Alabama Hostage Siege Ends As Boy Saved

A boy who was held hostage for a week has been found safe and his captor dead after FBI agents stormed an underground bunker in Alabama.

Officials said the raid went ahead after negotiations with 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes deteriorated and he was seen with a gun.

Fearing the child was in imminent danger, agents entered the bunker to rescue the five-year-old.

Officials break the news to gathered media

The boy, who has been named only as Ethan, was taken to hospital nearby. Officials said the child has Asperger's syndrome.

Dykes had been accused of snatching the boy from a school bus last week after killing the driver, Charles Poland.

An ambulance that had been parked near Dykes' bunker was seen driving away. However, it was not clear if anyone was inside and the vehicle did not have its sirens or emergency lights on.

Authorities initially declined to elaborate on how they had observed Dykes or on how he died.

However, an official in Midland City, citing information from law enforcement sources, said police had shot Dykes. 

The scene of the hostage drama

Daryle Hendry, who lives about a quarter of a mile from where Dykes was holed up, said he heard a boom followed by a gunshot.

Officials had been sending food and medicine to Dykes and the boy in the bunker.

Neighbours described Dykes as a man who once beat a dog to death with a lead pipe, threatened to shoot children for setting foot on his property, and patrolled his garden at night with a torch and a firearm.

Government records and interviews with neighbours indicate that Dykes had been in the US Navy, serving on active duty from 1964 to 1969. His record shows several awards, including the Vietnam Service Medal and the Good Conduct Medal.

He had some scrapes with the law in Florida, including a 1995 arrest for improper exhibition of a weapon. The misdemeanour was dismissed. He also was arrested for marijuana possession in 2000.

He returned to Alabama about two years ago, moving onto the rural tract about 100 yards from his nearest neighbours.

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Malala: Schoolgirl Shot By Taliban Speaks Out

The Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head by the Taliban has spoken out about her recovery for the first time since she was nearly killed.

Malala Yousufzai, 15, underwent successful surgery to reconstruct her skull and restore her hearing at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham at the weekend.

She escaped death by a matter of inches when she was shot on a school bus in northwestern Pakistan on October 9 last year - as the bullet entered just above her left eye and ran along her jaw, "grazing" her brain.

The Islamist gunmen said they targeted her because she promoted girls' education and "Western thinking".

In a message recorded by the hospital on Sunday, Malala said she was "feeling alright" and "happy that both the operations were successful".

She said: "I can also walk a little bit, I can talk and I'm feeling better."

Despite having five hours of surgery, Malala added: "It does not feel like I had a very big operation."

Malala on her path to recovery

Her doctors have expressed their delight at her recovery. They hope that the latest procedures - to put a titanium plate on her damaged skull and to fit a cochlear implant - will be the last surgery she needs.

Neurosurgeon Anwen White said that her "brain is healing very well" and she did not expect any long lasting cognitive problems.

She said the teenager would continue with rehabilitation and then "hopefully be discharged home fairly soon".

University Hospitals Birmingham medical director Dave Rosser said Malala was "doing very well".

He added that just a day after the operations Malala was "already talking about resuming her work and furthering her cause for women's education".

"Most of us would be feeling sorry for ourselves 24 hours after an operation like that, not talking about helping other people."

In another video interview, filmed before her surgery on January 22 but only just published, Malala is heard saying that she was "getting better, day by day".

Surgeons operating on Malala

Speaking clearly but with a slight stiffness in her upper lip, she said: "Today you can see that I am alive. I can speak, I can see you, I can see everyone.

"It's just because of the prayers of people. Because all people - men, women, children - all of them have prayed for me. And because of all these prayers God has given me this new life, a second life.

"And I want to serve. I want to serve the people. I want every girl, every child, to be educated. For that reason, we have organised the Malala Fund."

Malala was airlifted to Britain from Pakistan in October to receive specialist medical care and protection against further Taliban threats.

She is expected to remain in the UK for some time as her father, Ziauddin, has received a diplomatic post based in Birmingham.

The Malala Fund is a girls' education charity set up in late 2012. It launched with a $10m (£6.4m) donation from Pakistan.

