'Human Chain' Saves Boy, 12, From Drowning (ABC News)
A 12-year-old New Zealand boy, who was swept out to sea by rough waters, was rescued by beachgoers after they formed a human chain to pull the boy back to the shore.
Josh McQuiod had been playing with a friend along the water's edge on Marine Parade in Napier, New Zealand, Sunday when he was whisked out to sea, and close to drowning, according to One News in New Zealand.
McQuiod was dragged nearly 500 feet along the beach and fought eight long minutes for air against the pounding surf.
"The waves smashed me so much, there were five really big ones, they flipped me around quite a few times," McQuiod told One News. "I think the longest for about 20 seconds."
Constable Paul Bailey of the Napier Police was the first one into the water to attempt to rescue McQuiod, but he had a difficult time holding on to him.
"A few times under the waves I was thinking, 'Have I done the right thing charging in here? Is it going to be two bodies they're looking for," Bailey told One News.
Another police officer instructed others to form a human chain from the shoreline into the water to bring McQuiod and Bailey to safety.
McQuiod was unresponsive when his lifeless body was brought back to shore. Once again, his rescuers stepped up and helped revive him before he was taken to a local hospital.
The dramatic video captured during the rescue shows more than a dozen people holding hands from the beach into the whitecap waves to bring the two to safety.
"I'd love to thank them so much for what they did. They saved my life. If it wasn't for them I'd be dead," McQuiod told One News.
NCRI - The Iranian regime authorities have blocked the use of software tools that people use to evade Iranian regime's Internet filtering.
Iranian regime has adopted one of the world's most substantial Internet censorship regimes. Iran under mullahs' rule is among a small group of states with the most sophisticated filtering systems purchased from Western countries.
Many Iranians citizens evade the filter through use of "Virtual Private Network". Using the technology, surfers in Iran could sign in to a server in the United States for example and pretend that they are actually located in the US and not Iran. This way they circumvent the Iranian government’s installed filters and Iran’s information agents will not easily know which websites they visited.
But authorities have now blocked "illegal" VPN access, a member of Iranian regime's parliament said on Sunday.
The head of parliament's information and communications technology committee, Ramezanali Sobhani-Fard quoted by state-run Mehr news agency as saying: "Within the last few days illegal VPN ports in the country have been blocked."
"Only legal and registered VPNs can from now on be used," he added.
NCRI- A man has been arrested by Ministry of Intelligence and Security for follow up of his brother's case, a political prisoner in Iran.
Masoud Kordpour was arrested in Mahabad by MOIS agents and transferred to an unknown location. There is no information on his whereabouts and he has not been able to contact his family
Russian scientists may have found new life under Antarctic ice
Posted 2013/03/07 at 1:18 pm EST
MOSCOW, Mar. 7, 2013 (Reuters) — Russian scientists believe they have discovered new life forms sealed off for millions of years in a subglacial lake deep under the Antarctic ice, the RIA news agency reported on Thursday.
A man stands near drilling apparatus at the Vostock research camp in Antarctica in this January 13, 2006 handout photograph. REUTERS/Alexey Ekaikin/Handout
After more than a decade of stop-and-go drilling, Russia pierced through Antarctica's frozen crust last year and took back samples of water from a vast lake that has lain untouched for at least 14 million year.
Scientists say the icy darkness of Lake Vostok, under some 12,139 feet of ice, may provide a glimpse of the planet before the Ice Age and clues to life on other planets.
"After excluding all known contaminants, bacterial DNA was found that does not match any known species in world databases," Sergei Bulat of the St Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute told RIA.
"If it (the bacteria) had been found on Mars, then without a doubt we would have said there is life on Mars - but this is DNA from Earth," he said. "We are calling this life form unidentified or unclassified."
Scientists from the United States and Britain are close on Moscow's heels to probe what life may exist in one of the most extreme environments on Earth.
This year, a U.S. expedition said they had seen living cells under a microscope in field samples taken from the shallower subglacial Lake Whillans, but more study is needed to determine what kinds of bacteria they are and how they live.
A British effort to reach a third body, Lake Ellsworth, was called off in December because of problems drilling.
What life is found in the icy depths may provide the best answer yet to whether life can exist in the extreme conditions on Mars or Jupiter's moon Europa.
The Russian discovery came from analyzing water that froze onto the end of the drill bit used to bore through to Vostok - the largest of a network of hundreds of lakes under the ice cap that acts like a blanket trapping the Earth's geothermal heat.
Bulat and other members of Russia's Antarctic mission could not be reached for comment to Reuters on Thursday.
But Bulat told RIA that scientists are waiting for more samples from the lake to confirm their discovery.
Because of the technology used to keep from polluting the pristine lake, Russia will only obtain clean water samples - uncontaminated by drilling fluid - for analysis later this year.
To answer concerns kerosene and anti-freeze from the borehole would seep into the lake, Russian engineers withdrew the drill to allow the water to percolate up into the borehole and freeze there, only returning this year to collect it.
But Bulat said the unknown microbes were found after separating out species of bacteria that are known to exist in the drilling fluid.
"When we tried to identify the DNA, it did not coincide with any of known species. It's degree of similarity was less than 86 percent," Bulat told RIA.
"That is practically zero when working with DNA. A level of 90 percent tells us the organism is unknown."
