarter earnings expected sometime in the next week or so, the retailer’s fate likely rests in the hands of its CEO, chairman and largest shareholder, Eddie Lampert, who owns nearly 50 percent of the company.

Lampert has kept Sears alive over the last several years through a series of store closures, cost cuts and financial transactions, often involving the extension of loans from his hedge fund to the retailer. 

Lampert offered on Aug. 14 to buy the retailer’s Kenmore household appliances brand and other assets in a deal that would inject up to $480 million of badly needed cash into the company. In a letter to the company, he described a speedy Kenmore deal as “critical,” though he did not say what would happen if the company rejects his offer. An independent committee of the company’s board is weighing the deal.

“Getting the Kenmore deal done, it brings in cash, but the reality is it doesn’t change the dynamic of the business,” said Philip Emma, senior analyst at Debtwire.

The dynamic is clear: Sears and Kmart have been unable to stem their steep sales decline and corresponding losses.

And the two chains can’t look to consumers to come to their rescue.   

It has been years since either chain was a major influence in the retail sector. The company has been dwarfed by online giant Amazon and outrun by more agile big-box rivals such Walmart. Meanwhile, specialized store chains such as Best Buy that offer similar products but at cheaper prices have delivered a more appealing shopping experience in person and online.

“Sears and Kmart are just not going to come back,” said Bob Phibbs, CEO of New York-based consultancy the Retail Doctor. “Shoppers are turning to other retailers like Walmart, Kohl’s and TJ Maxx. The few people that still go into Sears or Kmart find dirty stores, items out of stock and uninterested employees. At the end of the day, they’re not innovating, and they gave up on their customers. They are brands in free fall.”

And while Sears is steeped in nostalgia for some Americans, it’s not even considered by many millennials and their teen peers who make up Generation Z.  “Most younger shoppers don’t have Sears on their radar,” said Saunders. “The brand is completely irrelevant to them.”

Lampert has said that he’s “fighting like hell” to ensure Sears survives. Critics say he has designed deals to ensure that he continues making money while also putting himself in position to gain access to the company’s best assets, including its prime real estate. 

The company is making debt payments to Lampert’s investment funds worth up to $220 million annually, USA TODAY reported in June. 

Follow USA TODAY reporters Nathan Bomey on Twitter @NathanBomey and @charissejones.

 

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T20 Blast quarter-final: Kent Spitfires v Lancashire Lightning – Live – BBC Sport

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The United Nations has urged Latin American countries to ease entry for thousands of people fleeing Venezuela’s deepening economic and political crisis.

The call on Thursday came after Ecuador and Peru announced tighter entry requirements for Venezuelans.

“We recognise the growing challenges associated with the large scale arrival of Venezuelans,” UN refugee agency chief Filippo Grandi said in a statement issued jointly with the International Organization for Migration.

“It remains critical that any new measures continue to allow those in need of international protection to access safety and seek asylum,” Grandi added. 

Led by President Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela has been struggling with hyperinflation, economic recession and shortages of essential goods, including food and medicine, as well as a political crisis that has left much of the country polarised.

According to the UN, 1.6 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2015, 90 percent of whom went to countries within South America.

This week, Ecuador and Peru said that those without valid passports would be denied entry, in a move affecting hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who were previously allowed to cross the border with paper ID cards instead.

The UN agencies warned that the new passport requirement will expose people to “further risk of exploitation, trafficking and violence”.

Ecuador recently declared a state of emergency in three northern states and has called for a regional summit to discuss the mass exodus, which sees up to 4,200 Venezuelans arriving in the country daily.

“It is the moment to exchange opinions, to see what different countries are doing in different aspects,”  Santiago Chavez, Ecuador’s vice minister for human mobility, said in a statement on Wednesday.  

“The worst that can happen to the country (Ecuador) is migratory chaos,” he added.

Al Jazeera’s Mariana Sanchez, reporting from the Ecuador-Peru border, said that “there is a lot of anxiety among all these Venezuelans who are trying to get into Peru” before a Saturday deadline where they will be required to have a passport to cross the border.

“There is a lot of expectation that there will be a lot of people coming here in the next few days,” she added.

‘We are stranded’

For its part, Colombia on Wednesday said it wanted a special UN envoy and a “multilateral emergency fund” to help manage the mass exodus. More than a million people have entered Colombia in the past 16 months alone.

