Reward offered for €150k homing pigeon

A breeder in Düsseldorf has offered a €10,000 reward after thieves stole a homing pigeon worth €150,000 from his aviary.

The grey pigeon, a six-year-old male known as “AS 969”, was the most valuable bird the breeder kept, police said on Tuesday following a break-in over the weekend.
He first noticed that it was gone at around 7 am on Sunday morning.
Thieves must have known exactly what they were looking for among the hundreds of other pigeons in the cages housing the breeder's collection, they said.
A police spokeswoman added that while the animal looks just like any other grey pigeon, it has “good genes” which would only be obvious to a fellow pigeon fancier.
The breeder said that the bird had won several prizes and that its offspring were being used for racing in South Africa.

Sony Distributes 'The Interview' Online Through YouTube and Google Play

Sony announced today that "The Interview" will be available online today via Google Play, YouTube Movies, Microsoft’s Xbox Video and a site www.seetheinterview.com, for $5.99 rental on all platforms, $14.99 for purchase in HD.

 “It has always been Sony’s intention to have a national platform on which to release this film,” said Sony CEO Michael Lynton in a release to ABC News. “With that in mind, we reached out to Google, Microsoft and other partners last Wednesday, December 17th, when it became clear our initial release plans were not possible. We are pleased we can now join with our partners to offer the film nation-wide today."

Lynton said his company never stopped "pursuing as wide a release as possible" for the film that looked like it was dead as of last week when all the big move chains like AMC and Regal had backed out of showing the film due to hacker threats.

"Especially given the assault upon our business and our employees by those who wanted to stop free speech. We chose the path of digital distribution first so as to reach as many people as possible on opening day, and we continue to seek other partners and platforms to further expand the release,” he continued.

He thanked Google and Microsoft for their commitment to "free speech."

"While we couldn't have predicted the road this movie traveled to get to this moment, I’m proud our fight was not for nothing and that cyber criminals were not able to silence us," he added.

The statement closed by stating that in addition to online, "'The Interview' is also being released in more than 300 United States theaters on Dec. 25.

Google's chief legal officer David Drummond wrote in a blog post, "Last Wednesday Sony began contacting a number of companies, including Google, to ask if we’d be able to make their movie, 'The Interview,' available online."

"We'd had a similar thought and were eager to help -- though given everything that’s happened, the security implications were very much at the front of our minds," Drummond wrote. "Of course it was tempting to hope that something else would happen to ensure this movie saw the light of day. But after discussing all the issues, Sony and Google agreed that we could not sit on the sidelines and allow a handful of people to determine the limits of free speech in another country (however silly the content might be)."

After the news broke, the film's star Seth Rogen tweeted "Thanks Sony for making it happen. Booyah."

Executed at age 14, George Stinney exonerated 70 years later

South Carolina electrocuted George Stinney after he was convicted of killing two white girls in 1944. The trial lasted three hours, and George's lawyer had never before represented a criminal defendant.

At just 95 pounds and barely five feet tall, he was so small that he had to sit on a phone book.

George Stinney was just 14 years old when the state of South Carolina electrocuted him in 1944 – the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century. Jim Crow was the law for African-Americans. The Ku Klux Klan was a menacing presence. Lynchings still happened all too frequently in this pre-civil rights era.

It may never be known if the black boy killed two white girls in Alcolu, S.C., as police, prosecutors, and jurors – all of them white – quickly determined. Any physical evidence has long since disappeared.

But as the great Southern writer William Faulkner said through one of his characters, "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past." And that's certainly true for George's relatives, as well as the relatives of 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and 8-year-old Mary Emma Thames, the girls killed that day.

George confessed, but there's strong feeling that he was coerced. And the details of how authorities (and the defense attorney) handled the case leave much doubt that justice was done. For decades, the old legal maxim "Justice delayed is justice denied" seemed to apply.

On Wednesday, Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen vacated the boy's conviction, effectively clearing his name.

Judge Mullen ruled that George's confession (which he later denied making) was likely coerced and thus inadmissible, "due to the power differential between his position as a 14-year-old black male apprehended and questioned by white, uniformed law enforcement in a small, segregated mill town in South Carolina." 

"This Court finds fundamental, Constitutional violations of due process exist in the 1944 prosecution of George Stinney, Jr. and hereby vacates the judgment," Judge Mullen wrote. "Given the particularized circumstances of Stinney’s case, I find by a preponderance of the evidence standard, that a violation of the Defendant’s procedural due process rights tainted his prosecution."