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Magdalene Laundries: Victims Await Report

By Vicki Hawthorne, Ireland Correspondent

A report into the running of the Magdalene laundries in Ireland is due to be published.

The religious-run institutions started in the late 1700s as places to rehabilitate so-called "fallen" women.

It is estimated that around 30,000 women, mainly single mothers and teenage girls, were placed in the laundries to work.

There were 10 Magdalene laundries across Ireland and the last one closed its doors in 1996.

In the years since, women who lived in the laundries have spoken out about the harsh and gruelling work they had to carry out.

They also detailed horrendous physical and emotional abuse at the hands of the religious congregations which ran the workhouses.

The Irish government has always denied that the state was involved in the operation of the Magdalene laundries, but survivors' accounts claim the opposite.

The Magdalene Sisters film depicted the struggle of women in the laundries

A committee was set up 18 months ago to investigate exactly what role the Irish state played in the institutions between 1922 and 1996.

It was led by Martin McAleese, the husband of former Irish president Mary McAleese.

The plight of the women inspired the film The Magdalene Sisters in 2002.

Steven O'Riordan now represents some of the women after making a documentary about them.

"I would believe their families and wider society were fooled into thinking that these women or children would get a better education if they went into these institutions," he said.

Steven O'Riordan: 'the women and children were victims of slave labour'

"But what materialised in my own opinion is that they became a money-making scheme and these women became victims of slave labour."

The Magdalene laundries were run by four religious congregations: Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, The Good Shepherds, The Sisters of Mercy and the Religious Sisters of Charity.

Dr Katherine O'Donnell, director of the Women's Study Centre at University College Dublin, said: "The state sent girls and women into the Magdalene laundry system through courts and mother-and-baby homes.

"They never checked on those girls and women to see if in fact they ever left."

Many of the Magdalene women have since died.

Those who remain, and their families, say they have been ignored in Ireland, while other abuses within the Catholic church and state-run institutions have been recognised, apologised for and compensation issued.

The report may give the Magdalene women the voice and, in turn, the apology they have longed for.

Solicitor Leslie Keegan is representing some of the laundries' survivors and believes the Irish government is accountable.

"There is irrefutable evidence of the involvement of the state in the confinement of these women," he said. "So absolutely the state should take responsibility."

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Syria War: 'Children Are Biggest Casualty'

By Stuart Ramsay, Chief Correspondent, in Aleppo

The anguished cries of a little boy receiving treatment without anaesthetic for a shrapnel wound to the face fills the putrid air of a converted shop that is an Aleppo field hospital.

The walls are splattered with blood. All around are shop fronts with medics working on the latest injured.

A car pulls out and a young man shot in a drive-by attack staggers inside followed by his screaming mother.

In rebel-held Aleppo, this is just another day. It isn't particularly busy. It is just constant.

Medics, who have gone underground after their hospital was reduced to rubble by a targeted Syrian government bombing campaign, say children are being injured and killed in greater numbers now than the rebel fighters.

Stuck inside this city the children are on the streets more than anyone else. Playing or scavenging amongst piles of rubbish for anything of value to take home, they are now the most vulnerable.

Hamid Sakia was shot by a sniper while playing football

A short distance away in another makeshift hospital room nine-year-old Hamid Sakia whimpers in pain; a sack of draining blood lies on the floor. He was shot by a sniper while playing football. He will lose his kidney. The medics are waiting for a surgeon to get enough anaesthetic to operate.

He whispers a "Yes" as I ask him if it hurts. His mother looks on holding back tears. She buried her daughter this week. Her family is being torn apart.

It is not about the lack of food or heating or supplies, she says.

"What will happen in the future?" She asks: "What will happen? Everyone is scared."

In a room next door, surrounded by seat cushions to try to keep the breeze from her skin, Aya Hussein stares motionlessly ahead. She is dreadfully burnt. Her tiny body a web of fierce welts caused by a fire when her apartment was hit by an artillery round.

Aya Hussein was burned when she was hit by an artillery round

The cushions are her treatment. This is life in Aleppo.

This city is slowly being destroyed. There is barely a building unscarred by the bombing from fighter jets and artillery. A million plus people still live here amongst the ruins where shells and snipers are a constant.

