‘Desperate Housewives’ character shot dead in twist already spoiled by producer’s testimony at Nicollette Sheridan trial Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/television/desperate-housewives-character-shot-dead-twist-spoiled-producer-testimony-nicollette-sheridan-trial

Ron Tom/ABC

Mike Delfino (James Denton) checked out of ‘Desperate Housewives’ a few weeks ahead of the rest of the gang.

[Spoiler Alert: This article reveals the major plot developments of Sunday night's episode.]
To the surprise of himself and his wife Susan, Mike Delfino left “Desperate Housewives” a few weeks ahead of everyone else last night.
James Denton’s character had finished an “oh, that’s sooooooooooo sweet” scene with Susan (Teri Hatcher), telling her how much he loved her, when a man with whom he had an earlier beef drove by and plugged him in the chest with a handgun.
You wouldn’t peg Wisteria Lane as a hotbed of drive-bys, but there you go.
Now people have been almost dying on “Desperate Housewives” for years – including, come to think of it, Mike.
But this time he looked really dead. His and Susan’s life together flashed before all our eyes, and the previews for next week show everyone at a funeral. Bet heavily that it’s Mike’s.
With only five episodes and a finale remaining for “Housewives,” Mike’s death could be sending a somber message.
For starters, it could mean the fence post he promised to fix “tomorrow” – minutes before his death – will remain forever leaning against the post next to it.
Unless one of the other men on Wisteria Lane steps up to fix it as a tribute to Mike, that is.
Perhaps more ominous, though, last night’s episode was positively swarming with danger, as if creator Marc Cherry is warning us that in the final hours, no one on Wisteria Lane is safe.
Karen (Kathryn Joosten), ill with terminal cancer, kept trying to persuade Bree (Marcia Cross) to kill her. She laid down in back of Bree’s car as Bree was backing out, for example.
She demanded that Bree finish her off, to which Bree replied, “I can’t do it today. I have Pilates.”
That’s what friends are for.
Karen then baked a “suicide pie,” loaded with pills and other stuff she couldn’t identify, but which didn’t seem to come from the four basic food groups.
Karen's husband Roy unknowingly served Bree two slices, but they didn’t seem to have any immediate ill effects.
Carlos and Gaby’s daughter Juanita climbed up on the roof to chase the cat and almost fell off when Carlos (Ricardo Chavira) rescued her.
Gaby (Eva Longoria) only looked like she was going to kill Carlos when Carlos started writing large checks to steelworkers who had been laid off after Carlos helped buy their company and screw them out of their jobs.
Meanwhile, Jane, the new girlfriend of Tom (Doug Savant), told Tom’s estranged wifey Lynette (Felicity Huffman) that Tom had asked her to move in with him.
Soon thereafter Jane choked on a cheese puff, with only Lynette in the room, and Lynette seriously weighed her options before she performed the Heimlich Maneuver.
Death has been a presence on Wisteria Lane forever, of course, since the first casualty came around the opening credits of the first show.
Between plane crashes and various demented husbands, boyfriends, children and visitors, it has never been a stranger.
So the question now, perhaps, is whether Mike’s death will become the shock that brings everyone together for a happy ending, or the first shot in a general Wisteria Lane meltdown that will leave that fence post forever unfixed.

Aregbesola And His Traducers

It is not difficult to fathom why the PDP and its allies feel so uncomfortable with the public posture and indeed the personage of Ogbeni Ruaf Aregbesola, the Governor of State of Osun.
He is hewn in the mould that is radically different from those of the people that populate the PDP. He does not mince words in baring his mind. He does not prevaricate or equivocate on any issue he deigns to comment on. He does not harbor any traits of Janus or a double faced personality that says the opposite of what is in his mind. He does not label the spade differently than its real name. He is a straight talker, who suffers fools gladly. He sees diplomacy and such other arts that mask the real intents of man’s heart in demeaning lights and takes none of it.

