World News

World's most expensive motorhome: The gold-covered £2m mega-caravan with its own roof terrace

It's certainly not the average traveling home you'd find at the Caravan Club.

This extravagant caravan, a 40ft gold-covered monster, is the world's most expensive motorhome - and it'll set you back an eye-watering £2 million.

The space-age eleMMent Palazzo comes with an enormous master bedroom, 40-inch TV, fireplace and even a rooftop terrace.

And the luxury mod-cons don't end there. The press of a button transforms the motorhome into a 'Sky Lounge' complete with pop-up cocktail bar, underfloor heating and marble lighting.
The extravagant driver's seat in the Dubai motorhome (Caters)
Lavish: The motorhome is aimed at oil sheikhs, rock stars, and the rich and famous (Caters)
Luxury travel: The motorhome has an enormous 430ft of space (Caters)
Party time: The rooftop terrace on board the impressiver motorhome (Caters)

It won't surprise many to learn that the extravagant vehicle was created in Dubai, where they're not exactly known for doing things by halves.

The £2m home, said to be popular with oil-rich sheikhs, can even wash itself after being driven through the Middle Eastern desert.

A spokesman for creators Marchi Mobile said: 'People never fail to notice innovation, but rarely does the excitement for it last.


'That is how it began for us. But now - after many years of development - we sparked a fire in luxury mobility.

'The eleMMent series from Marchi Mobile is a new class within the premium segment of vehicles, targeted to enthuse lovers of the extraordinary.

'Our goal has not only been to introduce a new line of luxury vehicles - but usher in a new era. This is done by a perfect masterpiece that sets itself apart at first sight.'







Boston Suspects Parents Face Questioning

Boston Marathon Bombings: Suspects On CCTV


The FBI has released new pictures of two suspects in the deadly Boston marathon bombings.
The photographs show a pair of men investigators describe as "armed and extremely dangerous".
Images released on Friday morning show one suspect wearing dark clothes, a dark cap and sunglasses.
The second suspect is seen wearing a white baseball cap, which is reversed allowing a clearer view of his face.
The Boston Globe claims that one of the suspects has been captured, while the other remains on the loose.
CCTV footage was released of the pair on Thursday, in which they are seen carrying bulky backpacks as they walk the route of Monday's race in the heart of the city.
The men were filmed heading in the direction of the finishing line, moments before both bombs went off just seconds apart.
Three people were killed and more than 180 others injured in the explosions.
FBI special agent Richard DesLauriers, who is leading the manhunt, appealed for help in finding the suspects.
He said: "Somebody out there knows these individuals as friends, neighbours, co-workers or family members of the suspects.
"Though it may be difficult, the nation is counting on those with information to come forward and provide it to us."
The FBI has declined to discuss the men's ethnicity for fears people would be led "down the wrong path potentially".
Earlier at a moving inter-faith memorial service, Barack Obama joined 1,700 people at Boston's Holy Cross Cathedral to honour the victims - the youngest of whom was eight-year-old Martin Richard, from Boston.
The president promised the killers would be brought to justice, saying: "We will find you.
"We will hold you accountable. But more than that, our fidelity to our way of life - to our free and open society - will only grow stronger." Read more Yahoo News

Nigerian journalists held after accusing Jonathan of skulduggery

Yahoo news : (Reporting by Joe Brock and Camillus Eboh; Editing by Tim Cocks)     



ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian police have detained a number of journalists a week after their newspaper reported that President Goodluck Jonathan had issued orders to frustrate a newly potent opposition by any means, including surveillance.

Africa's most populous nation has a vocal and relatively free press by the standards of the region and even vitriolic criticism of the president is usually tolerated. However, the suggestion that he was resorting to illicit political tactics was an inflammatory one.
"Yes, we have some journalists in custody over ongoing investigations," police spokesman Frank Mba said on Tuesday, declining to give further details.
Presidency spokesman Reuben Abati last week described the Leadership newspaper's April 2 story as "concocted lies". He was unavailable for comment on Tuesday.
The paper said on Monday that four of its reporters had been detained and asked to reveal their sources.
The article said Jonathan had issued a directive that "everything (is) to be done to frustrate the merged opposition parties", including security surveillance of opposition state governors.
The story did not specify whether the order had been directed at the government or at Jonathan's People's Democratic Party (PDP) or his campaign team.
Nigeria's four main opposition movements announced a merger in February, posing the sternest threat in years to Jonathan and the PDP ahead of elections in 2015.
Azubuike Ishiekwene, managing director of Leadership Group, called the arrests "a calculated and brazen affront on press freedom".
"We are bereft that a supposedly elected government will come this low," he said in a statement. "We stand by our story and will neither be cowed nor intimidated by the strong-arm tactics of President Jonathan."