Cars cross the most dangerous parts of town protected by mud walls. You can hear the sniper rounds thudding into the barricade or whining over head as you pass.

The dreadful sound of artillery rounds smashing into buildings never stops wherever you go.

Once tree-filled parks are now open spaces. There is no heat or electricity in Aleppo so wood has become a precious commodity.

In the markets there are plenty of local vegetables. But meat, gas, fuel and pretty much everything else comes from Turkey at a huge cost. Gas bottles are 15 times their proper cost.

The city's scarred buildings

People are living in battered apartment blocks. Theirs is a virtual twilight of dark stair wells and shuttered rooms.

The artillery comes from the south so they huddle in north facing homes. But the shrapnel and the explosive power of the bombs means nowhere is truly safe.

"I am hopeless. I can only trust in my God," 78-year-old Mahmoud tells me. He and his wife Emira are alone. Their family has fled, they depend on the handouts of neighbours. Their flat is freezing and bare.

On the next storey Rada cuddles two of her six children. It is freezing inside and they have just a few scraps of food to eat.

"My husband won't leave Aleppo. We want to stay here whatever happens. Our children are ill, they are frightened, but we have nowhere else to go," she says.

The rebels and the government forces appear to have fought themselves to a standstill. In the middle a population is stuck, surviving but dying as well, every day.

This is Aleppo.

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Assad: Syria Can Confront Israeli Aggression

President Bashar al Assad has accused Israel of trying to destabilise Syria after an air strike on a military research base near Damascus last week.

The comments by Mr Assad are the first since the attack on Wednesday that US officials say was targeting a convoy of anti-aircraft weapons inside Syria bound for Hizbollah.

State TV said Mr Assad spoke during a meeting with visiting top Iranian official Saeed Jalili.

Saeed Jalili and Bashar al Assad

The president said Syria is capable of facing current challenges and can "confront any aggression" that would target the Syrian people.

Purported images of the targeted site show destroyed cars, trucks and military vehicles. A building has broken windows and damaged interiors, but no major structural damage.

State news agency SANA quoted Mr Jalili as reaffirming Tehran's "full support for the Syrian people ... facing the Zionist aggression, and its continued coordination to confront the conspiracies and foreign projects".

Following the attack, Syria's ambassador to Lebanon, Ali Abdul-Karim Ali, said Damascus "has the option and the capacity to surprise in retaliation," but that it was up to the relevant authorities to choose the time and place.

Israel's defence minister has indicated that his country was behind the air strike, in the first public comments from his government on the attack.

Ehud Barak brought the issue up at a gathering of the world's top diplomats and defence officials in Germany, initially saying: "I cannot add anything to what you have read in the newspapers about what happened in Syria several days ago."

But he added: "I keep telling frankly that we said - and that's proof when we said something we mean it - we say that we don't think it should be allowed to bring advanced weapons systems into Lebanon."

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California Tour Bus Crash: Eight People Dead

At least eight people have been killed after a tour bus collided with two other vehicles in the mountains of southern California.

Another 38 people were taken to hospital with injuries after the crash about 80 miles east of Los Angeles near the town of Forest Falls, California Highway Patrol spokesman Mario Lopez said.

The bus driver reported having brake problems as the vehicle came down the mountain on State Route 38, Mr Lopez said.

It crashed into a car before flipping over and hitting a pick-up truck that was pulling a trailer.

A spokeswoman for the US Department of Transportation said the passengers on the bus were part of a tour group from Tijuana, Mexico.

The group were reportedly headed for Big Bear Lake, a popular mountain ski resort northeast of San Bernardino.

The injured are being treated at hospitals in the area. Fifteen of them are reported to be in critical condition, reports said.

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Greece: Far-Right March On Athens

By Anthee Carassava in Athens

It was supposed to be a remembrance rally, but as thousands packed Athens to honour three fallen heroes, the black-clad crowd of men in military fatigues and baseball caps crested with mangled swastikas, offered the grimmest reminder yet of Greece's tireless march to the far right.

Organised by Golden Dawn, which emerged from political obscurity here to win 7% of the national vote last June, last night's event showcased the group's biggest public gathering to date.

