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Oyinbo Celebrities Launch 'Aso Ebi' For Obama's Presidential Campaign
Showing posts with label Latest world news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Latest world news. Show all posts
Thursday, 28 June 2012
Sunday, 17 June 2012
Saudi Crown Prince Nayef to be buried today
Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz, a hard-line conservative credited with pushing back al Qaeda, will be buried Sunday 17 june 2012, a spokesman said. Nayef, named crown prince in October by his brother the king, was heir to the Saudi throne. Saudi state TV, which reported his d*ath Saturday, broadcast Quran readings as an expression of mourning for the prince, who d*ed in Geneva, Switzerland.
"It is a shock. We all knew his health was frail, but his d*ath is a shock," Saudi Foreign Ministry spokesman Osama Nogali said. "We still don't know the reason behind his d*ath." The Saudi Press Agency published a statement from the Royal Court, saying it "condoles the Saudi people on the deceased prince pray to God to bless his soul and to reward him for his services to his religion and homeland."
Biden meets Prince Nayef bin Abdelaziz Nayef's body will arrive in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday and will be buried after afternoon prayer in Mecca, Nogali said. Saudi Arabia pumping out too much oil? After the funeral, a period of mourning -- most likely for three days -- will be announced, a Saudi official said. The official asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
Saturday, 16 June 2012
BREAKING NEWS :Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince d*ad
Prince Nayef, who was also deputy prime minister and interior minister, had left the country for a holiday and medical tests late last month. On 3 June, the deputy interior minister said the prince, who was 77 or 78, was in good health and would return "soon". He was named crown prince in October 2011 after the death of the previous crown prince, Sultan bin Abdul Aziz.
The succession in Saudi Arabia still passes among the sons of former King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, who established the modern kingdom during his reign from 1932 to 1953. Next in line is expected to be Crown Prince Nayef's 76-year-old brother, Prince Salman, who was appointed defence minister in November after spending five decades as governor of Riyadh. King Abdullah, who is 89 years old, had a back operation last year.
A statement from the king published by the official SPA news agency, said Prince Nayef had d*ed on Saturday "outside the kingdom" and would be buried Sunday after prayers in Mecca. It gave no more details. Unconfirmed reports said Prince Nayef had been receiving medical treatment since May at a hospital in the Swiss city of Geneva.
Tuesday, 12 June 2012
Disabled girl, 16, found starved down to 23 pounds by her mother four MONTHS
A 16-year-old girl with cerebral palsy weighed only 23lbs and could not walk or talk when she was removed from her family home after being starved by her mother. Darlene Armstrong measured just 3’10’’ tall when she was rushed to hospital in Chicago in March.
The severely disabled girl could have been rescued four months earlier if the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) had followed set procedures, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune revealed. Darlene’s mother, Rosetta Harris, 50, pleaded guilty to endangering the life of a child. The mother, who had no prior criminal record, was sentenced to 18 months of probation and ordered to undergo parenting classes.
Doctors at the Comer Children’s hospital said the girl, now 17, had been starved for a considerable period of time. When Darlene was brought to hospital she weighed only 23 lbs – just over one and a half stone - the typical weight of a two or three-year-old child.
Monday, 11 June 2012
Horror as six-month-old boy d*e after evil rats Feasted on his Face
On Saturday morning, Nthabiseng lay her six-month-old boy down on the bed next to her. She breastfed him, watched as he went to sleep, and fell asleep herself. A few hours later, she woke up to find that giant rats had been eating her boy’s face! “My child’s mouth was covered in blood and his eyes had terrible cuts.
I called an ambulance and my son was taken to Leratong Hospital,” Nthabiseng Mgangame (27) said. But late that night she got a call that her son, Philandar, had d*ed. The baby was buried yesterday at Lenasia cemetery. Nthabiseng and other residents said evil rats were taking over Spooktown in Bekkersdal, west of Joburg. “They come from the graveyard and invade our shacks at night.
I felt like someone was hitting me on the face. I was asleep but I tried to fight it off. Eventually I woke up and that’s when I saw cuts on my face and blood coming out of my mouth. The rats nibbled on my eyes and I could not see clearly when I woke up,” said a neighbor, Ntswaki Malomane (23) who had also been attacked by the rats. Ntswaki was taken to hospital and treated for rat bites.
