2 Men Held in Plot to Murder Singer Joss Stone
Two men are being held in a U.K. jail for attempting to murder singer Joss Stone. According to online reports, the men were captured in the area of Stone’s country home in Devon on Tuesday. Police found a sword, rope and a body bag n their possession.
So far, police are not ID’ing the two men, whose ages were 30 and 33. But authorities say the pair had the weapons inside their car along with blueprints mapping out Stone’s home and aerial views of the property.
Neighbors tipped off police after seeing the two men driving slowly and suspiciously around the village’s roads in a red Fiat Punto. Cops originally arrested them for possession of offensive weapons, but after questioning them further the charges were upgraded to conspiracy to rob and murder the singer. Source
Industry insiders believe Stone was targeted because she’s “heavy into the drug scene over there.”
In 2007, producer Dallas Austin accused Stone and other female pop singers of f*cking for tracks. In a shocking video produced by Dallas’ own Rowdy Records, he said, “f*ck all them bitches f*cking for tracks.”
Medical Minute: Deadly E. Coli Superbug Spreads in Europe
A deadly new E. Coli bacterium that is spreading rapidly through Europe has doctors and scientists stumped.
According to NPR, the new E. Coli strain is so virulent and deadly that it is “very rare” and has never been seen in an outbreak form before.
The new bacterium is similar to the E. Coli strain that doctors have seen in the United States. But the new strain is resistant to most antibiotics and it has a different method of making people ill.
The bacterium causes full-blown haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), a condition that results in bloody diarrhea and large volume of blood in urine.
So far, 18 people have died, and 470 people have been sickened in Europe since the World Health Organization (WHO) sounded the alarm on May 20.
The new strain of E. Coli attaches itself to the intestinal walls and releases a deadly toxin that is absorbed through the intestinal walls into the bloodstream.
“What we think happens is the toxins get into the blood stream and injure the blood vessels. And the blood vessels form little clots, and there’s impaired blood flow to organs throughout the body,” said Dr. Phillip Tarr from Washington University in St. Louis.
This type of serious injury to blood vessels leads to kidney and liver failure, and can cause death. More than half of the people sickened by the new E. Coli require kidney dialysis.
“In almost all cases it’s temporary,” Dr. Tarr says. “Dialysis lasts a median of about 8 days.”
But dialysis doesn’t save everybody — as evidenced by the 18 people who died in Europe in the last 2 weeks.
Is Obama in the Beginning Stages of Alzheimer’s?
Remember when everyone thought Senator John McCain was getting senile during the 2008 presidential race? Statements such as “John McCain isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer” resulted in millions of nervous Americans casting their votes for his opponent, Senator Barack Obama.
But shortly after Obama’s historic landslide election in 2008, clues began to emerge that he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack either.
For instance, while giving a speech in London, England in 2009, Mr. Obama forgot where he met his wife, Michelle Obama.
Coincidentally, the most recent sign of a disturbing lapse in Mr. Obama’s memory occurred in London again. This time, Mr. Obama forgot what year it was when he signed a guestbook in the nave of Westminster Abbey yesterday.
According to London’s Daily Mail: instead of signing ’2011′ after his name in the guestbook, Obama wrote ’24 May 2008′ (it is customary for the British to write the day first followed by the month and year). He got the date wrong by three years when he signed the guestbook – despite apparently asking the dean what day it was.
“DOESN’T OBAMA KNOW WHAT YEAR IT IS?” shouts the embarrassing headlines in the London papers today.
In the first stage of Alzheimer’s, a disease that destroys brain cells, there is no visible impairment. In stage 2, the individual begins to experience memory lapses, forgetting familiar words or locations. In stage 3, there is a noticeable cognitive decline and the person has trouble remembering names and dates. The symptoms develop slowly and get worse over time.
It is believed that former president Ronald Reagan suffered from Alzheimer’s while he was still in office.
Click this link to see more beautiful pictures of the Obamas’ official UK trip!
