Driving by sled across the sea ice on the picturesque Tasiilaq fjord in east Greenland, my guide, a rosy-cheeked Inuit seal hunter, urges on his 14 dogs as we push on towards the mountains. All of a sudden, a snowmobile like a dart overtakes us. “Today, youngsters prefer them to dog sleds,” Dines Mikaelsen tells me, gesturing to the fast-disappearing motor vehicle with his sealskin whip.

It’s easy to see this moment as a metaphor for the country itself. Greenland, a self-governing Arctic nation of just 57,000 with the Danish Kingdom, is keen to invigorate its traditional economy of fisheries and hunting, by tapping into the vast mineral wealth worth billions of dollars, now exposed due to the receding ice caps. “In the past, we’ve relied mainly on fisheries which made the economy very fragile,” Greenland’s Prime Minister Aleqa Hammond told reporters in Copenhagen last month. “We need another way to stabilize the economy, and that will be mining.”

To kickstart Greenland’s mineral rush, the government looks set to end its ‘zero tolerance’ policy on uranium mining, which could lead to mining of rare earth metals commonly used in making smartphones, laptops and other electronic devices. This will allow for mineral production at Kvanefjeld, the world’s largest deposit of rare earths, which will offer the country an opportunity to compete with China which controls over 90% of global output in these minerals. Recent geological estimates show that below Greenland’s ice sheet there are enough rare earths to satisfy a quarter of world demand in the future.

However, mining for rare earths will also mean mining for uranium, which is tied up with the elements – and prospecting radioactive materials could threaten Greenland’s pristine nature, argue critics. “If radioactive tailings drop into the fjord, we would have problems calling our waters and fish the cleanest in the world,” says Mikkel Myrup, the chairman of Avataq, a local environmental group that headed an appeal last month by 48 NGOs protesting the decision to end the moratorium on uranium mining. “As long as there are those saying it’s dangerous, I would never accept it,” says Avaaraq Olsen, a 28-year-old primary teacher and elected municipality official living in the town of Narsaq, just a few kilometers away from the Kvanefjeld site.

Meanwhile, the site’s owners have been downplaying the risks, despite the fact that final ecological assessment reports are yet to be released. “That appeal [by Avataq] instilled a lot of fear. The idea of apocalyptic devastation clearly shows a lack of understanding on how these projects work,” Rod McIllree, CEO of Australian-based Greenland Minerals and Energy, told Metro. “But it all needs to be taken within the broader context that Greenland needs a mining industry.”

Once in full production, the royalties from the Kvanefjeld site alone will boost Greenland’s GDP by 20%, says McIllree. Indeed, this money could help the country become independent from Denmark, which currently subsidies more than half of the island’s total budget. Independence from their former colonial master is an alluring prospect for Greenland, nearly 90% of the population being indigenous Inuits. “I hope that one day Greenland will be independent – something I share with many Greenlanders,” says Ingo Hansen, who runs a men’s clothes store in the capital Nuuk. “But our economy has to improve before that can happen.”

But given the paltry number of people here in the world’s most sparsely populated nation, Olsen wonders how independent the country would actually be. “I think it’s very important not to be blinded by the word ‘independence’. What happens when all the minerals are mined, what then for Greenland?”

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A music video shot aboard the International Space Station went viral on Monday, turning an astronaut into an overnight music sensation with his zero-gravity version of David Bowie’s hit “Space Oddity.”

As the first Canadian to command the space station, a $100 million project of 15 nations, Chris Hadfield had already earned himself a place in the history books.

But as he prepared to return home on Monday after more than five months in orbit, Hadfield released a poignant “cyberspace” rendition of Bowie’s song, which was first released in 1969 just ahead of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

The video, with its familiar refrain “Ground Control to Major Tom,” had more than 1.5 million hits on YouTube early Monday afternoon and was being touted as the first music video ever filmed in space.

Complete with re-worked lyrics and high quality footage that Hadfield and his crew mates shot aboard the orbital outpost, the video shows the astronaut singing about the impending end of his space mission while floating in mid-air above the blue Earth.

“Though I’ve flown 100,000 miles, I’m feeling very still and before too long I know it’s time to go,” the astronaut croons.

Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, actually have racked up many millions of miles (kilometers) as they circled about 250 miles above the planet over the past 5-1/2 months.

Hadfield’s singing and acoustic guitar playing is accompanied by stunning video of the space station flying around the planet, a guitar free-floating and an eerie shot of a spacesuit at night.

The video, which was put together with the help of Hadfield’s son Evan and with the support of David Bowie, ends with a Soyuz capsule parachuting to Earth.

The music video caps a public outreach campaign Hadfield has conducted since before he blasted off for the station in December 2012, sharing comments and photographs on Twitter and other social media outlets.

The music video is not Hadfield’s first public performance. He is the lead vocalist and bass guitar player in the Houston-based all-astronaut rock band, Max Q.

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Matthew Winkler, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, apologized on Monday for allowing journalists “limited” access to sensitive data about how clients used Bloomberg terminals, saying it was “inexcusable”, but that important customer data had always been protected.

His statement came as the European Central Bank said it was in “close contact with Bloomberg” about any possible breaches in the confidentiality of data usage. The U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, said they were examining whether there could have been leaks. A source briefed on the situation said the U.S. Treasury Department was looking into the question as well.

The practice of giving reporters access to some data considered proprietary – including when a customer looked into broad categories such as equities or bonds – came to light in media reports last week. In response, the parent company, Bloomberg LP, said it had restricted such access last month after Goldman Sachs Group Inc complained.

Winkler, in an editorial posted on Bloomberg.com, said: “Our reporters should not have access to any data considered proprietary. I am sorry they did. The error is inexcusable.”

Goldman flagged the matter to Bloomberg after the bank found that journalists had access to more information than it had known and argued the information was sensitive and should not be seen by reporters.

The news triggered fears at Wall Street firms about the privacy of sensitive data, as well as at the Fed and other U.S. government departments that use Bloomberg terminals.

In the editorial, Winkler sought to clarify what exactly Bloomberg journalists could see. He said they had access to a user’s login history, as well as “high-level types of user functions on an aggregated basis, with no ability to look into specific security information.”

He said the practice dates back to the early days of Bloomberg News in the 1990s, when reporters used the terminal to find out what kind of news coverage customers wanted.

“As data privacy has become a central concern to our clients, we should go above and beyond in protecting data, especially when we have even the appearance of impropriety,” Winkler wrote. “And that’s why we’ve made these recent changes to what reporters can access.”

BLOOMBERG’S BOOK

Data security was an issue that company founder Michael Bloomberg wrestled with in his 1997 book, “Bloomberg by Bloomberg.” In general, he wrote, restricting access to proprietary information can be an ineffective exercise.

Often “the whole data security issue is overblown at most corporations that think they have a lot to guard,” wrote Bloomberg, who has been mayor of New York City since 2002. “Pilferage and leakage are costs of doing business. Live with them. While some restrictions make sense, many are ridiculous.”

In his statement, Winkler emphasized that Bloomberg News “has never compromised the integrity of that data in our reporting” and said Bloomberg journalists are subject to standards that are among the most stringent in the business.

“At no time did reporters have access to trading, portfolio, monitor, blotter or other related systems,” he said. “Nor did they have access to clients’ messages to one another. They couldn’t see the stories that clients were reading or the securities clients might be looking at.”

Even though the information available to Bloomberg reporters was limited, senior Goldman executives argued that a trader could profit just by knowing what type of securities high-profile users were looking at, or what questions a government official raised with Bloomberg’s help desk, people with direct knowledge of their views said.

