Yong Vui Kong, We’re back from Rwanda with plenty of photos and stories to share. But all that will just have to wait. Because right now, there’s something far more urgent we have to tell you about.

We’re back from Rwanda with plenty of photos and stories to share. But all that will just have to wait. Because right now, there’s something far more urgent we have to tell you about.
It’s about the imminent death of a boy called Yong Vui Kong. You might have already heard his name. Read his sorry tale somewhere. That stupid kid who at 19, got busted for trafficking drugs into Singapore.
Vui Kong was caught with 47.27 grams of heroin – he was a runner taking instructions from his so-called ‘Big Brother’. He sits in a prison cell now, waiting to pay for his crime, with his life.
We saw the boy in court last Wednesday. A pale, skinny thing surrounded by four policemen. He had been scheduled to hang on Friday. And his lawyer was trying to convince the judge to stay the execution pending an appeal. The judge agreed. It was a decision no one, least of all Vui Kong, expected. He broke down and cried as he was being led out of the room.
Does Vui Kong deserve to die? The mainstream media in Singapore has been strangely silent about the matter. But there’s been plenty of debate online. We won’t rehash what’s already been said (for more please read this and this). We will instead, share with you, an interview we did with Vui Kong’s older brother, Yun Leong. Please listen to what he has to say:

PANAJI INDIA: Goa police is planning to file an FIR against five policemen who were placed under suspension for their alleged nexus with drug peddlers in the state.

High level sources in the department said that the Crime Branch, which is investigating the nexus, is likely to file the FIR, soon.

Deputy Inspector General of Police Ravindra Yadav has already given his consent to file the report against all five policemen including police inspector Ashish Shirodkar.

An inspector, a head constable and three constables were placed under suspension last week after an alleged drug dealer, Yaniv Benahim alias Atala, was caught on camera confessing to be close to Shirodkar.

Atala had claimed that Shirodkar was supplying him drugs stolen from the Anti Narcotic Cell custody.

Similarly, interrogation of arrested drug dealer David Griham alias Dudu by police had also revealed few names of policemen providing him protection. While Dudu is currently in judicial custody under Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, Atala was arrested on Tuesday under section 41 of CrPC.

DIG Yadav told reporters that Atala’s statement was required to probe the police drug-peddler nexus claimed in the video tape shot on spy cam, which exposed the links.

Joran Van Der Sloot Confession, The mystery of disappeared young American high school student has been solved. Natalee Holloway has been disappeared in 2005 during his trip on the island of the Aruba. It is revealed today that she was died and buried at the hidden place over there my and Dutch man, who has been suspect for this before he confess his crime.

Peter R. de Vries is the person who solves this 5 year old mystery in his show. Peter R. de Vries is the crime reporter, works in Netherlands and his show with the Joran Van Der Sllot had been broad cast live on the commercial channel of the coutry which was 2 hours long.

According to the Joran Van Der Sloot he does kill Natalee, she died due to the illness. He described that he had sex with her at the island of Aruba and after that she get ill and his condition suddenly gone out of control from our hand and she died next day due to that illness.

Then according to him he make a call to his one of his friend who came to the island of Aruba to help to get out from this situation. He and his frien dump the body in the land and get away from that place as early as they can and then after that he had asked for this mystery many times. At the end he also said that he can easily prove that he is not the killer of the Natalee.

PORT-AU-PRINCE: Haiti Earthquake, 100,000 Feared Dead, More than 100,000 people were feared dead in Haiti after an earthquake decimated the capital Port-au-Prince, where survivors faced a second night on streets still littered with the dead.

Schools, hotels, hospitals and the presidential palace lay in ruins and people pleaded for help as they lay trapped beneath mountains of concrete, and the capital was “mostly destroyed” an correspondent said.

Mournful songs and prayers rose above the dust and debris-cloaked city of two million people as darkness descended.

Dusk saw horrific scenes of the injured laying in the back of pick-up trucks which normally ferry residents through the city’s thronged streets.Scene:Songs and prayers in Haiti’s darkest hour

A dead victim was pinned between the fallen roof of her home and her bed, and rescuers tore at the wreckage of a children’s hospital with their bare hands.

Jeanwell Antoine held a trapped baby’s arm and sought to comfort it as he clawed through the rubble.

