Georgia Baby Buggy Shooting: Two Arrested

Two teenage boys have been arrested after a 13-month-old baby was shot dead as his mother pushed him in a buggy.

The two suspects - aged 14 and 17 - have been charged with murder over the death in the coastal community of Brunswick, Georgia, on Thursday.

The 17-year-old, identified as Demarquis Elkins, was charged as an adult, while the 14-year-old was not named because he is a minor.

Sherry West told police that two boys approached her and demanded money as she walked with 13-month-old Antonio in his buggy.

She said she told the muggers she had no money and tried to shield her boy, but one of them pushed her aside and shot the baby.

Demarquis Elkins is jointly accused of fatally shooting the baby

"I put my arms over my baby and he shoves me, and then he shot my baby right in the head," Ms West said.

She was shot in the leg and said her ear was grazed by a bullet.

The boy's father, Luis Santiago, told WAWS TV: "He was special ... He had the bluest, bluest eyes."

Police said before the arrests that they had been looking at school attendance records as part of their investigation.

Brunswick police spokesman Todd Rhodes asked the public for any tips or information that could lead to an arrest, and announced a $10,000 (£6,500) reward.

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Cyprus Bailout: MPs Stumble Towards Deal

Cyprus Bailout: Threat To Savings

Updated: 7:36am UK, Saturday 23 March 2013

By Ashish Joshi, Sky News Correspondent

Finally late into Friday night - an agreement on Plan B, meaning Cyprus has moved one giant step towards securing a Brussels bailout.

It includes a solidarity fund pooling together state assets and the granting of power to the Government to control bank capital.

The latter move is to prevent a run on the banks when their doors finally open on Tuesday.

There will also be a restructuring of the country's banks and a savings tax on Cypriot savers.

The details of the tax have still to be finalised, but the framework is in place.

It could mean savings over 100,000 euros held in Bank of Cyprus accounts being taxed up to 20%, according to one source close to the negotiations.

The same source said if that proposal is rejected there will be a plan to impose a tax of around 10% on all Cypriot bank accounts over 100,000 euros.

The threat of savers being hit hangs over the heads of people like Loizos Michael.

The 60-year-old tailor worked hard for 35 years, building up a good business.

He was looking forward to a wealthy retirement. Not anymore. Times are hard.

Speaking from his small tailor's shop in central Nicosia, Mr Michael said: "With the banks being closed, it is hard because I don't have a credit card and so cash flow is a problem.

"Even filling your car with petrol needs thinking about.

"Cypriots have always been workers by nature and nobody could have imagined that unemployment would be so high.

"This has hit us hard in the pockets."

Cyprus is weathering a storm - the likes of which this Mediterranean island has never faced in her young history.

Mr Michael said he knew things were getting bad, but expected solutions to be found to avoid ordinary people having to suffer.

"I expected something better. But now, it looks like the problem has been brewing for some time," he said.

"There used to be some people talking about the crisis, but now everyone's talking about it.

"I think things are harder now than just after the war. After the war of '74 people could still find work. Now, there is just no work so people have no money. What can we do?"

In the 1990s, Cyprus boasted a dynamic, booming economy, but it grew and unchecked.

An overbloated banking sector exposed to Greek debt has crippled the country's economy.

Now people like Loizos Michael must pay the price. He and the rest of Cyprus will soon find out exactly how much that is going to be.

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Obama To End Mid East Tour With Petra Visit

Barack Obama is closing his four-day trip to the Middle East with a trek around the ancient Jordanian city of Petra.

The US President is expected to fly to Petra by helicopter from Jordan's capital Amman.

A sudden sandstorm in the region threatened some of his travel plans on Friday, leading him to state the trip to Petra was "weather permitting".

The 24-hour visit to Jordan is Mr Obama's final stop in his Middle East visit - the first foreign trip of his second term as president.

Mr Obama arrived in Jordan on Friday for talks with King Abdullah II. The talks focused on the Syrian war and the influx of refugees into the country.

More than 400,000 Syrian refugees have crossed into Jordan to escape two years of bloodshed at home, crowding refugee camps and overwhelming aid agencies run by the US ally.

