I Don’t Care about the ‘Royal Wedding’ and I’m British!

I solemnly swear that I will not discuss the Royal Wedding that was watched by 2.5 billion people. I am proud to say that I did NOT watch it. Yes, I was at work. I have no time for nonsense, since, unlike the Royal Couple, I work for my living. I wasn’t born into wealth.

I do not care that the hotel bookings alone jumped to 400% for the weekend show. Not only were they selling commemorative spoons and plates, cell phones and condoms, they were selling more magazines and newspapers. This Royal Wedding of William and Kate is expected to pump $1 billion into the British economy. Good for them!

It does not interest me the least bit that tweets with the word the ‘Royal Wedding’ have increased fourfold since the beginning of this month, with an average of nearly 5,000 Per Hour. Thank God for the pause button for those who use twitter to get updated EVERY SECOND! 

In fact, it is perplexing that Twitter has prepared its own servers to tweet about the marriage between Prince William and Kate. Guess what it is called? ‘Wills & Kate` of course!  And a special treat for those who could not make it to the wedding: a Wedding book has been established. So now everybody can congratulate the Royal Couple using the hashtag #rw2011. Now doesn’t that make you feel important.

And everyone seems to be in on action EVERYWHERE. English tweets about the Royal Wedding that came from the U.S. were 40 percent, followed by the UK (31 percent), Canada (8 percent), Australia (6 percent), Indonesia (4 percent) and India (3 percent).

Even YouTube could not be left out. They have their own channel called the “The Royal YouTube” page that streamed live across the web all day. Videos related to the Royal Wedding, using any related keyword (such as ‘Royal Wedding’, ‘Kate Middleton’, etc.) have grown more than 110 times per day initially only 37.5 k to 460 k per day.

And of course how can we not mention the radical Islamic groups, including the al-Qaeda and Islamic militant groups. How do they fit in you ask? Well, the poor souls were so bummed out for not being invited that they wrote on their website that “the Royal Family is the enemy of God because it supports the war in Afghanistan”. HIGH ALERT

How can you blame them when Hitler didn’t react royally either when he found out he wasn’t invited:

In Pakistan, people celebrated in the only way they know: dolling up the bride and groom in the traditional farshi gharara and sherwani:

The one million people who had gathered along the wedding route did not have a ball either. 57 arrests were made: about half the arrests were for breach of the peace and a man was held for an alleged sex assault on a girl, aged 14.

 

Anyway, I am glad it's over now and I feel proud of myself for not giving in to the hype. For the rest of you, GET BACK TO WORK!

THE GREAT ESCAPE: AFGHAN STYLE (inside job?)

Around 541 members of the Taliban, including some top military commanders, escaped from Kandahar city's main jail, this Sunday, through a 320 meter-long tunnel that took five months in the making.

However, police in Kandahar stated, later on Monday, that they had recaptured 26 of the 541 prisoners, and that two of them were killed in the process.

The 1,200-inmate Sarposa Prison, known to be the most secure prison in the country, is part of a plan to strengthen the government's presence in Kandahar. Just recently, the prison underwent security upgrades and tightened procedures after a 2008 Taliban attack that helped 900 prisoners escape. In that assault, dozens of militants on motorbikes and two suicide bombers attacked the prison. One suicide bomber set off an explosives-laden tanker truck at the prison gate while a second bomber blew open an escape route through a back wall.

But this time it was different, more “well planned”, according to the prison guards.

A statement was later issued by the Taliban boasting about the easy escape for which “not a single shot was fired”.

“The tunnel was not dug by the inmates but by fighters outside the prison. These Mujahedeen began digging a 320 meter-long tunnel from a house to the prison from the south side, which was completed after a five-month period, bypassing check posts, the Kandahar-Herat main highway, government checkpoints, watch towers and concrete barriers topped with razor wire, leading directly to the political prison," the statement read. (It is surprising that the Taliban secretly dug a tunnel more than 300 meters long, right under the guards’ noses, right in the middle of a big city, and nobody noticed?)

