Why would you have sex in your baby's tomb?

Maud Gonne played a public role in the struggle for Irish independence, but her life also included private tragedy. Her grief over a child who died at the age of two inspired an unpublished poem by W B Yeats - and she was so desperate to reincarnate the boy that she had sex in his tomb.

Actress, activist, feminist, mystic, Maud Gonne was also the muse and inspiration for the poet W B Yeats, who immortalised her in some of his most famous verses.
After the Free State was established in 1922, Maud Gonne remained a vocal figure in Irish politics and civil rights. Born in 1866, she died in Dublin in 1953.
But for many years in her youth and early adulthood, Maud Gonne lived in France.
Of this part of her life, much less is known. There is one long-secret and bizarre episode, however, that has now been established as almost certainly true.
This was the attempt in late 1893 to reincarnate her two-year-old son, through an act of sexual intercourse next to the dead infant's coffin.

''I cannot imagine any reason why she would have made the story up - it is too bizarre and too personal”

End Quote Warwick Gould Yeats scholar

Maud Gonne was English by birth. Her father, Thomas, was a captain in the British army, and during part of her childhood the family lived in Ireland. This was where her interest in Ireland began.

Later Maud was sent to be educated by a governess in France. There was also a rich aunt who introduced her to society in Paris. She was barely out of her teens when her father died, and not long afterward she began a relationship with a right-wing French politician called Lucien Millevoye.
"Millevoye was obviously a replacement father figure," says Yeats scholar Deirdre Toomey. "He was 16 years older than she."
Millevoye was a follower of Gen Georges Boulanger, a hardline nationalist who in the late 1880s briefly looked like he might be the future leader of France.
Boulangistes like Millevoye were obsessed with recapturing the lost eastern territories of Alsace and Lorraine. But Millevoye was also strongly anti-English, and he encouraged Maud Gonne in her own growing hostility to the Crown in Ireland.

Maud had been travelling regularly to Ireland, learning at first hand of the rent strikes and evictions in the countryside. She was increasingly sure her future lay in opposing the English interest in Irish politics.
Then on 30 January 1889, in Bedford Park, London, there took place the famous meeting between Maud Gonne and the young poet William Butler Yeats.

Yeats was immediately overwhelmed. According to his biographer R F Foster, Maud Gonne appeared to Yeats "majestic, unearthly… Immensely tall, bronze-haired, with a strong profile and beautiful skin, she was a fin-de-siecle beauty in Valkyrie mode".

It was the start of a mutually obsessive relationship that would last half a century. But what Yeats did not discover until very much later was that less than three weeks before this momentous first encounter, Maud Gonne had given birth to a baby boy.
The baby was called Georges, he was born in Paris, and he was Lucien Millevoye's.
Gonne - a complicated character if ever there was one - initially kept Georges' existence secret from Yeats. When he did find out about the baby, she insisted that he was not hers but adopted.
"It is surprising how naive Yeats seems to have been over Gonne's child," Toomey says. "He must have wanted to believe that what she said was true about it not being hers."
But two-and-a-half years later Georges was dead. It is not certain how he died, but it was probably meningitis.
When Yeats met Gonne next, it was in Dublin in October 1891 and she was shattered. By a strange twist, she arrived in Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) on the same mail boat that brought the body of the just-dead Irish politician-cum-hero Charles Parnell.
People thought her tears were for Parnell, but they were for Georges.
Over the next two years, in Dublin, London and Paris, a grief-stricken Gonne was drawn into the occultist and spiritualist worlds that were already of deep importance to Yeats.
Writing many years later in his memoirs, Yeats recalled that Gonne repeatedly asked his circle of friends about the reality of reincarnation. One friend - the writer and mystic George Russell - assured her that it was indeed possible to recreate a dead child's soul if the parents went about it in the right way.
And so the story leads to a white stone mausoleum in the cemetery of the small riverside town of Samois-sur-Seine, 50km (30 miles) south-east of Paris.

Maud Gonne used to rent a house here, to get away from the bustle of Paris and when Georges died, she had him interred in the town's graveyard.
Having inherited a large sum of money on the death of her father, she paid for a memorial chapel - the biggest in the cemetery. In a crypt beneath, the child's coffin was laid.
In late 1893 Gonne re-contacted Lucien Millevoye, from whom she had separated after Georges' death.
She asked him to meet her in Samois-sur-Seine. First the couple entered the small chapel, then opened the metal doors leading down to the crypt.
They descended the small metal ladder - just five or six steps. And then - next to the dead baby's coffin - they had sexual intercourse.

Hugh Schofield visits the mausoleum where Georges was laid to rest

How do we know this?
The evidence comes from Yeats. In his posthumous memoirs - not published till 1972 - he wrote that Gonne herself told him the story.
"Gonne and Yeats were always extremely close," says Yeats scholar Warwick Gould.
"And I cannot imagine any reason why she would have made the story up. It is too bizarre and too personal. But it accords with what we know of her interest in reincarnation."

On a Child's Death
In 1893 Yeats wrote a poem that was never published. It is called On a Child's Death, and it is clearly inspired by Maud Gonne's dead son, and her consequent grief - though when he wrote it Yeats still thought Georges was adopted. Scholars say it is of uneven quality, which is why Yeats did not want it to be part of his canon.
You shadowy armies of the dead
Why did you take the starlike head
The faltering feet, the little hand?
For purple kings are in your band
And there the hearts of poets beat;
Why did you take the faltering feet?
She had much need of some fair thing
To make love spread his quiet wing
Above the tumult of her days
And shut out foolish blame & praise.
She has her squirrel & her birds
But these have no sweet human words
And cannot call her by her name:
Their love is but a woodland flames
You wealthy armies of the dead
Why did you take the starlike head.
On A Child's Death was reproduced with the permission of Caitriona Yeats

The purpose of the act was to recreate the baby's soul in the new baby that she would conceive with the same father. By having sex next to the corpse, it was hoped that the process of metempsychosis - the transmigration of the soul - would be made easier.
Whether the soul of Georges transmigrated is a matter for metaphysicians. What is certain is that in August 1894 Maud Gonne had another baby.
This was her daughter Iseult. Maud Gonne brought up the child as her own, but their relationship was always odd. Later she refused to call her "daughter" in company, instead describing her as a "kinswoman" or "cousin".
As an adult Iseult had an affair with Ezra Pound and married the controversial Irish-Australian novelist (and Nazi sympathizer) Francis Stuart. She died a year after her mother, in 1954.
Maud Gonne, meanwhile, converted to Catholicism (much to Yeats' dismay) and in 1903 married the Irish soldier and Republican, John MacBride.
With him she had her third child, who grew up to be the Irish politician, IRA leader, international statesman and Nobel peace prize winner Sean MacBride.
John MacBride was shot by the English in the Easter Rising of 1916. Sean MacBride lived until 1988.
The Gonne mausoleum in Samois-sur-Seine was long forgotten. Few knew the story of Maud Gonne's dead baby - almost no-one knew the story of the secret sex.
Occasionally Yeats scholars would come to pay a visit out of curiosity. But in the town - once the generations had moved on - they had never heard of Maud Gonne.
Interest in the cemetery resided solely in its other famous occupant - the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.