“It is not me who is pushing back this earth. It is the hand of God, who loves life and is guiding me so I can save this baby,” he said.

With every hour crucial for those trapped, a global aid operation swung into action, with rescue teams bringing heavy lifting gear and desperately-needed medicines and food.

Casualty figures were impossible to calculate, but Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN the final death toll from the 7.0 quake could be “well over 100,000.” President Rene Preval told the network 50,000 could be dead.Related article:Eye-witness reports, appeals on Twitter

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton compared the tragedy to the Asian tsunami which killed more than 220,000 people five years ago.

“The Indian Ocean tsunami was such a terrible tragedy and with such high loss of life. This will be a very high loss of life as well,” she said.

Preval, unsure of where he would sleep after his home and the presidential palace were destroyed, painted a scene of utter devastation.

“Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed,” he told the Miami Herald.

With thousands of people missing, dazed survivors in torn clothes wandered through the rubble as more than 30 aftershocks rocked the ramshackle and impoverished capital.

Dust filled the air, scattered fires broke out, and injured people slumped on the blood-soaked floor of one clinic waiting for treatment. Elsewhere, outside a field hospital, mothers huddled with shell-shocked children.

Some injured survivors wore makeshift slings and blood-soaked bandages. Others were carried on pieces of debris used as stretchers, past piles of smashed concrete, from which crushed bodies protruded.

Fanning safety fears in the crime-hit capital, the United Nations said the main prison had collapsed, allowing some inmates to flee into a city where basic services and communications were shut down.Related article: Quake blow to UN

The earthquake was the latest tragedy to hammer Haiti, which has been scarred by years of unrest, crime and political tumult.

“They have had a long and tortured history, but they are good people, they are survivors,” said former US president Bill Clinton, the UN envoy to Haiti.

“These people deserve a chance to bury their dead, to heal their wounded, to eat, to sleep, to begin to recover, and they can’t do it with just government help alone,” Clinton said, appealing on CNN for cash to buy food aid.

The quake late Tuesday struck just below the earth’s surface on a notorious fault line, meaning the shock was intense and damage severe, scientists said.

UN officials said at least 16 of its staffers were dead, 56 were injured and a further 150 were missing. The head of the UN mission to Haiti, Hedi Annabi, was thought to be among the dead.

US President Barack Obama vowed a swift and aggressive effort to save lives and spoke with an array of regional leaders to coordinate the aid operation.

“This tragedy seems especially cruel and incomprehensible,” he said.

Officials said the first US search and rescue teams workers were already deploying from the airport in Port-au-Prince.

The US military also mobilized ships and aircraft, and an aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, was due to arrive Thursday.

Officials said the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, home to a controversial camp for terror detainees, may also be used to house refugees.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates cut short foreign trips to return to Washington as the scale of the crisis became clearer.

Plane-loads of rescue teams and relief supplies were quickly dispatched from nations including Britain, Canada, Russia, Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Russia.

The World Bank said it planned to extend an additional 100 million dollars in emergency aid to Haiti to help recovery and reconstruction.

The massive quake toppled the cupola on the country’s gleaming white presidential palace, a major hotel where 200 tourists were missing and the headquarters of the UN mission in Haiti.

Jordan reported that three of its peacekeepers were killed and 21 wounded in the quake. Brazil said 11 of its peacekeepers were killed while eight Chinese soldiers were buried in rubble and 10 were missing, state media said.

The Haitian resort town of Jacmel was also devastated.

“I was driving back to Jacmel in the mountains when the entire mountain seemed to fall down all around me,” said Emmet Murphy, local head of the US non-governmental organization ADCI/VOCA.

Two hundred foreigners were missing at the Hotel Montana, French Secretary of State for Cooperation Alain Joyandet said.

SANAA:Al-Qaeda Wing Claims US Plane Attack, Al-Qaeda has claimed it was behind the attempt to bomb a US airline.
The picture of Umar Farouk, al-Qaeda member held on board for trying to bomb the US plane, was also released on the said website.
The statement said that Umar of Nigeria got training from al-Qaeda about bombing but failed to achieve his target due to some technical fault.

URUMQI, China: China on Tuesday executed a British man convicted of drug smuggling in its first execution of a European citizen in half a century, drawing a strong condemnation from Britain’s prime minister.

Britain’s Foreign Office confirmed the execution of Akmal Shaikh, whose relatives say was mentally unstable and was unwittingly lured into the crime.

