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Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid al-Qaeda No.3

ISLAMABAD: Al-Qaeda’s third-in-command, whose role spanned from operations to fundraising, is believed to have been killed last month in a US missile strike in Pakistan.

Sheikh Sa’id al-Masri, also known as Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, was believed to be killed along with members of his family in a strike by a pilotless CIA-operated drone attack.

Al-Qaeda confirmed his death in a statement on a website earlier on Monday.

“We have strong reason to believe…that al-Masri was killed recently in Pakistan’s tribal areas,” a US official in Washington said on condition of anonymity. “In terms of counterterrorism, this would be a big victory.”

A Pakistani security official said Yazid was most probably killed in a missile strike in North Waziristan on the night of May 21.

“We had a report at the time that one Arab was killed in that strike with some of his family members and I think it was probably him,” said the official, who declined to be named.

The attack targeted a house owned by a tribesman some 25 km west of Miramshah, the main town in North Waziristan, a stronghold of al-Qaeda and Taliban militants that borders Afghanistan.

Intelligence officials at the time said six militants were killed but residents said 12 people, including four women and two children, were killed. Six women and two children were wounded and treated at a hospital in Miramshah, residents said.

“He was known as Mustafa in the area. His wife was killed in the strike,” a resident of the village where attack took place said on condition of anonymity.

The US-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant websites, said earlier on Monday that al-Qaeda announced al-Masri’s death in an Internet posting.

In addition to al-Masri, the announcement stated that his wife, three of his daughters, his granddaughter and other men, women and children were killed, according to SITE.

The CIA has stepped up the pace of unmanned aerial drone attacks, targeting not only high-level al-Qaeda and Taliban targets but largely unknown foot soldiers as well.

A US official said al-Masri was widely seen as al-Qaeda’s No. 3 figure and its main conduit to leader Osama bin Laden.

As al-Qaeda’s chief operating officer, he had a hand in everything from finances to operational planning, the official said.

Capacity damaged, commitment remains

Analysts say his death will be a major loss for al-Qaeda but there would be no weakening of the group’s fighting resolve.

“Definitely it will have an impact because it was their important figure, it’s a big loss for them but there appears to be a generational change taking place in al-Qaeda where new ones are replacing old ones,” said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a newspaper editor and expert on militant affairs.

“Al-Qaeda’s capacity to operate and strike has been badly damaged because of their losses in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq but we have not yet seen any weakening of their commitment.”

A senior intelligence official in Islamabad said al-Qaeda’s No. 3 position was “the most dangerous” rank in the group.

Five other al-Qaeda leaders considered third-in-command have been killed or captured since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, but al-Masri may be the most difficult to replace.

“They’re not getting enough people of the right calibre that they require as they were getting earlier,” the intelligence official said, crediting pressure from the drone strikes, Pakistani military actions in the tribal areas and stepped-up intelligence actions in the rest of Pakistan.

Yazid served as al-Qaeda’s leader in Afghanistan and as well as al-Qaeda’s “chief financial officer,” according to the US 9-11 commission.

As chief financier, he was responsible for disbursing al-Qaeda funds, making him one of the most trusted and important leaders of the group.

He was a founding member of Ayman al Zawahiri’s branch of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, one of the original groups that merged to form al-Qaeda. Following the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981, al-Masri was implicated in the killing along with Zawahiri and others, and they spent time in jail together.

He also served as a top propagandist for al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

In March, US officials said a drone strike in Pakistan killed a key al-Qaeda planner.

Courtesy : DawnNews.

Ted Koppel's Son Found Dead

The 40-year-old son of former ABC anchor Ted Koppel has been found dead in an Upper Manhattan apartment, police said Tuesday.

Andrew Koppel was declared dead at around 1:30 a.m. Monday in the Washington Heights apartment, Detective John Sweeney said. A medical examiner would determine the cause of death.

Koppel worked for the law department at the city Housing Authority, the agency said Tuesday. They would make no other comment.

The Queens resident was one of Ted Koppel’s four children.

Ted Koppel was the longtime anchor of ABC’s news show “Nightline.” A call to his publicist was not immediately returned Tuesday.

Andrew Koppel was convicted on a misdemeanor assault charge in 1994 for striking a U.S. Senate aide during an argument at a Capitol Hill automatic teller machine. At the time, he was a student at Georgetown Law School.

Koppel had been drinking for hours with a man he met at a bar, the New York Post reported Tuesday.

“He had a straw hat on, and I had one on, and he said, ‘Nice hat, man,’” the drinking partner, Russell Wimberly, told the newspaper. “We got to talking, and he started buying me drinks.”

Wimberly said Koppel drank whiskey, and neither man had anything to eat all day.