These attributes are alien to the rank and file in PDP who take politics as duplicity, deception and guile; all packaged into one seamless take-away pack. For a party that delights in subterfuge and grand obfuscation as means of careering off and on an irresponsible power route, the person and image of Aregbesola is unfathomable. Not for their members alone, but also outside their enclave where all is fair in battle. The PDP brooks no such attributes as Aregbesola has come to personify.
Aregbesola leaves you in no doubt where he stands on any issue. He is not afraid to take on any issue or anybody so long as he feels the need to address an issue. He is not one that goes to a parley with a dagger hidden in his clothes but who before any meeting, brandishes his weapon and dares you to get yours and meet him in an open battle. He does not stalk on his assumed friends or foes and strike the dagger when they least expect. He gives you sufficient warning of any impending attack and dares you to get prepared for it. He does not know how to back stab but knows how to publicly excoriate when he feels an issue is not going right.

Being a governor and with his known penchant to shoot straight, Aregbesola constitutes a potent threat to the PDP’s own maniacal desire for untrammeled power. His knack for provoking issues that so many people feel uncomfortable about marks him as a red hot threat to the suzerain empire the PDP easily dreams of. His boisterous and bonhomie mien adds pep to his well expressed desire to ensure that every issue is brought on the table and not hidden under the rug. As governor, Aregbe adopts unorthodox style that gives him quick result. He has unruffled many with his style, which has however endeared him to the hearts of Osun people. Not for him is the culture of sitting idly on the waiting room of bureaucracy while things could be done in quicker ways.
We all know how Aregbesola ran an electrifying campaign in 2007 against an incumbent and his political party that spared nothing to beat down the tsunami, which Aregbesola provoked with his campaign. A glimpse into how he scared the living daylight out of the PDP was how Ebenezer Babatope, a PDP chieftain, tried to explain the questionable victory that was awarded the PDP in 2007. He claimed that indeed, Aregbesola scared them to the extent that he beat them hands down in the urban areas of Osun State, while the PDP claimed the state with votes from the rural areas. But this story did not jell with Osun electorates who pretested loudly that in both the urban and the rural areas, they voted Aregbesola and no one else. The history of his determined and roiling battle to reclaim his stolen mandate was historical, as it was tasking. Every hell was levied against Aregbesola as he fought the power soaked vandals for his mandate.
So it is easy to understand why the South West, and by extension the national PDP feels that Aregbesola is one hell of an object on its reckless way that must be put out of circulation for them to enjoy their unimpeded way to unearned power.
So it is easy to understand why the PDP had to resort to the kind of brash tactics it went for recently when it fabricated and caused to be leaked a specious and outlandish cocktail of fairy tales, with high puerility content and routed through the ubiquitous security agencies of Nigeria that have excelled in deepening the security crisis and taking up the dirty fights of the PDP against every other Nigerian. I strained my eyes to see the treasonable and secessionist contents of the juvenile hack the SSS passed as ‘security reports’ on Osun State. I needed no soothsayer to know that the entire thing was a tissue of forgeries, intrigues and fables the badly hurting gang of electoral rouges that constitute the South West PDP employed to create confusion and tension in a sedate agrarian state that is far removed from the concocted picture the so called reports painted. The generous back up the PDP threw to this widely condemned attempt to sow tension and crisis where there is none, clearly demonstrated the asinine intent behind that tissue of lies and negative conjectures.

Heaven, they say, know no greater fury than that of a woman scorned and I dare add that heavens know no greater fury than that of the disgruntled, disoriented, dislodged political jobbers and free loaders that were rusticated from governance in the South West recently. It is in this maze that we locate the spurious security report that was firmly anchored on fiction and laughable reasons. What we saw were mere fictional projections of how the PDP feels it can steal power again in Osun, the South West and consolidate its tenuous hold on power in Nigeria. Aregbesola is a potent threat to this dream that has wrecked almost everything in Nigeria. So the plot is allege secession and religious manipulation, even when these are founded on baseless grounds, provoke an insurrection and employ this to levy security take over of Osun State. This stems from a primitive and raw concept of power, as the PDP has found so attractive employing these past thirteen years in power. The feeling is writ large in the diarrhead power laboratory of the PDP that once the recalcitrant Aregbesola is taken out of the way, it would be easy to take on other more restrained ACN governors in the South West.