"The tunnel reached its target last night, from where the prisoner Mujahedeen were led away through the escape route by three previously informed inmates in a period of four-and-a-half hours, starting from 11pm last night and ending at 3:30am this morning. Mujahedeen later on sent vehicles to the inmates who were led away to secure destinations."

"We had proper digging equipment. There was so much earth from the tunnel that we carried it away gradually and sold it in the market. We had the support of skilled professionals - people who were trained engineers, who advised us on the digging," he added. "We managed to hit the spot where the prisoners were kept."

Security guards at Sarposa prison say they discovered the breach at about 4 a.m. Monday, a half-hour after the Taliban say they had gotten all the prisoners safely to a house at the other end of the tunnel.

 

Police showed reporters the roughly dug hole that was punched through the cement floor of the prison cell. The opening was about 3 feet (1 meter) in diameter, and the tunnel dropped straight down for about 5 feet (1.5 meters) and then turned in the direction of the house where it originated.

A man, who claimed to have helped organize those inside the prison, told The Associated Press in a phone call that he and his accomplices obtained copies of the keys for the cells ahead of time from "friends." He did not say who those friends were.

"There were four or five of us who knew that our friends were digging a tunnel from the outside," said Mohammad Abdullah, who said he had been in Sarposa prison for two years after being captured in nearby Zhari district with a stockpile of weapons. "Some of our friends helped us by providing copies of the keys. When the time came at night, we managed to open the doors for friends who were in other rooms."

He said the diggers broke through Sunday morning and that the inmates in the cell covered the hole with a prayer rug until the middle of the night, when they started quietly opening the doors of cells and ushering prisoners in small groups into the tunnel.

Wali Mohammad, a Taliban fighter in Helmand province's Marjah district before being jailed, said he was woken at 1:30am on Monday by noises in his prison cell.

"When I opened my eyes, I saw three Taliban armed with Kalashnikovs who were waking the prisoners”. They guided us to the top of the hole and we all got in, one after another. There were lights inside the tunnel and also a pipe which I think was carrying air. It took us around half an hour to reach the other end,” he claimed.

After emerging from the tunnel into the safe house, he tried to flee to his cousin's home in Kandahar city in search of food and clothing. But as he reached his safe haven, people and police became suspicious of him as he was barefoot and his clothes were stained with mud from the tunnel and they arrested him.

A second prisoner, Jaan Mohammad, insisted he was not a Taliban and was forced to escape. "They pointed their guns towards us and warned that we either go or they will shoot us, so we went," he said.

"The air inside the tunnel was very heavy and I felt like choking. At the other end of the tunnel, there were eight or nine people who told us to disperse and leave. I went to a village and hid myself among the wheat fields there but people saw me and they informed the police, who later arrested me,” he claimed.

A third man, a Taliban fighter Hamid Gul, said he knew an escape was forthcoming.

"It was later in the night that we realized it was time as we heard some noise. The doors of our cell are not usually locked, so we easily got out and went to the tunnel. I was told to go to Arghandab district (elsewhere in Kandahar province) and join the Taliban there but I was detained by police inside Kandahar city," he said.

But there is no ignoring the fact that the Taliban had pulled off a daring success right under the noses of Afghan and NATO officials.

In another statement, the Taliban boasted that "the most astonishing thing" was that the escape had taken four-and-a-half hours, finished at 3.30am but went unnoticed until four hours later.

A successful escapee bragged of the ease of their escape and the failure of prison guards to notice which will raise questions about discipline among staff and the training they received from Canadian 'mentors.' "They were just sleeping," he claimed. "They are always intoxicated, smoking heroin, smoking hashish, or sleeping." He will now rejoin the insurgency, he said. "I have been doing jihad for 10 years. I will fight again, I will fight again!" 

The Afghan presidential spokesman Waheed Omar described the incident as a "disaster" while local intelligence officials fear an upsurge in violence will be repeated this time.

Experts in the US predict that the experience of insurgents in the Afghan jail, where conditions are frequently insanitary and overcrowded, can boost their determination to fight pro-government forces.
 

