Pope Francis has proclaimed the first saints of his pontificate in a ceremony at the Vatican – a list which includes 813 victims of an atrocity carried out by Ottoman soldiers in 1480.
The “Martyrs of Otranto” were beheaded in the southern Italian town after refusing to convert to Islam.
Their names are unknown, apart from one man, Antonio Primaldo.
Within two months of taking office, Pope Francis has proclaimed more saints than any of his predecessors.
Among those canonized on Sunday were two Latin American nuns – Laura Montoya from Colombia and Maria Guadalupe Garcia Zavala from Mexico – who both died in the 20th Century.
Colombia’s first saint, Mother Laura Montoya dedicated her life to helping indigenous people while the woman named by Pope Francis as Mother “Lupita” sheltered Catholics during a government crackdown against the faith in the 1920s.
Pope Francis has proclaimed the first saints of his pontificate in a ceremony at the Vatican
The Italian “Martyrs of Otranto” were executed after 20,000 Turkish soldiers invaded their town in south-eastern Italy.
There was no hint of any anti-Islamic sentiment in the homily that Pope Francis delivered before tens of thousands of worshippers gathered in St Peter’s Square.
While it was Pope Francis’s predecessor, Pope Benedict, who gave the go ahead for their canonizations, the new pope is continuing the process of honoring a new generation of modern as well as historic martyrs.
Later this month an Italian priest, Father Giuseppe Puglisi, who was murdered by the Sicilian mafia 20 years ago will be beatified – the last step before being declared a saint.
Otranto 14 August 1480:
The “Martyrs of Otranto” were 813 Italians beheaded for defying demands by Turkish invaders to renounce Christianity
The Turks had been sent by Mohammed II, who had already captured the “second Rome” of Constantinople
His fleet landed in Otranto, Italy’s easternmost city, and laid siege
Its citizens held out for two weeks, allowing the King of Naples to muster his forces and prevent the fall of Rome
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it appears likely that the new coronavirus (NCoV) can be passed between people in close contact.
This comes after the French health ministry confirmed a second man had contracted the virus in a possible case of human-to-human transmission.
Two more people in Saudi Arabia are also reported to have died from the virus, according to health officials.
NCoV is known to cause pneumonia and sometimes kidney failure.
WHO officials have expressed concern over the clusters of cases of the new coronavirus strain and the potential for it to spread.
Since 2012, there have been 33 confirmed cases across Europe and the Middle East, with 18 deaths, according to a recent WHO update.
Cases have been detected in Saudi Arabia and Jordan and have spread to Germany, the UK and France.
“Of most concern… is the fact that the different clusters seen in multiple countries increasingly support the hypothesis that when there is close contact this novel coronavirus can transmit from person to person,” the WHO said on Sunday.
French health ministry confirmed a second man contracted the new coronavirus in a possible case of human-to-human transmission
“This pattern of person-to-person transmission has remained limited to some small clusters and so far, there is no evidence to suggest the virus has the capacity to sustain generalized transmission in communities,” the statement adds.
France’s second confirmed case was a 50-year-old man who had shared a hospital room in Valenciennes, northern France, with a 65-year-old who fell ill with the virus after returning from Dubai.
“Positive results [for the virus] have been confirmed for both patients,” the French health ministry said, adding that both men were being treated in isolation wards.
Meanwhile, the Saudi deputy minister of health said on Sunday that two more people had died from the coronavirus, bringing the number of fatalities to nine in the al-Ahsa governorate in the east of Saudi Arabia, Reuters news agency reports.
WHO officials have not yet confirmed the latest deaths.
In February, a patient died in a hospital in Birmingham, England, after three members of the same family became infected.
It is thought a family member had picked up the virus while travelling to the Middle East and Pakistan.
Novel coronavirus is from the same family of viruses as the one that caused an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that emerged in Asia in 2003.
However, NCoV and SARS are distinct from each other, the WHO said in its statement on Sunday.
Coronavirus is known to cause respiratory infections in both humans and animals.
But it is not yet clear whether it is a mutation of an existing virus or an infection in animals that has made the jump to humans.
Longest-held Cleveland kidnap victim Michelle Knight suffered such severe beatings while locked inside the house of horrors that she will require facial reconstruction surgery, her family said.
Michelle Knight, 32, was released from hospital on Friday, five days after she and two other victims Amanda Berry, 27, and Gina DeJesus, 23, along with Amanda’s six-year-old daughter were rescued following a decade held captive in the dungeon-like home.
“When she was severely beaten, he beat her so badly in the face that she has to have facial reconstruction and she’s lost hearing in one ear,” Michelle’s grandmother, Deborah Knight, toldCBS.
Michelle Knight suffered such severe beatings while locked inside the house of horrors that she will require facial reconstruction surgery
Michelle Knight told police that her alleged captor, Ariel Castro, repeatedly raped her and caused her to miscarry at least five times over the years by starving her and punching her in the stomach.
The news of her condition comes after it was revealed that Gina DeJesus’ family is planning to “adopt” Michelle Knight and look after her as their daughter because of Knight’s fractious relationship with her own family.
According to a friend of Felix and Nancy DeJesus, Michelle Knight initially rejected a meeting with her own mother, Barbara Knight, though it is unclear whether they have since met in the days since she was released from hospital.
Lupe Collins, a neighbor who helped the DeJesus family look for Gina since she disappeared in 2004, said Nancy DeJesus told her in a phone call on Thursday that she and her husband are trying to convince Michelle Knight, now 32, to stay with them.
“She was Georgina’s sister for ten years in that house and she’s still her sister now,” Lupe Collins said.
“They’re going to take her in as their own family member and help her.
“Michelle doesn’t want to go back to her own family because they abused her before she was kidnapped and they only want the money now.”
Michelle Knight was taken to DeJesus’s house after she was released from hospital.
The men of Duck Dynasty reality show all sport awesomely wild and bushy beards, but there was a time in the distant past when you could see their faces before they grew in the shaggy facial hair.
Left: Jase Robertson and his wife Missy posing for a photo on their wedding day
Right: Twenty years later and Jase and Missy Robertson are still happily married.
The men of Duck Dynasty reality show all sport awesomely wild and bushy beards, but there was a time in the distant past when you could see their faces before they grew in the shaggy facial hair.
Willie Robertson without beard
Left: Willie Robertson is all business in the front and party in the back as a student at Louisiana State University.
