Nigeria Boko Haram commander Ibn Saleh Ibrahim 'killed'

Boko Haram has staged numerous bombings across northern Nigeria in recent months

Nigeria's military has killed a top commander of militant Islamist group Boko Haram in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri, an army spokesman has said.

Ibn Saleh Ibrahim was killed in an exchange of fire with six of his lieutenants, the spokesman added.

An unknown number of civilians are said to have been killed in the crossfire, says a BBC reporter in Nigeria.

Boko Haram, which has killed hundreds of people since 2009, has not commented on Mr Ibrahim's reported death.

The group's founding leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was killed by security forces in July 2009.

'War hero'

Boko Haram is now said to be led by Abubakar Shekau.

Army spokesman Lt Col Sagir Musa told the BBC that Mr Ibrahim was "very close" to Mr Shekau and had a reputation of being "invincible".

"Yesterday [Thursday], we learned he was in town and we were able to track him in a special operation," he said.

"There was an exchange of fire and in the process he was killed with six of his lieutenants."

There has been no independent confirmation of Mr Ibrahim's role in Boko Haram.

Lt Col Musa said Mr Ibrahim had been responsible for last month's assassination of retired General Mohammed Shuwa following an order from Mr Shekau.

Gen Shuwa was shot dead at his home in Maiduguri - no group has said it carried out the attack.

He is regarded by the Nigerian military as a war hero, and played a key role in crushing Biafran separatists during Nigeria's brutal civil war in the 1960s.

In a statement, Lt Col Musa said the operation in Maiduguri, supported by armoured personnel carriers and helicopters, was on-going.

Weapons and explosive devices have been recovered, he added.

The BBC's Abdullahi Kaura in the northern city of Kaduna says residents in Maiduguri told him that the security forces have sealed off four areas within the city - Ngarnam, Bulabulin, Bayan Quarters and Flatari.

This has made it impossible for people to move in and out of the areas, though some managed to flee on Thursday when fighting broke out, he adds.

Military helicopters were circling the suspected Boko Haram strongholds, but no shooting was heard on Friday, our reporter quotes residents as saying.

Residents also told our reporter that during Thursday's clashes, civilians, including women and children, were killed after being caught in the crossfire.

The number of casualties is not known.

Earlier this month, rights group Amnesty International accused Nigeria's security forces of carrying out widespread abuses in their campaign against Boko Haram, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and torture.

The group is campaigning to impose Islamic law across Nigeria.

It has carried out a wave of bombings and assassinations since 2009.

This story is from BBC/Africa

Aluu Killings: Tears as Toku is buried

It was another festival of tears and lamentation in the Garden City of Port Harcourt on Friday as remains of Lloyd Toku Mike, one of the four University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT) students, who was lynched in Aluu clan was committed to mother earth.

The remains of the deceased was interred in Port Harcourt City cemetery, opposite Free-Town Street, off Aggrey Road Rivers State.

Until his painful demise on October 5, 2012, the late Lloyd was a 200 level Engineering student of UNIPORT and first son of his parents, Mr. & Mrs. Toku Mike. His dad is an Assistant Director of Programmes, Rivers State Broadcasting Service.

Bereaved friends and family members mourned uncontrollably when the casket bearing Lloyd’s remains arrived their residence at No. 29 Captain Amangala Street, Town,Port Harcourt.

On sighting the vehicle bearing the corpse, a Ford Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) with a Lagos registration number, BDG 485 AS, the tear-soaked mother muttered, “My baby is here,” touching the ambulance bearing the body of her beloved son.

In his sermon, pastor Promise Jeremiah of Salvation Ministries reminded sympathizers not to forget that one day people would also gather to mourn them like Lloyd. He called on them to repent in other to be found in the lamb’s book of life.

The cleric who read from Luke 16:22-30, said in life, people must belong to, either, Lazarus’ camp or beggar’s camp, heaven or devil’s camp.
The emotion-laden father, Mr. Toku Mike, while lamenting that his son promised to come home the very day he was brutally killed said Lloyd occupies a special place in his heart.

