Bonjour Planet Earth

Caught in the ACTA: More angry protests break out in Poland...

2012-01-28T15:12:00.001+01:00

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Anonymous 'goes nuclear' in Megaupload revenge attack...

U.S. shuts Megaupload.com, hackers hit back...

Movie fans turn to piracy when the online cupboard is bare...

Dentist admits using paper clip for root canals!!!

2012-01-28T14:50:00.002+01:00

A former dentist has pleaded guilty to Medicaid fraud for using sections of paper clips instead of stainless steel posts in root canals in an effort to save money.

Michael Clair, who had a practice in Fall River, is scheduled to be sentenced next week. He pleaded guilty Friday to defrauding Medicaid of $130,000, assault and battery, illegally prescribing prescription drugs and witness intimidation charges.

Some of Clair's patients reported infections after he performed root canals on them, said Grant Woodman, a spokesman for state Attorney General Martha Coakley, whose office prosecuted Clair.

Prosecutors say Clair was suspended by Medicaid in 2002 but continued filing by using the names of other dentists in his practice. Full story...

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UN role for Sri Lanka ex-army general accused of war crimes...

2012-01-28T14:11:00.001+01:00

One of Sri Lanka's most controversial diplomats, an ex-army commander, has got a senior post advising the UN secretary general, the government says.

Major General Shavendra Silva, Sri Lanka's deputy ambassador to the UN, is the subject of a lawsuit in the US accusing him of war crimes.

Maj Gen Silva denies the charges. He is one of many military men given top diplomatic posts by Sri Lanka.

He will now be part of a group advising Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Full story...

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Torture and abuse in Libya...

2012-01-28T13:58:00.003+01:00

NATO's alleged "responsibility to protect" was subterfuge. Months of terror bombings left Libya a charnel house.

Africa's most developed country was ravaged. Tens of thousands were killed, multiples more injured, and millions left on their own to sink or swim.

When is war not war? It's when mass killing and destruction are called the right thing. It's also when terrorizing and traumatizing an entire population goes unaddressed.

Add horrific torture to other crimes and abuses, according to Amnesty International (AI), Doctors Without Borders, and Human Rights Watch (HRW). Full story...

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British schoolgirl, 8, wows guitarists with Stratovarius YouTube video...

2012-01-28T13:48:00.003+01:00

Read full story here...

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Atheist teen forces school to remove prayer from wall after 49 years, gets online threats...

2012-01-28T10:34:00.004+01:00

She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years.

A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer’s presence at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, concluding that it violated the principle of government neutrality in religion.

In the weeks since, residents have crowded school board meetings to demand an appeal, Jessica has received online threats and the police have escorted her at school, and Cranston, a dense city of 80,000 just south of Providence, has throbbed with raw emotion. Full story...

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If the TSA will treat Senator Rand Paul like a scumbag, what will they to TO YOU...

2012-01-28T09:06:00.003+01:00

On Monday, U.S. Senator Rand Paul was detained by the TSA for about two hours at an airport in Nashville. By doing so, TSA officials directly violated the U.S. Constitution and they demonstrated once again why the rest of the world is coming to regard us as a bunch of disgusting, arrogant "pig people". Do we really want to get such a bad reputation that virtually nobody will ever want to visit this country? We are going to absolutely destroy our tourism industry with this nonsense. Yes, we all want to fly safely, but other countries get the job done without their security officials running around acting like a bunch of Nazi prison guards. The TSA should be shut down, but if Congress wants it to continue to exist it should be given a dual mandate. It should be directed to protect the dignity of the American people first, and the safety of the American people second. If those running the TSA don't believe that this is possible, then they should be immediately replaced, because there are a whole lot of good people out there that could get the job done. Right now, TSA officials are treating American citizens like they aren't even human. The truth is that Rand Paul got off easy compared to what has happened to many other Americans. Full story...

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TSA officer stole $30,000 from travellers with boss's approval! WTF!

Mysterious blue balls fall from the sky in Bournemouth...

2012-01-28T08:15:00.003+01:00

A man in Dorset has been left mystified after tiny blue spheres fell from the sky into his garden.

Steve Hornsby from Bournemouth said the 3cm diameter balls came raining down late on Thursday afternoon during a hail storm.

