Priest Jailed For Raping Girl, 12, In Church

Sanil K James attacked his victim several times in church. Pic: MediaOneTV

A priest has been jailed for 40 years for repeatedly raping a 12-year-old girl at his church.

Sanil K James was convicted of raping and sexually assaulting the child at a Salvation Army church in the southern Indian state of Kerala in 2014.

The court heard he raped the girl, now aged 13, several times over two months.

The 37-year-old is also being investigated for the alleged rape of another girl during the same period.

The judge sentenced James to two consecutive 20-year prison terms - without parole - and also fined him 20,000 rupees (£212).

"The court said the priest deserved the maximum punishment for this cruel act," said Prosecutor Pious Mathew.

Activist Smriti Minocha welcomed the jail term which she said was highly unusual in a country where even those sentenced to life usually only serve 14 years.

"Courts normally award life sentences to rape convicts but sentencing him to 40 years is exceptional," said the director of the women's justice initiative at the Human Rights Law Network, a Delhi-based NGO.

"Most of the cases of child sexual abuse remain undocumented, it's only grave acts like rape and molestation which are reported."

More than 18,000 children were sexually assaulted in India in 2014, according to the country's national crime records bureau.

A UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2014 said one-in-three rape victims in India was a minor and half of the abusers were known to the child or in a position of trust and responsibility.

Poisoned Elephant Kills Lions and Vultures

A lioness at South Africa's Kruger National Park. File pic

Two lions and more than 100 vultures have died after eating a poisoned elephant's carcass, officials have said.

It is feared the killings in South Africa's Kruger National Park, indicate a new method of poaching.

The park's managing executive Glenn Phillips said: "It seems poachers have resorted to wildlife poisoning in the national parks and other protected areas in Southern Africa."

Investigators said the elephant was shot in the head, its tusks removed and its carcass laced with poison.

Two lions, 110 white-backed vultures and two jackals died after feeding on it.

The remains were found by rangers over the weekend, although it is not known when the animals were poisoned.

Tusks and horns are often smuggled to countries in eastern Asia.

Prince Harry visited the park last year, seen with the carcass of a rhino

Park spokesman William Mabasa said vultures are of interest to traditional healers or sangomas in South Africa.

The heavily-guarded park was visited byPrince Harry last year during three months spent working on conservation projects and highlighting the threat to elephants and rhinos from poachers.

Animal poisoning is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of an elephant, four lions and 46 vultures at Kruger National Park last year.

In Zimbabwe, more than 370 elephants have died after being poisoned during the past two years, with officials blaming poachers.

Facebook’s Plan to Invade Your Office Is Growing

Facebook wants to be one of the only, if not the only, website you ever need to visit — even when you’re at work.

“Facebook at Work,” the Menlo Park, Calif.’s workplace communications platform, is being piloted at 450 companies as of March 2, the company says. That’s up 50% from six months ago. Previously, around 300 companies had been participating in the trial program.

Facebook at Work is a version of the world’s biggest social media network where users interact only with their coworkers. It’s meant to help employees connect and collaborate.

Profiles on Facebook at Work are separate from users’ personal pages. But the two platforms offer many of the same characteristics, like the News Feed. Features that get added to Facebook’s primary offering typically make their way to Facebook at Work as well.

“Basically every Facebook engineer is contributing to Facebook at Work somehow,” says Julien Codorniou, director of Facebook at Work.

Facebook at Work is still in its early stages. But the company’s ambitions go beyond making just another office communication tool. The firm is aiming to turn Facebook at Work into a platform through which employees can access and collaborate over other popular workplace tools, like Microsoft Office and Salesforce.

“That’s currently an ambition,” says Codorniou. “We’re not there yet, but we’re building it.”

One potential upshot of platforms like Facebook at Work: Fewer emails. As workplace chat platforms make real-time communication more efficient, our inboxes could get quieter.

“We’ve seen that when we deploy Facebook at Work, in large companies or small companies, people just send less email, especially internally,” says Codorniou. “Every email you send to more than two people internally can be replaced by something on Facebook at Work.”

Facebook at Work faces several challenges, not the least of which are workers’ and IT departments’ reluctance to learn or install new software. The $620 millionenterprise software market a crowded space, including industry stalwarts like Microsoft as well as young upstarts like Slack. (The latter of which recently announced new features that could make workers still more reluctant to give it up.)

But Codorniou isn’t worried about enterprise-focused rivals. He argues that Facebook’s familiarity — over one billion people worldwide use the platform daily — will give it an edge. “Most of the companies who are deploying, one of the many reasons they are launching Facebook at Work is because they want to give their employees the same tools they have when they’re not at work,” he says.

Gbenga Sesan: Connecting a Million

As a school student Gbenga Sesan was denied access to the computer room at his Nigerian school and told he was not clever enough to operate one.

When I think of my Nigeria, I think of potential and of real-life action. When I think of potential, I think of what could be, but is not. When I think of real-life action, I think of young people who literally take their future into their own hands and build something that they can be proud of and others can also be proud of. Gbenga Sesan, ITC expert

Years later, Gbenga is an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) expert, who has won international awards and is running a successful consultancy business.