The issue made people inside the bank uncomfortable with even the Bloomberg marketing and sales team’s access to information, the sources said.

In disclosing the new restrictions set last month, Chief Executive Daniel Doctoroff said Bloomberg had created the position of client data compliance officer to ensure that its news operations never have access to confidential customer data.

Closely held Bloomberg, which competes with Thomson Reuters , the parent of Reuters News, gets the bulk of its revenue from terminal sales to financial institutions.

Bloomberg has more than 315,000 terminal subscribers globally, with each Bloomberg terminal costing more than $20,000 a year. Last year it posted revenue of $7.9 billion.

In a statement on Friday, Thomson Reuters said its news division operates “completely independently, with reporters having no access to non-public data on its customers, especially any data relating to its customers use of its products or services.”

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The thought of eating beetles, caterpillars and ants may give you the creeps, but the authors of a U.N. report published on Monday said the health benefits of consuming nutritious insects could help fight obesity.

More than 1,900 species of insects are eaten around the world, mainly in Africa and Asia, but people in the West generally turn their noses up at the likes of grasshoppers, termites and other crunchy fare.

The authors of the study by the Forestry Department, part of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said many insects contained the same amount of protein and minerals as meat and more healthy fats doctors recommend in balanced diets.

“In the West we have a cultural bias, and think that because insects come from developing countries, they cannot be good,” said scientist Arnold van Huis from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, one of the authors of the report.

Eva Muller of the FAO said restaurants in Europe were starting to offer insect-based dishes, presenting them to diners as exotic delicacies.

Danish restaurant Noma, for example, crowned the world’s best for three years running in one poll, is renowned for ingredients including ants and fermented grasshoppers.

As well as helping in the costly battle against obesity, which the World Health Organization estimates has nearly doubled since 1980 and affects around 500 million people, the report said insect farming was likely to be less land-dependent than traditional livestock and produce fewer greenhouse gases.

It would also provide business and export opportunities for poor people in developing countries, especially women, who are often responsible for collecting insects in rural communities.

Van Huis said barriers to enjoying dishes such as bee larvae yoghurt were psychological – in a blind test carried out by his team, nine out of 10 people preferred meatballs made from roughly half meat and half mealworms to those made from meat.

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Robbers equipped with ropes, hammers and chisels broke into a strong-room at Johannesburg’s Soccer City stadium after a Justin Bieber concert and made off with 3 million rand ($330,000) in cash, local media and police said Monday.

An officer from the nearby Booysens police station in the sprawling Soweto township said officials at the stadium, which hosted the final of the 2010 soccer World Cup, only realized the cash was missing on Monday morning.

The haul included takings from Sunday night’s concert by 19-year-old Canadian pop sensation Bieber and a gig the previous evening by U.S. rockers Bon Jovi.

“The money was taken from the building and they only realized today,” the police officer, who declined to be named, told Reuters. “We don’t know how many people were involved as we are still gathering evidence.”

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A top Republican on Sunday said he expected more witnesses to step forward with information about last year’s deadly attack on a U.S. mission in Benghazi and how President Barack Obama’s administration responded to the unfolding events.

“I do think we’re going to see more whistle-blowers. I certainly know my committee has been contacted,” Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

Last week, Republican charges that the White House covered up details of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack gathered more steam after former U.S. diplomat Greg Hicks told lawmakers he believed more could have been done to stop the assault by suspected Islamist militants.

Hicks, the second in command at the U.S. Embassy in Libya at the time, expressed his frustration in an emotionally charged congressional hearing that a U.S. military jet and special forces were not sent to help in Benghazi.

A report by ABC News provided additional momentum to the highly partisan flap over whether the administration tried to avoid casting the attack as terrorism at a time when the presidential election was less than two months away.

ABC released 12 versions of the administration’s “talking points” on Benghazi that appeared to show how various agencies — particularly the State Department and the CIA — shaped what became the Obama administration’s initial playbook for explaining how four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the attack.

The report showed the final talking points went through a series of revisions that scrubbed references to previous terror warnings, including one regarding the potential threat from al Qaeda in Benghazi and eastern Libya.

“I would call it a cover-up in the extent that there was willful removal of information,” Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said on ABC’s “This Week”.

McCain called for a select congressional committee with a mandate to interview “everybody,” including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has already testified before Congress on the matter and accepted responsibility for the tragedy.

But McCain’s call was brushed off by fellow Republican Representative Darrell Issa, who chairs the House of Representatives Oversight and Government committee that heard from Hicks last week.

“You know, let’s not blow things out of proportion. This is a failure, it needs to be investigated. Our committee can investigate,” Issa said.

Issa said he would be sending a request on Monday to privately depose two former U.S. officials that headed the Accountability Review Board, which investigated the Benghazi attacks and issued a scathing report on December 18 that criticized security at the mission and leadership “deficiencies”.

Issa said he wanted to hear from Thomas Pickering, a former U.S. ambassador in the Middle East, Russia and India, and retired Admiral Michael Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, privately “so we can get the facts in a nonpartisan way.”

Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, told ABC News there was no basis to Republican charges of a cover up.

The Obama administration has provided over 25,000 pieces of documentation to Congress, which has already held 11 hearings on the matter, Reed said.

Meanwhile, Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican who served in Obama’s Democratic administration, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” it would have been “very difficult, if not impossible” to rescue the U.S. embassy officials and said he would have not have approved such an operation.

“To send some small number of special forces or other troops in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on the ground, I think would have been very dangerous,” Gates said.

“It’s sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces” to think the United States could have mounted a rescue, Gates said.

It would have been risky just to send in a military jet to try to scare off the insurgents, “given the number of surface-to-air missiles” on the loose in Libya, he said.

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Red buttons flash before me. The oxygen levels are falling sharply and smoke floods the cockpit. “WARNING! Your pilot is drunk,” the PA system announces. Moments later the craft swings out of control and we are finished.

Rather than floating in the Atlantic Ocean, we emerge into the backyard of a central London warehouse, surrounded by half-built machines and imported beer. The spaceship simulator I just crashed is one of the star attractions at the launch of London’s new hackspace, where innovation meets intoxication.

There are more than 1,000 hackspaces in the world, bringing together tech-minded people in community hubs from Iraq to Albania, and this new arrival is believed to be the largest yet with more than 700 members. The launch party hopes to draw in many more and offers a diverse menu.

Deep underground we visit the biohack lab, where genes are spliced and DNA is tested. “It will be the first completely public laboratory; you can have your meal tested for horse-meat,” says hackspace trustee Mark Steward, referring to the recent Ikea meatball scandal.

Down the corridor are metalwork labs, 3D printers and a row of drills. Doors open at the swipe of hacked London transit cards, while smart readers on the wall show internet connectivity and energy consumption. Food hacking offers ice cream cooled in liquid nitrogen – slightly thicker than normal – and experimental cocktails.

“It’s the old meaning of hacking, which is building and creating,” member and programmer Dave Ingram says. “There is very little ‘cracking’ – breaking into security systems – although we do workshops to learn how the systems work.”

The space operates as a nonprofit company, entirely owned and funded by its members, with a board of trustees for legal purposes. “It’s a cooperative, and you don’t see those in London now,” says founder Russ Garrett, who launched the first hackspace in 2009 in response to a broken chair.

Free access and equality are guiding principles – behind Rule Zero: Do not be on fire – and the hackers have realized their role in the community. Among the workshops in radio production, space exploration and lock-picking are classes for local youths who would otherwise miss out.