He found about a dozen of the balls in his garden. He said: "[They're] difficult to pick up, I had to get a spoon and flick them into a jam jar."

The Met Office said the jelly-like substance was "not meteorological" Full story...

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It's raining fish in Australia!!!

Why are dead birds falling from the sky in Western Australia?

Dead starlings fall from the sky in Somerset...

Syria: claims of 'racial cleansing' as 14 family members are massacred...

2012-01-28T06:36:00.002+01:00

Even by the numbing standards of Syria's uprising, the most brutal of the Arab Spring, the images are harrowing.

Their faces battered and bloodied, the four children are laid out on a bed. The camera hovers first over the corpse of a male toddler in a turquoise sleep suit and blue and pink socks. He is not yet of walking age; his legs are still bowed.

A bib around his neck is splattered in blood and he is lying on the upstretched hand of his older sister, whose face is stained crimson. Beneath them on the sheet are the bodies of two more young children, a boy and a girl, both bearing horrific injuries.

The bloodshed does not stop there. On the floor just to the left of the bed is a veiled woman, perhaps the children's mother. Full story...

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Suspected 'honor killings' shock Canada...

2012-01-27T18:28:00.000+01:00

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Pakistani girl mutilated for refusing marriage to cousin.

Pakistan's acid attack victims. (Graphic)

People have less integrity and it is harming society...

2012-01-27T18:09:00.000+01:00

British people have significantly less integrity than ten years ago, and it risks harming civic mindedness, new research claims.

Adultery, lying and underage sex have all become more acceptable, according to the findings published by Professor Paul Whiteley.

He blames the bad examples set by footballers cheating on their wives, the phone hacking scandal, and dodgy financial dealing.

And, he says, the implications could be profound for society. The findings show that people with high levels of integrity tend to have a strong sense of civic duty. Full story...

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"Shocking" police treatment of minorities in France...

2012-01-27T13:56:00.005+01:00

French police use broad powers to conduct abusive identity checks on black and Arab young men and boys despite the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.

A police spokesman denounced the HRW report as a "caricature" of the force.

HRW warned in its report that unwarranted checks and intimate searches, on top of police insults, were damaging police-community relations.

"It's shocking that young black and Arab kids can be, and are, arbitrarily forced up against walls and manhandled by the police with no real evidence of wrongdoing," said HRW western Europe researcher Judith Sunderland. Full story...

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Children boycott South African school over teachers pestering girl pupils for sex...

2012-01-27T13:05:00.004+01:00

Schoolchildren at a school in South Africa's northern Limpopo province are boycotting classes over claims that their teachers are pestering female pupils for sex.

Students at Mahlontebe High School, who are backed by their parents, have also accused teachers of turning up late and bunking classes.

They claim they have complained to the head teacher of the school, who allegedly failed to act. The boycott began when term started earlier this month.

One alleged that female pupils who did not give in to the teachers' advances were vilified and those who did engaged in sexual activity on the school premises.

"We are sick and tired of the way teachers treat us in this school," she told South Africa's Sowetan newspaper. Full story...

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Doctor accused of masturbating in front of schoolgirls!!!

Fear shrouds election race in Manipur, India's dark jewel...

2012-01-27T12:49:00.003+01:00

Thrown face down in an open drain by a grenade blast, Maisnam Ratan's bloodied corpse was the latest reminder of the lingering insurgency in India's isolated, far-eastern state of Manipur, which elects a state legislature Saturday.

Manipur, which neighbors Myanmar, is called the Jewel of India for its paddy fields, lakes and green hills. But it has been plagued for decades by a low-intensity war, blamed by authorities on rebels sheltering in Myanmar as well as a stream of drugs and guns seeping through the porous border.

At night, the run-down capital, Imphal, is often lit only by candles and burning garbage because of a chronic electricity shortage. Fearful of threats by rebels who see India as a colonial power, cinemas do not show Bollywood movies and cable television blocks out programs in Hindi, the country's most widely spoken language. Full story...

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India's Irom Sharmila has been on hunger strike for 10 years but is largely ignored...

The story of marijuana, cannabis...

2012-01-27T12:42:00.003+01:00

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Approved drugs, 10,008 deaths; marijuana 0

A marijuana history lesson...

The marijuana conspiracy: why hemp is illegal...

Why is marijuana illegal?