“These people will have bad memories from the time of their detention, they will have bad memories from interrogations and I’m sure they will come back and wreak revenge,” said Noor-Ul Haq Ulumi, a former Afghan general with extensive experience in the south.

Conspiracy? (Isn’t there always one?)

While some anti-American agents claim this is a conspiracy orchestrated by the CIA and supported by the local prison guards as a reason for the US to stay in Afghanistan to keep the War On Terror going and not turn over power to the Afghans. This is because the US is making millions by investing in programs, military equipment, ammunition, weaponry research etc. There are around 130,000 international troops in Afghanistan, two-thirds of them from the United States, battling the Taliban and other insurgents.

Other analysts seem to point fingers at the Karzai government, which is currently pursuing peace talks with Taliban elements as international combat troops prepare to start limited withdrawals from July ahead of a full pull-out by 2014. They suggest the Afghan government may even have overlooked the plot as a way of ‘building bridges with the Taliban’ and furthering peace efforts by President Hamid Karzai as NATO troops start withdrawing. "The escape is a political cover, this is a political move," said an official (who did not want to be named). "This could not have happened without the knowledge or even facilitation of the Afghan government."

I guess we will never really know the truth... Will we?

Cannibals in Pakistan: Part 3 (recent developments)

 

New details have been unearthed concerning the case of the ‘Cannibal Brothers' in Pakistan. 

A little background to understand the story: Pakistani police had arrested two middle-aged brothers, Mohammad Arif and Mohammad Farman, on suspicion of stealing and eating the flesh of 24-year-old cancer patient, Saira Perveen. The two brothers are said to have cut a foot and part of a knee from the body and cook the flesh in a steel pot. Some of the gruesome dish had already been devoured when police raided the brothers' home in a remote part of Punjab. (The videos below may contain graphic scenes. Watch at your own discretion)

The culprits have confessed to eating human flesh since a decade. One brother claimed that the delicious dishes were made from the flesh of human beings, and that they could only procure this meat from dead corpses. Otherwise, “we have to kill them and then eat them.” While, the other brother found all this amusing and casually said that he thought he was being fed goat’s meat and had no clue it was human flesh.

When the police raided their house they found that, “they (the brothers) had managed to remove the flesh from the leg. Under interrogation, Arif revealed that they had eaten some of the flesh and stored the rest for dinner.”

According to the investigators, Arif and Farman had eaten parts of almost 150 bodies that they had excavated from the graveyard. The number, others speculate, could be up to 250.

Not only this, the brothers had taken out the limbs of children from graves and eaten them, and had also eaten stray cats and dogs when nothing else sufficed. They allegedly ate the shrouds after writing religious verses on them, in what seems to be a black magic ritual. While it was difficult for them to digest bones, they used chemicals to metabolize and dissolve the bones and tough parts of the body. They have also revealed to the police that they also ate their own flesh in small amounts, as well as their own hair.

It seems that Saira Perveen was not the only one who was the victim. They had been doing so as an act of revenge against women when their mother passed away and their wives left them. Farman’s wife, Rashida, left him a day after their marriage, and then divorced him, while, his brother, Arif, was married to Iffat seven years ago. She left Arif and took her two children with her. They had lost two other children less than a month after their birth. According to the mother, the children were severely ill and were killed by their own father and uncle who confessed that they cooked and ate them too. Their bodies were never found.

There were more victims…According to a neighbor, their sister, Saira, who was mentally disturbed, was gang-raped and became pregnant. Just before giving birth to her child, the brothers allegedly killed and ate her. Her body was never found either.

While it was Saira Parveen family that first raised the alarm over the missing body, locals now claim they always had their suspicions, more so because there were no burials for Arif’s two children, and that another six-month old baby’s body had gone missing from the graveyard. They never reported this to the police because later they were threatened by the brothers.

Ghulam Habib, the caretaker of the graveyard, since 30 years, admitted that he too suspected the two brothers when he, repeatedly, saw them entering the graveyard at odd hours, carrying a spade and other tools. He could not expose them because they had threatened to kill him as well.