But expansion brings its own challenges. Members generally use the honor system’with resources and safe behavior, but as the group grows so does the risk. In a facility full of toxic chemicals, deadly blades and alcohol, new members are more likely to cause accidents. “I worry a lot more now,” says Russ.

The space has begun to attract serious commercial interest. NASA funds one startup here, while resident drone producer “Universal Air” is valued in millions of dollars, and the message board is flooded with offers.

But despite the money, there is loyalty to the hackspace spirit. “We spent all yesterday freezing kiwis with liquid nitrogen and smashing them with hammers,” says longtime member Tim Reynolds. “That’s what it’s about.”

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Korean electronics giant Samsung said this morning that it had successfully tested so-called 5G that would allow an entire movie to be downloaded in just one second.

Samsung said the Fifth Generation technology, which would be available by 2020, can handle data speeds of tens of gigabits per second, as opposed to the 75 megabits per second offered by modern 4G Long Term evolution devices. That means the new wireless service is several hundred times as fast as 4G networks.

That will permit users to “transmit massive data files, including high quality digital movies, practically without limitation,” Samsung said.

Samsung, the world’s largest maker of smartphones, said it had overcome the previously insurmountable issue of sending data at more than 1 GB per second by using 64 antenna elements.

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Benjamin Netanyahu is changing his mid-air sleeping arrangements after a public flap over a $127,000 custom-built bedroom for the Israeli prime minister and his wife on a flight to London last month.

Israel’s Channel 10 television reported the sum was tagged onto the $300,000 cost of chartering an El Al Boeing 767 that flew the couple and Netanyahu’s entourage of aides and bodyguards to former British leader Margaret Thatcher’s funeral.

News of the extra public expenditure, for a 5 1/2-hour flight, caused an outcry on Israel’s social media and in its mainstream newspapers that coincided with protests over government plans to raise taxes as part of an austerity budget.

“Bibi is king, and in a monarchy, when the king and queen fly, price is no object,” said political commentator Sima Kadmon, referring to the prime minister by his nickname.

“Where is the shame?” she wrote on the front page of Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s biggest newspaper.

Netanyahu’s office did not dispute the reported figures. It said he had been unaware of the extra cost of installing the double bed and partition and wanted to arrive fresh for meetings with world leaders on the sidelines of the funeral.

The prime minister, it said, was entitled to a good night’s sleep on an overnight flight after a busy day. But it added, a sleeping cabin would no longer be installed on his flights to Europe.

The Netanyahu bedroom touched a particular nerve in Israel after news earlier this year that the prime minister’s office had an annual budget of $2,700 to buy his favorite flavors from a Jerusalem ice cream parlor.

A post on Netanyahu’s Facebook page contained a link to a website inviting people to sign a petition demanding he pay for the bed out of his own pocket. Nearly 4,000 have signed since Channel 10 first broke the news on Friday.

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British Prime Minister David Cameron will visit Boston on Monday to learn more about the bombings there after a meeting with President Barack Obama aimed at helping broker a Syrian peace deal and spurring talks on an EU-U.S. trade pact.

Making his first trip to the United States since Obama won a second term, Cameron will receive a detailed briefing from the FBI on the Boston bombings to see if Britain can learn lessons from how the United States responded. He is also expected to express his condolences to the victims of the attack.

Global diplomacy will feature prominently during his trip and the British leader is hoping the U.S. president will help him prepare the ground for next month’s G8 summit in Northern Ireland and that the two – along with Russia – can help find a political settlement for Syria.

Cameron’s three day visit will begin at the White House in Washington and finish in New York where he is expected to take part in U.N. talks on agreeing new global development goals.

His visit underlines the continued importance of the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States, even as cuts to Britain’s defense budget and talk of Britain leaving the European Union are causing anxiety among senior U.S. policymakers who fear their close ally is growing weaker.

Cameron phoned Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss Syria before the trip. A spokesman from Cameron’s office said he had talked about “how the UK, Russia and America could work together to successfully achieve the plan of a peace conference by the end of the month”.

Cameron was also keen to discuss with Obama how Britain and America could work together to establish a stronger and more credible opposition inside Syria, the spokesman added.

EU-U.S. TRADE DEAL

But it is the prospect of an EU-U.S. trade deal and the lucrative dividends that such an agreement could bring both countries that Cameron was keen to stress before the trip even as one of his own government ministers said he thought Britain should leave the EU.

In particular, he is hoping Obama will help him clinch an agreement to start talks on such a trade deal in the margins of the G8 summit, an achievement he believes would give the global economy a shot in the arm at a time when his own country and many others are seeing only a fragile economic recovery.

“Britain and America can once again lead the way in meeting the greatest challenge of our time: securing the growth and stability on which the prosperity of the whole world depends,” Cameron wrote in an article for the Wall Street Journal.

He said an EU-U.S. trade deal would boost the British economy by 10 billion pounds a year and the U.S. economy by 63 billion pounds annually.

“When times are tough, some want to put the barriers up, to look inwards, and to protect themselves from the world. But Britain and America stand for a better way,” he wrote in the same article.

Cameron is hoping Obama will also help him turn high-flown rhetoric on cracking down on global tax evasion into a meaningful international agreement at the G8 summit.

“We must fight the scourge of tax evasion by promoting a new global standard for automatic information exchange between tax authorities,” Cameron said.

Using some of his strongest language on the subject yet, he added: “We must lift the veil of secrecy that too often lets corrupt corporations and officials in some countries run rings around the law.”

A global standard for resource-extracting companies that obliged them to report all payments to governments across the world would be also be an important step forward, he said.

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[UPDATED]

Twin car bombs killed around 43 people and wounded many more in a Turkish town near the Syrian border on Saturday and Turkey said it suspected Syrian involvement.

The bombing increased fears that Syria’s civil war was dragging in neighboring states despite renewed diplomatic moves towards ending fighting in which more than 70,000 people have been killed.

The bombs ripped into crowded streets in the early afternoon in Reyhanli, scattering cars and concrete blocks in the town in Turkey’s southern Hatay province, home to thousands of Syrian refugees.

President Bashar al-Assad’s administration was the “usual suspect” in the attacks, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said.

“We know that the people taking refuge in Hatay have become targets for the Syrian regime,” Arinc said in comments broadcast on Turkish television. “We think of them as the usual suspects when it comes to planning such a horrific attack.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Nor was there any comment from Damascus.

NATO member Turkey supports the uprising against Assad and violence has crossed the border before, but not on the same scale.

Turkey is far from alone in fearing the impact of Syria’s war, which is already helping inflame the Middle East’s tangle of sectarian, religious and nationalist struggles.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said it was no coincidence the bombings came as diplomatic moves to end the Syrian conflict intensify.

“There may be those who want to sabotage Turkey’s peace, but we will not allow that,” Davutoglu told reporters during a trip to Berlin. “No-one should attempt to test Turkey’s power.”

Prospects appeared to improve this week for diplomacy over the civil war, now in its third year, after Moscow and Washington announced a joint effort to bring government and rebels to an international conference.

But a Russian official said on Saturday that there was already disagreement over who would take part and he doubted whether a meeting could happen this month.

As well as disputes over who would represent the rebels and government at any talks, there have also been questions over possible participation by Assad’s Shi’ite ally Iran. The rebels are backed by the largely Sunni Gulf states.

Diplomats in New York said the Syria meeting would likely slip into June and it was unclear who would participate.

DEATH TOLL MAY RISE

In Reyhanli, smoke poured from charred ruins after the blasts outside administrative buildings.

“My children were so scared because it reminded them of the bombings when we were in Aleppo. God help us,” said one refugee, a mother of three who gave her name as Kolsum.

