INDIA RAPE VICTIM’S BODY CREMATED IN NEW DELHI

 

NEW DELHI, India - The body of a woman who died after being gang-raped and beaten on a bus in India's capital was cremated on Sunday amid an outpouring of anger and grief by millions across the country demanding greater protection for women from sexual violence.

• The young woman's body was cremated in a private ceremony in New Delhi soon after it arrived in the capital on a special Air India flight from Singapore, where the woman died at a hospital Saturday after being sent for medical treatment.
• Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress party, were at the airport to receive the body and meet family members of the victim who had also arrived on the flight.
• Hours after the victim died early Saturday, Indian police charged six men who had been arrested in connection with the attack with murder, adding to accusations that they beat and gang-raped the woman on a New Delhi bus on Dec. 16.
• After 10 days at a hospital in New Delhi, the victim, who has not been identified, was taken Thursday to Singapore's Mount Elizabeth hospital, which specializes in multi-organ transplants. She arrived there in extremely critical condition, and then took a turn for the worse, with her vital signs deteriorating. She died with her family and officials of the Indian Embassy by her side, according to the chief executive of the hospital, Dr. Kevin Loh.

Source: Agency

CHINESE MINING FIRM BUILDS TOWN IN PERU

Foreign mining companies are increasingly drawn to Peru for its rich minerals.

A Chinese mining company, which plans to exploit a copper mine in Morococha, is building a brand new settlement to house locals from the poor mining town.

But the firm, Chinalco, will have to convince thousands of people to move from their homes in Morococha.

Al Jazeera’s Maria Sanchez reports from Lima, the Peruvian capital.

EXTRAVAGANT CHRISTMAS DISPLAY AROUND THE WORLD

Christmas gone crazy

It took electrician Alex Goodhind in Melksham, England a month to dress up his home using 100,000 light bulbs, an extra up-rated electricity supply, countless decorations and a snow machine. The display raises money for charity for a local hospice, Dorothy House, not to mention the local electricity company.

 

Largest tree on water

At 85 meters, the Christmas tree at the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon in Rio de Janeiro is touted as world's biggest floating Christmas tree. It was built on 11 platforms by Brazil’s largest insurance company, Bradesco Seguro.

 

The classic

A rare snap of the 24-meter tall Rockefeller Center Christmas tree (complete with Swarovski star) in New York City without hordes of tourists and smartphone photographers.

 

"Santa Claus" in Switzerland

No village is more Santa-Claussy than the village of Saint Niklaus (Santa Claus in German) in western Switzerland. The village has the world's biggest Santa Claus, which doubles up from a 350-year-old, 36.5-meter church's clock tower.

"You can't catch me"

This gingerbread man doesn't appear very speedy as he poses among the one million-plus lights strung up throughout Stanley Park in Vancouver, Canada. The annual "Bright Lights Stanley Park" display concludes January 1.

 

God jul!

Skeppsbro quay in the old town of Stockholm, Sweden. At 36 meters, the Christmas tree is the tallest that is made solely out of fir tree.

 

Window dressing

Tokyo's Akasaka Grand Prince Hotel illuminates a 100-meter tall, pixelated Christmas tree on the building's exterior.

 

Source: CNN

PHILIPPINE INMATES FORGO MEALS TO DONATE TO TYPHOON BOPHA’S VICTIMS

MANILA, Philippines -  Inmates at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) in suburban Muntinlupa City have decided to skip meals to donate to victims of typhoon Bopha.
According to an article published in the Social Action News section of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines Online, NBP inmates have decided to skip their regular meal cycle so that they can set aside money that they can donate to typhoon victims. 
According to Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo, inmates at NBP had taken to skipping meals for two reasons.

“This Kalinga sa Kapwa (caring for others) is a fasting — a form of sacrifice, wherein the inmates will skip their meals in three days in promotion of the concept of the Restorative Justice, as well as in response to the President Benigno Aquino III’s call to help the victims of typhoon Pablo (Bopha),” Pabillo said.

Bopha, which lashed the southern eastern portion of the southern island of Mindanao. 

