Outrage in India over rape of 7-year-old girl






VASCO DA GAMA, India: Thousands protested in the holiday state of Goa on Tuesday after a seven-year-old girl was raped in a school toilet, sparking fresh outrage in India following a deadly gang-rape on a bus.

Crowds began gathering outside the Deepvihar High School in the city of Vasco da Gama on Monday night after news of the attack emerged, prompting police to arrest the headmistress on charges of neglect as well as appeal for calm.

A massive manhunt has been launched to trace the attacker, thought to be in his early 20s, who managed to get into the premises despite security guards posted at the school gate.

A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that the youngster was raped after being dragged inside the toilet situated next to the headmistress' office during a break in classes.

Police were alerted after the girl complained of pain and was given a medical examination.

The girl was taken to hospital and has since been discharged, a charity worker accompanying her told AFP. "She is fine now and recuperating at home," she said.

The victim's identity has been protected in line with Indian law.

Thousands of people surrounded the school on Monday night, shouting to demand the arrest of the headmistress and the perpetrator.

Demonstrations then spread to other parts of the city on Tuesday, with shops and businesses closing in protest. Police were due to hold a press conference on the incident in the late afternoon.

Goa's Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar visited the spot to try and calm the tense gathering.

"We will not spare the accused and anyone involved in this crime," he told the crowds, after which the headmistress was detained. She was later arrested for alleged negligence of duty, the police official said.

The case has been transferred from local police to the state crime branch, which has taken up the help of a teacher to draw a sketch of the accused, seen loitering in the school compound.

The attack comes after the gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi last month sparked nationwide protests and fuelled anger across India over the alarming incidence of sexual assault.

Five men and a teenager have been charged with the rape and murder of the 23-year-old woman, who died 13 days later in a Singapore hospital from horrific injuries.

Police say the suspects lured the woman and her male companion onto a private bus in the capital when the pair were returning home from the cinema.

The group allegedly beat the man and raped the young woman in the back of the bus while driving around the city for about 45 minutes.

They also sexually assaulted the woman with a metal bar, leaving her with severe intestinal injuries, before throwing her out of the vehicle.

Protesters across the country have called for tougher laws to punish rapists, including the introduction of capital punishment in the most extreme cases.

Also in Goa on Monday, a policeman was arrested after being accused of sexually abusing sex workers, who said he and two other policemen -- all now suspended -- had been exploiting them in return for protection of their trade.

- AFP/ir



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Branch makes its conversation threads available to all



Branch home page



(Credit:
Jennifer Van Grove/CNET)


Billed by Twitter's inventors as a new platform for high-quality public discourse, Branch today opened it doors to anyone who wants to fork off into conversations of more than 140 characters in length.


Branch is essentially a modern, user-friendly version of the Internet forum. People create "branches" to discuss topics or links and invite their friends to participate. Thread participants can also branch off into their own separate but related conversations.

The small, San Francisco-based startup is backed by Obvious, the incubator-investor hybrid machination of Twitter creators Evan Williams and Biz Stone. Obvious announced last March that it was lending its celebrity and product expertise to the conversation-focused company. Prior to today, Branch required an invite to participate.

With the public launch, Branch, which has done marginally well at attracting the attention of the technorati, is going after more mainstream appeal. The service has introduced a few regular people-friendly features including an easier way to start branches, a view of all recent activity, and highlights which help to immediately identify key passages. Also new is the option to add SoundCloud or Spotify selections to branches.

The team behind the product insists that they've made the branch creation process more akin to jotting down ideas or talking to friends in real life. The Branch prompt box nudges the user to talk about a topic or paste a link. Then, upon hitting the next button, he or she can add a few more bullet points to help focus the conversation. The changes could be instrumental in making folks less intimidated by the getting-started process.

Branch, which creates a playground between the blog and the tweet, has its attractive assets, but it has a ways to go before it becomes a place where anyone other than passionate bloggers (or blowhards) will want to hang around for a while. At least with the invite restriction lifted, there's less of a barrier to entry.


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India rape suspect actually a minor, lawyer says

NEW DELHI One of the five men charged with gang-raping and killing a woman is a minor, his lawyer said Monday as he demanded an age-determination test in what could be a tactic to delay the case from being tried in a fast-track court.

