PHOTOS: Global leaders arrive in South Africa as hundreds of thousands gather in Soweto for MANDELA'S historic memorial service

President Barack Obama and the First Lady have arrived in Johannesburg after Air Force One touched down in South Africa on Tuesday morning. The Obamas were met at the airport by South Africa's minister for international relations Maite Nkoana-Mashabane (pictured above left) - after a 17-hour flight from Washington with former President George W Bush and his wife Laura, and former Secretary of State and first lady Hillary Clinton.

As dignitaries from around the world flew in for the funeral service, South Africans gathered in their thousands to celebrate the life of their inspirational leader (inset).

See photos below...more photos to come as events unfold....

Former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura are seen coming off of Air Force One after the Obamas as the two couples shared the plane with former Secretary of State and first lady Hillary Clinton

Lines of succession: Obama led the Americans, followed by Michelle, then former President George Bush, Laura Bush, and Hillary Clinton seen just slightly at the end

 

Representatives: David Cameron and Nick Clegg were attending the ceremony along with three former Prime Ministers of Britain

Arrival: Mr Cameron, Mr Clegg and John Major walking in to the FNB Stadium this morning

Successor: Jacob Zuma, the current president of South Africa, is giving the keynote speech during the ceremony

Ally: FW de Klerk, who was awarded the Nobel Prize along with Mandela for his role in ending apartheid, arrives with his wife Elita

Stars: U2 singer Bono and South African actress Charlize Theron talking in the crowd at the ceremony

Dignitary: Sir John Major  former Prime Minister of the UK

Respected: Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan arrived with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former President Jimmy Carter

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace Mugabe (centre) arrive in Pretoria ahead of the memorial

 

Equatorial Guinea's president Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (left) and Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta (right) also arrived in South Africa on Monday night

Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain (centre) is also on the guestlist for the prestigious memorial

 

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni (left) and Malawi's President Joyce Banda (right) arrive at Waterkloof Air Force Base in Pretoria

 

 

 

More photos to come.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#dailymail.co.uk

 

 

Tulisa 'will plead not guilty' after being charged with being involved in the supply of Class A drugs

Former X Factor judge Tulisa Contostavlos was tonight charged in connection with the supply of Class A drugs.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced the 25-year-old will appear before Westminster Magistrates’ Court on December 19.

The charge relates to Tulisa “being concerned in” the supply of drugs.

It follows a newspaper sting in which she was allegedly filmed appearing to fix an £820 cocaine deal with a man who was later revealed as an undercover journalist.

Tulisa is said to have acted as a go-between in the alleged drug deal involving part-time rapper Mike GLC - real name Michael Coombs – who was also charged.

During the sting operation, the reporter in question offered the singer a £3million film contract while masquerading as a movie producer.

Tulisa and her friends were also flown first class to Las Vegas.

CPS London chief Crown prosecutor Baljit Ubhey said: “The Crown Prosecution Service has today authorised the Metropolitan Police Service to charge Tulisa Contostavlos, 25, with being concerned in the supply of Class A drugs

“This charge relates to an investigation by the Sun newspaper between early March 2013 and May 23 2013 which resulted in the supply of Class A drugs to an investigative journalist,”

“This decision to prosecute was taken in accordance with the code for Crown prosecutors.

“We have determined that there is sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction and that a prosecution is in the public interest.”

“This defendant is now the subject of criminal proceedings and has the right to a fair trial.”

Tulisa was initially arrested in connection with the incident with 35-year-old musician Mike GLC on June 4 by appointment at a London police station.

If found guilty, supplying Class A drugs can carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

However, such severe punishment is only applied in the most extreme circumstances involving large scale drug rings, repeat offenders and huge profits.

Tulisa, from Hatfield, Herts, was officially dropped as a judge on X Factor days before her arrest, with Sharon Osborne returning to the show in her place.

A Scotland Yard spokesman confirmed the singer had been charged alongside Coombs, 35, of Enfield.

Tulisa’s lawyer Ben Rose said that she would fight the charge and plead not guilty.