Here are some of those particularized circumstances:

The trial lasted just three hours, and no witnesses were called on George's behalf. His white, court-appointed lawyer – a tax commissioner who had never represented a criminal defendant – did not cross-examine witnesses for the prosecution. The jury of 12 white men took just 10 minutes to reach a guilty verdict. When the boy was sentenced to die by electrocution, no appeal was filed.

Ray Brown, who’s producing a film called "83 Days" based on George’s execution timeline, toldTheGrio.com he was overwhelmed by Wednesday’s ruling.

“It’s never too late for justice,” Mr. Brown said. “There’s no statute of limitations on justice. One of the things I can say about South Carolina and I can give them credit for – is that they got it right this time. During a period of time in our nation where we seem to have such a great racial divide, you have a southern state that has decided to admit they made a mistake and correct it.”

The past may not be dead, as Faulkner wrote, but much of South Carolina's past no longer marks the state's present.

In the court proceedings leading up to young George's exoneration, the solicitor for the state who argued that the conviction should stand, was a black man, the son of South Carolina's first African-American state Supreme Court justice since Reconstruction.

Gay men earns less but lesbians earn more, says World Bank study

Gay men in the UK earn less than heterosexual men and lesbians earn more than straight women, a World Bank study claims.

According to the study, lesbian employees in the UK earn eight per cent more than straight women. But gay men earn five per cent less than heterosexual men, the metro.co.uk said citing the study.

The study commissioned by the World Bank and the economic research institute IZA World of Labor shows that the average UK woman working full-time still earns around nine per cent less than her male counterpart.

The differences are starker when compared to other nations, the study reveals.

"Lesbians may realise early in life that they will not marry into a traditional household," 

"Lesbians may be willing to make a series of career-oriented decisions, such as staying in school longer, choosing a degree that is likely to lead to a higher paying job, and working longer hours," the report quoted Dr Nick Drydakis, a senior economics lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University and the author of the report as saying.

He added that gay women "tend to self-select into male-dominated occupations that may offer higher salaries".

Vladimir Putin admits he's in love, with a mystery woman

Vladimir Putin, 62, and divorced, is in love.

According to reports published in Mail Online, the Russian President also said he is "getting loved in return".

"I do, I tell you, " Putin replied when asked by a journalist about whether he has time for women. 
But not one knows about the mystery woman Putin loves. However, reports had suggested he has been in a relationship with Olympic gymnast Alina Kabayeva.

The Mail Online report says Putin reportedly confirmed the news to his friend in Europe when asked whether he loved anyone. He replied saying, "Yes".

However, Putin has been rubbishing rumours about his wedding with Alina. Vladimir Putin announced divorce to his wife Lyudmila on June 7, 2013.

Lyudmila, 55, was rarely seen in public during her husband's long tenure at the top of Russian politics, fueling rumours that she and Putin had separated. 

Divorce is common in Russia, and nearly 7,00,000 couples dissolved their marriages in 2009, according to UNICEF.

But Russian leaders, unlike their American counterparts, generally keep their domestic lives well out of public view and divorce among top officials in Russia is unprecedented.

While break-ups involving prominent politicians are exceptionally rare, some sections of the media often sneer at celebrity splits.

Opposition-leaning Kommersant Radio lauded the couple's announcement for keeping the public informed instead of keeping it secret.

"Perhaps a lot of people feel better now that the president did what he did instead of living a double life for the sake of following some false protocol," prominent columnist Viktor Loshak said on Kommersant FM Friday morning. "The president and his wife acted like real people."

The Putins married on July 28, 1983, and have two daughters, Maria and Yekaterina, who haven't been seen in public for years.

There have been hints that Lyudmila Putina was unhappy. In a 2005 interview with three Russian newspapers, she complained that her husband worked long hours, forgetting that "one needs not only to work, but also to live."

Pope Francis: ‘I will not be in the Vatican in 10 years’

POPE Francis says he will not still be in the Vatican in ten years.

Greeting athletes and officials from the Italian National Olympic Committee on Friday, the Pope wished them well with their bid to host the 2024 Games, but said he would not be around to watch them. He recently celebrated his 78th birthday.

“Dear friends, best wishes for Rome’s bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games,” he said. “I will not be there. May the Lord bless all of you and your families.”

It was not the first time the Pope has hinted he does not think he will last very long at the helm of the Catholic Church.