A plaque commemorating guitarist and composer Django Reinhardt who lived and died in Samois-sur-Seine

Today though, there is a small resurgence of interest. Intrigued by the mausoleum, local councillor Josette Dufour conducted her own research and has now written a short monograph on the Georges Gonne story.
The mausoleum no longer belongs to the Gonne family. Though the plot was bought by Gonne "in perpetuity", in practice the freehold had to be renewed - and it wasn't.
But inside the Grecian-style edifice, there are still the metal doors in the ground.
Josette Dufour provided a key for the padlock. And there in the crypt, on a small trestle - lies the coffin of baby Georges. It is in fact a double-coffin, because for transport from Paris the law stated that the original coffin had to be encased in another.
On the lid are some crumbling flowers made of papier-mache or some other material. And a plaque bears his name: Georges Gonne. Born January 11 1889. Died August 31 1891.
When she died in 1953, Maud Gonne's will bore no reference to Iseult.
But she asked to be buried with Georges' baby-shoes in her coffin.

The woman who chose a hut over a home

For much of her life, Devi Asmadiredja was a housewife in Germany - but then her husband told her to pack her bags and leave the country. She ended up 3,000km (2,000 miles) away living in a remote mountain hut among the Chechens of Georgia's Pankisi Gorge.

Few tourists visit the gorge, a notoriously insular region with a reputation for drug and arms smuggling, and radical Islam - one of the top leaders of Islamic State (IS), Abu Omar al-Shishani, hails from here.
But this remote part of the Caucasus Mountains is where Devi Asmadiredja, a German woman of Indonesian descent, found refuge.
Four years ago, she was living in Germany with her husband and three children. But in early 2011 he abruptly informed her that he no longer loved her, and told her to leave their home. He ordered her to go to Pankisi to learn Chechen, the language of his forefathers.
"He knew I was good at languages, he thought I could come back and teach him," she says.
He bought her a plane ticket and gave her enough money for food. "I had never travelled before. For me it was interesting and a chance to run away from him," she says. Leaving behind her three children - then five, eight, and 12 - was harder. "It was very difficult. I'd never slept a single night without them," she says. But she didn't feel she had a choice.
Asmadiredja arrived in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, and took a series of marshrutki - shared minibuses - to the village of Duisi, the first of five villages that snake along the gorge. She says she didn't even have any local contacts, "I had nothing."

She asked the first locals she saw where she could find someone to teach her Chechen. Within 20 minutes, tuition and free accommodation with a local family had been arranged.
She quickly learned the language and members of the community soon gave her a Chechen name, Khedi - derived from Khedijat, the name of Muhammad's wife.
Still, she attracted some suspicion, both as a foreigner and as a woman travelling alone. "They thought I was a Russian spy," she says. Her uncovered hair, her independence, her seven tattoos - she sports a traditional Indonesian dagger on her left leg, a Caucasian one on her right - set her apart.
Under pressure from the imam at the recently built hardline Wahhabi mosque, her hosts told her she had to leave and she moved in with another Kist family, the people she now refers to as "my mother" and "my sister". The Kists, Georgians of Chechen descent, migrated to the valley in the 19th Century.

After 18 months in the village, her estranged husband called, to tell her that he had moved on, and that there was no need for her to come home.
"So I went to the mountains," she says. A friend took her to a cowherd's hut - a simple stone building with no heating, electricity, or running water. She had one modern convenience - a mobile phone with a camera and solar charger.
Asmadiredja spent two months there living alone, surviving off the occasional donation of food from passing shepherds and water from the many mountain streams.

Despite - or because of - the harsh circumstances, the solitude and mountain life brought her fulfilment. "I fell in love with the mountains," she says. "I had never seen mountains like this before - the light was unbelievable up there, the people I met while wandering around were unbelievable. She ate little, she says, and kept warm by walking.
She began to walk further - to the villages of Khevsureti, Tusheti, and Georgia's most remote mountain regions. "I didn't have any money. I had no choice but to walk," she says.
At this point Asmadiredja had only mastered the Chechen language, but now, meeting Tush and Khevsur shepherds, she learned to speak Georgian as well.
She memorised the labyrinthine, unmarked trails from Pankisi into the mountains. Once she injured her ankle and was stranded, without food and only a stream for water, for 12 days before passers-by found her. "It was damned close," she admits.

Other challenges came from the locals. Initially some shepherds aggressively pursued her. "They hadn't seen a woman in a long time" - and a woman like Asmadiredja, living alone, was particularly interesting. Most of them were dissuaded by sharp words but one she had to fight off. "Nothing happened," she says. Other shepherds - who had by now come to recognise her - stepped in to stop the attack.
Eventually, Asmadiredja returned from the mountains to the village. A German travel agency offered her a job - $100 a day to guide hikers through the Caucasus, where there is little tourist infrastructure and few locals speak either English or German.
"I had to open a bank account," she laughs. Another friend, hearing of Asmadiredja's interest in photography, brought her a second-hand camera, and she began displaying her photographs of Pankisi in galleries across Tbilisi. "I'm not an intruder," she says. "People know me." Early next year, Asmadiredja's work will have its first international showing, at the Georgian Embassy in Indonesia.
But life back in the village could, at times, feel oppressive. "I am not Chechen, I am not Kist. I am not even Georgian. I was born in East Germany. I need my freedom. I am an independent woman, who does not ask for permission to do or go anywhere. In the Kist traditions you have to follow your elders. I needed some time for me alone, [in a place] where I didn't know anyone."
In March last year, a friend told her about a small, hidden cave in Georgia's southern Samtskhe-Javakheti province. She went at once, taking only a camping stove, a sleeping bag, and some fruit and nuts.

The entrance to the cave where Devi Asmadiredja stayed

But once there, something happened that would change Asmadiredja's life again. Two local cowherds driving their cattle happened across the cave, and at once insisted that she return home with them. She refused.
"My first thought was 'Why don't they leave me alone?'" They asked her if she liked khinkali - traditional Georgian meat dumplings. "They left and a half-hour later they were back with khinkali and wine."
One of the cowherds, a Georgian called Dato, began to visit her every day, insisting that she give him her telephone number. At last, she relented, and the two began a relationship.
They plan to marry later this year. The ceremony will not be legally binding - Asmadiredja is still married to her Chechen husband who is in Germany. But her adoptive family has already planned a traditional Pankisi supra feast anyway. "I never thought I would have love like that," she says.
She knows he cannot join her in the various caves and huts she has called home, but envisages a life spent between a home in Pankisi and the mountains - she is encouraging him to learn to drive, so that he can work alongside her on her guided tours.

Even so, Asmadiredja, now 45, is aware of how much she left behind. Two of her children, aged nine and 12, who initially remained with her husband, are now in foster care. With a different partner, she also had an older child, a daughter who lives with her father.
Asmadiredja emails her children from time to time, but they do not respond. She has been tempted to return to Germany to seek custody, but has been given no assurances that she would be able to get them back.
"I have a life here," she says. "It has cost me a lot of strength. To go back to Germany... maybe I will get my kids, maybe not, but even if I get them, [it would only be] for a few years - and for this, I should throw everything away? I cannot. Maybe I'm selfish, [but] I have built my life here. My name is known here as a guide, as a photographer. Why should I throw it all away - just to live off [benefits] there?"