Arinc said around 40 people had been killed, while Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan warned the toll could rise with many more seriously injured.

Erdogan said the bombings might have been related to Turkey’s own peace process with Kurdish militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who began a withdrawal this week to end a three decade conflict.

But he said the blasts could also have been aimed at provoking sensitivities in the region that is home to so many Syrian refugees.

Turkey is sheltering more than 300,000 Syrians, most of them in camps along the 900-km (560-mile) frontier, and is struggling to keep up with the influx.

Erdogan said this week Turkey would support a U.S.-enforced no-fly zone in Syria and warned that Damascus crossed President Barack Obama’s “red line” on chemical weapons use long ago.

A no-fly zone to prohibit Syrian military aircraft from hitting rebel targets has been mentioned by American lawmakers as one option the United States could use to pressure Assad.

Erdogan is due to meet Obama in Washington on May 16.

Violence also crossed the border in February, when a minibus blew up at a border crossing near Reyhanli, killing 14 people.

The Syrian opposition said one of its delegations appeared to have been the target of that attack, but there has been no confirmation of this from the Turkish authorities.

In October, five Turkish civilians were killed in Akcakale when a mortar bomb fired from Syria landed on their house, prompting Turkey to fire back across the frontier.

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Rescuers pulled a woman on Friday from the rubble of a Bangladesh garment factory 17 days after it collapsed, astonishing workmen who had been searching for bodies of victims of a disaster that has killed more than 1,000 people.

Hundreds of onlookers burst into cheers as army engineers pulled the woman from the basement of the building after a workman helping to clear the wreckage reported hearing her faint cries of “Save me, save me” from beneath the ruins.

Pale, drawn and seemingly unable to walk, the woman, identified by Bangladeshi media only as Reshma, was hoisted out of the rubble on a stretcher, then loaded into an ambulance in scenes broadcast live on television.

Mohammad Rubel Rana, a workman who had been cutting iron rods, said he had alerted rescue crews after hearing a feeble voice.

“I heard a faint voice saying ‘Save me, save me’,” Rana told Reuters television. “She was given water, biscuits and oxygen.”

“She has been rescued and taken to a military hospital,” said Bangladesh’s army spokesman Shahinul Islam.

Rescuers speculated that she may have survived by drinking water that had pooled in the site when firemen doused a fire that had broken out earlier in the rescue effort.

It was not clear if she was one of the thousands of garment workers who had been working in the eight-story building, which collapsed April 24, a day after its owner assured factory owners and news crews it would stand for “a century.”

The woman was found hours after the death toll from the world’s worst industrial accident since the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India climbed above 1,000 as rescuers struggled to end the salvage operation.

Spotlight on retailers

Bodies were still being pulled from the rubble of the Rana Plaza complex, and on Friday a spokesman at the army control room coordinating the operation said the number of people confirmed to have been killed had reached 1,045.

A series of deadly incidents at factories have focused global attention on safety standards in Bangladesh’s booming garment industry. Eight people were killed in a fire at a factory this week, which an industry association said on Friday may have been started deliberately.

About 2,500 people were rescued from Rana Plaza, in the industrial suburb of Savar, 20 miles northwest of Dhaka, including many injured, but there is no official estimate of the numbers still missing.

The disaster, believed to have been triggered when generators were started up during a blackout, has put the spotlight on Western retailers that use the impoverished South Asian nation as a source of cheap goods.

Nine people have been arrested in connection with the disaster, including the building’s owner and bosses of the factories it housed.

Hundreds of relatives remained at the site, some holding up photographs of family members. Rescue workers have found it increasingly difficult to identify decomposing bodies and are using ID cards found on them or their mobile phones to do so.

“A total of 156 unidentified victims have been buried,” said Dhaka District Administrator Mohammad Yousuf Harun, adding that DNA samples taken from the bodies had been preserved so tests could be done if relatives come forward later.

The government has accused the owners and builders of the complex of using shoddy construction materials, including substandard rods, bricks and cement, and failing to obtain the necessary clearances.

Bangladesh’s garment industry, which accounts for 80 percent of its exports, has seen a series of deadly accidents, including a fire in November that killed 112 people.

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In one of the biggest ever bank heists, a global cybercrime ring stole $45 million from two Middle Eastern banks by hacking into credit card processing firms and withdrawing money from ATMs in 27 countries, U.S. prosecutors said.

The U.S. Justice Department accused eight men of allegedly forming the New York-based cell of the organization, and said seven of them have been arrested. The eighth, allegedly a leader of the cell, was reported to have been murdered in the Dominican Republic on April 27.

The ringleaders are believed to be outside the United States but prosecutors declined to give details, citing the ongoing investigation. What’s clear is the sheer scope and speed of the crimes: In one of the attacks, in just over 10 hours, $40 million was raided from ATMs in 24 countries involving 36,000 transactions.

“In the place of guns and masks, this cybercrime organization used laptops and the Internet,” U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta Lynch said at a news conference. “Moving as swiftly as data over the Internet, the organization worked its way from the computer systems of international corporations to the streets of New York City.”

The case demonstrates the major threat that cybercrime poses to banks around the world. It also shows how increasingly international and sophisticated criminal gangs have become, particularly those using the Internet.

Prosecutors highlighted the “surgical precision” of these hackers, the global nature of their organization, and the speed and coordination with which they executed operations in 27 countries.

According to the complaint, the gang broke into the computers of two credit card processors, one in India in December 2012 and the other in the United States this February. The companies were not identified.

The hackers increased the available balance and withdrawal limits on prepaid MasterCard debit cards issued by Bank of Muscat of Oman, and National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah PSC (RAKBank) of the United Arab Emirates, according to the complaint. They then distributed counterfeit debit cards to “cashers” around the world, enabling them to siphon millions of dollars from ATMs in a matter of hours.

In New York, for example, members of the cell fanned out into the city on the afternoon of Feb. 19, armed with cards bearing a single Bank of Muscat account number. Ten hours later, they had completed 2,904 withdrawals for $2.4 million in all, the final transaction coming around 1:26 a.m., prosecutors said.

Casher crews in other countries were busy doing the same, pulling some $40 million from Bank of Muscat to add to the $5 million they stole from RAKBank in December, according to the indictment. In total, cashers made some 40,500 withdrawals in 27 countries during the two coordinated incidents.

Prosecutors said the method of attack was known as “unlimited operations” in the cyber underworld.

Representatives for the two banks could not be reached for comment outside of regular business hours.

In a statement, Mastercard said it had cooperated with law enforcement in the investigation and stressed that its systems were not involved or compromised in the attacks.

In late February, Bank of Muscat disclosed that it would take an impairment charge of up to 15 million rials ($39 million) because it had been defrauded overseas by 12 prepaid debit cards used for travel. That charge was equal to more than half of the 25 million rials profit it posted in its first quarter ended March 31.

Highly skilled hackers

Cyber experts said they believe the operation likely required the work of several hundred people, at least several of whom were highly skilled hackers capable of devising ways to penetrate well-protected financial systems.

“Hackers only need to find one vulnerability to cause millions of dollars of damage,” said Mark Rasch, a former federal cyber crimes prosecutor, based in Bethesda, Maryland.

The group may have targeted Middle Eastern banks because they tend to allow customers to put much larger sums on cards and do not monitor them as closely as banks in other regions, said Shane Shook, global vice president of consulting for the security firm Cylance Inc.

“It’s a target-rich environment in terms of soft electronic security,” said Shook, an Arabic speaker who has spent more than a decade investigating cyber crimes.

