2 Senior Khmer Rouge Leaders Are Convicted in Cambodia, Decades After Rule

This combination photo released on Thursday by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia shows Khieu Samphan, left, and Nuon Chea as their verdicts were delivered.

 Cambodia — A court on Thursday found the two most senior surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime, which brutalized Cambodia during the 1970s, guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced them to life in prison.

The chief judge, Nil Nonn, said the court found that there had been “a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Cambodia” and that the two former leaders were part of a “joint criminal enterprise” that bore responsibility. They were convicted of murder and extermination, among other crimes.More than 1.7 million people died under Khmer Rouge rule between 1975 and 1979.

Mam Sonando, at a birthday celebration, has been arrested three times over reports on his Beehive Radio program that offended the government.In Cambodia, Voicing the StruggleMARCH 13, 2014
The Lede Blog: The Economist Behind the Khmer RougeJUNE 27, 2011

ISIS Forces Appear to Capture Iraq’s Largest Dam

People carried a wounded victim at the scene of a car bombing outside a Shiite prayer hall on Thursday in Kirkuk.

Sunni militants appeared on Thursday to have captured the Mosul dam, the largest in Iraq, as their advances in the country’s north created an onslaught of refugees and set off fearful rumors in Erbil, the Kurdish regional capital.

An official in the office of Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish regional government, said Thursday afternoon that Kurdish forces, or pesh merga, were still fighting for control of the dam. But several other sources, including residents of the area and a Kurdish security official, said it had already been captured by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, a potentially catastrophic development for Iraq’s civilian population.

Ebola emergency turns spotlight on experimental drugs

A health worker, wearing personal protection gear, offers water to a woman with Ebola virus disease (EVD), at a treatment centre for infected persons in Kenema Government Hospital, in Kenema, Eastern Province, Sierra Leone in this August, 2014 handout photo provided by UNICEF August 6, 2014.

With hundreds of patients in Africa suffering the devastating effects of Ebola, health experts are scrambling to determine which drugs might offer the best experimental treatment, and researchers are being pressed by government officials to speed up their work.

Three treatments have shown especially promising results in monkeys, the researchers said. One, produced by tiny California biotech Mapp Biopharmaceutical, gained international prominence this week when it was given to two U.S. aid workers who contracted Ebola in West Africa and have since shown signs of improvement.

Others are from Vancouver-based Tekmira Pharmaceuticals and privately-held Profectus BioSciences, of Tarrytown, NY.

NNPC spends N620m daily refining crude oil –Alison-Madueke

Moves by the Federal Government to tackle the menace of crude oil theft through the option of crude transportation by marine vessel has increased Nigeria’s cost of refining hydro-carbons to a whopping N620 million daily, Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke has said.

The Minister stated this in Lagos yesterday at the opening ceremony of the Nigeria Annual International Conference and Exhibition (NAICE) of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).

She regretted that the oil and gas industry had been plagued with a plethora of challenges that have negatively impacted on the ability to meet national crude oil production target as well as loss of revenue to investors, environmental degradation and sometimes loss of lives and property.

Impeachment Panel Dismisses Allegations against Nasarawa Gov. Al-Makura

The panel set up to investigate the 16 allegations of gross misconduct leveled against Gov. Umaru Al-Makura by the Nasarawa State House of Assembly on Tuesday dismissed the allegations for want of evidence.The Chairman of the panel, Yusuf Usman, during the proceeding of the panel in Lafia, said the assembly failed or neglected to appear before it to prove its allegations.

He said the panel, therefore, had no choice than to dismiss the allegations. Usman said the panel had, at the Monday sitting, given a grace of 24 hours to the House of Assembly to appear before it and substantiate its case. He also drew attention to the appearance of counsel to the assembly, led by Mr Ocha Ulegede on Tuesday.