The mountains, she says, are her real home. "In the mountains I am free."

One teacher with 26 million students

Zach Sims founded the site to teach himself

Of the many buzzwords making the rounds in Davos this year, "skills gap" is the most ubiquitous.

The great and good attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) have done much hand wringing over how to address what one report termed a "worrying mismatch between the demand for specific skills and the supply of suitable candidates".
While there seems to be a broad consensus on what the causes of the said gap are - outdated teaching methods and course syllabuses, and lack of in-work training - there is less agreement on what needs to be done, or who should be doing it.
But one unlikely WEF attendee - a 24-year-old from New York who dropped out of Columbia University before completing his degree - is grabbing the attention of crusty executives gathered in this mountain resort.
Introduced by global leaders as the "man who has 26 million students", Zach Sims runs a three-year-old website called Codecademy, which enables users to learn six popular programming languages, via a simple interface, for free.
Relevant skills
Zach is hardly the Davos type - he apologises when using buzzwords such as "intersection" and uses sarcastic air quotes when talking about the WEF's "new digital context" slogan - but he is a vivid example of a "skills gap" victim, albeit a first-world one.
"When I was looking for internships in my junior year, at companies like Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, I realised that nobody I was going to college with had any skills that would be relevant in that context," he says.
In the first weekend of Codecademy's launch more than 200,000 people used the product
"We were spending our days learning about Greek mythology, and our nights studying thick financial modelling textbooks.
"We figured if students at Columbia - a top five school in the country, can't find jobs when they graduate, there was probably a problem."
So Zach started to teach himself to code. "We built the first version of Codecademy for me," he explains, and with the help of a friend, Ryan Bubinski, he expanded the site.
Mr Bubinski became co-founder and together they launched Codecademy, in August 2011.
In the first weekend more than 200,000 people used the product - "it gave the ability to send emails to all those people who said the market size was limited," Zach quips, unable to suppress a smile.
'New currency'
The site now reaches almost 26 million students in more than 100 countries, and is helping people from all economic backgrounds to "up-skill", including residents of African refugee camps and single mothers in the US.
Business leaders may be catching on.
A report on "global talent competitiveness" released at the beginning of the week in Davos by business school INSEAD and recruiters Adecco, emphasised that talent was the "new currency of the global economy." It said an estimated 8.4 million jobs were not being filled because of "mismatches in skills and geographies".
At a packed Davos lunch event entitled Business Backs Education, featuring a panel including Tony Blair, one chairman cautioned that companies could no longer "stick to the assumption that you get educated for 25 years and then you work for 45 years".

The site now reaches almost 26 million students

Another panellist, US business magnate Stephen Schwarzman, said improving training was "how you deal with income inequality".
But while a broad consensus may be forming, attracting investment is as hard as ever. Just 13% of the money spent by the top 500 US companies on social development in 2013 went toward education projects, according to one report.
And while the demand for more in-work training is rising, the desire of businesses to provide such opportunities is waning, some say.
But if Zach has one message for the Davos elite, it's that employers need to take "a little bit of responsibility", and that the appetite for learning is at an all time high.
"Its crazy that two kids could start something in a one-bedroom apartment in California, and educate more people in a weekend than a formal institution could in years," he says.

"Education is having a moment".

Three major sponsors leave FIFA

Will it be because of the perceived rot in the organisation,with heavy allegations popping up every now and then? Or is it simply contract expiration as they claim?

Sepp Blatter, FIFA president

World governing body FIFA confirmed on Friday that three major sponsors have ended their relationships with the organisation, but said there was nothing unusual about the development.
Oil manufacturers Castrol, tyre company Continental and healthcare giant Johnson and Johnson have followed Emirates and Sony by choosing not to renew contracts with FIFA that expired last year.
British newspaper the Daily Telegraph claimed the three companies had been deterred by allegations of corruption that have been levelled at FIFA following the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
But in a statement sent to AFP, FIFA marketing director Thierry Weil said: “Rotations at the end of a sponsorship cycle are commonplace in the sports industry and have continuously occurred since the commercialisation of the FIFA World Cup began.
“It is natural that as brands’ strategies evolve they reassess their sponsorship properties.
“The contracts with Castrol, Continental and Johnson and Johnson were always planned to run until the end of 2014 and therefore expired on 31 December 2014 accordingly.”
Weil added that FIFA was in “advanced negotiations with a number of companies” regarding sponsorship deals for the next World Cup cycle.
FIFA has already signed up Russian oil and gas giant Gazprom as a commercial partner ahead of the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
Quoted by the Telegraph, a spokesperson from Castrol said: “We have not been sponsors of FIFA since, I believe, the World Cup last year.”
Johnson and Johnson stated: “It was a decision that was made for business reasons after a comprehensive review.”
Continental told the newspaper: “It was a great platform for us and now we’re using football on a regionalised level.”
British politician Damian Collins, who is leading a campaign to impose reform on FIFA, said the sponsors’ withdrawals proved that the organisation had become a “toxic brand”.
FIFA and its 78-year-old Swiss president Sepp Blatter have been dogged by accusations of corruption ever since Russia and Qatar won the rights to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in 2010.
Blatter, who has presided over FIFA since 1998, will seek a fifth term in office in a presidential election scheduled to take place on May 29.

Chimps and Tourist photograghers

 These chimps at Jacksonville Zoo in Florida just can't get enough of being snapped by tourists

Give us a gurn: Happy chimp

Getting a chimp to smile for the cameras is always gurn to be a tall order but these shots show they are happy to strike a pose for an audience.
One chimp monkeyed around pulling funny faces for its babies, while another stroked its chin, just like Rodin’s The Thinker, as if deep in thought.
Graham McGeorge, 43, of Dumfries in Scotland, took the shots at Jacksonville Zoo while on holiday in Florida.

Graham McGeorge / Media Drum World

Big grin: Happy chimp

And captured a bit of animal magic.
Chimps are the closest living relatives to humans, although few people can gurn like this chap.
They are known for their love of sex and have even been known to use it to resolve arguments.
Chimps have also been observed mourning other members of their group after they've died.

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz joins his ancestors

King Abdullah of Saudi is dead

Abdullah bin Abdulaziz was the fifth of his brothers to take the throne and became king in 2005, reports Caroline Hawley

Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz has died, royal officials have announced, weeks after he was admitted to hospital.

King Abdullah, who was said to be aged about 90, had been suffering from a lung infection.
A statement early on Friday said his 79-year-old half brother, Salman, had become king.
Abdullah came to the throne in 2005 but had suffered frequent bouts of ill health in recent years.

