MOSCOW — Russian officials said Saturday that they had killed the husband of a suicide bomber who blew up a public bus last month in the city of Volgograd, ending a monthlong manhunt in Dagestan, a violence-plagued republic in the North Caucasus.
The bus bombing in Volgograd, which is about 900 kilometers (559 miles) south of Moscow, had unnerved the authorities because of its randomness and because instances of Muslim insurgent violence outside the Caucasus are relatively rare.
The bomber, Naida Asiyalova, blew herself up on a crowded No. 29 bus in the center of the city, killing six other passengers in a fiery blast that was recorded by the dashboard camera of a car traveling behind.
Ms. Asiyalova, who was four days shy of her 31st birthday, had been suffering from a grave, perhaps terminal, illness. After the bombing, investigators said they were searching for her common-law husband, Dmitri Sokolov, 21, whom they had identified as a demolition and explosives specialist for a rebel group based in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan.
Russian officials said that antiterrorism forces found Mr. Sokolov, along with four others, just outside Makhachkala, where they engaged in a standoff. During a prolonged negotiation, investigators put Mr. Sokolov on the phone with his mother, who apparently pleaded with him to surrender, according to local news agencies.
Officials told news agencies that during the negotiations Mr. Sokolov admitted to making the explosive belt used on the bus in Volgograd, though there was no way to verify the claim.
The men refused to surrender, and all five were shot and killed, officials said. A woman and child in the house where the men had been blockaded were rescued unharmed, officials said, and a stash of weapons and ammunition was discovered.
Ms. Asiyalova and Mr. Sokolov apparently met as students in Moscow.
Russian security forces have been aggressively trying to suppress Muslim separatists ahead of the Winter Olympics, which will be early next year in Sochi, and the bombing in Volgograd was seen as demonstration of the ability of rebel fighters in the Caucasus to carry out attacks despite the crackdown.
ONITSHA, Nigeria (Reuters) – A Nigerian woman faked her own kidnapping to extort a $ 1,200 ransom from her husband, police said on Tuesday, in a region of the west African nation plagued by abductions.
Authorities arrested the woman and her accomplice, a motorcycle taxi man who helped her stage it, after tracing the bank account given for her husband’s payment of 200,000 naira ($ 1,200) to the taxi man himself.
“They have confessed to the crime and we are corroborating our investigation to be able to charge them in court,” said Ebere Amarizu, a police spokesman in Enugu state.
Kidnapping for ransom is rife in southern Nigeria, particularly in the oil-producing Delta region, in the ethnic Igbo area to the north of it, where Enugu lies, and the commercial hub of Lagos.
In some cases, police suspect the victims collude with their abductors.
The multi-million dollar criminal enterprise pushes up the insurance and security costs for businesses, including foreign oil majors who have often been targeted in the past. ($ 1 = 160.1 naira)
(Reporting by Anamesere Igboeroteonwu; Writing by Tim Cocks, Editing by Gareth Jones)
Just an ordinary story of crack cocaine mind control and telepathic sex crimes in a Utah trailer park, via Gawker:
A woman in Utah has pleaded guilty to attempted criminal solicitation and possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person after persuading her husband to shoot their neighbor by claiming she was the victim of “telepathic rape.”
Meloney Selleneit was accused of illegally purchasing a gun for Michael Selleneit, a violent felon, and inciting him to shoot Tony Pierce twice in the back while Pierce was working in his yard.
Michael, 53, later told police Pierce, 41, had been telepathically raping his wife for years and was using crack cocaine to control her mind.
A judge found Michael competent to stand trial despite some hesitancy from mental health evaluators. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two one-to-15 years prison terms. Meloney, 55, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to her charges last week.
THE wife of a Russian fisherman who went missing during a trip to Siberia has revealed she has proof that he was murdered and eaten by his friends.
Andrei Kurochkin’s bones were found in the Siberian forest, allegedly gnawed through, and according to Kurochkin’s widow, Olga Kurochkin, the post mortem reveals what she has believed to be true all along
Two fisherman have been accused of carrying her husband’s corpse for a fortnight through remote snow-bound forests feeding themselves from his flesh until there was nothing left after their mode of transport was destroyed. See their photos
Both the alleged cannibals, Alexei Gorulenko, 35, and Alexander Abdullaev, 37, remain free, though one admitted eating his fisherman friend and then retracted the statement, and a fourth man in the group remains missing, feared dead.
Speaking to the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid, Kurochkin said: ‘I’ve got a copy of the final post-mortem report. It says Andrei was murdered and then dismembered before being eaten.
‘The cause of death was definitely not hypothermia or exhaustion.’
According to Kurochkin, the post mortem reveals her husband received three blows to the head and a knife wound, which would suggest Gorulenko and Abdullaev’s claims that their friend died of natural causes is false.
The surviving pair were discovered on November 29, 2012 in an emaciated condition after four men set out on the expedition to the East of Russia in August that year.
Gorulenko and Abdullaev now say they became separated from the other two members of their group, and while they cannot be sure what happened to the fourth man, they claim Kurochkin died of ‘exposure’.
Given the Department of Justice’s current track record – the IRS Scandal, Fast and Furious, subpoenaing the press, and other law bending activities – it is not surprising that it would reach inside its own organization and blatantly overstep the First Amendment rights of employees.
Just an ordinary story of crack cocaine mind control and telepathic sex crimes in a Utah trailer park, via 