The case is similar to one in 2009 that targeted the prepaid debit-card unit of Royal Bank of Scotland, which lost more than $9 million in less than 12 hours, said Jason Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor who supervised the Justice Department’s handling of that case.

That case was considered a watershed moment in cyber crime prosecutions at the time. “This dwarfs that case,” he said.

It is not clear if banks can seek to recover losses from card processors, legal experts said. Contracts usually have specific language governing the security protocols that must be in place, said Frederick Rivera, an attorney with Perkins Coie who specializes in financial services litigation.

If the processors failed to follow those requirements, they could be liable for the losses. If they had adequate security, however, the banks “could be left holding the bag,” Rivera said.

The banks might also be able to seek reimbursement under their insurance policies, many of which now have cyber crime provisions, or from the processors’ insurance carriers.

Weinstein also said that the processors could face regulatory scrutiny over whether they provided proper security.

The eight defendants – all U.S. citizens and residents of Yonkers, New York – were charged with withdrawing cash from the ATMs and transporting money, not hacking into the credit card processing firms or managing the operation.

The seven arrested are: Jael Mejia Collado, Joan Luis Minier Lara, Evan Jose Peña, Jose Familia Reyes, Elvis Rafael Rodriguez, Emir Yasser Yeje and Chung Yu-Holguin (known as “Chino El Abusador”). All except for Rodriguez were arraigned on Thursday and pleaded not guilty. Rodriguez’s attorney was unavailable. Only Pena has been released on bail.

The defendant who reportedly had been killed was Alberto Yusi Lajud-Peña, also known as “Prime” and “Albertico.” Lynch said it was unclear whether the murder was related to this case.

Prosecutors said cashers often laundered their proceeds by purchasing luxury goods, and sending a portion of the money back to the organization’s leaders.

Lynch said the New York gang kept roughly 20 percent of their takes, and sent the rest to the organizers. Authorities said they seized hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and bank accounts, as well as two Rolex watches and a Mercedes SUV, from the defendants.

Investigators said that they found an email exchange with an account associated with a criminal money laundering operation in St. Petersburg, Russia, describing wire transfers.

An investigation is ongoing to see if other cells are operating in the country, Lynch said, adding that U.S. law enforcement had worked with counterparts in Japan, Canada, Germany, Romania, the United Arab Emirates, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Italy, Spain, Belgium, France, United Kingdom, Latvia, Estonia, Thailand, and Malaysia to uncover the ring.

No individual bank accounts were compromised by the scheme, Lynch said.

The case is U.S. v. Lajud-Pena et al., U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, No. 13-cr-259.

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Britain said on Thursday it was “very likely” the Syrian government had used chemical weapons, and Turkey announced it was stepping up testing of people fleeing the Syrian civil war for traces.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry expressed gratitude to Russia for its willingness to try to arrange a “Geneva two” conference to negotiate an end to the conflict, in a sign of a thawing of the long diplomatic chill between Washington and Moscow, Syria’s strongest ally.

Damascus and the head of the Arab League welcomed the apparent rapprochement between the United States and Russia this week. Syrian opposition leaders are skeptical of an initiative they fear might let President Bashar al-Assad hang on to power.

Kerry, in Rome, said however a transition government would have to have the “mutual consent of both sides, which clearly means that in our judgment President Assad will not be a component of that transitional government”.

Syria’s foreign ministry said Damascus was convinced by the “the firm Russian stance which is based on the U.N. principles of non-interference in internal affairs or the threat to use force against the safety of any state”.

Israel has asked Russia not to sell Syria an advanced air defense system which would help Assad fend off foreign military intervention as he battles a more than two-year-old rebellion.

The S-300 missile is designed to shoot down planes and missiles at 125-mile (200-km) ranges. It would enhance Syria’s current Russian-supplied defenses, which failed to deter Israel from launching air strikes around Damascus last weekend.

“We have raised objections to this (sale) with the Russians, and the Americans have too,” an Israeli official told Reuters.

Kerry said in Rome that Washington would prefer Russia not to sell weapons to Syria.

Israel said its air raids on Syria were intended to stop Damascus sending powerful Iranian missiles to Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech on Thursday that Syria would respond to the raids by providing his group with sophisticated weapons, and Hezbollah would back any Syrian effort to recapture the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

CHEMICAL TRACES

Western states have been reluctant to consider military action against Assad, but U.S. President Barack Obama has said the use of chemical weapons would cross a “red line” and trigger a strong response.

Evidence of such use is so far fragmentary and disputed.

Asked about reports that rebel forces had used the banned nerve agent sarin, a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said: “Our assessment is that chemical weapons use in Syria is very likely to have been initiated by the regime. We have no evidence to date of opposition use.”

Turkey has sent a team of eight experts to the border with Syria to test wounded victims of the country’s civil war for traces of chemical and biological weapons, state-run Anatolian news agency said.

Turkey started testing blood samples last week from Syrian casualties brought over the border for treatment to determine whether they were victims of a chemical weapons attack.

The civil defense team, equipped with a specialist vehicle which can detect chemical, biological and nuclear traces, has been stationed at the Cilvegozu border gate near the town of Reyhanli, Anatolian said.

Some Turkish newspapers said ricin, a highly toxic substance, had been detected.

The latest samples were taken from some 12 people from the Syrian province of Idlib who arrived in Turkey with breathing difficulties.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said it was too soon to draw conclusions.

“Examinations are continuing. When the final result is out, whatever that is, we will share this with the public and inform the relevant international institutions,” he told a news conference in Ankara.

He said Ankara had been carrying out such tests for a while but would now examine every patient who arrived from Syria.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said meanwhile the United Nations should declare Syria’s Islamist militant al-Nusra Front a terrorist organization, to differentiate it from other Syrian rebel groups.

France wants to bolster the opposition Syrian National Coalition, while pushing it to expand, unify and guarantee that a new government in Damascus would respect the rights of all communities, Fabius said in an interview with Le Monde daily.

Britain, which has suggested Syria’s official opposition should be exempt from an EU arms embargo, said on Thursday there was a strong case for amending or lifting the ban when it expires on June 1.

A Foreign Office spokesman stressed Britain had not yet decided whether to supply arms to the opposition, but leaving the option open would help pressure Assad into joining talks.

“We need to find ways to increase pressure on the regime to accept a political solution and ensure we have flexibility to react to the deteriorating situation on the ground,” he said.

(Additional reporting by William James and Mohammed Abbas in London, Dan Williams in Jerusalem, Arshad Mohammed in Rome, Ayman Samir in Cairo, Catherine Bremer in Paris and Ece Toksabay in Istanbul; Editing by Jon Hemming)

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Steven Hawking, the leading physicist, has become embroiled in a dispute over what he sees as the occupation of Palestinian territory after he boycotted a major Israeli conference.

At first Hawking’s home base, UK’s prestigious Cambridge University, claimed that Hawking would not be attending the high profile Israeli Presidential Conference, which is personally sponsored by Israeli president Shimon Peres, for health reasons.

But last night it emerged Professor Hawking had written to the organizers, stating his intention to boycott the event because of Israel’s presence in what he sees as Palestinian territory.

His letter stated: “I accepted the invitation to the Presidential Conference with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for a peace settlement but also because it would allow me to lecture on the West Bank.

“However, I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference. Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster.”

His withdrawal, dated May 3, drew s stern rebuke from Israel Maimon, director of the conference: “The academic boycott against Israel is in our view outrageous and improper, certainly for someone for whom the spirit of liberty lies at the basis of his human and academic mission.

“Israel is a democracy in which all individuals are free to express their opinions, whatever they may be. The imposition of a boycott is incompatible with open, democratic dialogue.”

