BELGIUM: Belgian authorities found a 'bomb factory' probably linked to the Paris attacks
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgian investigators believe explosives used in the attacks in Paris in November may have been made in an apartment in Brussels that was rented under a false name and where a fingerprint of a key fugitive was found.
Police found material that could be used to make explosives, traces of explosive acetone peroxide and handmade belts during a raid on the apartment on Dec. 10, federal prosecutors said in a statement on Friday.
Belgian newspaper De Standaard, which reported the raid in its Friday edition, said the investigators believed the explosives were probably packed into suicide belts in a hotel outside Paris in the lead-up to the Nov. 13 attacks.
Prosecutors investigating Belgian links to the Paris attacks said the apartment in the district of Schaerbeek had been rented under a false name that might have been used by a person already in custody in connection with the Paris attacks.
The find adds to indications that the Nov. 13 shooting and suicide bomb attacks in Paris, in which 130 people were killed, were at least partially planned in Belgium.
Two of the attackers had been living in Brussels and Belgian authorities have arrested 10 people.
Investigators also found a fingerprint of Salah Abdeslam, the brother of one of the attackers, who returned from Paris the morning after the attacks and has still not been found.
D'banj Releases New Track... Listen!!!!!!!!!!
After giving an amazing performance at the just held Glo CAF Awards 2015,D’banj is out with a new single – a song he performed for the first time last night.
Listen to “Emergency” at Bella Naija
Coldplay and Beyoncé are Coming to the Super Bowl 2016
It was announced today that Coldplay, who will headline the Super Bowl 50 halftime show, will be joined by none other than Beyoncé for the landmark event. This marks Bey's first return to the NFL's big day since she owned halftime in 2013.
We can assume that Bey and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin will perform a live rendition of “Hymn for the Weekend,” which is featured on the band's seventh album, and features vocals from Bey.
Martin voiced his excitement today at the prospect of a British invasion of America's favorite pastime. “Are you kidding me? It’s the greatest moment of our band’s life," he gushed. "We’re going to give it everything we have.” They're certainly off to a good start by bringing Queen Bey into the mix.
Obama debated a bunch of people opposed to his new gun actions
President Barack Obama engaged in a spirited an enlightening debate on gun control Thursday night, often with members of a CNN audience who disagreed with his views on the issue.
Obama verbally tussled with opponents of his executive action on guns earlier this week during a town-hall event moderated by CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.
He received questions from the widow of a former US Navy SEAL who was shot dead at a shooting range, a rape survivor, and a Republican sheriff from Arizona running for a seat in Congress.
Taya Kyle was the first member of the audience to ask Obama a question. Kyle is the widow of Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL whose life as the "most lethal sniper" in US history was detailed in the film, "American Sniper." Chris Kyle was killed when he was shot at a shooting range by a former US Marine.
Tara Kyle questioned whether Obama's actions would prevent the occurrence of shooting deaths in the US. She asked why he didn't choose to provide "hope" to the American people in a different way — for example, noting that the rate of violent crime in the US has dipped to its lowest level in more than three decades.
"I understand that background checks aren't necessarily going to stop me from getting a gun, but I also know that they wouldn't have stopped any of the people here in this room from killing. And so it seems like almost a false sense of hope," she said. "So why not celebrate where we are?"
Obama told Kyle that she was correct about the decline of violent crime. But in his answer, Obama compared further steps on gun control to making car travel safer, even in the face of declining traffic deaths.
"In the same way that we don't eliminate all traffic accidents, but, over the course of 20 years, traffic accidents get lower — there's still tragedies. There's still drunk drivers. There's still people who don't wear their seat belts, but over time, that violence was reduced, and so families are spared," Obama said.
"That's the same thing that we can do with gun ownership," he continued. "There is a way for us to set up a system where you, a responsible gun owner ... can have a firearm to protect yourself, but where it is much harder for somebody to fill up a car with guns and sell them to 13-year-old kids on the streets."
