We have confirmation from the family that Aisha Khan has been found safe in her home city of Overland. Read rest here.

For locals in the Kansas City Area: There will be an organized search effort for Aisha today and we need to mobilize as many people and as soon as possible. Please meet at the Clarion Hotel on 7000 W 108th St (next to the Metcalf 435 overpass) in Overland Park at 1PM.

Though police say all possibilities are being considered in the case of missing Kansas student Aisha Khan, her husband of five months firmly believes she was kidnapped.

“My message to the kidnapper is, let her go,” Waseem Khan told “Good Morning America” today. “You have the power to let her go and I will completely forgive you if you let her go.”

“Aisha, if you are listening to this, we love you a lot and we are doing everything to get you back home safely,” said Waseem Khan.

“I'm just hoping that the bell rings and I'll see her and the phone rings and she'll be right in front of my eyes,” Khan's mother Fouzia Khan said through tears. “That's what I'm dreaming about.”

Read rest here

19-year old college student Aisha Khan has been missing for over 72 hours from the university where she was studying for an exam.

Keep her in your duas.

And please in the US, if any one harasses you or assaults you please call 911 first before you call your family.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A message from the family:

Friends, especially in the Greater Kansas City Area, we kindly and strongly encourage you all to sacrifice your Facebook profile picture for the time being and post up Aisha's missing person's flier.

Keep up with the latest updates at the family's official facebook page. The family is offering a $10,000 award for any information about this case. You can also sign a petition asking for Aishaslaw – making it mandatory that all universities and colleges have proper surveillance in order to protect the students and staff.

“It’s the age thing. I wanted to make sure I had options,” said Saheela, a senior at the Wardlaw-Hartridge School in Edison.

In the end, 13 colleges accepted her — including six of the eight Ivy League schools.

After weeks of debate, Saheela settled on Harvard. She will be among the youngest members of the school’s freshman class.

“I’ll be one of the youngest. But I won’t be the youngest,” the soon-to-be 16-year-old said.

Saheela is among the millions of high school seniors who had to finalize their college decisions by Monday, the deadline for incoming freshman to send deposits to the school of their choice. Nationwide, this year’s college selection process was among the most competitive in history as most top colleges received a record number of applications.

Saheela joins a growing number of New Jersey students going to college before they are old enough to drive. Last year, Kyle Loh of Mendham graduated from Rutgers at 16. In previous years, a 14-year-old from Cranbury and two of his 15-year-old cousins also graduated from Rutgers.

For Saheela, her unusual path to college began when she was a sixth-grader at the Conackamack Middle School in Piscataway. Eager to learn more about her favorite subject, math, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants asked to move to a higher-level class. The school let her skip sixth grade entirely.

By high school, Saheela said, she was no longer feeling challenged by her public school classes. So, she moved to the Wardlaw-Hartridge School, a 420-student private school, where she skipped her freshman year and enrolled as a 10th-grader. Her three younger brothers, twins now in the ninth grade and a younger brother in second grade, all eventually joined her at the school.

School officials were impressed Saheela, one of their top students, didn’t spend all her time studying.

“She’s learned and she’s very smart. But she keeps pushing herself,” said William Jenkins, the Wardlaw-Hartridge School’s director of development.

Read more here.

(Images: Russell Watkins/DFID)

The 2010 Floods in Pakistan that caused devastation over a major part of the country, also brought about a strange phenomenon. Apparently, the flood waters caused millions of spiders to seek refuge in trees and other vegetation, where they proceeded to spin webs all around the trees. The trees (pictured in the images) look like huge cotton candy but are slowly dying.

An amazing side-effect of this phenomenon is that the webs are limiting the number of mosquitoes in the area, which given the stagnant water in the area should have been breeding in multitudes. Indeed it is a blessing of Allāh (may He be glorified and praised) that after the hardships faced by the people, he has brought them protection for further disease through this amazing phenomenon.

For indeed, with hardship [will be] ease. Indeed, with hardship [will be] ease. (Quran 94:5-6)

Suggested Reading

• Parables in the Quran: The Spider's Web
• Divine Plan or Natural Forces – Reflections on the Pakistan Floods

The office snack machine is broken, and your magical kicks just aren’t bringing it back to life this time. Or maybe those plain M&Ms are always gone the exact moment you want them, leaving you stuck with those blasted peanut ones.

If only someone could have just delivered exactly what you wanted straight to your door. But wait!

Fortunately, the Yousuf brothers of Loudoun County, Va., offer a satisfying solution — as long as you can think ahead. The brothers have launched an online vending machine.

Their website, Snack&Munch, gives snack cravers the ability to create “snackpacks” of any 24 snacks ($24) from a selection of 250-plus. Customers can choose to make a one-time purchase or set up a recurring monthly plan.

The snackpack ships immediately after purchase, with continual snackpacks (if wanted) shipping every 30 days thereafter. The service is available nationwide.

“We wanted to make snacking easier for people,”said Snack&Munch cofounder Farooq Yousuf. He and his brother Ammar founded the idea only four weeks ago.

Thanks to them, our sweettooths (sweetteeth?) are satisfied… for now. Let's get them working on an immediate snack digital download, though.

Source: NBC Washington

Click here to view the embedded video.

“We are very, very proud of her,” Hadi

Hashmi said of his teenage daughter, Heraa. “She took care of her sister.”

Heraa was babysitting 2-year-old Nabiha just after 2 p.m. when the fire broke out in an adjacent unit at the Summit Condominiums, located at 2855 Rock Creek Circle.

