IO N IPT SC R SU B
SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2012
JAMADI ALTHANI 7, 1433 AH
No: 15432
48 7Police13 nab suspect
150 Fils
Death toll mounts as bombs hit Damascus
Chinese blind activist makes mystery escape
Barcelona coach Guardiola ends four-year reign
after London siege 49-year-old man armed with gas canisters
Max 37º Min 23º
Pakistan expels Osama’s family SANAA: The three widows of slain Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and other family members arrived in Saudi Arabia yesterday after being expelled from Pakistan, a Yemeni non-government group head said. “The Yemeni woman has arrived in Saudi Arabia along with other members of the Bin Laden family, his children and her brother who was looking after her case in Pakistan,” Mohammed Naji Allaw of the NGO Hood said. So far there has been no confirmation of their arrival from Saudi Arabia, which has kept total silence on the issue. The other two widows are Saudis. At around midnight Pakistan time on Thursday night, a minivan whisked the 9/11 mastermind’s relatives from the Islamabad house where they had been in detention to the city’s airport. They then left for the Gulf kingdom on a specially chartered flight just before 2:00 am. “We have begun making representations for her return to Yemen,” Allaw said of Bin Laden’s Yemeni widow Amal, adding that his information on their arrival came from Zakaria Abdulfattah Al-Sadaa, her brother. Hood, which deals with human rights cases in Yemen, especially those concerning children, has been tasked by the widow’s brother with looking after her case. Sadaa went to Pakistan to personally oversee the deportation of his 30-year-old sister-bin Laden’s youngest and reportedly favorite wife-and her five children. — AFP
Fruit, veggies tied to lower diabetes risk LONDON: People who eat more fruits and vegetables may have a slightly lower risk of type 2 diabetes than people who don’t, and getting a wide variety of those healthy foods may be key to avoiding the disease, according to a UK study. The findings, reported in the journal Diabetes Care, do not prove that eating fruits and vegetables will ward off the condition, which is associated with obesity and old age, but researchers said it should give people yet more incentive to improve their diet. The study of over 3,700 UK adults found that those who ate the most servings of fruits and vegetables in a week had a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes over 11 years versus people who ate the fewest. The diabetes risk was also lower among people who consumed a wider variety of fruit and vegetables, regardless of the actual quantity they ate. This suggests that people should focus not only on how many servings they get each day, said senior researcher Nita Forouhi, of the Institute of Metabolic Science in Cambridge, UK. “The finding on variety of intake is new and exciting, because it demonstrates that independent of the quantity consumed, we have the potential to gain additional and important benefits from choosing a mixture of different fruits and vegetables as part of a balanced diet,” she said. One serving is equal to a half-cup of cooked vegetables or a medium-sized piece of fresh fruit. For the study, her team looked at data from 3,704 adults aged 40 to 79 who were part of a larger study on nutrition and chronic diseases. — Reuters
LONDON: Heavily armed, masked police surrounded a site in central London yesterday after a woman reported that a man had walked into her office threatening to blow himself up. (Inset) Police arrest the suspect after a three-hour standoff yesterday. — AP/Sky news LONDON: Police snipers and heavily armed officers put several blocks of central London’s shopping district into lockdown yesterday after a man allegedly armed with gas canisters entered an office building and threatened to blow himself up. Police said a 49-year-old man was arrested hours after a stand off with police at Advantage, a training company near London’s Tottenham Court Road that offers tests for truck drivers. A shirtless man in green khaki pants was seen being led out with his hands behind his back by two unarmed officers. Armed officers followed behind. British media had claimed that the man was holding people captive, but police said they were “not aware of any hostages at this stage.” Police and security personnel said the incident was not terror-related and presented no risk to
the upcoming 2012 summer Olympics. An Advantage employee interviewed by The Huffington Post identified the suspect as a former customer and said he had come in “strapped up in gasoline cylinders.” “Basically he threatened to blow up the office,” Abby Baafi, 27, told the news website. Police declined to say whether he had been armed in any way. The Huffington Post’s UK editor Carla Buzasi said that her organization’s offices shared a fire escape with Shropshire House, where Advantage is headquartered. She said that two men ran into their offices when the suspect arrived, sending “a ripple of panic” across the newsroom. The Huffington Post’s offices were one of several buildings in the area evacuated as police with heavy weapons and riot gear got into position. Several blocks were cordoned off and
subway stations were closed as office equipment was chucked from a fifth floor window. “He threw 10 computers,” 26-year-old construction worker Martynas Vristiuk said, adding that one of the computers landed on a police car. The three-hour-long siege turned the normally bustling Tottenham Court Road into a ghost town. The motive behind the standoff wasn’t immediately clear. Police Commander Mak Chishty, who gave a brief statement following the arrest, identified the suspect only as “a local man” and said the incident was over a “quite local” matter. A phone message left with Advantage was not immediately returned. “This was an isolated incident and has no bearing on security preparations ahead of the summer games,” said a British security official on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his work. — AP