Nigerian cabinet ordered to rule on president's health

A high court judge said today that Nigeria's cabinet must pass a resolution within 14 days to determine whether the ailing president is capable of remaining in power.
President Umaru Yar'Adua left Nigeria nearly two months ago to seek medical treatment in Saudi Arabia. He has long had a kidney ailment, and doctors have said the 58-year-old is now suffering from acute pericarditis, an inflammation of the sac surrounding the heart.
Judge Dan Abutu is ruling on two of three lawsuits which aim to force the government to allow the vice-president, Goodluck Jonathan, to take over. Yar'Adua left the country without formally appointing an acting leader, as the constitution requires.
The constitution puts the vice-president next in line, but it is unclear if the Muslim-dominated north would allow Yar'Adua, a Muslim, to be replaced with Jonathan, who is a Christian. The Nigerian presidency alternates between Christian and Muslim leaders, and Yar'Adua still has two years left in his term.
Hundreds of Nigerians protested in the capital earlier this month after Yar'Adua said in a radio interview that he hoped to recover and return to power.
"The court is directing the cabinet to convene and pass a resolution to determine whether the president is still fit to run the office," Abutu said, adding that it was not in the court's power to make a final decision on the president.
Michael Aondoakaa, Nigeria's attorney general, said the government would abide by the judgment of the court.
"The executive council of the Federation of Nigeria will be sorting this as directed and will consider a resolution on the state of the president's health," he said.
The suit was filed by Farouk Aliyu, a member of Nigeria's opposition party. Aliyu's lawyer, Bamidele Aturu, said: "We filed this case so that we can save our country from anarchy, from chaos and from constitutional crisis."

Couple have sex on clock tower in Sydney centre as shoppers look on

Shocking pictures have emerged of a stark naked couple having sex on clock tower in the middle of a busy shopping centre. The Australian couple were snapped after startled onlookers noticed them clinching in the precarious, and extremely public, position on the edge of the balcony

Sixteen-year-old becomes Spain's youngest transsexual

A Spanish clinic today revealed it had performed a male-to-female sex-change operation on a 16-year-old, making her the youngest patient to undergo the operation in the country's history.
The unnamed teenager had been taking hormones to change her body since she was 15, according to doctors who treated her at Barcelona's hospital clínico, and she had been seeing doctors and psychiatrists for even longer. "The patient has been in treatment for nearly three years," said the surgeon who carried out the operation, Dr Iván Mañero.
A sex-change operation on a minor requires the approval of a Spanish court to override a law that sets the minimum age for such operations as 18.
That permission was given in November by a judge after the the child's parents had themselves made the request. The ­operation was carried out in December, though news of it was only released on Monday.
The teenager had reportedly tried to ­commit suicide on several occasions. As a child she was convinced that she was really female, but had been born in the wrong body.
"The judge consulted many medical experts and doctors, all of whom have recommended that he be operated on … she is very happy," Mañero told El País.
Gina Serra, president of the Catalan Association of Transsexuals, said it was possible from an early age for a child to be conscious that they were in the wrong body.
"An eight-year-old child knows already what they want to be and what they do not want to be," she said.
"In the end, everything depends on the support that they find within their own family."
"It is a condition that one is born with but which you cannot operate for until they are 18 years old," said Mañero.

Tourist killed by 'dinosaur-sized' shark off South African beach

Witnesses have described their horror at seeing a tourist being eaten by a "gigantic" shark in South Africa's most popular holiday destination.
Lloyd Skinner was pulled under the surf and dragged out to sea by the shark, believed to be a great white, off Fish Hoek beach in Cape Town. His diving goggles and a dark patch of blood were all that remained in the water.
"Holy shit. We just saw a gigantic shark eat what looked like a person in front of our house," witness Gregg Coppen posted on Twitter. "That shark was huge. Like dinosaur huge."
The shocking attack yesterday afternoon came after an increase in recent shark sightings and led to calls for an electronic warning system to alert swimmers.