Analysis: BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner
The official announcement from the Royal Court came as little surprise, but this is still a historic and sad moment for this deeply conservative Muslim country, home to the two holiest sites in Islam, at Mecca and Medina, and the world's biggest oil exporter and producer.
As king he pushed through cautious reforms, including giving women a greater public role, against opposition from religious conservatives.
King Salman assumes the throne at a difficult time for Saudi Arabia. Having defeated an Islamist insurgency 10 years ago, the country now finds itself sandwiched between the growing threats from al-Qaeda in Yemen to the south and Islamic State to the north. Both groups have their sympathisers inside Saudi Arabia.

King Salman, 79, had recently taken on the ailing monarch's responsibilities.
Before the announcement, Saudi television cut to Koranic verses, which often signifies the death of a senior royal.
The late king's half brother Muqrin, who is in his late 60s, has been named the new crown prince, the official statement said.

The BBC's Frank Gardner says Saudi Arabia could face an increasing internal security problem following the death of King Abdullah

All three are sons of the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz, usually referred to as Ibn Saud, who died in 1953.
King Salman called on the royal family's Allegiance Council to recognise Muqrin as his crown prince and heir.
"His Highness Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud and all members of the family and the nation mourn the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, who passed away at exactly 1am this morning," the statement said.
US President Barack Obama expressed his personal sympathies and those of the American people, on the death of King Abdullah.
"As a leader, he was always candid and had the courage of his convictions. One of those convictions was his steadfast and passionate belief in the importance of the US-Saudi relationship as a force for stability and security in the Middle East and beyond," he said.
Vice-President Joe Biden tweeted that he would lead a delegation to Riyadh to pay respects.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron said Abdullah would be remembered for his "commitment to peace and for strengthening understanding between faiths".

King Abdullah: Key events

• Believed born in Riyadh in August 1924, although actual date is disputed
• His mother, Fahda, was the eighth of King Abdulaziz al-Saud's 16 wives
• Appointed commander of the Saudi National Guard in 1962
• Became crown prince and first deputy prime minister in 1982 when King Fahd succeeded King Khalid
• Succeeded to the throne in August 2005 following the death of King Fahd

Obituary: King Abdullah

Abdullah was the 13th of the 37 sons of King Abdulaziz. He is believed to have been born in August 1924 in Riyadh, although there is some dispute about his actual birth date.
In 1962 he was appointed commander of the Saudi National Guard, where he earned the respect and loyalty of the desert tribes.
When he came to the throne in 2005 he succeeded another half-brother, Fahd.
However, he had already been Saudi Arabia's de-facto leader for 10 years because his predecessor had been debilitated by a stroke.
Correspondents say Abdullah was seen as a reformer at home, albeit a slow and steady one.
He allowed mild criticism of his government in the press, and hinted that more women should be allowed to work.
King Salman spent 48 years as governor of Riyadh Province before becoming crown prince and defence minister.
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says it is thought unlikely that he will embark on any great changes.
In a recent meeting with the BBC in Jeddah, he appeared alert and well-briefed but walked with the aid of a stick, our correspondent adds.

King Salman has succeeded Abdullah

King Salman: Key facts

• Born on 31 December 1935
• Son of Princess Hassa al-Sudairi
• Governor of Riyadh from 1955-1960 and again from 1963 to 2011
• Appointed defence minister upon death of his brother Crown Prince Sultan
• Owns important stake in one of the Arab world's largest media groups

CHARLIE HEBDO back with a bang

Long queues have formed at newsstands in France for the latest edition of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Three million copies are being printed - a week after Islamist gunmen murdered eight journalists at the magazine and four other people in Paris.
The cover shows a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad weeping while holding a sign saying "Je suis Charlie" ("I am Charlie").
It is believed earlier cartoons of the Prophet prompted the attack.
The slogan "Je suis Charlie" has been widely used following the shootings.
In a separate attack in Paris two days later, four Jewish men died after an Islamist gunmen took hostages at a kosher shop in the French capital. A police woman was shot dead in a third shooting believed to have been carried out by the same attacker.

 All copies of the magazine were sold out by Wednesday morning at this Paris newsstand

Some kiosks said they had received dozens of reservation requests

On Sunday, about 1.5 million people rallied in Paris in a show of solidarity with the victims

Referring to last week's shocking events, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said his country was at war with extremism and terrorism - but not with Muslims.
He was speaking on Tuesday after funeral ceremonies were held for seven of the victims in France and Israel.
France has deployed 10,000 troops at various sites across the country - including synagogues, mosques and airports - in response to the attacks.
New threats

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Charlie Hebdo editor-in-chief Gerard Biard comforted Renald "Luz" Luzier, who drew the latest cover, at a news conference

Wednesday's edition of Charlie Hebdo has an unprecedented print run of three million copies. Normally only 60,000 are printed each week.
Demand for what is being called the "survivor's issue" of the magazine is high, correspondents say, especially as the proceeds will go to the victims' families.
Kiosk owners told French media they had received large numbers of reservation requests, while at one shop in Paris all copies were reportedly sold out within 30 minutes.

Hugh Schofield in Paris on the new edition:
There's the full-page cartoon of a weeping Muhammad on the front cover, but inside there are no more caricatures of the Prophet.
There are plenty - in the paper's characteristic scurrilous vein - of Muslim extremists. In one cartoon, two terrorists are seen ascending to heaven and asking: "Where are the 70 virgins?" In the background, the murdered staff at Charlie Hebdo are enjoying an orgy.
An editorial thanks the millions of people who have declared themselves as Charlie in the past few days - but it says it wants no more of the past insinuations that by provoking Muslims, it has somehow brought trouble on itself.

The issue will be available in six languages - including English, Arabic and Turkish - some in print and some online.
Editor-in-chief Gerard Biard told reporters: "We are happy to have done it and happy to have been able to do it, to have achieved it. It was tough. The front page... was complicated to put together, because it had to express something new, it had to say something relating to the event that we had to deal with."
The front cover of the edition had been widely published in advance by French media.

Security has been increased dramatically across France after the attacks

Outside France, the Washington Post, Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine, Corriere della Sera in Italy and the UK's Guardian are among publications to show the cartoon.
Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet has published a section of the magazine, including a small image of the cover in one of its columns.
Very few outlets in the Middle East and North Africa have shown the image.
Charlie Hebdo's decision to publish another cartoon of the Prophet has already generated threats from militant Islamist websites and criticism from the Islamic world, the BBC's Chris Morris in Paris reports.
Meanwhile, controversial French comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala was arrested on Wednesday for "defending terrorism".
Police opened an investigation into the comic on Monday, after he wrote on a Facebook post "I feel like Charlie Coulibaly" - merging Charlie Hebdo with the name of supermarket gunman Amedy Coulibaly.
Suspect on the run The three days of violence in Paris began after brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi attacked the magazine's office. They shouted "We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad" after the shootings.

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New mobile phone footage shows the Kouachi brothers opening fire on police

The brothers were later killed by French security services after a stand-off in a town north of Paris.
Separately, Coulibaly - whom investigators have linked to the brothers - killed the four men at the kosher supermarket on Friday, apparently before police stormed the building. Coulibaly is also believed to have shot dead the policewoman the day before.
His partner Hayat Boumeddiene is now thought to be in Syria. She has been identified as a suspect by French police, although she left France before the attacks.