On his way back from South Korea in August he lightheartedly remarked to reporters that he may have only two or three years left to live.

Responding to a question about how he deals with his astonishing global popularity, he replied: “I try to think of my sins, my mistakes, not to become proud. Because I know this will last a short time, two or three years, and then I’ll be off to the house of the Father”.

The Argentinian pontiff has also stated that he could retire if his health fails, as his predecessor Benedict XVI did last year in what was the first voluntary papal resignation in more than 700 years.

Official: North Korea behind Sony hack

WASHINGTON — Hours after an announcement that U.S. authorities determined North Korea was behind the recent cyber-attack on Sony Pictures, the entertainment company announced it was pulling the film The Interview.

The comedy about journalists who score an interview with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was scheduled for a Dec. 25 release.

"Sony Pictures has no further release plans for the film," according to a statement from the company.

Sony also removed any mention of the movie from its website by Wednesday afternoon.

Earlier Wednesday, a federal law enforcement official offered the news about North Korea.

The official, who is not authorized to comment publicly, said a formal announcement of attribution by the U.S. government could come as soon as Thursday.

U.S. investigators believe the attacks originated outside North Korea, but they have determined that the actions were sanctioned by North Korean leaders, a second U.S. official said Wednesday.

The U.S. government is not prepared to issue formal charges against North Korea or its leadership, but the official, who is not authorized to comment publicly, said a lesser statement of attribution is expected..

U.S. investigators had moved quickly toward a determination in recent days, indicating this week that attribution was imminent.

Addressing the matter last week, FBI Director James Comey said the attack was very "complicated'' and the government wanted to be sure "before we make an attribution that we have high confidence in it.''

Sony was hit by hackers Nov. 24. A glowing red skeleton appeared on screens throughout the Culver City, Calif.-based Sony subsidiary.

The hack apparently was in response to the planned release of The Interview, which featured James Franco and Seth Rogen as tabloid TV journalists. As they prepare to travel to the secretive North Korea, they're recruited by the CIA to assassinate Kim.

Tuesday, the hackers, who call themselves the Guardians of Peace, posted a message threatening a 9/11 type attack on theaters that showed the movie.

While making the film, Sony representatives met with Assistant Secretary Daniel Russell of the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs and other State Department officials to discuss U.S. policy in Asia, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. She did not detail their conversations.

Psaki would not confirm reports that Robert King, the U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights, relayed messages to Sony about the movie. King "did not view the movie and did not have any contact directly with Sony," she said.

Psaki said the department had no "credible information to support these threats" against theaters showing the film.

The hacking has had other, massive repercussions for the media giant. Almost 38 million files were stolen and doled out on file-sharing websites.

Files included the screening versions of five Sony films, the script to the most recent James Bond movie, embarrassing e-mails between studio executives, salary data and personal information about Sony staff.

During the three weeks since the attack, an ongoing question has been "Why?"

Historically, hackers have either stolen intellectual property as part of an industrial espionage campaign or grabbed personal data to sell.

An attack that merely posted material, much of which could have been sold for large amounts of money on the black market, is unprecedented.

After entering and copying much of the Sony network, the hackers released malicious software, or malware, that infected Sony's computers and was extremely destructive.

"Its job was not just to erase files but to destroy them," said Tom Kellermann, a computer security expert with Trend Micro.

This sort of behavior hadn't been seen much since the 1990s, when "script kiddies" copied computer programs they didn't actually understand and used them merely to wreak havoc.

"Back then, we saw this a lot, people jumping in, messing up a network and jumping out, but there was no financial gain. It was just 'Ha ha, look what I did!' " Kellermann said.

North Korea has been suspected of employing hacking attacks against groups it disagreed with, including South Korean media outlets and banks.

Putin says west is provoking Russia into new cold war as ‘spies’ deported

Russian president denies fanning tensions and says Nato expansion in Europe has been ‘geopolitical game changer’

Vladimir Putin has suggested to a German interviewer that the west is provoking Russia into a new cold war. The airing of the interview, which was recorded by the German channel ARD in Vladivostok last week, followed Russia’s tit-for-tat expulsions of German and Polish diplomats, as well as the deportation of a Latvian accused of spying.

Asked whether the accusatory rhetoric between Moscow and Washington and a noticeable increase in Russian displays of military strength near western countries points to a new cold war, Putin said two rounds of Nato expansion in central and eastern Europe had been “significant geopolitical game changers” that forced Russia to respond.