Colombia has granted 800,000 of them temporary residence, but many want to travel onwards to Peru, Chile or even Argentina, which has taken in more than 30,000 Venezuelans under a law that allows foreign nationals to remain in the country “when there are exceptional reasons of a humanitarian nature”.

“What is happening in Venezuela is of such gravity that it looks as though we were going through a terrible war like Syria – except there is no war,” Trino Marquez, a sociologist in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, told Al Jazeera.

“And there is the expectation that things will get even worse,” Marquez added.  

Many Latin American governments initially welcomed the migrants with open arms, remembering Venezuela’s role in welcoming those fleeing dictatorships and conflicts in the past.

But the exodus has ballooned this year, stretching social services, creating more competition for low-skilled jobs and stoking fears of unrest.

Earlier this week, residents in a northern Brazilian town drove hundreds of Venezuelans back over the border. 

“There have been days of tension at the border between Brazil and Venezuela, especially at the town of Pacaraima where a shelter where Venezuelans were living was attacked and set on fire, with a group of Brazilians pushing about 1,000 Venezuelans to the Venezuelan side of the border,” said Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo, reporting from Boa Vista, the capital of the northern state of Roraima.

She added that those who had managed to come back were living in shelters.

“I cannot go back to my country, we cannot survive there,” Ricardo Rondon, a Venezuelan in Pacaraima, told Al Jazeera.

“It’s a disaster and I won’t go back as long as Nicolas Maduro is in power. We are stranded” 

On August 20, Maduro’s government rolled out a new currency, the petro, slashing five zeroes from the bolivar in a bid to tame the country’s rampant hyperinflation,

Maduro, who says that he is the victim of a US-led “economic war” designed to sabotage his administration through sanctions, said that using the petro will abolish the “tyranny” of the dollar and lead to an economic rebirth in Venezuela, an OPEC member state home to the world’s biggest crude oil reserves.

But many fear the measures could worsen the situation.

“There has been complete confusion and paralysis since these new reforms came into place,” said Al Jazeera’s Lucia Newman from Caracas. 

“There is little confidence that these new measures are going to make things better … and people believe that the only way out of this crisis is leaving this country,” Newman added. 

But for many, this is not a realistic option. The country has all but stopped issuing passports due to ink and paper shortages, as well as bureaucratic problems.  Those who can afford it have paid fees and brides upwards of $2,000 to get a new passport.

“I need to leave but how? There is no way to get a passport unless you pay $2,000 under the table, which I don’t have,” a Venezuelan citizen told Al Jazeera.

Venezuela’s gross domestic product (GDP) has dropped by about 45 percent since Maduro took office in April 2013, according to the International Monetary Fund. 

“There is no work, I can not support my family or buy milk or diapers for my baby, so I have no choice but to leave,” Alejandro Blanco, another Caracas resident, told Al Jazeera.

Paul Flart’s infamous farts cost him his job. 

The flatulent security guard went viral for filming himself farting at work for the past six months. He dutifully recorded his toots on Instagram, and then blew up on Reddit on Tuesday when someone posted a fart compilation. 

The post even inspired a compilation of his expulsions arranged in order of length, which one Redditor called “the Sistine Chapel of fart videos.”

Unfortunately, the newfound fame cost Paul Flart his job. In an Instagram Live video, Paul Flart — whose real name is Doug — recorded himself getting fired. It wasn’t his actual farting that got him dismissed, but the fact that he recorded himself on the job. 

“It’s come to our attention that you recorded yourself, wearing that uniform, on our client’s property,” his supervisor says. 

When Doug pointed out that none of his videos showed any logos or identifying details about the workplace, his supervisor handed him the official write up. 

Then Doug turns to the camera and shrugs, “That’s it, we lost the job, guys.”

As his now former supervisor berates him for recording on private property, Doug keeps going: “Please stay tuned, I appreciate all of you.” 

So what’s Doug going to do next? He told Vice that he has Paul Flart merchandise in the works. Helpful Redditors encouraged him to contact Jimmy Kimmel and get a manager. 

Doug is ready to hustle for his farts, telling Vice that “we live in a society where this is the big popular thing right now, but next week, unless I’m doing more than keeping it going, it’s going to be nothing.” 

He also hinted at making themed fart content. 

“We can do Paul Flart on vacation, you know, throw in like a Hawaiian shirt and a hat of some sort,” he said. “And then just fart around Florida.” 