The next question at the town hall came from Kimberly Corban, whom CNN described as a rape survivor from her time in a Colorado college in 2006.
She said the incident changed her view on the issue of owning a handgun. The mother of two small children, she said she now viewed it as her "basic responsibility" to own a gun and to be able to carry it for protection.
"I have been unspeakably victimized once already, and I refuse to let that happen again to myself or my kids," she said. "So why can't your administration see that these restrictions that you're putting to make it harder for me to own a gun, or harder for me to take that where I need to be is actually just making my kids and I less safe?"
Obama told Corban that nothing he has proposed would make it more difficult for her to buy a gun. He stressed, however, that he did want to keep a gun out of the hands of her assailant, who Cooper earlier said had been convicted to 24 years in prison.
"You certainly would want to make sure that if he gets released, that he now can't do what he did to you to somebody else, and it's going to be easier for us to prevent him from getting a gun if there's a strong background system in place," Obama said.
He added: "All I'm focused on is making sure that a terrible crime like yours that was committed is not made easier because somebody can go on the Internet and just buy whatever weapon they want without us finding out whether they're a criminal or not."
Read original on Business Insider
Beyoncé Crash Channing Tatum’s ‘Lip Sync Battle’ And Weep
It was Tatum V. Tatum on tonight’s (Jan. 7) episode of the Spike series, with Channing going tête-à-tête with his wife, Jenna Dewan-Tatum. But while JDT’s steamy rendition of “Pony” was impressive, to say the least, it’s hard to top a surprise cameo by the world’s biggest pop star. And that’s exactly what happened when Bey stormed her way into Channing’s performance of “Run The World (Girls),” crushing the competition in the process.
It was Tatum V. Tatum on tonight’s (Jan. 7) episode of the Spike series, with Channing going tête-à-tête with his wife, Jenna Dewan-Tatum. But while JDT’s steamy rendition of “Pony” was impressive, to say the least, it’s hard to top a surprise cameo by the world’s biggest pop star. And that’s exactly what happened when Bey stormed her way into Channing’s performance of “Run The World (Girls),” crushing the competition in the process.
Warnings To Donald Trump About Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin’s praise of Donald Trump as “a very outstanding man, unquestionably talented” has been reciprocated by Trump’s calling Putin “a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond” that they “would get along very well.”
Trump has shrugged off warnings of Putin’s perfidy by citing lack of proof that Putin “kills journalists, political opponents and …invades countries.” Only the naïve would know there will be no such proof when the Kremlin controls prosecution, justice and the secret police. Putin’s hybrid warfare and its plausible deniability complicates proof of crimes against the international order, despite obvious Russian military engagement in Georgia and Ukraine.
(Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
Killing journalists and political opponents is only one reason for Trump to be leery of Putin. Trump should heed seven red flags when considering how to respond Putin’s flattery:
First, Trump must know that Putin ordered the hybrid war against Ukraine that has, according to conservative United Nations estimates, killed more than 9,000 and wounded nearly 21,000. Combatants and civilians are being killed daily despite a so-called truce brokered by Russia. More than one and a half million people have been displaced and almost four million are living under desperate circumstances.
Second, Trump must know that Putin has consistently declared the United States as enemy number one since his February 2007 speech in Munich. In Putin’s world, the United States and its NATO allies are intent on surrounding and dismembering Russia. Any aggressive actions of Russia – Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine – are therefore purely defensive in nature designed to protect Mother Russia from the world’s main source of evil. How will Trump “get along very well” with a negotiating partner, whose regime’s very existence requires that the U.S. play the role of Russia’s major enemy?
Third, Trump must heed the classic scholarly work of noted historian John Dunlop: “The Moscow Apartment Bombings of September 1999.” Dunlop uses the various commission and investigative reports that were prepared in that lost time of relative press and political freedom to present convincing evidence that Putin, the FSB (which Putin headed) and the Yeltsin regime deliberately blew up apartment buildings in three Russian cities, including Moscow. More than 300 were killed and 1,700 wounded. The bombings paved the way for the Second Chechen war, on the basis of which Putin was elected president in 2000. Prior to the bombings and the war, Putin had a minuscule favorability rating and stood little chance of being elected.