'Black Death' Skeletons Found Under Crossrail





Archaeologists say 12 skeletons found beneath a building site in London could provide evidence of a Black Death burial ground.
The remains were found by teams working on Crossrail - a £15bn project to improve transport links in the capital, including at Farringdon where the bones were found.
Historical records indicate a hastily-built cemetery opened in the area in 1348 as the plague spread across the country.
Up to 50,000 people are thought to have been buried there in less than three years.
Jay Carver, lead Crossrail archaeologist, said: "This is a highly significant discovery and at the moment we are left with many questions that we hope to answer.
"We will be undertaking scientific tests on the skeletons over the coming months to establish their cause of death, whether they were plague victims from the 14th century or later London residents, how old they were and perhaps evidence of who they were.
"However at this early stage, the depth of burials, the pottery found with the skeletons and the way they have been set out, all point towards this being part of the 14th century emergency burial ground."
The skeletons were found during excavations below a road in Charterhouse Square.
They were buried in two rows and laid out in a similar formation to skeletons discovered at a Black Death burial site in Smithfield in the 1980s.
Experts at the Museum of London Archaeology will now use DNA testing and carbon dating to determine both a cause of death and a burial date.
Charterhouse Square had previously been identified as a possible site for the lost burial ground, as it is one of few locations in Farringdon to remain undeveloped for the past 700 years.
John Stow, the 16th century historian, said more than 150,000 victims of the Black Death were buried in London, including 50,000 at a site in Farringdon known as 'No Man's Land'.
About 75 million people and up to 60% of the European population are said to have died in the four-year global pandemic.
Archaeologists working on Crossrail have already uncovered more than 300 skeletons near Liverpool Street station.
It is thought they were buried near the site of the Bedlam Hospital in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.















Pictures: Rio’s Olympic rowing lake filled with 65 tonnes of dead fish




A huge clean-up has been launched in the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon after 65 tonnes of dead fish filled the waters which are set to play host to the 2016 Olympic rowing events.
The lagoon, authorities say, became deoxygenated after heavy storms, which washed ‘a large amount of organic matter’ into the lake.
The clean-up is still underway, and is not the first time that the lagoon has suffered such misfortune. In 2009 an estimated 100 tonnes of dead fish, predominantly shad, had to be removed from the waters after a similar incident.
As you can see from the picture above, taken during the Pan-Am Games in 2007, the lagoon hosted rowing successfully.
But you can see the horrific pictures of the Lake as it is this week below:

Microsoft Fined Over Rival Browser Choice


yahoo.com by (c) yahoo news 2013.

Microsoft (NasdaqGS: MSFT - news) has been fined 561m euros (£484m) by the European Commission for breaking its promise to offer a choice of rival internet browsers.
The EU said that in 2009 Microsoft agreed to make a choice of browsers available to its Windows users in Europe following an anti-trust battle.
But during the roll-out of Windows 7 between May 2011 and July last year the company failed to do so in what the Commission called a "very serious infringement" of its commitment.
Over the period, around 15 million Windows users did not see the so-called browser choice screen which enables users to select their preferred search engine, the EU said.
The Commission vice president in charge of competition policy, Joaquin Almunia, said: "Legally binding commitments reached in antitrust decisions play a very important role in our enforcement policy because they allow for rapid solutions to competition problems.
"A failure to comply is a very serious infringement that must be sanctioned accordingly."
In a statement, Microsoft said it took full responsibility for the "technical error" that caused the lapse.
"We provided the Commission with a complete and candid assessment of the situation, and we have taken steps to strengthen our software development and other processes to help avoid this mistake – or anything similar – in the future," it said.
The fine - which is the first sanction against a company for failing to satisfy a previous EU complaint - will serve as a warning to other technology firms involved in European anti-trust disputes.
Google (NasdaqGS: GOOG - news) , for example, is currently in discussions with the EU over how it ranks search engine results.
Microsoft's penalty is the latest in a string of punishments issued by the Commission against the US software giant.
In total, it has been fined 2.16bn euros (£1.87bn) for - among other things - not providing data at fair prices to rivals and for tying its media player to its operating system.