The Wolf Foundation, which awarded Hawking the Wolf prize in physics in 1988, said it was “sad to learn that someone of Professor Hawking’s standing chose to capitulate to irrelevant pressures and will refrain from visiting Israel”.

But the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which aims to apply pressure to Israel, said Palestinians ‘deeply appreciated’ ‘ Professor Hawking’s decision.

Professor Hawking has had Motor Neurone Disease for 50 years and has used a wheelchair for most of his life. He also requires mechanical help to speak.

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Chinese authorities have begun investigating reports that Zhang Yimou, one of China’s best-known movie directors, has seven children in violation of strict family planning rules, which could result in a fine of 160 million yuan ($26.05 million), state media said this morning.

Online reports have surfaced that Zhang, who dazzled the world in 2008 with his Beijing Olympic ceremonies, “has at least seven children and will face a 160 million yuan fine,” said the website of the People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece.

An unnamed official at the Wuxi Municipal Population and Family Planning Commission said “based on the current policies and regulations, an investigation is currently being carried out”, according to the report.

It is unclear where Zhang’s children were born, the report said, citing a worker at the Jiangsu Province Population and Family Planning Commission.

Both the Wuxi and Jiangsu Population and Family Planning Commission could not be reached for comment.

Zhang, 61, once the bad-boy of Chinese cinema whose movies were sometimes banned at home while popular overseas, has since become a darling of the Communist Party, despite long being a subject of tabloid gossip for alleged trysts with his actresses.

Zhang’s newest project, a film to depict wartime Nanjing under Japanese occupation starred Hollywood actor Christian Bale in a leading role.

There are signs that China may loosen the one-child policy, introduced in the late 1970s to prevent population growth spiraling out of control. The policy has long been opposed by human rights and religious groups but is also now regarded by many experts as outdated and harmful to the economy.

Last December, authorities in southern Guangdong said they were investigating a family for having given birth to octuplets through in-vitro fertilization, a case that sparked intense public debate about China’s one-child policy and how wealthy families were able to circumvent the rules.

The one-child policy was meant to last only 30 years and there are now numerous exceptions to it. But it still applies to about 63 percent of the population. ($1 = 6.1410 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Sui-Lee Wee, Additional reporting by Sally Huang; Editing by Michael Perry)

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Eight people were killed when a fire swept through a clothing factory making garments for Western stores in Bangladesh, as the death toll from the collapse of another factory building two weeks ago climbed above 900.

The fire, in an industrial district of Dhaka, comes amid global attention on safety standards in Bangladesh’s booming garment industry following the catastrophic collapse of Rana Plaza, on the outskirts of the city, in the world’s deadliest industrial accident since the Bhopal disaster in India in 1984.

“It is not clear to us how the accident happened, but we are trying to find out the cause,” Mohammad Atiqul Islam, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), told Reuters.

On Wednesday the Bangladesh government said it had shut down 18 garment factories for safety reasons following the April 24 collapse of Rana Plaza, which housed five garment factories making clothes for Western brands. Six were cleared to re-open on Thursday after inspectors issued safety certificates.

Salvage teams were still pulling bodies from the rubble of the Rana Plaza complex in Savar, around 20 miles northwest of Dhaka, and on Thursday a spokesman at the army control room coordinating the operation said the number of people confirmed to have been killed had reached 912.

Roughly 2,500 people were rescued from the building, including many injured, but there is no official estimate of the numbers still missing.

The government has blamed the owners and builders of the eight-storey complex for using shoddy building materials, including substandard rods, bricks and cement, and not obtaining the necessary clearances.

Bangladesh’s garment industry, which accounts for 80 percent of the poor South Asian country’s exports, has seen a series of deadly accidents, including a fire in November that killed 112 people.

The latest fire, in an 11-storey building in the Mirpur industrial district, broke out at a factory belonging to the Tung Hai Group, a large garment exporter.

“The factory was closed and all the workers had left the premises an hour earlier,” said fire service official Bhazan Sarker.

A fire service official and BGMEA president Islam said the Bangladeshi managing director of the company and a senior police officer were among the dead. The others killed were friends and personal staff of the factory boss, officials said.

Tung Hai Group says on its website that it has more than 1,000 employees and its customers include major Western retailers including Britain’s Primark, and Inditex Group of Spain. It makes products including cardigans, jumpers and pyjamas.

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Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury -the global head of the Anglican church – said the video was ‘juvenile’ and urged Christians to ‘rise above it’.

But he also couldn’t resist having a dig: “I doubt that Bowie would have the courage to use Islamic imagery – I very much doubt it.”

And Jack Valero, of the Catholic Voices Group, told the Telegraph newspaper that the video was ‘desperate’, adding: “He used to be famous – just what is he trying to achieve?’

The video contains a sequence of Bowie in a bar in robes, striking a Christ-like pose. Gary Oldman, of ‘JFK’, ‘Batman’ and ‘Harry Potter” fame, and Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose) are also featured. Oldman is dressed as a priest, while Cotillard is in her underwear, with blood spurting from two wounds in her hands.

Youtube initially took the video down, but it was later reinstated after the company said an error had been made. Users have to provide proof of age before they can see it.

Lord Carey told the Telegraph: “If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery perhaps Christians should not worry too much at such an exploitation of religious imagery.

“I doubt that Bowie would have the courage to use Islamic imagery – I very much doubt it.

“Frankly, I don’t get offended by such juvenilia – Christians should have the courage to rise above offensive language although I hope Bowie will recognize that he may be upsetting some people.”

Bowie has been increasingly reclusive in recent years after a series of health problems. It is understood he spends much of his time living in New York City and he controversially missed an opportunity to appear in a bonanza of British musical talent that was held to close last year’s London Olympic Games.

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Police officers recently arrested 31 people connected to a “highly professional” diamond heist at the Brussels Airport.

The robbery, which took place a few months ago at the Brussels-Zaventem international airport, was one of the biggest diamonds heists ever executed. It was executed within three minutes using two cars. The unregistered diamonds were worth $50 million.

The thieves wore mask and held machine guns with laser lighting. They entered through an unlocked access gate and drove through the airport construction site.

According to the Telegraph, the gang’s target was a Brink’s diamond and jewelry service truck that had just finished loading the Helvetic Airways flight LX789 to Zurich.

To ensure ultimate security, the cargo is loaded on the runway just before the plane takes off.

Passengers on the flight said it all happened so quickly that they saw nothing. The thieves sped off in two black vehicles, a Mercedes van and an Audi both with police lights, which they flashed as they drove off.

Police detained one man in France who is thought to organizer of the robbery. Eight other people were arrested in Switzerland including a Geneva lawyer and a businessman and 24 suspects have been detained in Belgium.

“We believe the man arrested in France is one of the authors of the robber,” said Jean-Marc Meilleur, of the Brussels prosecutor’s office. “Among those arrested in Belgium, at least 10 are known to the court, including for armed attacks. They are part of the Brussels criminal underworld.”

The stolen diamonds were coming from Antwerp, which sends approximately $203 million worth of jewels through the Brussels airport daily.

Follow Mary Ann Georgantopoulos on Twitter @marygeorgant

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Seven people were killed and two were missing after a container ship crashed into a concrete control tower in the northern Italian port of Genoa.

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A monkey forced to ride a bicycle in a Chinese circus act was mauled to death by a bear in the same show.

A video of the incident shows the monkey, one of two in the show, doing two circuits of the circus ring at the Shanghai Animal Show in China. The monkey is followed by a black bear, also on a bicycle.

