Nigeria recovers looted $2tn

Nigeria has recovered over the last 12 years more than $2 trillion (£1.4tn) that had been looted from the national treasury, Justice Minister Abubakar Malami has said. 

Criminal gangs and public office holders had stolen the money, he added. 

In 1988 alone, then-military ruler Sani Abacha laundered over $2m, Mr Malami is quoted by Nigeria's Vanguard newspaper as saying. 

President Muhammadu Buhari has vowed “to recover the fortunes that criminals have made illegally by returning every penny that belongs to the Nigerian public”, the minister added.  

Georgia Executes Oldest Death Row Inmate

Brandon Astor Jones, the oldest inmate on death row in Georgia, died by lethal injection at 12.46am local time on Wednesday at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.

The state's department of corrections said in a statement that he accepted a final prayer and recorded a final statement.

Jones turned down a last meal, and was instead to be offered the standard prison menu of chicken and rice, rutabagas, seasoned turnip greens, dry white beans, cornbread, bread pudding and fruit punch, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.

His death was delayed for almost six hours following a string of appeals by his attorneys.

The US Supreme Court denied Jones' request for a stay of execution late on Tuesday.

The Georgia Supreme Court and the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles had rejected his petition to commute his sentence to life without parole.

Jones' execution is the fifth this year in the US, and the first of two scheduled this month in Georgia, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors capital punishment.

Texas, Alabama and Florida executed inmates last month, the organisation said.

Jones was the second man executed over the shooting of Roger Tackett, 35, inside a store in Atlanta's suburbs in June 1979, according to court testimony.

He was arrested inside along with co-defendant Van Roosevelt Solomon by a police officer who heard four gunshots, according to a Georgia Supreme Court case synopsis.

Jones later told another officer: "There is a man in the back - hurt bad," court records said.

Police then discovered a badly wounded Tackett in a locked storeroom.

Solomon, who was also convicted of murder, was put to death in 1985.

Jones had spent decades appealing against his death sentence.

A federal district court overturned his death sentence in 1989 because a trial judge had allowed a Bible in the jury deliberation room.

The court decided this could have improperly influenced jurors to base their decision on scripture instead of the law.

But Jones was again sentenced to death by another jury in 1997.

He had continued to appeal against the verdict since then, claiming his trial lawyers failed to mention his history of mental illness and childhood sexual abuse.

Israel accused of illegally deporting Africans

The BBC has gathered evidence that Israel is sending unwanted African migrants to third countries under secretive deals, which may be in breach of international law. There are around 45,000 Eritrean and Sudanese migrants in Israel. The government refuses to name the third countries involved in the deals, but the BBC has spoken to people who say they were sent to Rwanda and Uganda. Kathy Harcombe reports:

Google’s iPhone App Has a Really Fun New Feature

Google’s main search app now doubles as a random fact generator for iPhone 6s owners.

The company issued an update to its app for iPhone on Feb. 1 that takes advantage of Apple’s 3D Touch technology in a new way, as TechCrunch first noticed. Once the app is updated, iPhone 6s owners will be able to quickly access Google’s “I’m Feel Curious” button by pressing down on the Google Search app icon. Tapping this button brings the user to a random question and its answer, with the option to pull up a new query right underneath it.

Questions can range from anything such as “When did the first microwaves come out?” to “Who was the last person to sign the Declaration of Independence?”

Google links to the information’s source right below the answer.

Google’s app already supported 3D Touch, but the “I’m Feeling Curious” functionality appears to be a new shortcut. Those who don’t have an iPhone 6s can access the same arbitrary facts by typing “I’m feeling curious” into the Google Search bar.

It’s a lighthearted feature that probably won’t come in handy too often, but it shows that companies such as Google are still coming up with new ways to use Apple’s 3D Touch months after it’s been introduced.

Two Injured As Explosion Blows Hole In Jet

06:48, UK, Wednesday 03 February 2016

An aviation expert said the damage was consistent with an explosive device

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A passenger jet was forced to make an emergency landing after an explosion blew a gaping hole in its fuselage.

The pilot of the plane, which was forced to land minutes after taking off from Somalia's Mogadishu airport, said he thought a bomb was the cause.

An aviation expert who examined pictures of the hole in the fuselage said the damage was consistent with an explosive device.

Two people suffered minor injuries as 74 passengers and crew of the airliner were evacuated after the plane made a safe landing, Somali aviation official Ali Mohamoud said.

There were unconfirmed reports a person fell out of the hole in the plane

There are unverified reports that a male passenger fell out of the hole caused by the blast.

Mohamed Hassan, a police officer in Balad town - 30km north of Mogadishu - said residents had found the dead body of an old man who might have fallen from a plane. 

The plane, operated by Daallo Airlines, was headed to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa.