A young tourist takes a photo in the ancient city of Petra in 2012

The bulk of Mr Obama's time during his Middle East tour has been spent in Israel, where he sought to reassure an anxious public he is fully committed to their security.

He also made a brief stop in the West Bank city of Ramallah for meetings with Palestinian leaders.

In Israel, Mr Obama paid respects to the nation's heroes and to victims of the Holocaust. He also solemnly reaffirmed the Jewish state's right to exist.

After touring the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, he declared it illustrates the depravity to which man can sink but also serves as a reminder of the "righteous among the nations who refused to be bystanders".

Mr Obama was criticised in Israel for a speech in Cairo in 2009 in which he gave only the example of the Holocaust as reason for justifying Israel's existence.

In clear response to the criticism, whilst at Yad Vashem, he said: "Here on your ancient land, let it be said for all the world to hear. The state of Israel does not exist because of the Holocaust, but with the survival of a strong Jewish state of Israel, such a holocaust will never happen again."

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Syria Bombing Kills Pro-Assad Cleric Al Buti

A suicide bombing at a Syrian mosque has killed a senior cleric and supporter of President Bashar al Assad, state television has said.

Mohammed al Buti - imam of the historic Ummayyad Mosque - was killed when a bomber blew himself up during packed evening prayers at the Iman Mosque in Damascus.

The Syrian health ministry said 42 people died in the bombing and 84 were injured.

The attack took place at a mosque in Damascus

It is unclear if the explosion was caused by a car bomb or a mortar shell.

TV footage showed wounded people and bodies with severed limbs on the blood-stained floor of the mosque, which has since been sealed off by the military.

The Sunni preacher's death is a big blow to Syria's embattled minority Alawite leader, who is fighting mainly Sunni rebels who want to oust him.

The 84-year-old imam has been a vocal supporter of the Assad regime since the early days of his father and predecessor, the late President Hafez Assad.

In recent months, Syrian TV has carried his sermons from mosques in Damascus live every week.

He also has a regular religious TV programme.

In one of his televised speeches, Dr Buti had described the opposition to Mr Assad as "scum".

He also used his position to call on Syrians to join the armed forces and help Mr Assad defeat his rivals in the country's two-year-long rebellion.

He was remembered for a sermon he gave early in the conflict, in which he told the president he had had a vision that Syria would "receive God's wrath", but would survive.

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China: President Xi In Russia On First Trip

By Mark Stone, China Correspondent

The new Chinese president is in Russia for his inaugural foreign trip.

Xi Jinping will hold meetings with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin as part of a two day visit to Moscow.

President Xi, who was made Communist Party leader in November and installed as the country's president last week, will also hold meetings with the Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev.

He will attend the opening celebrations to mark 'Chinese Tourism Year' in Russia and will deliver a speech at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

A meeting has also been scheduled with officials from the Russian Defence Ministry.

Since November there has been plenty of speculation over which country would be chosen for the first foreign trip.

Russia and China are historically allied together in a union which has countered western global interests.

Vladimir Putin will meet the Chinese leader in Moscow

The two countries continue to share views on key global issues including Syria and Iran.

Moscow and Beijing both vetoed key UN resolutions on the Syrian crisis.

The two countries stand together, against the US-led stance on both Syria and Iran's disputed nuclear programme.

However, economics is the critical motivation for this trip.

Last year, just before his re-election to the presidency, Mr Putin said that he wanted to "catch the Chinese wind in our economic sail".

Russia is the world's largest energy producer. China is the world's largest user of energy and needs more of it.

Given the downturn in Europe, Russia needs a new customer. China wants to sign an agreement on a new natural gas pipeline with the Russians.

President Xi's wife Peng Liyuan is a well-known Chinese singer

"We will have some outcomes related to energy, investment and major projects of strategic importance. We expect some breakthrough on these pragmatic cooperation fields," Vice Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping told a press conference in Beijing.

Geo-politically, America's so-called pivot to Asia may also have prompted the Russia trip.

According to the Chinese Xinhua state-run news agency, President Xi has said that China and Russia should "strengthen coordination in international and regional affairs to safeguard world peace, safety and stability".

