Nigeria: Petrol Tanker Explodes Killing 36

At least 36 people have died after a petrol tanker exploded when it collided with a bus on a highway in Nigeria.

The accident took place on the Benin-Ore highway at Igbogui village in southern Edo state.

Jonas Agwu, a spokesman for the Federal Road Safety Commission, confirmed the death toll, adding it included 30 passengers from the bus.

Four people from the tanker died as well as two children who were at a nearby mechanic workshop.

Mr Agwu said the fire which erupted from the accident quickly "spread to a nearby mechanic workshop where eight other vehicles got burnt. A nearby local market also got burnt".

The highway links Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos with eastern and southern states of the country.

Nigeria has one of the worst road accident records in Africa, with poor roads, badly maintained vehicles and reckless driving killing thousands every year.

Eighteen people were killed and nine others seriously injured Wednesday when their bus veered off its lane and collided with another bus along a highway linking the capital Abuja to the central city of Lokoja, officials said.

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Growing Calls In US For Legalised Marijuana

By Greg Milam, US Correspondent

A national survey has found the majority of Americans are now in favour of legalising marijuana.

A study by the Pew Research Centre found 52% of people thought the use of the drug should be made legal, with people aged 18 to 32 most in favour.

Even opponents of moves to legalise the drug nationwide - something compared to the end of prohibition of alcohol in the 1930s - admit it is probably now inevitable.

Colorado and Washington state voted to legalise the drug last November but it remains illegal at the federal level, prompting a debate about how police should treat producers and users.

Marijuana is legal in Colorado and Washington state, but illegal federally

In the Rocky Mountains state of Colorado, growers are preparing for a wave of new customers once authorities have worked out how to implement Amendment 64, the vote to legalise.

At the moment only licensed medical users, carrying what is called the Red Card, can buy cannabis from dispensaries.

Andy Williams, who owns and runs the Medicine Man dispensary in Denver, is rushing to complete construction work which will expand his growing capacity by a third.

He already has 4,000 plants, carefully cultivated in high-tech "grow rooms" that look more like a science laboratory than the traditional image of cannabis production.

He has invested hundreds of thousands in industrial-scale growing.

He told Sky News: "It really hasn't hurt anything. We don't see a sky rocket in terms of our kids using it, we don't see lots of people getting into accidents on the highway because of it, we don't see any negative effects.

"What we are seeing is jobs, taxes, all sorts of good things so let's just take the curtain off this and say what it is - it is recreational."

He estimates a boom in sales once Amendment 64 takes effect and anyone over 21 can buy the drug legally.

Already the first Amsterdam-style coffee shops have started to spring up.

Veronica Carpio, who owns the Front Tea and Art Shop and used to run a dispensary, said: "I would say it is time to get over it.

"We have had these biases in our culture for decades and they have impacted peoples lives horribly and negatively. It is time to move past that and evolve."

Her customers believe any attempt to roll back the new law will fail.

"It is historical, it is trailblazing," Heidi Perreira told Sky News: "There is no way it can go back."

But some in Colorado are unwilling to give up the fight.

Douglas County has voted to ban cannabis-related commerce, in effect becoming a dry county.

Jack Hilbert, the county's commissioner, said the decision was taken to reflect the fact that voters there had consistently rejected legalisation.

He said: "There are too many unanswered questions about the safety of this product."

Even he accepts there is an inevitability about nationwide legalisation. The profits for businesses and the taxes collected by states will prove hard to resist.

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Mexico Drug War Memorial Angers Relatives

A monument unveiled by the Mexican government in memory of the thousands killed during the country's vicious drug war has sparked anger among victims' relatives.

The £1.6m Mexico City structure, which includes steel panels bearing quotes from famous writers and thinkers, was dedicated during an official ceremony on Friday.

But only some rights groups recognise the monument because it does not bear a single victim's name.

Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said: "Other organisations asked us for other space because they're against this one.

A relative writes on one of the steel panels in Mexico City

"What took us so long was trying to get agreement among the groups, and we failed."

The dispute arises from the fact the Mexican government has yet to fully document the drug war dead - thought to be as many as 70,000 people - despite constant pleas from the public.

Former president Felipe Calderon's government stopped counting the victims in September 2011, and Enrique Pena Nieto's new regime has only provided monthly statistics for December 2012 to February 2013.

Jose Merino, a political science professor at Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology, said people would not accept the memorial until the government documented every case.

Mr Calderon, who at first dismissed most of the drug war dead as criminals, proposed the memorial last year after meeting with victims' families.

Many Mexicans consider the military as complicit in drug war abuses and disappearances.

The land where the memorial is located belonged to the Defence Department, but was given to a governmental body that helps victims and relatives.

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Mother Who Left Baby To Freeze Gets 50 Years

A mother has been sentenced to 50 years in prison for leaving her newborn daughter to freeze to death on a remote road.

