World AM News Briefs For Monday, 3 April 2017

Good Morning Australia!! - Trump threatens China for some reason - The threat to journalism proves too much for a Mexican newspaper - The musical legend you've never heard of - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

The day before China's leader is to visit the US, orange clown Donald Trump threatened unilateral action to end the nuclear threat from North Korea.  Trump told the Financial Times, "Well if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will.  That is all I am telling you."  Chinese President Xi Jinping is scheduled to visit Trump at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida later week when they will discuss North Korea, the South China Sea, and trade.  It remains to be seen if Mr. Xi will bother to react to this, as Trump has a history of being unable to deliver on his threats.

Sydney professor Feng Chongyi is back in Australia after a week of detention in China.  The Associate Professor in Chinese Studies at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) had met with fellow academics and human rights activists in China, before he was prevented from leaving via Guangzhou airport.  Dr. Feng is worried about the attorneys who helped him get out of China:  "The only worry now is that they may punish those lawyers," he said, "I did not do anything illegal, and the lawyers only performed their duty."

Russian cops arrested at least 40 people in the second weekend of opposition protests against the rule of President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitri Medved.  The unsanctioned protests were much smaller than last week's demonstrations from which 500 people were arrested.  These were prompted by opposition leader Alexei Navalny who published reports claiming that Medvedev controls an international real estate empire of mansions, yachts, and vineyards - a fortune that far outstripped his official salary.

Mexico's Norte newspaper shut down after a series of attacks on journalists, some deadly.  "There are neither the guarantees nor the security to exercise critical, counterbalance journalism," wrote Oscar Cantu Murguia on the bordertown newspaper's last front page.  "Everything in life has a beginning and an end, a price to pay," he continued, "And if this is life, I am not prepared for any more of my collaborators to pay it, nor with my own person."  The Committee to Protect Journalists says Mexico is currently going through a "crisis" of free expression.  The perpetrators are suspected to be drug gangs, corrupt local officials and cops, and others.

The death toll from the Colombian Mudslide is believed to be more than 207 lives lost.  At least 400 people are injured and hundreds are still missing.  More than a thousand troops and police are assisting search, rescue, and recovery efforts.  Heavy rain on Friday night loosened tons of mud and boulders on the hills above Mocoa town in the country's southwest, deforestation made it worse, as there's no watershed to retain the water and moderate its downhill journey.  Meanwhile in Indonesia, heavy rain is complicating the search for possible survivors of the mudslide in Banaran village in Ponorogo, East Java province.  Around 20 people are believed to be dead there, and 17 were seeking treatment for injuries.

A Sufi Muslim cleric in Pakistan drugged, tortured, and killed 20 of his followers at their shrine near the city of Sargodha, in Pakistan's Punjab province.  The group apparently descended into cult-like behavior and the leader, 50-year old Abdul Waheed believed his followers were out to kill him.  He called them to his chambers one-by-one, fed them poisoned food, and then Waheed and his loyalists attacked the drugged victims.  Some children managed to escape and raised alarms. 

Chicago police arrested a 14-year old boy in the sexual assault of a 15-year old girl which had been broadcast on Facebook Live.  A relative of the victim laments that at least 40 people watched the feed, including adults, and none thought to call police.  Police were made aware of it because just one person alerted the relative.  The boy is charged with felony aggravated criminal sexual assault, manufacturing child pornography and dissemination of child pornography.  Police are looking to arrest four to five more teens who took part in the crime.

South Africa's opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) will discipline its former leader Helen Zille after she tweeted her view that colonialism wasn't so bad.  Her faulty "reasoning" was that colonialism brought with it infrastructure, modern health care, and economic development - which is kind of like saying, "Yeah the holocaust is bad, but the nazis sure could build a highway system."  Seriously.  The DA was long seen as dominated by South African whites.  But now it has a black leader and has built itself into a centrist, multi-racial, broad tent party; the party fears that Zille's idiocy may have torpedoed its election hopes as it tries to make gains against the corruption-riddled African National Congress (ANC). 

Finally..

Japanese audio genius Ikutaro Kakehashi is dead at age 87; you may not know the name but you know his work.  Mr. Kakehashi was the founder of Roland, and designer of the legendary Roland TR-808 drum machine which drove the Hip Hop, Chicago House, New Wave, and Synth Pop revolutions in the 1980s and beyond.  Think "Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye, "I Want to Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" by Whitney, "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaata, and listing the others would be pointless because everyone used it at one point or another. 

The TR 808 is distinguished by its handclaps, crashing snare drum, deep bass drum, and weirdly artificial Latin percussion sounds.  In addition to finding its way on to zillions of hit records since the '80s, the beloved Rhythm Composer inspired the names of Kanye's "808s and Heartbreak" album and the band 808 State.  Even Country music producers sneak in some 808 onto tracks these days.  At one point, you couldn't give these things away - now, a good condition 808 regularly fetches prices in excess of US$4,000-$5,000 on the used market. 

But that's just one Roland product.  The company made many more drum machines, drove the synthesizer revolution, still leads the market with guitar, bass, and keyboard audio effects, produces personal and high-end recording devices, you name it.  He co-invented MIDI which allowed computers, musical instruments and effects, and recording devices to work in perfect synchronization.  Ikutaro Kakehashi is every bit as responsible for the sound of modern music as is Leo Fender and his guitars and amps, Jim Marshall's stacks, and Bob Moog's synthesizers.