Eideard

Police in India say they have arrested six foreign nationals suspected of defrauding hundreds of people using text message and email scams…

Authorities seized 14 laptops, seven memory sticks and 23 mobile phones, as well as fake documents and cash. The arrests come after security firm Kaspersky reported that India now sent more spam than any other country in the world.

Police said the six men, all Nigerian, would be remanded in custody until 12 January. The arrests signal attempts to crack down on a growing cybercrime problem in the region…

Mumbai-based internet security specialist Vijay Mukhi said poor enforcement of laws meant spammers could act with impunity.

“We have an Information Technology Act that was introduced in 2000. But we don’t have any convictions under it and it’s silent on spam,” he said…If I’m a spammer, I would rather spam from India to India and the rest of world because nothing will happen to me.”

It’s still the biggest hoot of the day that the 6 spammers busted happen to be from Nigeria.

Is it because of bigotry on the part of the coppers? Easier to arrest African nationals. Or have the world’s leading spam hustlers actually started moving to India because they feel safer committing cybercrimes from there?

Fifa is investigating allegations two of its officials offered to sell their votes in the contest to host the 2018 World Cup, ahead of December’s ballot.

Reporters from The Sunday Times posed as lobbyists for a consortium of American companies who wanted to bring the tournament to the United States. The reporters approached Amos Adamu, a Nigerian who serves as a Fifa executive committee member.

He allegedly said he wanted $800,000 to build football pitches…

The Sunday Times footage appears to show Adamu asking for money to be paid to him directly for endorsing a US bid.

In the video, he was asked whether the money for a “private project” would have an effect on the way he voted.

Adamu, who is president of the West African Football Union, replied: “Obviously, it will have an effect. Of course it will. Because certainly if you are to invest in that, that means you also want the vote.”

Reynald Temarii, president of the Oceania Football Confederation, is also alleged to have asked for a payment, in his case to finance a sports academy.

A statement from Fifa read: “Fifa and the Fifa ethics committee have closely monitored the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 Fifa World Cups and will continue to do so…”In any case, Fifa will immediately analyse the material available and only once this analysis has concluded will Fifa be able to decide on any potential next steps. In the meantime, Fifa is not in a position to provide any further comments on this matter.”

Don’t you love 3rd Party press release copouts?

I would have linked the original story, btw; but, you would have to PPV to Rupert Murdoch to read it.

Nigeria’s state-run oil firm NNPC and China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) have signed a $23 billion deal.

The two will jointly seek financing and credits from Chinese authorities and banks to build three refineries and a fuel complex in Nigeria…

NNPC hopes the construction of new refineries will stem the flood of imported refined products into Nigeria.

Nigeria is the world’s 12th-largest oil producer and the eighth-largest oil exporter. But the country imports roughly 85% of its fuel needs because of the disrepair and mismanagement of its four state-owned refineries…

The three refineries will be built in Bayelsa, Kogi and Lagos states, while a location has to be confirmed for the petrochemicals complex.

The Nigerian government has said that foreign companies must invest in developing Nigeria’s infrastructure and economy first, before they can benefit from its oil and gas exports.

Not unreasonable.

Interesting comparison with the U.S. where we haven’t built a new refinery in years. While reactionary whiners try to assign responsibility for that to environmental regulations – heavens, how could we not pollute? – investors generally accept it’s part of how the Oil Patch Boys keep their prices and profits up.

An Islamic court in Nigeria has banned a rights group from hosting debates on the Twitter and Facebook websites on the use of amputations as a punishment.

The court, in the northern city of Kaduna, backed a case brought by a pro-Sharia group arguing that the forums would mock the Sharia system. The rights group, the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, said it would appeal against the ruling.

Sharia judges can order amputations of limbs for petty crimes in some states…

The newspaper ThisDay quoted the judge’s ruling as saying:”An order is hereby given restraining the respondents either by themselves or their agents from opening a chat forum on Facebook, Twitter, or any blog for the purpose of the debate on the amputation of Malam Buba Bello Jangebe.”

In 2000, Jangebe made history as the first person in Nigeria to have an amputation carried out under Islamic law after being found guilty of stealing a cow.

The Civil Rights Congress said it had started a Twitter feed, blog and Facebook debate on Jangebe so “Nigerians could air their opinions on Sharia law as a whole”…

The Sharia code runs alongside the secular state system in 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states, and citizens can choose which system they deal with.

You might think I’d tire of outrage after a half-century of political activism. Between the jingoism, deceit and corruption of the land I live in – and the hypocrisy and greed parceled among political flunkies in the rest of the world, I’ve had enough to be concerned with.

Still, nothing trips my trigger like some backwards bugger with a special hat on his head making life and death decisions founded upon ignorance from several centuries in the dimly-lit past. And whole chunks of the world nodding their heads in agreement.

Nigeria’s anti-narcotics agency confiscated 6.5 tones of marijuana Tuesday from the home of a man who claimed to be 114 years old.

The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) said it had found 254 sacks of cannabis at the home of Sulaiman Adebayo in Ogun state, north of the commercial capital Lagos.

“The quantity of drugs suggests a large scale involvement … There is more to the case than Pa Sulaiman,” NDLEA chairman Ahmadu Giade said in a statement.

Adebayo, who said he had been a farmer all his life, told police he thought the sacks contained rice.