Sunday, 10 June 2012
The woman who defied Saudi's driving ban
Growing
up in Saudi Arabia, Manal al-Sharif was taught in school that listening
to music -- just like driving, showing her face in public or making a
decision without consulting her male guardian -- was forbidden and
sinful.
She believed so strongly in music's satanic powers that she burned many
of her father's and brother's cassette tapes so they couldn't play them
anymore.
Then one day in 2001, al-Sharif was about to dub over one of her
brother's American tapes with a lecture on Islam when curiosity got the
best of her.
She let herself
listen to a few bars. And the first song to touch her ears helped
reroute the course of her life.
It was the Backstreet Boys' "Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely."
"They had been telling us that music was Satan's flute -- was a path to
adultery," she said in a recent presentation at the Oslo Freedom Forum, a
human rights conference in Norway. "This song sounded so pure, so
beautiful, so angelic. It can be anything but evil to me. And that day I
realized how lonely I was in the world I isolated myself in."
Al-Sharif, now 33,
gained international attention last summer after she uploaded a YouTube
video of herself driving in a country where women are banned from doing
so. Now she is the face of Saudi Arabia's Women2Drive movement, which
plans to hold demonstrations on June 17 calling for women in that Middle
Eastern country to be able to do something that's downright banal
everywhere else in the world: drive themselves around town in an
automobile.
While driving is technically not illegal for women in Saudi Arabia, a
religious edict, or fatwa, issued in the early '90s, banned the
practice.
A statement from
the Ministry of Interior backed up the decree.
Al-Sharif's action followed a November 6, 1990, demonstration in which
women in Riyadh, the capital, drove without permission. Since her
protest, small groups of women periodically have staged what The New
York Times termed "random acts of women driving" to stand up for their
rights.
Al-Sharif follows in that tradition, but she has caused much more of an
uproar.
But, for her, it all started simply.
The divorced mother of one says she likes to make yearly challenges to
herself around her birthday, April 25. One year, she went sky diving. In
2011, she wanted to drive.
So in May last
year, an acquaintance filmed al-Sharif while she drove through the
streets of Khobar wearing a black headscarf and sunglasses but not
hiding her face. "We want to change the country," she said in the video,
according to a translation posted on YouTube. "A woman, during an
emergency, what's she going to do? God forbid her husband's with her and
he has a heart attack. ..."
"Not all of us live luxurious lives -- are spoiled like queens and have
drivers," she said, in reference to the fact that many women have to pay
for drivers to get around town.
Al-Sharif's act of defiance did not go unnoticed.
The next day,
police detained her. She was held for nine days without being charged,
she said, and then released after considerable international pressure,
much of it coming from the Twitter hashtag #Women2Drive and
corresponding pages on Facebook. The next month, on June 17, dozens of
women in Saudi Arabia got behind the wheel and drove to protest the ban,
according to news reports.
One year later, the Women2Drive campaign is planning to have a second go
of it.
The group again is encouraging Saudi women to go out and drive on June
17.
Amnesty
International has collected thousands of portraits of people who support
the movement and plans to send them to the Saudi royal family, said
Cristina Finch, the U.S. chapter's policy and advocacy director for
women's human rights. And al-Sharif said demonstrations are expected to
take place at Saudi embassies around the world.
Al-Sharif is so concerned about her family's safety that she doesn't
plan to drive on June 17.
"That would
endanger my family, not only me."
iReport: What if you couldn't drive for a day?
But the campaign isn't really about driving, she said. Driving, in one
sense, is a stand-in for other issues. Women in Saudi Arabia won't be
allowed to vote or hold public office until 2015. They can't get
married, leave the country, go to school or open bank accounts without
permission from a male guardian, who usually is the father or husband.
Much of public life is segregated by gender.
Al-Sharif also hopes driving is a starting point -- that it will empower
silent women.
"When women break
that taboo and they're not afraid to drive that car by herself --
that's it," she said. "Now she has the guts to speak up for herself and
take action."
In essence, the Women2Drive campaign is asking women of Saudi Arabia to
go through some of the same transformations al-Sharif did.