The five charged in last month's attack of the 23-year-old student in a moving bus in New Delhi would face a possible death penalty if convicted. A sixth suspect says he is 17 years old, and if he is tried in a juvenile court he would face a maximum sentence of three years in a reform facility.




15 Photos


Gang-rape sparks rage in India






Play Video


Indian prosecutors to push for death penalty in gang rape case



The rape of the woman, and the brutal beating that led to severe organ failure, has set off an impassioned debate about what India needs to do to prevent such tragedies. Protesters and politicians have called for tougher rape laws, police reforms and a transformation in the way the country treats women.

The five men charged with various crimes in the incident live in a slum in New Delhi, and were riding in an off-duty bus that picked up the woman and a male companion late in the evening of Dec. 16 in a posh part of the capital. Both were beaten severely and thrown off the bus. The woman died two weeks later of the injuries in a Singapore hospital.

Manohar Lal Sharma, the lawyer for one of the five charged men, Mukesh Singh, said at a court hearing Monday that his client is under 18, and that police documents indicating Singh is 26 had been "manipulated."

"If you could just see his face, he is only a child," Sharma told The Associated Press.

The hearing has been closed to the media under a gag order placed by the magistrate. The defendants have been brought to the court with their faces masked, and authorities have not released photos of the accused.

Sharma said Singh had added several years to his age to get a driver's license. He said he asked the court to order a medical test to determine his client's age, but that the court did not indicate whether it would meet his request.

The case was expected to be shifted to the fast-track court Monday to avoid the delays that plague most trials in India. But the court addressed only procedural matters and paper work at the hearing, and the case was not handed over.

The next hearing was scheduled for Thursday, but it was not clear whether the case would be handed over then to the fast-track court, which was created this month to deal with crimes against women.

Last week, Sharma made a series of inflammatory and often-contradictory statements, saying that police had beaten the five charged suspects and placed other prisoners into their cells to threaten them with knives.


india, bus, gang rape

Indian policemen stand with six men, faces covered in black, accused in the gang-rape of a bus passenger in Punjab state, India, Jan. 13, 2013.


/

AP

Monday's hearing had been set for last week but was rescheduled when it turned out that the official list of charges was not completely legible.

On Sunday, police said they had arrested six suspects in another gang rape of a bus passenger in India.

Police officer Raj Jeet Singh said a 29-year-old woman was the only passenger on a bus as she was traveling to her village in northern Punjab state on Friday night. The driver took her to a desolate location, he said. There, the driver and the conductor took her to a building where they were joined by five friends and took turns raping her throughout the night, Singh said.

The driver dropped the woman off at her village early Saturday, he said, adding that police arrested six suspects on Saturday and were searching for another.

Also on Saturday, police arrested a 32-year-old man for allegedly raping and killing a 9-year-old girl two weeks ago in Ahmednagar district in western India, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

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Newtown Parents Launch Anti-Violence Initiative













On the one-month anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the parents of Anna Marquez Greene, one of the 20 children killed during the attack, are aiming to start a national dialogue through the non-profit group Sandy Hook Promise.


Appearing on "Good Morning America" today, Jimmy Greene and Nelba Marquez-Greene spoke of their grief for their little girl, and honored her memory.


"She was kind, she was loving, she was smart -- and she was also a fashionista -- she loved those gaudy flowers. I'm wearing it for her today," Nelba Marquez-Greene said, referring to her flower headwear. "We're hoping that through Sandy Hook Promise, we can bring awareness to issues, and start a conversation based on love and respect."



FULL COVERAGE: Newtown, Conn., Elementary School Shooting








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Newtown Children Return to School After Sandy Hook Massacre Watch Video





The non-profit, which was formed in the days following the December 14 shooting under the original name Newtown United, asks people to sign a pledge to "encourage and support common sense solutions that make my community and our country safer from similar acts of violence."


Tom Bittman, co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise, said the group aims to get past the polarization that the shooting has caused in the national debate.


"We need to approach it differently," Bittman said on "GMA." "We need a national conversation on the things that need to change, so that this doesn't happen again. We think it's holistic, we don't think it's one piece of legislation and one change. We think it's going to be a number of things."


