The Hangover News

Bastard Alliances
BOKO HARAM SAID THEY WERE TEAMING UP WITH ISLAMIC STATE
The Nigerian militant group pledged allegiance to ISIS on Saturday

(via)

Nigerian Islamic militant group Boko Haram declared its allegiance to Islamic State on Saturday.

"We announce our allegiance to the Caliph […] and will hear and obey in times of difficulty and prosperity, in hardship and ease […] we call upon Muslims everywhere to pledge allegiance to the Caliph," the group said in an audio clip posted online.

The move shows an increasing coordination between Islamic militant groups in North Africa and the Middle East.

In its campaign to carve out its own Islamic state in northern Nigeria, Boko Haram has killed thousands of people and kidnapped hundreds more over the last six years.

Destroying the Past
ISLAMIC STATE SMASHED UP THE RUINS OF AN ANCIENT IRAQI CITY
The Unesco World Heritage Site of Hatra has been destroyed

(via)

Islamic State militants destroyed 2,000-year-old ruins at the ancient city of Hatra, a Unesco World Heritage Site, on Saturday, the Iraqi government said.

The Iraqi ministry said it couldn't confirm the reports, but local residents told Reuters that they'd heard a large explosion from the ancient site and had seen IS bulldozing buildings there.

IS militants recently destroyed ancient Assyrian ruins in the city of Nimrud and smashed up a museum in Mosul.

The group say shrines and statues of Iraq's pre-Islamic history are "false idols" and have to be destroyed.

Government Cover-Ups
DOCUMENTS PROVED THATCHER KNEW OF WESTMINSTER CHILD ABUSE
The Mail on Sunday said Downing Street had tried to "cover-up" damaging files

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Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and other senior politicians were warned about MP Cyril Smith's alleged sexual and physical abuse of teenage boys and did nothing, the Mail on Sunday reported.

The documents obtained by the Mail show that Thatcher was warned that awarding Smith a knighthood would damage "the integrity of the honours system" and that the cabinet secretary wrote to the head of public prosecutions querying why Smith was not prosecuted for alleged sexual offences.

The Mail accused Downing Street of a cover-up after battling to get its hands on the dossier of information for over a year, the Cabinet Office giving in only after the Mail threatened High Court action.

"Contract Killings"
TWO MEN WERE CHARGED FOR KILLING A RUSSIAN POLITICIAN
Boris Nemtsov was an opposition leader and a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin

(via)

Two men were charged with the murder of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov by a Moscow court on Sunday.

Russian media reported that the men charged, Anzor Gubashev and Zaur Dadayev, came from Chechnya, a Russian state that has seen a separatist insurgency for the past 20 years.

The committee investigating the crime is said to be treating it as a "contract killing", the Russian Interfax news agency reported.

Nemstov was deputy prime minister in the 1990s and a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine in the years before his death.

House Party
A GUY SPENT THE NIGHT ON THE ROOF OF PARLIAMENT
And no one really knows why

(via)

A 23-year-old man was arrested on Sunday morning after spending eight hours on the roof of the Houses of Parliament.

Scotland Yard said there was no indication why the man was there. "Officers are still trying to establish why he was on the roof. He appeared to be alone," police said in a statement.

The man is pictured in a video wearing a grey jumper and calmly walking up and down.

The roof has previously been scaled by protest groups such as Greenpeace and a group campaigning against a third runway at Heathrow.