Winnebago County Judge John Truitt handed down the sentence to 32-year-old Katie Stockton of Illinois on Friday.

Stockton's infant became known as Baby Crystal after her frozen remains were found.

Stockton pleaded guilty in February to first-degree murder in the infant's death after years of insisting she was innocent.

She had hidden her pregnancy and secretly gave birth to the baby in December 2004 and then stuffed the newborn into a shopping bag and left her along a roadway in frigid conditions.

Under Illinois state law she could have abandoned the baby at any designated safehouse without any questions being asked.

Police interviewed Stockton about Baby Crystal's death in 2004 after the child's frozen remains were found along a dead-end road near the Stockton family home.

Prosecutors said when detectives interviewed her hours after the discovery, she lifted her shirt and asked if she looked like she had just given birth.

Stockton refused to provide a DNA sample but detectives investigating the death collected evidence from a cigarette butt they saw her discard.

Authorities said saliva on the cigarette butt matched blood found on the clothing with Baby Crystal.

But Stockton was not arrested in connection with Baby Crystal's death until 2009.

The Rockford Register Star reports Judge Truitt allowed testimony during Friday's sentencing hearing about skeletal remains of two other baby girls found years after Baby Crystal's death in the boot of Stockton's car.

Those remains, wrapped in cloths and stuffed underneath a spare tyre and a tyre iron, were found in 2009 - after the car had been sitting in impound for a year.

DNA testing determined Stockton was also probably the mother of those babies.

That testimony would not have been allowed had Stockton stood trial.

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India: Survivor Found Day After Tower Collapse

Rescuers have pulled out alive an injured woman from the wreckage of a Mumbai tower block - 36 hours after it collapsed leaving as many as 72 dead and 70 injured.

The 65-year-old was dragged from the building on Saturday morning after rescue workers heard her voice and used camera equipment to pinpoint her location under the rubble. She is said to be in a stable condition in hospital.

It came as the search for further survivors was called off after more than 40 hours and the rescue of 126 people in total.

A 10-month old infant was pulled from the debris on Friday.

Dozens are still missing, while some 36 of the injured remain in hospital.

A 10-month-old child rescued from the rubble

Most of the dead and missing are migrant construction workers who were living on the site in Thane, on the outskirts of the city, with their families.

At least 17 of those killed are children.

The building collapsed "like a pack of cards within three to four seconds," one witness said on Thursday night.

As rescue teams combed the rubble for survivors immediately after the collapse, two young children were plucked out alive to cries of "God is great".

A toddler is pulled out alive from the wreckage

Rescue workers with sledgehammers, gasoline-powered saws and hydraulic jacks struggled to break through the tower of rubble in their search for possible survivors. Six bulldozers were brought to the scene.

An investigation has now been launched into what has been described as one of the worst incidents of its kind in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.

The collapse is being blamed on shoddy construction and unstable foundations.

The building was only supposed to be four storeys high but three extra levels had been illegally constructed on top and an eighth was being added when it collapsed, said police.

Rescue workers search for survivors in the rubble

Police said they have arrested the builder and his associates. They face a number of charges including manslaughter.

A local resident who gave his name as Ramlal said: "The building collapsed like a pack of cards within three to four seconds.

"Only labourers used to stay there. No rich person or well-to-do family stayed here. Only poor people stayed here."

The neighbourhood where the building collapsed was part of a belt of more than 2,000 illegal structures that had sprung up in the area in recent years, said Malvi, the town spokesman.

"Notices have been served several times for such illegal construction, sometimes notices are sent 10 times for the same building," he said.

A crowd watches the rescuers at work

GR Khairnar, a former top Mumbai official, said government officials who allowed the illegal construction should be tried along with the builders.

"There are a lot of people involved (in illegal construction) - builders, government machinery, police, municipal corporation - everybody is involved in this process," he told CNN-IBN television.

As the economy has grown, so has the appetite for property and the quick profit that comes from unauthorised construction.

In one of the worst collapses, nearly 70 people were killed when an apartment building in a congested New Delhi neighbourhood crumbled in November 2010.

That building was two floors higher than legally allowed and its foundations appeared to have been weakened by water damage.

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North Korea: US Deploys Spy Plane To Japan

Tensions remain high on the Korean Peninsula amid reports the US has deployed an unmanned spy plane to Japan to boost its surveillance after North Korea readied missile launchers on its east coast.

The Global Hawk will be stationed at the US airbase in Misawa, northern Japan, in the first ever deployment of the aircraft in the country, the Sankei Shimbun reported, quoting government sources.

The US military informed Japan last month about plans to deploy the plane between June and September but has brought the date forward.

It comes after North Korea warned foreign diplomats they may not be safe in the country if war breaks out.