Xinhua said the pivot, which will see America re-focus its attention and its military to the Asia-Pacific region, represented a "strategic mistrust" of China.

Chinese-US relations are tense with Washington accusing Beijing of industrial-level state-sponsored computer hacking.

Despite that though, the new Chinese premier Li Keqiang insisted at a press conference last weekend that both countries were committed to closer ties.

"China and the United States have their own distinctive cultures but we must learn from each other to maintain strong ties," Premier Li said.

One other issue is the source of significant anticipation. In a marked departure from the style of his predecessor Hu Jintao, President Xi's wife is expected to play an active role in the trip.

Peng Liyuan is a well-known and glamorous Chinese singer.

In a move which will position her as a Chinese "first lady", Peng is expected be photographed with her husband and attend engagements in the Russian capital.

On Sunday, President Xi will travel from Moscow to Tanzania, South Africa and Congo; a sign of the vital connection China has with the African continent.

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Nicolas Sarkozy Faces Charges Over Corruption

Preliminary charges have been filed against Nicolas Sarkozy over allegations he took financial advantage of an elderly L'Oreal heiress.

The move means the former French president is under formal investigation, accused of accepting envelopes stuffed with cash from Liliane Bettencourt to illegally finance his 2007 election campaign.

The 90-year-old was declared in a state of dementia in 2006 and was placed under the guardianship of her family in 2011.

The preliminary charges were issued after Mr Sarkozy was questioned for several hours in a Bordeaux courthouse, according to the prosecutor's office. 

A statement said he had been placed under investigation "for taking advantage of a vulnerable person in February 2007 and during 2007 to the detriment of Liliane Bettencourt".

Under French law, preliminary charges mean the investigating magistrate has reason to believe wrongdoing was committed, but allows more time to investigate. The charges may later be dropped or could lead to a trial.

Mr Sarkozy's lawyer Thierry Herzog criticised the decision as "legally incoherent and unfair".

Earlier, the former president was unexpectedly summoned for a face-to-face encounter with Ms Bettencourt's ex-butler Pascal Bonnefoy over the claims.

Jean-Michel Gentil, the judge in charge of the case, was hoping the confrontation would allow him to establish how many times Mr Sarkozy visited Ms Bettencourt during his successful campaign.

The 58-year-old has always maintained he visited her home only once, contrary to testimony from several members of the multi-billionaire's staff.

So far, 17 people have been charged in the case.

Liliane Bettencourt, 90, has been in poor health for years

In November, magistrates decided not to formally charge Mr Sarkozy after a 12-hour interrogation but continued investigating the allegations against him.

Ms Bettencourt's former accountant told police in 2010 that she had handed envelopes filled with cash to the heiress' right-hand man, Patrice de Maistre, on the understanding it was to be passed on to Mr Sarkozy's campaign treasurer, Eric Woerth.

Mr Sarkozy lost his immunity from prosecution when he was defeated in the 2012 presidential election by Socialist Francois Hollande.

Since losing office he has had to contend with a string of allegations relating to his five years in power and various electoral campaigns he has been involved in.

As well as the Bettencourt case, he faces probes into alleged cronyism in the awarding of contracts for opinion polls, an illegal police investigation into journalists and alleged kickbacks on a Pakistani arms deal used to finance the right in 1995, when Mr Sarkozy was budget minister.

He has always denied any wrongdoing and remains popular with right-wing activists despite being regarded as a divisive figure among the swing voters who tend to decide French elections.

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Australia: Julia Gillard Challenge Called Off

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has retained the leadership of the Labor party just hours after she was urged to hold a ballot.

Ms Gillard ensured she will lead the party into elections in September after her main rival Kevin Rudd admitted he did not have enough support to defeat her.

The prime minister called the vote after a senior MP said the issue was "killing" the party and needed to be resolved.

The vote was scheduled for 16:30 (05:30 GMT), but minutes before it was due to take place Mr Rudd pulled out, meaning Ms Gillard was elected unopposed, with no actual vote called.

She said: "Today the leadership of our political party, the Labor Party, has been settled and settled in the most conclusive fashion possible.

"The whole business is completely at an end. It has ended now."