In addition to her Backstreet Boys moment, al-Sharif has been subject to
several dramatic turning points in her life. In a moderate family, she
was the Islamic extremist, she said, supporting jihadists of the 1980s,
including Osama bin Laden.
After the
September 11 terrorist attacks, she took a hard look at her beliefs.
"When 9/11 happened, the extremists said it's God's punishment to
America for what they're doing to Muslims," she said in her Oslo
presentation. "I was confused which side to take. I watched the news
that night and I saw this picture -- it was a video of a man throwing
himself from one of these (World Trade Center) towers. He was escaping
the fire. I remember that night I couldn't sleep. That picture of that
man throwing himself was in my head and it was ringing a bell.
Something is
wrong. There is no religion on Earth (that) can accept such
mercilessness, such cruelness. My heroes were nothing but bloody
terrorists, and that was the turning point in my life."
Another change occurred after her divorce, which she said happened
without her consent. "I didn't even know," she said. "He just went and
divorced me. That's it."
After that, she said, she stopped deferring to the men in her life,
including her father, who is her current guardian. Instead of "begging"
them to allow her to take a job or drive a car, she said she politely
tells them that this is the way things will be.
"I reached a point in my life where I'd had enough of men controlling
me," she said.
"I stopped asking
for permission. ... If you change (a Saudi woman's) mind-set -- (if)
she's not weak, she doesn't need permission -- the people around her
will change."
Her biggest problems now concern her son, who is 6.
"The kids in the school, they harass him and bully him because they know
I'm his mom," she said. She tried to explain the situation to him but
couldn't find the exact words. "I promise you when you're older you'll
be really proud of your mom," she recalls saying.
She keeps files of news clippings and awards in hopes that, when he's
older, he will see them and decide she is not the sinful, dangerous
woman her critics portray.
"All I did was ask for rights. I didn't attack anyone.
I didn't harass
anyone. I didn't oppose the system or the country or the authority. All I
said is, 'Why can't I drive?' "
Her work life further complicates this situation.
To speak at the human rights conference last month in Norway, al-Sharif
said she had to quit her job as a computer scientist at Saudi Aramco,
the oil company. Her employer, she said, told her she could not continue
to work if she was going to speak up. The company did not respond to a
CNN request for an interview.
The only way she
could find work at this point, she said, is to leave Saudi Arabia.
But if she does so, she said, she would lose custody of her son.
She doesn't know what she's going to do.
"It's so hard," she said, before backtracking and putting on a stronger
face. "It's OK. I'm used to these things. There's always a price to
pay."
She doesn't expect change to come quickly in Saudi Arabia. But she hopes
that her own story -- one of change and a call for rights -- could be
the inspiration for other Saudi women.
"It took me a long, long time to break the chains that's inside me."
She added: "We're
just keeping our heads up. We're not giving up."
At the end of the Oslo Freedom Forum, al-Sharif received an award for
"creative dissent" -- another accolade she can put in a scrapbook for
her son. In her acceptance speech, she humbly said she didn't know what
the word "dissent" meant until she heard she had won the prize.
After learning the word's meaning, she said she doesn't think of herself
as a dissident. "I find myself someone who is driven by her own
struggle," she said.
Then she ended her speech with a metaphor: "The rain begins with a
single drop."
showing her face in public or making a decision without consulting her male guardian -- was forbidden and sinful. She believed so strongly in music's satanic powers that she burned many of her father's and brother's cassette tapes so they couldn't play them anymore. Then one day in 2001, al-Sharif was about to dub over one of her brother's American tapes with a lecture on Islam when curiosity got the best of her.
She let herself listen to a few bars. And the first song to touch her ears helped reroute the course of her life. It was the Backstreet Boys' "Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely." "They had been telling us that music was Satan's flute -- was a path to adultery," she said in a recent presentation at the Oslo Freedom Forum, a human rights conference in Norway. "This song sounded so pure, so beautiful, so angelic. It can be anything but evil to me. And that day I realized how lonely I was in the world I isolated myself in."
Al-Sharif, now 33, gained international attention last summer after she uploaded a YouTube video of herself driving in a country where women are banned from doing so. Now she is the face of Saudi Arabia's Women2Drive movement, which plans to hold demonstrations on June 17 calling for women in that Middle Eastern country to be able to do something that's downright banal everywhere else in the world: drive themselves around town in an automobile. While driving is technically not illegal for women in Saudi Arabia, a religious edict, or fatwa, issued in the early '90s, banned the practice.