The Serbian pilot, Vladimir Vodopivec, told Belgrade newspaper Blic: "I think it was a bomb. Luckily, the flight controls were not damaged so I could return and land at the airport.

"Something like this has never happened in my flight career.

"We lost pressure in the cabin. Thank god it ended well."

Somalia's deputy ambassador to the UN Awale Kullane was on the plane, and wrote on Facebook that he "heard a loud noise and couldn't see anything but smoke for a few seconds".

When visibility returned they realised "quite a chunk" of the plane was missing, he added.

John Goglia, a former member of the US National Transportation Safety Board and an aviation security expert, said: "We don't know a lot, but certainly it looks like a device."

Mr Goglia added there were only two things that could have caused a hole in the jet like the one in the photos circulated online - a bomb or a pressurisation blowout caused by a flaw or fatigue in the plane's skin.

The images appear to show black soot around the aircraft skin that is peeled back, Mr Goglia said, adding that a pressurisation blowout would not create soot, but a bomb would.

The fact that the explosion happened during take-off - and before the plane reached 30,000 feet where there is maximum pressurisation - made a blowout even less likely, according to Mr Goglia.

Passenger Mohamed Ali told the Associated Press that he and others heard a bang before flames caused a gaping hole in the jet's side.

"I don't know if it was a bomb or an electric shock, but we heard a bang inside the plane," he said, adding he could not confirm reports passengers had fallen from the plane.

Australian Court Rules That Offshore Detention of Refugees Is Legal

Australia’s High Court upheld the country’s controversial policy of detaining asylum seekers in offshore processing centers Wednesday, dismissing a claim that the conditions under which they are being held on the island of Nauru violates the Australian constitution.

The case was brought by an anonymous Bangladeshi woman temporarily relocated from Nauru to Australia for medical treatment, the BBC reports.

The court’s ruling means that over 250 asylum seekers, including around 50 children and nearly 40 infants born in Australia, will be deported to the island nation in the coming days, despite allegations by rights groups that the centers are not safe.

Nationwide protests against the ruling have reportedly been planned.

The Australian government’s treatment of refugees arriving at its shores, who are promptly transported to Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus island where reports of human rights violations abound, has long been a subject of intense controversy.

Detainees at the two island centers are reportedly subjected to widespread violence and abuse, with the most recent public outrage involving the case of a five-year-old boy who was allegedly raped on Nauru and will now likely be sent back.

“That is this huge cloud hanging over him,” Dr. Karen Zwi, a pediatrician who examined the boy, told Australian broadcaster ABC. “That he will be returned to an absolutely traumatic and devastating environment for him.”

Zwi mentioned that the young boy had started wetting the bed and even began to self-harm, a phenomenon she reports seeing in several distressed children.

Australia’s Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said he would take medical advice on the five-year-old’s case into consideration. Meanwhile, rights groups attacked the government’s hasty amendment to a funding-related law — closing a loophole that enabled it to defeat the court challenge — in June last year.

Daniel Webb of the Human Rights Law Centre told ABC that the government “shifted the goalposts” by changing the law while the case was ongoing.

“They won in the High Court, but let me tell you, around the country right now there are 267 incredibly vulnerable people who will be terrified.”

A visceral fear at the prospect of going back to Nauru is the predominant reaction of most asylum seekers temporarily moved to mainland Australia, with a Sri Lankan woman who was also allegedly sexually assaulted on the island telling the Guardian’sAustralia edition ahead of the court ruling, that she was “too scared” to return.

“If I am sent back to Nauru, I will commit suicide,” she said.

How Old Will You Be Before You Are Debt Free?

They underestimate the number of years they will be paying off mortgages, loans and credit cards by more than a decade, it suggests.

On average, Britons will not be free of repayments until the age of 69 - the age many will retire and no longer be earning.

That is 12 years older than the age Britons anticipate they will have paid back all their loans, which is an "unrealistic" 57 years old, said the report.

Today's 18-year-olds may not be financially free until they are 74 if they plan to buy a home in their lifetimes.

The research was by peer-to-peer lending site Zopa and the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

Zopa co-founder Giles Andrews says part of the problem is that people are borrowing money later in life.

He said: "In the meantime, some people think that their unsecured debt is going to be cleared by the time they are in their mid-thirties or forties, and that is simply not happening.

"They are not clearing their debt before they get involved in the biggest purchase of their life which is buying a house."

House prices are rising around 10% per year, according to the Halifax, and outpacing wage growth, meaning mortgages are lasting longer.

Consumer credit is also increasing rapidly, as it remains convenient and fairly easy to access.

This may be adding up to a lifetime of debt.

Households now owe about £49,000 each, including home and other loans.

That's 17.6% more than before the financial crisis in 2007, the research says.

Zopa conducted the survey of 2,005 UK adults in January 2016. 

Information on the level of household debt, both unsecured and mortgage, was obtained from the ONS Wealth and Assets Survey.