Fourth, Trump must note that Putin does not hesitate to lie publicly about important political matters, such as his April press conference statement that “there are no Russian troops in Ukraine.” (He backtracked this statement at his December press conference.) Putin lied that the March 2014 annexation of Crimea was a spontaneous act of the Crimean people; no Russian troops were involved. Only later did Putin publicly admit that he had ordered work on “returning Crimea” to begin at an all-night meeting on February 22. Russia’s armed annexation of Crimea was the first violation of the basic principle of secure sovereign boundaries on which the postwar international order is based.
Fifth, Trump must note that Russia is rated by the Committee to Protect Journalists in 7th place, just after Pakistan, as the most dangerous country for journalists. Iraq and Syria are at the top, and Russia is the only European country on the top list at 56 killed with motive confirmed since 1992. Only lower-level paid killers, if any, have been convicted. Russia with its armies of secret police, FSB agents and informants knows who is responsible. That Putin’s KGB state has not brought any of the guilty tells us that the Kremlin does not want these cases solved and is hence itself complicit.
Sixth, Trump must note that under Putin there have been at least eight political assassinations of national importance, not counting the murders of numerous regional and local politicians. The two most prominent murders were of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov (February 2015) and of ex-KGB agent and British citizen Alexander Litvinenko (November 2006). The investigation of Nemtsov’s murder is at the usual standstill. High-level suspects hiding in Chechnya have not been interrogated. Only low-level assassins will take the fall citing improbable Islamic-fundamentalist outrage. A London high court is currently hearing the Litvinenko case, which includes the polonium trail of the presumed assassins from and back to Russia. The London court has heard evidence of “a “prima facie case” of the culpability of the Russian state.” The two presumed assassins are safe in Russia; one has been granted parliamentary immunity. Of particular interest is the Russian March 2006 law which allows state assassination of those who threaten national security. The Russian secret service would not assassinate a UK citizen on British soil without permission from the highest levels.
Seventh, Trump should know that, as documented in Karen Dawisha’s book “Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?,” Putin and his inner circle have stolen a large portion of Russia’s wealth. Dawisha shows that Putin runs Russia as a criminal enterprise in which “the right to property is entirely conditional upon the property owner’s loyalty…” Putin’s own wealth will never be known, but it would likely place him among the wealthiest in Europe if not in the world. Russia’s top ten billionaires have a cumulated wealth of $125 billion. It is unlikely that their “boss” would be satisfied with less. Would Trump welcome the praise of national thieves like Marcos, Mobutu and Duvalier? I doubt it. Trump is proud he made his fortune. He did not steal it as did Putin.
A savvy negotiator must be able to size up his opponents and decide with whom to associate.
If Trump fails to dismiss Putin’s quasi-endorsement, he runs the risk of playing the dupe as did former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany (Putin’s stooge on Gazprom’s board), George W. Bush (looked into his soul), and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (Russian reset). Trump surely does not wish to join this group.
Source: Forbes
SOUTH AFRICA: 27-year-old woman found mutilated and burnt in Soweto, boyfriend confesses...
A suspect identified as her boyfriend has been arrested in connection with the murder after he made a verbal confession. Details yet to be made public. The hastag #JusticeforZestah is currently trending on SA twitter.
"I will forever Remember & Miss this Happy, Beautiful, go getting, Energetic , Loving Soul. Zestah every moment I spent with you, you managed to always remind and teach Me that every moment should lived to the fullest. There was never a dull or less animated moment with You. We are heartbroken beyond measure. I will Always Remember and Miss You "Shebadem"
NIGERIA: Internally displaced person beheaded inside camp in Borno
Source:lindaikeji
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)