The House Bunny

type

Movie

Current Status

In Season

mpaa

PG-13

runtime

97 minutes

Wide Release Date

08/22/08

performer

Anna Faris, Colin Hanks, Katherine McPhee

director

Fred Wolf

distributor

Columbia Pictures

author

Karen McCullah Lutz, Kirsten Smith

Genre

Comedy

The summer of 2008 broke history, and rebuilt it. America suffered through a bitter presidential election on the road to a globewrecking financial crisis. In theaters, cinematic generations were rising — and falling. Superheroes, Will Smith, George Lucas, Guillermo del Toro, Emma Stone, Mike Myers, Sisterhoods and Step Brothers, Batman, and ABBA, adaptations of TV shows we still tweet about, new installments of movie franchises studios won’t stop rebooting: everything Hollywood was before, alongside everything it still is.

In our weekly column Two Thousand Late, we’ve explore the big hits and curious flops from a summer that has never really ended. Last week: The boys of Tropic Thunder. This week: Critic at large Leah Greenblatt and TV critic Darren Franich rediscover the sisterhood of The House Bunny.

LEAH: Darren, can you believe The House Bunny is 10 years old? That’s like, 35 in movie years. I think we can both agree that this not what you would call a quality film; still, if the Academy really is giving out popularity prizes now, I would give half an Oscar, or at least the statuette’s little gold butt part, to Anna Faris.

Hollywood has given us a million iterations of the dizzy blond, I know. But there’s something so brilliant about her Shelley — an aspiring Playmate whose greatest ambition in life is to be Miss November, and maybe learn how to use “hence” in a sentence. (We do know that she’s not looking to make soup.)

A full decade before Faris made a misguided and ultimately totally unnecessary remake of Overboard, she was already giving us her best Goldie Hawn: that kind of fantastic daffiness you can only pull off if you’re actually pretty freaking smart. I like to think of it as sort of the stealth acting equivalent of Dolly Parton’s “Honey, it takes a lot of money to look this cheap.”

Anyway the premise, if you remember, is that Shelley is booted out of the Playboy Mansion for committing the time crime of turning 27, a.k.a. “59 in Bunny years,” and is forced to find a new, Hefner-free life for herself in the outside world. When she stumbles on a band of sorority misfits in need of a house mother — including future Oscar winner Emma Stone, and future Mrs. Fifth David Foster Katherine McPhee — she believes she’s finally found her calling.

The plot isn’t especially memorable, and a bunch of the jokes don’t really land. And yet, there is so much to love: Colin Hanks as Shelley’s love interest, putting his perfectly Hanks-y perplexed face to maybe its best use ever; the recurring gag where all the animals in the neighborhood howl whenever she opens the door to her beater station wagon; the way she delivers the line “the eyes are the nipples of the face.”

But you tell me, did this movie hold up for you? Or was it just never your bag of rabbits to begin with?

DARREN: I feel awkward here, Leah, as awkward as Emma Stone flirtatiously repeating “BATTLESTAR GALACTICA!” through a mouthful of hot dog. I completely missed The House Bunny on the first go-round. Actually, embarrassing journalist revelation: I somehow interviewed Anna Faris without ever seeing The House Bunny. (I had a lot of Mom questions! Mom is a good show!) So watching it for the first time this week was a low-key revelation.

I think you’re right on with your Faris praise. This is one of those post-2000 movie comedies that overdoses on musical montages — I’ll see your Pussycat Dolls’ “When I Grow Up” and raise you one Rihanna’s “Take a Bow”! But I think my favorite moment comes during Shelley’s mental makeover, set to Yael Naim’s “New Soul,” aka “The La La La Song.” There’s something halfway balletic in the way Farris piles high her textbooks, chair-rolling between huge tomes, committing blessed facts to memory. And her two dates with Colin Hanks are comedy bliss. “Can I get it with just one mahi?” “I’m definitely pro-Hawaii.” “Your biceps are huge, kiss me!”

The storytelling’s definitely a bit shaggy, though I think college comedies are less about plot than about getting a compelling group of people together in a setting you’d like to party in. And the Zetas rock! Stone’s a perfect regular-person counterbalance for Faris, pinpointing a chatty-quirky bantering style, “we could, like, play some form of dodgeball, maybe!” (I’m stoked for everything Stone’s accomplished in the ensuing decade — winning an Oscar, hitting Broadway, making everyone forget about Amazing Spider-Man 2 — but I miss her in pure comedies. Easy A for life!) And Kat Dennings really had the market cornered circa 2008 on Hollywood’s idea of hipsterdom: Rocking a flannel shirt and a flannel attitude, throwing out complaints about “An archaically superficial reflection of the male fantasy!” like she’s pre-writing her own movie’s Jezebel thinkpiece.