Witnesses said the flames spread quickly, engulfing the six-unit building in a ball of fire and filling it with smoke that sent the two girls and one firefighter to a hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation.

At least 40 firefighters and 10 engines from 12 agencies worked for three hours to bring the blaze under control, said Boulder County Sheriff's Cmdr. Rick Brough.

A total of 18 condos in three buildings were evacuated during the blaze. At least 15 people who live in the burned building were displaced for the night.

Hashmi, who works at Level 3 Communications, said Heraa heard the smoke alarm start beeping, grabbed her sister, then called 911 and ran outside. She called her parents from outside the home.

The girls were taken to Avista Adventist Hospital and released several hours later.

Hashmi said both girls, who are home-schooled and were left alone for a short time on Thursday, are doing “perfectly OK.” He said he has no idea how the fire started.

He said he assumed it was a minor fire until he headed home and saw the smoke, which was visible for miles around Superior as it billowed from the roof of the two-story building.

He said Heraa did everything right.

“She is very grown-up, and we are very proud of her,” he said.

Other residents were also lucky to have escaped the fast-moving flames, officials said.

Paul Olkowski, 59, who has lived at the complex for 10 years, sat barefoot outside his condo for more than an hour on Thursday, watching it burn. He said he was taking a nap when a fire alarm woke him up.

“I looked outside and saw my fence in the back engulfed in flames,” he said.

Olkowski said he looked for his cat, but couldn't find it before he needed to run from the home. Visibly distraught, Olkowski said he didn't know whether the animal survived.

Andrea Golod, 34, has lived in the building since 2005. She said she was at home with her 16-month-old son, Jacob, uploading photos on her computer when someone pounded on her door.

“He told me the building was on fire,” Golod said.

She said she normally doesn't answer the door during the day, but she heard repeated knocks on doors throughout the building. She said the man, a maintenance worker for the condos, “is the most awesome person in the world right now.”

The warning gave her time to grab her son and get out of the building safely, she said.

The mother and son were standing outside about two hours after the fire began, watching firefighters climb through the window of Jacob's bedroom to tear out the ceiling where flames had spread through the roof.

“This is your worst nightmare,” Golod said.

Oblivious to the damage, though, Jacob seemed excited to see the fire trucks more than anything.

“He's diggin' it,” Golod said.

Of her belongings inside the building, Golod said she was primarily concerned about a hard drive that contains her only copies of photos of her son.

“Everything else can go,” she said with tears in her eyes. “Just not his first pictures.”

One firefighter was taken by ambulance to Avista as a precaution after complaining of discomfort from the heat and smoke.

The fire was so hot at one point that radiant heat melted four windows in a building near the flames. Sheriff's officials said the Summit Condos don't have sprinkler systems, and they aren't required to because they were built before the building code required them.

Three condos were destroyed in the blaze, and three sustained serious damage. None of those residents — at least 15 people — have been allowed to return home.

Michelle Kelly, a battalion chief with Rocky Mountain Fire District, said residents in the two buildings nearest the burned condos were allowed to return home Thursday night. Some of those units had broken windows or smoke and heat damage to curtains, she said.

Kelly said some people in those units had their windows boarded up and decided to stay at home, while others went to hotels.

The Red Cross set up an emergency shelter at Eldorado K-8 School, 3351 S. Indiana St., for evacuees.

Firefighters were at the scene mopping up the water and debris left by the fire until after 9 p.m. A multi-agency fire investigation team plans to visit the site Friday morning to begin an investigation into the cause of the blaze.

Several neighbors and passers-by said they think the flames were sped up by propane bottles that were attached to grills on front porches.

“That's what really got it going,” said Rock Creek resident Matt Lowry, who described seeing a propane tank send a jet of fire into the air.

Read more:http://www.coloradodaily.com/ci_15902966?source=most_viewed#ixzz0y6wqokS8
Coloradodaily.com

This video has been made especially for people residing abroad, who want to help with the relief campaign on the ground. PIA, the national carrier, has declared it will ship to Pakistan free of cost any donations that people abroad want to send for the flood victims. Watch the video to learn more:

Click here to view the embedded video.

A summary of the items described in the video above:

1)      Get a box, preferable size 12 inches x 15 inches x 15 inches

2)      A white sheet

3)      Two 1.5 liters mineral water (not more, not less)

4)      Twelve-pack of any juice with straw

5)      One box of salty biscuits

6)      Two boxes of sweet biscuits (1 big, 1 small)

7)      One box of chocolates

8)      Milk carton (1-1.5 liters) – expiration date should be far off

9)      One bag of potato chips

10)   Two to four soap bars

11)   One box of dates

12)   ORS (Oral Rehydration Salts / dehydration-prevention supplement- pedialyte)

13)   One pack of disposable cups

Pakistan International Airlines (PIA): Contact details

For details of whom to contact, please visit: http://www.piac.com.pk/Flood_Relief/ERP.htm

(JTA) — Israel's military is investigating an IDF officer and soldier suspected of selling goods they confiscated from the Gaza flotilla after the May 31 raid.

The probe comes as a number of Israeli and international committees are investigating the incident.

“The investigation has just begun, but as it appears now it will prove embarrassing and shameful,” a high-ranking Israeli officer said, according to Ynet.

The officer and soldier have not appeared before court yet. Police say they will make more arrests but did not give details, according to the report.

Not long after the flotilla incident, passengers aboard the ships complained that credit cards, cell phones and other equipment had been confiscated and used. At the time, an IDF spokesman said all personal items had been sent out of the country.

An investigator said that if it turns out the items were taken from the ships, the activists would be compensated.

Source: JTA