Twenty Islamists killed in northeast Nigeria: military




Nigeria's military said Sunday that it killed 20 Boko Haram Islamists while repelling an attack by the extremist group in the embattled northeastern state of Borno.
"Boko Haram terrorists attempted to attack a military barracks (in Borno) at about 5:00 am (0400 GMT)," spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Sagir Musa said in a statement.
He said the attack occurred in the village of Monguno, about 200 kilometres (124 miles) from Borno's restive capital of Maiduguri, considered Boko Haram's home base where the radical group has been blamed for scores of deadly attacks.
The raid on the military barracks "was repelled," Musa said. "The encounter led to the deaths of 20 Boko Haram terrorists." He made no mention of military casualties.
Musa said the gunmen, armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, had stormed the military site in three 4X4 trucks and eight motorcycles.
Separately, two militants linked to a series of explosions in Maiduguri that injured four people last week have been arrested by the military, he added.
Boko Haram's insurgency is estimated to have left 3,000 people dead since 2009, including killings by the security forces.
The Islamists have said they are fighting to create an Islamic state in Nigeria's mainly Muslim north, but their demands have repeatedly shifted.
A video posted on YouTube last month featured gunmen claiming to be from Boko Haram who said they abducted a French family of seven from a Cameroon nature park near the Nigerian border.
The video marked a departure for the Islamist group, which had never before claimed the kidnapping of a Westerner and some have questioned whether the Nigerian Islamists did in fact carry out the abductions.
France has said that Boko Haram was responsible for the attack and are likely holding the family members, including four children, in Nigeria.
Boko Haram is believed to include a number of factions with varying degrees of coordination, and some criminal groups are suspected of carrying out attacks under the guise of belonging to the movement.
The main faction of the Islamist militia is thought to be led by Abubakar Shekau, who was designated a global terrorist by the United States last year.
Several experts have cast doubt on the suggestion that Shekau's faction was directly involved in the kidnapping of the French family.
Boko Haram has rarely attacked foreign targets, with most of its violence directed at Nigeria's security services, politicians and other symbols of authority.
Churches have also been repeatedly targeted in the country roughly divided between a mainly Muslim north and mostly Christian south.
Nigeria is Africa's most populous country and top oil producer, which has also seen waves of violence by militants and gangs in the oil-rich south.





Meteor strike injures hundreds in central Russia




















A meteor crashing in Russia's Ural mountains has injured at least 950 people, as the shockwave blew out windows and rocked buildings.
Most of those hurt, in the Chelyabinsk region where the meteor fell, suffered cuts and bruises but at least 46 remain in hospital.
A fireball streaked through the clear morning sky, followed by loud bangs.
President Vladimir Putin said he thanked God no big fragments had fallen in populated areas.
A large meteor fragment landed in a lake near Chebarkul, a town in Chelyabinsk region.
The meteor's dramatic passing was witnessed in Yekaterinburg, 200km (125 miles) to the north, and in Kazakhstan, to the south.
"The explosion was so strong that some windows in our building and in the buildings that are across the road and in the city in general, the windows broke."
Officials say a large meteor partially burned up in the lower atmosphere, resulting in fragments falling earthwards.
Thousands of rescue workers have been dispatched to the area to provide help to the injured, the emergencies ministry said.
The Chelyabinsk region, about 1,500km (930 miles) east of Moscow, is home to many factories, a nuclear power plant and the Mayak atomic waste storage and treatment centre.
'Blinding'
Chelyabinsk's health department said 985 people had sought medical treatment, including 204 children, Russia's Interfax news agency reports. Two people in the town of Kopeysk were in a serious condition, it added.
The governor of Chelyabinsk region, Mikhail Yurevich, was quoted elsewhere as saying 950 people had been hurt, two seriously.
Mr Putin promised "immediate" aid for people affected, saying kindergartens and schools had been damaged, and work disrupted at industrial enterprises.
Many children were at lessons when the meteor fell at around 09:20 (03:20 GMT).
Video posted online showed frightened, screaming youngsters at one Chelyabinsk school, where corridors were littered with broken glass.
Chelyabinsk resident Sergei Serskov told BBC News the city had felt like a "war zone" for 20 to 30 minutes.
"I was in the office when suddenly I saw a really bright flash in the window in front of me," he said.
"Then I smelt fumes. I looked out the window and saw a huge line of smoke, like you get from a plane but many times bigger."
"A few minutes later the window suddenly came open and there was a huge explosion, followed by lots of little explosions."
In Yekaterinburg, 36-year-old resident Viktor Prokofiev was driving to work when he witnessed the event.
"It was quite dark, but it suddenly became as bright as if it was day," he was quoted by Reuters as saying.
"I felt like I was blinded by headlights."
Debris also reportedly fell on the west Siberian region of Tyumen.
Governor Yurevich reported that the meteor had landed in a lake 1km outside Chebarkul, which has a population of 46,000.
A Russian army spokesman said a crater 6m (20ft) wide had been found on the shore of the lake.
Source: BBC NEWS 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/

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