If you thought Australia’s border policy couldn’t be more unsympathetic, you were wrong

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NEED TO KNOW:

Police in Indonesia have accused Australia of paying people smugglers to take boats full of asylum-seekers somewhere else. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who has made it part of his life's work to prevent refugees from entering his country, did not deny it.

Abbott said that "creative strategies" are needed to stop the boats. "What we do is stop the boats by hook or by crook, because that's what we've got to do and that's what we've successfully done," he told Australian media today.

The boats he is speaking of are often barely functioning and full of starving people from Myanmar or Bangladesh or Afghanistan or elsewhere. Australia typically uses its navy to push boats back out to sea, which endangers the lives of the migrants. Until recently other countries in the area, like Malaysia and Indonesia, had adopted similar strategies. As a result, thousands of refugees were left floating in the open ocean with no food and no place to go.

Activists have criticized Australia's border policy. It was hard to imagine that it could be any more unsympathetic. But then the news came that it might actually be paying the people smugglers $5,000 or more to turn the boats around.

These smugglers are not typically altruistic souls doing everything they can to save persecuted people. Instead, they are in it for the money. Desperate refugees from Myanmar often scrape together every penny they have to pay smugglers to get them out of the country. Those smugglers rarely follow through on promises. Some even bring the refugees to what are essentially death camps in Thailand, where they use torture to extort more money from asylum seekers. These are the people Australia is now apparently paying.

WANT TO KNOW:

Saudi Arabia is worried about the Islamic State. So it is casting a wide net. Over the last eight months, Saudi authorities have arrested more than 1,000 men with alleged ties to terrorist groups, including the Islamic State.

The Kingdom has good reason to worry. The Islamic State has essentially declared war on Saudi Arabia, and has made no secret of its desire to topple the monarchy and take control of some of Islam's most important cities and institutions. While Saudi Arabia is one of the few places governed by Sharia law, Islamic State leaders have accused Saudi officials of indulging in “intoxication, prostitution, dances, and feasts.” They also say Saudi Arabia has failed to protect the Palestinians.

So the Islamic State has attempted a series of attacks. Last month, suicide bombings at Shia mosques killed 25 people. In November, 11 people were shot dead by masked men in a Shia neighborhood of Al-Ahsa. For now, authorities say the Islamic State and its imitators are more nuisance than significant threat to the country’s security. But they aren't taking any risks.

In the last decade Saudi Arabia has made sweeping changes to fight off threats from terrorist groups. The Interior Ministry is now bigger and has more tools at its disposal to track potential suspects. Schools have also toned down the virulent religious curriculum that critics said made pupils easy recruits. But there remains in Saudi Arabia lingering sectarian rhetoric, and a dangerously large group of unemployed young people. Coupled with turbulent regional politics, extremists are having an easy time finding new people to join their cause.

STRANGE BUT TRUE:

Traveling Americans — that's people from the United States — apparently bring with them a certain reputation, a series of identifying quirks. And non-Americans — that is, people who are not from the United States — can apparently spot them from a distance.

In this video, a South Korean filmmaker asks people on the street how they might know someone is American. “They are bigger,” is one common answer. “They have square jaws,” is another, slightly more surprising answer. “They are loud.” Well, ya, that's maybe kind of true.

The answers are varied. While most are what you'd expect, some of them are unexpected and strangely specific.

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