A statement from the Ministry of Interior backed up the decree. Al-Sharif's action followed a November 6, 1990, demonstration in which women in Riyadh, the capital, drove without permission. Since her protest, small groups of women periodically have staged what The New York Times termed "random acts of women driving" to stand up for their rights. Al-Sharif follows in that tradition, but she has caused much more of an uproar. But, for her, it all started simply. The divorced mother of one says she likes to make yearly challenges to herself around her birthday, April 25. One year, she went sky diving. In 2011, she wanted to drive.
So in May last year, an acquaintance filmed al-Sharif while she drove through the streets of Khobar wearing a black headscarf and sunglasses but not hiding her face. "We want to change the country," she said in the video, according to a translation posted on YouTube. "A woman, during an emergency, what's she going to do? God forbid her husband's with her and he has a heart attack. ..." "Not all of us live luxurious lives -- are spoiled like queens and have drivers," she said, in reference to the fact that many women have to pay for drivers to get around town. Al-Sharif's act of defiance did not go unnoticed.
The next day, police detained her. She was held for nine days without being charged, she said, and then released after considerable international pressure, much of it coming from the Twitter hashtag #Women2Drive and corresponding pages on Facebook. The next month, on June 17, dozens of women in Saudi Arabia got behind the wheel and drove to protest the ban, according to news reports. One year later, the Women2Drive campaign is planning to have a second go of it. The group again is encouraging Saudi women to go out and drive on June 17.
Amnesty International has collected thousands of portraits of people who support the movement and plans to send them to the Saudi royal family, said Cristina Finch, the U.S. chapter's policy and advocacy director for women's human rights. And al-Sharif said demonstrations are expected to take place at Saudi embassies around the world. Al-Sharif is so concerned about her family's safety that she doesn't plan to drive on June 17.
"That would endanger my family, not only me." iReport: What if you couldn't drive for a day? But the campaign isn't really about driving, she said. Driving, in one sense, is a stand-in for other issues. Women in Saudi Arabia won't be allowed to vote or hold public office until 2015. They can't get married, leave the country, go to school or open bank accounts without permission from a male guardian, who usually is the father or husband. Much of public life is segregated by gender. Al-Sharif also hopes driving is a starting point -- that it will empower silent women.
"When women break that taboo and they're not afraid to drive that car by herself -- that's it," she said. "Now she has the guts to speak up for herself and take action." In essence, the Women2Drive campaign is asking women of Saudi Arabia to go through some of the same transformations al-Sharif did. In addition to her Backstreet Boys moment, al-Sharif has been subject to several dramatic turning points in her life. In a moderate family, she was the Islamic extremist, she said, supporting jihadists of the 1980s, including Osama bin Laden.
After the September 11 terrorist attacks, she took a hard look at her beliefs. "When 9/11 happened, the extremists said it's God's punishment to America for what they're doing to Muslims," she said in her Oslo presentation. "I was confused which side to take. I watched the news that night and I saw this picture -- it was a video of a man throwing himself from one of these (World Trade Center) towers. He was escaping the fire. I remember that night I couldn't sleep. That picture of that man throwing himself was in my head and it was ringing a bell.
Something is wrong. There is no religion on Earth (that) can accept such mercilessness, such cruelness. My heroes were nothing but bloody terrorists, and that was the turning point in my life." Another change occurred after her divorce, which she said happened without her consent. "I didn't even know," she said. "He just went and divorced me. That's it." After that, she said, she stopped deferring to the men in her life, including her father, who is her current guardian. Instead of "begging" them to allow her to take a job or drive a car, she said she politely tells them that this is the way things will be. "I reached a point in my life where I'd had enough of men controlling me," she said.
"I stopped asking for permission. ... If you change (a Saudi woman's) mind-set -- (if) she's not weak, she doesn't need permission -- the people around her will change." Her biggest problems now concern her son, who is 6. "The kids in the school, they harass him and bully him because they know I'm his mom," she said. She tried to explain the situation to him but couldn't find the exact words. "I promise you when you're older you'll be really proud of your mom," she recalls saying. She keeps files of news clippings and awards in hopes that, when he's older, he will see them and decide she is not the sinful, dangerous woman her critics portray. "All I did was ask for rights. I didn't attack anyone.