How the attacks unfolded (all times GMT)

• Wednesday 7 January 10:30 - Two masked gunmen enter Charlie Hebdo offices, killing 11 people, including the magazine's editor. Shortly after the attack, the gunmen kill a police officer nearby.
• 11:00 - Police lose track of the men after they abandon their getaway car and hijack another vehicle. They are later identified as brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi.
• Thursday 8 January 08:45 - A lone gunman shoots dead a policewoman and injures a man in the south of Paris. Gunman later identified as Amedy Coulibaly.
• 10:30 - The Kouachi brothers rob a service station near Villers-Cotterets, in the Aisne region, but disappear again.
• Friday 9 January 08:30 - Police exchange gunfire with the Kouachi brothers during a car chase on the National 2 highway northeast of Paris.
• 10:00 - Police surround the brothers at an industrial building in at Dammartin-en-Goele, 35km (22 miles) from Paris.
• 12:15 - Coulibaly reappears and takes several people hostage at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris. Heavily-armed police arrive and surround the store.
• 16:00 - Kouachi brothers come out of the warehouse, firing at police. They are both shot dead.
• 16:15 - Police storm the kosher supermarket in Paris, killing Coulibaly and rescuing 15 hostages. The bodies of four hostages are recovered.

• 
  

US Secretary of state safe after car accident

•••US Secretary of State John Kerry emerged unscathed after his motorcade was involved in a minor car accident in India.
Kerry was riding in the first of two vehicles involved in the collision, which resulted in “some damage to both cars,” said State Department Spokes­woman Jen Psaki.
The SUV in which Kerry was traveling was rear-ended as it made its way through streets of the city of Ahmedabad, where Kerry had attended an interna­tional business conference.
Kerry suffered “no injuries nor did any staff or personnel,” Psaki said. “One vehicle was switched out and the motorcade proceeded to the airport without further incident.”

Source:Daily Times

MEND wanted Jonathan dead

It’s true MEND wanted Jonathan dead – Asari-Dokubo

Leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Vol­unteers Force(NDPVF), Alhaji Mujahid Asari-Dokubo, formerly known as Mel­ford Dokubo Goodhead Jr., has earned a reputation as a man who has, arguably, made some controversial pronouncements over the 2015 general elections.
In this interview, he spoke on the claim by President Goodluck Jonathan that Mr. Henry Okah attempted to kill him, his al­leged threat to overrun Yoruba and other issues.Excerpts:

What is your reaction to the recent endorsement of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari by MEND?
Our people say that birds of the same feather flock together. It is not strange that this phantom organisation is endorsing Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. I have always maintained that there is nothing like MEND. Anybody who has been reading my write-ups and interviews know my position on this. Let me make some expla­nation, regarding the coming into being of MEND.
When I was in the prison, NDPVF, the the political arm of organisation I belong to, went to Okerenkuku on the invitation of Tompolo. The IYC also went. Tom­polo’s organisation was there too. Other organisations were equally there. They went to Okerenkuku for a meeting on how to come together for our struggle. They decided that they did not want any more arrest. They resolved to use a faceless organisation. Denis Otuaro came with Kingston Poto and later Henry Okah came to me at Kuje prison.
They came to get my opinion on the need to get a name that would be used. Although members of the NDPVF resisted the new alignment, I coerced them into joining them. Okah and others wanted us to be faceless. They decided that fighters would bear phantom names. So, they came up with names, like Gen. Godswill, Tamino, Gbo­mo Jomo, Alaibe, etc. These were phantom names. They were not real. That was how the organisation, MEND, was formed. Be­fore I came out of prison, there was a break when Henry Okah became more domi­neering. He was extorting money from oil companies. Almost all the governors in the Niger Delta were paying him millions. A former of Rivers State governor was paying him N100 million monthly.
Some groups started breaking out when they could no longer bear what was hap­pening. There was a group that came out. The name was Nabina. It was the authentic MEND that started issuing statement. Anytime there was an attack, authentic MEND would come out with the nature of the attack, where it took place. It would do that before the other MEND would react. They started attacking each other. Nabina was linked to me. It was formed by members of the NDPVF, who felt that they were doing the job but another group was taking the glory. They were the people who went to Brass, Cutting Channel, etc. So, why would another group be taking the glory? That issue dragged until I came out from the prison.

At what point did President Jonathan come into the picture?When I met with the then Vice President, now President Goodluck Jonathan, he asked me all that was happening. I decided that NDPVF should stop all forms of arms struggle. That was how we disbanded arms struggle. That does not mean that we never had clashes with these groups. The Henry Okah group started to mop up people. Kidnapping became a vehicle for making money.
Ijaw struggle is a spiritual one. A lot of people do not know this. The struggle was based on Egbesu.
When you are an adherent of Egbesu, you do not steal. If you pick a toothpick that is not yours, you will die; if you rape a woman, you will die; If you shoot a person who is not armed, someone who is not fighting, you will die. Also, if you cut down economic tree or destroy a fishpond you will die and if you burn down a house, you will die. These are laws of Egbesu. Those who believe in Egbesu don’t do these things I mentioned. All the songs we sang then were Egbesu songs. Only a few of us – Labikeremana and I – who were a born again Christian and a Muslim that were a bit different. Even at that, we could not say that we were totally immune from Egbesu’s influence .
When Henry Okah first came to the Niger Delta, he didn’t know anything about Ijaw because he is a Yoruba Ijaw. He was misbehaving when he came. I have always called him a Yoruba man. He came through me to be known to everybody in Ijaw and Niger Delta generally. How his disagreement with Goodluck Jonathan started was that he wanted Jonathan to pay him money. I wrote a piece on this titled: ‘When silence is not golden’ in 2007, I revealed a lot in the piece, which I tagged part one.Ijaw elders begged me not to reveal more in my proposed part two of the write up. The part two was ready but I didn’t publish it because Clarke and others begged me not to. They said that I was revealing the secret of Ijaw. I told them that what they were doing would backfire. Everybody was on my head. I became their enemy.
If Henry Okah asked for money and you didn’t give him, they would come after you. When Jonathan was governor of Bayelsa, the Okah group asked him to share the budget of the state and give five per cent. They wanted five per cent of the state’s earning every month to service the ‘boys.’ But Jonathan said no. Because Jonathan refused, the Okah group invaded Government House. Some of the people who are now claiming to support Jonathan were part of the people that invaded Gov­ernment House, Bayelsa. They destroyed some important things. My people ran away with Jonathan as governor. They went to Otueke, thinking he was there and burnt down his country home. The gover­nor ran. Some of them are today the people around Jonathan.