Toting blue-and-white Greek flags, orange-red flares and wooden torches, some 30,000 supporters, according to organisers, gathered in central Athens, shouting slogans indicative of the party's virulent and truculent beliefs.

"We are winning the hearts and minds of the people, because we say it as it is," roared Ilias Kassidiaris, the party's spokesman.

"These politicians who have ruled us for decades are crooks. They have betrayed our national interests. They have led us to humiliating defeats," he said, referring to a near-war showdown with Nato ally Turkey in 1996.

Three Greek Airforce pilots were killed in that crisis and the dispute over contesting claims to a barren outcrop in Aegean Sea forced then US trouble-shooter Richard Holbrooke to intervene.

He ordered both Nato allies not only to climb down from their conflicting claims but to refrain from further ownership disputes of islands in the oil-rich Aegean.

For hardcore nationalists like Golden Dawn sympathisers, the retreat marked an embarrassing sell-out of national sovereignty - a theme gaining fresh appeal among the country's young and unemployed youth as foreign creditors demand greater control over the Greece's failing finances.

"They calls us fascists, thugs and criminals," says Vassilis, a 23-year-old recruit, who joined the party because of his disenchantment with the country's feckless political elite.

Golden Dawn party leader Nikos Michalioliakos addresses the rally

"We're nationalists. We're patriots. And if these guys who ruled the country for decades had a fibre the nationalism we're running on, they would have never brought the country to its current predicament."

With extremism - left and right - polarising Greek society, hundreds of riot police and undercover officers were on alert on Saturday in a bid to thwart potential attacks, springing from the gathering, held within yards of the prime minister's office and the Turkish embassy in Athens. Surrounding roads, also, were cordoned off by police, bringing traffic to a halt and angering locals.

"For a nation that suffered dearly under the Nazis, neo-Nazi gatherings, like these, should be banned," said Sofia Laniti, a 47-year-old saleswoman.

Leftist radicals argue the so-called Imia Day protest is a veiled tribute to the party's true ideological mentor: Adolf Hitler.

The Nazi leader was appointed to the head of the German Chancellery on January 30, 1933, marking the start of a 12-year reign of terror across Europe.

Eighty years later, far-right parties feeding on popular resentment to growing fiscal austerity policies, are attracting growing applause in many corners of Europe. Sliding economies and rising unemployment, have voters largely giving the boot to mainstream parties they hold most responsible.

In Greece, attempts by the government to exclude Golden Dawn and its vehement nationalism that singles out immigrants as a threat, have backfired.

If anything, polls show, the far-right group has gained even greater political ground, since its startling entry to Parliament, becoming Greece's third largest party with over 10% national support.

Mr Kassidiaris said: "This is a day of remembrance. It's a day to remember that Golden Dawn is here to stay. And so long as it does, there will be hope for the country."

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Chris Kyle: Ex-US Navy Seal Sniper Shot Dead

A former US Navy Seal sniper has been shot dead at a shooting range in Texas, according to reports.

Chris Kyle, who also wrote the best-selling book, American Sniper, was killed alongside another man.

It is believed the 38-year-old had been helping a soldier who was recovering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Local newspapers have quoted Erath County Sheriff Tommy Bryant who said the pair were found dead on Saturday afternoon at Rough Creek Lodge's shooting range which is about an hour from Fort Worth.

The Star-Telegram reported that witnesses told police a gunman opened fire on the men, then fled in a truck belonging to one of the victims.

The newspapers said a 25-year-old man was later taken into custody in Lancaster, southeast of Dallas. The motive is unclear.

Co-author of the book, Scott McEwen, paid tribute to his friend: "It just comes as a shock and it's staggering to think that after all Chris has been through, that this is how he meets his end, because there are so many ways he could have been killed."

American Sniper details Kyle's four combat tours of duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom and the two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars he was awarded for bravery.

It has been claimed he was responsible for 160 kills during his career.

After leaving the Navy he founded Craft International, a company that provided combat and weapons training to military, police and corporate and civilian clients.

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Iraq: 33 Dead In Bomb Blast And Gun Attack

At least 33 people have been killed in a coordinated suicide car bombing and gun attack on police headquarters in northern Iraq.

