Taliban film shows leader is dead

The Taliban in Pakistan have released a video confirming that their former leader Baitullah Mehsud is dead.
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A video received by the BBC shows the body of the former head of Pakistan's largest Taliban group lying in a room. It is not clear where it was taken.
Mr Mehsud was killed on 6 August in the tribal region of South Waziristan in a missile attack by a suspected US drone.
The video came as officials said at least six people had been killed in a fresh drone attack in North Waziristan.
See a map of the region
The strike near the town of Mir Ali was the third such attack in the past 24 hours against militant targets near the Afghan border, intelligence officials said. Two missile attacks on Tuesday, one in South Wziristan and one in North Waziristan, left at least 12 suspected militants dead.
Covered
US and Pakistani officials were quick to claim Mr Mehsud's death, but it took nearly three weeks for the Taliban to admit he had been hurt in the attack and had later died.
It is not clear why they have decided to release the video of their former leader now. They announced his death and named a successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, in late August.
The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad says the video shows Baitullah Mehsud lying on a flat surface in a room, amid virtual silence.
His entire body is covered in a white funeral shroud, so it is difficult to tell how his body was injured in the attack.
There are no marks on his face, except for a few scratches near his nose.
A man is shown in the video crouching near the body clearly stricken with grief.
The video, which lasts nearly two minutes, has little audio. Two sentences are spoken.
A voice, apparently that of the video maker, says: "If there was a leader, there would have been some preparations."
Later, the same voice says: "May Allah destroy these cruel people who do not use rifles and Allah knows what else, to kill us."
Pakistan's government publicly condemns drone attacks, arguing that they fuel anti-American feeling, but many observers say Islamabad secretly endorses the tactic.
Hundreds of militants and civilians have been killed in dozens of such attacks in the past year.

British girl banned from selling granny on eBay

Ad said grandmother was cuddly but annoying
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LONDON : A 10-year-old British girl has been barred from trying to sell her granny on eBay, who she complained was "cuddly" but "annoying," the auction website said Wednesday.
Zoe Pemberton wrote a light-hearted listing to sell her 61-year-old grandmother Marion Goodall, of Clacton, southeastern England, but eBay said the advert breached human trafficking regulations.
"Obviously we have rules about the selling of people," said an eBay spokeswoman. "We had to take it down but it was quite amusing.
"The little girl had described her grandmother as 'annoying' but had gone on to say she liked crosswords and was 'cuddly' and there were quite a few offers."

US probes Facebook Obama assassination poll

750 vote as health care debate gets serious
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DUBAI : The United State's Secret Service was investigating on Tuesday a poll published on social networking website Facebook for asking if President Barack Obama should be assassinated amid tensions on planned health care reforms.
The controversial poll asked users: "Should Obama be killed?" and offered four answers: No, Maybe, Yes and "Yes, if he cuts my health care."
The Secret Service said it was treating the survey, posted on Facebook over the weekend, like any other threat to an American president.
The poll was only removed from Facebook after the agency alerted the company, which said the poll was created by a person using an add-on application.
"All we are saying is we are aware of the poll and we are investigating the matter," Secret Service spokesman, Ed Donovan, told Al Arabiya.
More than 750 Facebook users had reportedly cast votes by the time the poll was yanked.
When asked about what the majorty of votes were Donovan said: "We will not be giving the nuts and bolts of the investigation."
The president's proposed healthcare plans have stirred much controversy with several anti-Obama protests being held across the U.S.
Former president Jimmy Carter and House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, have blamed racism for the outrage but Obama later dismissed the claims on The Late show with David Letterman where he joked: "I was actually black before the election."
According to the Britain's Sky News, Southern Poverty Law Center, a U.S. civil rights group, reported a rise in traffic on white supremacist websites since Obama was inaugurated.

Bin Laden in "I love Guantanamo" shirt in US ad

Second poster depicts Cheney "Qaeda's best recruiter"
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WASHINGTON: Travelers on the metro in the U.S. capital risk coming facing to face with al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, smiling and wearing an "I Love Guantanamo" T-shirt.
The irreverent billboard image of America's number one enemy, just a short distance from the White House, is part of an activist campaign aimed at highlighting that al-Qaeda uses the U.S. detention center as a recruiting tool.
The metro billboard is "to remind policymakers that torture is illegal, unethical and a top recruiting tool for the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network," creators from the Avaaz activist group said.
Avaaz believes Guantanamo is a potent symbol for the "war on terror" torture excesses of former president George W. Bush and that al-Qaeda plays on this fact to pull in new members.
Another poster presents former vice-president Dick Cheney, who has ardently defended the controversial interrogation techniques of the Bush-era, begging the question: "Could this be al-Qaeda's best recruiter?"
President Barack Obama, who has vowed to shut the camp by January, is shown in a third poster, looking pensive, alongside a slogan from his inauguration speech: "We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals."
The advertisement campaign aimed at shutting the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is being run at Farragut North metro station, one of the closest to the White House, and in the Washington Post daily newspaper.

Malaysian villagers amazed by "Allah meat"

People flock to see meat inscribed with God's name
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DUBAI: A family of Malaysian villagers became the talk of the town after they found the word Allah, meaning God in Arabic, inscribed on meat bought from the local market, the country's press reported on Tuesday.
Housewife Rashadah Abdul Rani, 57, said her son bought the meat from a market in the village and it was her daughter who discovered the inscription.
"I cut the meat into six pieces and soaked them in the water. It was my daughter, who was helping me in the kitchen, who saw the word "Allah" on all six pieces of the meat," Rani told reporters at her house in Kampung Alur Gunung.
Rani said the discovery had changed her plans of cooking the meat for feast and said she would now dry the meat and keep it to use for medicinal purposes.
In 2008, a similar story was reported from northern Nigeria where a restaurant served a piece of meat inscribed with Allah. The customer who discovered the meat said he was about to eat it when he suddenly noticed the words.Also a similar incident was reported in 2006 when hundreds of Muslims flocked to a pet shop in Liverpool, England to see two gold fish hailed a "miracle" as one's scales spelled Allah and the other Muhammad, Islam's prophet.
The internet is also rife with videos of animals thought to be growling Allah's name.
For Muslims such occurrences only further signal the greatness of their Lord as Islam teaches that everything in the world from the sun and moon to everything with a soul is commanded by God.