British govt. arrests two men over racist tweets!

Two men have been arrested after racist comments about the disappearance of three-year-old Mikaeel Kular were posted on Twitter.

Police said the men, aged 19 and 26, had been arrested, questioned and released on bail.

The tweets were brought to the attention of Police Scotland by members of the public in Edinburgh.

Police Scotland officers liaised with Hampshire and Derbyshire forces to identify the suspects.

On Saturday, Police Scotland said they were investigating another offensive tweet relating to the case which had originated in the Manchester area.

Ch Supt Mark Williams, Police Scotland's divisional commander for Edinburgh, said: "Any reports of racist, offensive or abusive comments made online will be thoroughly investigated and those responsible will be brought to justice.

"If you commit an offence, we will investigate it and you will be prosecuted."

Miss Kular, a mother of five, told police that she put her son to bed at her Edinburgh home at 9pm on Wednesday, but when she went to wake him at 7.15am the following morning he was missing.

She also said that on the night he allegedly disappeared he was sleeping alone in the bedroom he normally shared with his twin sister Ashika.

Officers initially suggested that the little boy may have got up in the middle of the night, put on his clothes, and left the building “for a wander”.

His disappearance led to a large search operation involving hundreds of members of the public who travelled from all over Scotland in a bid to find the youngster, who was described by nursery staff as a “happy wee boy”.

For two days, Police Scotland insisted there was no evidence of criminality, and expressed sympathy for Mikaeel’s “very distraught” mother.

Kabul restaurant attack- Afghan Govt. blames foreign intelligence!

Afghanistan's National Security Council chaired by President Hamid Karzai.

has accused "foreign intelligence services" of being behind Friday's deadly attack on a Kabul restaurant.

It said such "sophisticated and complex" attacks could not have been carried out by "ordinary Taliban".

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the suicide assault in central Kabul which killed 21 people.

The victims included the local IMF chief and citizens of at least nine nationalities.

Friday's attack saw a suicide attacker detonate explosives outside the gate of the heavily fortified Taverna du Liban, then two gunmen entered the restaurant and started shooting. The gunmen were eventually shot dead by the security forces when they arrived at the scene.

Others traced human shapes representing the victims who died.

"The NSC said such sophisticated and complex attacks are not the work of the ordinary Taliban, and said without doubt foreign intelligence services beyond the border are behind such bloody attacks," a statement quoted by the AFP news agency said.

Demonstrators gathered at the scene of the attack on Sunday to protest against the Taliban insurgency.

"We came to denounce the acts of terrorism that took place here," said Lailee Rahimi, who works for the Counterpart International aid group.

"We wanted to show sympathy to the victims of the attack. We are against acts of the insurgents," she added.

A number of Afghan officials have been suspended as an investigation is carried out into the attack.

The restaurant, in Kabul's Wazir Akbar Khan area, had come under attack before and was considered a favourite destination for foreign nationals, diplomats and aid workers.

Those killed in the attack:

• Eight Afghan citizens
• Two Lebanese: Wabel Abdallah, the 60-year-old Lebanese head of the International Monetary Fund's Afghanistan office, and the restaurant's owner, Kamal Hamade
• Three UN civilian staff from Russia, the US and Pakistan; the Russian national, Vadim Nazarov, was said to have been working on kick-starting peace talks with the Taliban, while Basra Hassan, a Somali-American, was working as a nutrition specialist for Unicef
• Two other American citizens, both of whom worked for the American University of Afghanistan
• Two Britons: Labour Party candidate for the European Parliament elections Del Singh, who was working for the economic advice consultancy Adam Smith International, and Simon Chase, reportedly serving with the EU police mission Eupol
• Gnana Nagarajah, a Malaysian national who also worked for Adam Smith International
• A Danish woman also serving with Eupol
• Two Canadians who worked for a financial services firm.

Source: BBC news desk

Three men arrested for abducting and gang raping a teenager for 3 days!

These three men took turns to rape the school girl for three days before she was rescued by the police following a tip-off by neighbours who heard her cry for help.



The suspects, Fred Musa, 23, Ezekiel Lucky, 22, and Benjamin Promise, 23, allegedly abducted a 17-year-old girl as she was returning from school and confined her in their house on Erediuwa Street, off Upper Sakonba Road, Benin City, Edo State for three days.

The Edo State Commissioner of Police, Mr Foluso Adebanjo said the three suspected rapists after abducting the girl switched off her mobile phone thereby preventing her from making any distress call to her family.

The helpless girl gained freedom after she cried out for help through the window of the room she was locked in while the three suspects were out of the house.