A car bomb was set off before militants armed with guns, grenades and suicide vests stormed and sought to take control of the compound in the city of Kirkuk, police said.

A further 70 people were also injured in the the deadly attacks - shattering a relative calm in recent days in the war-torn country.

The attackers struck during the morning rush hour in the city centre, Brigadier General Natah Mohammed Sabr, head of the city's emergency services department said.

In addition to the casualties, the blast caused extensive damage to nearby buildings.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for Sunday's attack.

Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed city, is at the centre of a dispute over oil and land rights between Baghdad's central government and the autonomous northern Kurdish region.

The unresolved row is persistently cited by diplomats and officials as the biggest threat to Iraq's long-term stability.

Tensions between Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni factions in Iraq's power-sharing government have been on the rise this year.

Militants continue to strike almost daily, and carry out at least one big attack a month.

The latest violence comes amid weeks of protests calling for Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki to resign.

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Egypt: Police Beat Protester Outside Palace

Bloody Scenes Expected In Port Said

Updated: 11:11pm UK, Thursday 31 January 2013

By Sam Kiley, Middle East Correspondent, in Port Said

This city has always prided itself on resistance to invaders.

The people of Port Said believe they saw off the British in the 1950s and the Israelis in the 1960s.

Now they're rolling up their sleeves to take on Egypt's president, Mohammed Morsi, promising a second round of bloodletting in as many weeks.

A beach resort city that guards the Mediterranean entrance to the Suez Canal, Port Said, was torn by violence last weekend.

Thirty people and two policemen were killed in running street battles.

Locals deny that any of them shot at the police. But there are bullet holes in the walls of the partly burned officers club on the sea front that say otherwise.

Still, there is no hiding the violence that the city met when protestors attacked the prison.

Dozens of market stalls and tiny homes were razed during the fighting – local businesses were riddled with bullets.

The prison was attacked because it housed 21 men condemned to death for their parts in the killing of 74 football fans during a riot on February 1 last year.

Some 59 others, among them nine police, are still waiting for their verdicts in the jail.

The killings last week have fuelled what was already going to be an incendiary brew on the day marking the first anniversary of the riot in which supporters of the Cairo team Al Ahly were beaten and crushed to death.

Ansaf Mousa's son Osama el Sherbiri, 23, an IT graduate was killed last week during the demonstrations.

"Morsi has blood on his hands. Osama el Sherbini exploded the whole world. His death will fuel an explosion.

"There will be a protest against Morsi like none before. This will be the nuclear explosion that blows up the whole place."

Her anger is shared by families across the city.

The bullet that killed Osama wounded his friend Mohammed.

"The youth will be on the streets (on February 1), they have to be to take revenge for Osama and all the others. This isn't going to end here."

A state of emergency was declared in Port Suez, Ismailia and Port Said last week. Curfews imposed for most of the night hours have since been cut back to a token regulation of the small hours of the morning as they were entirely ignored anyway.

General Abdel Fatteh al Sisi, the commander of the Egyptian armed forces, has warned that he fears the nation may fall apart .

He singled out the Suez City as especially troubling – promising to ensure the security of the canal as his top priority.

The region, though prosperous and benefiting from tax free zones and $5.2bn (£3.3bn) in revenues to Egypt for transit fees for shipping, is not associated with the secular middle class that had driven so much of the revolution in Cairo.

Osama's family are deeply religious. Many of the men have callused foreheads from years of prayer.

Yet they object to the Muslim Brotherhood's domination of Egypt's constitutional process and presidency.

"The Muslim Brotherhood are not Muslims – they are just after power," said Osama's mother.

That, in Port Said, seems to be the dominant view.

In a downtown coffee house clattering with domino players El Badry Farghali, a veteran MP who has opposed the military governments which were swept away two years ago and the new Muslim Brotherhood regime ever since, held court to a new generation of young protestors.

"The Muslim Brotherhood will not give up power. They will only manoeuvre. They are backward. They do not have the capacity to run the country on their own. And they will not make concessions. But the Egyptian people will force them to back down," he said.

Port Said has chosen the anniversary of the football chaos to drive home a political message. The odds are that it will be written in blood.

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