You seem to habour personal grudges against Okah?I am the only person who has been talking against Henry Okah. He is nobody. He does not have the power they think he has. If he challenges me, we will meet. We will throw Ijaw into an orgy of violence. Back to the issue, the Henry Okah group contin­ued with his strategy when Yar’Adua came to power. He continued arm-twisting him. He demanded for an oil bloc and Yar’Adua agreed to give him and his boys the oil bloc. But that could not be done until he died . Henry was still in prison while the discussion was going on. When Goodluck Jonathan took over, he reneged on that agreement. But Jonathan released him from prison on account of the amnesty programme. I had told the world that Henry was involved in a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea but it was denied. Later it was discovered to be true and he was arrested, detained and tried. But Presi­dent Yar’Adua caused him to be released because some Ijaw people who today have ruined President Goodluck Jonathan’s gov­ernment, impressed on the late president to help release him. Some Ijaw people, I must tell you, have ruined Jonathan’s govern­ment. They see danger but they tell him to go to the danger.
Back to the issue, Okah, after he was released, struck a deal with Yar’Adua to take amnesty. All the militants, except me took amnesty. Because I did not take the amnesty, Yar’Adua chased me out of the country and I went into exile. Between 2009 and 2010, I was in exile. When Good­luck became president, I was called and asked why I was still outside the country. I told them that I had no business coming back. But everybody came to Benin Re­public to plead with me to return. In Benin, I was visiting Libya, Niger and Holland frequently. When I returned to Nigeria, one of my assistants, who is my cousin, one day called me and said, when one Chima was coming back, give him some money for me. I called Chima and he said he was coming to meet me the next day.
I am saying all these because people are asking why didn’t Goodluck say it. Some Ijaw people want him to make mistakes. When the call came, I decided to call back. I quickly remembered that when I was in prison, Chima used to work with Henry Okah. I told myself that something was wrong somewhere. One Orji, Chima’s friend, who was also close to me, called me and said they were in Abuja. He said that Chima would call me later. Anytime they called, after the conversation they would switch off their phones. I would call them, but their phones would be dead.
Immediately, I alerted the office of NSA that something was going to happen. That was two days to October 1. I told them that there were people in town and something was going to happen. One of our com­manders told me that Chima called him and showed him some weapons, night vision goggles, explosives, etc. and that they wanted to renew the attack in the Niger Delta. He took the picture of the weapons. I went home, collected the picture and took it to the JTF commander. He printed the picture. He later sent the picture to Abuja. On Thursday, they went to search the home of Henry Okah in South Africa. One of the closest persons to Goodluck came to my hotel room in Bolingo and asked when I would end the hatred against Henry Okah. He asked if it was because he was more popular than I. I told him that we were not in popularity contest. This was happening on Thursday. On Friday, the bomb went off. Instead of helping to arrest Henry Okah, when he was here, they were calling him on phone to advise him that MEND should not claim responsibility for the bomb blast. Some of the things I am telling you were on my Facebook wall. I was the first person, after the October 1, 2010 blast, to come out to say that Henry Okah was responsible for the bomb explosion. Many people attacked me. The former president of IYC came out and abused me. They were all thinking that Ijaw must be united. It has dawned on all of them now that Henry Okah was the greatest danger to our struggle.
The reason I cannot be charged by the Nigerian state is that there is no evidence that I did oil bunkering, kidnapping or other evils. All my charges are political. As far as our struggle was concerned, we saw it as a moral one. We believe that morality must come first before any other thing. We are finished if we lose the support of God. It is the support of God that emboldened us to fight. It is what gives us the impetus, the drive to say that if you shoot us, we will not die. For me, what the president said is belated. He had known since 2007 that the Henry Okah group wanted to kill him. For not saying it out since, it is the fault of Ijaw leaders, including Clarke, who had been saying they should hide those thing and sweep it under the carpet. They forgot that one day, the debris under the carpet would become too much that the carpet would be undulated. The stench is coming out now and the president can no longer hold back; he has now come out to say that Henry Okah wanted to assassinate him. What he said was true. Henry Okah wanted him dead.

Were Ijaw leaders the people that asked the President to exonerate MEND when the blast took place?The argument that the president gave was in order. When you talk about MEND, Tompolo, Boy Loaf, Africa, Ogunbos and Varadagogo were all MEND leaders. They were field commanders but they were not among those that carried out the bomb blast. It is like IRA, a branch of the organisation goes to carry out a bomb blast and the mainstream IRA says no, we are not part of it . Ninety nine per cent of the so-called conglomerate of MEND was not there. They had taken amnesty and they were with Mr. President. So, the president was right in saying that MEND was not in­volved. If Mr. President had exonerated all the MEND elements, Henry Okah would not have been arrested. The president was making a distinction between Henry Okah and the mainstream MEND, which was led by Tompolo and which is still with Mr. President.
He was not wrong. Let me give you another analogy. It is like some APC mem­bers attacking somebody. They didn’t have the authority and backing of the authorities of APC before carrying out the attack. The party will not take responsibil­ity. The party would be right to say that the attack was not carried out by it; that those people who did the attack are members of APC does equate to APC being responsible for the attack .

Is it safe to say that security agents at a point deceived the president by going after Chief Raymond Dokpesi?That is not true. A lot of things happened that Nigerians do not know. If we go into it, we will spill a lot of beans. Ebiwari, who is in prison now, was working with Dokpesi. My driver, who is late, was also working with Dokpesi and co. Henry Okah was with them. When they were caught, they saw messages in their handsets sent to Dokpesi, Henry Okah and other people. For everybody that was investigated, there were telephone calls that linked them together. The security tried to arrest every­body that was connected in the calls and text messages, etc.
When I was in the prison, kidnapping was going on. Dokpesi came to me when the first set of kidnapping was done. The police brought phone to me at Area 10. Dokpesi spoke to me through my sister, Hilda Dokubo. He asked me how I could facilitate and talk to these boys to release the people kidnapped. He said that it was giving a bad image to the government.
The Henry Okah people were anti-Goodluck. They didn’t want Goodluck to win the 2011 election; the same thing they are doing now endorsing Buhari. They issued the same statement in 2011 that nobody should vote for Goodluck.

You said that some Niger Delta lead­ers are deceiving Jonathan. Is Clarke among the people?
No, I didn’t say that Clarke was among those deceiving the president . What Clarke and few Ijaw leaders wanted was genuine. They wanted unity among Ijaw fighters, among Niger Delta people. They did not want disunity. They saw me as somebody who was not ready to abide by this. They felt that I was not ready to hide a few people who were doing some wrongs. They wanted me to keep quite, even when some things were not right but I cannot do that. By the way I was brought up I cannot keep quiet in the face of evil. Most of the people I am working with are from poor background. I have never known poverty. I have always had whatever I wanted. People want to be rich but wealth means nothing to me, it does not entice me. I was chauffeur-driven to school, except when I was in the village with my grandmother. My other siblings never experienced village life; that is why I am different from them. I went to live in the village because my father wanted me to learn the culture and language of my people. Most of siblings cannot speak our dialect very well. Clarke and others saw me as being arrogant.