They locals claimed that the brothers “never spoke to anyone, but just kept to themselves for the last four years. We had heard they used drugs, but there was never any indication that they indulged in these activities… they never really bothered anyone.”

The brothers reportedly believed that by consuming human flesh, they would gain the powers of Satan and become immortal, invisible and all-powerful which is apparently a belief of black magic.

The local police officer, Abdul Rehman, says that this is the “worst case of my life”.

Residents now fear that the bodies of their loved ones may have already gone into the cannibals’ cooking pot.

An Attractive Man Has A Loooong... Ring Finger!

If you want to know how attractive a guy is, all you have to do is look down … at his hands.

According to a recent study conducted by British Royal Society's journal Biological Sciences, published on April 19, the ratio between the length of a man’s right index and ring fingers is linked to his facial attractiveness.

Ok…so what is ‘the ratio’? It is also called the 2D:4D since it compares the length of the second digit with the fourth digit, makes sense since that ratio is driven by the sex hormone testosterone, the researchers say.

To make it simple: "What we found was that 2D:4D ratio can predict face attractiveness. The more masculine the 2D:4D is, the more attractive is the face," said study researcher Camille Ferdenzi at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. "The amount of sex hormones you are exposed to before birth contributes to how your face develops and how attractive it becomes." Past research has shown that females find caveman-like masculine faces more attractive.

Oddly enough, this is because of the amount of testosterone that a fetus is exposed to in the end of the first trimester, when the testes start to develop. The more testosterone, the higher this 2D:4D ratio is, and also, the higher-quality sperm the male produces. This is different from other sexual and masculine traits, such as voice frequency and body odor, which are regulated by levels of adult testosterone.

"There are lots of things that are regulated by testosterone during puberty and in adults," said John Manning, a researcher from Swansea University in Wales who wasn't involved in the study.

Looks Matter! 

The more testosterone the fetus is exposed to, the longer its right ring finger grows (yes, just this one finger). Apparently, the index finger is more sensitive to fetal estrogen levels. If these two fingers are of the same length (measured from the bottom crease), the 2D:4D ratio is 1; if the ring finger is longer, the ratio is lower than 1. So the longer the ring finger is than the index, the higher the level of fetal testosterone is — and, eventually, a hotter guy! (facially)

While the experiments required to definitively prove this correlation (sampling testosterone during pregnancy, or treating some fetuses with testosterone and measuring finger length) would be unethical, many researchers believe in the connection. Tests in rats show that increased testosterone causes higher 2D:4D ratios, and some human hormonal diseases show differences in this ratio.

To see how this is related to attractiveness, Ferdenzi had 49 female college students judge body-odor-soaked pads  taken from the armpits of men (yuck!), voice clips and face-only pictures of 49 male college students. They then compared these results with precise measurements of the guys' 2D:4D ratios and saw a connection between facial attractiveness and higher 2D:4D ratios.

"The study's main conclusion is sound, the relationship between digit ratio and perception of attractiveness fits in with what we already know," said Manning, who in his own research last year found a connection between the 2D:4D ratio and the talent for playing rugby football. "I think it's an excellent paper." (Me too!)

Health Matters too

Last year British researchers reported new confirmative findings for a link between index finger length (relative to ring finger length) and the risk of developing prostate cancer. Men featured with a longer index finger than ring finger, appear to have a 33% higher chance for NOT developing prostate cancer.

A Woman’s Finger Length Says:

Finger length may be an indication of sexual orientation too, a controversial study has shown. Scientists from California found that lesbian women have a greater difference in length between their ring finger and index finger than straight women do. The same pattern was also found for homosexual men - but only when the researchers looked at those males that had several older brothers.

In women, the ring finger and index finger tend to be about the same length. What the study showed was that lesbian women also tended to have the more "masculine" arrangement - that is, they had shorter index fingers.

A Man’s Finger Length Says:

The ratio of finger sizes in men was more complicated. In men, however, the index finger is usually the shorter of the two digits. Comparisons between all men showed no differences. Only gay men with several older brothers had an unusually "masculine" finger ratio - in other words, they had significantly shorter index fingers.

