FATAL CRASHES AND SEVERAL DEATHS LINKED TO FAULTY SWITCHES IN GM MOTORS, CANADA.

General Motors Co., Canada is undergoing probing, subject to a recall to fix faulty switches which allegedly led to two fatal crashes and at least 13 deaths in the United States. The country's top transportation official told Reuters on monday.
According to Reuters,
"Transport Minister Lisa Raitt said she was sure the number of complaints potentially linking accidents to the switches would rise as people became aware of the recall.

"There were two accidents into which we are currently having investigations which may be related to this defect and this recall and I can confirm that," she said in a telephone interview.

An official at Transport Canada - the federal transportation ministry - earlier said both accidents involved vehicles which were subject to the recall. The airbags did not deploy in either case.

Complaints about the crashes were filed in June 2013 and April of this year. Raitt said she did not know how long Transport Canada's probes would take to wrap up.

The United States this month fined GM $35 million for not recalling cars with faulty ignition switches as quickly as possible.

At least 13 deaths in the United States have so far been linked to the problem.

Asked whether she felt fatal crashes in Canada could be linked to the faulty switches, Raitt told Reuters: "I think people are going to take a look at the accidents they had and wonder whether or not the faulty switch was at fault and I expect Transport Canada will get more phone calls."

Raitt said Ottawa is trying to determine whether the firm had delayed the recall of some cars, breaking the law in doing so, but she added that there was no evidence that GM Canada had contravened Canadian laws.

"If information comes to light that GM Canada is not being truthful with us, we do have the ability to go back and prosecute," she said.

Raitt said she did not know how Transport Canada would handle the nine complaints. Asked about the complaints, GM Canada said it was working closely with the ministry.

"We will continue to offer our full cooperation with the federal government as we work through these difficult issues," said spokeswoman Adria MacKenzie."

NIJ STUDENTS' WEEK 2014; UNUSUAL IS THE STANDARD

The 2014 edition of students' week in the Nigerian Institute of Journalism, Ogba, Lagos promises to be more interesting and fun filled than the previous ones as various events are already taking place in the pre students' week activities to get the students prepared for the never-stopping fun still to come during the week itself.

 The chairman of the students representative council (SRC), Ojebola Mathew revealed to the students that this year's students' week is going to be unusual, he said "unusual is the slang as we the committee shall see to it that our fellow students  experience something unusual from time past".

 Also, speaking with the leader of the sub-committee in charge of the pre students' week activities, Motunrayo Ganiyah, she expresses her hopes that the activities of the pre student week will be effective in getting the students involved during the student week proper, she said " the whole idea of the pre students' week activities is to get students fully prepared for the week it self, and with activities like the hilarious beauty contest in which the winners won cash prize, the intra-school debate, the five-men football competition and several others still to come, I believe that the students are well prepared for the main week come june."

  According to the leader of the sub-committee handling publicity, Olubunmi Adeyera, he said " we are committed to keeping the students  and the general public informed and ensuring success during the pre-students' week and the students' week itself, and i believe we are making progress through publicity on social platforms and also posting bills all around the campus, with all these, i believe we're going to make it."

 Other sub-committees are also doing genuine jobs to ensure the success of the week.

10 MISSING AFTER ATTACK ON CHINESE CAMP IN CAMEROON

About ten people have been confirmed missing after an attack carried out by unknown people in a chinese enterprise camp in cameroon today.
  According to CCTVNEWS, Nigeria's boko haram are suspected to be behind the attack.

KIDNAPPED GIRLS HAVE BEEN CONVERTED - SHEKAU

  A Boko Haram video emerged Monday purportedly showing some of the kidnapped Nigerian girls in Muslim headdresses and the terror group's leader declaring they have converted to Islam.
The video, released by French news agency Agence France-Presse, was shot in a nondescript bush area and showed about 100 girls.

In the 27-minute footage, the terror group's leader, Abubakar Shekau, says he is willing to exchange the schoolgirls for Boko Haram prisoners.

It shows girls dressed in black and gray hijabs, and reciting the Quran as they make Islamic declarations of faith. Shekau appears in a separate part of the video, but never with the girls.

"Praise be to Allah, the lord of the world," the girls in the video chant.