Time running out as aid fails to reach Haiti

A massive international air and sea lift of aid to earthquake-devastated Haiti was struggling last night to overcome ­obstacles in delivering rescue teams and emergency help to the more than 2 million people in need of immediate assistance.
Confronted by bottlenecks caused by wrecked runways, port ­facilities and roads, aid experts were warning it could be days before the relief effort gets fully under way, even as thousands of people remained unaccounted for beneath the rubble of Tuesday's quake and bodies were piled in the ruined streets.
The Red Cross estimated 45,000-50,000 people were been killed in the magnitude 7.0 earthquake. Last night Haiti's president, René Préval, said: "We have already buried 7,000 people in a mass grave."
Aid agencies fear the crucial 72-hour window to find survivors would be missed if the help did not start getting through. Compounding the ­desperate problems, America's civil aviation ­authority was forced to halt planes leaving the US for Haiti.

Haiti completely devastated by earthquake

Haiti – Haitians piled bodies along the devastated streets of their capital Wednesday after a powerful earthquake crushed thousands of structures, from schools and shacks to the National Palace and the U.N. peacekeeping headquarters. Untold numbers were still trapped.President Rene Preval said he believes thousands of people were dead from Tuesday afternoon's magnitude-7.0 quake."Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed," Preval told the Miami Herald. "There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them."The Roman Catholic archbishop of Port-au-Prince was among the dead, and the head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission was missing.The international Red Cross said a third of Haiti's 9 million people may need emergency aid and that it would take a day or two for a clear picture of the damage to emerge.

Crisis in Nigeria as president drops out of view

Nothing has been heard of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua of Nigeria for 45 days after he left the country for medical treatment

The president is missing. The executive chair is empty, the in-tray overflowing, and 150 million people are crying out for leadership.
This is the crisis enveloping Nigeria, political rivals and activists say, as rumours swirl around the health of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, not seen in public for 45 days.
Africa's most populous country has allegedly become a rudderless ship despite a series of urgent issues, including the arrest of the Nigerian al-Qaida suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charged with attempting to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day. how do you feel that nigerians are governed by their sick president on the sick bed?

Amazon explorers uncover signs of a real El Dorado

It is the legend that drew legions of explorers and adventurers to their deaths: an ancient empire of citadels and treasure hidden deep in the Amazon jungle.
Spanish conquistadores ventured into the rainforest seeking fortune, followed over the centuries by others convinced they would find a lost civilisation to rival the Aztecs and Incas.
Some seekers called it El Dorado, others the City of Z. But the jungle swallowed them and nothing was found, prompting the rest of the world to call it a myth. The Amazon was too inhospitable, said 20th century scholars, to permit large human settlements.

* News * World news * Global terrorism Christmas Day airline bomb plot suspect pleads not guilty

The alleged Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab pleaded not guilty to criminal charges in federal court today, opening a case that has earned Barack Obama criticism from conservatives who say the suspected terrorist should be treated as an enemy combatant.
The 23-year-old Nigerian faces several criminal counts related to his Christmas Day attempt to bring down a Northwest airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. what a lad in sheep clothing, do you think he's really not guilty?

Obama ends Hawaiian holiday, returns to Washington

President Barack Obama returned Monday to the White House he never really escaped.Obama and his family took an overnight flight from Hawaii, capping an 11-day holiday vacation sure to be remembered more for the botched attempt to blow up a Christmas Day flight than the hours spent on golf courses or at luaus. The failed terror attack refocused the president's trip from R&R on the island of Oahu to a river of memos from homeland security aides.
Obama arrived back at the White House at midday
Even without those reviews, the president has a full agenda for the new year.
Lawmakers from the House and Senate must resolve differences on a health care overhaul nearing passage. Obama's departure for Hawaii was delayed until Christmas Eve, when the Senate passed its version of the White House's top domestic priority.
Monday with nothing on his public schedule — but much on his plate.