Having a large number of older brothers had previously been established as a factor predisposing men to homosexuality, and like finger length reflects prenatal androgen exposure.

Homosexual men without older brothers had finger length ratios indistinguishable from heterosexual men, indicating that factors other than hormones - such as genetic influences - also contribute to sexual orientation.

"The results in men are more complicated but also more interesting," Dr Marc Breedlove, one of the researchers, told the BBC. This is because they suggest younger brothers are being exposed to higher levels of androgen in the womb than their elders.

What Makes The Finger Grow?

"We think it is inescapable that the mother's body is remembering how many sons she has carried before, and somehow she is then increasing the amount of androgen that each subsequent son sees before birth. So the fascinating questions are: where is the memory being stored in the mother's body and what is she doing to change amount of androgen that each subsequent son sees."

The Berkeley study has been published in Nature. Scientists in the UK have given it a cautious reception. They say far more work is required to back up some of the ideas contained in the research.

"I think this is a possibility," said Dr Richard Sharpe, of the human reproductive science unit at Edinburgh University. "But no-one has actually measured the levels of androgens in fetuses or the womb - you can imagine it is difficult to do - so this is all speculation. It may be informed speculation, but I think when we get on to a subject as touchy as sexual orientation we need to clearly define what is speculation and what is fact."

So, now all I have to do is look at the hands of a man to see how attractive he is and whether he would be into women? Great! That’s much more convenient and saves a whole lot of time. Couldn't thank you researchers enough!

'Three Cups of Tea' and One Cup of DECEIT!

Greg Mortenson is a former mountaineer, best-selling author, humanitarian, and philanthropist. His non-profit organization, the Central Asia Institute (CAI), is committed to supporting education, especially for girls, in rural areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and according to its web site, has instituted more than 140 schools there. 

Due to his understanding of the sensitive areas in these countries, Washington think tanks such as the Aspen Institute regularly invite him to speak. Top American generals such as David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal ardently seek Mortenson’s advice and depend on him to set up meetings between the U.S. military and village elders of Pakistan.

Mortenson brings an inspirational message built around a story that forms the foundation of his best-selling book, ‘Three Cups of Tea’. This book gives an account of how, in 1993, he tried and failed to reach the peak of K2, the world's second tallest mountain located in Pakistan, as a tribute to his dead sister, how he got lost and separated from his group on the descent, how he was kidnapped by pro-Taliban fighters and escaped and stumbled into a tiny village called Korphe.

Greg Mortenson: "My pants were ripped in half and I hadn't taken a bath in 84 days. And I stumbled into a little village called Korphe, where I was befriended by the people. They gave me everything they had: their yak butter, their tea. They put warm blankets over me, and they helped nurse me back to health".

Mortenson tells how he discovered 84 children in the back of the village writing their school lessons with sticks in the dust. “And when a young girl named Chocho came up to me and said, “‘Can you help us build a school?’ I made a rash promise that day and I said, "‘I promise I'll help build a school."’ Little did I know it would change my life forever” he said.

About the kidnapping incident Mortenson stated that the men had “detained” him for eight days and kept his money and his passport. He insisted that at the time, “I thought it best to befriend the people detaining me."

President Obama was so smitten by the stories in his book that he donated $100,000 to the group from the proceeds of his Nobel Prize. ‘Three Cups of Tea’ has sold more than four million copies and is required reading for U.S. servicemen bound for Afghanistan.

Greg Mortenson has become a publishing phenomenon and sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit, where he has attained a cult-like status. He regularly draws crowds of several thousand people at $30,000 per engagement.

Mortenson has received numerous honors, including the Sitara-e-Pakistan (Star of Pakistan), a civilian award rarely given to foreigners.

It's a powerful and heart-warming tale that has motivated millions of people to buy his book and contribute nearly $60 million to his charity.

Until Sunday night, Mortenson was considered an international hero. That is until Jon Krakauer, one of Mortenson's earliest backers, who donated $75,000 to his non-profit organization, told ’60 Minutes’, “It’s a beautiful story, and It's A Lie!”