The tragedy is not that those that scripted this baloney believe so much in its practicability and potency. The real tragedy however is that the present federal government invests so much faith in this infantile political jeremiad. But when we understand that what passes for a federal government in the past two years is no more than a highly impressionable, shallow agglomeration of clueless mandarins that see themselves more as PDP wayfarers, we will understand why the nation is tottering so aimlessly on the watch of these partisan enforcers. It is the same tragic mess that a national security that has excelled in allowing Nigerians to be used as punching bags by so many fonts of state violence is the one being used by political layabouts and rent seekers to widen the circle of violence and religious war all in the name of offering services to an amoral political party and its bestial interests.

I believe that this monumental misstep will work to steer Aregbesola aright as he braces to face the infantile fury of the PDP, which will manifest in several ways as his re-election battle approaches. It is good his traducers have shown their hands so early in the day, and in an embarrassingly puerile manner. It will allow him and his strategists enough time to plan containment strategies that will leave the PDP with a bloodier nose than he has inflicted on it so far. He should count himself lucky that his traducers are so inflicted with raw bile, frustration and the attendant fury that they let themselves out so cheaply. I believe that he will emerge much stronger and more fortified to deal with his opponents and continue on his laudable mission to leave indelible positive impressions on Osun, as he is doing at present.

Twenty People Including Two Professors Killed In Church Blast In Kano

A seriously injured victim of the BUK bomb attack being taken out from an ambulance outside the emergency unit at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital Kano, yesterday

TWENTY persons were killed yesterday, including two university professors with several others injured when gunmen armed with bombs attacked St Stephen Catholic Chaplain, Bayero University, Kano.

The attack occurred at Theatre Two, near Sports Complex, at the old Campus of the institution as Christian worshippers were holding Sunday services. Vanguard gathered that two professors, one identified as Prof. Ayodele of the Chemistry Department and Andrew Leo of the Library Department, were among the dead. The university’s Public Relations Officer, Malam Zaharadeen, confirmed the death of the professors.

An eye witness told Vanguard that the attackers who were armed with Improvised Explosive Devices arrived the Theatre hall of the university at about 8.45a m in a car and two motorcycles and took positions at all the exit points after which they threw the bomb devices into the hall. When the bombs exploded, it caused stampede and when the worshippers attempted to escape from the hall, the gunmen who had positioned themselves at exit points opened fire on them.

According to one witness, “they first attacked the open-air service outside the faculty of medicine. They threw in explosives and fired shots, causing a stampede among worshippers. They now pursued them, shooting them with guns. They also attacked another service at the sporting complex.”

A witness who said he was at the sporting complex at the time of the attack reported hearing gunshots outside while they were praying. “Then there was pandemonium,” he said, adding that he later saw two men outside shooting indiscriminately.

The source explained that scores of others including women and children were injured and taken to hospitals for medical attention.

Musical instruments and half-eaten meals could be seen at the site of one of the services.

A crowd later gathered at a Kano hospital waiting to hear news about friends or family.

A member of the rescue team who pleaded anonymity told Vanguard that, “we have recovered 18 dead bodies so far and have transfered same to Murtala Muhammad Specialist Hospital.”

At the time of this report, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

JTF spokesman, Lt Ikediche Iweha confirmed the incident but referred Vanguard to confirm the casualty figures from the university authority. The  JTF spokesman, said military operatives had been deployed to the area to restore order. Iweha, however, refused to give further details, saying: “I can’t give you in details of what happened as our people are now at the scene of the incident.”

When contacted, BUK Public Relations Officer, Malam Zaharadeen said: “JTF has taken over the process and we will give you details as soon as they hand over.”

On his part, the Chairman, Christian Association of Nigeria, Kano Chapter, Rev Ransom Bello while confirming the incident expressed fear that dozens might have been affected.