Neighbours who heard her rushed to the police who quickly responded and rescued the girl.

One of the suspects, Fred Musa, recounting the incident said: “During our school days, we used to rape ladies. We have been seeing the girl pass in front of our house. We tried to ‘toast’ her but she turned us down. We decided to abduct her while she was returning from school about 2.30pm. We dragged her into our house and ordered her to take off her clothes. From that moment we detained her for three days and engaged her in marathon sex. We gave her food to eat and we came in anytime of the day to bash her.”

Another suspect, Benjamin Promise, said: “It was our neighbours who called the police and the girl was rescued. We were reluctant to release her because we just enjoyed her.”

One of their neighbours speaking said: “It was a shock when we heard the voice of the girl crying and shouting for help through the window where they locked her. Immediately we went to the police station to report the ugly incident.”

The traumatized school girl recounted her experience on how she was abducted while returning home from school: “Whenever they saw me going to school, they would always ‘toast’ me but I would turn down their request. Then one day when as I was coming back from school, they dragged me to their house and ordered me to remove my clothes. They had sex with me for three days. I pleaded and pleaded. They were adamant to my plea before the neighbours heard my voice and went to report the case at the police station and I was rescued.”

For their felonious act, Edo Police boss, Adebanjo said that the three suspects would soon be charged to court to face the wrath of the law.

‘He was stealing my glory’ – Pastor says after killing another preacher!

The Police in Osun state has arrested a cleric for allegedly killing a fellow preacher.

The accused, identified simply as Pastor Adepoju, was said to have murdered one Julius Olusoji Oguntoye, also a pastor, with a cutlass.

Adepoju, who presides over a branch of the Apostolic Church located at the Oke Afata, Gbongan area of the state reportedly butchered Oguntoye because according to him, the latter was “stealing his glory". 

It was gathered that the murder took place at about 8.00 p.m in front of the mission house of The Apostolic Church, Okeola, Gbongan, which was the deceased’s official residence. 

Immediately the Divisional Police Officer of Gbongan Division received the information, he reportedly led other detectives to the scene where they recovered the cutlass used by Adepoju to inflict fatal injuries on his fellow pastor, and he confessed to the crime. 

Information gathered revealed that trouble started at about 6.40p.m. when Pastor Adepoju left his residence with a cutlass and went to Oguntoye’s official residence, and accused him of casting a spell on him, thereby ‘stealing his glory’ and those of his children. He was also said to have alleged that the deceased rained curses on him, warning him to stop all those things. 

The murder suspect thereafter engaged the late pastor in a fight during which he used a sharp cutlass to inflict a deep cut on the chest and stomach of the deceased, resulting in multiple injuries and instant death. Confirming the incident, the police spokesperson in Osun state Police Command, Folasade Odoro, a Deputy Superintendent of Police said that the suspect had been arrested and transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Osogbo, while the remains of the deceased had been deposited at the General Hospital Mortuary, Ile-Ife for autopsy.

Source: Saturday Tribune

Rio's iconic Christ the Redeemer's statue left thumb hit by lightning!

The iconic statue of Jesus overlooking Rio de Janeiro, one of the city's most recognizable landmarks, has lost a thumb tip to lightening. 



It was reported that Christ the Redeemer, the giant monument and tourist magnet that looms atop nearby Mount Corcovado, was damaged in a huge storm Thursday night. 




Standing at 38 metres - pedestal and all - 



the statue was named in a 2007 global poll as one of seven new wonders of the world. 

Site caretaker Father Osmar Raposo said the giant concrete figure that juts from the mountain top some 710 metres above Rio's beaches, would undergo repair next month. 

A broadcast helicopter images of the statue on its G1 web portal, showing part of Christ's right thumb missing. 



Brazil's national space institute INPE counted more than 40,000 lighting flashes during the three-hour storm which felled dozens of trees and flooded 
streets. 

Winds gusting at 87 kilometres per hour forced one of Rio's airports to close and brought a halt to boat trips across the city's Guanabara Bay.

Mysterious stone 'rawled up' to Mars Rover Opportunity!

A strange black and white stone has appeared out of nowhere near the Opportunity Mars Rover, which has not moved for more than a month already. The "guest" was noticed in the photos made by the Mars Rover by Vitaliy Egorov, a famous Russian "Martianologist blogger". 

The Mars Rover Opportunity has been working on Mars for almost 10 years now - since January 24, 2004. At present, the Rover is waiting out the Martian winter; it stands in Solander Point next to the Endeavour crater and has not moved since the end of November. The Rover only moves his manipulator.