Right: Nowadays, Willie Robertson is the CEO of Duck Commander. As the only Robertson with a business degree, he took the company from a living room operation down by the river to a premiere destination for all things outdoors. Willie Robertson says “being a redneck millionaire has its perks,” including buying new trucks, gadgets, and swanky suits, working with kin can be a headache.
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is celebrating with his supporters, amid early signs that his party will be the largest after parliamentary elections.
Media projections based on partial results suggest a big lead for Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League, and he has already claimed victory.
The election should lead to the country’s first transition from one elected government to another.
The turnout was huge but the poll was marred by violence.
In Karachi, the Pakistan Taliban said they planted a bomb which killed 11 people and wounded 40 others.
The bomb was placed outside the office of the Awami National Party.
There were also attacks in Balochistan and the north-western city of Peshawar.
Voting was extended for an hour across the country before closing at 18:00.
An election commission spokesman said they hoped for a turnout of 60-80%. In 2008 it was 44%.
No official results have yet been released, but unofficial partial results suggested that Nawaz Sharif’s party was ahead in more than 100 of the 272 directly elected parliamentary seats.
It appears that Nawaz Sharif’s party will fall short of a simple majority in the National Assembly.
But in a speech at his party headquarters in the north-eastern city of Lahore, Nawaz Sharif said that the Muslim League (PML-N) was sure to emerge as the largest party.
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is celebrating with his supporters, amid early signs that his party will be the largest after parliamentary elections
“We should thank Allah that he has given PML-N [Muslim League] another chance to serve you and Pakistan.”
“I appeal for all parties to come to the table and sit with me and solve the country’s problems.”
However, the mood in the party was not one of joy, as there are so many daunting challenges facing the country.
Nawaz Sharif’s apparent victory is largely confined to his native Punjab province, which has nearly 60% of the country’s population, and so he will be compelled to look for support from the three smaller provinces for greater legitimacy.
Even if he had got as few as 90 seats he would still have been able to put together a coalition.
The prospect of Nawaz Sharif forming a new government represents a remarkable political comeback for a man deposed by General Pervez Musharraf in a coup in 1999 and subsequently put on trial and given a jail sentence.
A deal with Saudi Arabia meant he spent time in exile there before returning in 2007 to contest polls the following year.
The Movement of Justice (PTI) party of former cricketer Imran Khan has also performed well, with projections saying he had won a big victory in Peshawar.
President Asif Ali Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is in a race for second place with the PTI, but both seem likely to win fewer than 40 seats.
Outgoing PM Raja Pervez Ashraf suffered a crushing defeat in his own seat in Rawalpindi.
The PPP hardly tried because of Taliban threats against it but also because of a lack of will as it was so unpopular.
The Pakistani Taliban threatened to carry out suicide attacks ahead of the election.
About two hours after polling started, a bomb attack was reported in Karachi, apparently targeting an Awami National Party (ANP) candidate outside the party’s political office.
Eleven people were killed and more than 40 others were wounded, police said. Local ANP candidate Amanullah Mahsud was injured but not seriously.
The attack happened in the Landhi district of Karachi, which is known for Taliban activity. Another ANP candidate and his son were shot dead close to the area last week.
The Taliban have been blamed for numerous attacks throughout the campaign on Pakistan’s three most prominent liberal parties.
The PPP along with the Karachi-based Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) and the ANP have been singled out for threats, and were forced to curtail their campaigning as a result.
Although Pakistan has been under civilian rule for the past five years, the military is still believed to wield considerable power.
In what appeared to be an endorsement of democracy, Pakistan’s most powerful military officer Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was filmed live on TV casting his vote in a polling booth, rather than sending it in by post as many expected.
Tens of thousands of troops had been deployed at polling stations to ensure security. In the run-up to the election, more than 100 people died in election-related violence.
Before polls opened, Pakistan sealed its borders with Iran and Afghanistan in an effort to keep foreign militants at bay. Officials said the borders would remain closed for the next three days.
Aesha Mohammadzai has made international headlines in 2010 when she appeared on the now-iconic cover of Time magazine with a gaping wound in the center of her face where a nose should be.
Aesha Mohammadzai’s tragic tale of mutilation and abuse is well known by now: her Taliban husband and his family chopped off her nose and ears to punish her for trying to escape the family compound in Afghanistan.
The girl, known also as Bibi Aisha, was left for dead in the mountains, but survived and was brought for treatment to an American military base. A charity organization eventually helped bring Aesha Mohammadzai to the US, where she was taken in by an Afghan family from Maryland, CNN reported.
Over the past year, the raven-haired, vivacious young woman has undergone a serious of painful surgeries and treatments that have set the stage for Aesha Mohammadzai getting a new nose.
“It was very difficult in the beginning, but then I got used to it,” Aesha Mohammadzai told CNN.
Now, 22-year-old Aesha Mohammadzai is only a few minor procedures away from her dream becoming a reality. This summer, she will have a new face, but she will still have many challenges ahead of her.
Back in Afghanistan, Aesha Mohammadazi was not allowed to attend school and as a teenager was forced into marriage by her father, serving as a peace offering to the family of her new husband to make up for her uncle’s transgressions.
In 2011, Aesha Mohammadzai arrived in the US unable to read or write in any language. While her adoptive family, the Arsalas, say that she is a bright girl, they admit that she can be impulsive and easily distracted, preferring to work on her line of jewelery or watch movies on her laptop rather than study her ABCs.
Aesha Mohammadzai has been living with Mati Arsala, his wife Jamila Rasouli-Arsala and their daughter since November 2012, nearly two years after she arrived in the US.
She told CNN that people in Maryland often laugh at her because of her nose, but she responds to questions about what happened to her with: “It’s none of your business.”
Her first few months in the US Aesha Mohammadzai had spent in California preparing for reconstructive surgery, which ended up being scrapped because she was deemed too emotionally volatile.
She then spent several months in New York at a group home for Afghan women, where she was offered therapy and English classes, before finally moving to Frederick, Maryland, to live with the Arsalas.
Aesha Mohammadzai has made international headlines in 2010 when she appeared on the now-iconic cover of Time magazine with a gaping wound in the center of her face where a nose should be
Her first surgery took place last June, making it her first step towards getting a new nose. Over the past 11 months, Aesha Mohammadzai had the skin on her forehead expanded to provide doctors with additional tissue for her new nose.
Surgeons at Walter Reed Medical Center, where she has been treated free of charge, also had to take skin, bone and cartilage grafts from various parts of her body in preparation for her reconstructive surgery.
To avoid the risk of contracting an infection, Aesha Mohammadzai has been staying indoors, which led her to stop going to her weekly English classes. These days, she stays up late at night watching Bollywood films and sleeps during the day.