Frozen samples from deeper in the borehole collected during this year's Antarctic summer season in February are now being carried back by boat and are due in St Petersburg in May.
"If we again identify the same group of organism in that pure sample of water, then we can confidently say we have found new life on Earth," Bulat said.
Saudi princess who fled £5 million Paris hotel bill to have assets seized
A Saudi princess who fled Paris's luxury Shangri-La hotel in the middle of
the night to avoid paying a £5 million hotel bill is to have her assets seized
in France, a judge has ruled.
A spokesman for the Shangri-La
said the hotel was pleased at the judge's ruling, but did not expect the bill to
be settled soonPhoto:
shangri-la.com
By Ian Sparks
2:50PM GMT 07 Mar 2013
Maha Al-Sudairi was caught ordering her entourage of 60 to load scores of
suitcases into a fleet of limos outside the hotel at 3.30am in June last year.
She had racked up the vast bill after checking into the hotel six months
previously, taking over an entire 41-room floor.
But when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia refused to pay for her stay, she
attempted the early morning dash, claiming diplomatic immunity and moving to the
nearby five-star Royal Monceau Hotel, near the Champs-Elysees, which is own by
"family friend" the Emir of Qatar.
She then left France a month later and has not returned since.
On Wednesday a court in Nanterre, west of Paris, ruled that her assets in
France must be seized to pay back at least six creditors, including a five star
concierge company, Cinquième Etoile, that she used to hire a limousine and
chauffeur.
The company also used sub-contractors to coordinate security, catering, and
housekeeping for the princess and her entourage.
The princess is known to have bought three storage units in central Paris,
where she is believed to have stashed her wares from her shopping trips around
the French capital – said to include luxury leather goods, artworks, jewellery,
and clothing worth up to £10 million. The judge has ordered that those units
must be opened up within the next few days.
Their contents will reportedly be seized and could be sold to pay off the
princess's debts, barring a complex legal process.
Princess Al-Sudairi's lavish foreign trips have even proved too much for King
Abdullah, who confined her to a palace in the oil-rich state in 2009 after she
left a trail of unpaid bills across Europe.
But the ex-wife of Nayef ben Abdel Aziz, the
former Saudi Crown Prince, who died weeks after the Paris incident, escaped and
headed for France.
Princess Maha has a history of frustrating foreign police forces.
The following year, she needed to again be bailed out by her after she
ordered £18,000 worth of glassware and silverware from a Paris store.
Her fabulously wealthy credentials meant her IOU notes handed to shopkeepers
reading 'payment to follow' were usually accepted.
Over the past years, up to 30 of Paris's most exclusive luxury goods
retailers have fallen foul of her credit notes, according to French newspapers.
Jacky Giami, owner of Paris's Key Largo leisure wear store, said the princess
and her relatives pillaged his shop of more than £100,000 worth of stock three
years ago.
He said he spent days loitering in the bar of the Georges V hotel hoping to
confront her, only to learn she had fled to London.
In 1995, Princess Maha was accused of assaulting a servant in Orange County,
Florida, whom she suspected of stealing $200,000 from her. No charges were
filed.
Several people were wounded Sunday in an explosion in Bandar Imam Khomeini, a port city in Iran, but few details have been released.
AAFont Size
By Chana Ya'ar
First Publish: 3/10/2013, 4:55 PM
Satellite image of Persian Gulf
NASA
Several people were wounded Sunday in an explosion in Bandar Imam Khomeini, a port city in Iran, but few details have been released.
The city is located some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) southwest of Tehran, in the oil-rich Khuzestan province.
Members of Iran’s Arabic-speaking minority have occasionally held demonstrations in recent years in the area, demanding more rights.
The Arvand and Ghadir Petrochemical Companies are both located at the port, which is northeast of Kuwait City, and on the banks of the northwestern end of the Persian Gulf.
Several cars were damaged and windows in nearby buildings were shattered, including those at a hotel, according to the report late Saturday by the semi-official Iranian news agency ILNA.
There were no details offered about the cause of the blast.
In the past, Iran has blamed such explosions on intelligence agents from Israel or Western nations such as the United States or Britain.
International Women's Day: Bahraini Women imprisoned, tortured, killed, stripped from nationality, .. and impunity for abusers
7 Mar 2013
On the International Women's Day, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights expresses its grave concern and condemnation over the continued violations of women's rights in Bahrain. With Bahraini women's important role in the Bahraini uprising, calling for democracy and political reform, they have been violently targeted by the authorities. At least 13 women were victims of extra-juridical killing. Many were detained, tortured and sentenced to years in prison. Today there are several women in prison over politicized and false charges for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, illegal gathering and helping injured.
It is important to note that the cases presented in this report are just a sample of hundreds of other cases in regards to arrests, harassment, sackings, beatings and torture of women in Bahrain.
Extra-Judicial Killings
At least 13 women died as a result of authorities’ use of excessive force, teargas and intimidations since Feb 14, 2011. No one has been held accountable for any of these deaths. Teargas is the number one cause of death amongst women, 70% died due to authorities’ excessive use of teargas on a daily basis and the targeting of homes of citizens.
NCRI - The Iranian regime authorities have blocked the use of software tools that people use to evade Iranian regime's Internet filtering.
NCRI- A man has been arrested by Ministry of Intelligence and Security for follow up of his brother's case, a political prisoner in Iran.
