India: Gang-Raped Sisters' Bodies Hung From Tree

Two police officers suspected of gang-raping and killing teenage sisters before hanging their bodies from a mango tree have been arrested in India.

A third man was also held, according to reports, after the discovery of two bodies renewed public outrage over sexual violence in the country.

Villagers in Katra found the bodies hours after the girls, aged 14 and 15, disappeared from fields they used because their homes had no toilet.

Hundreds of people spent Wednesday in silent protest over alleged police inaction in the case.

Indian TV channels filmed villagers sitting under the girls' hanging bodies, preventing authorities from removing them until the suspects were arrested.

Police responded by making three arrests - and four more suspects are being sought.

Police officers at the scene of the hanging

Autopsies confirmed the girls were gang-raped and strangled before being hanged, police Superintendent Atul Saxena reportedly told AP.

A police station chief has been suspended, according to the news agency, after allegedly ignoring a complaint the girls were missing.

India tightened its rape laws last year - introducing the death penalty for gang rape - following the fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old woman on a moving bus in New Delhi.

The case sparked nationwide protests.

A rape is committed every 22 minutes in India, a nation of 1.2 billion people - and activists say many more cases go unreported because of a culture of tolerance.

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Former Army Chief Wins Egyptian Elections

Egypt's Military Strongman: Saviour Or Dictator?

Updated: 3:25am UK, Tuesday 06 May 2014

By Sherine Tadros, Middle East Correspondent

For the past three years Egypt has seen constant surprises - this month's elections though are a foregone conclusion.

Presidential candidate and former army chief Abdel Fattah al Sisi is practically guaranteed a win, formally taking the reins of the Egyptian state.

That's why Monday's interview, his first interview since announcing his candidacy, was so important and offered the biggest indication yet of what Mr al Sisi's Egypt will look like. 

He appeared on privately owned channels ONTV and CBC simultaneously with the channels' main anchors co-interviewing him.

The presenters, both vocal supporters of last July's military coup, danced around important questions seemingly afraid to offend or push too hard.

In the two-hour interview there was no mention of the killing of hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo following the coup, nor the thousands currently detained without charge after the recent crackdown.

Mr al Sisi assured the Egyptian public he had not planned the overthrow of elected President Mohamed Morsi nor did he plan to become president. Rather, he reluctantly answered a call of duty as Egypt was headed for disaster.

The referendum on the constitution earlier this year, he argued, showed him the people wanted him at the helm and so despite two assassination attempts, he decided to run.

The main theme of the interview was - 'I am running for president because someone has to save Egypt'. And in a climate of fear and rumours, this rhetoric is sure to resonate with the Egyptian public.

When pushed about his strong military background and the possibility of the country being run as a military regime, he argued the military has had no role in Egyptian politics in decades.

Unchallenged by the presenters (three Egyptian presidents since 1952 came from the army's ranks) he went on to profess his neutrality and independence from the very institution recent history has shown his survival in politics will depend on.

One of the interviewers, CBC's Lamis al Hadidyi, asked the presidential candidate about his family and where he grew up.

Mr al Sisi, for the first time, spoke emotionally about his wife and four children. This nicely crafted section of the interview was designed to show his human side.

So far the Egyptian public has seen the soldier. On Monday, they had to see the husband and father. 

On terrorism, Mr al Sisi compared what Egypt is facing to what US forces are fighting in Afghanistan. He spoke about "major progress" being made in the troubled Sinai (where a military operation has been ongoing for several months) saying 1,200 out of the 1,300 tunnels between Egypt and the besieged Gaza Strip had been destroyed. 

The security issue is his trump card and he didn't miss an opportunity to explain the serious threat facing Egypt. It justifies not only the need for a president with a military background (the only person standing against him in the election, Hamdeen Sabahi, is a civilian) but also the current crackdown on Brotherhood supporters and other forces of dissent.

Mr al Sisi made clear there was no room in his Egypt for the Muslim Brotherhood. No surprise there. Under his watch the group was declared a terrorist organisation and their members and supporters imprisoned and sentenced to death.

In the end this was never going to be a hard interview to test Mr al Sisi. He had everything to gain. In fact, at times he sounded more like the president than a candidate - using the same nationalist and paternal tone to address Egyptians while offering no details of his economic or social policies.