In the coming months, Aesha Mohammadzai’s nose will be complete, at which point doctors will be able to move on to her mutilated ears.
Aesha Mohammadzai ‘s surrogate parents say that they want to give her more time to heal both physically and emotionally, but once her face is whole again, Aesha will have to move forward and forge her own path in her adoptive country.
As part of Aesha Mohammadzai ‘s life-changing treatment, her forehead has ballooned and dark, drooping flesh covered the space where her nose once was – before her husband sliced it off.
Doctors placed an inflatable silicone shell under the skin of her forehead and gradually filled it with fluid in order to expand her skin and provide them with extra tissue for her new nose.
They have also taken tissue from her forearm and transplanted it to her face to form the inner lining and lower part of the nose.
Aesha Mohammadzai ‘s wounds are healing, but she lives with the scars of an ordeal few could imagine. Speaking for the first time on television to ITV’s Daybreak in February, she told the story behind that Time photograph.
She said: “Every day I was abused by my husband and his family. Mentally and physically. Then one day it became unbearable so I ran away.
“They caught me and put me in jail for five months. When I came out the judge sent me back to my husband. That night they took me to the mountains.
“They tied my hands and my feet. They said my punishment was to cut my nose and ears. And then they started to do it.”
Aesha Mohammadzai, who has never attended school or celebrated her birthday, now lives in America. Helped out of Afghanistan by a charity, she now has a new family who care for her as one of their own.
She said she is “happy” with her new nose and wants her experience to tell a new story, this time one of hope.
She said: “I want to tell all women who are suffering abuse to be strong. Never give up and don’t lose hope.”
Aesha Mohammadzai’s story was first told in August 2010 by Time magazine, who published a harrowing cover photo of her – horrifying people around the world and symbolizing the oppression of Afghan women.
When she was 12, her father promised her in marriage to a Taliban fighter to pay a debt.
Aesha Mohammadzai was handed over to his family who abused her and forced her to sleep in the stable with the animals.
The UN estimates that nearly 90% of Afghanistan’s women suffer from some sort of domestic abuse.
But when Aesha Mohammadzai attempted to flee, she was caught and her nose and ears were hacked off by her husband as punishment.
“When they cut off my nose and ears, I passed out. In the middle of the night it felt like there was cold water in my nose.
“I opened my eyes and I couldn’t even see because of all the blood,” she told CNN reporter Atia Abawi.
Left for dead in the mountains, she crawled to her grandfather’s house and her father managed to get her to an American medical facility, where medics cared for her for ten weeks.
They then transported Aesha Mohammadzai to a secret shelter in Kabul and in August 2010, she was flown to the U.S. by the Grossman Burn Foundation to stay with a host family.
She was taken in by a charity in New York called Women for Afghan Women who supported her and helped pay for her education.
But Aesha Mohammadzai soon became unhappy and her behavior gave rise to concern. During one outburst during, she threw herself to the floor and slammed her head against the ground, grabbing at her hair and biting her fingers.
Her primary guardian figure at the center Esther Hyneman, who witnessed the tantrum said no one was able to prevent her from inflicting the injuries and they had to call 911 for help.
Nowadays, Aesha Mohammadzai still prefers watching Bollywood films rather than American TV.
The men of Duck Dynasty reality show all sport awesomely wild and bushy beards, but there was a time in the distant past when you could see their faces before they grew in the shaggy facial hair.
Si Robertson without beard
Left: Get a load of Uncle Si sans specs and beard! Didn’t Si Robertson look dapper when he was in the military?
Right: Si Robertson’s most famous war story as a Vietnam veteran is that while serving overseas, his mother sent him a blue mug. Thirty years later, it’s still hanging from his back pocket and Si Robertson continues to only drink from this cup, every day.
The men of Duck Dynasty reality show all sport awesomely wild and bushy beards, but there was a time in the distant past when you could see their faces before they grew in the shaggy facial hair.
Phil Robertson without beard
Left: This young boy grew up to become Phil Robertson: Duck Commander.
Right: Phil Robertson’s love for the outdoors and duck hunting lead him to create the Duck Commander Duck Call in 1973, forgoing a career in the NFL. During the ten-week duck hunting season, Phil Robertson follows a strict routine of no showering, no shaving, and no clothes washing of any kind to ensure a bountiful haul.
Parliamentary elections are under way in Bulgaria with opinion polls predicting no outright winner.
Mass protests against low living standards and widespread corruption forced the government of the centre-right Gerb party to resign in February.
However, the run-up to Sunday’s election has been marked by voter apathy and claims of fraud.
On Saturday prosecutors said they had seized 350,000 illegal ballot papers at a printing house.
The election campaign had already been marred by revelations of illegal wiretapping of politicians.
Latest opinion polls suggested the Gerb party – headed by former Prime Minister Boiko Borisov – and its main challenger the socialist BSP party were running neck-and-neck.
Gerb has pledged to keep debts under control while the socialists say they will spend more and create jobs.
Parliamentary elections are under way in Bulgaria with opinion polls predicting no outright winner
Other parties expected to pass the 4% threshold needed to enter parliament are the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) – which represents Bulgaria’s ethnic Turkish minority – the ultra-nationalist Ataka, and the centrist Bulgaria of the Citizens.
However, the prospect of an election with no outright winner has raised fears of a hung parliament and further instability in the EU’s poorest country.
Polls opened at 07:00 local time and are due to close at 20:00.
Bulgaria’s 6.9 million eligible voters can choose between 36 parties but turnout is predicted to be below 50%.
Despite the large number of parties competing, it is an election that no-one appears to want to win.
Boiko Borisov has said he would be happy to go into opposition and BSP leader Sergei Stanishev has said that if his party wins, he will not be prime minister.
Bulgaria faces a major economic and social crisis with unemployment officially close to 12% but – unofficially – over 18%.
A day before the election, prosecutors revealed they had raided a printing house near the capital Sofia and seized 350,000 ballot papers that were printed over the legally fixed number.
Sergei Stanishev described the discovery as a “scandal”.
He said it showed there had been “preparation for total falsification of the elections”.
The discovery triggered a protest by members of some opposition parties outside parliament on Saturday.
The election campaign has also been marred by revelations of illegal wiretapping of political opponents, with prosecutors pointing the finger at former Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov.
More than 250 international observers will monitor Sunday’s election.
Elida-Marie Caraballo, the niece of sadistic Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro, has revealed how she innocently played in his “house of horrors” while his three torture victims were chained up in the cellar beneath her.