I’m with the movie through most of Act 2. The Aztec Party is a suitably insane: virgin sacrifice, semi-functional frontyard volcano, all the sorority sisters dressed in Fay Wray chic. And I kinda dig the big turn toward the end, when the Zetas (briefly) become everything they despise. But there are a couple different mission statements here that can’t quite thread together: Tell a story about sisterhood and conjure up a piece of Playboy propaganda, with Hugh Hefner himself playing the kindest possible notion of Hugh Hefner. Like, it’s a super sharp idea to begin with Shelley getting kicked out of the Playboy Mansion because she’s an elderly 27-year-old. When that all turns out to be a misunderstanding — a plot by Shelley’s nemesis! — some of the air goes out of the movie for me.

Was there anything on this rewatch that stuck out to you more than the first time you saw the movie, Leah? Or anything that played differently in 2018? I have to admit, I felt an insanely guilty burst of 2000s nostalgia when the Girls Next Door ladies appeared onscreen. Ah, for the days when reality show loons weren’t so president-adjacent!

LEAH: I got a strong bolt of nostalgia from seeing the Girls Next Door girls, and of course Hef, too (rest in peace and questionable gender politics, Pervy Pajama Grandpa).

It’s true that the movie sort of ingeniously slaps rainbow and kitten emojis all over the ickier aspects of the Playboy empire — which is why I especially love the small moments when Shelley refers to a Mansion life that was maybe a little darker than roller skates and Shaq popping by for birthday cake; remember the throwaway bit about getting roofied, or that her real-world example of “philanthropy” was letting Bob Saget grind on her during a slow dance?

But overall there’s such an innocence to the whole thing, and a sweetness too — way more than other contemporary hard-R comedies like say, Ted, or Harold & Kumar. Faris reminds me a lot of Will Ferrell or Steve Carrell, all the –ells: They will happily take humor to the most ridiculous, raunchy place, but it never feels hard or mean-spirited. The joke is always aimed in the mirror, even if it’s a funhouse one.

Faris has made a career out of playing bouncy air-bubble blonds (okay fine, she was brunette in Scary Movie) and she takes that to its loony Hollywood extreme here, on her own terms. It’s maybe my favorite performance of hers outside of Lost in Translation, which I still think she’s way underrated for. The demon voice Shelley repeats back as a memory device when she learns someone’s name for the first time? I have friends who still do that in social situations. Never apologize, never explain.

The two credited screenwriters, Karen McCullah and Kristen Smith, also wrote Legally Blonde and 10 Things I Hate About You, so they’ve more than earned their spot in the things-you’ve-watched-47-times-on-a-rainy-TBS-Saturday pantheon. I do think they let things get pretty fuzzy around the midway point, and the teachable moments are basically done in skywriting. (Learning is fundamental! Be true to yourself and love will follow! When in doubt, buy a water bra!)

But I still had a lot of fun going back to this again. It was good to be reminded that Bunny gave Tyson Ritter from All American Rejects his first real acting job, and that head sorority mean girl Sarah Wright was great in American Made last year with Tom Cruise, which I wish more people had seen. And that all Faris needs to shine again on a big screen is more good material — and at least one Mahi.

Complete Summer 2008 Schedule:

May 2: Iron Man and Made of Honor
May 9: Speed Racer
May 16: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
May 22: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull
May 30: Sex and the City
June 6: Kung Fu Panda
June 13: The Happening
June 20: The Love Guru
June 27: WALL-E
July 2: Hancock
July 11: Hellboy II: The Golden Army
July 18: The Dark Knight
July 25: Step Brothers
Aug. 1: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Aug. 13: Tropic Thunder
Aug. 22: The House Bunny

WASHINGTON — David Pecker, the CEO of American Media Inc., has been granted immunity by federal prosecutors in a deal that led to him describing President Donald Trump’s role in hush agreements with women ahead of the 2016 election, according to The Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair. 

Pecker, a close Trump ally, has been accused of helping silence negative stories about the president, including purchasing the rights to stories then quashing them in a practice that’s known as “catch and kill.” 

He is accused of doing this with Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model. One of his magazines, The National Enquirer, bought the rights to her story claiming that she’d had an affair with Trump, who was already married to Melania Trump at the time.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the immunity agreement, followed by Vanity Fair and NBC News. All used unnamed sources. 