According to Rev Bello, “the Commissioner of Police has put me on notice about the ugly incident in BUK old campus but yet to confirm the casualty figure”.

Rev Bello stated that “it was morning mass and I have this feeling that dozens might have been affected but we are waiting for final figure from the security forces.”

Nigerians react to Kano bomb blast

Meantime,the Coordinator, Patriotic Alliance of Nigeria (PAN), Chief Maxi Okwu, has advised the Federal Government not to negotiate with any armed sect.  Okwu, whose organisation comprised members of opposition political parties, made the call yesterday in a telephone interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) while reacting to Sunday’s bomb attack in Kano.

“Globally, nations no longer negotiate with terrorists. The hammer must fall heavily on the sect and especially their political sponsors whose sole aim is to destabilise the nation.

“These bomb attacks have gone out of hand and the sect has continued to thrive because of their sponsors,“ Okwu said.

Mr Tony Uranta, the Executive Secretary of  the United Niger Delta Energy Development Security Strategy (UNDEDSS), said that the Federal Government should abandon any planned negotiations with the sect.

“We demand that the Federal Government must cease every move toward holding talks with these monsters unless and until they abandon this callously inhumane modus operandi that has claimed thousands of innocent lives.

“There is no justification for the existence of the sect. Enough is enough as Nigeria belongs to all,“ he said.

The President of  Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, AlhajiYerimma Shetima, said,  “the perpetrators and their sponsors must be traced and brought to book.“

It is sad and unfortunate —Gov Kwankwaso

Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso who cut short his official visit to Abuja on Sunday and visited the venue of the attack described it as sad and unfortunate. He was conducted round by the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academics) Professor Yahuza Bello and said “this is sad and unfortunate against the backdrop that the attack is coming at a point peace is gradually returning to the commercial city”.

The governor announced that the state government will be responsible for the medical bills of those injured and receiving treatment at the hospital, adding that a notice to this effect has been served to all Chief Medical Directors of existing private and public health institutions in the state.

Kwankwaso who commiserated with the university community assured that his administration will exploit available option to forestall a re-occurrence.

In a speech earlier, the Deputy Vice Chancellor Academics, Professor Yahuza Bello explained that some worshippers were attacked at an indoor sports hall, while another set of worshippers were attacked in an open space outside Dandatti Abdulqadir Hall which is currently undergoing renovation.

5-anarchists-busted-plot-bomb-cleveland-bridge-fbi

Fox News

5 anarchists suspected of being involved in a plot to blow up a Cleveland area bridge.

CLEVELAND — Five men, at least three of them anarchists, plotted to blow up a bridge near Cleveland, but there was no danger to the public because the explosives were inoperable and were controlled by an undercover FBI employee, the agency said Tuesday in announcing the men’s arrests.
The target of the plot was a bridge that carries a four-lane highway over part of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in the Brecksville area, about 15 miles south of downtown Cleveland, the FBI said.
Authorities said three of the men were arrested Monday and are self-described anarchists, not tied to international terrorism.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the men had attorneys. All of the suspects, ranging in age from 20 to 35, were expected to appear in federal court Tuesday afternoon.

Fox News

The Cleveland area bridge near Cuyahoga Valley National Park was the target of 5 suspects who were arrrested for attempting to blow it up.

The FBI said three were arrested on charges of conspiracy and trying to use explosives to damage property affecting interstate commerce. They were identified as Brandon L. Baxter, 20; Douglas L. Wright, 26; and Anthony Hayne, 35. Their hometowns were not provided.
Charges were pending against the other two men.
Baxter, Wright and Hayne considered different plots over several months, including distracting law enforcement with smoke grenades while trying to bring down financial institution signs in downtown Cleveland, federal authorities alleged. The defendants’ finally settled on blowing up the bridge, authorities said.
“The individuals charged in this plot were intent on using violence to express their ideological views,” Special Agent Stephen D. Anthony, who oversees the FBI’s Cleveland division, said in a statement. “The Joint Terrorism Task Force will continue to be vigilant in its efforts to detect and disrupt any terrorism threat, domestic or international.”

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