Elida-Marie Caraballo, 19, said she would visit “Uncle Ariel” with her cousin Arlene – Ariel Castro’s daughter – but he would demand they wait outside the back door until he “fixed things” inside.
“He would play the radio real loud and told me never to leave the kitchen,” she said.
“I thought he was weird but I had no idea he was a monster. It gives me chills to think I was playing with my toys on the kitchen floor while those poor girls were locked in the basement.
“My uncle and aunt were separated so I would go round with Arlene to visit her daddy.”
Elida-Marie Caraballo, 19, said she would visit “Uncle Ariel” with her cousin Arlene
Elida-Marie Caraballo’s mother, Elida, 44, is the sister of Ariel Castro’s common-law-wife Grimilda Figueroa who died last year of a brain tumor the family say was brought on by vicious beatings by Castro.
The couple bought the house where the three women were held captive, built in 1950, in 1992 and raised their four young children there until they split in 1996.
Elida-Marie Caraballo says her uncle’s behavior “became weirder” after he split from her aunt and that he may have abducted his victims to replace the family he lost.
“He was a bully and used to beat my aunt badly but when she finally got the courage to leave and come live with us he cried and begged her to come home.”
Recalling her visits there, Elida-Marie said: “I had no idea those poor girls were chained up in the basement.
“Now I wonder what would have happened if I’d heard something. Would he have locked me in the basement too? I was only a kid but the house gave me the creeps.”
Amanda Berry and her fellow captives Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight are enjoying their first weekend of freedom after escaping the clutches of brutal Ariel Castro.
Amanda Berry, 27, Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Knight, 32, are set to become overnight millionaires by telling their harrowing stories from the Cleveland horror house.
Oprah Winfrey is said to have offered Amanda Berry $300,000 to do her first interview.
A source close to Gina DeJesus claimed she was so traumatized that she was unable to sleep in a bedroom.
“She was locked in a room for so long that she is now sleeping on an inflatable mattress in the living room,” the source said.
“She can’t stand the idea of being in a small room. She walks around the garden. She is beautifying herself, doing her nails and hair and experimenting with make-up. She’s been catching up on everything, reading women’s magazines, trying to figure out what she has missed and who the Kardashians are.”
Amanda Berry and her fellow captives Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight are enjoying their first weekend of freedom after escaping the clutches of brutal Ariel Castro
Michelle Knight, 32, has been dubbed “the forgotten victim” because her disappearance was never taken seriously by police. She vanished in 2002 aged 20 after her young son was taken into care.
The source revealed that she refused to see family members, including her mother, after her release, preferring to stay at the DeJesus family home.
When Amanda Berry had her daughter Jocelyn, which DNA tests have confirmed was fathered by Ariel Castro, she was given “favored” status by her captor, the source added.
“Castro referred to Amanda as his girlfriend and showered affection on Jocelyn. When they were rescued, Jocelyn was crying for her daddy. She is confused and doesn’t understand what is going on.”
Ariel Castro’s daughter Angie said that he showed her a photograph of a child she now believes was Jocelyn in February. Amanda Berry’s mother Louwana died aged 48 while her daughter was imprisoned. She went to her grave believing she had spoken to her daughter’s kidnapper.
After Amanda Berry had been missing for three days, the story was covered on a news bulletin, after which she received a phone call from a man who told her Amanda was with him.
In a TV interview Louwana Berry gave after the call in 2002, she said: “So I’m begging him to let me speak with her, just to let me know if she’s there. And he hesitated and said, <<I’ll have her home in a few days>>. I kept begging for him to let me speak with her. And he hung up.”
Cleveland police refused to say whether Ariel Castro had confessed to making the call, saying: “We don’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”
Amanda Berry’s grandfather, Troy Berry, revealed the emotional phone call he received from his granddaughter after ten years of captivity in Cleveland horror house.
Just hours after escaping from the clutches of crazed kidnapper Ariel Castro, Troy Berry’s granddaughter Amanda – whom he had last seen as a 16-year-old – called to say: “Hi grandpa, it’s Mandy.”
But then the call from Amanda Berry, who is now 27 years old and the mother of a six-year-old daughter born in captivity, took an unexpected twist.
Troy Berry, 73, who is set to be reunited with Amanda soon, revealed how her first words were about a classic car he had promised her just days before she went missing.
He said: “A few days before she went, I told her I had this 1986 Chevrolet, a special Nascar limited edition, which I would teach her to drive in. And I told her if she did good, I’d give it to her.
“The first thing she asked me was, <<Grandpa, do you still have my car?>> I joked and said, <<No, I’ve given it away>>. But then I heard silence and I told her I was kidding and she burst into tears of happiness.
Amanda Berry’s grandfather Troy Berry with the Chevrolet 1986 Monte Carlo, SS Nascar limited edition, that he promised her ten years ago
“I used to look at that car and think of her. I hope she was thinking of it too, and of us, while she was in there and I hope that helped her to get through it. I used to take Mandy to motor shows when she was a little girl.
“She used to love it all and ask, <<Grandpa, what’s this one? How old is that one? How fast does it go?>>.
“When she went missing, I could never bring myself to get rid of the Chevy. Every time I looked at it, I imagined her smiling, sitting behind the wheel and I’d pray to God that she’d come back to us. Now I’m going to fix it up. I kept the fancy hubcaps in the house so they wouldn’t get stolen.
“I’m as pleased as punch I’ll finally be able to teach her to drive in it. We’ll get a booster seat for the little one and make it a regular palace on wheels.”
Amanda Berry and her fellow captives Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Knight, 32, are enjoying their first weekend of freedom after escaping the clutches of brutal Ariel Castro.
Troy Berry said: “Mandy is as happy as a freed bird. She told me it feels good to be sleeping properly.
“She says every moment feels like a gift. Every piece of chicken, every glass of water, every little thing. The FBI took Mandy to the doctors. She had no daylight and he starved them, only giving them the cheapest things he could find. But she’s feeling great and doing well.”
Troy Berry said Amanda had formed a “life bond” with fellow victims Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight.
“Mandy said she was sometimes in the same room as the other two girls,” he said.
“She said they kept each other going, tried to help each other, protect each other from him. She said she’ll stay friends with them forever after what they’ve been through. They’re the only ones who know how bad it all was.”
It was revealed today that Kate Middleton official due date is July 13.
Mystery has shrouded the expected date of birth ever since Kate Middleton was rushed into the King Edward VII hospital with severe morning sickness in December, early in the pregnancy.