However, as Egorov has found, a "guest" has made an appearance near the Mars Rover: a stone, which was not seen in the picture on the 3,536th Sol (Martian day) since the beginning of the mission, turned out to be in plain view on the 3,537th Sol.

Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_01_15/Mysterious-stone-rawled-up-to-Mars-Rover-Opportunity-9921/

The blogger notes that one side of the stone is not covered with dust and glitters like some white mineral, but coal-black parts of unknown origin are visible on it.

There is dust on the other side of the stone, which is why it cannot be a newly fallen fragment of a meteorite.

Egorov believes that the Rover could pick off the stone while driving, but all the time it remained invisible

Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_01_15/Mysterious-stone-rawled-up-to-Mars-Rover-Opportunity-9921/

"It was lying somewhere under the body of the Rover not being observed by the cameras, and on the 3,537th Sol, the Rover's "hand" hooked it and threw forward," he writes in his blog on LiveJournal.

This is not the first discovery in the field of Martianology made by Egorov. Earlier, he and the other cosmonautics buffs from the "Curiosity, the Mars Rover" group on the social network Vkontakte, conceivably found the place of landing of the Soviet Mars-3 unmanned spacecraft, which could not be found by specialists for a long time.
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_01_15/Mysterious-stone-rawled-up-to-Mars-Rover-Opportunity-9921/

In 2012-2013, Egorov and his virtual companions made an analysis of a high resolution photograph of the supposed landing zone of the station made in 2007 by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. They managed to find objects, which supposedly are elements of Mars-3, such as a parachute, a soft landing engine and an aerodynamic brake screen.
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_01_15/Mysterious-stone-rawled-up-to-Mars-Rover-Opportunity-9921/

Philippines: Spate of Journalist Killings!

President Benigno Aquino III should speak out against the recent killings of three journalists and ensure that the authorities expedite their investigation, Human Rights Watch said today. While the killers and motives are unknown, these and past unresolved attacks on journalists have a chilling effect on media freedom in the country.



“The latest killings and threats against journalists underscore the precarious state of media freedom in the Philippines and the need for the government to respond,” said Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director. “Unless the government brings people who attack journalists to justice, these killings are not going to stop.”

On July 30, 2013, unknown assailants shot and killed Richard Kho, 47, and Bonifacio Loreto Jr., 59, both columnists for the weekly tabloid Aksyon Ngayon, in Quezon City, Metro Manila. Two days later, on August 1, unidentified gunmen killed a freelance photojournalist, Mario Sy, 53, in the southern city of General Santos. Police have not made any arrests in the killings.

That same week, a broadcast journalist, Ces Drilon, received text messages threatening to “erase” her after her network, ABS-CBN, aired her report on the Maguindanao Massacre, in which 58 people, most of them journalists, were executed in 2009. While her news show reported on a bombing in Cagayan de Oro City she received a text message that read: “You’re next to explode.”
Although the number of extrajudicial killings has declined since 2010, when Aquino took office, certain groups, such as environmental and labor activists, and journalists, continue to be recurring targets of attack.

Journalism has long been a high-risk profession in the Philippines. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, some 73 journalists have been murdered in the Philippines since 1992; local media groups put the number considerably higher. The Philippines consistently ranks as among the “top 3” in the organization’s list of “deadliest countries” for journalists.

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said that the three recent killings brought the number of journalists killed in the country under the Aquino administration to 18. Journalists, particularly outside the major cities, regularly report threats and harassment. The union said that most of the journalists killed had received death threats.

The Aquino administration has announced reforms to the criminal justice system that could result in more effective criminal investigations, but has not fully implemented them. For instance, Administration Order 35, issued by the Aquino administration in 2012, authorized the creation of a government “super body” to coordinate and expedite the actions of various criminal justice organs on specific high-priority cases. However, eight months later, that body is stalled at the stage of identifying appropriate cases to pursue.

Aquino began his term with a promise to promote and respect human rights, and pressed for the passage of several laws to improve human rights, but this has not translated into significant improvements on the ground. In particular there has been little progress in prosecuting human rights abusers. In his State of the Nation Adress in July, which outlined the priorities of his administration’s final three years, Aquino did not mention human rights, raising concerns that less attention would be given to human rights issues.

“The Philippines has a reputation for having one of the freest media freedom environments in Asia, but that reputation disappears bit-by-bit with every killing of a journalist,” Kine said.  “President Aquino needs to realize that this problem won’t go away on its own.”

Source: Human Rights watch