Man Killed by Wife and Son, Who Then Used Drain Cleaner to Burn His Face So He Wouldn’t Be Identified

A New York man was murdered by his wife and son, who then teamed with his other son to cover up the crime, PEOPLE confirms.

Blurred Lines In Zimbabwe’s Arms of the State

A bill allowing President Robert Mugabe to appoint senior judges sparked outrage Wednesday from Zimbabwean opposition and activists who said it marked a new power-grab by the authoritarian government. The law, which was passed by the lower house on Tuesday, is the first amendment to the 2013 constitution, adopted four years ago by popular vote.
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Why An Average Congolese National Is Among The Poorest On the Planet

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) ranked 176 out of 187on the latest United Nations Human Development Index and two new investigations have shed more light on why that’s the case.

Despite being Africa’s biggest copper producer and the world’s leading source of cobalt with “up to $10 billion” worth of those minerals mined and sold abroad, an investigation by Global Witness, the anti-corruption charity, shows that “as little as 6%” of DR Congo’s annual mining exports reach the national budget.

As a result, despite the country’s vast mineral wealth, an average Congolese national is “among the poorest on the planet,” Global Witness says.

This reality, described as a “paradox of poverty”, is the consequence of large scale corruption which ensures very little of the country’s mineral wealth find its way back to the people. Between 2013 and 2015, mining revenue of up to $1.3 billion—twice the amount the country spends annually on health and education—failed to reach the treasury, according to Global Witness. The shortfall is blamed on a “dysfunctional state-owned mining company and opaque national tax agencies” as well as “corrupt networks linked to President Joseph Kabila’s regime.”

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Brilliant: 11-year-old Pre-teen From Benin Republic Passes exams 7 years early

 Latest news from around Africa: Peace Delaly Nicoue, the youngest person to sit the Baccalaureate exam in Benin this year, has passed with top grades. The shy 11-year-old told BBC Afrique he was “happy and relieved” to achieve 17 out of 20 in Maths because he plans to study economics at university.

Man executed for stabbing woman to death at her home - click for more

On Thursday a man convicted of murdering a woman by stabbing her repeatedly after breaking into her home about 13 years ago was executed.

TaiChin Preyor, 46, died by lethal injection at the state's death chamber in Huntsville, a prisons official said.

The execution was delayed for more than three hours to allow the U.S. Supreme Court time to hear an appeal from Preyor's lawyer to spare his life, which the court rejected.

The execution was the 543rd in Texas since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the most of any state.

“First and foremost I’d like to say, ’Justice has never advanced by taking a life’ by Coretta Scott King. Lastly, to my wife and to my kids, I love y’all forever and always. That’s it," Preyor was quoted as saying in his final statement by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Preyor was convicted in the 2004 killing of Jami Tackett, 24. He also stabbed a man who was with her, who survived.

"Several of Tackett’s neighbors heard her screaming and saw Preyor when he left her apartment," the Texas Attorney General's Office said.

Lawyers for Preyor launched the appeal at the court on Thursday, arguing that prior counsel was incompetent and included one lawyer who lost his license two decades earlier and another attorney with no death penalty experience who used Wikipedia to navigate the Texas death penalty system.

"His trial counsel ignored glaring references to significant mitigation evidence, depriving jurors of crucial information likely to persuade them to impose a life sentence," Preyor's lawyers said in their filing.

Lawyers for Texas asked the Supreme Court to deny the appeal, saying Preyor had been justly sentenced and should have raised concerns about prior counsel earlier.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Leslie Adler and Richard Pullin)

20 Stavros Niarchos Foundation Academic Excellence Scholarships in Greece, 2017

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation is delighted to offer twenty (20) Academic Excellence Scholarships in the field of Civil Society Organizations. International students are eligible to apply for this scholarship program.

The scholarships are aimed at strengthening scientific research regarding civil society and encouraging young people to follow the example set by Tzanetos Antypas in the field of social work. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation [(SNF) (www.SNF.org)] is one of the world’s leading private, international philanthropic organizations, making grants in the areas of arts and culture, education, health and sports, and social welfare. Since 1996, SNF has committed $2.1 billion, through 3,891 grants to nonprofit organizations in 113 nations around the world.

Course Level: Scholarships are available to postgraduate as well PhD students.

Study Subject: Scholarships are awarded in the field of Civil Society Organizations.

Scholarship Award: The scholarships are allocated as follows:

• Ten (10) scholarships for postgraduate students in the Postgraduate Program «Governance and Public Policy” (€3,500 per student).
• Ten (10) scholarships for Doctoral Candidates (€9,000 per student), who will conduct research on issues of civil society, volunteerism, nonprofit organizations, and NGOs.