Get the munchies? Turn it all into Rice Krispies.

Thieves apparently used a Nigerian-based scam to steal $2.5 million from the Utah treasury, covering their tracks by using intermediaries and a church address.

Michael Kessler…said the thieves appear to have used a simple scam that originated in Nigeria about five years ago. The Utah theft is the first time he’s seen a government victimized.

“Their IT people should have known better,” Kessler said after reviewing a copy of the search warrant Thursday. “It sounds like any kid could have done this.”

The search warrant, made public this week in Salt Lake City’s 3rd District Court, said someone in August obtained a vendor number for the University of Utah’s design and construction department. They then forged the signature of the department’s director and submitted paperwork to the state of Utah changing the department’s bank account information.

Fraudsters logged onto a state Web site and submitted invoices to the state on behalf of the campus department. When the state paid the invoices, the money went to a Bank of America account in Texas.

The thieves reaped $2.5 million before the bank called the state to inquire why such large payments were going to the account.

Attempts to contact any of the people listed in the search warrant Thursday as receiving or transferring money were unsuccessful.

Tee hee. This is just too fracking hilarious for words. More uptight, conservative, self-righteous fools caught out by the real world.

The former Halliburton subsidiary KBR has been charged with bribing Nigerian government officials with “tens of millions of dollars” to obtain “billions of dollars in contracts.” KBR was spun off from its former parent corporation Halliburton in 2007.

The Justice Department had no comment on the filing, but officials familiar with the case said they expected KBR representatives to appear Wednesday the 11th in federal court in Houston.

The 22-page court document outlines a complex joint venture involving KBR and the Nigeria government-owned National Petroleum Corporation charged with developing the country’s oil and gas industry. The contracts involved the design and construction of a natural gas plant.

The government documents say the joint venture included payments to international consultants to bribe Nigerian officials.

The alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act come after the conviction of Albert Stanley, KBR’s former chief executive officer, who pleaded guilty to bribery last fall.

In case you never noticed, KBR has been under fire for its business practices while outsourcing Bush’s War in Iraq. The Nigerian charges are separate from KBR’s contracts in Iraq and Kuwait.

No, those are not pumpkins. But, you get the idea…

Motorcyclists in Nigeria have been wearing dried pumpkin shells on their heads to dodge a new law forcing them to wear helmets, authorities say.

Officials in the northern city of Kano said they had stopped several riders with “improvised helmets”, following this month’s introduction of the law. Road safety officials said calabash-wearers would be prosecuted.

Calabashes are dried pumpkin shells more commonly used to carry liquid.

Kano Federal Road Safety Commission commander Yusuf Garba told the BBC they were taking a hard line with people found using the improvised helmets. “We are impounding their bikes and want to take them to court so they can explain why they think wearing a calabash is good enough for their safety,” he said.

RTFA. Some of the crap people believe – everywhere in the world – is simply amazing. The tales surrounding these motorbike cabbies are a trip!

Police in south-east Nigeria have arrested a man who claimed to have killed 110 child “witches”.

Bishop Sunday Ulup-Aya told a documentary film team he “delivered” children from demonic possession. But after his arrest, he reportedly told the police he had only killed the “witches” inside, not the children.

Self-proclaimed “pastors” extort money from families to exorcise children, but none has been charged until now.

“So many people here believe that children can be possessed by demons that there is rarely any action taken against those who claim to deliver the children in violent exorcisms,” says Sam Ikpe-Itauma, of the Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network (CRARN).

He says he has been working for six years to bring the attention of the state government to the children being abandoned, sold to traffickers, or murdered.

His organisation is looking after 170 children who have been abandoned or abused after being accused of being witches.

Some religions have left the Dark Ages behind. I guess. I’m never really certain which of the True Believers to feel safe around, though.

There is no shortage of the demented ready to kill in the name of their god.

Daylife/AP Photo by Sunday Alamba

On Sunday morning, Sani ibn Salihu went to pray for the dead. Even as he arrived at the central mosque of the Nigerian city of Jos to join a throng mourning 364 people whose bodies he said had already been taken there, the battered corpses kept coming: 11 in the hour he spent praying.

“There were women and children, old men,” among the bodies, Mr. Salihu, a peace activist and journalist, said in a telephone interview from Jos, the central Nigerian city where two days of ferocious violence between Christians and Muslims after a disputed local election has left hundreds of people dead.

A tense calm returned to Jos on Sunday as soldiers wrested control of the streets from armed Christian and Muslim gangs that had roamed the city, slaughtering people with guns and machetes and torching houses, churches, shops and cars, according to residents. The sudden and vociferous explosion of religious violence was the worst Nigeria has seen in at least four years.

Four whole years. Golly gee.

Elections have not been held in Jos for years, in part because of fears that the political parties would split along religious lines, which is in fact what happened. Even before the results were announced, gangs on both sides began rampaging, anticipating defeat. Christian gangs claimed that the governing party, the P.D.P., was being cheated of victory, while Muslim gangs claimed that the opposition A.N.P.P., which is identified largely with Muslims in the north, was being robbed of its win.

In this particular pogrom, mostly Christians killed mostly Muslims. Which puts the lie to all the True Believers who would have you believe there’s one religion or another with a corner on the market for love and peace. But, that’s about all.

All that’s consistent is the brutality and hatred expressed in collective murder.