A brief history of weed, marijuana...

Altantuya Shaaribuu murder in Malaysia: the truth at last?

2012-01-27T10:43:00.000+01:00

The politically-charged appeal of two elite Malaysian police bodyguards who were sentenced to death two years and nine months ago for the 2006 murder-for-hire of Mongolian translator and party girl Altantuya Shaaribuu is due on Feb. 10 in Malaysia’s Court of Appeal.

The High Court trial, in which everything appeared to have been done ignore the question of who hired the two killers, stands in vivid contrast to the appeal filed by prosecutors on Jan. 19 in the case of Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim, in which everything appeared to have been done to bend the evidence to try to put the 64-year-old Anwar behind bars. As Judge Mohd Zabidin Mohd Diah pointed out in his not-guilty verdict, “the court cannot be 100 percent certain that the DNA evidence against Anwar was not contaminated.”

The two bodyguards, Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar, were to be paid RM50,000 to RM00,000 to kill Altantuya, according to a confession by Sirul which was never produced in court. Full story...

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Two Malaysian cops get death sentence for Altantuya Shaariibuu murder...

Malaysian politicians, sex and porn scandals...

Dirty politics in Malaysia forces nude photo opposition member to quit...

Outrage at RBS chief Stephen Hester's £963,000 bonus ...

2012-01-27T03:02:00.005+01:00

A £963,000 bonus in shares awarded to Royal Bank of Scotland boss Stephen Hester has been strongly criticised.

Lib Dem minister Jeremy Browne said Mr Hester was "a public servant" and should turn down the bonus while the Unite union said it was "disgusting".

Labour said government pledges to curb executive pay were "utterly worthless".

(...)

RBS has announced thousands of job cuts, although it recorded a £2bn profit in its most recent trading period, compared with a £1.6bn loss in the same period in 2010.

The Unite union said the bonus was "utterly disgusting and offensive" while the TUC described it as "utterly unacceptable".

The RMT's General Secretary Bob Crow said: "The Royal Bank of Scotland is owned by the country. To give someone £1m and then to give them a massive bonus on top, while public sector workers get a pay freeze and their pension contributions go up, I have got to say that is a complete disgrace. Full story...

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CEO salaries jump a whopping 27% while workers get peanuts...

Barclays gives £10m pay and bonus deals to two bankers!

Crisis? What crisis? There's no crisis for the world's billionaires...

Apple's iPad and the human cost for workers in China...

2012-01-27T02:49:00.005+01:00

The explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday evening last May, an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were discarded straws.

When workers in the cafeteria ran outside, they saw black smoke pouring from shattered windows. It came from the area where employees polished thousands of iPad cases a day.

Two people were killed immediately, and over a dozen others hurt. As the injured were rushed into ambulances, one in particular stood out. His features had been smeared by the blast, scrubbed by heat and violence until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.

(...)

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning. Full story...

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Another iPhone in Singapore explodes while charging...

2012-01-27T02:36:00.000+01:00

For the second time in two weeks, yet another man's iPhone has exploded.

Mr Ong explained to the Today paper, that his father was charging his year-old iPhone 4 when it started to emit sparks and smoke, followed by a loud "boom".

His house blacked out after the explosion.

This follows an earlier case where an iPhone, belonging to well known local hairstylist Addy Lee, exploded in a similar fashion. Full story...

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The typewriter fights for its life in India...

2012-01-27T02:03:00.003+01:00

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Indian politicians get iPad lessons to cut down on paperwork!!!

The missing dot in the "i" leads to two murders...

Indian bureaucracy worst in Asia, Singapore's the best...

Zurich bans minors from sex trade...

2012-01-27T01:39:00.003+01:00

Wide open prostitution is coming to an end in Zurich after the city council approved measures to ban minors under the age of 18 from plying the sex trade.

In a 108-to-nine vote, the council on Wednesday night adopted regulations designed to prevent 16- and 17-year-olds from practising the world’s oldest profession on the street or indoors.

Swiss federal law only makes prostitution unlawful for people who have not reached the age of 16.

But the city of Zurich’s new regulations get around that hurdle by requiring prostitutes to take out a permit, under a contract which minors are ineligible to sign. Full story...

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Zurich planning drive-in sex-boxes...

Swiss prostitutes to use defibrillators to prevent...