This is what he said in an interview:

Interviewer: Did he stumble into this village weak in a weakened state?

Krakauer: Absolutely not.

Interviewer: Nobody helped him out? And nursed him back to health?

Krakauer: Absolutely not. I have spoken to one of his companions, a close friend, who hiked out from K2 with him and this companion said Greg never heard of Korphe till a year later.

Concerning his alleged kidnapping it was reported that the said ‘kidnappers’, appeared in a picture with Mortenson, were tracked down and they denied abducting him or being members of the Taliban. The men he identified as Taliban kidnappers were actually his own tour guides. One man charged the author's version was "totally false," a tale told "to sell his book!"

Mahsud, a local from the village Korphe, showed a photo of Mortenson that was taken that July. The picture shows Mortenson, smiling, standing shoulder to shoulder with eight other men. They are all armed with AK-47s. So is Mortenson!

He too is cradling an AK-47 with a huge 75-round magazine attached. “He claims we are all kidnappers,” says Mahsud. “You can clearly see this man is not a frightened, kidnapped man, but a very happy one. Mortenson’s claim that he was forced to pick up copy of the Quran, do ablutions and promise to convert to Islam is false too".

The "60 Minutes" report alleged that several schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan that Mortenson's Central Asia Institute is said to have founded either do not exist or were built by someone else, or not receiving support at all!

It has been reported that half a dozen staffers and board members have left Mortenson’s nonprofit in recent years over concerns about how its money was budgeted. The charity has filed only one public IRS return in its 14 years of existence, last year’s, and reported spending $1.7 million for Mortenson’s book promotion travels, including on private jets. Krakauer, who stopped supporting the institute nine years ago after donating $75,000, said he was told by a staffer that “Greg uses Central Asia Institute as his private ATM machine—that there’s no accounting. He has no receipts.”

In this defense, Mortenson did, however, concede that some elements of the tale may have been trimmed to fit the narrative. “The time about our final days on K2 and ongoing journey to Korphe village and Skardu is a compressed version of events that took place in the fall of 1993 … There were many people involved in the story and also those who produced the manuscript. What was done was to simplify the sequence of events for the purposes of telling what was, at times, a complicated story."

It is people like him who tend to make some powerful enemies (Anti-Americans in Pakistan) by using people to their advantage, making millions and lying to the public in return. Perhaps, if he would have put down the word "Fiction", none of this would even matter!

Suicide Bomber, caught just before the act, Survives To Tell His Story

In April a suicide blast ripped though a shrine in Pakistan, which was packed with thousands of devotees, leaving several dead. Both bombers were schoolboys in their early teens. But one survived to tell his story about what made him want to take his life and the lives of others.

Fidai, 14, was brainwashed by the Taliban into becoming a suicide bomber because he believed he would go to paradise. He was lucky to survive because his bomb vest failed to detonate. Although, he was left nearly dead, as the explosives strapped to him ripped through his abdomen, tore off his right arm, and crippled his left arm and he could yet lose his life because of his injuries.

Now in police custody, he admits he made a terrible mistake and begs forgiveness for his deadly mission - for which his family has now disowned him.

He explained how he was led to believe, by the dogged Taliban recruiters who waited for likely young boys as they went to school, that studying was a waste of time and that killing 'infidels' would be a direct route to paradise. “The Taliban prayed all the time and read the Koran, so I thought they were good people. My heart told me to go and train with them,” the child said.

Fidai said that as many as 350 people are being trained as suicide bombers in Mir Ali, North Waziristan where they learn how to shoot, use a grenade and ultimately become suicide bombers. Those being trained include people from Punjab, while many are Uzbek, Tajik and Arab nationals, indicating the presence of foreigners’ involvement.

Speaking about the complex network, he said that “A man named Sangeen Khan travels from Waziristan to Afghanistan and picks out targets for suicide bombers while another man named Naeem instructs the bombers”. He added that “Six trained men had been sent to various districts of Punjab with explosive material for more attacks”.

