1. Nigerian president reportedly brain-damaged in Saudi Arabia
President Umaru Yar’Adua is seriously brain damaged, is not able to recognise anyone, including his wife Turai, and can no longer perform the functions of the office of the president, according to multiple sources who have spoken to NEXT on Sunday. But this fact, which has left a nation of 150 million people rudderless and its government in disarray, is being concealed from the public through an elaborate scam orchestrated directly and energetically by the First Lady.
2. SITE says qaeda threatens to execute French hostage in Mali (three Saudis recently killed near Mali border recently, that was “al qaeda” too)
The north African branch of al-Qaida said it will execute a French hostage unless four of its militants are freed from jail in Mali in 20 days, the U.S. monitoring group SITE said on Monday.
3. crew of seized plane turns to Kazakh president in Thai court
The four Kazakh crew members of an arms-laden cargo plane seized in Bangkok in mid-December have asked the president of Kazakhstan to defend them as they face major charges for illegal transportation of weapons….”We were making a flight ordered by the Air West Georgia company and the plane’s lessee, AirTech company, from Ukraine. In line with a contract, we should have transported a 35-ton civil cargo from Pyongyang to Kiev. The flight to Pyongyang was made on schedule… After landing in Pyongyang on December 10, 2009, in the evening, we went to a hotel,” the crew, which is now being held in the Bangkok Remand prison, said in the statement. According to the statement, the next morning, when the crew arrived at the airport, they found the cargo packed in wooden and iron boxes and sealed. “We were not allowed to inspect the cargo,” the crew said, adding “according to documents, the cargo consisted of ‘mechanical parts,’ and looked similar to oil drilling equipment.”
4. Thailand: suspects in 20 year old Saudi case indicted
The case has received much attention from the public. Saudi charge d’affaires to Thailand Nabil Ashri, who on Monday voiced his concern over the handling of the case by Thai authorities to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, described the indictment of the five suspects as “good news” which Saudi Arabia has long been waiting for. He said Saudi Arabia waited for nearly 20 years to see the first case being brought into the judicial process. The two other cases are the murder of three Saudi diplomats, also in 1990, and the jewellery theft in 1989.
5. Saudi teen poses as pilot in Manila airport
A 19-year-old Saudi Arabian man dressed as a pilot was arrested Tuesday after he illegally entered a restricted area in the main airport in the Philippines, an airport official said. “He was able to elude our security by misrepresenting himself as a pilot of Saudi,” said airport general manager Alfonso Cusi, referring to the Saudi Arabian flag carrier. …The detained Saudi, identified by the local authorities as Hani Abdulelah Bukhari, told airport police he was there to meet his father, a retired Saudi pilot who later arrived on a flight from Saudi Arabia. He was wearing a pilot’s uniform from Saudi Airlines when airport security personnel noticed him lining up at the immigration section of the passenger terminal, Cusi told ABS-CBN television.
6. Canadian faces terror charges
OTTAWA - A TORONTO man who earned a six-figure salary as a computer programmer appeared in court on Monday for the first day of his trial on charges of plotting to attack Canada’s main stock exchange and other targets. Shareef Abdelhaleem, 34, is accused of conspiring to bomb Canada’s main stock exchange, spy agency offices and a military base in order to try to provoke Canada’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
7. FBI and Shin Bet tracked Teitel a year before his arrest — it was all just police work you understand
A year prior to Yakov “Jack” Teitel’s arrest, the Shin Bet and the FBI were in close contact as part of an investigation into bombings targeting homosexuals, messianic Christians and left-wing figures, Haaretz has learned. Teitel was arrested on October 7. However, the initial exchanges on the case between the two security services on the case began in October 2008, when a Shin Bet officer, code-named Ariel, contacted the FBI with a request for assistance in the investigation. Eventually, the authorities would come to suspect Teitel as the person behind the bombings.
more @ haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1142043.html
8. Houston TX consulate reportedly issued questionable passports
Three Indian citizens, including a man linked to the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai, were issued Pakistani passports by the country’s consulate in the U.S. city of Houston, an anti-corruption court has been told by a senior diplomat. Pakistan’s Consul General in Houston, Aqil Nadeem, appeared as a witness in the accountability court in Rawalpindi on Monday and confirmed that Pakistani passports were issued by the consulate to Indian nationals Aziz Moosa, Saleem Ali and Abdul Sadiq.
