28 April 2014 Last updated at 05:00
| by MAMDOUH THABET
Aleppo gripped by barrel bomb fears
A BBC team has witnessed the devastating effects of air bombardment on Syrian civilians after gaining rare access to rebel-held areas of Aleppo.
Emergency rescue teams told the BBC the city was living in "danger and fear".
Thousands of people are reported to have been killed or maimed in a campaign of aerial bombardment in northern Syria this year.
The BBC's Ian Pannell and Darren Conway are the first Western broadcasters in rebel-held Aleppo this year.
"My husband was sitting at breakfast. We heard the first blast: it sounded far away. But I asked him to go and get the kids off the street. And suddenly it hit us."
Um Yahya wept. With two small children at her side, the young mother was standing in what until that morning had been her home. It was now a wreck: a tangle of rubble and cables and dust, with half the ceiling missing and parts of the building completely razed.Schools where Prada, jewellery and private jets replace apple for teacher
April 28, 2014 - 12:32PMDavid Barrett
Teachers at fee-paying schools are being "bribed" by parents who hand over expensive end-of-term gifts including designer handbags, diamond necklaces and even the free use of a private jet, it has emerged.
Witnesses reported seeing "boxes and boxes of Prada and Chanel" outside the head teacher's office at one west London independent school, prompting new concerns that an influx of foreign pupils has led to a new and "un-British" culture of gift-giving which borders on corruption.
One teacher received a wad of cash as an end-of-term gift, while giving thousands of pounds in gift tokens has become normal, the June edition of Tatler magazine reports.
Surging bloodshed strains 'marriage of irreconcilables'
Escalating conflict, splitting tribes and families, is dividing Nigeria's largely Muslim north and Christian south and its future as a unified state.
When Fulani raiders carrying rifles, machetes and clubs stormed his village one night last month, Pius Nna was stunned to see his teenage nephew among them.
"He was leading them and telling them to check very well because my house would have a lot of people in it and they would be sure to find someone to kill," said Nna, a tall farmer in his mid-60s who said he escaped by fleeing into the bush.
Sitting in a courtyard littered with rubble, Nna told how his sister's son, whose father is a Muslim Fulani, had led the raiders to burn down his farm in the attack on Ungwan Gata village, one of several mostly Christian Moro'a communities in Nigeria's central Middle Belt.
Russian propaganda campaign finds fertile ground in Ukrainians’ mixed identity
McClatchy Foreign Staff
KIEV, UKRAINE — The Russian invasion of Ukraine began long before separatists seized control of eastern Ukrainian city buildings.
It began long before an estimated 40,000 Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border, engaging in “training exercises” as Moscow threatened “consequences” for Ukrainian resistance. It even began long before the mostly bloodless seizure of Crimea in March.
Experts and officials in Ukraine, in fact, insist it began during the autumn of 2004.
It was then, they say, while Ukrainians and much of the world rejoiced at the power of democracy shown through the Orange Revolution, that Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite a landslide victory earlier in 2004, saw the potential of democratic unrest spreading into his nation. Analysts say he worried.
Egypt Mass Trial: Judge Sentences 683 To Death For Deadly Crackdown
| by MAMDOUH THABET
Posted: Updated:
MINYA, Egypt (AP) — A judge in Egypt sentenced to death 683 alleged supporters of the country's ousted Islamist president on Monday over acts of violence and the murder of policemen in the latest mass trial in Egypt that included the Muslim Brotherhood's spiritual leader, defense lawyers said.
Under the law, Monday's verdicts in the southern city of Minya have to be referred to Egypt's Grand Mufti, the top Islamic official, said one of the attorneys, Ahmed Hefni.
Such a move is usually considered a formality but the same judge in the trial on Monday also reversed most of the death sentences out of 529 that were passed in a similar case in March, and commuted the majority of them to life imprisonment.
Monday's case is linked to deadly riots that erupted in Minya and elsewhere in Egypt after security forces violently disbanded sit-ins held by Brotherhood supporters in Cairo last August.
Japan Producing Huge, Lightly Guarded Stockpile of Plutonium
ROKKASHO, Japan — With its turquoise-striped walls and massive steel cooling towers, the new industrial complex rising from bluffs above the Pacific Ocean looks like it might produce consumer electronics.
But in reality the plant 700 kilometers north of Tokyo is one of the world’s newest, largest and most controversial production facilities for a nuclear explosive material. The factory’s private owners said three months ago that after several decades of construction, it will be ready to open in October, as part of a government-supported effort to create special fuel for the country’s future nuclear power plants.
Once it’s running, sometime after October, the plant will produce thousands of gallon-sized steel canisters containing a flour-like mixture of waste uranium and plutonium. In theory, the plutonium is capable of providing the fuel for a huge nuclear arsenal, in a country that protects its nuclear plants with unarmed guards and has resisted U.S. pleas to upgrade security.
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