It's the first purported sighting of the girls abducted last month in the northern town of Chibok. A convoy of Islamist militants drove to a school, seized nearly 300 girls and fled into the night.

At least 276 girls remain missing since the terror group abducted them on April 14. Though some of the girls escaped shortly after their abduction, none of the others have been found.

MISSING FLIGHT MH370 - HARDEST SEARCH IN HISTORY

The hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has been termed as  the most difficult in human history by the man heading the operation, but modern technology greatly increases the chances of finding the missing plane.
According to CNN  "Angus Houston said the hunt is even more difficult than that for Air France Flight 447, which disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.

"The big difference between Air France 447 and MH370 is that the last known position, in terms of MH370, is at the top of the Malacca Straits, and then the aircraft continued to fly for an extended period after that," Houston told CNN's Anna Coren on Monday.

"Whereas Air France, they had a very good last known position, which then turned out to be very close to where the aircraft was eventually found."

But he said searchers are performing "groundbreaking work" with satellite analysis, which has helped isolate the search area in the Indian Ocean.

"Without that, we would be essentially searching the whole of the Indian Ocean, and I think the chances of finding the aircraft in those circumstances would have been slim," Houston said. "I think by having this defined search area ... I think eventually we will find the aircraft."

Houston is the chief search coordinator for the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, based in Australia. He said his greatest concern throughout the two-month search has been the families of those on board.

"To have a set of circumstances where you don't know what's happened to your loved ones in circumstances such as this, it's just a terrible, terrible emotional trauma of all of those involved," he said.

"And beyond that, the wider public has a great interest in what happened here because we all fly in airplanes, and we all fly long distances over water, and a lot of people want to know what happened and why it happened."

France offers to host African security summit on Boko Haram

France has offered to host a summit with Nigeria and its neighbors focused on Islamist militant group Boko Haram, President Francois Hollande said on Sunday.
Global outrage over the Boko Haram's abduction of 200 schoolgirls last month has focused attention on the group, which has destabilized large swathes of northeast Nigeria and its neighbors.
"With Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, I have proposed to hold a meeting with the countries bordering Nigeria," Hollande said during a visit to the Azeri capital of Baku.
"If the countries agree, it should take place next Saturday" in Paris, Hollande added. His aides said that the leaders of Nigeria, Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Niger might attend. Britain, the European Union and the United States would likely be represented as well.
France, Britain, the United States and other countries have said they were sending experts to help Nigeria track down and free the schoolgirls.
Nigeria's army has mobilized two divisions to hunt for the schoolgirls as Jonathan's government has faced criticism for not responding more quickly to the abductions.
A French priest was released in December after being kidnapped the previous month in northern Cameroon, a region where Boko Haram is known to operate. The group kidnapped a French family of seven on holiday in northern Cameroon in February 2013 and released them the following April.

<<Reuters>>

CHINA - ELITES URGE RELEASE OF JAILED NOBEL LAUREATE

A group of "princelings", children of China's political elite, has quietly urged the Communist Party leadership to release jailed Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo on parole to improve the country's international image, two sources said.
Liu's release is not high on the agenda of the party, which is trying to push through painful economic, judicial and military reforms amid the most extensive crackdown on corruption in over six decades, the sources with ties to the leadership said, requesting anonymity.
But the back channel push for Liu's parole shows that a debate is taking place among leaders about damage to China's reputation caused by his jailing. It also suggests the ruling elite are not monolithic when it comes to views on dissent.
Liu, 58, a veteran dissident involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests crushed by the army, was jailed for 11 years in 2009 on subversion charges for organizing a petition urging an end to one-party rule. He won the Nobel Peace Prize the following year.
"For many princelings, the pros of freeing Liu Xiaobo outweigh the cons," one of the sources said. "Liu Xiaobo will definitely be freed early. The question is when."
 He is eligible for parole after serving half his term.
The sources declined to say how big the group of princelings was, but said most were second- or third-generation born in the 1960s or 1970s and some were close to President Xi Jinping.
"The biggest worry is hostile forces using Liu Xiaobo once he is freed," the second source told Reuters.

read more at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/11/us-china-dissident-idUSBREA4A01120140511