You are considered as one of the few Nigerians making inflammatory utter­ances ahead of the February election. How do you feel being associated with this toga?
I have never made a statement without reacting to somebody. I am not a mad man. I see somebody with a gun on televi­sion, standing and saying: ‘We are going to kill you, Niger Delta; Niger Delta, we are coming’ and you expect me to fold my hands and watch him? No, I can’t do that. That is how the people in Gwoza waited: where are they today? The people in Mubi waited; where are they today? The people in Baga waited; where are they today? I will not wait. Let Ango Abdullahi and Bu­hari call their boys to order. If they shoot us, we will shoot them back. There are no two ways about it. You cannot tell me that I should fold my hands and get killed.
You see a man with armoured vehicle, anti aircraft and you tell me to fold my hands. I will not do so. I will also buy mine. I will also prepare. Before the man would shoot at me, I will shoot him. It is my right to life. Who is Ango Abdullahi? If not that he is from the North, would he have been a professor in the first place? What is his academic contribution? He makes careless and provocative statements and expects us to keep quiet. I will not do that. There is this thing that everybody has been doing – leave them, please, you are not like them, don’t go and compare your life with them, they will kill you, etc. That is nonsense. Don’t they have fleas and blood? If I shoot them, will they not die? Why should I leave them? They will look at me and say they are born to rule. I will punch anybody that says that.

You were quoted as having threatened to overrun Yorubaland if the people fail to vote for Jonathan next month. How true is the claim?
I never made such statement; it is a lie. Everybody knows that whenever I make a statement, I own up to it. There is no such thing. Many times, a lot of things are ascribed to me. For instance, they claimed I said ‘this Fulani man.’ I don’t use the world Fulani. What I use is Gambari for Fulani people. They claimed I said ‘this Fulani man, Buhari’ will do better for Ni­ger Delta people than President Jonathan. How can I say such thing? When he was head of state, let him show what he did for the Niger Delta. He was in the PTF, let him show what he did for the Niger Delta. What they do is that, because they feel that I am very vocal for the election, they ascribe all manner of things to me. They know that they have lost Yorubaland; how can they win in Yoruba? There is noth­ing they can do to win in Yorubaland. They lost the election in Ekiti. In Osun, where they have the power, they scored 52/48. They know they have lost elec­tion in Yorubaland. They want to inflame tempers; they came up with the claim that Jonathan’s brother said he would overrun Yorubaland. They have failed; they have access to the press and I have too. I never said such thing.
Source:The Sun

Charlie Hebdo attacker linked to Mutallab of Nigeria

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: underwear bomber

Said Kouachi, 34,, right linked with Mutallab

Said Kouachi, one of France’s Charlie Hebdo terrorists had links to Umar Mutallab, the Nigerian ‘underwear bomber’ who tried to blow up a commercial US flight on Christmas Day in 2009, it has been claimed.
The revelation comes as French investigators try to establish the connections the suspects had with terror networks and one another.
Two brothers who killed 12 in an attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine on Wednesday were shot dead Friday as they fled a warehouse north of Paris, firing at police.
Shortly afterwards in eastern Paris, anti-terrorist forces stormed a kosher supermarket where hostages were being held by a gunman with reported links to the brothers. The gunman and four hostages died.
A Yemeni journalist and researcher, Mohammed al-Kibsi, told CNN he had met and spoken with one of the brothers – Said Kouachi – in Yemen in 2011 and 2012.
He said Kouachi – who was studying Arabic grammar – shared a small apartment with the ‘underwear bomber’ Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab for one to two weeks in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen.
Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, was sentenced to life in prison in February 2012 for trying to bomb a US passenger plane flying from Amsterdam to Detroit as a would-be suicide mission for al-Qaeda.
He was badly burned when a bomb sewn into his underwear failed to detonate fully in the plane carrying nearly 300 people.
During his trial, Abdulmutallab said the bomb in his underwear was a ‘blessed weapon’ to avenge poorly treated Muslims around the world.
Mr al-Kibsi told CNN Abdulmutallab and Kouachi also prayed together at the Al-Tabari School while they were staying together. As yet, his claims have not been given official confirmation.
It came as Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch, known as AQAP, released a statement saying they directed the attack to make good on previous threats.
One of the brothers – Cherif Kouachi – named the terror group’s Yemen branch as his commanders.
A statement released in English said: ‘The leadership of #AQAP directed the operation, and they have chosen their target carefully as a revenge for the honor of Prophet (pbuh) [peace be upon him].
‘The target was in France in particular because of its obvious role in the war on Islam and oppressed nations.
‘The operation was the result of the threat of Sheikh Usama (RA). He warned the West about the consequences of the persistence in the blasphemy against Muslims’ sanctities.
‘Sheikh Usama (RA) said in his message to the West: If there is no check on the freedom of your words, then let your hearts be open to the freedom of our actions.
‘The Organization delayed to claim responsibility due to the executors’ security reasons.’
In a chilling telephone conversation with a journalist – later played out on French news network BFM – Kouachi said he knew he was talking to a reporter before saying: ‘I am a defender of the prophet.
‘I was sent by Al Qaeda of Yemen. I’m financed by Imam anwar al Awlaqi – Anwar is a predicateur (preacher). He has lived in the Yemen. He is one of the thinking heads of Al Qaeda.’

When humans are packed like a heap of trash in cargo ships

Smugglers squeezed almost 1,000 migrants into the bowls of the Blue Sky M cargo ship

Human traffickers are believed to have set the Ezadeen cargo ship on autopilot before abandoning it to continue at full speed across the Mediterranean with 359 illegal migrants on board.

Experts say it is part of a new tactic that has emerged in recent months, with smugglers using old freighters to transport hundreds of people - mostly Syrian refugees - from Turkey to EU countries.
Just days earlier, the Blue Sky M, carrying 970 people, was found adrift in Greek waters.
Who are the people organising these perilous journeys - and what is being done to stop them?
Organised crime
Officials say the Ezadeen was carrying the Sierra Leone flag, while the Blue Sky M was sailing under a Moldovan flag.
A previous case involved a freighter with the flag of Tonga, says Izabella Cooper, spokesperson for Europe's border control agency, Frontex.
But identifying the smugglers is not that straightforward.

The Ezadeen was marked as being from Freetown in Sierra Leone

The ships' crews are thought to have come from countries including Russia, Egypt and Syria, according to Ms Cooper.
And they may be linked to criminal gangs operating on an international scale.
"People trafficking is an international crime," says Claude Moraes, MEP and chair of the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee at the European Parliament.
"Part of it is still opportunistic. But as time goes on, it is far more organised and we see it linked to other crimes."
'Profitable business'
The one thing investigators are sure of is the motivation for the smugglers - money.
Police in Italy believe traffickers made some $3m (£1.9m; €2.5m) from the Ezadeen, with each traveller paying between $4,000 and $8,000 to board the ship.
"Smuggling people is very profitable business - probably one of the most profitable in the world," says Ms Cooper.