“I condemn the execution of Akmal Shaikh in the strongest terms, and am appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted. I am particularly concerned that no mental health assessment was undertaken,” British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a statement issued by the Foreign Office.

Shaikh, 53, was the first European citizen to be executed in China in five decades.

Shaikh first learned of his death sentence Monday from his visiting cousins, who made a last-minute plea for his life. They say he is mentally unstable and was lured to China from a life on the street in Poland by men playing on his dreams to record a pop song for world peace.

Brown had spoken personally to China’s prime minister about his case.

Shaikh was arrested in 2007 for carrying a suitcase with almost 9 pounds (4 kilograms) of heroin into China on a flight from Tajikistan. He told Chinese officials he didn’t know about the drugs and that the suitcase wasn’t his, according to Reprieve, a London-based prisoner advocacy that helped with his case.

He was convicted in 2008 after a half-hour trial. In one court appearance during his trial and appeal process, the judges reportedly laughed at his rambling remarks.

It was not known how Shaikh, who is of Pakistani descent, was executed.

Amanda Knox Verdict updates :- American university student Amanda Knox arrives in court for her murder trial in Perugia, Dec. 4, 2009. Defendants Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were both found guilty for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in November 2007.

The court has heard final statements from all the parties, but they really weren’t final. A couple of days are set aside for rebuttals.

On Wednesday, the prosecution laid out its case once again. In essence, it’s this:

Amanda was in the middle of a drug-induced sexual assault.

Meredith disliked Amanda, thinking she slept around too much and didn’t clean up after herself, and the hostility was mutual.

The killers staged a clumsy burglary to make it look like someone had broken in the house to kill Meredith.

Amanda accused a man of the murder who she knew to be innocent, Patrick Lumumba.

Amanda is being tried with her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito. Amanda took the stand during the trial, but Raffaele did not.

Rudy Guede, a Ivory Coast native, opted for a speedy trial and was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The defense has argued that there’s no motive for murder, and that there’s no physical proof linking Amanda to the scene of the crime. Specifically, they say there’s no trace of Amanda’s footprints or fingerprints anywhere in the room in which Meredith was killed.

Defense lawyers have hotly contested scientific work showing DNA from Raffaele on Meredith’s bra clasp, and from Amanda on the knife that the prosecution believes to be the one used to kill Meredith.

Brenda Sierra, 15, was found dead.Seven years ago, police asked Fabiola Saavedra to view photographs to identify a body they believed to be her 15-year-old sister, Brenda Sierra. She recognized a pair of hoop earrings and knew it was Brenda.

The case is being actively investigated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Cold Case Unit.

“We believe that Brenda was killed as retaliation by gang members in the neighborhood responsible for a shooting that Brenda’s brother and mother witnessed a few weeks earlier,” said Sgt Tom Harris, who heads the unit.

Gloria Molina, a Los Angeles County supervisor, had requested that the case be transferred from San Bernardino County, where the remains were found, to Los Angeles County.

Molina’s office has been instrumental in having the $150,000 reward offer extended for an additional six months to a year.

Harris said police want to talk to a man named Jorge Barraza because, police say, he associated with the gang members arrested in the shooting Brenda’s mother and brother witnessed.

Police have been unable to locate Barraza and believe he is in Mexico. He is not a suspect in the case.

Courtesy CNN

Jlo falls on stage, Jennifer Lopez falls, Live American Music Awards 2009, Jennifer Lopez wasn’t the only performer who fell at the American Music Awards (AMAs), but she did have the best recovery, because she’s a pro.

Russian River, The Russian River supplies drinking water for some 600,000 people in Sonoma and Marin counties, and it’s also home to the endangered coho salmon and threatened chinook salmon.

David Manning, principal environmental specialist with the Sonoma County Water Agency says biologists are counting higher numbers of returning coho this year.

Manning says the coho numbers continue to be small, but he’s optimistic that by improving river habitat, the coho will slowly rebound as well.

Manning says they’re also reaching out to anglers who fish for steelhead trout in the river with a newly launched program with the tagline “If Mouth has Black, Put it Back” to help fishermen not to mistake salmon for steelhead.

Manning says with only a handful of coho left in the Russian River, every spawning salmon lost to an angler’s mistake takes a big toll on the local population.