Tearfully he said: “Lloyd, you called and wished me happy birthday on Thursday, October 4, 2012. You promised you would come home on Friday, October 5, 2012 after lectures but you never did. Little did I know that your birthday wish was your goodbye to me, your mother, and your younger brother.
Continuing, Toku mourned: “Lloyd, why, why and why did you abandon us the way and manner you did? Lloyd, we loved you so very much. Word alone can’t explain how much love we had and still have for you even in death.”
He further lamented that money and tears are not enough to bring him back to life if not they would not have stopped crying, and would have also gone extra-mile to borrow money in other to bring him back to life and to complete his education.

However, mourners who were present during the interment blamed president Goodluck Jonathan and Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi for not sending representatives to the burial ceremony.

While calling on relevant security agencies to bring the killers to book, they also warned them to guard against future re-occurrence.

Meanwhile, the students’ union leaders of UNIPORT also blamed the authorities of University of Port Harcourt for not ensuring that the murdered students get justice.

This story is from DAILYPOST- NIGERIA 

Egypt bus crash kills at least 40 children

As many as 40 children aged four to six years old have been killed in a crash involving a school bus and a train in the central Egyptian province of Assyut, officials say.

The bus was carrying about 60 children from a nursery school when it was hit by a train near Manfalut, 350km (230 miles) south of Cairo.

The Egyptian transport minister has resigned, state media said.

Egypt's roads and railways have a poor safety record.

Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi ordered his ministers to offer support to the families of those killed, the state news agency reported.

Are you in the area? Did you see the crash? Please share your comments using the form below.

This story is from BBC News/ Middle east

MAN DIES GOING TO PIT TOILET

Tragedy occurred this morning in Urugbam in Biase LGA when an 82year old man collapsed, fell into the local pit toilet and died.

According to eyes witnesses, the old man prior to the incident, was hale and hearty and showed no sign of being sick. But on getting to the local pit toilet (called "latrine” by the locals) and bending down to “poo”, collapsed on top of it, fell into the pit toilet and died there.

Sympathisers had to rush and drag him out. But by the time he was dragged out, he was already dead with maggots and excretes from the pit toilet all over his body. The said sympathisers had to rush to the local stream to fetch lots of water to clean him up before taking him to the hospital at the uptown where he has been deposited at the mortuary.

Since there were witnesses and people standing by when the incident happened, there have been no suspicions of foul play or murder related. When we placed a call to the vice chairman of Biase LGA, Lagos branch Mr Sunday Onegwam, he declined to comment more on this siting insufficient information at his disposal at the moment.

Meanwhile, calls have placed to his children and relations who are living outside of Biase. May the soul of the old man rest in peace

“You are rude” – Robert De Niro goes off on Jay Z at Hollywood party

Robert De Niro and Jay-Z got into a tense beef at Leonardo DiCaprio’s birthday bash the other night, when De Niro called the rapper disrespectful, Page Six can exclusively reveal.
 

Spies say “Godfather II” and “Taxi Driver” star De Niro gave Jay a dressing-down in a roomful of celebs including Martin Scorsese because the rap mogul had refused to return De Niro’s calls.

Sources add that Jay tried to joke his way out of the situation, and even his wife, Beyoncé, tried to intervene, but De Niro wouldn’t back down.

“Bob was sitting at a table, and when Jay-Z went over to say hello, De Niro told Jay that he never called him back,” a source says.

A spy then overheard De Niro complaining to the rapper, a fellow TriBeCa resident, about a song Jay-Z agreed to record for the Tribeca Film Festival. De Niro had reached out to discuss further details, but Jay never returned his calls.

“Bob wasn’t in any mood to make polite conversation,” the spy says. “He told Jay that if somebody calls you six times, you call them back. It doesn’t matter who you are, that is just rude.”

When Jay-Z tried to make a joke of it, saying he is terrible on the phone, a source says, “De Niro kept telling him that he thinks he’s the man, but that he was disrespectful.’ ”

“Beyoncé came over, but that didn’t calm Bob down,” the source said, adding that afterward, “It was the talk of the party.

Source: Page Six

Mob hack two robbers to death with machetes in Imo

The police in Owerri on Friday said a mob killed two suspected members of a four-man robbery gang, believed to have been terrorising residents of Spibat area of Akwakuma, Owerri.

The Public Relations Officer of the state Police Command, Mr Vitalis Onugu, told reporters that the suspects were arrested by members of the Special Anti-Robbery squad at the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) who responded to a distress call.