Megaupload users plan to sue FBI over lost files...

2012-01-27T01:01:00.000+01:00

In most reports following the MegaUpload shutdown, the site is exclusively portrayed as a piracy haven.

However, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people used the site to share research data, work documents, personal video collections.

As of today, these people are still unsure whether they will ever get their personal belongings back.

In a response, Pirate Parties worldwide have started to make a list of all the people affected by the raids, and they are planning to file an official complaint against the US authorities. Full story...

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Obama signs ACTA, global internet treaty worse than SOPA...

Anonymous 'goes nuclear' in Megaupload revenge attack...

U.S. shuts Megaupload.com, hackers hit back...

Movie fans turn to piracy when the online cupboard is bare...

Obama signs ACTA, global internet treaty worse than SOPA...

2012-01-26T14:53:00.000+01:00

Months before the debate about Internet censorship raged as SOPA and PIPA dominated the concerns of web users, President Obama signed an international treaty that would allow companies in China or any other country in the world to demand ISPs remove web content in the US with no legal oversight whatsoever.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was signed by Obama on October 1 2011, yet is currently the subject of a White House petition demanding Senators be forced to ratify the treaty. The White House has circumvented the necessity to have the treaty confirmed by lawmakers by presenting it an as “executive agreement,” although legal scholars have highlighted the dubious nature of this characterization.

The hacktivist group Anonymous attacked and took offline the Federal Trade Commission’s website yesterday in protest against the treaty, which was also the subject of demonstrations across major cities in Poland, a country set to sign the agreement today. Full story...

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Wikipedia begins blackout in protest against US anti-piracy laws...

Stop ACTA demonstration in Poland...

2012-01-26T14:46:00.004+01:00

See also: Obama signs ACTA, global internet treaty worse than SOPA...

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Orthodox Jews in Israel stone woman for wearing "western" clothes...

2012-01-26T14:30:00.003+01:00

A group of ultra orthodox men threw stones at a woman in Israel because she was wearing Western clothes.

The woman said she feared for her life and was afraid that the men would put her on fire.

According to the newspaper Haaretz, the incident happened on Tuesday in Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem and was the plot of an ultra orthodox Jewish group that campaigns against “indiscreet clothing”.

The men jumped the car the woman was driving, smashed in its windows, poured bleach inside the vehicle and slashed all tires. When the woman tried to escape the men began throwing stones and small rocks at her. Full story...

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North Korea threatens to punish mobile-phone users as 'war criminals'

2012-01-26T14:06:00.003+01:00

North Korea has warned that any of its citizens caught trying to defect to China or using mobile phones during the 100-day mourning period for Kim Jong-il will be branded as "war criminals" and punished accordingly.

There are reports from within the isolated state that food supplies are again dwindling and that there has been an increase in the number of people attempting to cross the border into China. Many of those that do manage to cross the frontier eventually manage to reach South Korea, where an estimated 23,000 defectors have now settled.

The Workers' Party has issued the stern warning in an effort to deter more from attempting the already perilous journey, apparently in an effort to ensure the stability of the new regime of Kim Jong-un, who took over from his father, according to Good Friends, a South Korean relief group.

People who are caught attempting to flee the poverty and political oppression in the North, as well as those detained in China and sent back over the border, usually end up in the North's network of hard labour camps, human rights groups have reported, while repeat offenders can expect to be executed. Full story...

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Facebook's timeline feature becomes mandatory for all users - with just 7 days to 'clean up'

2012-01-26T13:51:00.000+01:00

Facebook's Timeline - a new look for people's Profile pages which exposes their entire history on the site - will become mandatory for all users.

The 'new look' has been voluntary up until now.

From now, users will simply be notified that they are being 'updated' via an announcement at the top of their home page, which users click on to activate Timeline.

As with voluntary switches to Timeline, those who are 'updated' will have just seven days to select which photos, posts and life events they want to advertise to the world.

Via the official Facebook blog, the site announced, 'Last year we introduced timeline, a new kind of profile that lets you highlight the photos, posts and life events that help you tell your story.' Full story...

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How Facebook, Twitter and YouTube can destroy your reputation.

Backlash over Google move to change privacy settings...

Sexy interracial poster sparks furor in South Africa...

