Polite London schoolboy now IS executioner, Asia's richest women and dogs forget everything in 2 minutes

Charmain Naidoo found this interesting in the news today...

1. Papers around the world this morning ran the story identifying the man dubbed the world’s most wanted terrorist.

The Mail Online’s chilling story of the polite London schoolboy who’s now been identified as Jihadi John said: “… There is nothing to link this middle-class schoolboy to the merciless terrorist butcher Jihadi John. But Mohammad Emwazi can tonight be unmasked as the notorious Islamic State murderer who has shocked the world with his bloodlust.

Arriving in Britain when he was six years old, Kuwaiti-born Mohammed Emwazi appeared to embrace British life, playing football in the affluent streets of West London while supporting Manchester United. Neighbours recalled a polite, quietly spoken boy who was studious at his Church of England school, where he was the only Muslim pupil in his class.

The son of a Kuwaiti minicab driver, young Emwazi arrived in Britain speaking only a few words of English, and appeared more interested in football than in Islam.

He went to mosque with his family, who spoke Arabic to each other, but wore Western clothing and became popular with his British classmates at St Mary Magdalene Church of England primary school in Maida Vale, West London.

Former schoolmates were yesterday struggling to believe that the quiet boy they knew had been unmasked as the world's most notorious terrorist.”

2. The South China Morning Post reports that women from mainland China and Hong Kong again dominated the annual Forbes list of the 50 most powerful businesswomen in Asia, with 14 top female decision-makers making the grade this year. Does this show that Asian women are more than just “tiger mums” pushing their children to succeed? Or, does it prove just that?

3. I LOVED this story about the 84-year-old Anthony Smith who made a raft with pipes and a telegraph pole, plonked his garden shed on the contraption, called it The Antiki, hired three equally ancient mariners to help him and set sail to cross the Atlantic. It took them two months – of storms and uncertainty. But they did it!  It’s one of those inspirational stories with just a whiff of Why Would You Do That?

4. This one is for those animal lovers who feel guilt every time they discipline their pet. Its official. Your pet doesn’t remember being scolded. A study at Stockholm University has found that your dog forgets everything within two minutes. A chimpanzee has just 20 seconds of recall!

5. The world’s oldest investor, Irving Kahn, who predicted the 1929 Wall Street Crash, has died at 109 years of age. Born in 1906, he was just 23 years old. He apparently doubled his money by side stepping the crash.

6. This is my best blog. Marc Antoine Colaciuri writing for the Huffington Post on why he lived in New York City for three months – without once using technology: no internet, no computer, no cell phone! Some feat! Here is some of it: “From October 15, 2014 to January 11, 2015, I ran a rather peculiar experiment... traveling from Paris to New York, and spending 90 days there without Internet, computer or a cell phone.

Why? I needed to disconnect in order to better reconnect in a hyper-connected environment. I felt a real need for emancipation, and I was pushed by a quest for authenticity. At 25 years old, the Internet and its related technologies (smartphones, computers, etc.) make up the main part of my daily exchanges: virtual exchanges of information, not to mention virtual exchanges of emotion.

Weary of the way technology can distort meaning, I decided to try the opposite. It would be an adventure: connecting to individuals and the world, guided by my intuition rather than a smartphone.

My project wasn't solely intended to be a "digital detox." Yes, I sometimes feel dependent on my electronic gadgets, and the decision to put them away for a while certainly feels like "detoxing." But if distancing myself from technology had been my goal, I would have headed somewhere with wide open spaces, instead of New York, with its skyscrapers.

No way was I going to declare a war against Google. It is, after all, thanks to this technology that I am sharing my experience with you now! Millions of people on this planet still don't have Internet access, and as far as I know, they get by.

What really pushed me to make this apparently contradictory choice was the wish to better understand the ideas of "connection" and "disconnection."

Have they been reduced to just "clicks" online? Convinced that the opposite is true, I decided to experience connection, rather than connectivity.”