Firebomb kills 18 in Cairo nightclub
Molotov cocktail hurled at a Cairo nightclub kills 18 people, Egyptian security officials quoted as saying.
| Middle East, Egypt, Crime
A Molotov cocktail hurled at a Cairo nightclub has killed 18 people, Egyptian security officials said on Friday.
One of the officials said the attacker was an employee who had been fired from the nightclub in the Agouza area in the centre of the Egyptian capital, Reuters news agency reported.
Other reports said the attack followed a dispute between employees of the nightclub and a group of youths.
Victims of the blast were burned to death or died from smoke inhalation in the establishment. The nightclub, which also features a restaurant, was located in a basement, offering no escape route, the officials said.
Thousands flee Chennai floods amid fears more rain could add to death toll
Overflowing rivers and lakes pose added threats to India’s fourth largest city as the number of troops deployed in rescue effort is doubled to 4,000
Thousands of people were trying to escape flooding in the Indian city of Chennai on Friday amid fears that further heavy rain will cause more destruction.
After a lull from the heaviest rains in a century that have killed at least 280 people this week, another rain burst was forecast to hit the low-lying coastal city within hours. But officials said brimming lakes were the main concern.
“The rain is not a problem now, it is the overflowing river and 30 lakes that continue to flood four districts,” a senior home ministry official in New Delhi told Reuters.
V Raghunathan, 60, a manager at an interior design company living in the south of the booming industrial and port city, complained about the lack of warning before floodgates were opened.
Muslim Americans fear demonisation after mass shooting
Muslims across US respond with shock and outrage after San Bernardino massacre of 14
Muslim Americans fear their religion will be demonised and Islamophobia will spread after a young Muslim couple was accused of carrying out one of the bloodiest mass killings in the United States.
Across the country, Muslim Americans responded with shock and outrage after a shooting in which authorities said Syed Rizwan Farook (28), and Tashfeen Malik (27), stormed a holiday party attended by San Bernardino County employees in California on Wednesday, killing 14 people and wounding 21.
“I was at the gym yesterday while the shooting was taking place and all the TVs were showing that footage and all I could keep thinking to myself is ‘God, I hope they don’t have any Eastern descent, not just Middle Eastern, anything we’d associate with a Muslim’,” said Adam Hashem (32), in Dearborn, a Detroit suburb with one of the country’s largest Muslim populations.
Islamic State adds smartphone app to its communications arsenal
An independent group monitoring the Islamic State online says it discovered the militant group is distributing its own mobile app, signaling a shift in how the jihadists communicate.
In addition to using Facebook, Twitter, and messaging apps such as Telegram, Islamic State is also distributing custom communications software to spread its message of radical Islam.
The militants have developed a smartphone app designed to run on Android phones that is available to download in private channels on Telegram, an encrypted smartphone chat program. According to security experts tracking the group, the app appears to be a new effort from Islamic State (IS) to bypass often less secure social media platforms that are easily targeted and attacked by governments and independent groups working to blunt the group's digital presence.
"They want to create a broadcast capability that is more secure than just leveraging Twitter and Facebook," says Michael Smith II, chief operating officer at Kronos Advisory, a defense consulting firm. “IS has always been looking for a way to provide easy access to all of the material.”
Protests erupt as Ecuador lifts presidential term limit
Assembly vote prompts violent street protests against what many demonstrators deem a power grab by President Correa.
Ecuador's National Assembly passed a constitutional amendment to lift the limit on the country's presidential term, sparking violent demonstrations between protesters and riot police.
The amendment, which was approved on Thursday, prompted street demonstrations in Quito, the capital, against what many deemed a power grab by President Rafael Correa.
Part of a package of amendments, the measure will permit the leftist Correa to run for office indefinitely beginning in 2021. His current term ends in 2017 and he has said he does not intend to run at that time.
Analysts have called Correa's decision a shrewd political move considering Ecuador's current economic woes.Radiation from Fukushima nuclear disaster spreads off U.S. shores
By Courtney SherwoodNATIONAL
Radiation from Japan’s 2011 nuclear disaster has spread off North American shores and contamination is increasing at previously identified sites, although levels are still too low to threaten human or ocean life, scientists said on Thursday.
Tests of hundreds of samples of Pacific Ocean water confirmed that Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant continues to leak radioactive isotopes more than four years after its meltdown, said Ken Buesseler, marine radiochemist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Trace amounts of cesium-134 have been detected within several hundred kilometers of the Oregon, Washington and California coasts in recent months, as well as offshore from Canada’s Vancouver Island.
Another isotope, cesium-137, a radioactive legacy of nuclear weapons tests conducted from the 1950s through the 1970s, was found at low levels in nearly every seawater sample tested by Woods Hole, a nonprofit research institution.
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