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Thursday, February 3, 2011
Global News
Investigators:
NEWS IN BRIEF
20-year-old behind Moscow bombing By Ulf Mauder dpa MOSCOW — The suicide bomber who killed 35 people in an attack on a Moscow airport last week was a 20-year-old man from the North Caucasus, investigators said Saturday. The mangled body of the man had been identified, a spokesman for the national investigative committee told the news agency Interfax, though he did not give a name. The case had been solved and further suspects were being sought, the spokesman said. About 180 people were injured in Monday's attack at Domodedovo airport, Moscow's busiest, dozens of whom were still
being treated in hospitals. Immediately after the attack investigators had blamed militant Islamist groups from the North Caucasus which includes the republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, North Ossetia and Kabardino-Balkaria in particular singling out the Nogay Jamaat terrorist group. Numerous radical Islamist groups have been fighting for an independent "emirate" in the North Caucasus for years as the Kremlin has struggled to impose peace on the region, plagued by poverty and high unemployment. According to a Saturday report by the business daily Kommersant, the explosive belt worn by the bomber had been remotely activated.
Protesters in Suez storm police station By Hannah Allam McClatchy Newspapers SUEZ, Egypt — Thousands of Egyptian protesters stormed the main police station Friday in the port city of Suez, overwhelming security authorities and raising an even bigger challenge to the embattled regime of President Hosni Mubarak. The protesters freed prisoners from the city jail and destroyed armored police vehicles, then sacked the building and looted its contents. The demonstrators emerged from Friday
prayers at mosques in Suez and confronted police officers outside the station. Police fired at the demonstrators, who then surged forward to take over the station. The protesters dragged fleeing riot officers off their motorbikes and seized their batons and equipment. They also set at least a half-dozen armored vehicles on fire. After storming the police station, protesters removed its contents: refrigerators, desks, files and other equipment.
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1 Family of missing boy finds car ditched in canal
Internet service shut down in Egyptian riots
PATTERSON, Calif. – Divers ended their search of the Delta-Mendota Canal in California on Saturday afternoon. Friday night, divers retrieved a Toyota Corolla from a dangerous location inside the canal’s water siphon. They believe the car was the one driven by Jose Esteban Rodriguez when he allegedly abducted Juliani Cardenas on Jan. 18. The bodies of the missing 4-year-old boy and his suspected kidnapper were not found inside the car. Investigators say a witness saw a man and boy in a similar vehicle go into the canal about an hour after the boy was snatched from his grandmother’s arms in front of her house. According to reports, the boy’s body had been pulled from the canal, but Rodriguez has still not been found.
CAIRO – The Internet was shut down in Egypt on Friday, cutting off a key communication tool that government opponents were using to organize their street protests this week. The Egyptian government cut off all online services between midnight and 12:30 a.m. The situation in Egypt differs from what took place during the recent successful revolt in Tunisia where specific services and websites were blocked. The Internet blackout was Egypt’s latest move in halting online communications amid the unrest. On Tuesday, social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube were made largely unavailable in Cairo, and on Thursday the government blocked Internet service on BlackBerry smart phones.
2 New questions raised about breast implants WASHINGTON – The Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday that it has begun investigating the possible connection between breast implants and the increased risk of a rare form of cancer. While the number of women who may develop the disease is small, there is apparently no way to identify those who are likely to develop it. But among women who do have implants, FDA investigators say they have identified as many as 60 women who have developed ALCL worldwide, with an estimated global population of 5 million to 10 million women with implants. The FDA did not provide an incidence number for women with implants who developed the disease in the United States alone. The agency said the number of known cases was too few to draw a conclusion that implants were linked to the disease. FDA officials emphasized the small risk and said that women with implants don’t need to do anything more than maintain vigilance.
