North Korea ( Says it has carried out nuclear testing )

North Korea nuclear test: live

North Korea says it has carried out a successful nuclear test, drawing widespread international condemnation. Follow the latest reaction from around the world as the UN prepares to hold an emergency meeting.

The Punggye-ri nuclear test facility in North Korea Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Mark Hughes, the Telegraph's New York correspondent, reports that Susan Rice, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, described the nuclear test as “highly provocative” and added: “Countries around the world including every member of the Security Council agree this test was an extremely regrettable act and further undermines international peace and security.”

She added that the test “increases the risk of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction”.

“North Korea does not and will not benefit from violating international law. Far from achieving its stated goal of becoming a string and prosperous nation, the DPRK has instead isolated and impoverished its people through its ill-advised pursuit of nuclear weapons,” she said.

Ms Rice added that the test “threatens the security of a number of countries, including the United States”.

Texas ( Man goes free from prison after 30 years - DNA set him free ) Murder case

Texas man convicted in '81 stabbing death freed

By NOMAAN MERCHANT | Associated Press – 2 hrs 48 mins ago

 

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Associated Press/Nomaan Merchant - Randolph Arledge, left, speaks to one of his attorneys, Innocence Project co-director Barry Scheck, before a court hearing in Corsicana, Texas, on Monday, Feb. 11, 2013. Arledge …more was released from prison after three decades after new DNA evidence showed he was wrongfully convicted of a 1981 murder. (AP Photo/Nomaan Merchant) less

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• View PhotoRandolph Arledge, right, embraces …

CORSICANA, Texas (AP) — A 58-year-old Texas man walked free Monday after serving years for a crime he didn't commit — the repeated stabbing of a woman whose body was found on a dirt road in rural North Texas.

Randolph Arledge was sentenced to 99 years in prison in 1984 for killing Carolyn Armstrong. But a state district judge in Corsicana, about 50 miles southeast of Dallas, agreed with prosecutors and Arledge's attorneys that he could no longer be considered guilty after new DNA tests tied someone else to the crime.
Judge James Lagomarsino agreed to release Arledge on bond while the process of overturning his conviction is pending. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals must accept Lagomarsino's recommendation for the conviction to be formally overturned, a process that is considered a formality.
Arledge wore shackles around his wrists and ankles at the start of the hearing, but was later taken into a back room by two deputies to have them removed. When he returned, Arledge hugged his two children. His daughter was 4 years old and his son 7 when he was sent to prison.
"They suffered more than anybody," Arledge told reporters afterward. He gestured to his daughter, Randa Machelle Arledge. "She's always talking about, she wanted me to come pick her up from school. Now she's picking me up."
His children said they remained hopeful through the years, not doubting his innocence.
"Every time he came up for parole, it was broken, shattered hopes," his daughter said.
Armstrong's body was found in August 1981 on a rural dirt road in Navarro County, according to a court filing by Arledge's attorneys. She had been stripped naked from the waist down and stabbed more than 40 times.
Her abandoned car was found miles away with several pieces of evidence, including a black hairnet on the left side of the driver's seat. Hair taken from that net was preserved for three decades. In 2011, more advanced DNA testing linked samples from the hair net and elsewhere to someone else.
Navarro County District Attorney Lowell Thompson said authorities are searching for the person matched to the DNA and believe they know where he is. The case "will stay open until we solve it," he said in an interview.
While Thompson credited the system for freeing Arledge, he said he remained committed to finding Armstrong's real killer for her relatives.
"It's their daughter; it's their sister who was victimized," Thompson said. "I empathize with them as much as I can, but you know it's not easy for them to have to have all this brought back up."
Armstrong's relatives who attended the hearing declined to comment as they left court.
Like many wrongfully convicted inmates, Arledge was sent to prison with the help of faulty eyewitness testimony. Two co-conspirators in an armed robbery testified at his trial that he had admitted to stabbing someone in Corsicana and that he had blood on his clothes and knife, according to the filing by Arledge's attorneys.
One of those witnesses has since admitted to lying about Arledge due to a personal dispute, the filing said.
Arledge became the 118th person in Texas state courts to have his conviction overturned, according to the University of Michigan's national registry of exonerations.
State lawmakers have passed several measures to try to prevent wrongful convictions. Texas now has a law allowing all inmates convicted of a crime to seek new DNA testing. It also has the nation's most generous law for ex-inmates who have proven their innocence, providing a lump-sum payment of $80,000 for each year someone wrongly spent behind bars, as well as an annuity and other benefits.
Arledge spent some of his prison time in Tennessee on an unrelated armed robbery conviction. He was placed in a Texas prison in 1998 after being paroled from Tennessee, Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark said. For that reason, it's unclear how much compensation he will receive.