Greene said that he agrees that a multi-faceted approach is ideal.


"I don't think it's wise to focus on one thing," he said. "Obviously we need to make our schools, our streets, our malls, our public places safer. Obviously there needs to be a better discussion on mental health, and access to it."


Speaking of her daughter -- who caught the nation's attention in a video where she sang "Come Thou Almighty King" while her 9-year-old brother Isaiah played the piano -- Marquez-Greene said that she wants her work now to be a tribute to her little girl.


"[She was] passionate, she was abut loving God and loving people, and I hope that that can be the legacy that we leave," she said. "That love wins, and that love will prevail in this."



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Syria war envelops region in "staggering" crisis: aid agency


BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's civil war is unleashing a "staggering humanitarian crisis" on the Middle East as hundreds of thousands of refugees flee violence including gang rape, an international aid agency said on Monday.


Opposition activists said an air strike on rebel-held territory southwest of Damascus killed 20 people, including women and children, adding to the more than 60,000 people estimated to have been killed in the 21-month-old conflict.


Over 600,000 Syrians have fled abroad - many to neighboring Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan - as violence has spread and international efforts to find a political solution have sagged.


Refugees interviewed by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) cited sexual violence as a major reason they fled the country, the New York-based organization said in a 23-page report on the crisis published on Monday.


Gang rapes often happened in front of family members and women had been kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed, it said.


"After decades of working in war and disaster zones, the IRC knows that women and girls suffer physical and sexual violence in every conflict. Syria is no exception," the group added.


Rebels and government forces have both been accused of human rights abuses during the conflict, which began with peaceful protests against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011.


The unrest turned violent after government forces fired on demonstrators and has since become a full-scale civil war.


Fierce winter weather has worsened the plight of hundreds of thousands of refugees. The IRC urged donors to step up planning and funding in the expectation that more Syrians will flee.


"Nearly two years into Syria's civil war, the region faces a staggering humanitarian disaster," the IRC report said.


AIR POWER


Despite advancing in Syria's north and east and winning support from regional powers like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the Syrian rebels have been unable to break a military stalemate with government forces elsewhere.


They have struggled to counter government air power in particular, making it hard for them to take and hold territory crucial to Assad's grip on power, including major cities.


An activist in Moadamiyeh, a rebel-held town southwest of Damascus, said an air strike there killed 20 people on Monday.


Activist video footage showed images of the limp body of a boy being pulled out from broken concrete, his back covered in dust and his front in blood.


The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said at least 13 people had died in the air raid but the toll was likely to rise.


Syrian state television said "terrorists" - its word for rebels - had fired a mortar from the Damascus suburb of Daraya on a civilian building in Moadamiyeh, killing women and children.


The reports could not be independently verified because of government restrictions on independent media in Syria.


Syrian warplanes also bombarded the strategic Taftanaz air base that rebels seized last week, the Observatory said.


In another sign of escalating bloodshed, Human Rights Watch said it had evidence that government forces had used multi-barrel rocket launchers to deliver Egyptian-made cluster munitions in recent attacks.


"Syria is escalating and expanding its use of cluster munitions, despite international condemnation of its embrace of this banned weapon," it said.


DEADLOCK


Syria's rising death toll has brought international intervention no closer. The United States and Russia have been deadlocked over how to resolve the crisis.


Moscow - which has continued to back its long-standing ally and arms client Assad - urged the opposition on Sunday to make its own proposals in response to a speech by Assad a week ago.


The speech, which offered no concessions, was criticized by the United Nations and United States. Syrian rebels described it as a renewed declaration of war.


Talks between Russia and the United States in Geneva on Friday failed to produce a breakthrough.


As diplomatic efforts have stalled, the conflict has continued to draw in Syria's neighbors.


A mortar round apparently fired from Syria crashed in a field in Turkey overnight close to a refugee camp housing thousands of Syrians along the border, Turkish state media said.


NATO troops have begun deploying Patriot defense missiles in Turkey against a potential attack from its southern neighbor. The missiles are expected to be operational by the end of the month. Turkey is a strong supporter of the Syrian rebels.


NATO said Syrian government forces had launched a short-range, Scud-style ballistic missile on Sunday, bringing to more than 20 the number launched in the past month.