BAA introduces full-body scanners at UK's Heathrow

British airport operator BAA said on Sunday it would move quickly to install full-body scanners at London's Heathrow airport after the failed Christmas Day attack on a U.S.-bound plane."Now that the government has given the go-ahead, we will introduce full-body scanners as soon as practical," a spokesman for BAA, owned by Spain's Ferrovial, told Reuters.
"It is our view that a combination of technology, intelligence and passenger profiling will help build a more robust defense against the unpredictable and changing nature of the terrorist threat to aviation," he said.
He said BAA, which operates six British airports, was just looking at introducing the scanners at Heathrow -- Europe's busiest airport by passenger numbers -- at this stage. He could not give a timetable for their introduction or say how much the move would cost. Full-body scanners, unlike standard archway metal detectors used in airports around the world, use radio waves to generate a picture of the body that can see through a person's clothing and spot hidden weapons or packages. do you think that these measures could curb terrorist attacks?

snowfall brings beijing to a halt

BEIJING, Jan. 3, 2010 (Reuters) -- Heavy snow hit Beijing on Sunday, stranding thousands of passengers at the Chinese capital's main airport and casting an unusual quiet over normally busy streets as people stayed out of the freezing weather.

DECEMBER RETAIL IN NEW YORK

Top U.S. retailers will give investors the most detailed picture yet of holiday sales this week, with most expected to show better sales after an abysmal 2008 performance.The retailers will report sales at stores open at least a year, data that may also shed light on their positions heading into the spring season. Wall Street is predicting a tougher environment as consumers return to saving money.
Chains from Costco Wholesale Corp to Macy's Inc to Abercrombie & Fitch will report December same-store sales data Wednesday and Thursday. Analysts expect a 1.3 percent increase from a year earlier at 30 retailers tracked by Thomson Reuters Data.
That would mark the fourth consecutive monthly sales increase, after a straight year's worth of declines during the recession.
Jharonne Martis, director of consumer research for Thomson Reuters, said the December results should reflect an improvement from last year, when same-store sales fell 3.6 percent, but not an economic recovery.
A rise of 1.3 percent "is sti

SKYSCRAPER MAKES HISTORY IN DUBAI

Started at the height of the economic boom and built by some 12,000 laborers, the world's tallest building will open on Monday in Dubai as the glitzy emirate seeks to rekindle optimism after its financial crisis.Burj Dubai, whose opening has been delayed twice since construction began in 2004, will mark another milestone for the deeply indebted emirate with a penchant for seeking new records.
Dubai, one of seven members of the United Arab Emirates, gained a reputation for excess with the creation of man-made islands shaped like palms and an indoor ski slope in the desert.
With investor confidence in Dubai badly bruised by the emirate's announcement in November that it would seek a debt standstill for one of its largest conglomerates, the Burj Dubai is seen as a positive start to the year after a bleak 2009.
The project has been scrutinized by human rights groups, who have objected to its treatment of laborers, as well as by environmentalists who said the tower would act as a power vacuum, increasing the city's already massive carbon footprint.

Pope Benedict XVI appeals for peace in 2010

The Pope has called for peace and the protection of children as he celebrated a Mass to mark the start of 2010.

Pope Benedict XVI said peace began with mutual respect between people, regardless of their ethnicity or faith.
He said the shared characteristics of children such as laughter and tears made it clear all men were brothers.
Marking the Roman Catholic Church's World Day of Peace, the Pope appealed to armed groups to "stop, reflect and abandon the way of violence".
"Respect others, regardless of their skin colour, nationality, language, religion," he said.
The leader of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics added that the value of respect for all should be taught from an early age.
He remarked that it was increasingly common for children from different countries and backgrounds to share the same classroom.
"Their faces are a prophecy of the kind of humanity we are called upon to create: a family of families and peoples," said Pope Benedict.
Pictures of young people caught up in conflicts with faces "disfigured by pain and desperation" were a silent appeal for peace, said the 82-year-old pontiff.
He also called for people to take more care of the environment, saying that the degradation of man led to the degradation of the planet.

Pakistan volleyball crowd 'hit by suicide bomber'

At least 45 people have been killed after a suspected suicide bomb attack at a volleyball pitch in the troubled north-west of Pakistan, officials say.

Officials said the bomber drove a vehicle towards the field as people gathered to watch a match. Emergency workers put the toll as high as 70.
The attack happened near Lakki Marwat, close to North and South Waziristan.
The Pakistani army has been conducting a campaign against the Taliban in the tribal areas since October.
Dozens of people were reported to be injured in Friday's attack. Several buildings collapsed, trapping people under rubble.