2012-01-26T10:04:00.000+01:00

It’s the poster that all of South Africa is buzzing about. In a single image, it exposes the most sensitive issues in this fragile post-apartheid society: politics, race and sex.

The poster was distributed on university campuses by the student wing of the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party. It shows a young inter-racial couple – a white man and a black woman – both apparently nude, locked in a loving embrace.

Within days of its appearance on campuses this week, the image was dominating the South African media, sparking heated debate among politicians and hundreds of other commentators on websites and social media across the country.

Much of the reaction was supportive. Some was racist. Some was prudish. Some was fiercely partisan or bizarrely over-the-top. But the controversy showed that the taboos of the apartheid era have not entirely disappeared in this “rainbow nation” today, even though 18 years have passed since apartheid’s collapse. Full story...

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Black staff in South African hospital accused of ill-treating white patients...

White farmers 'being wiped out' in South Africa. More than 3000 killed but...

South Africa's new AWB leader loses his cool on live TV...

South Africa; poor whites, rich blacks...

If you're newly rich in South Africa, you must be a witch!!!

Backlash over Google move to change privacy settings...

2012-01-25T16:12:00.002+01:00

Critics have hit out at Google's decision to merge personal data from YouTube, Gmail, search, social network Google+ and dozens of other services.

Forthcoming changes to privacy settings will see data shared across all these platforms. Users cannot opt out of the changes.

Google said the update would offer more relevant searches.

But critics say it has more to do with the data battle the search giant is waging with rival Facebook.

The changes take effect from 1 March. Full story...

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How Facebook is tracking you...

Privacy not a major concern for majority of Facebook users...

Google+: use your real name or get out...

Google+: one hell of a Trojan horse...

Google is sneaking into every corner of our lives...

Female Saudi driver who defied driving ban dies in car crash...

2012-01-25T15:19:00.003+01:00

In an ironical incident, a woman who had actively protested the driving ban on female motorists in Saudi Arabia has died in a car crash.

While one woman was instantly killed, the other one survived with injuries and is being treated in the hospital, said the police.

"One woman was immediately killed and her companion who was driving the car was hospitalised after she suffered several injuries," police spokesman Abdulaziz al-Zunaidi told AFP.

The fatal accident happened when their car overturned as they were driving through the northern Hael province on Saturday evening.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are not allowed to drive. Full story...

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Indian family and their two dogs go on vacation!!!

2012-01-25T03:01:00.002+01:00

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How to send an SMS in India!!!

Driver caught using two mobiles! Two???

The vigil-aunties of Karachi...

2012-01-25T02:55:00.002+01:00

Imagine this: you are a young Pakistani woman walking in a Karachi park with a young man. He could be your brother, cousin, university friend, fiance, or husband. You are wearing a full burqa, and your companion is walking beside you, carrying on a conversation. You are a middle to lower-middle-class girl, with a lot of restrictions on your life, and this time in this public space, where you are modestly dressed and doing no harm, give you a bit of respite in a life that carries a lot of expectations about how you conduct yourself and what weight that places on your family’s respectability.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a group of fifteen upper-class women descend upon you. One of them has a microphone which she thrusts into your companion’s face, and there is a camera crew behind her, filming every moment. She claims to be doing a survey on mobile phone crime, but the questions she poses become more and more intrusive. “Are you college students? Yes? Then why aren’t you in class? It’s morning time.” The woman with the microphone assures you the camera is not recording, but the accusations become more pointed. “Are you on a date? Are you married? Where’s your nikahnama?” Full story...

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Lady doctors in Karachi hospital sexually harassed by male staff...

Women in Malawi beaten and stripped for wearing trousers...

Slutwalking and a woman's right to dress as she pleases...

In India's Kerala, the moral brigade goes on the rampage against women...

Morality police hits Tehran's streets...

Man in Malaysia attacks women wearing shorts!!!

Davos 2012: From Capitalism to Fascism...

2012-01-24T16:25:00.004+01:00

This is very serious. The elitist power grab is going right at the heart of capitalism. Of course, they have always been for central control, with them in control, but now they are calling out capitalism, directly, as an inferior product.

On Friday, I attacked Larry Summers for blaming the current crisis on capitalism. I thought he was a lone wolf attempting to see how far the anti-capitalist agenda could be pushed. I was wrong.