He said the two suspects were first arrested by the local vigilance group operating in Spibat area in Akwakuma and about to be lynched by the mob when the police arrived at the scene and rescued them.

“Responding to the call, the anti robbery squad got there and found the suspects already tied down with tyres around their necks and were about to be burned alive.

“They were rescued but at the point of death as a result of machete cuts dealt on them by the angry mob. They died before we could get them to the hospital.

“However, one of the suspects, Buchi, from Akpodim in Mbaise, Imo, managed to describe to the policemen the location of their hideout before he died,” he said.

Onugu said the police immediately swung into action and arrested two other suspects in a thick bush behind Orji Mechanic Village in an uncompleted building.

The suspects were alleged to have dispossessed people of their laptops, cell phones, plasma television sets and ATM cards, Onugu said.

He said that items recovered from the suspects included Indian hemp, charms and magical instruments, assorted SIM cards, cell phones and white candles with an inscription “white confusion”.

The police spokesman also said that loaded double barrel shotguns and other dangerous weapons were recovered from the suspects.

He said a full investigation into the incident had begun.

Source: NAN

In China, New Sustainable Cities Are Rising From Nothing

China is planning a building explosion of dense, sustainable suburbs, connected to its megacities by public transit. Can these "prototype cities" alter the course of the country’s unsustainable development?

In 1902, a self-taught urban planner named Ebenezer Howard published his utopian vision for "Garden Cities"--self-contained circular towns radiating from a central city, connected only by train. Neither town nor country, they were a dense, compact fusion of the two: suburbia without sprawl.

Although Garden Cities never really caught on in the West, the Chicago-based Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture has resurrected the idea with Chinese characteristics: a “prototype city” twice as populous and twenty times as dense, with a tower taller than the Empire State Building at its core. Working with one of China’s largest real estate developers, the firm aims to build them by the score.

The first is slated for a patch of farmland roughly 10 miles from the core of Chengdu, China’s westernmost mega-city. Designed according to the specifications of Beijing Vantone Real Estate Co., the master plan calls for 80,000 residents to live and work within a half-square mile circle in which any point will be at most a 15-minute walk away.

To achieve that level of density--which is comparable to the Chicago Loop’s--“the average height of the buildings would have to be 18 stories,” says Adrian Smith. But to preserve a 480-acre greenbelt around the city, and to mollify officials anxious about developers chewing up so much farmland, the plans call for towers as high as 400 meters (1,312 feet), taller than anything in Chengdu itself. (At least until AS+GG complete their commission for a separate 450-meter tower downtown.)

Trains and mass transit will connect the satellite city to the Chengdu’s core as part of the firm’s plans to restrict cars and dramatically reduce the city’s carbon footprint. With the help of infrastructure consultants Mott McDonald, the city will deploy a raft of tactics and technologies to holistically address waste, water and energy in a manner designed cut landfill by 89%, wastewater by 58%, and energy by 48% compared to a typical Chinese city its size--which is good, because Vantone plans to sell at least one to every mega-city in China.

As Smith tells it, his partners at Vantone settled on the parameters of their neo-Garden City even before they found a site. “They were looking outside Beijing as well,” says Smith,” but the first [city] that said ‘let’s do this’ was Chengdu.”

“The old Ebenezer Howard satellite city concept never happened much in Europe, but with the growth and control that exists in China, it’s possible,” Smith adds. “It’s what, 80,000 people? That’s not huge. You’d need 12 to get to a million people.”

Vantone and AS+GG aren’t the first to propose a bright green protoype for China’s mega-urbanization. Not content to design entire cities-from-scratch, a raft of foreign architects, developers, and even sovereign governments are offering their projects as template. Maybe the most famous is Songdo, the “city-a-box” designed by the architects Kohn Pedersen Fox on behalf of American developers Gale International. Plans to build as many as 20 sequels across China are on hold, although one is proceeding outside the provincial capital of Changsha without Gale’s involvement.

AS+GG’s Smith is looking even further abroad. “We think it makes sense not just for China, but for India as well,” he says. “Since India has no infrastructure to speak of,” or at least not enough to double the densities of its already mind-bendingly populous centers, “you have to build out from the city’s core.” Ebenezer Howard would be proud.

This message was taken from Co.Exist 

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