Mr Rudd said he was honouring a pledge not to challenge for the top job made after a previous failed bid in 2012.

He said: "I believe in honouring my word... others take such commitments lightly, I do not.

"I have also said that the only circumstances under which I would consider a return to leadership would be if there was an overwhelming majority of the parliamentary party requesting such a return, drafting me to return and the position was vacant.

"I am here to inform you that those circumstances do not exist."

Polls suggest Mr Rudd has more public support than Ms Gillard, who is on course to lose the election to Liberal Party candidate Tony Abbott.

The latest crisis is the third time the prime minister has defeated Mr Rudd for the leadership, but she now faces a tough job to unify a deeply-divided party and turn around public support over the next six months.

"I think they're terminal. There is no way out of this," political analyst Nick Economou told Reuters.

Ms Gillard's leadership has been threatened for most of the past two years as her minority government lumbered from one crisis to another, despite an economy that avoided recession after the 2008 global crisis and has seen 21 years of continuous growth.

She first replaced Mr Rudd in a party coup in June 2010 but the move to oust an elected prime minister angered many voters, who have found it difficult to forgive her for the way she became leader.

Ms Gillard defeated Mr Rudd in a second leadership vote in February 2012, prompting her rival to promise that he would only take on the leadership again with the overwhelming support of his party.

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Mini 'Blood Labs' Can Predict A Heart Attack

By Thomas Moore, Health Correspondent

A blood testing laboratory that is so small it can be implanted under the skin has been invented by Swiss scientists.

The device, which is just 1.4cm (0.5in) long, can check up to five different substances in the blood around the clock - and transmit the results to a doctor's computer.

The inventors say the tiny "lab-on-a-chip" could be used to give an early warning of a heart attack, or monitor cancer patients having chemotherapy.

Giovanni de Micheli of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne said the chip can be "programmed" by coating it with chemicals which react with substances that doctors want to monitor.

"It comes in contact with fluids in the body," he said.

"The sensors react to the presence of particular compounds in the fluids and send the data outside."

Reactive chemicals on the chip provide the test results wirelessly

A patch on the surface of the skin powers the chip and transmits the information via Bluetooth to a smartphone or a tablet, which then relays it on to the doctor.

Sandro Carrara, another of the inventors, said the chip had huge potential.

"This device can predict a heart attack in advance by several hours thanks to the metabolites released by the heart when it is suffering," he said.

The prototype is being unveiled at DATE 13, (Design Automation & Test in Europe) Europe's largest electronics conference. The scientists hope the device will be commercially available within four years.

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Al Qaeda Says It Beheads French Hostage

Al Qaeda says it has beheaded a French hostage in reprisal for France's military intervention in Mali, according to reports.

Its North African arm claimed responsibility, Mauritania's ANI news agency reported, citing a commander for the group.

A French foreign office spokesman said they were trying to verify the report of the killing of Philippe Verdon, adding that "we don't know at the moment" whether it is reliable.

In a telephone call to the news agency, the group spokesman said Mr Verdon had been beheaded on March 10 "in response to the French military intervention in the north of Mali", ANI reported.

The AQIM commander described Mr Verdon as a French spy and said France's President Francois Hollande "bore the responsibility for the remaining hostages".

Mr Verdon and another Frenchman, Serge Lazarevic, were kidnapped from their hotel room on November 24, 2011, in the northern Mali town of Hombori.

Their families denied that the two men were mercenaries or secret service agents.

It is not known whether Mokhtar Belmokhtar is dead or alive

The killing, if proved true, would be a worrying development for Mr Hollande.

Another 14 French hostages are detained in Western Africa, including seven believed to be held in the Sahel region by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its affiliates.

In August last year a video showing Mr Verdon describing the "difficult living conditions" was released on a Mauritanian website.

The hostages' families have in recent weeks expressed growing fears for their loved ones in the light of France's military actions in Mali.

Earlier Tuesday, Mr Verdon's father Jean-Pierre, complained that the families were hearing nothing from the French authorities.

"We are in a total fog and it is impossible to live this way," he told RTL radio. "We have no information."