It appears Summers simply fired the first shot in a new aggressive move by elitists to discredit capitalism outright. The elitists are gathering in Davos, Switzerland right now for the 2012 World Economic Forum. Full story...

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Capitalism in crisis, a warning from history...

Charles Dickens and the money barons...

Bankers and CEOs raping and pillaging the nation...

The freedom not to obey...

(ESM) or The shocking truth of fascist Europe...

Mob in Jaipur stops Salman Rushdie talk: organisers get death threats...

2012-01-24T15:58:00.001+01:00

Sir Salman Rushdie was prevented from speaking to the Jaipur literature festival audience by video link today after a Muslim mob infiltrated the venue, the police warned of violence and the organisers received death threats.

He had previously been forced to delay plans to appear at the Indian literary festival after India's leading Islamic Seminary called for protests over his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses. He later cancelled them after organisers were told of intelligence reports that Sir Salman would be assassinated if he travelled to Jaipur.

Earlier on Tuesday a fallback plan for him to be interviewed from a remote location by video link was abandoned after the police warned of violent clashes inside and outside the venue if the event went ahead.

The government has been heavily criticised for failing to offer the same protection to Sir Salman that they provided to the American chat show host Oprah Winfrey when she appeared at the festival last weekend. Congress party ministers have been accused of cynically manipulating the situation to win Muslim votes in a key state election. Full story...

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Salman Rushdie talks about the 'stupid, archaic' British monarchy...

Pakistan cleric offers reward to kill Christain woman...

Attack on French paper for joking about Prophet Muhammad...

Here comes the Dragon! Happy Chinese New Year!

2012-01-24T15:42:00.002+01:00

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Although we are different, we are all special! Happy Deepavali...

Amazing planet earth, amazing humans...

Small pleasures...

Are you dancing? Life is meant to be enjoyed...

Human Rights Watch to Singapore: Stop hiding behind old excuses...

2012-01-24T15:08:00.003+01:00

The Singapore government should cease violating fundamental free expression rights citing self-serving historical and cultural justifications that only tarnish Singapore’s global image, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2012.

Singapore’s rights record went before the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process in May 2011. The government either rejected outright or contested the premises of many recommendations for improvements in civil and political rights. Concerns cited included the use of preventive detention, the use of defamation suits to silence critics, restrictions on public protests, regular use of corporal punishment for a wide range of crimes, and criminalization of same-sex relations between men.

“Singapore’s claims of exemption from human rights standards are just lame excuses for abuses,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The people of Singapore deserve the same rights as everyone else, not more clever stories justifying government oppression.” Full story...

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Singapore is not so clean, Mr Murdoch!

Singapore sits moodily atop wealth pole...

Press freedom: Alan Shadrake and the Singapore grip...

‘The genie is out of Singapore’s political bottle’

Singapore under pressure to abolish internal security law...

Singaporeans: we work till we die...

Asia loses its taste for shark fin...

2012-01-24T14:56:00.002+01:00

As Asia's ethnic Chinese sit down for lavish banquets to usher in the Lunar New Year, a delicacy long considered a must at celebratory meals is fast disappearing from menus and dinner tables.

A growing number of shops, restaurants and hotels have in the past few months given up selling shark fin, which in Asia is usually eaten in soup, throwing a lifeline to the marine predator that activists say is long overdue.

"Yes, we do see an increasing number of locals and international businesses saying no to shark's fin," said Elaine Tan, chief executive for environmental group WWF in Singapore.

"This change in attitude could be due to an increasing awareness of the plight of sharks as well as the result of many shark campaigns worldwide," she told AFP. Full story...

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‘Catastrophic’ loss of sharks in the South China Sea...

Growing movement in Hong Kong against shark fin...

Spain's bloody blood fiestas ... and the European tax payer is footing the bill!

First they went for the Tamils, but now Sri Lanka is targeting workers and youth...

2012-01-23T16:03:00.001+01:00

In a recent speech, Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse highlighted the “threat to our national security” posed by attempts to “create [political] instability” as in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

Remarks by the top defence official, the brother of President Mahinda Rajapakse, are an ominous warning that the government is refocusing its police-state apparatus, built up over a quarter century of civil war, against protests by workers and youth.

(...)

