After nearly four years of negotiations between leaders of the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the results of the "people's referendum" have been announced. In a shocking result, the citizens of Colombia have spoken out, with 50.24 percent voted against the peace accord.^[i]

The announcement of the vote has created a sense of confusion; how Colombia could have rejected a deal that would have put an end to the 52-year conflict? The numbers show the 'no' campaign winning by the slimmest of margins, with only a small percentage separating the two sides.^[ii]

Four years of negotiations appeared to have culminated on August 24 with the announcement of the peace deal. At a public ceremony in Cuba, Humberto de la Calle, head of the Colombian delegation, and Ivan Marquez, chief FARC negotiator, signed the historic agreement. On September 26, the accord was once again signed, this time in Cartagena by President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC commander Timochenko as crowds looked onward and the streets of Colombia broke into celebrations. Throughout the entire process both President Santos and ex-president Uribe led fierce campaigns for and against the agreement respectively. Santos begged Colombians to be rational and see the bigger picture, whereas Uribe, playing to the hearts of the people, urged voters to not simply forgive and forget. Opinion polls taken during the weeks building up to the referendum continuously predicted a "yes" landslide, with a comfortable 66% called just before the election.^[iii] President Santos, who has staked his political career on this peace process, believed that his campaign would soon claim victory and peace could finally fall over Colombia.

Dear African-American brothers and sisters,

I am not black. But like you, I am not white.

I do not have the history of slavery you carry like a weight on your back from the day you are born. My ancestors weren't shipped in chains from Africa to the Americas through the Atlantic to work under slave owners. But in 1948, Zionist militias did drive them out of their homes to refugee camps in an infamous event called the Nakba, obliterating many of our villages and towns.

My parents didn't have to protest in the streets to end segregation and institutional discrimination by their own government to win the right to enjoy their most basic civil rights, a remarkable series of events that I teach to my own students here in Gaza. However, they have been labelled "stateless" by the international community, driving them to protest through boycotts, demonstrations and even hunger strikes, introducing the word intifada (shake-off) into our political dictionary.

Police officers from my own government neither pull me over for "driving-while-black," nor stop and frisk me. They do not shoot at me, kill me while unarmed and get away with it. However, I was born under the boot of an oppressor that has controlled almost every minute of my life: the Israeli occupation forces.

The first US presidential debate did not reveal anything new when it came to either candidate. Instead it merely confirmed that Donald Trump is a slobbering megalomaniac who should be kept away from political office in the same way a three-year-old child is kept away from a box of matches. A poster boy for unfettered capitalism, he is a man so divorced from reality — and, with it, his own humanity —that every word that leaves his mouth comes over as a cry for help.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, is a natural born killer, a passionate disciple of US exceptionalism who believes there is no country that can't be improved with a shower of cruise and tomahawk missiles. She and her husband come as a package of liberal opportunism who have made their way through speaking left and acting right. The fruits of this opportunism are mass incarceration, the entrenchment of Wall Street as the golden temple of the US economy, and perpetual war and regime change overseas. When Farrakhan described Hillary as a "wicked woman" he couldn't have been more right. Christopher Hitchens said it even better when he observed, "She and her husband haven't met a foreign political donor they don't like and haven't taken from."

Police have expanded the search for a missing RAF serviceman who was last seen over a week ago, amid fears the 23 year old may have been abducted.

Corrie McKeague, a serviceman based at RAF Honignton in Suffolk, was last seen early Saturday morning in the town of Bury St. Edmunds, 12km south of the base. CCTV footage released by Suffolk Police shows McKeague leave the Grapes pub around 3am last Saturday morning.

On Monday morning, Suffolk police released images of the pink Ralph Lauren shirt and brown suede Timberland boots McKeague is believed to have been wearing at the time of his disappearance.

At least 22 people were killed and scores more injured in a suicide bombing on the outskirts of the northeastern Syrian city of Hasaka, local media reported.

The blast reportedly occurred during a Kurdish wedding when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest in the crowd.