But then again, why should he campaign?  Egyptians weren't watching to find out the campaign pledges on offer but rather for a glimpse of his first unscripted comments.

I watched the interview at home with an Egyptian family and friends and the reaction was generally positive.

Mr al Sisi delivered a convincing performance to an Egyptian public that is exhausted and looking for a saviour.

But what he sees as saving Egypt appears to others as dragging it firmly back to authoritarianism and a security state - the very things hundreds died fighting against in the 2011 uprising.

As Mr al Sisi spoke, the nation watched. But in many areas around Cairo, power cuts (which have become a common problem across Egypt due to energy shortages) meant not everyone heard what he had to say.

This is yet another indication of the huge challenges he faces if he becomes president.

He is in good favour with much of the Egyptian people now, but once he becomes accountable for the serious problems his citizens are facing, how long will this honeymoon last?

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Missing Flight MH370 Satellite Data Released

Missing Plane: Timeline Of Events

Updated: 1:18pm UK, Thursday 10 April 2014

A summary of developments surrounding the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and search for the plane.

Wednesday, April 9

:: Search team leader Angus Houston announces that Australia's Ocean Shield has picked up two further signals in the Indian Ocean. He says they were relocated on Tuesday after a brief period of going undetected.

Monday, April 7

:: Mr Houston declares the "most promising lead" so far, after the Ocean Shield detects two signals - suggesting the presence of a flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. They are located in a separate location to those previously found by a Chinese vessel.

Saturday, April 5

:: Chinese vessel Haixun 01 reports picking up a pulse signal with a frequency of 37.5kHz in the Indian Ocean, which could be a plane's black box. Other vessels are diverted to the area to follow up the lead.

Friday, April 4

:: Australian authorities launch a new underwater phase of the search. British vessel HMS Echo and nuclear submarine HMS Tireless are in the area to help with the search for MH370.

Monday, March 31

:: An Australian pilot spots a cluster of orange objects, which turns out to be fishing equipment.

Friday and Saturday, March 28/29

:: The search continues in a new location, further north in the Indian Ocean, with a Chinese plane spotting three multi-coloured objects

Thursday, March 27

:: Thailand reports the discovery of 300 floating objects but none are found to be from MH370.

Sunday, March 23

:: French satellites pick up 122 objects 1,500 miles west of Australia but search crews are again unable to find anything of significance.

Saturday, March 22

:: Chinese satellites spot a large object further south in the Indian Ocean, but aircraft flying over the site find only clumps of seaweed and a wooden pallet.

Thursday, March 20

:: Australian satellite images released show two objects around 1,550miles west of Perth in the southern Indian Ocean but surveillance aircraft are unable to locate them.

Saturday, March 15

:: The search area is expanded to two air corridors - a northern one stretching as far as Turkmenistan and Thailand - and one which goes through Indonesia and into the southern Indian Ocean.

Wednesday, March 12

:: Evidence from military radar possibly picking up the flight saw the search area expanded westwards to the Malacca Strait and Andaman Sea.

Sunday, March 9

:: Vietnamese aircraft reports seeing a door off the south-west coast of Vietnam, but it was found to be unrelated to flight MH370.

Saturday, March 8

:: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 leaves Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing at 00.41am local time with 239 passengers and crew on board.

:: The plane makes its last verbal contact with Malaysian air traffic control at 1.19am.

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Nigerian Army 'Knows Where Missing Girls Are'

Nigeria's Chief of Defence has said the military knows where more than 200 abducted schoolgirls are, but has ruled out using force to rescue them.

Chief of Defence Staff Air Marshal Alex Badeh refused to name the location where they were being held.

He said: "The good news for the parents of the girls is that we know where they are, but we cannot tell you.

"But where they are held, can we go there with force? We can't kill our girls in the name of trying to get them back."

The girls were abducted from their secondary school in Nigeria's northern Borno state by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram last month.

Intelligence experts and military personnel from the UK, US and France have joined Nigeria and its regional neighbours in a cross-border search.

However, with the exception of a video released by Boko Haram showing the detained girls, little information regarding their whereabouts has been made public.

Activists have launched a high-profile campaign for the girls' release

In the video, the group's leader threatened to sell most of the schoolgirls into slavery if the government does not release detained Boko Haram fighters. 

