Polish couple face investigation 'for abandoning two-year-old daughter at airport'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/9422648/Polish-couple-face-investigation-for-abandoning-two-year-old-daughter-at-airport.html

Airport staff reported the girl was left in tears after being abandoned at Katowice airport while the rest of her family boarded a flight to Greece.

Her parents had failed to notice that her passport had expired on May 25.

Although a grandmother arrived later to collect the girl, police are investigating whether the well being of the child was threatened when her parents left, and are also checking the family's background.

"There are reports that the girl was hysterical when her mother left, and we want to check this," said Rafal Biczysko, a police spokesman.

"We also want the family court to assess the care and upbringing of the child."

Turkey sets up secret anti-Assad rebel base with Saudi Arabia and Qatar - reports

http://www.rt.com/news/syria-rebel-base-turkey-qatar-230/


Turkey is directing the rebel fight against Bashar Assad, after setting up a secret base on its border with Syria, with help from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. It devises tactics and supplies weapons for the uprising, according to Reuters sources.
It is unclear how long the base, described as the “nerve center” of the anti-Assad campaign has existed, and its location is given only as Adana, a city 60 miles from the border. Adana is home to Incirlik, a huge air base run jointly by Turkey and the United States, though it is not clear whether it was used for this operation.
"Three governments are supplying weapons: Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia," said the source, reportedly based in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
The source claims the base was set up at the request of Saudi deputy foreign minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Saud during his visit to Turkey, which was open to the idea. Turkey then took control of operations once the base was established.
“It's the Turks who are militarily controlling it. Turkey is the main coordinator/facilitator. Think of a triangle, with Turkey at the top and Saudi Arabia and Qatar at the bottom."
Disunited and badly trained when the uprising against President Assad began 18 months ago, recently Syrian rebels have had a string of successes against the supposedly better-trained and better-equipped regular soldiers. They have held down large parts of the country and advanced on the capital Damascus earlier in July. An audacious suicide attack last week took out four of the most senior security officials in the Assad circle.
These successes may have been made possible by the steady flow of arms from the Adana location, most of which appear to have been purchased illegally to cover the sponsors’ trails.
"All weaponry is Russian. The obvious reason is that the Syrian rebels are trained to use Russian weapons, also because the Americans don't want their hands on it. All weapons are from the black market,” claims the source, which says arms are also obtained by looting loyalist weapons stores.
Ankara has enjoyed a difficult diplomatic relationship with Assad, whose family has been in charge in Syria for 40 years, and so immediately backed the uprising. At the same time, Ankara has staunchly denied arming the rebels. It has also condemned the suicide attack on ministers as an act of terrorism.
Meanwhile, the small but wealthy state of Qatar has already played a key part in helping topple the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya last year, and was widely suspected of being involved in the Syrian civil war.
Although the three countries involved have long been accused of arming the rebels, this is the first time specific information has emerged about a concrete center of operations.

London 2012 organisers apologise for North Korea flag blunder

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/26/london-2012-north-korea-flag

London 2012 organisers have apologised and blamed human error for Wednesday's flag mix-up when South Korea's flag appeared alongside North Korea's women's football team on stadium screens as players warmed up before their opening match.

The team left the pitch in protest at the blunder and initially refused to play but the game with Colombia at Hampden Park, Glasgow, eventually kicked off more than an hour late after hurried corrections to the video rectified the spectacular mistake. On Thursday, North Korea's Olympic team accepted repeated apologies.

Baby left in car dies from the heat

http://www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws.english/news/120726_baby

A six month old baby has died as a result of the heat. The baby girl's father, a member of the armed forces, had forgotten the child in his car when he drove to work at the army barracks in the Brussels borough of Evere.

The child was fastened in a child seat. The baby was going to the crèche at the military base, but the father forgot his baby daughter in the car. The car has tinted windows preventing anybody from noticing the baby from the outside.

When the father went to the crèche to pick up his daughter after work he realised he had forgotten her in his car. He alerted the emergency services, but the baby had already died as a result of the heat.

Brussels police are investigating the matter. The father risks charges of involuntary manslaughter.

Bulgaria bomb blast: Iran accuses Israel of killing its own citizens

http://www.rt.com/news/iran-israel-bulgaria-attack-096/


Iran's UN envoy says it was Israel who plotted and staged the Bulgarian bus attack, buffing off allegations his country was behind the tragedy.
­The suicide bomb attack on a bus in the Bulgarian city of Burgas on July 18 killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver and injured over 30 more.
Israel was quick to point the finger at Iran, accusing Tehran and its “Hezbollah proxy” of staging the bombing.
"It's amazing that just a few minutes after the terrorist attack, Israeli officials announced that Iran was behind it," Iran's UN Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee told in a UN Security Council debate on the Middle East on Wednesday. "We have never and will not engage in such a despicable attempt on innocent people."
"Such a terrorist operation could only be planned and carried out by the same regime whose short history is full of state terrorism operations and assassinations, aimed at implicating others for narrow political gains," added Khazaee. "I could provide … many examples showing that this regime killed its own citizens and innocent Jewish people during the last couple of decades.”
Israel's deputy UN ambassador Haim Waxman called the accusation by Iranian Ambassador "Appalling, but not surprising from the same government that says the 9/11 attack was a conspiracy theory and denies the Holocaust."
Iran has repeatedly blamed Mossad-trained terrorists for assassinations of the country’s top nuclear scientists and attacks on its nuclear research sites.

Officials banned from surfing net @ work

http://rt.com/politics/access-intrernet-networks-kaliningrad-011/

A Russian regional government has blocked access to news sites and social networks in its offices after discovering its civil servants were “hanging out” on the web instead of working.
“Access to regional news websites has been limited to almost all the employees of the government,” said Aleksandr Torba, deputy chairman of government in Russia’s westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad. The new restrictions, though, do not refer to the press-service and officials whose duty is to monitor news, he added.
The authors of the initiative believe that it will help to boost the quality and efficiency of the government’s work as the public servants reportedly spend up to 20 per cent of their office hours hanging out on the web.
Earlier, access to social networking services was blocked in the Kaliningrad regional government building.
“We immediately noticed a positive result of the decision,” Torba pointed out. Therefore, he said, a ban on using news portals has become another step on the way to improve officials’ work.
The politician observed that it was an uneasy decision to make, since web media outlets may take the move as an attempt by the leadership to limit rights of the employees.
However, Torba added, civil servants are free to use the internet at home, spending their own money, and get any kind of information they are interested in.

Blast Near North Nigeria Beer Garden Kills Boy

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/blast-north-nigeria-beer-garden-kills-boy-16832332#.UAxYDJ9Bp6s

Police in Nigeria say a bomb hidden inside a wheelbarrow exploded near a beer garden in the north of the country, killing a 6-year-old boy and wounding 10 other people.

Sunday's explosion in Bauchi struck a local bar many gather at to enjoy beer, despite the state being ruled under Shariah law. Bauchi state police commissioner Mohammed Ladan said the blast killed the boy, who was near the bar.

Adamu Abubakar, a Red Cross official, said security forces had surrounded the area.

Bauchi has been previously struck by sectarian violence sweeping across Nigeria's north from a radical Islamist sect known as Boko Haram. However, the sect did not immediately claim responsibility for the attack.