News Headlines - 23 December 2013
“For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” he said. “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.” “All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed,” he said. “That is a milestone we left a long time ago. Right now, all we are looking at are stretch goals.”
▽South Sudan: the state that fell apart in a week | The Guardian
The first western journalist into South Sudan reports from Juba on the brutal and sudden descent into civil war
▽Pussy Riot Member: Release is PR Stunt
A member of Russian punk band Pussy Riot who was released from prison Monday denounced her release within hours. Maria Alyokhina told Russia's Dozhd television that she would have preferred to remain in prison. She said that her release was not "a humanitarian act," describing it instead as a public relations stunt.
▽Mikhail Kalashnikov, designer of the AK-47, dies aged 94 | theguardian.com
Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of the assault rifle that has killed more people than any other firearm in the world, has died aged 94. Kalashnikov, who was in his 20s when he created the AK-47 just after the second world war, died in his home city of Izhevsk near the Ural mountains, where his gun is still made, a spokesman for Udmurtia province's president said on state television. The spokesman did not give the cause of death. Kalashnikov was fitted with a pacemaker at a Moscow hospital in June and had been in hospital in Izhevsk since 17 November, state media reported.
▽Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing receives royal pardon | The Guardian
Alan Turing, the second world war codebreaker who took his own life after undergoing chemical castration following a conviction for homosexual activity, has been granted a posthumous royal pardon 59 years after his death.
