[Iran Press TV] An elderly nun has been gang-raped by a group of bandidos in a Christian missionary school in India's West Bengal area, local police say.
A group of up to 12 thieves violated the 75-year-old after she tried to stop them robbing the Convent of Jesus and Mary School in Nadia district, 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of the West Bengal state capital of Kolkata, said a police officer on Saturday.
The officer added that the nun was hospitalized after the event and is currently in a serious condition, and that the culprits are currently being searched for by the police.
The officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the thieves tied up security guards with ropes and entered the nun's sleeping room and took the oldest one and raped her after she tried to stop them ransacking the convent.
"We strongly condemn the incident that took place at the Ranaghat Convent," said Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal, "CID [Criminal Investigation Division] will be examining all aspects to this horrific crime. Swift, strongest action to be taken."
According to church officials, the culprits destroyed the church tabernacle and stole sacred church vessels.
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03/15/2015 00:00 ||
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[Ynet] Egypt's government announced Friday plans to build a new capital adjacent to Cairo, in a massive new project that in its first phase would cost $45 billion and take up to seven years to complete.
Housing Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced the plan at the opening of the 3-day international economic conference held in this resort city and attended by hundreds of business executives and world leaders. The aim, he said, is to alleviate congestion and overpopulation in Cairo over the next 40 years. By that time, Cairo -- currently home to nearly 20 million -- would have doubled in size.
[Iran Press TV] China has dispatched fighter jets to the border with Myanmar after a Burmese warplane reportedly dropped a bomb on Chinese territory, killing four civilians and injuring nine others.
China sent several warplanes to "track, monitor, warn and chase away" Myanmar military planes approaching the common border, Chinese Air force front man Colonel Shen Jinke said on Saturday.
Shen also added that Beijing would watchfully monitor the airspace along its border with Myanmar.
The Myanmar warplane dropped the bomb on a sugarcane field in China's southwestern Yunnan province on Friday.
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03/15/2015 00:00 ||
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...FWIW, that part of the world has borders that are traditionally...fluid. It's remote and rugged enough that without a functioning GPS, it's a tossup as to whose side of the line you're on.
Mike
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[AnNahar] Poland is seeking advanced cruise missiles to equip three new submarines it wants to acquire by 2030, the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... member's minister of defense said Thursday.
Tomasz Siemoniak confirmed on Polish public radio that Poland had asked the United States about the availability of Raytheon's Tomahawk cruise missiles.
"Last year, I decided that Polish vessels should be able (to launch cruise missiles) and we are speaking to all those able to deliver this kind of weapon, including the Americans," he said.
Procedures to begin the submarine tender could be launched this year, the minister added.
If Washington greenlights the sale of Tomahawks to Warsaw, they could compete in the Polish tender against La Belle France's MdCN missile systems exclusively used to equip submarines made by the country's DCNS group.
Looking east to the bloody conflict gripping Ukraine, Poland has kicked off an unprecedented military spending spree worth some 33.6 billion euros ($42 billion) to overhaul its forces over a decade.
Its long shopping list includes an anti-missile shield and anti-aircraft systems, armored personnel carriers and submarines as well as combat drones.
The plans bring Warsaw in line with NATO's recommended defense spending level of 2.0 percent of gross domestic product.
Seventy multi-role helicopters top the list, a contract worth 2.5 billion euros.
To counter an upped Russian military presence in the Baltic and Black Sea region, NATO is boosting defenses on its eastern flank with a spearhead force of 5,000 troops and command centers in the Baltic states, Bulgaria, Poland and Romania.
[AnNahar] A U.S. Patriot missile battery will take part in a joint exercise this month with Poland designed to reassure NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... allies anxious over a resurgent Russia, the Pentagon said Friday.
The Patriot systems, used to take out incoming missiles, will be deployed for the drill along with 100 U.S. soldiers and about 30 vehicles, front man Colonel Steven Warren said.
"This planned exercise is part of Operation Atlantic Resolve which aims to reassure allies, demonstrate freedom of movement and deter regional aggression on the eastern flank of NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... ," Warren told news hounds.
The American forces will exercise with a Polish air defense missile brigade, he said.
Poland is expected to make a decision on new missile defenses later this year and the Patriot system -- manufactured by U.S.-based Raytheon -- is competing against another system by the Eurosam consortium that includes MBDA La Belle France, MBDA Italia and La Belle France's Thales Group.
If Poland opts for the Patriot batteries, it would mean more U.S. troops would be deployed on the country's territory, which would be in Warsaw's interest, U.S. Ambassador to Poland Stephen Mull said last month.