I didn't harass anyone. I didn't oppose the system or the country or the authority. All I said is, 'Why can't I drive?' " Her work life further complicates this situation. To speak at the human rights conference last month in Norway, al-Sharif said she had to quit her job as a computer scientist at Saudi Aramco, the oil company. Her employer, she said, told her she could not continue to work if she was going to speak up. The company did not respond to a CNN request for an interview.
The only way she could find work at this point, she said, is to leave Saudi Arabia. But if she does so, she said, she would lose custody of her son. She doesn't know what she's going to do. "It's so hard," she said, before backtracking and putting on a stronger face. "It's OK. I'm used to these things. There's always a price to pay." She doesn't expect change to come quickly in Saudi Arabia. But she hopes that her own story -- one of change and a call for rights -- could be the inspiration for other Saudi women. "It took me a long, long time to break the chains that's inside me."
She added: "We're just keeping our heads up. We're not giving up." At the end of the Oslo Freedom Forum, al-Sharif received an award for "creative dissent" -- another accolade she can put in a scrapbook for her son. In her acceptance speech, she humbly said she didn't know what the word "dissent" meant until she heard she had won the prize. After learning the word's meaning, she said she doesn't think of herself as a dissident. "I find myself someone who is driven by her own struggle," she said. Then she ended her speech with a metaphor: "The rain begins with a single drop."
Jobseeker says he's been turned down for 200 posts because he's 'too clever'
A 'completely unemployable' man who has been to university four times says he has been dumped on the scrapheap because he is too clever to work.
Mark Schwalbe, 52, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire, claims to have applied for more than 200 jobs and has been rejected for every one because he has too many qualifications.
Each employer has told him his CV is too good and he is overqualified for the menial jobs he has applied for, he claims. This is because he has multiple A-levels, a degree and a masters degree as well as an HND and years of experience in the care sector.
He says he has applied unsuccessfully for jobs at fast food chain McDonalds and also high street giants Primark, Wilkinsons and Morrisons.
His frustrations have boiled over to such an extent he wrote to David Cameron and Nick Clegg to tell them about a situation he says is making him miserable.
'I have gone for factory and warehouse jobs where I have been told I am too qualified. Someone even said to me "we don’t want a genius asking why they’re being asked to push a broom". 'I am totally unemployable. I’ve written to David Cameron and Nick Clegg telling them about my situation. There are so many people out there without work.
Turtle Divorce: Giant Turtles Divorce After 115 Years Together
After an impressive 115 years together, two giant turtles at an Austrian zoo are refusing to share their cage anymore, the Austrian Times reported Friday. "We get the feeling they can't stand the sight of each other anymore," said Helga Happ, director of the Klagenfurt-based zoo, where the turtles -- Bibi, the female and Poldi, the male -- have lived for the last 36 years.Before that, they called Basel Zoo in Switzerland home. According to the paper, zoo staff realized something was amiss when Bibi bit off a chunk of her partner's shell. When the attacks continued, Poldi was moved to another cage. Animal experts even attempted couples' counseling -- feeding the turtles aphrodisiacs and encouraging them to play games together. But so far, efforts have failed to bring the shelled lovers back together.
Turtles aren't the only members of the animal kingdom known to "divorce" their partners. Studies have shown that some birds who mated successfully with a partner one year have "divorced" and moved on with another partner in successive years.
Saturday, 9 June 2012
15 year old girl from the Incan Empire who has been frozen for 500 years. (She was a sacrifice)
W
hat do you think?SALTA, Argentina — The maiden, the boy, the girl of lightning: they were three Inca children, entombed on a bleak and frigid mountaintop 500 years ago as a religious sacrifice.
Unearthed in 1999 from the 22,000-foot summit of Mount Llullaillaco, a volcano 300 miles west of here near the Chilean border, their frozen bodies were among the best preserved mummies ever found, with internal organs intact, bl*od still present in the heart and lungs, and skin and facial features mostly unscathed.
