Saif al-Adel - the new Al-Qaeda chief

Al-Qaeda has chosen a former Egyptian special forces officer as interim leader after the killing of Osama bin Laden, CNN has reported. Saif al-Adel, a top al-Qaeda strategist and military leader, has been tapped as 'caretaker' chief of the group, CNN said, citing the former Libyan militant Noman Benotman, who has renounced al-Qaeda's ideology.

Pakistan's The News corroborated the report, citing unnamed sources in an article datelined Rawalpindi, a city near the capital, Islamabad, that is home to the military headquarters of the Pakistani Armed Forces.

The decision to choose Adel, also known as Muhamad Ibrahim Makkawi, came as militants grew increasingly restive over the lack of a formal successor to bin Laden, who was killed in a dramatic US commando raid in Abbottabad in Pakistan on May 2, Mr Benotman told CNN.

Bin Laden's long-time deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, another Egyptian, is considered to be his presumed successor.

Mr Benotman said the appointment of Adel on a temporary basis may be a way for the group to gauge reaction to having someone from outside the Muslim holy region of the Arabian peninsula at the helm.

1,100 women are raped every day in the Democratic Republic of Congo - study

More than 1,100 women are raped every day in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), making sexual violence against women 26 times more common than previously thought, a study concluded Tuesday.

More than 400,000 women and girls between the ages of 15 to 49 were raped in the vast, war-ravaged country in central Africa during a 12-month period in 2006 and 2007, according to the study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

That is 26 times more than the 15,000 women that the United Nations has reported were raped there during the same 12 months. "Our results confirm that previous estimates of rape and sexual violence are severe underestimates of the true prevalence of sexual violence occurring in the DRC," said Amber Peterman, lead author of the study.

"Even these new, much higher figures still represent a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of sexual violence because of chronic underreporting due to stigma, shame, perceived impunity, and exclusion of younger and older age groups as well as men," she said.

The study, which gathered data from 2007, did not capture sexual violence among girls younger than 15 years or women older than 49 years and did not include sexual violence among boys and men.

"Although the burden of sexual violence among these groups is uncertain, a review of the records of 4,133 women attending Panzi Hospital in Sud Kivu showed that six percent were younger than 16 years and 10 percent were older than 65 years," said the study.

"In addition, Human Rights Watch reported that sexual violence in 2009 doubled in comparison with 2008. If this assessment is accurate, then the current prevalence of sexual violence is likely to be even higher than our estimates suggest."

Commenting on the study, Michael VanRooyen, director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, said that "rape in the DRC has metastasized amid a climate of impunity, and has emerged as one of the great human crises of our time."

via AFP News

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Woman RM1.1m poorer after falling for sob story on Facebook

A Malaysian woman who fell for a con artist's sob stories on Facebook ended up being cheated of RM1.1mil.

The man who claimed to be a British citizen had told her he needed her account to bank in money from his contract with Petronas, which he claimed amounted to RM4.6mil.

However, he told the woman he needed her help to pay stamp duty charges and insurance fees before he could get his contract sanctioned.

The suspect claimed he could not afford the fees at the time.

“The victim paid RM1.1mil via several transactions to the man between March 29 and April 19,” said Federal Commercial Crimes director Comm Datuk Wira Syed Ismail Syed Azizan yesterday.

He added that following a police report lodged by the victim, six suspects were arrested in Kepong on Tuesday.

Police also recovered RM15,000 in cash, 18 ATM cards, seven cellphones and a laptop.

“Of the six, two were Nigerians, two were Bangladeshis while the others were locals,” he told reporters.

Comm Syed Ismail said the victim had been sympathetic when she read about the man's predicament.

“She caved in when she heard his sob stories,” he added.

Comm Syed Ismail urged people using popular social networking websites like Facebook to be very careful.

“These unscrupulous people prey on gullible girls through these websites,” he said. “Revealing your personal information on your Facebook wall' is not a good idea.”

The public, he said, had been warned several times not to respond to e-mail from seemingly rich people offering money for safekeeping, yet a lot of them still become victims.