Number of Scholarships: Up to 10 postgraduate and 10 doctoral scholarships are available.

Scholarship can be taken in Greece

Eligibility: The following criteria must be met in order for applicants to be eligible for the scholarship:

• Postgraduate students and PhD candidates will acquire high-level academic knowledge and skills in a Department that follows an interdisciplinary approach, in the subjects of economics and modern governance in the European and international context, as well as on the workings of civil society organizations specifically. They will strengthen their theoretical foundations and gain new opportunities to exploit their abilities, in order to enhance their career prospects in the dynamic field of community service.

Nationality: International students are eligible to apply for this scholarship program.

Masters Scholarships

How to Apply: Applications are submitted electronically at pedis-at-uop.gr. Subsequently, the three-member evaluation committee meets in the first week of October 2017, followed the scholarship selection process.

The documents substantiating the applicant’s academic and professional career are not required to be submitted along with the submission of the application dossier but must be made available to the Evaluation Committee when requested. All applications must be submitted electronically by September 30th, of each academic year. The Academic Committee meets in the first week of each new academic year, i.e. in September, and decides on the allocation of scholarships. Those selected during the first stage of the selection process will be called for an interview by the members of the evaluation committee.

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation is not involved in the process of candidate selection and evaluation, for which the University of Peloponnese is solely responsible.

Interested applicants will need to submit the following:

• A recently updated curriculum vitae, following Europass standards, which will include academic achievements, volunteering experience, professional career information and any research activity.
• A short “letter of motivation”, (up to 400 words) on why they believe that attending the postgraduate or PhD program will benefit their career in the NGO sector.
• The acceptance of their application to the Postgraduate Program “Governance and Public Policy” or their application for a PhD thesis, by the PSIR GA.
• A letter of recommendation from a person who can assess their professional experience and voluntary action, in collaboration with civil society actors.
• A copy of their income tax return statement for the recent fiscal year.

Application Deadline: The application deadline is September 30, 2017.

48 years later: A look back at the moon landing

                                                   48 years later: A look back at the moon landing

48 years ago, Neil Armstrong took mankind's first step on the moon as a part of NASA's Apollo 11 mission. John Noble Wilford, the New York Times science reporter who covered the moon landing, looks back on what he says he knew was the biggest story he would ever report.

Stephen Farrell, Susan Archer and Josephine SedgwickThe New York Times

From small crimes, cousins allegedly move to killing 4 men

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Two cousins charged in a gruesome crime spree that ended with police unearthing the bodies of four young men buried on a family farm started off committing small crimes.

But authorities don't know why the 20-year-old suspects escalated from offenses like break-ins and jewelry heists to allegedly killing their victims and burying them in two pits so deep beneath the ground that a backhoe and dozens of people were needed to sift through the dirt.

Police found the missing men after a grueling, five-day search in sweltering heat and pelting rain.

For Cosmo DiNardo, whose lawyer said he confessed to all four killings in exchange for being spared the death penalty, brushes with the law began in his early teenage years.

He was about 14 when the Bensalem Police Department first had contact with him. He had more than 30 run-ins with its officers over the next six years, department director Frederick Harran said, although court filings reflect only the minor infractions and traffic stops that came after age 18.

Honolulu Fire: At Least Three Killed in High-Fire Blaze Yahoo View•July 15, 2017

The fire broke out at a Honolulu high-rise condominium building on Friday, sending flames and smoke billowing out from the tower's upper floors and causing people to flee to safety.
Investigators look to piece together what caused the fire as the mayor says the law exempting buildings built before 1974 from sprinkler requirements may need to be amended.

Nikki Haley: ‘We can’t trust Russia, and we won’t ever trust Russia’

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is offering a remarkably different account of President Trump’s meeting at the G-20 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin than other U.S. and Russian officials, claiming Trump told Putin that the United States believes that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election and that the Kremlin needs to quit interfering in the U.S. democratic process.

“What he did was bring up right away the election meddling, and he did that for a reason,” Haley said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “One, he wanted to basically look him in the eye, let him know that, yes, we know you meddled in our elections. Yes, we know you did it, cut it out. And I think President Putin did exactly what we thought he would do, which is deny it. This is Russia trying to save face. And they can’t. They can’t. Everybody knows that Russia meddled in our elections.”

Haley’s description runs counter to the versions offered by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Trump himself.

While Trump said Sunday that he “strongly pressed” Putin about Moscow’s meddling, the president has also expressed doubt about who was behind it.