Israel Today ( The Gaza strip - refugees flee to the strip but turned away )

Israel Today Recently, the UN Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA), which was created to handle the issue of Palestinian Arab refugees, asked the Palestinian governments to allow their brothers from Syria to enter. Palestinian Arabs in Syria have had to flee their refugee camps under attack from Syrian rebels who view the Palestinians as supporters of dictator Bashar Assad.

Gaza-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh refused to take the refugees on the grounds that doing so would set a dangerous precedent for more Palestinian refugees to come to the Gaza Strip. He declared that these refugees should return to Israel and not to the Gaza Strip.

Haniyeh further argued that Gaza doesn’t have the financial resources to absorb any refugees. Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas similarly refused entry into the PA-controlled parts of Judea and Samaria.

Even though the Palestinian governments in Gaza and Ramallah truly don’t have the financial resources to take on refugees, the refusal to help their brothers in a time of great danger is still strange. On the one hand, the Palestinians in Gaza and Ramallah constantly ask UNWRA for help for themselves, but on the other they refuse help to their people who see themselves as refugees as well.

Sixty years ago, Israel didn’t have the financial resources to take on refugees either, but over 600,000 fleeing Jews were welcomed with open arms and given a place in the country.

It is clear the Palestinians don’t really care about a “right of return,” rather they want to destroy the Jewish state demographically, while keeping these outsiders out of Palestinian towns and villages. The refugee problem is only a tool against Israel.

Pakistan ( Taliban warns shops not to sell Viagra)

Pakistani Taliban warn shops not to sell Viagra

By RIAZ KHAN, Associated Press 10:06 a.m.Feb. 11, 2013

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The head of a trade association for a large market in northwestern Pakistan says the Taliban have warned shopkeepers not to sell sex-related drugs like Viagra, or obscene films.

Shamsher Khan Afridi says he received a text message from the Pakistani Taliban on Saturday with the warning. Afridi said Monday that he distributed a pamphlet to thousands of shopkeepers in the Karkhano market in Peshawar city asking them to comply with the order.

Afridi said the Taliban's message warned that selling sex-related drugs and obscene movies was against Islam.

The Pakistani Taliban follow a hardline version of Islam and have bombed shops selling music and movies in Peshawar in the past. The group has also been waging a bloody insurgency against the government that has killed thousands.

San Diego (Man goes to police station and tells them he just killed his wife )

Man holding toddlers tells deputy he killed his wife

By Susan Shroder4:32 p.m.Feb. 6, 2013

 

Detectives look over the scene at the Imperial Beach Sheriff station. — K.C. Alfred

IMPERIAL BEACH — A man who rang an intercom button at the Imperial Beach sheriff’s station on Wednesday told a deputy who answered the side door that he had just killed his wife, and a woman was found near a pickup truck in the parking lot with multiple stab wounds, authorities said.

The man was holding two toddlers in his arms and had a knife in his waistband when the deputy came to the door about 3:40 p.m., sheriff’s homicide Lt. Glenn Giannantonio said.

Deputies found the injured woman on the ground near a white Nissan Titan pickup in the parking lot of the station on Imperial Beach Boulevard. She was breathing, but died shortly afterward, the lieutenant said. The sheriff’s station is next to a fire station, but paramedics were unable to revive her.

The stabbing is believed to have occurred in the parking lot, Giannantonio said. A motive was not yet known.

The man was taken into custody and was being questioned at the station. The children were taken into protective custody. They were not harmed.

Both the man and woman are residents of San Diego, the lieutenant said. It was not known what they were doing in Imperial Beach and whether they indeed were married and if so for how long, Giannantonio said.