"I'm the kind of guy you don't tell not to do something, I will do it. If you tell me it's impossible, I'll take it as a challenge...

I think the first thing that hit me was: 'Do I want to raise a child in Nigeria?' There were things that I didn't have access to myself because I was raised here, but I think it makes me double my effort because I want to raise my child in a country that works," he says.

The social entrepreneur is spreading his good fortune by teaching ICT and life skills to young adults in Nigeria's poorest neighbourhoods.

Gbenga was appointed Nigeria's first IT Youth Ambassador in 2001.

With up to 56 percent of youth in Nigeria being unemployed, he is determined to "training young people, connecting them with opportunities, through technologies." 

Driverless Racing Car Hits 120mph On Track

und a racetrack at speeds of up to 120mph, this car handles tight turns and twisty chicanes - all without a driver.

The autonomous vehicle has been developed by researchers at Stanford University, and can navigate tracks almost as fast as experienced racing drivers.

Video shows the custom-engineered Audi TTS pulling up to the start line of the Thunderhill Raceway in California, and the driver and passengers stepping out.

The car then takes off on its own using autonomous driving algorithms, with the steering wheel automatically turning and the car speeding up and slowing down appropriately as it navigates around the course.

A driver and passenger step out of the car before the test

The car - called Shelley - took several years to create and knows exactly where it is on the road using a differential GPS system.

This is more accurate than a traditional GPS system, because it corrects for interference in the atmosphere.

As a result it is accurate to within two centimetres.

Gyroscopes provide bearings, while wheel-speed sensors and an accelerometer measure speed and acceleration.

The steering wheel was seen turning automatically

The car typically operates are speeds of between 50 and 70mph, but can reach up to 120mph.

The team is using the racing car's development to research ways to make everyday autonomous cars safer.

Lead researcher Chris Gerdes said: "A race car driver can use all of a car’s functionality to drive fast. We want to access that same functionality to make driving safer."

Last year, the self-driving car was pitted against David Vodden, an amateur touring class champion - and was faster by 0.4 of a second.

Bristol firm plans to give women time off for periods

A company is planning to introduce a "period policy" to allow female staff to work flexibly around their menstrual cycles.

Co-Exist in Bristol says women will be allowed to take time off during their period and make up the time later.

Director Bex Baxter told the Bristol Postshe had seen women at work "bent over double" in pain but unwilling to go home which was "unfair".

Menstrual leave exists in Japan, parts of China, South Korea and Taiwan.

It is thought the company is one of the first firms to introduce it in the UK. 

'Willy nilly'

Miss Baxter said criticism of menstrual leave came "from a place of fear".

She told the BBC: "Women don't want to feel they are less employable than men if they are taking time off [for periods]." 

Co-Exist employs 24 people, seven of them men. Ms Baxter said the details of the policy had not yet been worked out but would be discussed at a seminar later this month.

She said there would inevitably be a fear of lack of fairness or of women taking time off "willy nilly" but added: "We want to create a policy that trusts people - we don't want to create something that... doesn't recognise the needs of the business."

Work Until Mid-70s Warning Amid Pensions Review

Workers starting out today have been warned they may have to wait until their mid-70s before they can start drawing their state pension.

The state pension age has been undergoing changes since 2010 so that its long-standing level of 60 for women will equalise with men at 65. From 2018 it will rise for both and reach 67 by 2028 under Government plans.

But there are warnings this could further rise as a consequence of a Government review, which will consider changes in life expectancy and wider changes in society and aim to ensure that the state pension "remains sustainable for generations to come".

Former CBI director general John Cridland will lead the review.

It comes as a number of expert reports separately raise the prospect of people having to "work until they drop" because they are not putting enough money aside for themselves.

Pensions minister Baroness Altmann said: "As our society changes, it is only right that we continue to review state pension ages and take into account the relevant factors to make sure that the state pension is sustainable and affordable for future generations."

Financial services firm Hargreaves Lansdown said further changes were likely to mean it goes up faster than currently planned.

Tom McPhail, head of retirement policy at the firm, said: "Those joining the workforce today are likely to find themselves waiting until their mid-70s to get a payout from the state system."

The 2014 Pensions Act requires the state pension age to be reviewed during each Parliament. This will be the first such review to take place.

It will not cover the existing timetable for changes up to April 2028. Mr Cridland will report in time to allow the Government to consider the recommendations by May 2017.

Meanwhile, research from Royal London found that people making minimum workplace pension contributions from the age of 22 would need to work until 77 to be able to enjoy the sort of "gold standard" pensions enjoyed by many of their parents' generation.

This varies across the country due to different wage levels so that it would be as high as 81 in Westminster.

Former pensions minister Steve Webb, director of policy at Royal London, said: "It is great news that millions more workers are now being enrolled into workplace pensions, but the amounts going in are simply not enough to give people the kind of retirement they would want for themselves."

Another report, the Labour-commissioned Independent Review of Retirement Income, warns that people need to be saving 15% of their salary now to build up a reasonable pension pot - compared to 8% in the past.