Wimberly said he and Koppel eventually wound up at the apartment, which belonged to Wimberly’s friend. He and the friend, Belinda Caban, told Koppel to sleep it off and later found that he had gotten sick and appeared not to be breathing, the Post said. The two said they called 911.

I guess this is the first time that a storm has blown down a 200ft hole swallowing a building. At least one man was killed and others are missing after a three-storey building fell into a 200ft-deep sink hole in Guatemala City.

Tropical storm Agatha, the first named storm of the 2010 Pacific season, slammed into Guatemala and neighbouring El Salvador at the weekend, dumping more than three feet of rain in the region.

The enormous crater appeared while the city was being ravaged with high winds, torrential rain and deadly mudslides. Witnesses claim at least one man was in the three-storey building when it was swallowed up at a downtown intersection, and others remain missing.

Agatha has killed at least 146 people across Central America, and has sparked fears for the economies of Guatemala and El Salvador – as there has been widespread damage to the coffee crop in both countries.

‘I’ve got no one to help me. I watched the water take everything,’ said Carlota Ramos in the town of Amatitlan near the Guatemalan capital, crying into her hands outside her brick house almost completely swamped by mud.

As the sun came out, exhausted rescue workers hauled away stones and tree trunks from crushed houses as they fought to reach wounded people and find dozens still missing.

‘We just have shovels and picks. We don’t have any machinery to dig,’ said firefighter Mario Cruz, who had been working almost nonstop since Friday night.

Sink hole

200ft Sinkhole in Guatemala City

Kristen Stewart's Weird Skirt

Kristen Stewart makes a bold fashion statement by wearing a skirt that most women don’t want to attract much attention.

The 19-year-old star of the Twilight Saga film series wore an unusual canary yellow mini-skirt on the red carpet in Sydney last night.

But as she signed autographs, she revealed the rear of the skirt, which featured an extra large pelmet of material, adding volume to the dreaded area.

Kristen wore the yellow leather skirt, by LA-based designer Jenni Kayne, with a $32 T-shirt by brand Market, and Sergio Rossi shoe boots.

The skirt was specially modified for the actress from a dress in the designer’s Spring/Summer Collection.

Kristen was seen at a fan event in Sydney as she kicked off her Eclipse promotional duties with co-star Taylor Lautner as they answered questions from 400 fans.

A source told Australian newspaper the Herald Sun: ‘She was just in a bad mood because of the photographers.

‘She sprinted along the wharf trying to get away. She was swearing at them and tried running into a restaurant, but the door was locked. She was saying, “Stop taking my picture”.’

The 20-year old star who plays Bella Swan in the Twilight movies explained in previous interviews why she hates the attention she gets

She has said: ‘What you don’t see are the cameras shoved in my face and the bizarre intrusive questions being asked, or the people falling over themselves, screaming and taunting to get a reaction.’

Checkout her new skirt here :

Malaysian cops have reported that a ghostly apparition of a woman with long hair in a white dress has been haunting their police lock-up.

According to the Harian Metro, the ghost has apparently been disturbing officers on night duty at the Betong district police headquarters about 150km from Kuching, and it has also been seen around the police station.

“Its face is similar to an officer here. When it is given instructions, it would only keep quiet,” the Star Online quoted a source as saying. Such incidents have been happening ever since the police headquarters shifted to the current location in April.

The police sought the services of an ustaz to get rid of the ghost, and it was found the spirit of the woman was not in peace. “We were told that the woman, when she was alive, was a rape victim and was murdered here,” the police said.

Betong OCPD Deputy Supt Mohd Bukhori Saffai said the ghost had disturbed three policemen over the past month, with the latest incident taking place just last week.

News source: Yahoo!

Google Ditches Microsoft Windows

Internet web search giant, Google.com is abandoning internal use of Microsoft Windows over concerns of security. This comes after Chinese hacking incident. All employees of Google have been asked to ditch Microsoft Windows and move to other OSes like Mac OS and Linux. And this is said to have began as early as January itself. Microsoft Windows turned Google rival and competitor after Google made plans to introduce its own OS, Chrome OS for PC and Android for mobile.

Internet security firm McAfee Inc said at the time the cyber attacks on Google and other businesses had exploited a previously unknown flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, which was vulnerable on all recent versions of Windows.

One Google employee says: “We’re not doing any more Windows. It is a security effort.” Another said: “Getting a new Windows machine now requires CIO (chief information officer) approval.”

Google said in a statement: “We’re always working to improve the efficiency of our business, but we do not comment on specific operational matters.”

Windows is the most popular and widely used operating system in the world. It is reportedly said to run in 9 out of 10 personal computers in the world.

Its about time Google did this. But I didn’t expect them to force their employees to NOT use Windows. lol