There have been reports that the government was close to a prisoner swap deal to secure their release which has since fallen through.

Last weekend Senate President David Mark, the country's number three, rejected the prospect of making concessions to Boko Haram. 

"This government cannot negotiate with criminals and... will not exchange people for criminals. A criminal will be treated like a criminal," he was quoted by local media as saying.

Boko Haram is accused of killing 118 people in an attack in Jos last week

In the six weeks since the girls' abduction, suspected Boko Haram attacks have left an estimated 470 Nigerian civilians dead.

Earlier on Monday four soldiers were shot dead in the central Plateau state, where Boko Haram militants have made significant inroads.

Twin blasts in the state's administrative capital Jos on Tuesday left 118 people dead.

It is not clear whether Boko Haram carried out the attack.

Thousands of people have died during Boko Haram's five-year campaign to carve out an independent Islamic state.

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Far-Right National Front 'Win' In France

By Robert Nisbet, Europe Correspondent

Voters have dramatically altered the make-up of the European Parliament by doubling the number of MEPs from the populist, eurosceptic right and the anti-austerity left.

Marine Le Pen's far right National Front scored its first victory in European Parliament elections in France.

Without waiting for the final result, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls went on television to call the result "an earthquake" for France and Europe.

The National Front (FN) won around 25% of the vote in France, according to exit polls, easily beating the centre-right UMP on 20%.

Exit polls say far-right and hard-left parties have gained ground in many countries, including in Greece where the extreme right Golden Dawn are thought to have won nearly 10% of the vote.

By the half way stage, the centre-right parties were expected to be the biggest group, with 212 out of 751 seats.

The Socialists were expected to gain 185 seats, the Liberals third with 71, the Greens fourth with 55 and the far-left next with 45.

Eurosceptic parties were expected to win about 143 seats.

Marine Le Pen celebrates winning France's Euro election

The winners in Greece, the anti-austerity movement Syriza, are thought to have topped the polls with more than 27% of the vote.

In Germany, the EU's biggest member state with the largest number of seats, the pro-European centre ground held firm, according to the polls.

Ms Le Pen, whose party beat President Francois Hollande's ruling Socialists into third place, told supporters: "The people have spoken loud and clear ... they no longer want to be led by those outside our borders, by EU commissioners and technocrats who are unelected.

"They want to be protected from globalisation and take back the reins of their destiny."

In Denmark the right wing Danish People's Party topped the polls, although its leaders have ruled out an alliance with the National Front.

Spain's two main political parties, the ruling conservative Popular Party in power since 2011 and the Socialist Party, lost major ground to smaller parties, mainly on the left. The Catalan independence party also performed well.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's centre-left Democratic Party (PD) came in ahead of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) in his country's exit polls.

In Belgium, the controversial Flemish separatists secured four of  21 EU parliamentary seats available in the country, more than any other party. 

Turnout in Eastern Europe was predicted to be low, with estimates of around 20% expected. 

More follows...

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What Next For EU's 'Self-Hating Parliament'?

A paralysing financial crisis which saw rich European countries bailing out the poor meant that these elections were always going to be ugly for the mainstream parties.

And so it transpired in Greece (Syriza 27%), Denmark (Danish Peoples Party 23%), UK (UKIP - more than 30%) and most spectacularly in France (Front National 25%).

In these countries, EU-critical voices from the populist right and anti-austerity left have taken the lion's share of seats in their respective national delegations.

There are plenty of other results to worry the centre-right (EPP) and centre-left (S&D) groups which have traditionally passed laws in the parliament, with a little help from the ALDE Liberal group.

Take the success of Italy's anti-politician, anti-journalist, (anti pretty-much-everything) Five Star group. The election of a pirate and a neo-nazi MEP from Germany will also cause shudders.

But, take a deep breath. The centre ground still rules the roost, with two thirds of the MEPs in the parliament, albeit a drop of 10%.

Also many of these EU-critical parties have little in common: Mr Farage gave us a terse 'not interested' when the Netherland's anti-Muslim PVV sounded him out again to join an anti-EU alliance.

Marine Le Pen of France's National Front has led a European earthquake

Greece's Golden Dawn may support the anti-immigration stance of Denmark's People's Party, but they differ wildly on abortion and gay rights.