Tulisa found fame as a member of N-Dubz before going solo and hitting number one with her debut single Young, released in April last year.

Her TV career flourished working as an X Factor judge on the show’s eighth and ninth series, in 2011 and 2012, before she was replaced.



 #mirror

18 yr old mute boy goes missing in Lagos

Punch - The family of an 18-year-old boy, Somto Orji, has been thrown into panic since he got missing in the Allen, Ikeja area of Lagos State.

PUNCH Metro learnt that Somto, who is incapable of speech, was last seen leaving his parents’ home on Akin Osiyemi Street, off Allen Avenue.

Somto’s mother, Ify, told our correspondent that her son disappeared on November 29, 2013.

She said they only recently moved into the Allen Avenue house and that could be the reason her son did not know the way back home.

She said, “On that day, I was not home because I had gone to the hospital to have an X-ray following a serious car accident I had. My daughter called to inform me that Somto had run off. I learnt that it was when the houseboy opened the door for my daughter to come in that my son ran out of the house.

“The house boy said he chased him, but later turned back, thinking that he would come home soon.

“However, when I came back at 3.39pm, he had not come back. My husband and other people started searching for him. We reported the matter at the Ikeja Police Division.

“We searched the whole of Opebi, Allen, Alausa and Ikeja until 4.30am the following day, which was the monthly environmental sanitation day. Even during the sanitation, police gave us permission and we searched for him but to no avail.”

The victim’s mother said she and her husband later went to the state’s task force on environmental and other offences to check if her son had been arrested, adding that she did not find him there.

She said she also visited all the prisons in the state to no avail.

“We visited task force office at Alausa and we were told that 47 persons had been taken to the Badagry Prison. On getting to Badagry, 47 men were lined up for me to identify, but my son was not there.

“Task force said another 17 persons had been taken to Ikoyi Prison, so we made for Ikoyi,” she said.

Ify said her son was not found at Ikoyi Prison and she and her husband went to Kirikiri Prisons where 20 people had been remanded following a raid. She said her son was not found there as well.

She said she visited the Special Anti-Robbery Squad Ikeja, Area G Police Command, Ogba; as well as four police stations within Oshodi area, but she was told that no mute person had been arrested, while she was even allowed to see the detained suspects.

“We went to Lagos State University Teaching Hospital as well as the mortuary, but we did not see him. We went to Ministry of Youth and Culture and NAPTIP (National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons and other related matters), but my son was not in any of these places,” she said.

The victim’s mother said after looking everywhere for her son, she was relying on divine help to finding him.

She said she had recently lost one of her children who was 19.

While crying profusely, she said, “My son was not born dumb but he suddenly lost his ability to speak at the age of seven.

Due to his hyperactivity, he was not able to stay in school and cannot write and doesn’t understand sign language but he can hear. He is 5ft5 and has a chocolate skin colour.

“My fist child died of Kidney disease during her first year in University of Lagos, I cannot lose another child.”

When contacted on the telephone, Police Public Relations Officer, Ngozi Braide, said she had not been briefed, promising to call back. This, she had not done as of the time of going to the press.

Woman who stole 7-day-old baby arrested

JOS — The Plateau State Police command, yesterday, paraded the woman who, last week, stole a seven-day old baby in Bokkos Local Government Area and her accomplice who had faked a pregnancy to con her husband for seven months.

Parading the two alongside other suspects, state Commissioner of Police Mr. Chris Olakpe, said the housewife, Chundung Lagi Jugu, allegedly colluded with Elizabeth Zakari to steal the baby boy whose mother was on admission to justify the fake pregnancy.

According to him,“The suspects deceived one Mrs. Juliana Zakari who was delivered of a baby boy through caesarian operation after one week while she was still on admission that the governor’s wife was visiting Bokkos Local Government Area to assist all women who had their babies through caesarian operation and they took away her one-week old baby to an unknown destination.”

He said the suspects were arrested in Bukuru, Jos South Local Government Area.

Also paraded were three suspected killers of a nine-year-old girl whose corpse was found with vital parts removed in an uncompleted building in Fillin-Sukwa area of Jos.