The missiles, apparently fired against opposition targets, landed in Syrian territory, mostly in northern Syria, a NATO spokeswoman said in Brussels, but some of the missiles landed "quite close" to the Turkish frontier.


(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut and Adrian Croft in Brussels; Writing by Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by Mark Heinrich)



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MAS issues monograph on financial market infrastructure supervision






SINGAPORE: The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has issued a monograph of Supervision of Financial Market Infrastructures in Singapore on Monday.

In a statement, MAS said the monograph sets out its approach in supervising financial market infrastructures in Singapore to foster their safety and efficiency.

It also outlines MAS' adoption of the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures, issued by the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems and the International Organisation of Securities Commissions in April 2012.

The central bank added that the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures contains new and more demanding international standards to ensure that the infrastructure supporting global financial markets is robust and able to withstand financial shocks.

Financial market infrastructure, including the MAS Electronic Payments Systems, The Central Depository Limited, Singapore Exchange Derivatives Clearing Limited and Singapore Mercantile Exchange Clearing Corporation are expected to comply with the new rules.

Financial market infrastructures that are not properly managed can pose significant risks to the financial system and be a potential source of contagion.

MAS said the latest monograph updates and replaces the 2004 monograph on MAS' Roles and Responsibilities in Relation to Securities Clearing and Settlement Systems in Singapore.

- CNA/xq



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Apple is done, say teens



Love on the Surface.



(Credit:
Microsoft/YouTube Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)


When you want to know what's cool, you ask a teenager.


You have to ask her nicely or she will scowl you into oblivion or patronize you into a painful purgatory.


So I'd like to prepare you for some of this difficulty.


Teens have decided that Apple is, like, so over. If you want to be a veritable cooleratus, you want to be seen with a Samsung Galaxy phone in your hand or a
Microsoft Surface laptoppy
tablet stuck under your arm.


This definitive information comes to me courtesy of research performed by Buzz Marketing, as well as three 14-year-olds who tried to rob me of my orange Puma sneakers.


When they saw I had an iPhone, they couldn't even be bothered to take the sneakers. (I exaggerate slightly about this last element.)


As Forbes reports it, one of the sources of this deep technical disturbance is the self-obsession of those older people known as parents.


They have allegedly tended to toss older Apple products at their children, while buying themselves the latest iPhones.


Inevitably, this has caused a touch of pouty resentment among their offspring, who are forced to explain to their friends that possession of a smaller screen is not in any way their own fault.


Buzz Marketing's Tina Wells told Forbes: "Teens are telling us Apple is done. Apple has done a great job of embracing Gen X and older (Millennials), but I don't think they are connecting with Millennial kids."


This will surely explain why Microsoft had large numbers of Glee-ful teens dancing away in the launch ad for the Surface.


It may not explain so well why the Surface hasn't yet sold in limitless numbers.


Still, it's Apple's greatest challenge to maintain cachet as its products appear in so many more hands of so many more vintages.



More Technically Incorrect



When your logo gets seen too often, it can become a symbol of the establishment, rather than the renegade that teens are often desperate to embrace.


Teens want to believe that they have the inside track and that everyone else is worth nothing more than a snort. Why, they'll even allegedly drug their parents' milkshakes in order to get online.


They have great faith in their ability to unearth the novel and decry the status quo. The
iPhone 5 was, for them, a little too staid.

As, it transpired this week, is Facebook.

But, as they learn only a little later, their feelings can't be trusted. Their greatest emotional stability lies in its fickleness.

Which, of course, ought to give hope to brands that haven't been in teens' minds for a long time.


I'm thinking of you, Nokia.

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Poisoned Lottery Winner's Kin Were Suspicious













Urooj Khan had just brought home his $425,000 lottery check when he unexpectedly died the following day. Now, certain members of Khan's family are speaking publicly about the mystery -- and his nephew told ABC News they knew something was not right.


"He was a healthy guy, you know?" said the nephew, Minhaj Khan. "He worked so hard. He was always going about his business and, the thing is: After he won the lottery and the next day later he passes away -- it's awkward. It raises some eyebrows."