Poland has launched a major increase in military spending in the wake of Russia's intervention in Ukraine, with plans to invest in anti-aircraft defenses, an anti-missile shield, submarines, new helicopters and drones.
[AnNahar] Sweden said on Thursday it would raise defense spending by 6.2 billion kronor (677 million euros, $720 million) and bring back troops to a "strategic" Baltic island amid concerns over Russia's military resurgence.
The country's left-wing government said most of the money, to be spent between 2016 and 2020, would go towards modernizing ships that could detect and intercept submarines.
"We want to strengthen our ability to hunt submarines," Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist said at a presser.
The announcement came a few months after a week-long search for a suspected Russian submarine in the waters off Stockholm was called off despite members of the public reporting five sightings of suspicious vessels in a week.
The Swedish military's failure in October to find what it would only refer to as "a foreign vessel" -- but which was believed by most experts to be Russian -- raised questions over the country's military spending after years of cutbacks in the post-Cold War era.
The extra funds would also be used to re-establish a permanent military presence on the island of Gotland, between southern Sweden and Latvia, for the first time in 10 years.
The country's largest island "is of high strategic value for Sweden and all of the Baltic Sea," Hultqvist said.
The government wants 150 troops to be stationed on Gotland, Swedish media reported.
The United States on Monday began to deploy 3,000 troops on a three-month exercise in the Baltic to reassure Russia's nervous neighbors.
Operation Atlantic Resolve would see major NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and organization.... forces working alongside their allies in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia -- former Soviet republics now members of the Western alliance, military officials said.
The search last year in Stockholm's archipelago, involving battleships, minesweepers and helicopters, stirred up Swedes' memories of Cold War cat-and-mouse games with suspected Soviet submarines along Sweden's long, rugged coastline.
Together with a series of alleged airspace violations by Russian jets over the last year, it helped bolster public support for NATO membership in the non-aligned country.
[Hurriyet Daily News] Students at Istanbul University's Art History Department have elicited administrative disapproval after a 16th century Italian work they selected for an event poster was deemed "bawdy" by authorities.
"What is this? Cover it up this way or that way!" the faculty's secretary-general, Aliye Yucel, reportedly said after seeing Tiziano Vecellio's "Amor Sacro e Amor Profano" (Sacred and Profane Love), which the students wanted to use on a poster for a panel on the history of beauty.
"This news should not be run. I will talk to them," Yucel said when asked to comment on the matter by Hurriyet Campus, adding that she would refuse to speak further on the issue.
Members of the History of Art Collective decried what they call censorship on the part of the university, while saying they would now produce a "censorship design" for the event.
"As the history of Art Collective, we try to organize various activities. Of course we face difficulties in every activity, like failing to find amphitheaters or a hall. But recently, we have faced censorship for the poster of our seminar. We were told that the poster would not be approved by the secretary if we didn't change it, in other words, 'If we don't censor it.' Against this attitude, we came together with the participation of academics and will make a censorship design. We await your ideas."
Tiziano's painting is in the Galleria Borghese collection in Rome.
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03/15/2015 00:00 ||
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With some of these islamics, all art is bawdy. They prefer to impress the girls with more Islamic things.
[Dhaka Tribune] A former president of the Maldives has been sentenced to 13 years in prison after he was found guilty of ordering the arrest of a judge while in office.
Mohammed Nasheed was cleared of the charges last month, but was re-enjugged Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! and charged under anti-terrorism laws.
His lawyers quit during the second trial, which they said was biased and intended to end his political career.
Hundreds of supporters have been protesting on a regular basis since Nasheed's arrest last month.
Both the US and India have both voiced concerns over the charges.
A former human rights ...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... campaigner, Nasheed became the nation's first democratically elected leader in 2008, ending three decades of rule by former strongman Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
The judge at the court in the capital, Male, said the prosecution had proved "beyond reasonable doubt" that Nasheed ordered the "arrest or forceful abduction and detention" of Judge Abdulla Mohammed in January 2012.
Mohammed was detained after ordering the release of an opposition politician, provoking weeks of protests.
Nasheed eventually stepped down on February 7, later saying he had been forced to resign at gunpoint. His allies say he was ousted in a coup.