Giving an account of what happened at the shrine he explained that he was told he would go Afghanistan to kill 'non-believers' but in fact was taken to another part of Pakistan with his friend and ordered to blow up the shrine. They were blindfolded for the entire journey.

According to police sources, Umar and Ali stayed at a hotel in DG Khan where the room was booked using Ali’s national identity card. They said that the investigation team had arrested the hotel’s owner and a number of its employees for interrogation. However, the DG Khan police are yet to issue a sketch of Ali, the alleged mastermind of the attack, who died in the shrine blast.

“The plan was that Ismail would blow himself up near the shrine, then I would wait and blow myself up near the ambulances when they came.” He was told to press a specific button near the area where people ‘worshipped the dead’.

He said he had no doubts at all about killing himself: “All I was thinking was that I had to detonate myself near as many people as possible. When I decided it was the right time, it was a moment of happiness for me. I thought that there would be a little bit of pain, but then I would be in heaven. I was only keener to go to heaven. I never thought about my family members during the training”. “The moment you will press the button of your suicide jacket, you will immediately go to heaven,” Fidai said Zafar, his recruiter, told him.

Here is a video of Fadai being caught just before the act:

Luckily, the bomb vest failed but even then Fadai continued to try and bring about more carnage - reaching for a grenade in his pocket.

“We had been taught that if the belt does not go off, we should kill ourselves with the grenade. There were three policemen standing close by, and I thought if I killed them too, I would still make it to heaven.”

As he attempted to pull out the pin, he was shot in the arm by police. He says when doctors and officers then tried to save him, he realized he had made a dreadful mistake. 

But the young boy who said he lost his father Akbar Khan in a blast in Karachi a few months ago, apologized to the nation (see video below) and said he would work for the welfare of humanity if acquitted.

He admits he now “did a very bad thing” and has realized suicide bombing is un-Islamic. “I am ashamed of my act. We killed innocent people,” Umar told reporters, appealing to other suicide bombers to abandon such activities. 

Let’s just hope he has learned his lesson, albeit the hard way, and let this be an example to others who get brainwashed into committing such inhumane atrocities in the name of religion!

These Chinese! First fake products and now a fake ARMY in the U.S???

This 100-strong ‘army’ recruited from California’s Chinese neighborhood, thought they were part of an elite U.S. Special Forces unit employed to help defend their adopted country, the U.S. They were given military uniforms, flags and ID badges and were seen marching in local parades.

They were told that their service to the U.S. would help to gain points that would accumulate to acquire perks from getting off traffic tickets to paving a smoother path to a U.S. citizenship.

The only problem was that the mini-army was a FAKE!

The mastermind, a 51 years old Chinese, Yupeng Deng, was a conman preying on immigrants’ dreams of becoming citizens. He charged more than 100 fellow Chinese nationals between $300 and $450 to join this fake Army unit. As well as telling recruits that belonging to the unit was a path to U.S. citizenship, Deng urged them to pay him cash for higher military rank, according to prosecutors. 

Deng called his bogus squad the U.S. Army/Military Special Forces Reserve unit, or MSFR for short, and gave himself the lofty title of "supreme commander."

He even took ‘his soldiers’ to the decommissioned USS Midway aircraft carrier, which is a museum in San Diego. When they would appear in public, the recruits wore green uniforms and held up various flags. They also carried out drills using mock weapons.

They had no clue something was amiss even when they noticed that their uniforms didn't fit them. They didn't shine their boots like other soldiers did. They even had typos and misspellings on their ID cards.

Most of the ‘soldiers’ who turned up for recruitment, at a store front in Temple City, California, that was decorated to resemble an official military recruiting centre, were poorly-paid Chinese waiters from the Los Angeles area. Some of them came from as far away as Georgia.

The FBI began its investigation three years ago after local police noticed an increase in fake military identification passes that were smugly flashed by people pulled over at traffic stops.

It was learned that these ‘soldiers’ were promised that the fake IDs could be used to avoid getting tickets and to receive several benefits and discounts.

Deng was arrested on Tuesday by sheriff's deputies and was charged with theft by false pretenses, manufacturing deceptive government documents and counterfeit of an official government seal. He faces up to eight years in prison if convicted.