AMI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from USA TODAY.

In exchange for immunity, Pecker met with prosecutors and described details of the deals, which were arranged by Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, the news organizations reported.

Pecker told prosecutors that Trump had knowledge of the deals, the Journal reported.

Per the Journal, Dylan Howard, the company’s chief content officer would also not be criminally charged.

On Tuesday, the pair were mentioned, though not by name, in an indictment charging Cohen with criminal charges, including campaign finance violations. 

More: Five things to know about Michael Cohen’s guilty plea

Prosecutors charged Cohen helped arrange an agreement with one woman – McDougal – to sell the story of her affair with Trump to The National Enquirer. The magazine paid her $150,000 for the rights to any story involving her relationship with “any then-married man.” 

The magazine was not named in court documents, but prosecutors’ description matches the Enquirer. McDougal is referred to as “Woman-1.” 

Prosecutors said that although the agreement was ostensibly to pay her for writing for the magazine, “its principle purpose … was to suppress Woman-1’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.”

The court records allege the chairman, Pecker, and a chief executive of the magazine’s parent company had agreed to help the campaign “deal with negative stories about [Trump’s] relationships with women, by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.” 

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WASHINGTON – In the face of new and threatening criticism from President Donald Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired back Thursday, declaring that he was in “control” of the Justice Department.

“I took control of the Department of Justice the day I was sworn in, which is why we have had unprecedented success at effectuating the president’s agenda – one that protects the safety and security and rights of the American people, reduces violent crime, enforces our immigration laws, promotes economic growth, and advances religious liberty,” Sessions said in a written statement.

Sessions went on to defend the department that Trump has subjected to months of withering attacks. Those assaults only escalated this week with the conviction of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and guilty pleas entered by former Trump fixer Michael Cohen.

“While I am attorney general, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations,” Sessions said. “I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action.  However, no nation has a more talented, more dedicated group of law enforcement investigators and prosecutors than the United States.

“I am proud to serve with them and proud of the work we have done in successfully advancing the rule of law,” he said.

Sessions’ statement came just hours after Trump offered a blistering critique of Sessions during an interview on “Fox & Friends.”

Asked whether he intended to fire Sessions or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after the midterms, Trump didn’t dismiss the idea. 

“If you look at Hillary Clinton’s person, you take a look at the people that work for Hillary Clinton, and look at the crimes that Clinton did with the emails and she deletes 33,000 emails after she gets a subpoena from Congress, and this Justice Department does nothing about it and all of the other crimes that they’ve done,” he said. 

The president went into detail about his frustrations with Sessions and his decision to recuse himself from heading the Mueller investigation, which in turn put Rosenstein in charge of the inquiry. 

“[Sessions] took the job then he said ‘I’m going to recuse myself,’” Trump said. “I said ‘What kind of a man is this?’”

He said the only reason Sessions was given a job was because of his loyalty to the campaign. Trump dismissed Sessions’ character as someone who “hasn’t taken charge” of Justice.

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Olympiakos v Burnley live in Europa League qualifying play-offs – Live – BBC Sport

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At least 90 percent of the Rohingya population in Myanmar’s Rakhine state fled to neighbouring Bangladesh last year to escape a campaign of violence conducted by the Myanmar army and described by the United Nations as “textbook ethnic cleansing”.

Since August 25, 2017, some 700,000 people crossed the border, bringing with them stories of extreme violence, burned villages, murders and rape.

According to the UN, Bangladesh is hosting more than 960,000 Rohingya refugees, including those who arrived a year ago. But the Bangladeshi authorities say the number exceeds one million.

The vast majority of the latest arrivals are located in the densely-populated Kutupalong-Balukhali complex, known as the “Mega Camp” and home to more than 600,000 people.

Bangladeshi authorities have recently announced plans to relocate 100,000 Rohingya living in border camps to Bhasan Char, an uninhabited river island that emerged from the silt around 20 years ago in the Bay of Bengal.

The government says it will spend some $280m to build housing and infrastructure, suggesting that the island could be used by Bangladeshi people once the Rohingya population is repatriated.

But the plan has drawn criticism from human rights groups, with Human Rights Watch saying the island is unfit to build accommodation on because of its vulnerability to high waves, tides and extreme weather events.

One year into the latest Rohingya crisis, Aung San Suu Kyi has meanwhile defended her government’s actions in Rakhine state and refused to recognise the atrocities committed by the Myanmar military.