The spy plane will be stationed at the US airbase in Misawa, northern Japan

Pyongyang asked foreign embassies whether they were considering evacuating staff, saying the government could not guarantee their safety in the event of conflict from April 10.

The British Foreign Office dismissed the warning as "rhetoric".

However, an urgent international effort to defuse the situation is under way.

The heads of EU missions are to meet to hammer out a common position on the crisis, while the US works its diplomatic channels to resolve the stand-off with Pyongyang.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has been holding talks with officials in South Korea, as well as China - historically North Korea's ally - to see if the Chinese can put any more pressure on North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un to back down.

Kim Jong-Un holding up a pistol as he supervises firing drills

Reporting from the South Korean capital Seoul, Sky's Asia Correspondent Mark Stone, said: "In the skies above the Korean Peninsula there are spy planes operating.

"There will be drones - American drones - operating before long from a base in Japan.

"They are trying to get as much of a sense as possible of what it is that Kim Jong-Un is doing on the ground with his weaponry.

"We know he has some pretty sophisticated weaponry.

"There are artillery rounds just over the border. They could in theory hit Seoul. That's a big concern for South Korea.

"That's why they are trying to put these intelligence reports together, as well as the diplomacy behind the scenes, to try and work out what Kim Jong-Un might be up to."

A South Korean soldier looks to the north at a border observation post

He continued: "The diplomats were warned by Pyongyang to leave by April 10 - no one quite knows why that date should be significant.

"It seems pretty clear, certainly speaking to western diplomats based in Pyongyang, their belief is this is just the latest round of rhetoric from North Korea.

"You would assume that if North Korea was planning some sort of war, it would actually want the diplomats from foreign countries to remain there so that they could be used as some sort of a bargaining chip - not kicked out of North Korea.

"I think it is alarming, but I think it's also probably just more rhetoric," he added.

Most governments have made it clear they have no immediate plans to withdraw personnel from the area.

A rally in support of Kim Jong-Un's order to put missiles on standby

Western tourists returning from organised tours in Pyongyang - which have continued despite the crisis - said the situation on the ground appeared calm, with life going on as normal.

"We're glad to be back but we didn't feel frightened when we were there," said Tina Krabbe, from Denmark, arriving in Beijing after five days in North Korea.

The embassy warning on Friday coincided with reports that North Korea had loaded two mid-range Musudan missiles on mobile launchers and hidden them in underground facilities on its eastern coast.

The Musudan have never been tested but are believed to have a range of around 3,000km (1,860 miles), which could theoretically be pushed to 4,000km (2,485 miles).

That would cover any target in South Korea and Japan, and possibly even reach US military bases located on the Pacific island of Guam - which Pyongyang has threatened to strike.

Tensions have soared on the Korean peninsula since December, when the North test-launched a long-range rocket. In February, it conducted its third nuclear test and drew fresh UN sanctions.

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Rhino Horns Worth £2m Stolen In South Africa

Thieves in South Africa have stolen 66 rhino horns worth some $2.75m (£1.8m) in one of the biggest horn heists the country has ever seen.

The horns were taken after the thieves broke into the safe of game farm owner Johan van Zyl who runs the Leshoka Thabang Game Reserve in northern Limpopo province.They reportedly used a blowtorch to open the safe where the horns were kept.

The owner had removed the horns from living rhinos at his reserve to protect the animals from poachers who supply them illegally to international crime syndicates.

South Africans hold a protest outside the Chinese embassy in Pretoria

Demand is high in the Far East and particularly in Vietnam, where the newly affluent middle class believes it has strong medicinal powers. The treatments have no basis in science but demand has pushed the price up to around £43,000 a kilo, making it more expensive than gold.

"In my hands it is worth nothing, but in the hands of the guys who have it now, the horns are worth a lot of money," said Mr van Zyl.

The reserve owner has permits for horn removal and storage.

South Africa allows for private storage of horns, which must be registered, but forbids almost all sales.

South Africa uses armed guards to protect its rhinos

The country is home to the vast majority of rhinos on the continent, with numbers estimated at about 21,000.

Last year, more than 660 rhinos in South Africa were killed by poachers - a record high - and more than 800 rhinos could be killed this year if poaching continues at its current rate.

Several game reserve owners have dehorned rhinos to make them less likely to be killed by poachers, while South Africa has deployed its army to protect the animals in national parks.

Rhino horn has been used for centuries in Chinese medicine, where it was ground into powder to treat a range of maladies including rheumatism, sexual dysfunction, gout and even possession by devils.

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Iraq: 20 Dead, Dozens Hurt In Suicide Blast

A suicide bomber has killed 20 people and wounded dozens during a political rally in the Iraqi city of Baqouba, according to officials.

The bomber detonated his explosives as Muthana al-Jourani, a Sunni candidate for the provincial council, was hosting lunch for supporters in a large hospitality tent pitched next to his house, councilman Sadiq al-Huseini said.