4 Japanese volcanic eruption mirrors past TOKYO – Volcanic experts have sounded an ominous warning about the recent eruptions on Shinmoedake peak in Japan, saying they closely resemble highly destructive blasts that occurred there nearly 300 years ago. Phreatic explosions occur when the heat of rising magma causes underground water to boil and steam pressure rises. According to experts, however, the eruptions that have taken place since Wednesday are explosive eruptions characteristic of phreatomagmatic explosions.
5 LinkedIn net working site offers public stock SAN JOSE, Calif. – LinkedIn, the online resume and networking service, notified regulators Thursday that it plans to go public this year, marking the first major public stock offering for a Silicon Valley company in 2011. The Mountain View, Calif., company, which has been valued at more than $2.5 billion on one private share exchange, is one of several social networking sites whose public offerings have been widely anticipated in recent months. LinkedIn said the maximum total value of its offering will be $175 million.
Mubarak announces plan to step down, crowd tells him to leave By Hannah Allam and Shashank Bengali McClatchy Newspapers CAIRO — Faced with an unprecedented popular revolt that drew record crowds of protesters to downtown Cairo Tuesday, U.S.-backed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he would step down before elections this fall, a humbling end to his 30 years of authoritarian rule. “I will say, with all honesty and without looking at this particular situation, that I was not intending to stand for the next elections because I’ve spent enough time serving Egypt,” Mubarak said in a televised speech. “I’m now careful to conclude my work for Egypt by presenting Egypt to the next government in a constitutional way.” Mubarak acted after President Barack Obama sent a special envoy to Cairo, urging him not to seek re-election, and following calls from Turkey and Iran to step down. Obama later telephoned Mubarak, and in a
Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/Los Angeles Times/MCT)
After massive protests and violence in Egypt against the regime of President Hozni Mubarak, thousands of protesters gathered in Tharir Square on Monday, Jan. 31. “direct and frank” 30minute conversation, told him an orderly transition to a new regime had to begin immediately, the White House said. In a nationally televised appearance, Obama all but ignored Mubarak’s announcement, declaring that “an orderly transition must be meaningful, must be peaceful and must begin now.” Initial reaction was
mostly negative among protesters in Tahrir Square, where earlier Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians more than a million by some estimates - staged a festive rally to demand the president’s ouster. “He’s leaving! He’s leaving!” some protesters shouted gleefully. More than an hour after he spoke, however, chants continued to echo
from Tahrir Square as protesters vowed to keep flooding Egypt’s streets until Mubarak heeded their demand to resign immediately. “We have only one condition: We need Mubarak to be out of our lives,” said Mostafa Fathy, 28, an online journalist and activist. “He’s supposed to be out of the game now.” The 82-year-old
Mubarak appeared to make some concessions to the protesters, saying there should be presidential term limits and fewer restrictions on who can run for public office. But he didn’t dissolve parliament, which is filled almost completely with members of his ruling party. All day long, protesters had chanted, “Leave!” It came from the mouths of children draped in the Egyptian flag, bearded clerics in turbans, teenagers dancing to a drumbeat and elderly women with tears in their eyes. “In my whole life, I’ve never known another president, and suddenly I can’t imagine how he can stay for even one more day,” said Tasneem Osman, 26. “He has to go. He will go.” Before Mubarak’s appearance around 11 p.m., state TV stations mostly ignored the crowds in the square, instead airing call-in shows with government supporters and dismissing independent news coverage as tainted by foreign
interests. The government’s intense pressure on the protesters continued: an Internet shutdown, spotty phone service, a nationwide curfew, shuttered banks, no trains from other provinces and a crackdown on journalists. “The people said it clearly: They want a new democratic regime and this regime has lost its legitimacy,” opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei told Al-Jazeera television. “I would have liked that President Mubarak would listen to the sounds of the millions that went out today.” Even without Mubarak’s immediate ouster, the movement has achieved in a week something opposition groups have attempted in vain for decades. Mubarak was forced to name his first-ever vice president, the former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman. Habib el Adly, the interior minister who was detested for the alleged brutality of his police force, was unceremoniously sacked.