2015-02-22 ~ InfoTrove

Saturday, February 28, 2015

WATCH: SIS fighters destroy ancient artifacts at Mosul museum

Islamic State militants ransacked Mosul’s central museum, destroying priceless artefacts that are thousands of years old, in the group’s latest rampage which threatens to upend millennia of coexistence in the Middle East. The destruction of statues and artefacts that date from the Assyrian and Akkadian empires, revealed in a video published by Isis on Thursday, drew ire from the international community and condemnation by activists and minorities...

Friday, February 27, 2015

ISIS Executioner 'Jihadi John' Is Named as Mohammed Emwazi

LONDON — The identity of the masked executioner clutching a knife in ISIS beheading propaganda videos was revealed on Thursday. A U.S. intelligence official confirmed to NBC News that a Londoner named Mohammed Emwazi is the person known as "Jihadi John" in the ISIS videos depicting the murders of American and British citizens. The militant's identity was first reported by The Washington Post, which cited "friends and others with familiar with...

Apple ordered to pay $533 million for patent infringement

(Reuters) - Apple Inc has been ordered to pay $532.9 million after a federal jury in Texas found that its iTunes software infringed three patents owned by patent licensing firm Smartflash LLC. Though Smartflash had been asking for $852 million in damages, Tuesday night's verdict was still a blow to Apple. The jury, which deliberated for eight hours, determined Apple had not only used Smartflash's patents without permission, but did so willfully. Apple,...

FBI offers $3 million reward for alleged russian hacker Evgeniy Bogachev

The U.S. State Department and FBI on Tuesday announced a $3 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Russian national Evgeniy Bogachev, the highest bounty U.S. authorities have ever offered in a cyber case. The Federal Bureau of Investigation also issued a "Wanted" poster for Bogachev, who is charged in the United States with running a computer attack network called GameOver Zeus that allegedly stole more than $100...

Thursday, February 26, 2015

ISIS abducts at least 150 Christians in Syria

(Reuters) - Islamic State militants have abducted at least 150 people from Assyrian Christian villages in northeastern Syria they had raided, Christian Syrian activists said on Tuesday. A Syrian Christian group representing several NGO's inside and outside the country said it had verified at least 150 people missing, including women and elderly, who had been kidnapped by the militants. "We have verified at least 150 people who have been adducted...

WATCH: 'Power Rangers' gets super dark in this short-film remake

This isn't the Power Rangers you grew up with. A short film starring Battlestar Galactica's Katee Sackhoff  and Dawson's Creek's James Van Der Beek shows the Power Rangers as adults—seriously disturbed after being made to fight at a young age. The originally no-holds-barred NSFW version of the video was posted on Vimeo, though it could no longer be automatically accessed from there as of Wednesday. However, a partially censored—but still...

More mystery craters appear in Siberia

Image credit: Vasily Bogoyavlensky via The Siberian Times (NEWSER) – More mysterious craters have been spotted in Siberia, and researchers are starting to sound more than a little alarmed about the phenomenon. Vasily Bogoyavlensky, deputy director of Russia's Oil and Gas Research Institute, says at least seven suspicious craters have now been spotted—five of them in a region known as the "end of the world"—and a satellite image...

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

CT scans reveal preserved body inside ancient buddhist statue

Photo credit: M. Elsevier Stokmans/German-Mummy-Project Mannheim. CT scans reveal this statue contains a mummy A nearly 1,000-year-old statue has left China for the first time and the Meander Medical Center in the Netherlands thought they'd run it through a CT scanner, as you do. They confirmed that the statue holds the mummified remains of a man, while also finding some intriguing insights into the mummification process. advertising ...

WATCH: Traffic comes to a halt as it starts raining money in Dubai

Motorists driving through Dubai could not believe their eyes when it started raining money in the middle of the UAE city. Thousands of 500 UAE Dirham notes - worth around £88 - flew through the oil-rich city on a busy afternoon earlier this month, and officials have yet to give an explanation as to why, or reveal a source of the cash. Drivers abandoned their cars in order to get their hands on the notes blowing down the road, and were filmed...

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Chilean's round-the-world record cycling quest ends in death on Thai highway

Guillermo, from Chile, had set off on his world recording breaking bike trip in 2010 with the target of cycling 250,000Km over 5 years. Juan Francisco Guillermo, who was trying to cycle 250,000km in five years, was killed after being hit by truck in north-east Thailand, police said A Chilean cyclist’s attempt to set a record for biking around the world has ended with his death in a road accident in northeast Thailand, police said on Sunday. Juan...

ISIS overtakes Iraq's largest Christian city

Many of the Iraqi Christians who fled the violence have arrived in the Kurdish city of Erbil Iraq's largest Christian town has been overrun by the same militant Islamists who have gained a foothold in parts of eastern Syria and western and northern Iraq. The latest advance by ISIS (or the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) has caused thousands of Christians in the city to flee, just as other minority groups...

Monday, February 23, 2015

WATCH: New ISIS video shows Kurdish soldiers paraded in cages

Watch video at the bottom of the article.Islamic State (ISIS) militants released new footage Saturday that allegedly shows 21 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters being paraded through crowded streets in the embattled Iraqi province of Kirkuk. The beginning of the footage shows several men in cages being interviewed by an Islamic State militant holding a microphone with the group's insignia, before cutting to clips of several trucks with cages in the back...

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Russian bombers intercepted near British airspace

RAF Typhoon fighter jets were scrambled on Wednesday after two long-range TU-95 “Bear” bombers were detected flying over the English Channel. The incident was last night described as “yet another in a series of deliberately provocative” measures by President Vladimir Putin which confirmed that Nato’s status had moved firmly from “rival to adversary”. Sources within the Ministry of Defence last night revealed that one of the two long-range bombers...

It's official: Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao to fight on May 2

The fight is on as Pacquiao and Mayweather will fight May 2. (Getty Images) After weeks of speculation, it's finally done. Floyd Mayweather confirmed what had been rumored, that and he will fight Manny Pacquiao. The two will fight on May 2 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas with a reported purse of over $100 million. Mayweather made the fight official by posting the contract on the shots app. Pacquiao is happy the...