The medical examiner initially ruled Urooj Khan, 46, an immigrant from India who owned dry-cleaning businesses in Chicago, died July 20, 2012, of natural causes. But after a family member demanded more tests, authorities in November found a lethal amount of cyanide in his blood, turning the case into a homicide investigation.


"When we found out there was cyanide in his blood after the extensive toxicology reports, we had to believe that ... somebody had to kill him," Minhaj Khan said. "It had to happen, because where can you get cyanide?"


In Photos: Biggest Lotto Jackpot Winners


Authorities could be one step closer to learning what happened to Urooj Khan. A judge Friday approved an order to exhume his body at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago as early as Thursday to perform further tests.








Lottery Winner Murdered: Widow Questioned By Police Watch Video









Moments after the court hearing, Urooj Khan's sister, Meraj Khan, remembered her brother as the kind of person who would've shared his jackpot with anyone. Speaking at the Cook County Courthouse, she hoped the exhumation would help the investigation.


"It's very hard because I wanted my brother to rest in peace, but then we have to have justice served," she said, according to ABC News station WLS in Chicago. "So if that's what it takes for him to bring justice and peace, then that's what needs to be done."


Khan reportedly did not have a will. With the investigation moving forward, his family is waging a legal fight against his widow, Shabana Ansari, 32, over more than $1 million, including Urooj Khan's lottery winnings, as well as his business and real estate holdings.


Khan's brother filed a petition Wednesday to a judge asking Citibank to release information about Khan's assets to "ultimately ensure" that [Khan's] minor daughter from a prior marriage "receives her proper share."


Ansari may have tried to cash the jackpot check after Khan's death, according to court documents, which also showed Urooj Khan's family is questioning if the couple was ever even legally married.


Ansari, Urooj Khan's second wife, who still works at the couple's dry cleaning business, has insisted they were married legally.


She has told reporters the night before her husband died, she cooked a traditional Indian meal for him and their family, including Khan's daughter and Ansari's father. Not feeling well, Khan retired early, Ansari told the Chicago Sun-Times, falling asleep in a chair, waking up in agony, then collapsing in the middle of the night. She said she called 911.


"It has been an incredibly hard time," she told ABC News earlier this week. "We went from being the happiest the day we got the check. It was the best sleep I've had. And then the next day, everything was gone.


"I am cooperating with the investigation," Ansari told ABC News. "I want the truth to come out."


Ansari has not been named a suspect, but her attorney, Steven Kozicki, said investigators did question her for more than four hours.






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France bombs Mali rebels as more troops arrive in Bamako


BAMAKO/PARIS (Reuters) - French fighter jets bombed Islamist rebels in Mali for a third day on Sunday as Paris poured more troops into the capital Bamako, awaiting the arrival of a West African force to dislodge al Qaeda-linked insurgents from the country's north.


French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said France's dramatic intervention on Friday to bomb a convoy of heavily armed Islamist fighters sweeping southwards had stopped them from seizing Mali's capital Bamako within days.


Western countries fear Islamists could use Mali as a base for attacks on the West, forming a link with al Qaeda militants in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa.


Le Drian said former colonial power France was carrying out continuous bombing raids against the alliance of rebel groups, which seized the country's vast desert north in April.


"There are raids going on now: there were some last night, and there will be more tomorrow," Le Drian told French television. "The president is totally determined that we must eradicate these terrorists who threaten the security of Mali, our own country and Europe."


Residents said French aircraft bombed the northern town of Gao, and a Malian rebel spokesman said they bombed targets in the towns of Lere and Douentza.


Le Drian said France was deploying a further contingent of 80 soldiers to Mali on Sunday, bring the total to 550 soldiers , split between Bamako and the town of Mopti, some 500 km (300 miles) north. State-of-the-art Rafale fighter jets would be dispatched to reinforce the operation on Sunday, he said.


A Reuters cameraman reported seeing on Sunday more than 100 French troops disembarking from a military cargo plane at Bamako airport, just on the outskirts of the capital.


Bamako itself was calm on Sunday, with the sun streaking through the dust enveloping the city as the seasonal Harmattan wind blew from the Sahara. Some cars drove around with French flags draped from the windows to celebrate Paris's intervention.


Hours after opening one front against al Qaeda-linked Islamists, France mounted a commando raid to free a French hostage in Somalia held by al Shabaab militants allied to al Qaeda, but failed to stop him being killed along with a French commando.