Because of her illness, the Palace was forced to announce she was expecting before she had undergone her 12-week scan.
It meant no one outside Kate and William’s close circle knew exactly how far the pregnancy had progressed.
A friend of the pair revealed: “Some of Kate and William’s closest pals were at a barbecue hosted by a family friend of the Royals recently.
“They were all discussing the fact that Kate’s baby is due to be born on July 13. Everyone was very excited.”
Unfortunately, the birth due date falls in the middle of the Coronation Festival, a four-day celebration to mark 60 years since Queen Elizabeth II was crowned, 16 months after being proclaimed Monarch on her father’s death.
Kate Middleton official due date is July 13.
The festival, expected to rival last year’s jubilee revelries, runs from July 11 to July 14 – meaning Prince William and Kate Middleton are almost sure to miss out.
Opera singer Laura Wright, who will perform in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, joked: “I had better not sing too many high notes . . . what if my singing made her go into labor?”
The baby is expected to be delivered in the private Lindo Wing of St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington – the same place Prince William was born – under the supervision of Royal gynecologists Alan Farthing and Marcus Setchell.
Just after the pregnancy was announced in December, bookmakers were taking bets on whether the baby might share a birthday with Princess Diana, July 1.
Now it appears the child will have a birthday closer to the Duchess of Cornwall’s, on July 17. Unless the baby is more than nine days late, it will be born under the same cancer star sign as Diana, an avid astrology follower.
July 13 is also the birthday of satirist Ian Hislop, actor Harrison Ford, painter Frida Kahlo and even Julius Caesar – although some historians argue that he may have been born the day before.
Proposed changes to the rules of succession will mean that if the baby is a Princess, she will be third in line to the throne, regardless of whether she has a younger brother.
Kate Middleton had purchased a pale blue Bugaboo buggy, fuelling speculation the child will be a boy.
A Palace spokesman said last night: “We have only said that the Duchess is due in July. Anything further would be speculation.”
Grimilda Figueroa, the mother of Ariel Castro’s children, repeatedly went to authorities with accusations he was beating, abusing and threatening her.
However, her complaints never reached the point where Ariel Castro was imprisoned or triggered additional police investigations.
The late Grimilda Figueroa’s accusations against Ariel Castro began in 1989 and the last came in 2005, three years after he allegedly kidnapped Michelle Knight, the first of three women who had been held in his Cleveland house.
In the first case, Ariel Castro was not sentenced to prison and in the other two Grimilda Figueroa chose to drop proceedings.
Domestic abuse experts said victims in such cases often change their mind because they are afraid, or they lack knowledge of the legal system.
Ariel Castro now has been charged with three counts of raping Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight and four counts of kidnapping the three women and his daughter born to Berry while in captivity.
An Ohio prosecutor said on Thursday he intends to charge Ariel Castro with murder in connection with the starvation and abuse of Michelle Knight during pregnancies that led to miscarriages.
Grimilda Figueroa died in April 2012, at the age of 48, from an accidental overdose of painkiller oxycodone, according to an Indiana coroner.
Her last complaint against Ariel Castro, a 2005 request to the court for an “order of protection” could have been a missed opportunity to expose him, domestic abuse experts said.
If Ariel Castro had violated the order he could have been investigated by police and possibly arrested. That could have been an opportunity to find the women he allegedly held captive, or it could have made things worse if they had been abandoned without him and unable to leave the house.
Grimilda Figueroa also filed a police report in 2005 saying Ariel Castro had threatened to “beat your ass” in front of their daughter, according to the report.
A spokeswoman for Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said that police told Grimilda Figueroa that year to go to the county prosecutor’s office and file a criminal complaint but she did not.
Instead, Grimilda Figueroa sought a civil order of protection in county court. In Ohio, a victim can get a civil order without criminal charges because they believe this will be less upsetting to the offender, said Anne Murray, director of the domestic violence and stalking unit for the city of Columbus, which is 140 miles from Cleveland.
Grimilda Figueroa eventually dropped even that request for a protection order and so the court case was dismissed.
Grimilda Figueroa, the mother of Ariel Castro’s children, repeatedly went to authorities with accusations he was beating, abusing and threatening her
“That breaks my heart,” Anne Murray said.
Grimilda Figueroa had four children with Ariel Castro – Ariel “Anthony”, Arlene, Angie and Emily – and her efforts to protect herself from him spanned at least 16 years.
The first incident was in 1989. Ariel Castro pleaded no contest and was given a year of probation after Grimilda Figueroa made a domestic violence complaint against him, according to a Cuyahoga County court document.
On December 26, 1993, Ariel Castro was arrested after he arrived home drunk and began beating Grimilda Figueroa, police said.
“I was afraid that he would come home in this condition so I had already called police,” a police report at the time quoted Grimilda Figueroa as telling them.
The woman told police that he had thrown her to the ground, hit her about the face and head and kicked her, according to a Cleveland police report.
Their 12-year-old son, Anthony, ran out of the house to get help for Grimilda Figueroa and was pursued by Ariel Castro, the report said.
When a grand jury considered the incident, Grimilda Figueroa said she could not remember the abuse, according to court documents. The case was dropped.
“She was afraid,” said Chris Giannini, a former police officer and owner of International Investigations, a private investigations company, who tried to help protect Grimilda Figueroa from Ariel Castro.
Domestic violence experts say abuse victims often raise charges and then back down from pursuing them out of fear or other difficulties with the legal system.
“If they don’t have the support and the knowledge to go through with what they need to do, a lot of victims stop,” said Linda D. Johanek, chief executive officer of Cleveland’s Domestic Violence & Child Advocacy Center.
According to Cuyahoga County court documents, Grimilda Figueroa had been granted full custody of her and Ariel Castro’s children by 1997. By then, she was in a new relationship with a man named Fernando Colon, who was a guard at a hospital where she went for her injures from Ariel Castro’s beatings, according to Colon.
On August 29, 2005, Grimilda Figueroa went to court again, seeking an order of protection against Ariel Castro. She also said he had threatened to kill her and her children during the previous year and had “abducted” the children.
A year before that complaint, two of the daughters, Emily and Arlene, accused her new partner, Fernando Colon, of sexual abuse, Chris Giannini said. He investigated the case on behalf of Fernando Colon, and believes that Ariel Castro manipulated his daughters into accusing Colon. Grimilda Figueroa and Fernando Colon denied the abuse.
Fernando Colon was convicted in September 2005 on five charges of child molestation based on the testimony of the daughters, and was sentenced to three years of community supervision, according to court documents.