Rani Sarkas

This image is believed to be Rani Sarkas, a Syrian migrant on board the Blue Sky M

• Syrian migrant apparently found at the helm of the Blue Sky M when Italian coastguards boarded
• Italian daily La Repubblica quoted the 36-year-old as telling police he was contacted in Turkey by human traffickers who had posted notices on Facebook
• Said he was promised £10,000 ($15,000) and the possibility of sending his family to Europe in exchange for taking control of the boat once smugglers had abandoned it, according to reports
• Previously worked as a ship's captain
• Travelled from Mersin in Turkey, close to the Syrian border

Ms Cooper says it is such a money-maker that criminal gangs do not need to combine it with smuggling other illegal items.
"We don't see the ships carrying drugs or weapons.
"It's a business that is so profitable that it's worth the criminal organisations focusing on that only."
Easily purchased
Compared to the risks and cost the migrants themselves take on, the smugglers seem to be able to get hold of the ships quite easily.
David Olser, financial editor of maritime newspaper Lloyd's List, says scrap ships can be bought for around one million dollars (£550,000, 700,000 euros).
"Secondhand ships of the type used in the recent people trafficking cases can easily be purchased for less than the price of an unexceptional London flat," he says.

Most of those on board the Ezadeen appeared to be fleeing the conflict in Syria

There are regular auctions when shipping companies go bust, and old vessels are sometimes sold on online auction sites.
The BBC has also seen pages on Facebook offering services for buying and selling scrap cargo ships.
"Mostly the rock-bottom price for a ship is the scrap value, which is paid by tonne of recoverable steel," says Mr Olser.
But he says ships like these may not yield enough steel to make it worthwhile sailing them to India or Bangladesh for breaking.
"It's quite easy to imagine the smuggling gangs picking them up from friends for next to nothing."
So who is helping the people traffickers?
"There is no evidence of any involvement on the part of mainstream shipping companies in any of this," says Mr Olser.
"But as with every industry, there is obviously a small criminal fringe involved in activities such as smuggling contraband, narcotics and arms, and probably people trafficking as well."
'Ruthless travel agency'
Police in Italy say they arrested three people when coastguards managed to board the Blue Sky M.
According to reports in Italian media, one of them was Rani Sarkas, a Syrian migrant who said he had been paid £10,000 by smugglers to take charge of the ship once they had abandoned it.
"Although the Italian and other governments may be often proud of some arrests of 'boat drivers', the illegal migration bosses are still safely based in Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Italy," said Andrea Di Nicola, assistant professor in criminology at the University of Trento and co-author of the book Confessions of a People Smuggler.
"They are taking advantage of the weak points of certain laws and of border controls in Europe. Small fish are caught while big fish stay safely behind."
Mr Di Nicola spent more than two years following migrant routes to find out who is running what he calls "the most ruthless travel agency on the planet".

The migrants are often forced to travel with no food or water

He says using cargo ships is the "perfect way to smuggle asylum seekers since they do not need to be hidden.
"The opposite - they need to be intercepted and rescued."
'Incredibly dangerous'
"The problem is that the smugglers are actually operating relatively freely," says Mr Moraes.
He says EU member states deal with the trafficking situation once it becomes a domestic issue, so when the migrants arrive.
But the problem is that different countries have different criminal codes.
And physically stopping these migrant ships is also very hazardous.
"This is an incredibly dangerous modus operandi that we are seeing," says the Frontex spokesperson, Ms Cooper.
"In latest case, the ship was abandoned and set on autopilot and no one was able to stop it.

"It was only when fuel ran out that rescue crews were able to board it."

BBC

Kenya ICC witness Killed

Meschak Yebei was killed on a visit to see his son and pregnant wife

"I just couldn't bring myself to look at his body again; it was so badly mutilated... I couldn't recognise him at first," the wife of Meschak Yebei told me outside a hospital mortuary in the western Kenyan town of Eldoret.

Lillian Yebei said that her husband, who was due to appear as a defence witness at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, had disappeared 10 days earlier.

He was a good man, a reconciler and I don't know why someone would kill him”

End Quote Meschak Yebei's wife

His body was found over the weekend about 40km (25 miles) from his home in a river, caught up between some rocks.

It is not clear who was behind the killing - the authorities say they are investigating.
But the family firmly believes the motive was because of his association with the ICC.
And as brutal as the killing was, it was not unique in Eldoret, a town hit by the ethnic violence which following disputed elections in 2007.
Those believed to be responsible for that violence have been at the centre of ICC prosecutions.
Several families have reported the mysterious disappearance of relatives who had ties or were seen to be co-operating with The Hague-based court.

Source:BBC

Living with two penises is 'special and unique'

A man with two penises has been speaking to Newsbeat about living with the condition.

Known only as Triple D, the 25-year-old from the east coast of America claims to have had 1,000 sexual partners.
He suffers from diphallia which is a rare condition where a male is born with two penises.
According to a report by the BMJ - the global healthcare knowledge provider - one-in-five million males in the world are born this way.

WARNING: This article contains graphic content that some people may find offensive

"My life would never ever be the same again if I allowed my identity to be revealed," he told Newsbeat. We agreed to keep his identity anonymous.
He said he doesn't want to become "a butt of a joke" and a "novelty".
"If I wasn't going to have sex with you then you wouldn't know I had two [penises]. It's rare that anyone does know."

'Special and unique'

Growing up Triple D was told he was "special and unique" by his parents.
He remembers them sitting him down and making it clear: "Don't play doctor with anyone else, don't take your pants off in front of other people."
He says he managed to keep his condition hidden from friends but when schoolmates found out in high school he went through a hard time.
"Initially I didn't want people in school to know because I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings," he explained.

I wish my parents would have made it clear to me that people make fun of things that they don't understand

Triple D

I didn't want others guys to be jealous or feel bad that they didn't have two. It was never put into my head they might hate me because I had two or they might think I was weird.
"It didn't get out until a girl I'd been seeing had been interested in going all the way. I hadn't thought about it and I was trying to avoid it. It wasn't until then that I thought she might not be able to handle this - it might freak her."
Aged 16, he says he considered having one of his penises removed.
"Girls were starting to stare at my crotch a lot more - I denied it.
"I wish my parents would have made it clear to me that people make fun of things that they don't understand. I've always had these, this is my life. When I look down, what I see looks normal to me."
Questioned about why he's willing to talk about his two penises but not willing to reveal his identity he says: "Everywhere I would go, people would know who I was. They would have expectations."
Triple D has self-published a book called Double Header: My Life With Two Penises in which he gives a full account of coping with diphallia.

'Very much bisexual'

He claims to have had more than 1,000 sexual partners.
"I wanted to do whatever I wanted to do with whoever I wanted to do it with - whoever would do it with me.
"It was owning it, it was being me and accepting it and putting them to use. There were situations where people would freak out."
Triple D describes himself as "very much bisexual" and has been in polyamorous relationships - sexual or romantic relationships that are not exclusive to one person.
He says his longest relationship was with a couple.

"Entering into the porn industry crossed my mind. I remember thinking about it but I don't want to become a novelty."

Triple D

Everyday things like buying underwear are an issue - so he tells Newsbeat he doesn't wear any.
Both penises are fully functioning, "I can urinate and ejaculate through both at the same time," he explains.
"Entering into the porn industry has crossed my mind. I knew people who worked in the sex industry and some of them knew what I had, some had heard what I had.
"Nobody had seen it. I remember thinking about it but I don't want to become a novelty. My dignity is priceless."
Newsbeat has seen photographs which support Triple D's claims but cannot independently verify his identity.

Source:BBC