Indonesia sends its Navy to patrol waters where Aussie ships intruded – Barack Obama is rolling back some US spy programs that proved embarrassing – A species brought back from the brink needs help – Vlad Putin threatens Gay people.

Jakarta is assigning a Navy Frigate to patrol its southern waters, after Australian patrol ships repeatedly breached Indonesian waters in search of migrants to turn back.  Indonesia is demanding a halt to the turn backs.  Canberra insists the incursions was not intentional and not the policy of the government.  The situation is making relations with Indonesia even worse, after the Abbott government’s botched response to revelations that Australia spied on Indonesian officials including the President and his wife.

US President Barack Obama says the US will no longer spy on its friends and allies.  The US was deeply embarrassed by reports showing how the National Security Agency (NSA) tapped the communications of the leaders of Germany and Brazil – revelations that came from the same source as above-mentioned Indonesia surveillance, fugitive intelligence leader Edward Snowden.  While falling far short of dismantling the US spying apparatus, Mr. Obama also announced that he was ending the NSA’s mass-collection of metadata, and will require the NSA to get court orders to carrying out certain spying.

Benedict XVI kicked out some 400 Roman Catholic priests over child abuse claims during 2011 and 2012, when he was still the Pope.  The Vatican revealed this information in documents filed before a UN hearing on the church child abuse scandal, without fanfare or taking a bow before hungry journalists.  But victims’ advocates say dealing with the priests internally is far from the transparency that is needed to truly deal with the scandal, in which the church is accused of covering up these cases from courts of justice.

South Africa says Rhinoceros poaching is skyrocketing.  1,004 White Rhinos were killed in 2013, a 50 percent increase over the previous year, and more than in any previous year.  Conservationists want desperately to reverse this trend, as the White Rhino is one of their great success stories – only a hundred White Rhinos were alive a century or so ago, and now the population is around 20,000.  But there is growing demand for Rhino horn in Southeast Asia and China for use in superstitious, idiotic, ineffective “traditional” medicines.

Several foreigners were killed in a suicide bomb attack in Kabul, Afghanistan.  The Taliban took responsibility for the bloodshed at the “Taverna du Liban”, a popular spot for foreigners in the Afghan capital.  An International Monetary Fund official is one of the dead.

An Imperial Japanese Soldier who famously refused to believe that he lost World War II is dead.  Hiroo Onoda remained in the Philippine jungle near Luzon for almost three decades after the rest of his country moved on, killing some 30 people he says he mistook for forces attempting to capture him.  Finally in March 1974, his former commanding officer went to the Philippines to rescind his original orders in person, finally convincing Onoda to surrender.  Pardoned in the Philippines, Onoda didn’t adjust well to life in modern Tokyo, so he went to manage a cattle ranch in Brazil for a while, before returning to Japan where he died at age 91.

Uganda’s President has refused to approve the “Kill the Gays” bill, championed by American evangelical Christians.  But not because of any particularly enlightened reasons, President Yoweri Museveni just believes that LGBT people should be “cured” or “rescued” instead of persecuted and punished.  The bill would have required life imprisonment for homosexual acts and also made it a crime not to report gay people. 

Extremely masculine Russian President Vlad “I’m not gay” Putin says LGBT people will be welcome in Sochi for the Winter Olympics.  And then he threatened them, warning LGBT people not to spread “homosexual propaganda”.  Which oddly, doesn’t include shirtless fishing, shirtless hunting, shirtless horseback riding, or shirtless cavorting with mammals that are known to be sex-crazed.  Although it might involve men kissing men or kissing horses, unless they’re doing it in a totally manly way.  And he’s doing this to protect children and – oh dear, that’s just wrong.

Female Capuchin Monkeys throw rocks at the boys as a come on to “relations”.  But it’s just one group, the species as a whole doesn’t do it!

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