Arlene Castro declined to be interviewed by Reuters. Emily Castro is in prison serving a 25-year sentence after being convicted of attempting to murder her baby daughter in 2007 by slashing her throat.
Also in September 2005, authorities tried to serve Ariel Castro with a summons to attend a hearing on Grimilda Figueroa’s complaint.
“They went to his house three times and no one answered,” said Diane Palos, administrative judge for the domestic relations court in Cleveland. Ariel Castro came to the court to get the summons, she said.
The hearing on Grimilda Figueroa’s petition was held in November 2005. Court records show Ariel Castro and Grimilda Figueroa both attended the hearing as did Castro’s lawyer.
Grimilda Figueroa’s lawyer, Robert Ferreri, did not show up, citing a conflict with another case in juvenile court, records show.
Robert Ferreri, a former Cuyahoga County judge, resigned from the practice of law in 2011 as he was facing discipline, according to the Ohio Supreme Court. His law license had been suspended twice before in 1999 and 2000.
Repeated attempts by Reuters reporters to reach Robert Ferreri by phone or at residences listed for him were unsuccessful.
Grimilda Figueroa decided not to proceed with the request for a protection order, according to court documents. Her lawyer advised her that she would be at a severe disadvantage if she went ahead without him, documents show. The case was dismissed and she did not exercise her legal right to revive it.
“She feared this man [Ariel Castro],” said Fernando Colon, who now is unemployed and on disability.
“This man had her psychologically under control. Every movement she made, he was aware of. He threatened to kill her and the kids.”
Since 2005, victims’ advocates have been added to the justice system in Ohio to guide women through the hearing without a lawyer, said Alexandria Ruden, senior attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland.
Another innovation is that in the past 15 to 20 years the justice system has become more sensitive to the pressures on battered women, said Mat Heck, prosecuting attorney for Montgomery County, Ohio, and chairman-elect of the American Bar Association’s criminal justice section.
Authorities are now more willing to prosecute domestic violence cases even when the victim does not want to, he said.
If Grimilda Figueroa had gotten the protection order, it would have been effective for five years. Any violation by Ariel Castro could have been prosecuted as a crime.
“It’s possible that had she gotten that order, there could have been follow-up prosecution, absolutely,” Alexandria Ruden said.
Grimilda Figueroa decided in late 2005 to move her children to Indiana, according to Chris Giannini and Fernando Colon. After she died last year, her son Anthony Castro, who now lives in Columbus, Ohio, posted on the funeral home online guest book: “Dear Mom. You are gone too soon. But your suffering is over.”
Ariel Castro told police under interrogation that he was an addict who could not control his impulses.
The news came after prosecutors revealed they will likely seek the death penalty for the Cleveland kidnap suspect if extra charges are filed in relation to the termination of his victim’s pregnancies.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty said yesterday that based on the facts of the case, his office intends to seek charges not only for the assaults endured by the victims, but also “each act of aggravated murder he committed by terminating pregnancies”.
Timothy J. McGinty said he would seek charges for each act of violence, rape, kidnapping, assault and “each act of aggravated murder he committed by terminating pregnancies that the offender perpetuated against the hostages during this decade-long ordeal”.
Ariel Castro, 52, hung his head in shame as he made his first court appearance
Ariel Castro, 52, hung his head in shame as he made his first court appearance yesterday morning, the first time he has been seen in public since he was arrested on Monday.
His brothers appeared alongside him but were later released from custody.
Ariel Castro stared at the floor throughout the short hearing at Cleveland Municipal court. He didn’t once glance up to face the packed courtroom from the moment he entered.
Flanked by five guards and wearing a blue prison jump suit, he shuffled into the courtroom alongside his brothers.
Ariel Castro, who is alleged to have kept Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus captive for over a decade, refused to look up at judge Lauren Moore and face the bank of TV cameras inside courtroom three.
He did not speak or acknowledge the judge when she set bond at $8 million.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have broken through a symbolic mark reaching its highest throughout human history, recent figures from a US monitoring station show.
Daily measurements of CO2 at a US government agency lab on Hawaii have topped 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time.
The station, which sits on the Mauna Loa volcano, feeds its numbers into a continuous record of the concentration of the gas stretching back to 1958.
The last time CO2 was regularly above 400 ppm was three to five million years ago – before modern humans existed.
Scientists say the climate back then was also considerably warmer than it is today.
Carbon dioxide is regarded as the most important of the manmade greenhouse gases blamed for raising the temperature on the planet over recent decades.
Human sources come principally from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.
The usual trend seen at the volcano is for the CO2 concentration to rise in winter months and then to fall back as the northern hemisphere growing season kicks in. Forests and other vegetation pull some of the gas out of the atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have broken through a symbolic mark reaching its highest throughout human history
This means the number can be expected to decline by a few ppm below 400 in the coming weeks. But the long-term trend is upwards.
James Butler is responsible for the Earth System Research Laboratory, a facility on Mauna Loa belonging to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Its daily average CO2 concentration figure on Thursday was 400.03.
He said: “Carbon dioxide has some variability on an hourly, daily and weekly basis, so we are not comfortable calling a single number – the lowest we will go is on a daily average, which has happened in this case.
“Mauna Loa and the South Pole observatory are iconic sites as they have been taking CO2 measurements in real time since 1958. Last year, for the first time, all Arctic sites reached 400 ppm.
“This is the first time the daily average has passed 400 ppm at Mauna Loa.”
The long-term measurements at Mauna Loa were started by a Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientist called Charles Keeling.
In 1958, he found the concentration at the top of the volcano to be around 315 ppm (that is 315 molecules of CO2 for every one million molecules in the air). Every year since then, the “Keeling Curve”, as it has become known, has squiggled resolutely higher.
Scripps still operates equipment alongside NOAA on the mountain peak.
Its readings have been pushing 400ppm in recent days, and on Thursday recorded a daily average of 399.73.
But NOAA senior scientist Pieter Tans said: “Our measurements [NOAA] are in Coordinated Universal Time, while the Keeling measurements are in local Hawaii time. If you shift the Keeling definition of a day to the same as ours then we do agree almost completely on the measurements.”
By this definition, the Keeling team’s Thursday number would be 400.08 ppm.
And Dr. James Butler added: “Probably next year, or the year after that, the average yearly reading will pass 400 ppm.
“A couple of years after that, the South Pole will have readings of 400 ppm, and in eight to nine years we will probably have seen the last CO2 reading under 400 ppm.”