Images: DM
Eleventh-hour reprieve for Iranian man sentenced to have acid injected into his eyes by woman he blinded
Update I, 10:00am ET:
Authorities have postponed a Tehran court’s decision to inject acid into the eyes of a man who threw acid in his ex-lover’s face, blinding her.
The sentence was permitted under Iran’s Islamic law, imposed since the 1979 Islamic revolution – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, in cases in which great bodily harm was caused by the defendant.
Majid Movahedi, 27, was sentenced to be blinded with acid as he lies in a hospital under anesthetic yesterday at mid noon — 20 drops in each eye by a medical professional. But, according to an unnamed official, the punishment was postponed.
According to London’s Daily Mail, Movahedi threw sulphuric acid in the face of 32 year-old Ameneh Bahrami at a bus-stop in 2004 after she scorned his requests to marry him.
The sulphuric acid literally melted away her face and left her blind and disfigured. She underwent 19 operations, including skin grafts to her face. But her vision could not be saved.
Movahedi fled the scene after the attack but he was later apprehended and sent to prison.
The tabloid reports that Movahedi stalked Bahrami for months after she broke up with him. The courts awarded her £19,000 ($30,000 USD) for her pain and suffering but Bahrami didn’t want the money — she wanted him to feel the same pain and suffering as she did.
Bahrami has received numerous death threats, and the police warned her not to go outside alone.
“His mother phoned my parents. She asked for mercy,” said Bahrami in an interview.
“She said that Majid would always work for me if he could keep his eyes. But now it’s too late,” she said.
Bahrami and her lawyer have now said they were not aware that the punishment had been postponed yesterday.
Amnesty International has urged Iran not to carry out the sentence, saying: ‘the Iranian authorities have a responsibility under international law to ensure it does not go ahead’.
‘Regardless of how horrific the crime suffered by Ameneh Bahrami, being blinded with acid is a cruel and inhuman punishment amounting to torture,’ said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy director for Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.
Originally posted on May 13, 2011 @ 9:08pm
Would You Take a Bullet for Your Man Or Agree to Live in a Cave?
An early interview with Osama bin Laden’s youngest wife revealed what life was like on the run with the world’s most wanted terrorist.
Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah – thought to be Bin Laden’s fifth and final wife — took a bullet in her calf when she rushed toward Navy SEAL commandos as they entered bin Laden’s bedroom in the early hours of Monday, May 2nd.
In interviews with Pakistani interrogators, Amal said she and bin Laden never left the upper two floors of the house in 5 years.
Amal married bin Laden when she was 19-years-old. Bin Laden’s other four wives were much older than her, as were some of his sons. Bin Laden’s first wife, Saada, was said to be furious that bin Laden, the son of a billionaire, was living in caves. She may have encouraged his other three wives to rebel at their living conditions as well.
So bin Laden sent his most trusted aide to Yemen to find him a new wife. Osama’s only requirements were that she be “religious, generous, well-brought up, quiet, calm and young enough not to feel jealous of his other wives”.
Bin Laden showered Amal and her family with $5,000 worth of clothes and jewelry. Amal’s family was thrilled that the Al Qaeda chief wanted to marry Amal. The wedding ceremony took place before 9/11 and bin Laden was already on the U.S. Most Wanted list for other terrorist acts.
According to TIME magazine, Amal, who has been described as 24, 27 or 29 in media reports, gave an interview to a women’s Saudi magazine in 2002. In the interview she described uprooting her life and moving to a “mountainous area” when the U.S. started bombing Afghanistan after 9/11.
According to British tabloid The Daily Mail, she said:
‘When the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan started, we moved to a mountainous area with some children and lived in one of the caves for two months until one of his sons came with a group of tribesmen and took us with them.”
Amal and the children were handed over to Pakistani authorities who then assisted her in returning to Yemen.
“I did not know that we were going to Pakistan until they handed us over to the Pakistani government,” she said.
