LaNUBlog™

The scene here is pretty desolate and distraught. The families who survived, a few hundred people, are at the top of the valley. The women and children sit on the open hillside where they spent the night. The men are lining up for aid and trying to secure their shelter.

Rescuers in Afghanistan have given up hope of finding any more survivors in a double landslide that is feared to have killed more than 2,500 people. They have stopped digging through the earth and mud that swamped a whole village in the remote north-east province of Badakhshan on Friday.

A Twitter threat against American Airlines has landed a Dutch girl in hot water There are some things you just don't do. Making bomb threatsin an airport is one. Terrorism messages directed at airlines on Twitter is another.

Abdullah Abdullah was outgoing President Hamid Karzai's main challenger in 2009 Partial results from the Afghan presidential vote show former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah slightly ahead of Ashraf Ghani. With about 500,000 votes in 26 provinces counted, Dr Abdullah has 41.9% with Mr Ghani on 37.6%.

To help the public discover if the services are still exposed, Several security firms and independent developers have published online tests. However, there is no simple way to find out if they were vulnerable before. Organisations that used Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) web server software would not have been affected.

Users are being encouraged to change their passwords on sites that have tackled the bug Several tech firms are urging people to change all their passwords after the discovery of a major security flaw. The Yahoo blogging platform Tumblr has advised the publicto "change your passwords everywhere - especially your high-security services like email, file storage and banking".

Key points *. South African Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius is cross-examined for a second day *. Chief prosecutor Gerrie Nel says of Steenkamp relationship: 'It was all about you Mr Pistorius' *. Mr Pistorius denies murder, saying he shot Ms Steenkamp by mistake, thinking she was an intruder *. Mr Pistorius denies "picking" on Reeva Steenkamp, amid testimony on her phone messages *. Mr Pistorius says he does not know how a firearm went off in a restaurant *. All times BST Live text Reporting: Jasmine Coleman Richard Irvine-Brown Sitala Peek Welcome to our live coverage of the second day of Oscar Pistorius' cross-examination on charges of murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. 08:20 The 27-year-old athlete, who competed at both the London 2012 Paralympic Games and the Olympics, is charged with murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp - a charge he denies. 08:28 Gerrie Nel is known as "the bull terrier" in court circles for his ruthless and me...

If he is acquitted of murder, South African law stipulates that the court must consider the separate, lesser charge of culpable homicide, or manslaughter, for which he could receive between six and 15 years in prison. Mr Pistorius also faces charges of illegally firing a gun in public and of illegally possessing ammunition, both of which he denies.

Oscar Pistorius faced a second day of tough cross-examination Oscar Pistorius has faced a second day of intense cross-examination at his trial in which he was accused of being selfish, reckless and a liar. Chief prosecutor Gerrie Nel focused on the athlete's character, enthusiasm for firearms and version of events before he shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

The possible signal was detected by an Australia P-3 Orion searching the southern Indian Ocean A plane searching for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has detected a possible new signal in the southern Indian Ocean, Australian officials say. An Australian P-3 Orion aircraft picked up the signal in the same area where an Australian vessel detected audio pings earlier this week, officials said.

Police in Norway have released photos in a bid to identify a young man found in a snowdrift near Oslo in December, apparently suffering from amnesia. Police say they do not know where the man comes from but that he speaks good English with an East European accent.

Many of the messages posted to the deleted page had protested about its existence Facebook has removed a page entitled "Soldiers deserve to be raped and murdered" - but not because of its subject matter. The page was created last year and had sparked objections from members of the armed forces and the public.

Irish President Michael D Higgins has spoken of his country's "deep and enduring" friendship with Britain. Speaking in Westminster during the first state visit to the UK by an Irish head of state, he said both countries could take "immense pride" in their work towards peace in Northern Ireland.

The demo showed off a much larger battery than could eventually be incorporated in phones A battery that can charge in under 30 seconds has been shown off at a technology conference in Tel Aviv. Israeli start-up StoreDot displayed the device - made of biological structures - at Microsoft's Think Next Conference.

The researchers who discovered the bug publicised their findings via the web A bug in software used by millions of web servers could have exposed anyone visiting sites they hosted to spying and eavesdropping, say researchers. The bug is in a software library used in servers, operating systems and email and instant messaging systems.

Pro-Russian citizens have rallied in front of the Donetsk regional administration building Senior officials from the EU, Russia, the US and Ukraine are to meet next week to discuss the worsening situation in Ukraine. It will be the first four-way meeting since the crisis erupted.

Health care workers are among those most at risk of catching Ebola The World Health Organization (WHO) says it is taking "very seriously" the current outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa. Out of 122 cases recorded in Guinea so far, at least 80 patients have died, with a further four deaths in Liberia. What is Ebola? Ebola is a viral illness whose initial symptoms can include a sudden fever, intense weakness, muscle pain and a sore throat,

There is no known cure or vaccine for Ebola The number of people believed to have been killed by the Ebola virus in Guinea has passed 100, the UN World Health Organization says. It was "one of the most challenging Ebola outbreaks we have ever dealt with" and could take another four months to contain, the WHO said.

Whatever its shortcomings, Mr Giles says "today the Russian military is vastly more capable than it was in 2008 and much more capable than certainly the Ukrainians - and superior to the forces currently deployed on the territory of all of its Western neighbours". He believes that Russia can sustain this military threat to Ukraine for some considerable time.

With Nato assessments that there are some 40,000 Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border ready to move at a few hours' notice, the heightening war of words between Moscow and Kiev raises a genuine prospect of conflict. If Russia requires a pretext to move into eastern Ukraine, then many of the elements of that narrative are already in place. But what of the Russian military's capabilities? What can be deduced from what we have seen so far of Russian operations in Crimea? *. This 14 March 2014 photo of the Primorsko-Akhtarsk airbase in south-western Russia shows a build-up in the number of tactical aircraft *. There are primarily Sukhoi Su-25 Frogfoot strike aircraft (lower left) and Sukhoi Su-27 (on the right) *. While possibly deployed to initially be available over Crimea, they are also within range of a lot of eastern Ukraine and represent a threat to any Ukrainian armoured units Keir Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research Centre (CSRC), a group specialisin...