To determine CO2 levels before the introduction of modern stations, scientists must use so-called proxy measurements.
These include studying the bubbles of ancient air trapped in Antarctic ice.
One of these can be used to describe CO2 levels over the past 800,000 years. It suggests that CO2 held steady over this longer period at between 200 ppm and 300 ppm.
Doctors at the Betty Ford rehab centre are said to have cut off Lindsay Lohan’s Adderall supply, according to reports.
TMZ claims that the doctors evaluated Lindsay Lohan, 26, last week and decided that she did not need the pills.
Lindsay Lohan takes the tablets because she claims to suffer from ADHD but the website reports that health practitioners at the treatment facility believe there are substitute medication.
TMZ also claims that Lindsay Lohan is now “hell bent on making her escape”.
The actress is said to want to move to another rehab centre where she can take the drug.
Lindsay Lohan takes Adderall because she claims to suffer from ADHD
Adderall is known to be misused as a weight control and Betty Ford reportedly do not prescribe the drug to people over the age of 15.
The news of Lindsay Lohan’s rehab stay comes shortly after it was revealed that her parents Dina and Michael Lohan may be summoned to the Southern California-based Betty Ford Center for a family therapy session.
A source revealed to RadarOnline.com: “Lindsay’s counselors want to get Dina and Michael to Betty Ford for a series of sessions in the next few weeks.
“They feel like having her work through her family issues could help Lindsay’s recovery.”
“Families are encouraged to participate in group therapy,” the insider added.
But Dina Lohan dispelled the claim as fodder in a response to Radar.
“Where did you hear that from? News to me!” she answered when contacted by the website.
“I have a warrant for child support against him… he owes thousands in back child support,” she continued.
Meanwhile, Michael Lohan alleges he has paid Dina the child support in full, even furnishing a cashier’s cheque for $8,500 as proof.
He told Radar of a potential therapy session: “I will gladly attend, like I’ve always wanted to.
“It’s the only thing that will give Lindsay resolve and a chance to finally have her life and both parents back in her life.
“This is about Lindsay, not Dina or me. Our family needs healing and that’s the only way Lindsay is going to beat this”
“I’ll be there for anything she needs,” Michael Lohan finished.
The notorious couple finalized their divorce in 2007 after a tumultuous 22-year marriage.
They have remained estranged for years, communicating with each other only through bitter comments made to various press outlets.
It remains unknown whether Dina and Michael Lohan’s three other children, Michael Jr., 25, Ali, 19, and Cody, 16, were invited to participate in the group session.
Kanye West hit his head on a caution sign on Friday while on a lunch date with Kim Kardashian.
It appears the embarrassing incident has left Kanye West with a rather nasty looking bump on his forehead.
Kanye West, 35, looked grumpy as he left Kim Kardashian’s house on Saturday morning in Los Angeles sporting a giant protrusion just below his hairline.
He was dressed down in baggy dark jeans, a grey hoodie and white-and-grey Nike trainers while carrying a portable device and his cellphone.
Kanye West was likely still recovering after Friday’s painful – and somewhat embarrassing – incident, which occurred as he and Kim Kardashian made their way into Vietnamese eatery in 9021 Pho in Beverly Hills.
Kanye West hit his head on a caution sign on Friday while on a lunch date with Kim Kardashian
He was busy chatting to his girlfriend when he walked into the signpost, immediately bending over in pain as he placed his head in his hands.
Making the incident even more embarrassing was the fact that the sign was emblazoned with a warning that read: “Caution: Watch For Pedestrians.”
Kanye West was left with an abrasion in the middle of his forehead and was clearly not impressed.
As he became more and more enraged, paparazzi checked to see if he was okay, but Kanye West appeared not to be left with any serious injuries.
Heavily pregnant Kim Kardashian also looked on with deep concerned after her man hit his head, grabbing his arm, trying to coax him.
However, after going into the restaurant to nurse his wounds Kanye West did not calm down.
Instead, the rapper came back out of the eatery and started yelling at a photographer.
Caught on video by TMZ Kanye West screams: “Don’t take another f**king photo man.”
“All you mother f**kers stop it.”
Despite the photographer saying he had just got there, there was no stopping the angry Kanye West who shoved the man’s camera out of his hands.
Another patron even joins in the yelling before Kanye West storms back into the restaurant.
US astronauts Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn are carrying out an emergency spacewalk to fix a leak of ammonia from the International Space Station’s cooling system.
Live video shows Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn examining the outside of the craft to search for the escape.
The crew had spotted particles of ammonia drifting away from the laboratory on Thursday.
It is expected the spacewalk, prepared at record short notice, will last around six and a half hours.
Liquid ammonia is used to extract the heat that builds up in electronic systems, dumping that excess energy to space through an array of radiators.
Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn are carrying out an emergency spacewalk to fix a leak of ammonia from the ISS’s cooling system
NASA says the crew on the ISS are not in any danger.
The leak is coming from the station’s port side, at the far end of the backbone, or truss, structure that holds one of the laboratory’s huge sets of solar arrays.
The astronauts will “inspect and possibly replace” a pump controller box in that area of the space station, according to NASA.
Commander Chris Hadfield reported seeing “a very steady stream of flakes” on Thursday.
“They were coming out cleanly and repeatedly enough that it looked like it was a point source they were coming from,” he added.
It is not the first time that the station’s cooling systems have caused problems.
A very small leak was identified in 2007 in the same location, and a spacewalk was organized in 2012 to reconfigure coolant lines and isolate the problem.
The station currently has a crew of six. Commander Chris Hadfield, a Canadian, is due to leave the platform with American astronaut Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko on Monday.
Commander Chris Hadfield had asked mission controllers if the leak might prevent the undocking of his return capsule. They responded that there was no technical reason why it should, but that engineers would update the crew once they understood the issues more fully.
Scientists have built and tested a form of invisibility cloak that can hide objects from heat.
Similar cloaking efforts are underway to make objects invisible to light and even sound waves, but this is the first device to work with heat.
The prototype, to be outlined in Physical Review Letters, contained a 5 cm-wide flat region impervious to heat flowing around it.
The technology could be put to use in thermal management in electronics.
The theoretical ideas behind the prototype were outlined in a paper by French researchers in 2012 – now made real in copper and a silicone material called PDMS.
Scientists have built and tested a form of invisibility cloak that can hide objects from heat
It works by channeling heat flow around the central region, with carefully designed, alternating rings made of the two materials.
“If you follow a ring around, you can follow those areas of high [heat] conductivity, but if you go toward the centre you are repeatedly blocked by a layer of low conductivity,” explained lead author of the study Robert Schittny of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.