The city, some 35 miles north-east of Baghdad and made up of Sunni and Shi'ite residents, has been a focus of insurgent attacks and sectarian conflict over the past 10 years.

The latest attack comes ahead of provincial elections on April 20.

A police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said the politician, who was injured in the attack, had not requested any extra security for the event.

Eyewitness Ahmad al-Hadlouj, a 34-year-old who was wounded in the blast, said hundreds of people had gathered in the side street for the rally. His father, a member of the candidate's political bloc, was also wounded.

"This is our blood (shed) for the people," said Mr al-Hadlouj. "We will still participate in elections."

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the police officer said the attack was the hallmark of al-Qaeda militants who have used suicide bombers, car bombings and coordinated attacks to shake security in Iraq, hoping that will undermine confidence in the Shiite-led government.

The hard-line Sunni extremists see Shiites and those who work with them as heretics.

A wave of deadly bombings and attacks in March prompted Iraqi officials to conclude that al-Qaeda's Iraqi branch, known as the Islamic State of Iraq, has been getting stronger.

They say rising lawlessness on the Syria-Iraq frontier and cross-border cooperation with the Syrian militant group Nusra Front has improved the militants' supply of weapons and foreign fighters.

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Nelson Mandela Leaves Hospital After 10 Days

Former South African president Nelson Mandela has been discharged from hospital after being treated for pneumonia.

The 94-year-old was allowed to return home this afternoon "following a sustained and gradual improvement in his general condition".

An ambulance is understood to have taken him back to his residence in Johannesburg.

President Jacob Zuma's office said Mr Mandela would now receive "home-based" care.

Mr Mandela is believed to have been transported home in this ambulance

A statement said: "President Zuma thanks the hard working medical team and hospital staff for looking after Madiba so efficiently."

He also extended his gratitude to all South Africans, friends of the nation and to people around the world for their support.

Spokesman Mac Maharaj told Sky News: "We are all very happy with the news and grateful to the doctors and the hospital staff for looking after so well.

"The doctors say that given his age, they have to monitor him very carefully and they have to remain cautious all the time.

"He is frail, and we need to take into account his age ... but Madiba is a fighter and he is not ready to say goodbye to us."

It has been the third health scare in four months for the anti-apartheid leader.

He was in hospital briefly in early March for a check-up and again in December for nearly three weeks with a lung infection and following surgery to remove gallstones.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who became South Africa's first black president in 1994, is a global symbol of tolerance and the struggle for equality.

Mr Mandela stepped down as president in 1999 and has not been politically active for a decade.

He has a history of lung problems dating from when he contracted tuberculosis as a political prisoner.

He spent 27 years on Robben Island and in other jails for his attempts to overthrow the white-minority government.

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India: British Woman Murdered In Kashmir

A second man is being questioned after a British woman was found murdered on a houseboat in Indian-administered Kashmir, police have confirmed.

The son of the owner of the houseboat where Sarah Groves, 24, had been staying for up to two months is helping police with their inquiries, according to Sky sources.

Miss Groves, from Guernsey, was found in a pool of blood on the vessel at Srinagar's Dal Lake, a popular tourist destination.

A police officer at Dal Lake, a popular tourist destination

Local police said the victim had multiple stab wounds all over her body and a knife was found next to her.

The first arrested man - a Dutch national aged in his 40s - was said to have smashed open the door of her room during the night.

He was picked up as he tried to flee the valley with only his passport, senior police officer Abdul Ghani Mir said.

Miss Groves' body is being sent for medical examination to determine whether she was sexually assaulted before being killed.

Speaking to Sky News India correspondent Alex Rossi, Irfan Shoda confirmed his brother Samir was being questioned and described finding the victim's body in the early hours.

Onlookers gathered near the scene of the murder

Superintendent Tahir Sajjad told AFP: "We walked into a pool of blood in her room. We found a sharp-edged knife close to her body. The young lady had multiple stab wounds."

The Dutchman was held at Qazigund, in south Kashmir's Anantag district, around 100km (62 miles) from the lake where Miss Groves' body was found.

He had allegedly fled in a small boat which capsized as he was trying to reach the shore, forcing him to swim.

Speaking near the murder scene, Deputy Inspector General of Police for central Kashmir Syed Afadul Mujtiba said: "There is one houseboat over here in which there were two tourists living.

"She has been living here, an English tourist, and a Dutch tourist arrived two days ago, and now today in the morning the dead body of the female tourist has been found with incision wounds, sharp-edged weapon wounds."

The woman was killed in Indian-administered Kashmir

The weeping owner of the Kashmir houseboat, named Hafeeza, said she was shocked by Miss Groves' murder.

She said: "She was very dear to me, she was just like my daughter."

The Foreign Office says it is in touch with local authorities and Miss Groves' family has been informed.

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