The girl had been declared missing when she did not return after her grandmother sent her on an errand.

The commissioner said two of the suspects had confessed that they were contracted by one Aminu Saleh, to get a girl for N400,000 which made them to trick the unsuspecting girl identified as Umi Salma and kidnapped her.

He said the two confessed to having earlier sold a 12-year-old girl to the same Aminu Saleh for N300,000 but claimed he was yet to pay them for the last deal.

A 53-year old man alleged to have raped a 10-year old girl was also paraded.

Another middled aged man was paraded for alleged robbery, snatching a Toyota Corolla car from a lady at Zarmanganda area of Jos while two others were alleged to have stolen a Honda car from a shop.



#vanguard

Israel, Jordan and Palestinian Authority sign a deal to refill the rapidly disappearing Dead Sea with briny water pumped from the Red Sea.

New project to create drinking water from the Red Sea will also boost shrinking Dead Sea




NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images - Sylvan Shalom, left, Israeli regional development minister; Hazem Nasser, Jordanian water and agriculture minister; and Shaddad Attili, head of the Palestinian Water Authority, shake hands after signing the deal.


JERUSALEM — The Dead Sea has been rapidly disappearing for the past 50 years, one of the world’s natural wonders careening toward ecological collapse.

But in a deal signed Monday and hailed as “historic,” Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority agreed on an ambitious project to begin to refill the ancient salt lake with briny water pumped from the Red Sea.




The agreement calls for the construction of a large desalination plant in Jordan, on the Gulf of Aqaba, that would suck billions of gallons from the Red Sea and convert it to drinking water. The water would be shared by — and sold to thirsty customers in — Jordan and Israel. In addition, as part of the agreement, Israel agreed to increase the amount of water it sells annually to the Palestinian Authority by as much as 30 million cubic meters.

Billions of gallons of “reject brine” — essentially, super-salty water created by the desalination process — would be pumped via a new, 100-mile pipeline and discharged into the Dead Sea.

Estimated construction costs for the pipeline and desalination plant could run about $500 million. The first drop of water to enter the Dead Sea would probably not appear before 2017.

“This is a historic agreement that realizes a dream of many years,” said Silvan Shalom, the Israeli water and energy minister. “The agreement is of the highest diplomatic, economic, environmental and strategic importance.”

And hopefully not too late.

The deal was signed Monday in a ceremony at the World Bank in Washington, which for years has underwritten feasibility studies, environmental assessments and economic modeling about how not only to save the Dead Sea, but how to share costs and resources to provide drinking water for a thirsty region bristling with conflict.

The project, supported by the Obama administration as a symbol of regional cooperation and a sign for what could be accomplished if peace were to take hold, has been the subject of study and debate since the 18th century.

The Dead Sea is an ecological wonder and generator of superlatives good and bad. It appears in the Bible but not much. The Crusaders called it the Devil’s Sea. Today, it is a popular destination for tourists, who pack themselves in mud from its shores and float in water that is 10 times as salty as most oceans. There are salt ponds and potash mining and a mystical vibe — with lots of quicksand and sinkholes.

It is the lowest spot on Earth, a vast, sulfurous and strange inland sea, landlocked in a great rift valley, a cradle of civilizations and religions.

Thanks to humans, this natural wonder has been dying for years.

The water level of the lake has dropped more than 80 feet in the past half-century, as the Jordan River has withered to a trickle, sucked dry by Israeli and Jordanian agricultural projects. The sharp decrease in inflow from the river, and the desiccation of local natural springs, has reduced the surface area of the lake by one-third.

Government scientists and World Bank officials said the desalination deal would begin a very long, slow, uncertain process of stabilizing the Dead Sea. But some environmental groups, such as Friends of the Earth in the Middle East, warned that “the brine should not be transferred into the Dead Sea because of detrimental impacts.”

Supporters of the project say that since the Dead Sea will receive only 26 billion gallons of brine from the project a year, a fraction of what is needed to hold the Dead Sea at current levels, the benefits of the projects outweigh the risks.

Scientists say they will monitor the sea to look for impacts.





#washingtonpost