The figures on casualties differ in various reports. State television citing a police source said the casualties also included 55 injured. A Kurdistan24 reporter provided a different number of casualties, with 14 killed and 25 others wounded.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

A Catholic school in Sardinia has decided to ask African refugee children to use separate bathrooms after parents claimed the refugees posed a "health risk" to their kids, with some even transferring their children to other schools, a local newspaper reports.

According to Italy's La Stampa, the story involves two refugees from Egypt and Ethiopia, aged nine and 11, living in Cagliari, Sardinia and enrolled at a private Catholic school there. They were within an inch of death as they made the perilous boat journey from Libya, before they were rescued by the Italian military earlier in 2016, along with 380 other people on that boat.

Their parents are believed to have drowned, and the two were entrusted to two Italian lawyers by the Juvenile Court in Cagliari.

Parents of other children at the primary school believed that the two Africans would infect their children and staged a protest. Several parents even insisted on moving their children to a different school.

Trouble first started when the two kids noticed that other children wouldn't socialize with them. It later emerged that this was the result of the parents' concern that they may have brought unknown African diseases with them to Italy.

Aleppo is the long-suffering city of Syria which the representative of France to the United Nations compared to Sarajevo and Guernica on September 25. Sputnik met with the people involved in the humanitarian help in Aleppo.

According to reports, more than 200,000 people live in the eastern part of Aleppo which is still in the hands of the rebels. 1.2 million people reside in the western part and the media doesn't have much information about those civilians living in the government zone.

Pierre le Corf, founder of the NGO called "We are superheroes," has been helping the population of the west of Aleppo for more than six months.

For the past 288 days, Spain has plodded along without an elected national government. For some Spaniards, this is a wonderful thing.

"No government, no thieves," said Félix Pastor, a language teacher who, like many voters, is fed up with the corruption and scandals that tarnished the two previous governing parties.

Mr. Pastor, a wiry, animated 59-year-old, said Spain could last without a government "until hell freezes over" because politicians were in no position to do more harm.

After two grueling national elections in six months, and with a third vote possible in December, no party has won enough seats or forged the coalition needed to form a government. For the first time in Spain's four decades as a modern democracy, this country of 47 million people has a caretaker government.

That has produced an unprecedented public spectacle: Politicians scheme and plot but reject the difficult compromises needed to form a government. Voters watch ruefully with a mix of fascination and contempt.

The Israeli army has laid a lengthy list of charges against Issa Amro, the longtime Palestinian activist and organizer in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. The indictment includes incidents that span the last six years. Among the 18 charges are organizing an "illegal demonstration" in August 2010, spitting in the direction of a settler in 2012, insulting a soldier in March 2013 and entering a "closed military zone" in February this year.

Amro's lawyer, Gaby Laski, told the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz that the sudden resuscitation of past events for which Amro was arrested and released at the time, "absolutely seems to be a matter of political persecution." "They closed all the cases I was framed for in the past," Amro told Haaretz last week. "I don't think somebody can claim that my political activity is criminal. The court always lets me go when they arrest me for no reason."

A police officer who responded to several calls about illegal street racing and reckless driving found himself surrounded by a mob of angry people, some of whom yelled and cursed at him while others hit and kicked his vehicle as he sat inside.

"F the police, we run the streets," they said, according to Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer, ABC affiliate KFSN-TV reported.

The incident happened the afternoon of Sept. 25. The Fresno Police Department and California Highway Patrol received reports of large crowds blocking traffic a few miles outside of downtown Fresno, according to the police department.

A California Highway Patrol officer, who was first on scene, spotted a reckless driver and got out of his vehicle to make a traffic stop, the police department said. Then, people began yelling at the driver to leave. The driver sped away, and the officer went back to his vehicle to chase him. That's when a crowd of about 30 to 40 surrounded the officer's sport-utility vehicle.

Several people can be seen violently kicking the sides of the SUV while others recorded the incident with their phones.


The officer, whose name was not released, was able to drive away unharmed.

Over the past week, the police department has posted to its Facebook page several still photos taken from videos of the attack.