A freed Islamic State hostage has given a chilling account of how cold-blooded IS executioner 'Jihadi John' ran a sword across his throat during a mock execution in Syria.

Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa, who spent more than six months in IS captivity before his release in March last year, has described how Jihadi John, a masked IS terrorist seen in gruesome videos of beheadings of Western hostages, took pleasure in the psychological torture.

Writing in 'The Sunday Times', he goes into details about his encounter with Jihadi John, unveiled as 26-year-old Londoner Mohammed Emwazi.

He writes: "The Beatles - that was our nickname for the three British militants guarding us - loved this sort of theatre. They had me sat on the floor, barefoot, with a shaven head, a thick beard and dressed in the 'orange' uniform' that had made Guantanamo, the American prison, famous.

"Jihadi John wanted maximum drama. He had brought along an antique sword of the kind Muslim armies used in the Middle Ages. It was a blade of almost a metre in length with a silver handle.

"He caressed my neck with the blade but kept talking: 'Feel it? Cold, isn't it? Can you imagine the pain you'll feel when it cuts? Unimaginable pain," the journalist recalled.

"After finishing with the sword he holstered his pistol, a Glock. He placed it against my head and pulled the trigger three times. Click. Click. Click. It's called a mock execution. But not even this terrifying intimidation seemed to satisfy them," Espinosa said.

Espinosa and a photographer were kidnapped in Syria in December 2013 as they headed to the Turkish border.

An under-construction church in Kaimri village near here was vandalised by a group and the cross replaced with an idol of Hanuman, triggering tension in the area in Haryana.

Father Subhash Chand of Williwarsh church lodged a complaint against 14 people, following which a case was registered by police under sections 147 (Punishment for rioting), 153A (promoting enmity between groups), 295 (destroying, damaging a place of worship with intent to insult the religion of any class of persons), 380 (theft in a building), 506 (criminal intimidation) of IPC.

The complainant stated that the accused fragmented the cross and installed the statue of Hanuman and a flag depicting Lord Ram and threatened to kill him.

He alleged that they stole a cooler and some items from the worship place that was under construction.

Hisar range Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Saurabh Singh said that the situation was under control.

Meanwhile, Christian Front Haryana has condemned the incident and has demanded immediate arrest of the accused, all residents of Kaimri.

Picture for representation only.

The January 9 attack on the Jewish foodstore by Amedy Coulibaly, who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and also killed a policewoman in a separate attack, had been coordinated with two other gunmen who killed 12 people at satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo two days earlier.

Read full story HERE.

Data collated by the Union Health Ministry today said that as on March 14, the disease has claimed the lives of 1,710 people and 29,558 have been infected by it across the country.

Archbishop of Kolkata Thomas D'Souza said the rally from Allen Park in Park Street is to show their solidarity and sympathy to the victims of the attack. "We want to create awareness in the society on the importance of non-violence and respect for women," he said.

They have given a call to people from all backgrounds to participate in the rally. The Sister Superior of the convent school in Ranaghat sub-division was brutalised yesterday by dacoits who decamped with Rs 12 lakh.

Sunita Kumar, spokesperson of The Missionaries of Charity, expressed shock at the incident wondering why would anyone attack the nuns.

"I do not understand why they did this heinous crime of attacking the nun. I hope the police will catch them," she said. 

Over 200 crude bombs, hand grenades and revolvers have been seized during police raids at Belsore village in Burdwan district since last night.

Acting on a tip-off, the police led by Burdwan SP Kunal Agarwal seized two hand grenades and some crude bombs from a club, 23 km from Burdwan town, last night, Additional Superintendent of police Tarun Haldar said. 

In the continuing raids conducted by the police team along with bomb squad personnel from Durgapur and firemen today morning, 200 crude bombs and two revolvers were also found from the spot.

 

The crude bombs were being defused now, he said.

Two persons have been detained in this connection and the police are on the lookout for another three men, the ASP said.

The district is in the news since the Khagragarh blast in October last.

NASA is teaming up with military tech company Osterhout Design Group for the project and plans on testing the glasses this year in its giant underwater training facility in the Gulf of Mexico.        

Gandhi Jayanti, the birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation, has not been marked as a holiday in the current year's calender, released yesterday.             

The factory was tucked inside a fertilizer company in Buni Yadi town in Yobe state, according to officials.

All services in Riyadh and at the consulates in Jeddah and Dhahran have been cancelled for Sunday and Monday, it said in a statement posted on its website Saturday.

Forty-five militants were killed in army raids in the past week in Egypt, the military said today.

97 wanted and suspected militants were arrested, while 25 militants' headquarters were destroyed in the period from March 8-15, army spokesperson Brig General Mohamed Samir said.

He also added in his statement that 71 vehicles and motorcycle used by militants in their attacks against police and army personnel were destroyed.

Egypt's Sinai has witnessed many violent attacks by militants since the January 2011 revolution that toppled the ex-president Hosni Mubarak.

The attacks targeting police and military increased after the ouster of Islamist ex-president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Over 500 security personnel have been reported killed since then.

The military has launched security campaigns in the area, arrested suspects and demolished terrorist bases, including tunnels leading to the Gaza Strip. 

"Mushairas are now politicised. Ministers have been organising mushairas in order to draw votes into their kitty.The shayaris are thus hardlined and the standard does notremain the same," the poet said.

The programme will have speakers from civil society and secular political parties, victims, artists, intellectuals. 

Cultural programmes will be an important component of the programme.

A report on the 300 days keeping the violations regarding the above issues in mind will be prepared and released. 

Several speakers including senior politicians like Ajay Maken and Digvijay Singh of Congress, Brinda Karat and Sitaram Yechury are set to attend at the event.