It was not disclosed if they were the parents of the toddlers. The ages and genders of the children were not released.

Giannantonio said he did not know how long the truck had been in the parking lot. The truck belonged to either the man or the woman, he said.

He said the man, who said “I just killed my wife,” did not resist being taken into custody. Without being asked to do so, the man took the knife out of his waistband and dropped it on the ground, the lieutenant said.

The adjacent sheriff’s and fire stations are part of the Imperial Beach Civic Center complex where City Council meetings are held. Giannantonio said the crime scene would be cleared in time for city employees to return to work Thursday.

The complex is across the street from a park and the city library.

Josie Dorado, a retired teacher’s aide and Imperial Beach resident for 49 years, watched from beyond the crime scene tape. “It is upsetting,” she said. She had been on her way to the library.

India ( 27 killed railway station - religious festival )

 

ALLAHABAD, India (Reuters) - A stampede at a railway station in northern India killed at least 36 Hindu pilgrims on Sunday, the busiest day of the world's largest religious festival at which some 30 million had gathered to wash away their sins in the sacred Ganges river.

Twenty-seven of the dead were women, mostly elderly and poor. An eight-year-old girl was also crushed to death. A Reuters witness saw a woman weeping at the train station, surrounded by six bodies dressed in brightly colored saris.
Up to 100 million pilgrims and Hindu ascetics are expected to attend the two-month long Kumbh Mela festival, which comes to an end next month.
It is held every 12 years in a temporary city covering an area larger than Athens, spread over a wide sandy river bank in Allahabad at the point where the Ganges and Yamuna rivers meet a third mythical river.
The festival grows in size every time it is held and is considered the world's largest temporary gathering of people. Officials said some 30 million visited the site on Sunday, considered the most auspicious day to bathe in the river.

Yobe state ( 3 Korean Doctors killed by Armed men )

How Gunmen Killed 3 Korean Doctors In Yobe – Witnesses

Armed men on Sunday morning stormed a house in which three Korean doctors were quartered at T Junction area, Potiskum LGA of Yobe state and slaughtered them. These doctors were employed as specialists in Ear, Nose& Throat; Acupuncture and Gynaecology. Their corpses have been conveyed to Federal Medical Center, Azare.
Three eyewitnesses yesterday gave chilling accounts of how six gunmen murdered these three Korean doctors. According to them, the hoodlums broke into the doctors apartment in the early hours of the day and slit their throats. The operation lasted about 40 minutes.
An eyewitness named Mustapha, was peeping through a window when the attackers stormed the apartment, the gunmen walked straight to the compound and broke the gate to the main entrance.
Mustapha said in a telephone interview withus.

“I was peeping through the window when six armed men walked to the house of doctors in this area. Two of the gunmen took positions at the gate, while four entered the house. Ten minutes later, I started hearing cries and yelling, probably from the gunmen giving orders to their colleagues. But I cannot tell you whether all the three doctors were killed or not, because I did not hear the sounds of any gunshot fired by the suspects that night.”
Another eyewitness, Isa Yakubu, said the gunmen overpowered the doctors, tied their hands to their backs and slit their throats. He added that the wives of the doctors were looking for help when the gunmen escaped but could not find any help.
Yakubu, who said that the attacks and killings lasted about 40 minutes, added that the gunmen left the dismembered head of one of the doctors on the apartment’s gate.
Another eyewitness who sought anonymity said the remains of the doctors were deposited in the Federal Medical Centre, Azare, Bauchi State, because the morgue facility in Potiskum General Hospital was ill-equipped.
Confirming the incident yesterday, the commissioner of police, Yobe State Command, Alhaji Sanusi Rufai, said the three doctors were killed in the early hours of yesterday. He said the three men and a woman were posted to the Potiskum General Hospital.
Rufai said it was however too early to know who was behind the attack. “Police have begun an investigation. The victims were reportedly found inside their flat on Sunday morning, after people became worried that they were not answering the door,” he said. “Unfortunately, when they were posted and assumed duties as expatriates, the police were not notified to give them adequate security coverage. As I am talking to you now, I am in Potiskum. The three male health workers have been confirmed dead while we are still working to uncover the details.”
“For now, we cannot say with certainty those behind it or what exactly happened,” he said.