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http://ift.tt/eA8V8J A Pakistani court on Friday delayed the extradition hearing of a Pakistani-American man accused of plotting attacks in New York City for Islamic State without fixing a new date, the man’s lawyer said. Talha Haroon, 19, was arrested in Pakistan in 2016 after U.S. authorities identified him as one of three men, along with a Canadian citizen and a man from the Philippines, planning attacks on Manhattan’s Times Square and the city’s subway. His lawyer and family deny the charges. Haroon’s lawyer termed the investigation a sting operation carried out by an investigating officer motivated by career advancement. “The FBI projected this as a high-level story, but these people don’t have the qualifications to kill a monkey,” said the lawyer, Idrees Ashraf. Ashraf said his client was only in contact with the investigating officer but never directly spoke with the co-accused, raising serious doubts about the nature of the investigation. “According to the criminal compl...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J The United Nations’ cultural agency will elect a new chief on Friday, seeking someone who can revive UNESCO’s fortunes after the United States and Israel pulled out. Whoever gets the job will need to restore relevance to the agency whose mission to protect the world’s cultural and natural heritage has been hobbled by regional rivalries and a lack of money. After four days of secret balloting at UNESCO’s Paris HQ, Qatar’s former culture minister Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kawari qualified for the final vote, scheduled for Friday evening. He will face off against either Moushira Khattab, an Egyptian diplomat and politician, or Audrey Azoulay, a former French culture minister, whichever woman wins a ballot on Friday afternoon. “More than ever UNESCO needs a project that rallies the member states, re-establishes trust and cuts through the political divisions for the sake of UNESCO,” French foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes Romatet-Espagne said ahead of the vote to rep...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J The Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, Bauchi State Office, is to partner with the Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS) to train staff and inmates in the state on vocational skills. The State Controller of the Ministry, Mr Taddy Yusuf, made this known in a statement signed by the Public Relations Officer of the NPS, Bauchi Command, Mr Abubakar Algwallari, on Friday. Yusuf was on a courtesy visit to the Controller of Prisons, Bauchi State Command, Mr Sulaiman Sulaiman. He said that the ministry offered various skill acquisition programmes which  include: building, carpentry, computer operations, electrical installation, motor vehicle mechanic and welding. He said that others include: satellite dish installation, pipe fitting and plumbing, tailoring and dressmaking as well as catering and hotel management. Yusuf said that inmates stood a better chance of gaining a lot after undergoing courses of their choice. He said that the ministry’s certificate of co...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J Thirteen children were hospitalised on Friday after hydrochloric acid was spilled during a science experiment in a class in an elementary school in Fukuoka, south-western Japan, local media reported on Friday. According to the reports, the local board of education said that 13 pupils in the sixth grade felt ill following the accident, with some of them complaining of sore eyes and headaches. At around 11:20 a.m. local time, one of the students at Nagazumi Elementary School in Minami Ward, Fukuoka Prefecture, accidentally spilled around three milliliters of hydrochloric acid from a test tube onto a table. The post 13 elementary school children in Japan hospitalised after acid spill appeared first on Vanguard News . Vía Vanguard News http://ift.tt/2ygTjAu

http://ift.tt/2rY78zg Indian relatives and villagers attend the funerals of eight people killed during protests against the former Congress state government in Manipur on May 24, 2017, 632 days after their deaths. The bodies of eight people shot dead during an anti-government protest in northeast India have been buried after 632 days, authorities said May 25, ending a long confrontation. The victims' families were refusing to bury the bodies until their demands for proper compensation and action against the government officials who ordered the firing had been met. / AFP PHOTO / STR The bodies of eight people shot dead during an anti-government protest in northeast India have been buried after 632 days, authorities said Thursday, ending a long confrontation. The victims’ families were refusing to bury the bodies until their demands for proper compensation and action against the government officials who ordered the firing had been met. They finally laid their loved ones to rest...

http://ift.tt/2rTlMYy Mice PHOTO:AFP Freeze-dried mouse sperm that spent nine months in space has been used to produce healthy rodent offspring back on Earth, Japanese researchers said this week. But could the same hold true for humans? And if conception were even possible in space, would babies born in zero gravity develop differently than their Earth-bound counterparts? As NASA and other global space agencies work furiously on propelling people to Mars by the 2030s, experts say essential questions of survival on the Red Planet are often overlooked. Rocket scientists have little grasp of how humans would live and breathe on Mars, or if they even could withstand the powerful doses of cosmic radiation they’d receive on the two- to three-year journey. A key component to colonizing other planets — as SpaceX chief Elon Musk has vowed to do on Mars — would be having babies, said Kris Lehnhardt, assistant professor in emergency medicine at The George Washington University School...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J The whistleblowing which led to the indictment of two university vice chancellors for fraud was not done for financial gains, the Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities (SSANU), has said. SSANU’s National President, Samson Ugwoke, told newsmen in Lagos that its members exposed the fraud in the institutions to restore fiscal sanity in the university system. Recall that two university vice chancellors and other principal officers in the institutions are being prosecuted for fraud. They are Prof. Adebiyi Daramola of Federal University of Technology, Akure and his counterpart at Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Prof. Olusola Oyewole. “No SSANU member has ever received 2.5 per cent reward for whistleblowing because if we do so, it would seem as if the interest is in the money. “Remember that when we started all these, nobody has ever promised that if you blow whistle, you would receive one kobo. “We only did it to correct the s...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J The Court of Appeal in Lagos on Thursday set free after reversing the sentence of 5 years jail term earlier slammed on Raymond Omatseye, a former Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) over an alleged N1.5 billion contract scam. Justice Yargata Nimpar, who read the decision of the court, said the High Court which had tried and sentenced him did not properly evaluate the evidence before it. Recall that the Federal High Court, Lagos, on May 20, 2016, presided by Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia, sentenced Omatseye to five years in jail over an alleged N1.5 billion contract scam. Nimpar said: “The prosecution should not ride roughshod over the Constitution. “The judiciary will do the war on corruption more harm by declaring someone a criminal, where no offence has been committed “I find merit in the appeal. The conviction is hereby set aside and the appellant is hereby discharged and acquitted.” The High Court had found...

http://ift.tt/2p4awf5 The House of God International Ministry, founder, Pastor Chris Okotie has been told to stop criticising Prophet T.B Joshua, founder of Synagogue Church of Nations. Pastor Chris Okotie on his official Facebook page had said that T.B Joshua ‘is controlled by a malevolent misanthropic spirit,” . Chief Femi Fani-Kayode speaking on the issue called for unity among the men of God saying ”someone pl tell Kris Okotie to stop attacking TB Joshua? We need unity in the Church and not division. Our clerics MUST come together as one.’ “His hypocritical jeremiad should be ignored. He is just another frustrated shaman seeking public sympathy,” Okotie said. //storify.com/Adekunle2/stop-attcking-tb-joshua-okotie-warned/embed?border=false //storify.com/Adekunle2/stop-attcking-tb-joshua-okotie-warned.js?border=false [ View the story “Stop attcking TB Joshua, Chris Okotie warned ” on Storify ] Prophet T.B Joshua had declared recently that he was planing to move out of Nigeria...