Sri Lankan naval personnel allegedly attacked five fishermen when they were fishing near Katchatheevu on Saturday, official sources said.

The navy personnel, who came in five boats, fired four rounds in the air and threatened a group of fishermen from here not to fish in the area.

They also attacked five fishermen of a boat with steel rods, Kennedy, Inspector, 'Q' branch police and T Sasuraja, President, Rameswaram Fishermen Association, told reporters.

JUST IN: According to reports, two people were killed while 30 others were injured in twin blasts in a church the Youhanabad area of Lahore on Sunday.

According to The Express Tribune reports, it was a suicide blast. Rescue teams and security officials have reached the site of the blast.

Reports add that an enraged mob is dragging the body of the deceased suspect and beating it up in reaction to the blasts.

The injured have been shifted to Lahore General Hospital.

More details awaited.

Picture for representation only.

The 300-km long national highway, connecting Kashmir valley with the rest of the country, has been closed due to landslides triggered by heavy rain.    

We have not allowed any vehicle on the highway today following landslides at several place along the national highway triggered by heavy rain, a traffic police official said.    

The traffic was scheduled to move from Srinagar to Jammu.    

Meanwhile, the Border Roads Organisation, responsible for the maintenance of the highway has already put into service sophisticated machines and men to clear the snow and landslides on the highway. 

However, operation was affected due to continued rain.

Only one-way traffic is allowed on the highway for the past about two months to avoid any traffic jam and accidents

"I am acting chief minister. I have both the mike and the remote with me."

This is what Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said on Saturday when asked about the absence of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and whether the remote control is somewhere else while he is discharging the responsibility of a CM.

He said he is concentrating all his energies on running the government in the absence of Kejriwal.

Kejriwal is presently undergoing naturopathy treatment for high blood sugar and cough in Bangaluru and is slated to return on Monday.

Bollywood director Vishal Bhardwaj's 'Haider', an adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy 'Hamlet', will have its screening at the 17th London Asian Film Festival.

The film, which is set in the backdrop of insurgency-hit Kashmir conflicts of 1995 and civilian disappearances, was previously screened at the 19th Busan International Film Festival.

The Shahid Kapoor-Tabu starrer movie will be screened in the festival, starting from March 19, alongside Ketan Mehta's 'Rang Rasiya', disability drama 'Margarita With A Straw', Pakistani film 'Zinda Bhaag' and Nisha Pahuja's 'The World Before Her' among others.

Ten Americans are being flown back to the United States as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigates the possibility they might have been exposed to Ebola in Sierra Leone.

The number could change as the investigation continues, Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the CDC, told CNN on Saturday.

The news comes one day after an American health care worker who came down with Ebola while volunteering in West Africa arrived at a National Institutes of Health hospital for treatment, the NIH said.

Five people have been detained by the police in the alleged gangrape of an elderly nun at Gangnapur in Nadia district.

An 71-year-old nun was allegedly gangraped by dacoits on Saturday, triggering protests and blockades of roads and railway tracks even as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee ordered a CID probe into the incident.

According to authorities at a convent school in Ranaghat sub-division, the gang broke into the convent after 12.30 am and raped the nun after gagging her.

ISIS's serial beheadings and recent enkindling of a Jordanian air force pilot have generated worldwide horror. 

But heinous and repugnant as these acts indisputably are, its important to recognize that terrorism is more calculated and choreographed than these mindless acts of barbarity suggest. 

Rather, these and other less egregious deeds are the products of strategic choices consciously made by terrorists to further their aims in order to attract attention to themselves and their causes.

Why terrorists persist in believing that the horror and havoc they create will eventually prove beneficial lies at the heart of understanding what drives them to inflict deliberately shocking, wanton violence on their opponents.

At 11 am on January 21st, Christopher Poole posted a note online saying he was retiring as the administrator of 4chan, the notorious website he had founded as a high school student in upstate New York 11 years earlier. 

The news was as shocking as some of the site's content: The Zuckerberg of the online underground was walking away.

Poole had started 4chan as a way for fellow anime obsessives to post and discuss images. But over the next decade, it morphed into the Net's greatest factory of memes and mayhem. 

LOLcats and Rickrolling started on 4chan. So did Anonymous, the international collective of hacktivists and geeks. 

Most recently, 4chan has been in the crosshairs of two of the biggest controversies on the Web: the celebrity nude leaks called the Fappening, and Gamergate, the increasingly vicious battle over sexism in the video-game industry.

Did you know Pope Francis was a red-blooded teenager who enjoyed the company of pretty girls, took part in pranks on teachers, and was smitten with a beautiful 16-year-old brunette? 

Former schoolmates of the 78-year-old Pontiff, who were in his 10 Muchachos (or Ten Lads) gang of friends, spoke to MailOnline for the first time about the young Jorge Bergoglio's high school days.

And they revealed a studious yet normal young man who knew how to 'smart talk' the ladies, and who 'if a girl passed by who he thought was pretty... would say so'.

In the spring of 2010, Afghan officials struck a deal to free an Afghan diplomat held hostage by Al Qaeda. But the price was steep -- $5 million -- and senior security officials were scrambling to come up with the money.

They first turned to a secret fund that the Central Intelligence Agency bankrolled with monthly cash deliveries to the presidential palace in Kabul, according to several Afghan officials involved in the episode. 

The Afghan government, they said, had already squirreled away about $1 million from that fund.

Within weeks, that money and $4 million more provided from other countries was handed over to Al Qaeda, replenishing its coffers after a relentless CIA campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan had decimated the militant network's upper ranks.