Moscow resumed strategic aviation flights abroad several years ago in response to US nuclear bomber flights to areas near Russia that had continued after the cold war, he added.

“Nato and the United States have military bases scattered all over the globe, including in areas close to our borders, and their number is growing,” Putin said. “Moreover, just recently it was decided to deploy special operations forces, again in close proximity to our borders. You have mentioned various [Russian] exercises, flights, ship movements and so on. Is all of this going on? Yes, it is indeed.”

Putin has previously been accused by western leaders of fanning cold war-style tensions, most recently by the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, who said he told Putin at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing last week that Russia should stop “trying to recreate the lost glories of tsarism or the old Soviet Union”. In August, Barack Obama told the late-night talk show host Jay Leno that the Russians often “slip back into cold war thinking”.

In a speech in Australia on Monday, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who spoke at length to Putin during the G20 summit in Brisbane this weekend, said western sanctions against Russia would remain in place as far and long as they were needed and warned of growing Russian influence in eastern Europe. She argued that Russia should not be allowed to drive a wedge between Europe and the United States.

Also on Monday, the European Union’s new foreign policy chief, Italy’s foreign minister, Federica Mogherini, called for intensified diplomacy, including trips to Kiev and Moscow, to end the Ukraine crisis. Conservative commentators criticised Mogherini for being too soft on Russia after she was appointed in August, and her first meeting with other European foreign ministers on Monday saw them agree to consider additional sanctions against separatist leaders but not Russian officials.

The British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, is to announce on Tuesday that the UK will donate communications equipment and 10 armoured vehicles worth £1.2m to the Ukraine special monitoring mission of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe , which is being expanded in the face of an increasingly unstable ceasefire in the east of the country.

During the ARD interview, Putin dodged a question about whether Moscow had supplied weapons to the separatists and deployed troops to eastern Ukraine, as Nato and Kiev have argued. “Nowadays people who wage a fight and consider it righteous will always get weapons,” he said, blaming the west for supporting the government forces’ use of ballistic missiles.

“You want the Ukrainian central authorities to annihilate everyone there in eastern Ukraine,” Putin said. “Is that what you want? We certainly don’t. And we won’t let it happen.”

But a report on the weapons used in the Ukrainian conflict released on Monday by the consulting group Armament Research Services (ARES) suggested that rebels were “very likely” to have received arms from Russia “however the level of state complicity in such activity remains unclear.”

“It is very likely that pro-Russian separatist groups have received some level of support (including small arms, light weapons, guided light weapons, heavier weapons systems, and armoured vehicles) from one or more external parties,” the ARES report said, although it admitted that the “most significant sources” of weapons and armoured vehicles were domestic ones.

Putin also said Russia’s “friendship” with Germany was stronger than ever. German business groups have been among the most adamant opponents of sanctions. But in a sign of slipping political relations, Russia’s foreign ministry confirmed to the news agency RIA Novosti on Monday that it had expelled an employee of the German embassy in Moscow in response to Berlin’s “unfriendly actions toward an employee of one of Russia’s foreign institutions in Germany”. A Russian diplomat in Bonn had previously been expelled on suspicion of spying, Der Spiegel reported.

Moscow has also deported Alexei Kholostov, a former Latvian MP known as an advocate of Latvia’s Russian minority, on spying allegations, the Latvian foreign ministry told Interfax news agency on Monday. In a Russian television report aired this weekend, Kholostov said on camerathat he was “in Russia on assignment for the Latvian special forces, which work under the CIA’s control”.

In another ongoing spy scandal, the foreign ministry also said on Monday it had expelled “several Polish diplomats” over “activities incompatible with their status”, a common euphemism for spying. Polish television reported that four diplomats had been deported. Poland’s foreign minister called the move a “symmetric response” after Polish authorities arrested a military officer and a Russian-Polish lawyer last month on suspicion of spying for Russia.

'God baby' born in India with four arms and four legs

A BABY has been born in India with four arms and four legs.

The child has attracted hordes of visitors and been dubbed 'God' by his parents due to his resemblance to a many-limbed deity.

A relative, who has not been named, said: "When he first came out we couldn't believe it.

"The nurses said he was badly deformed but I could see that this was a sign from God.

"In fact, this is a miracle, it's God's baby. Indian God's have extra limbs just like this." 