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[DAWN] Detained Muttahida Qaumi Movement ...English: United National Movement, generally known as MQM, is the 3rd largest political party and the largest secular political party in Pakistain with particular strength in Sindh. From 1992 to 1999, the MQM was the target of the Pak Army's Operation Cleanup leaving thousands of urdu speaking civilians dead... (MQM) worker Umair Siddiqui has been involved in 120 murders, Rangers asserted on Saturday. Siddiqui allegedly also confessed that MQM Sector In-charge Rehman Bhola was the man behind the deadly 2012 Baldia Town fire that consumed at least 258 factory workers.
Rangers personnel had presented a report to the Sindh High Court in February this year which revealed that the MQM had set the factory ablaze. The information had been disclosed by suspect Mohammad Rizwan Qureshi, an alleged worker of the MQM, on June 22, 2013 during joint investigation of the factory inferno.
In a blurb issued today, the Rangers spokesperson said that Siddiqui, who was presented in an Anti-Terrorism Court today, confessed to being given the task of killing those that opposed the MQM.
The accused allegedly received orders to form a team of hit mans which included 23 MQM members belonging to various units. The said team was involved in the killing of approximately 120 people that opposed the party.
The orders were issued by Hamad Siddiqui, a member of MQM's Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... Tanzeemi Committee, the blurb stated.
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[Iran Press TV] The genome of humans and other complex animals contains essential "foreign" segments of genetic code, new study says.
The research, which cast doubt on the theory that evolution is exclusively a process of selection through ancestry, was published on Friday in the journal Genome Biology.
Initially, it was thought that complex animals' genes were solely inherited through parents, but the study proposes that horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is still ongoing between microorganisms and more complicated creatures.
"This is the first study to show how widely horizontal gene transfer (HGT) occurs in animals, including humans, giving rise to tens or hundreds of active 'foreign' genes. Surprisingly, far from being a rare occurrence, it appears that HGT has contributed to the evolution of many, perhaps all, animals and that the process is ongoing, meaning that we may need to re-evaluate how we think about evolution," said Lead author Alastair Crisp from the University of Cambridge.
During HGT, genes from various organisms living in the same environment are transferred to others through the process, which is widely carried out between single-celled life forms such as bacteria or algae and is thought to hold a key role in phenomena such as bacterial resistance to antibiotics.
During the research, the genomes of 12 fruit fly species, four nematode worm species, and ten species of primate, including humans, were analyzed and then the results were compared to find similarities to discover the likeliness of a certain gene acquired via HGT and how long ago this occurred.
The research unveiled 128 new foreign genes and confirmed that 17 formerly reported ones were acquired through HGT from bacteria, viruses and fungi in humans. Some of which have key roles in the human genome, such as in metabolism and digestion, and the immune responses. I'm not surprised. I've known lots of people who've been bacterial.
"This means that the tree of life isn't the stereotypical tree with perfectly branching lineages. In reality, it's more like one of those Amazonian strangler figs where the roots are all tangled and crossing back across each other," Crisp added .
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03/15/2015 00:00 ||
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Either that or they aren't too careful about cleaning their instruments...
[Dhaka Tribune] About 50 people were believed to have drowned off Myanmar when a ferry sank in bad weather, government officials said on Saturday, though residents said they believed more people on the overcrowded vessel had died.
The boat had 209 people on board when it ran into high seas late on Friday on a voyage from the coastal town of Taunggok to Sittwe, capital of the west coast state of Rakhine, officials said.
"Twenty bodies have been found while 27 are still missing. Rescue workers are looking for them," Pyay Nyein, a bigwig from the Inland Water Transport Department, told Rooters.
A Ministry of Transport official said the boat was swamped by huge waves and 167 people had been saved, though the missing were believed to be dead.
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[Iran Press TV] Iran's media said on Saturday that the country will soon start exports of electricity to the United Arab Emirates.
Homayoun Haeri, the managing director of Iran Power Generation and Transmission Company (TAVANIR), has emphasized that Iran's power grid will be connected to the UAE in the near future.
"This will be carried out through a subsea power line," Haeri has been quoted as saying by the Persian-language Forsat-e Emrooz newspaper.
He added that this is the result of the latest round of electricity export talks between Iran and the UAE.
Iran's current electricity production capacity stands at above 73,000 megawatts, Haeri has said, adding that this has turned the country into the electricity export hub of the Middle East.
The official further said Iran is currently exporting its electricity to Iraq, Armenia, The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistain.
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Iran Press TV] An elderly nun has been gang-raped by a group of 
[Hurriyet Daily News] Students at Istanbul University's Art History Department have elicited administrative disapproval after a 16th century Italian work they selected for an event poster was deemed "bawdy" by authorities.
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