French soldiers on the ground in Timbuktu

Asked about France's refusal to pay ransoms to kidnappers, he replied that the families had no say in such "decisions of state".

Terror chief Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an AQIM leader and one of the world's most wanted men, had pledged revenge and vowed to attack western targets in Africa after France launched a campaign to help the country's embattled government drive Islamist militants out of northern Mali.

France now has more than 4,000 troops on the ground in Mali.

It launched a nine-week assault in January to dislodge the group and other Islamist militants who had hijacked a Tuareg rebellion in Sahel and seized the northern half of the country.

They were driven out from the main cities of Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal, after which some 1,600 French and Chadian troops began searching for Islamist rebels in their pocket hideouts in the mountainous region of northern Mali.

When asked by the ANI news agency whether Belmokhtar had been killed, the AQIM commander neither denied nor confirmed it.

There have been conflicting reports on whether he was killed in the French military campaign against the rebels.

Soldiers from Chad fighting Islamists in Mali had claimed to have killed Belmokhtar, who is said to have been the mastermind behind the recent Algerian hostage crisis at a remote gas facility in the Algerian desert.

The one-eyed gangster, nicknamed Mr Marlboro because of his involvement in cigarette smuggling, had also been dubbed "The Uncatchable" by French intelligence after being linked to a series of kidnappings of foreigners in north Africa over the past decade.

France has been carrying out DNA tests to determine whether militant leaders Belmokhtar and Abdelhamid Abou Zaid are among those killed in recent fighting in Mali.

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Cyprus Looks To Russia Amid Bailout Chaos

Sacrificing Trust In The Banks

Updated: 8:16am UK, Wednesday 20 March 2013

By Ed Conway, Economics Editor

I'm rather glad that the Pope managed to mention Abraham in his inaugural mass.

After all, of all the Old Testament, the tale of Abraham and Isaac is probably about the most comparable to the current imbroglio in Cyprus.

The father and guardian takes his son to the top of the mount, binds him and is on the point of sacrificing him when, at the last minute, God sends down an angel to stop him.

In an analogous way, the Cypriot government, on orders from on high (the eurogroup in this case, not God) has come to the brink of gouging an unprecedented tax out of its peoples' savings, and, at the last minute, seems to have been offered a reprieve.*

Now, if this were the Bible, the story would end there. Abraham's faith was tested, and he passed the test. Conveniently, the ancients glossed over the question of what this incident did to the father-son relationship.

However, this is not the Bible, and so we're left unpicking a relationship that has gone very wrong indeed. There is clearly a widespread sense of betrayal in Nicosia, and one can understand why.

Even if, as is the current plan, small savers with less than 20,000 euros in their accounts are let off the deposit tax, this episode will leave a lasting scar in place.

After all, the Government had spent the past few years insisting to savers that any deposits below 100,000 euros would be safe, protected by its deposit insurance scheme.

That it could subsequently play fast and loose with the bank accounts is unlikely to be forgotten.

Even if the Government were to stop short of a deposit tax, it's hard to see why savers wouldn't simply withdraw all their cash in droves when the banks reopen (whenever that is) – even if it's simply to put it underneath a mattress at home.

This episode has fatally undermined the element of trust in the banking system – something which is fundamental to the way capitalist economy functions in its current form.

Whether this triggers chaos elsewhere is difficult to predict. Markets have become more unsteady as the situation in Cyprus has deteriorated, but we haven't yet seen any kind of depositor panic elsewhere, for instance in Portugal and Spain.

However, the story in Cyprus is far from over. Anger is mounting, the parliamentary system is creaking under the weight of the demands coming over from Brussels, and the threats from Frankfurt to cut off emergency funding to the banks if the country doesn't co-operate haven't made them any more willing.

Short of a papal intervention, it's hard to imagine how to get a happy ending out of this story.

*Yes I know there are some inconsistencies. For instance, it's debatable whether the eurocrats have ditched the plan or whether it's simply being rejected by the government, the latter of which would be akin to Isaac breaking free of his bindings and escaping.

Plus, Isaac had not borrowed himself so far into penury that he was facing bankruptcy. Nor had he become a go-between for Russian tax avoiders but let's leave that aside for the time being.

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