Thousands of people are flocking to the hospital in Baruipur, a city in India's eastern West Bengal State, to catch a glimpse of the baby. Chukka Rao, 67, from a neighbouring village, said: "When we first heard about God Boy we were slightly sceptical.

"But we came to see because we were intrigued by all the news we were hearing from friends and others.

"This is truly the son of the Hindu God Brahma, who also has four arms and four legs." 

However, a police spokesman said that the visitors were causing problems.

He said: "The crowds are going berserk and clamouring to see the child.

"Hundreds are crying in the streets, hundreds of others are praying and setting up camp here.

"Some are even panicking and believe this is a sign of the end of the world. I have never seen anything like this in my whole career."

Medics say that the infant's condition is a result of the arms and legs of a twin joining on to the foetus in the womb.

Ex-Navy SEAL Makes No Apologies For Going Public About Bin Laden

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill, who says he fired the shots that killed Osama bin Laden, played a role in some of the most consequential combat missions of the post-9/11 era, including three depicted in Hollywood movies. And now he's telling the world about them.

By doing so, O'Neill has almost certainly increased his earning power on the speaking circuit. He also may have put himself and his family at greater risk. And he has earned the enmity of some current and former SEALs by violating their code of silence.

But O'Neill, winner of two Silver and five Bronze Stars, makes no apologies for any of that. In a wide-ranging interview Friday with The Associated Press, he said he believes the American public has a right to more details about the operation that killed the al-Qaida leader and other important military adventures. And he insisted he is taking pains not to divulge classified information or compromise the tactics SEALs use to get the drop on their enemies.

"The last thing I want to do is endanger anybody," he said. "I think the good (of going public) outweighs the bad."

O'Neill, who last week began discussing his role in the bin Laden mission, was in Washington for a round of television and media appearances that drew both praise and criticism.

After helicoptering to the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, assaulting the house and killing three men and a woman, some of the SEALs reached the third floor, where a CIA analyst had told O'Neill that bin Laden would be. O'Neill followed an unnamed point man into bin Laden's bedroom, he told the AP, and the point man tackled two women, believing they had a bomb, in what O'Neill calls an incredibly selfless act.

"A few feet in front of me, on two feet, was Osama bin Laden," O'Neill said. "I shot him three times in the head and I killed him."

Many are impressed by the deed, but not everyone is impressed with the telling.

"We work in secret and we pride ourselves on that, so if somebody comes out and spills this much, it angers the rest of us," Jonathan Gilliam, a former SEAL, said in an interview.

But Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles Burlingame was the pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon, has said that O'Neill's descriptions were gratifying to the relatives of victims at a 9/11 museum ceremony where he donated the uniform he was wearing.

O'Neill's key role in the 2011 bin Laden raid was hardly his only brush with a high-profile mission. He was on the 2009 mission to rescue the captain of the merchant ship Maersk Alabama, who was taken hostage by Somali pirates. That episode was featured in the Tom Hanks movie "Captain Phillips."

And he was part of the group that helped retrieve Marcus Luttrell, the sole survivor of a four-man team attacked in 2005 while tracking a Taliban leader in Afghanistan. The Luttrell episode was featured in the 2013 film "Lone Survivor."

Long before those operations, O'Neill came to embody the dramatic transformation of the role of U.S. special operations over the last 13 years.

O'Neill joined the Navy in 1995, and in those pre-9/11 days, the SEALs did a lot of training with foreign militaries. High-risk operations in remote locations, let alone gun fights, were few and far between.

After the U.S. went to war against al-Qaida, the SEALs and other elite units were called upon for one combat mission after another — in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. O'Neill believes he killed more than 30 people.

His most fulfilling time as a SEAL, he said, came in Iraq in 2007, when he was going on multiple combat missions a night, stalking and killing insurgents and bomb-makers.

One current and two former SEALs, declining to be quoted talking about a sensitive matter, say it is not disputed that O'Neill shot at bin Laden. But Pentagon officials say it's not clear whose shots were the lethal ones.

Another SEAL, Matt Bissonnette, wrote a book about the raid, "No Easy Day." Bissonnette's account suggests the point man fired the fatal shots, and that he and a second SEAL, presumably O'Neill, shot bin Laden when he was already down.

O'Neill disputed the account of his former teammate, whom he calls a hero. Everyone who was a part of the bin Laden operation and others like it deserve recognition, he said.

"I got there because amazing men did amazing things," he said. "These are real people that have real families — that mow their lawns, can barely pay their mortgages and then they get called."