No special effort had been made to preserve them. The cold and the dry, thin air did all the work. They froze to d*ath as they slept, and 500 years later still looked like sleeping children, not mummies.
Friday, 8 June 2012
Dog rescues abandoned newborn
A farm dog in Ghana has attained hero status after spending a night protecting an abandoned newborn human. Authorities say the dog, along with its two-week-old charge, was found under a bridge in Winkongo (which is near Bolgatanga, the Upper East Regional Capital of Ghana), near the farm where he lives – with the tiny baby snuggled against him.A search party had been convened to look for the dog, not the baby, when the pooch's worried owner got concerned that her pet hadn't returned home in the evening. Searchers spent most of the night tracking the hound through nearby fields and woods, and came upon the unlikely pair quite some time later; finally locating him under the bridge near the farm he calls home, they were surprised to find the dog curled around a human infant.
Madam Rosemary Azure, Director of Health for the Talensi-Nabdam District, shared the remarkable story with the Ghana News Agency at a ceremony for a different occasion entirely – the launch of two vaccines that will help prevent diarrhea and pneumonia – although it's not impossible that officials will find themselves presiding over a medal presentation to "Hairy Poppins" sometime soon.
The baby himself is in relatively fine fettle after his adventure. His umbilical cord had not been cut, and had gotten infected, but the little one was otherwise unharmed; he's had all his vaccinations, and is currently in the custody of a local health directorate until new, non-bridge arrangements can be made for him. Azure noted that she couldn't say what had led to the baby's desertion by his mother, but speculated that the parents were teenagers, and took the opportunity to caution locals against unprotected s*x. Police are investigating. Any theories on what happened? And are you surprised that a dog took such good care of a human baby?
Do your dogs take care of your kids like they're their own offspring?
Tuesday, 5 June 2012
Massachusetts Man Catches Fire After Applying Sunscreen
Massachusetts man said he suffered second-degree burns from a grill after applying sunscreen aerosol spray on parts of his body.Brett Sigworth said he applied Banana Boat sunscreen to his body before walking over to his grill, not knowing it would still be flammable after it was on his skin. "I went into complete panic mode and screamed," Sigworth said. "I've never experienced pain like that in my life." The result was second-degree burns to his chest, ear and back, the only areas where he applied the sunscreen.
Ten days after the incident, Sigworth is still showing the effects of the incident. The warnings on the bottle of Banana Boat sunscreen read, "Flammable, don't use near heat, flame or while burning." But nothing about once it's applied. Banana Boat officials said in a statement they were sorry to hear about Sigworth's experience and would begin a prompt investigation.
"We are unaware of any prior incidents similar to what Brett has described, but because nothing is more important to us than the safety of our consumers, we are taking this matter very seriously," the statement said.
Dan Dillard, CEO of the Burn Prevention Network, believes the sunscreen might not have fully absorbed into Sigworth's skin and the droplets from the aerosol spray might have still been in the air.
"As he approached the flame, the charcoal simply caught the vapor trail and it follows the vapor trail to where the bulk of the substance is, which is on his body," said Dillard.
"I think if people were told this is flammable for two minutes on your skin, people wouldn't use it," Sigworth said.
He doesn't plan to sue, but it sharing his story and photos with others to make sure no one else ends up in the hospital after applying sunscreen.
"It was so scary," he said, "and I just wouldn't want to see it happen to anybody else."
Friday, 1 June 2012
Five aid workers freed in Afghan raid
The aid workers employed by Swiss-based Medair were en route to flood-stricken parts of Badakhshan province in May when they were k*dnapped. "It was a successful operation conducted by troops and all five aid workers have been released," said Shamsul Rahman Shams, the deputy governor of Badakhshan.
He said five hostage-takers were k*lled in the operation late on Friday. Police earlier said the men were demanding money for the release of the aid workers.
The k*dnapping of foreigners has become relatively common in parts of Afghanistan since U.S-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban government in 2001, heralding a 10-year anti-insurgent war. In 2010, 10 foreign medical workers, including six Americans, were k*lled in Badakhshan in an attack blamed on insurgents.
Police in Badakhshan said the gunmen in the latest incident belonged to criminal groups who were taking advantage of the difficult terrain and the loose grip that Afghan security forces have on the area.