You'll have to agree, no matter what, the Chinese are certainly inventive!

BOY ABDUCTED by FATHER, taken to PAKISTAN

Jahanzeb Niazi, of Sialkot with a Canadian nationality, kidnapped his son all the way from Canada and took him to Pakistan in order to gain full custody. Little did he know that his partner and the mother of his child, Roshni Desai, a Canadian national of Indian origin, was able to trace him back to Pakistan.

The boy, Azan Sohail Niazi, was born on July 10, 2007, in Canada, out of Desai's union with Niazi. After the couple split up Jahanzeb initially had visitation rights to the child but he was not content and wanted complete custody. Therefore, he started negotiations with the mother and was given access to the child once a week.

According to Desai, on March 7, 2011, Azan went missing and when she tried to contact Niazi he wouldn’t answer her calls. Later, Jahanzeb guaranteed that the child would be handed over to her soon, but that never happened, she added.

On March 9, 2011, a Canadian police informed Desai that Jahanzeb Niazi, along with Azan, had flown away to Pakistan. She said since she had been told that her son had traveled on a Pakistani passport, she contacted the Pakistani Consulate.

Desai said she also filed a petition before the Canadian Superior Court (Family Division), Province of Cubic, District Montreal, Canada, and obtained an order which directed the respondent to hand over the child to her latest by March 15, 2011. The court also granted her legal custody of the child. Additional, she approached the Royal Canadian Mounted police which issued arrest warrants for Jahanzeb Niazi on charges of abduction.

She appealed to the Lahore High Court (LHC) that Jahanzeb Niazi did not have any legal right to custody of the minor according to the Canadian law and Muslim Family Laws of Pakistan since there was no legal marriage solemnized between them.

Jahanzeb Niazi had not even obtained Pakistani citizenship for Azan; therefore, legally, as a citizen of Canada the minor could not live in Pakistan according to an order of the Canadian Superior Court (Family Division), Montreal, Canada.

Earlier, the police produced the child and Jahanzeb Niazi in the court of the judge, Justice Asad Munir, who allowed the petitioner to meet her son in the courtroom.

The judge asked Jahanzeb, “Do you think that Pakistani culture would accept this child whereas in Canada he can live a better life?” The judge explained the sensitivity of the case to the unmarried couple and stressed that it should be resolved amicably. Justice Munir granted temporarily custody of the child to Desai and directed both the parents to reach an agreeable solution by next date of hearing, April 14.

Let's hope this gets resolved soon for the sake of the child.

What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex? FINALLY answered!

This bestseller book called “What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex”, written and published in just nine days by Shed Simove, made a million authors instantly hate him.

Why? The book in question was a bit different to other books. And most authors felt it did not deserve the recognition it was receiving.

But WHY? Because, this book, entitled “What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex” is not some book written by a Mr. Know It All but by an honest person who, after a lot of research, has, for once, FINALLY answered the mother of all questions: What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex? And the answer lies in his 200 page book which is….COMPLETELY and UTTERLY BLANK!

That’s right, you read that correctly! His book contains two hundred pages and each one has absolutely nothing printed on it. So the question is finally answered!

The real reason for the book's popularity is clever marketing techniques through which it has become a bestseller on amazon.co.uk. Here is a video that Simove uploaded on youtube.com that helped sell his book:

In fact, the author sent a copy of his book to the Playboy Mansion to get an opinion from the 84-year-old Hugh M Hefner, the 'Playboy', the 'sex icon', who is known to have bedded over 2,000 women. Hef replied:

  

This is true, since this book wasn’t the first blank book published. In fact, in the 1700s, a blank book called ‘Everything Men Know About Women’ was released. It doesn’t come as a surprise that this book was blank too.

It goes without saying that men, in fact don’t think about much except sex be it at home, at work or with friends. That’s all they think about. It is known that men think about sex every seven seconds!

But hey, don’t get offended. If you use this book as a notebook and write things in it that come to your mind and are not about sex, you show that you DO actually think about other stuff. Take it as a challenge!