The audience cheer and laugh at the animals, but then one of the monkeys crashes off its bike just as the bear passes by. The monkey is trapped beneath its machine and, immediately, the bear pounces, mauling the monkey in front of dozens of children in the audience.

Circus staff try desperately to get the bear off the monkey, but the primate is in the bear’s jaws for more than 30 seconds. Eventually staff drag the monkey’s apparently lifeless body away.

The video appeared online Tuesday, but it is not clear when the incident took place.

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Three people were killed and six are missing after a container ship crashed into a control tower in the northern Italian port city of Genoa late Tuesday.

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  PHOTOS: Ship crashes into concrete control tower in the Northern Italy

The tower, which was more than 160 feet high and looked much like the ones common at airports, collapsed after being struck by the prow of the ship, the Jolly Nero.

Two of the dead were Coast Guard officials and the third was a pilot for the port, Coast Guard spokesman Filippo Marini said. “We are continuing the search for the missing,” he said.

The accident happened as staff were changing shifts, so more people than normal were in the tower.

“It’s very difficult to explain how this could have happened because the ship should not have been where it was,” the head of the Genoa Port Authority, Luigi Merlo, told local newspaper il Secolo XIX.

Three people were believed to have been trapped in the lift of the control tower and may have fallen into the sea.

Television pictures early Wednesday showed that the only thing left where the tower had stood was a badly leaning metal-framed stairway. Divers from the fire department were shown in the water searching for bodies.

The cause of the crash was unclear. It occurred at about 11 p.m. GMT in calm conditions as the Jolly Nero, owned by local fleet operator Ignazio Messina and Co., was maneuvering out of the port with the assistance of tugboats, under the control of two pilots.

“A thing like this has never happened; we are devastated,” said Stefano Messina, one of the directors of the family-owned operator, who spoke in tears near the crash site to a local TV channel after the accident.

The Jolly Nero is a 781-foot ship with a gross tonnage of 40,594 tonnes, according to the company’s website.

Prosecutors boarded the vessel and have opened an investigation into the accident, according to daily il Secolo XIX.

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A gas tanker truck exploded on a highway north of Mexico City early on Tuesday, killing at least 20 people and injuring more than 30 others as a fireball tore through cars and homes.

Pablo Bedolla, mayor of the Mexico City suburb of Ecatepec, said 20 people died in the blast that engulfed early morning traffic. Television footage showed burned out vehicles and debris strewn all over the highway on the edge of the capital.

“It was a ball of fire which exploded as though they’d put a spotlight in the whole window,” resident Carlos Gonzalez Silva told Mexican radio. “We opened the door and it was like fire had blown through the whole of the garden.”

Bedolla said 33 people had been injured by the blast and 45 houses damaged. Emergency services in the State of Mexico, which abuts the capital, said 16 vehicles were hit by the explosion.

President Enrique Pena Nieto expressed his condolences for the victims of the blast.

Mexican radio station Formato 21 said a family of four, including two children aged 11 and 6, were among the dead.

In January, a massive blast at the headquarters of state oil giant Pemex in downtown Mexico City claimed dozens of lives.

Media reports said the gas tanker did not belong to Pemex. The state oil company said it would help the company involved in rescue efforts.

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In a move toward increasing gender equality in Saudi Arabia, girls in private school will soon be allowed to participate in sports.

The girls will be allowed to participate in sports as long as their dress falls within the bounds of sharia law.

The decision to allow girls to play sports “stems from the teachings of our religion, which allow women such activities in accordance with sharia,” said education ministry spokesman, Mohammed al-Dakhini.

From the Guardian:
“Women’s sport remains nearly an underground activity in the kingdom. Only the largest female university – Princess Nora Bint Abdul Rahman Unviersity – has a swimming pool, tennis court and exercise area for its students. No other university in Saudi Arabia has sport facilities for its female students and staff.

Women are also bound by strict rules when it comes to their attire, so they cannot, for example, be seen by men while jogging in trousers. Almost all women in Saudi Arabia cover their face with a niqab, and even foreigners are obliged to respect local culture and wear an abaya, a loose black dress.

Female athletes cannot register for sport clubs or league competitions. They are banned from entering national trials, which makes it impossible for them to qualify for international competitions.”

This announcement comes a month after Prince AlWaleed bin Talal announced that women should be allowed to dive, because the country’s reliance on foreign drivers was hurting the economy.

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Israel played down weekend air strikes reported to have killed dozens of Syrian soldiers close to Damascus, saying they were not aimed at influencing its neighbor’s civil war but only at stopping Iranian missiles reaching Lebanese Hezbollah militants.

Oil prices spiked above $105 a barrel, their highest in nearly a month, on Monday as the air strikes on Friday and Sunday prompted fears of a wider spillover of the two-year old conflict in Syria that could affect Middle East oil exports.

“There are no winds of war,” Yair Golan, the general commanding Israeli forces on the Syrian and Lebanese fronts, told reporters while out jogging with troops.

“Do you see tension? There is no tension. Do I look tense to you?” he said, according to the Maariv NRG news website.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came under veiled criticism in Beijing, where he began a scheduled visit in an apparent sign of confidence Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would not retaliate. China urged restraint without mentioning Israel by name.

Russia, Assad’s other protector on the U.N. Security Council, said the strikes by Israel “caused particular alarm”. President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet on Tuesday to try to tackle differences over the Syrian crisis.

Israeli officials said the raids were not connected with Syria’s civil war but aimed at stopping Hezbollah, an ally of Iran, acquiring weapons to strike Israeli territory.

Israel aimed to avoid “an increase in tension with Syria by making clear that if there is activity, it is only against Hezbollah, not against the Syrian regime” Veteran lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi, a confidant of Netanyahu, told Israel Radio.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group based in Britain, said at least 42 Syrian soldiers were killed in the strikes and 100 others were missing.

Other opposition sources put the death toll at 300 soldiers, mostly belonging to the elite Republican Guards, a praetorian unit that forms the last line of defense of Damascus and is comprised mainly of members of Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam that has controlled Syria since the 1960s.

As well as the heavily-fortified Hamah compound, linked to Syria’s chemical and biological weapons program, the warplanes hit military facilities manned by Republican Guards on Qasioun Mountain overlooking Damascus and the nearby Barada River basin.

Residents, activists and rebel sources said the area is a supply route to the Lebanese Shi’ite militant group Hezbollah, but missiles for Hezbollah did not appear to be the only target.

Air defenses comprising Russian made surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns on Qasioun and overlooking the rebellious Damascus district of Barzeh were also hit, they said. Their statements could not be verified due to restrictions on media.

“The destruction appeared to be massive,” said one activist in Damascus, who did not want to be identified.

Russia said it was concerned the chances of foreign military intervention in Syria were growing, suggesting its worry stemmed in part from reports about the alleged use of chemical weapons in the conflict that has killed 70,000 people.

“The further escalation of armed confrontation sharply increases the risk of creating new areas of tension, in addition to Syria, in Lebanon, and the destabilization of the so-far relatively calm atmosphere on the Lebanese-Israeli border,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.

Assad’s government accused Israel of effectively helping al Qaeda Islamist “terrorists” and said the strikes “open the door to all possibilities”. It said many civilians had died but there was no official casualty toll.

CALCULATING

Israeli officials said that, as after a similar attack in the same area in January, they were calculating Assad would not fight a well-armed neighbor while preoccupied with survival against a revolt that grew from pro-democracy protests in 2011.

Israel has not confirmed the latest attacks officially, but has reinforced anti-missile batteries in the north. It said two rockets landed, by mistake, on Monday, in the Golan Heights, the Israeli-occupied area near Syria’s border with Israel.