To wield any real influence the 'antis' will need to form a political group before the constitutive session of the eighth parliament. Each faction needs at least 25 MEPs drawn from seven countries.

That will involve horse trading and compromise, which may play badly with party supporters back home.

However things will certainly be stickier for the ruling mainstream groups: the 'anti' MEPs may join forces to reject the entire batch of commissioners, and hold up laws and trade deals.

But this parliament is more likely to be a speed bump than a roadblock to this EU institution.

Its most significant impact may be back in the member states, if these parties manage to pull mainstream parties - and therefore governments - in a more Eurosceptic direction.

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Ukraine Militia 'Ready To Take On Separatists'

By Katie Stallard, in Southern Ukraine

On the eve of the presidential election, Sky News met pro-Ukrainian paramilitaries training in the country's southeast, preparing to fight the separatists who have taken control of large swathes of the region.

The men of the Azov Battalion seemed wholly unconvinced Sunday's poll would bring peace, or anything close to resolution.

They told us they have no plans to disband after the vote.

They prefer to put their faith in the Kalashnikov than the ballot box.

One platoon commander told us he wants another revolution. He said that neither Petro Poroshenko nor Yulia Tymoshenko (the current presidential frontrunners) are fit to lead the country and take on the mantle of maidan (the local name for the winter's uprising that started on Independence Square).

Another said he had no choice but to become a soldier now - to fight for his family and for his homeland.

We filmed them at a training camp close to the southern border of Donetsk region, at a location we agreed not to disclose.

Getting there involved meeting a man named Igor at a designated train station then following a car with no number plates through the Ukrainian countryside, which incidentally was waved through a police checkpoint without a second glance.

The men arrived in two buses and a pick-up truck - all in combat gear and balaclavas; carrying a variety of assault rifles and handguns.

Some had what looked like military-issue boots; the others a selection of trainers and walking boots.

Many had small blue and gold Ukrainian ribbons pinned to their uniforms, several had arm patches with the black and red nationalist flag.

They wouldn't say where the weapons had come from, or who is funding them, beyond that "lots of patriots" had donated to the cause.

The Azov Battalion is one of three new paramilitary units - operating outside the Ukrainian army and the national guard, but with the approval of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

To the north is the Donbas Battalion; to the west the Dnipro - the latter funded by governor/oligarch Igor Kolomoysky.

The men of the Azov told us they are all volunteers - the majority of whom are local to the south and east and have worried families at home.

They come from a variety of backgrounds.

A quick sample revealed three businessmen, a graphic designer, a construction engineer, two students and a cook - all spending their Saturday afternoon learning how to over-run a checkpoint and practising live firing drills.

There was a disagreement at one point about how they should be training, but no dispute about what they were preparing for.

All believed they were now fighting for the future of their country - few trust the politicians to deliver.

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Three Killed In Brussels Jewish Museum Shooting

Three people have been killed and another is in a critical condition after a shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.

Belgian Interior Minister Joelle Milquet tweeted to say she believes it was an "anti-Semitic attack".

Two women and a man were killed in the shooting, which came a day before Belgium's general election and European parliament election.

They were all struck by bullets in the face or throat, according to a spokeswoman from the prosecutor's office.

A fourth person injured in the attack is still being treated in hospital.

Sky's Robert Nisbet said a local website quoted witnesses as saying an Audi drove up to the museum and two men got out and began firing indiscriminately at passers-by.

They then got back into the car and drove off, La Libre newspaper said on its website.

Forensic experts at the scene of the killings

The attack happened just before 4pm in the Sablon area.

One man was arrested while trying to drive away from the scene. He remains in custody.

Police say they are looking for a second suspect who escaped on foot.

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders heard shots and arrived at the scene moments later to find bodies on the ground.

"I am shocked by the murders committed at the Jewish museum, I am thinking of the victims I saw there and their families," he wrote on Twitter.

A Jewish community leader, Joel Rubinfeld, said it clearly "is a terrorist act" and the result of "a climate of hate".

Protection around Jewish sites in the country has been increased and Belgian prime minister Elio Di Rupo said "all Belgians are united" in the wake of the attack.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the murder "the result of constant incitement against Jews and their state".

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