The aid workers had been travelling by donkey to visit a clinic in the remote Yawan district, where the road had been destroyed by floods caused by melting snow after one of the worst Afghan winters in decades.
Afghan forces have taken over security in the provincial capital Faizabad and some parts of Badakhshan ahead of the withdrawal of Western combat forces in 2014.
Obama Ordered Cyber Attacks on Iran
The cyberweapon program code-named "Olympic Games" was begun during the Bush administration, but has accelerated under President Obama's direction, even after the controversial Stuxnet worm escaped into the wild. RELATED: Rhetoric Ramps Up as Obama Pins Terror Plot on Iran The book, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, is written by David Sanger, and is based off interviews with anonymous intelligence sources with access to the highly-classified program.
Sanger appears to confirm that Stuxnet was the work of a joint effort between American and Israeli intelligence units, who were determined to bring down the Iranian nuclear program from within. RELATED: Obama's New Tech Sanctions Could Hit Home While there were concerns within the both the Bush and Obama administrations about the use of uncertain technology and tactics, officials made the calculation that "Olympic Games" was worth trying, if only to prevent the Israelis from launching a dangerous military strike on Iran.
According to Sanger, Rather than shut down the program after it became more widely known, the president ordered it to continue, launching the first computer attack that ended in physical damage to the Iranian plant.
Waitress Gets Half-Million Dollar Tax Refund
Virginia is owed a tax refund of $754, for which she has been waiting eagerly. But the check she opened was for more. A lot more: $434,712. "I think I would have to work most of my life to earn that much money," she says. "Even with undeclared tips," she adds with a laugh.
Virginia's tips aside, she is clearly one of the most honest waitresses in the country. She didn't consider keeping the money even for a moment. The problem is she didn't quite know how to go about returning half a million dollars to the U.S. government. Virginia was on her way to work anyway, so she took the check with her.
Virginia has been waiting tables at Johnny's Downtown Restaurant, a Cleveland institution, since it opened 19 years ago. "I tell people I used to be a tall, slim brunette," she jokes. "Now I stand four-feet-eight with white hair. This is what happens after 20 years of waitressing." She may not be tall or brunette any more, but she hasn't lost any of the personality that makes her one of the restaurant's favorite employees. "She was laughing" when she brought the check in, says fellow employee Mary Lou Adams, who's been a bookkeeper at Johnny's for as long as Virginia has been a waitress.
"She said, you'll never believe what I got in the mail." Both workers and diners at the restaurant joined in the discussion of what Virginia should do. "You have a million new best friends," Virginia says. "My grandchildren especially. They're teenagers." Her grandchildren thought half a million dollars just might get them into the sold-out Cleveland concert of the boy band One Direction. It was not to be. It was decided the best plan was for Virginia to hand carry the check into Cleveland's IRS office the next day.
"Would you believe I had to give them a photo id to prove it was me before I could give it back?" she says. "Otherwise they wouldn't even talk to me."
Once she'd convinced them she wasn't trying to scam the U.S. government by bringing in a large check, she says the IRS people were very polite. They took the check and promised to thoroughly investigate the error.
But Virginia will never learn why she was rich for a day. For privacy reasons, she says, the IRS will not reveal the results of their investigation.
Today is Virginia's day off. She says she's spending it "readjusting."
"It's not easy being poor after you've been rich," she jokes. But she did get something out of the experience.
A local television reporter happened to be eating at the restaurant when she came in with her riches, so now Virginia is a Cleveland celebrity.
Is she getting better tips?
"Last night was a good night," she admits. "Please tell me fortune goes with fame."
Virginia is still waiting for her $754 refund.
10-year-old boy runs back into flaming house to rescue sister
Despite the firing burning his leg during his first escape out, the boy fearlessly dashed back in. Trinity says she was cleaning her shoes with an aerosol spray when the chemical hit a lamp igniting the blaze. 'I thought nothing would happen if I cleaned my shoes off and when I saw it sprayed into the lamp I just saw fire popped out of nowhere,'
Thursday, 31 May 2012
Historic British mansion has 48 rooms but no toilet
Apethorpe Hall, an idyllic British manor with an astounding 48 rooms, has hit the market for what is considered a "bargain" price of 2.5 million pounds (about $3,882,500).