“They were fired erroneously as a byproduct of internal conflict in Syria,” an Israeli military spokesman said.

Syria would be no match for Israel in any direct military showdown. But Damascus, with its leverage over Lebanon’s Hezbollah, could consider proxy attacks through Lebanon.

Tehran, which has long backed Assad, whose Alawite minority has religious ties to Iran’s Shi’ite Islam, denied Israel’s attack was on arms for Hezbollah. Hezbollah did not comment.

Moscow and Beijing have blocked Western-backed measures against Assad at the United Nations Security Council, opposing any proposal that has his exit from power as a starting point.

Allegations of the use of chemical weapons – long described by Western leaders as a “red line” that would have serious consequences – have added to regional and international tension.

After months of increasingly bitter fighting, Assad’s government and the rebels have each accused the other of carrying out three chemical weapon attacks.

Syria is not part of the international treaty that bans poison gas but has said it would never use it in an internal conflict. Rebels say they have no access to chemical arms.

The White House has said the Syrian government has probably used chemical weapons. A U.S. official said on Monday Washington had no information to suggest that rebels had used them.

A U.N. inquiry commission said on Monday war crimes investigators had reached no conclusions on whether any side in the Syrian war has used chemical weapons, after a suggestion from one of the team that rebel forces had done so.

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April was Child Abuse Awareness Month and folks over in Spain created a very unique advertisement.

The billboard, created by an organization dedicated to aiding abused children shows a different message to children and to adults, even if both are looking at it at the same time.

The ad was created with the use of lenticular printing, which allows different images to be seen depending on the vantage point, according to Mashable.

Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk, the organization behind the advertisement, wanted to get the message of speaking up to children, even if they saw the ad while accompanied by an adult of even their aggressor.

The way this billboard works is if that it is seen by a child under 1.3 meters, about 4 feet 3 inches, the message reads, “If somebody hurts you, phone us and we’ll help you.”

Average heights by age were used in creating the video, so children under the age of 10 can see this message.

For adults viewing the billboard from a higher vantage point, the message reads, “Sometimes child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it.”

Advertising agency Grey explain to Mashable that the idea behind the billboard is that abuse victims might see the message as their walking down the street with their abuses.

Follow Mayr Ann Georgantopoulos on Twitter @marygeorgant

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A 70-million-year-old dinosaur skeleton from the Gobi Desert that was smuggled to the United States in pieces and auctioned for more than $1 million was returned on Monday by the U.S. government to Mongolia.

The huge Tyrannosaurus bataar’s skull was on display at a repatriation ceremony near the United Nations in New York, where officials of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and the U.S. Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) formally turned over the nearly complete skeleton to Mongolian officials.

Mongolia demanded the return of the 8-foot-tall (2.4 meter), 24-foot-long (7.3 meter), mostly reconstructed cousin of the Tyrannosaurus rex last year after commercial paleontologist Eric Prokopi sold it at a Manhattan auction last spring for $1.05 million.

Prokopi, based in Gainesville, Florida, bought and sold whole and partial fossilized dinosaur skeletons.

U.S. authorities filed charges against Prokopi in October and seized the skeleton, which is comprised of fossilized bones welded to a metal frame.

“This is one of the most important repatriations of fossils in recent years,” ICE Director John Morton said in a statement. “We cannot allow the greed of a few looters and schemers to trump the cultural interests of an entire nation.”

Morton said the repatriation would “undo a great wrong by returning this priceless dinosaur skeleton to the people of Mongolia.”

Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj thanked U.S. prosecutors, judges, investigators and paleontologists in a statement: “Our two countries are separated by many miles, but share a passion for justice and a commitment to putting an end to illegal smuggling.”

In addition to the skeleton, the United States is also helping to return more fossils to Mongolia, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said.

The Tyrannosaurus bataar lived some 70 million years ago in what is now Mongolia, and its skeleton was discovered in 1946 in a joint Soviet-Mongolian expedition to the Gobi Desert, according to court and federal documents.

It was imported to the United States in 2010 from Great Britain, with customs documents that falsely claimed it originated in Great Britain and was valued at $15,000, far below its auction price.

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The pilot, Ladislao Tejedor Romero, 35, an experienced jet flier, was pulled alive, but severely injured from the wreckage and rushed to a local hospital, where he later died. He was an assistant to Spain’s Defense Minister, Pedro Morenes.

Romero was flying a 60-year-old HA-200 Saeta plane at the Cuatro Ventos airshow which was attended by 3,000 spectators.

No one was hurt on the ground.

It is not obvious from the video of the crash that the plane suffered a mechanical fault, although a full inquiry has been launched.

The footage shows the jet going into a dive from a steep climb, and it appears that the pilot misjudged his height as he tried to pull up into a low pass. Tragically, the jet slammed into the hangar, and exploded.

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Actress Helen Mirren has delivered another show-stopping performance as Britain’s Queen Elizabeth after storming out of a London theatre dressed as the monarch to deliver an expletive-riddled tirade at a group of drummers ruining the play.

Infuriated by loud drumming outside the Gielgud Theatre, where Mirren is portraying the queen in the play “The Audience”, she burst out in full costume during the interval on Saturday night to tell them to shut up, with a few swear words thrown in for good measure. “Shut the f**k up!” one bystander claimed she yelled at the group.

“I’m afraid there were a few ‘thespian’ words used. They got a very stern royal ticking off but I have to say they were very sweet and they stopped immediately,” Mirren told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Mirren, 67, who last month added the best actress gong at Britain’s top theatre honors to the Academy Award she won for the 2006 film “The Queen”, said the drumming had got so loud it was disturbing cast and theatre-goers alike.

Audience members said they had tried unsuccessfully to silence the drummers, but the sight of one of Britain’s most prestigious actors dressed as the monarch did the trick.

Footage captured on mobile phone and aired on Sky News showed an angry Mirren, attired in tiara and pearls, accosting the drummers, waving her arms and gesticulating angrily before the music was brought to a sudden stop.

“I literally walked straight off stage, straight up the stairs and straight out the stage door and banged my way through the crowd who were watching and said ‘stop, you’ve got to stop right now’ only I might have used stronger language than that,” she told the newspaper.

“They were very sweet and stopped the minute they knew I wasn’t just a batty old woman haranguing them on the streets of Soho on a Saturday night.

“I felt rotten, but on the other hand they were destroying our performance so something had to be done.”

Liam Emerson, the musical director of the Batala London drummers who had been hired to advertise a gay festival later in May, said they had not intended to disturb anyone.

“Her language was very blue, which looking back on it is probably quite funny really,” he told Sky News. “But once I realized it was Helen Mirren and we were right next to a theatre we kind of stopped and politely apologized.”

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Mike Collett-White)

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Vultures took just 40 minutes to devour the corpse of a woman killed in a fall from a mountain in the French Pyrenees.

Police who went to search for the woman found only bones, clothes and her shoes remained. Her flesh had been eaten by a group of Griffin Vultures, which are common to the area of southern France.

The 52-year-old victim had fallen 300 meters down a slope while on a walk with two friends, said Didier Pericou of the local gendarmerie. The woman’s body had been stripped to the bone before local mountain rescue teams could each her.

Local farmers say the vultures have increasingly become  menace and have called for the lifting of European Union restrictions on hunting the creatures. One farmer, Alain Larraide, reported seeing vultures carrying off live animals, including an adult cow, before eating their victims. “You can’t imagine what it is like to see an animal eaten alive,” he said.

There have been 42 claims for compensation to local authorities in recent months for animals lost to the vultures.

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