“You can see that it’s easier for the heat to just travel around this object than travel toward the centre,” he said.
But the effort is not just about insulating the central region from heat – it is to make it “look” like it is simply not there.
“You want the heat flow to look as if there were no disturbance at all in the middle, and basically if you want to guide the heat around the central part, it takes a detour, a longer time to go around there,” Robert Schittny explained.
“Each ring is made so that it specifically compensates exactly this detour that the heat has to make.”
Robert Schittny said that the work showed promise for applications where heat needed to be carefully shuttled around – electronics systems, cooling or energy systems, and so on. And the prototype works just as the 2012 work predicted it would.
“We were all surprised by how well the theoretical simulations and the experimental results in the end agreed,” he said.
At least 40 people have been killed and other 100 are injured after two car bombs exploded in the Turkish town of Reyhanli, near the Syrian border, Turkey’s interior minister says.
Muammer Guler told Turkey’s NTV that two bombs had gone off in the town near the town hall and post office.
Video from the scene showed injured people being carried to safety in rubble-strewn streets, amid shattered buildings and twisted wrecks of cars.
The town is an entry-point for refugees from the war in Syria.
Local people attacked cars with Syrian number-plates and Syrian refugees after the attack, according to local media.
At least 40 people have been killed and other 100 are injured after two car bombs exploded in the Turkish town of Reyhanli
Emergency services looked for possible victims buried under the debris.
No group said they had carried out the attack.
Responding to news of the bombing, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Turkey would protect itself.
“There may be those who want to sabotage Turkey’s peace, but we will not allow that,” he said during a visit to Berlin.
“No-one should attempt to test Turkey’s power. Our security forces will take all necessary measures.”
Ahmet Davutoglu added that the blasts had taken place to deflect attention from efforts to solve the Syrian crisis.
The border area of Reyhanli has itself been attacked in recent months.
In February, an explosion near the town killed 17 people and wounded 30.
Five people were killed last October when a mortar round hit the Turkish border town of Akcakale.
The Turkish government has been a key supporter of the Syrian opposition, and has allowed rebels as well as refugees on to its territory.
But tensions in the Reyhanli area have been high for several weeks, reports say, with clashes between Turkish and Syrian youths.
A photo of man bearing a striking resemblance to Jay-Z has surfaced, and if it wasn’t for the fact that it was taken in 1939, you’d swear it was the rapper himself.
The image, taken by Sid Grossman, is part of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center’s collection.
The 1939 image shows a man sitting outside a stone building, dressed in typical though stylish attire for the decade: a news-boy cap and a full suit.
The man is staring down the camera lens with a distinct sense of attitude and intent.
Best of all, the man from the past has exactly the same poise and swagger as present day 43-year-old Jay-Z.
However, if you really wanted to start a conspiracy theory, you’d only need to look at the titles of Jay-Z’s albums and singles.
Jay-Z’s extensive list of titles include: In My Lifetime, The Best of Both Worlds (with R. Kelly), Don’t Let Me Die, Young Forever and Encore… mortality and immortality sure do seem to be running themes in the singer’s works.
Boston Marathon bombings investigators are examining whether suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was influenced by Magomed Kartashov, a distant cousin with ties to extremist Islamist groups in Russia.
Magomed Kartashov is founder and leader of a group called The Union of the Just which reportedly promotes the application of Islamic Sharia law and has protested against the U.S.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev is said to have met Magomed Kartashov for the first time when he spent six months in Dagestan, Russia’s turbulent Caucasus region, last year.
His mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, told TIME Magazine that the two “became very close”.
Magomed Kartashov is founder and leader of a group called The Union of the Just which reportedly promotes the application of Islamic Sharia law
The Union of the Just publicly renounces violence, but several of its members have ties to militants.
A lawyer for Magomed Kartashov confirmed to ABC News that Russian security agents recently interviewed her client about his links to Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Magomed Kartashov admits that the two were close but insists that it was Tamerlan Tsarnaev who tried to “pull him into extremism”.
He is currently in jail on charges of resisting police in an unrelated matter. His lawyer expects he will remain there for at least two more months.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed during a violent standoff with police on April 19, days after he and his brother Dzhokhar, 19, allegedly planted homemade bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured alive and has been charged with using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. He faces the death penalty.
Ever since the attack, investigators have been trying to understand how the brothers would have become radicalized to the point of wanting to kill and maim people in the U.S., the country they called home.
Much of the focus has been on Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s six-month visit to Dagestan, a restive region in southern Russia that is home to an Islamist militant insurgency. They want to know if and how Tamerlan Tsarnaev attempted to join militant groups there.
Earlier, a U.S. official confirmed to ABC News that investigators are also looking into Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s contacts with a young militant named Mahmud Mansur Nidal.
The two were reportedly seen leaving a controversial Salafist mosque in the capital of Makhachkala that has been popular with militants over the years.
They also want to know about possible contacts with a Canadian-Russian militant named William Plonikov, who was killed in a police shootout last July, just days before Tamerlan Tsarnaev suddenly left the country.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s death certificate, which was released on Friday, showed that he was shot in the firefight and then run over and dragged by a vehicle.
Police say it was Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who mowed over his brother’s body as he was making a getaway.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s death certificate showed that he was shot in the firefight and then run over and dragged by a vehicle
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was buried under a shroud of secrecy Wednesday evening at the Al-Barzakh Cemetery in central Virginia, about 15 miles from Richmond, with the help of Christian Martha Mullen.
The Tsarnaev brothers are accused of carrying out the April 15 twin bombings that killed three people and injured more than 260. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a violent shootout with police on April 19 and his brother, who was injured in the gunfight, was captured in Watertown, Massachusetts after an 18-hour manhunt.
His body was claimed by his uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, who asked that the remains be placed in a municipal cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Tamerlan Tsarnaev lived with his wife, Katherine Russell. But city officials would not allow that to happen.
Katherine Russell did not claim the body, which is why it was released to Ruslan Tsarni.
The public was not notified that Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body had been moved until after it was transported from the funeral home Wednesday.
On Thursday morning, police officials announced that: “A courageous and compassionate individual came forward to provide the assistance needed to properly bury the deceased.”
On average, burials cost $6,000 to $10,000, which covers basic services of a funeral director and staff, including the casket as well as embalming and sanitation of the body, according to the Funeral Consumer Guardian Society, a consumer advocacy group.
Typically, the person who claims the body – which in this case would be Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s uncle – pays these costs.