A French pilot was killed on Friday when rebels in Mali shot down his helicopter.


President Francois Hollande has made it clear that France's aim in Mali is to support the deployment of a West African mission to retake the north, endorsed by the United Nations, the European Union and the United States.


The 15-nation West African bloc ECOWAS convened a summit for Saturday in Ivory Coast to discuss the military campaign.


With Paris pressing West African nations to deploy troops quickly, Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara, who holds the rotating ECOWAS chairmanship, has kick-started the operation to deploy some 3,300 African soldiers.


Ouattara was himself installed in power with French military backing in 2011 after a brief civil war triggered by former president Laurent Gbagbo's refusal to step aside after losing a late 2010 election.


"The troops will start arriving in Bamako today and tomorrow," Ali Coulibaly, Ivory Coast's African Integration Minister, said. "They will be convoyed to the front at Sevare."


HOUSE-TO-HOUSE SEARCHES


Under cover from French fighter planes and attack helicopters on Friday, Malian troops drove the Islamists out of the strategic central town of Konna, which they had seized a day earlier. A senior Malian army official said more than 100 rebel fighters had been killed.


Military analysts expressed doubt, however, that this was the start of a swift operation to retake the whole of northern Mali - a harsh, sparsely populated terrain the size of France - as neither equipment nor ground troops were ready.


In Nigeria, which will lead the ECOWAS force, a military official who asked not to be identified said it would take time to train and equip the troops.


In Konna, calm returned after three nights of combat.


"Soldiers are patrolling the streets and have encircled the town," one resident, Madame Coulibaly, told Reuters by phone. "They are searching houses for arms or hidden Islamists."


Another inhabitant said the army set up roadblocks along the route north from Sevare to Konna and was checking for rebels. President Diouncounda Traore declared a state of emergency on Friday giving the military sweeping powers to carry out searches and shut down parts of the country.


"The army is in Konna ... securing the town and to make sure it is safe," army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Diarran Kone said.


A resident in the northern city of Gao, one of the Islamists' strongholds, had reported scores of rebel fighters were retreating northward in pickup trucks on Saturday. In Bamako, some civilians tried to contribute to the war effort.


"We are very proud and relieved that the army was able to drive the jihadists out of Konna. We hope it will not end there that is why I'm helping in my own way," said civil servant Ibrahima Kalossi, 32, one of over 40 people who queued to donate blood for wounded soldiers.


Concerned about reprisals on French soil, Hollande instructed Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault to tighten security in France at public buildings and on public transport.


France advised its 6,000 citizens in Mali to leave. Thousands more French live across West Africa, particularly in Senegal and Ivory Coast.


Hollande's intervention in Mali could endanger eight French nationals being held by Islamists in the Sahara. A spokesman for one of Mali's rebel groups, Ansar Dine, said on Saturday there would be repercussions.


"There are consequences, not only for French hostages, but also for all French citizens, wherever they find themselves in the Muslim world," Sanda Ould Boumama told Reuters. "The hostages are facing death."


(Additional reporting Adama Diarra, Tiemoko Diallo and Rainer Schwenzfeier in Bamako, Joe Bavier in Abidjan and Leila Aboud in Paris; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Alison Williams)



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Over 100 couples renew wedding vows at S'pore Flyer






SINGAPORE: It was a huge display of love at the Singapore Flyer as 111 couples renewed their marriage vows, in the presence of their family and friends.

The couples and their families then got a chance to take a cruise to Marina Promenade while others began their day in the air on an exclusive "Dawn Flight" on the Singapore Flyer.

It was all part of the first mass renewal of vows organised by the Family Life Champions of Chua Chu Kang GRC.

Health Minister Mr Gan Kim Yong, who is an MP for the GRC, said renewing marriage vows is an opportunity for couples to share their values with the younger generation.

He had also some advice for a lasting marriage.

Mr Gan said: "There will always be differences between the two person, because you came from different backgrounds, different history, but there are a lot of common interest, common areas they can develop.

"And if they focus more on the common areas, they will be able then to develop more common space and learn to accept one another, I think this is one important secret to a long marriage."

- CNA/fa



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