• It destroyed thousands of homes and devastated huge tracts of banana plantations land in Davao region, including the provinces of Compostella Valley, Davao Oriental and Davao del Norte.
• The typhoon, according to the latest tally by the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NRDDMC), left 1,067 people dead while the cost of damages was placed at P34 billion (Dh3 billion).

Source: Gulfnews

MAYALAND AWAITS DAWN OF NEW ERA

MERINDA, Mexico - Dec. 21 started out as the prophetic day some had believed would usher in the fiery end of the world. 

By Friday afternoon, it had become more comic than cosmic, the punch line of countless Facebook posts and at least several dozen T-shirts.

The doomsayers who had predicted apocalypse were nowhere to be seen. Instead, people showed up in T-shirts reading "The End of the World: I Was There."

At the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza, thousands chanted, danced and otherwise frolicked around ceremonial fires and pyramids to mark the conclusion of a vast, 5,125-year cycle in the Mayan calendar.

Vendors eager to sell their ceramic handicrafts and wooden masks called out to passing visitors, "Buy something before the world ends."

Source: The Independent...More...

MALAYSIAN FORMER PM IS RICHER THAN BRUNEI’S SULTAN

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Mahathir is the richest man off the record in the world. Maybe you have read this before. Just in case you have forgotten about it just before the elections....

Malaysia has squandered an estimated RM100 billion on financial scandals under the 22-year rule of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, according to a book about the former prime minister.

• According to Barry Wain, author of the ‘Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times’, direct financial losses amounted to about RM50 billion.
• This doubled once the invisible costs, such as unrecorded write-offs, were taken into account. The RM100 billion total loss was equivalent to US$40 billion at then prevailing exchange rates.
• Barry, who is a former editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal, says most of the scams, which included a government attempt to manipulate the international tin price and gambling by Bank Negara on global currency markets, occurred in the 1980s.
• ‘Malaysian Maverick’ is the first independent, full-length study of Mahathir, who retired in 2003 after more than two decades as premier. The book will be published globally next week by Palgrave Macmillan.
• Wain writes that the Mahathir administration, which took office in 1981 with the slogan, “clean, efficient, trustworthy”, was almost immediately embroiled in financial scandals that “exploded with startling regularity”.
• By the early 1990s, he says, cynics remarked that it had been “a good decade for bad behaviour, or a bad decade for good behaviour”.

Source: WikiSabah News

DOOMS DAY PREDICTIONS POSPONDED?

Some say today(21.12.2012) is the end of the world. However, there is no sign of 'Apocalypse'  is coming, yet.

In the meantime let share the following video just for fun of it.

MALAYSIA IS WORLD’S NO 2 IN ILLEGAL CAPITAL FLIGHT

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Close to RM200 billion of dirty money was siphoned out of Malaysia in 2010, putting the country second only to Asian economic powerhouse China in global capital flight.

Washington-based financial watchdog Global Financial Integrity (GFI), in its latest report which tracks capital flight, says the level of illicit flows from Malaysia in 2010 was the highest in 10 years.

GFI has introduced a new and more conservative methodology in its estimates of illicit financial outflows, which help to zero in exclusively on dirty money. As such, estimates from its previous reports have been revised.

Last year, GFI put the figure of illicit outflows for Malaysia in 2009 at US$46.86 billion (RM143.3 billion). This has been altered to US$30.41 billion (RM93 billion).

The latest report finds a dramatic jump of capital flight in Malaysia – from US$30.41 billion (RM93 billion) in 2009 to US$64.38 billion (RM196.8 billion) in 2010.

GFI has yet to obtain data for 2011 and 2012, but these will be included in future reports.

The global financial watchdog has warned that capital flight in Malaysia is “at a scale seen in few Asian countries”.

The GFI report, ‘Illicit Financial Flows From Developing Countries: 2001-2010?, is co-authored by GFI economists Sarah Freitas and Dev Kar, who is a former senior economist at the International Monetary Fund.

According to GFI, for the cumulative illicit financial outflows over 10 years – from 2001 to 2010 – Malaysia is ranked No 3 in the world, after China and Mexico.

The total 10-year estimate for Malaysia is US$285 billion (RM871.4 billion), while China is US$2,740 billion, and Mexico, US$476 billion.

Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak has disputed GFI’s figures. Last year, he gave Parliament a much lower figure of RM135.3 billion for illicit capital outflows from 2000 to 2009.

Source: The Malaysia Chronicle

GANG RAPE SPARKS PROTEST ACROSS DELHI

NEW DELHI, India -  The hours-long gang-rape and near-fatal beating of a 23-year-old student on a bus in New Delhi triggered outrage and anger across the country Wednesday as Indians demanded action from authorities who have long ignored persistent violence and harassment against women.

In the streets and in Parliament, calls rose for stringent and swift punishment against those attacking women, including a proposal to make rapists eligible for the death penalty. As the calls for action grew louder, two more gang-rapes were reported, including one in which the 10-year-old victim was killed.

• Thousands of demonstrators clogged the streets in front of New Delhi’s police headquarters, protested near Parliament and rallied outside a major university. Angry university students set up roadblocks across the city, causing massive traffic jams.
• Hundreds rallied outside the home of the city’s top elected official before police dispersed them with water cannons, a move that earned further condemnation from opposition leaders, who accused the government of being insensitive.
• Police on Wednesday fished out the body of a 10-year old girl from a canal in Bihar state’s Saharsa district. Police superintendent Ajit Kumar Satyarthi said the girl had been gang-raped and killed and her body dumped in the canal. Police were investigating and a breakthrough was expected soon, Satyarthi said.
• As protests raged in cities across India, at least two girls were gang-raped, with one of them killed. Elsewhere, a 14 -year old schoolgirl was in critical condition in Banka district of Bihar after she was raped by four men, said Jyoti Kumar, the district education officer.
• The men have been identified, but police were yet to make any arrests, Kumar said.

Source: The Spec.Com

GUNMEN STAGE MORE ATTACKS ON POLIO TEAMS IN NW PAKISTAN

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Gunmen shot dead a woman working on U.N.-backed polio vaccination efforts and her driver in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, officials said, just a day after similar attacks across the country killed five female polio workers.

The killings are a major setback for a campaign that international health officials consider vital to contain the crippling disease but which Taliban insurgents say is a cover for espionage.

• In Wednesday’s attack, the woman and her driver were gunned down in the northwestern town of Charsadda, said senior government official Syed Zafar Ali Shah. He said gunmen targeted two other polio teams in the same town, but no one was wounded in those attacks.
• Earlier in the day in the northwestern city of Peshawar, gunmen shot a polio worker in the head, wounding him critically, said Janbaz Afridi, a senior health official. There were also attacks Wednesday on polio workers in the cities of Charsadda and Nowshera, but no casualtties were reported there.
• Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio is endemic. Militants accuse health workers of acting as spies for the U.S. and claim the vaccine makes children sterile.
• The Taliban in the lawless northwestern tribal region also blame the U.S. drone strikes for their opposition to the vaccinations.
• On Tuesday, gunmen killed five female polio workers in a spree of attacks in several southern and northwestern cities, prompting authorities to suspend the vaccination campaign in the southern Sindh province.
• The three-day campaign, which started on Monday, continued in the northwest and elsewhere in the country.
• Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for the attacks on Tuesday. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Wednesday’s killings.

Source: 680 News, Video clips: Al Jazeera

JAPAN PM CONCEDES GE DEFEAT

TOKYO, Japan - Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Sunday conceded defeat in the general election and said he was stepping down as leader from his humbled governing party.

“I will resign as the head of the Democratic Party of Japan because I take  this result seriously,” he told a press conference.

• “I want to deeply apologise  as I could not produce results.”   
• Noda was speaking after NHK television, citing forecasts based on both  official results and its own exit polls, said the Liberal Democratic Party had  won at least 255 seats with 95 seats undecided, against 39 seats for the DPJ.   
• The LDP is expected to easily secure a majority of the 480-seat chamber  with New Komeito, its junior coalition partner, which is expected to win at  least 25 seats, NHK said.  
•  Asked why the DPJ suffered such a haemorrhaging of support, Noda said: “We  were unable to live up to people’s expectations when we came into government  (in 2009).”   
• “Politicians must take responsibility for results. The biggest  responsibility for such a severe defeat lies with me as the party leader.” 

Source:  -AFP