There's just one catch: The place doesn't have a bathroom. The Daily Mail reports that the house was originally built between 1470 and 1480 by Sir Guy Wolston, then sold to Sir Walter Mildmay.
It reportedly stayed in his family for 350 years. In more recent years, the house has been owned by the Catholic Church and Libyan millionaire Wanis Mohammed Burweila. Presumably whoever purchases the house, located in Northamptonshire, England, could afford to install a few modern amenities.
But as with any historic location, there are bound to be certain restrictions on developing a piece of property first constructed several hundred years ago. Along with not having a bathroom, the house comes with a few other catches: an annual $155,300 maintenance bill and a requirement that the hall be open to the public for at least 28 days a year.
The British government reportedly spent more than $6 million renovating the house, which had fallen into disarray over the years and was at one time "on the brink of ruin."
Suspected Seattle gunman d*es
Officers believe the man was responsible for a Wednesday morning k*ling spree that has now left five people d*ad: four from a Seattle cafe, and one at a downtown parking lot as part of a carjacking.
The Seattle Times identified the suspect as Ian Lee Stawicki, a 40-year-old Seattle resident. His brother, Andrew Stawicki, said, "It's no surprise to me this happened. We could see this coming.
Nothing good is going to come with that much anger inside of you."
The gunman left a trail of victims: Two men died at the cafe. Two women and another man died later at hospitals. One of the men k*lled at the cafe was described as a performance artist who was known as the "godfather of Café Racer." He and the other man k*lled at the cafe were members of a local band, God's Favorite Beefcake.
Police went on a manhunt for the suspect after the spate of violence.
"[We] were searching an area in Southwest Seattle when a plainclothes detective saw who he believed to be the suspect," Seattle Police Assistant Chief James Pugel said at a news conference. He said once the suspect saw officers surround him, the suspected gunman knelt down and sh*t himself in the head.
"We strongly believe this is the person who committed the homicides," Pugel said. The man's clothing and other items he had on him also matched what witnesses saw on a suspect who sh*t a woman and drove off in her SUV.
Truck hits students at Calif. high school; 8 hurt
Classes at Hemet High School had just ended for the day when Daniel Carrillo, 18, who was in a 1994 Ford Ranger with his twin brother and a friend, plowed through a crosswalk, California Highway Patrol Officer Darren Meyer said. About 30 people were in the crosswalk, headed toward the student parking lot and the school's football stadium, Meyer said.
"The kids were in the crosswalk doing everything right," said Hemet High School principal Emily Shaw. Eight people were hit: five female students, two male students and a 60-year-old woman whose ties to the school were not clear.
Three of victims were in critical condition, and five more were taken to hospitals with minor injuries, CHP and county fire officials said. None of the victims' names was released.
Witnesses told the Riverside Press-Enterprise that the driver, whose truck was modified for off-road use, was in a right-turn-only lane that heads into the parking lot, but he accelerated into the intersection, running a red light and hitting the pedestrians. "He revved the throttle like crazy.
We heard the RPMs build," student Alex Bissett told the newspaper. "I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. I've seen a lot of crazy stuff, but this tops it." Backpacks and clothing were strewn throughout the intersection after the crash, television station NBC4 reported. The driver was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and he stopped immediately to help the victims, Meyer said. The CHP would decide whether to file criminal charges after a thorough investigation, including a mechanical inspection of the truck, Meyer said. School activities director Al Fernandes said his 17-year-old daughter was among those hit.
He told the Press-Enterprise the girl was conscious and talking but extremely sore at Moreno Valley Regional Medical Center.
Hemet is a desert community about 80 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
The collision came with just two days left in the school year and on the last day of classes for seniors, whose graduation ceremony is Friday night.
There were no seniors among the victims, the Press-Enterprise reported.
Wednesday, 30 May 2012
Liberia ex-President Charles Taylor get 50 years in prison
Last month Taylor was found guilty of aiding and abetting rebels in Sierra Leone during the 1991-2002 civil war.
Special Court for Sierra Leone judges said the sentence reflected his status as head of state at the time and his betrayal of public trust. Taylor, 64, insists he is innocent and is likely to appeal against the sentence, correspondents say.
The appeal process could last up to six months.