When asked if she would one day see bin Laden again, she responded “Let us see what happens.” At the time, the CIA was well aware of her existence, and questions abound as to why they didn’t keep a closer eye on her in the years following 9/11.
At some point, around 2005, Amal and bin Laden reunited, and together with two of his wives and eight of his 20 children, they moved into the compound near Islamabad, Pakistan.
Exclusive video footage aired on Al Jazeera television yesterday revealed the squalid, rancid conditions in which bin Laden and his family lived inside the walled compound that was described by U.S. officials as a $1 million mansion. Pakistani real estate brokers say the compound was not worth more than $250,000.
Bin Laden was so image conscious that he sat on the dirty floor for hours changing channels on the satellite TV looking for news coverage of himself.
Shaky video shows garbage strewn about the building — inside and out. It’s hard to imagine that a billionaire lived with women and children in such appalling conditions. But bin Laden shunned material things and he hated Americans for being materialistic.
Bin Laden was so paranoid about being captured by U.S. forces that he ordered all garbage to be burned on the grounds inside the compound rather than being set out by the curb for pickup.
The trash that couldn’t be burned was left to pile up on every floor of the 3-story house in huge mounds of filth for the 5 years that they lived there.
Source: DM
Obama Meets With Navy SEALS; Says Economy Rebounding
Buoyed by the news that the economy unexpectedly added more than 200,000 jobs last month, U.S. President Barack Obama visited a transmission plant in Indianapolis today to promote his clean energy agenda.
Obama didn’t mention the execution of the world’s #1 terrorist, Osama bin Laden, by special Navy SEAL commando forces on Monday. Instead he focused on the early signs of an economic recovery.
“We’ve made this progress at a time when our economy’s been facing some serious headwinds,” the president told workers, citing high gas prices and the earthquake in Japan.
But the highlight of Obama’s agenda was his visit to the returning Navy SEALS, Night Stalkers and helicopter crews of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell in Kentucky today.
As demonstrators all over Pakistan burned American flags in mass protests of bin Laden’s death, Obama thanked the helicopter crews that flew the Navy SEAL commandos into Abbottabad where Osama had been hiding out for the last 5 years.
Bin Laden’s youngest wife, who was injured during the raid, said she and bin Laden never left the upper two floors of the million dollar mansion in the 5 years since they moved in.
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Osama Bin Laden’s Life of Luxury Revealed
This is a typical $1 million mansion in Lahore, Pakistan, not far from the “luxury” digs in Abbottabad, Pakistan where the world’s most wanted killer, Osama Bin Laden, stayed holed up until his death.
By contrast, this is the 3-story “mansion” where Osama spent his last few years on earth hiding from the prying eyes of military forces. The house was built in 2005 to house Osama, his youngest wife, one of his sons and 19 others, including the courier who unwittingly led U.S. forces to the hideout.
The land and the home are estimated to be worth about $1 million, but the compound had no Internet or telephone service. It was ringed by thick 12 to 18-foot walls topped by barbed wire.
Rather than put their garbage out by the curb for pickup like their affluent neighbors, the residents of the compound burned their trash in the yard.
Foot soldiers patrolled the sprawling grounds and snipers stood guard on the roof day and night.
The home had few windows facing the street. A third floor balcony had a 7-foot privacy wall. These outward signs gave every indication that someone important was hiding out there.
Abbotabad is described as a beautiful, sun splashed tourist destination with a golf course and quaint restaurants.
The compound was located just a hundred yards from a military training academy and a few hundred yards from the Pakistan Army Medical Center where it is believed Osama received treatment for kidney failure, low blood pressure and diabetes.
A video obtained by ABC News showed bottles of medications lining a shelf in a bedroom where bin Laden, 3 men and his teenage wife were executed on Sunday.
According to British tabloid The Daily Mail, U.S President Barack Obama watched the raid on the compound in real time on television in the situation room of the White House.
Image of Lahore mansion provided by meirajhaq