Rajapakse began his speech by referring once again to the “threat” of the revival of the LTTE abroad and in the country. Such comments are mandatory as the government needs to constantly stir up anti-Tamil communalism—the chief weapon used by the ruling elite for decades to divide the working class and rural poor, and block a unified struggle to defend living conditions and democratic rights.

(...)

The purpose of this “terrorist threat” is to justify the maintenance of the country’s huge military machine and police-state apparatus. The defence secretary declared that it was “of critical importance to maintain a strong [military] presence in areas… used by the LTTE for terrorist activities.” He added: “[M]aintaining a sizeable army and establishing camps in strategic locations throughout Sri Lanka is essential.” Full story...

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Saudi Arabia, the Middle East's most under-reported conflict...

2012-01-23T15:45:00.004+01:00

(...)

In October, shootings were reported between security forces and armed men outside a police station in Awwamiya. The town, which has for decades been a hotspot of Shia opposition, has since been in a virtual state of lockdown, and now seems to have started an uprising – the "intifada of dignity", as activists have called it.

Weekly and sometimes daily protests occurred in the villages of Qatif governorate and in late November and early December the first Shia were killed. When four young Shia were shot dead over the course of a few days, their funerals turned into the biggest demonstrations the eastern province had witnessed in three decades. The spiral of protest, killings and burials that was so crucial in galvanising protest in other countries such as Syria and Bahrain was set in motion. Particularly in a rural and suburban context, most people in a neighbourhood will know the deceased and therefore come out to his burial.

The Saudi regime seems prepared to crush these protests with an iron fist. It does not want to concede to Shia demands out of fear that other constituencies and regions might present similar demands. But this seems a very short-sighted strategy, as evidence from other Arab uprisings suggests. Online activists have already developed a mythology around the five "martyrs" and if there are more, this will probably galvanise protests rather than stifle them. Full story...

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Cat-boy in China sees in the dark, stuns doctors...

2012-01-23T09:00:00.002+01:00

See also: Cat-boy in China can see and read in the dark...

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The girl who cries tears of crystal!!!

Jill Price and her awesome memory; blessing or curse?

Foreigners in India for 'mommy makeover' surgery...

2012-01-23T08:47:00.002+01:00

The three mothers from the east African nation meticulously planned their month-long tour around surgical procedures in New Delhi that they hoped would enable them to return to their husbands looking trimmer and healthier.

They admit that vanity is a key motive behind their choice to go under the surgeon's knife in a faraway country, saying they want their tummies tucked and breasts firmed up so they can again wear swimsuits with confidence.

"There are certain activities you can't do if your top is very heavy," one of the women told AFP, requesting anonymity after breast reduction surgery at a clinic in the Indian capital.

"I am feeling so light now. I can go for a jog or a swim without attracting all the negative male attention that I earlier did," said the mother of four. Full story...

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Female genital mutilation (FGM) in Africa (graphic)

TSA: Brazenly strip-searching and brazenly lying about it...

2012-01-23T08:33:00.003+01:00

As usual when musing about a particular sample of the TSA’s evil, it’s tough to decide which detail most infuriates.

The Case of the Strip-Searched Seniors offers a perfect example. What angers you most: the TSA’s shaming frail, elderly invalids by compelling them to disrobe for a governmental goon’s inspection; its lying about these atrocities; or its "apology" that continues smearing the grannies as prevaricators?

You remember Lenore Zimmerman. She’s the 85-year-old resident of Long Island, NY, the TSA strip-searched at JFK International Airport before her flight to Florida in November. Only Our Rulers could have mistaken this lady for a recruit to Al Qaeda: she probably weighs less than her walker, and for sure its legs are thicker than hers. As Ms. Zimmerman herself noted, "I really look like a terrorist." She wears a defibrillator and suffers from a hunched back.

True to its Nazi mentors, the TSA preys on just such weak and helpless people. When Ms. Zimmerman asked for a pat-down to avoid the porno-scanner at the checkpoint, two deviants "escorted her to a private room and began to remove her clothes. Full story...

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TSA officer stole $30,000 from travellers with boss's approval! WTF!

Imam arrested in Bangladesh for 'raping' 8-year-old...

2012-01-23T08:16:00.003+01:00

Police have arrested an imam on charges that he violated an 8-year-old female madrasa student at Pirojpur district's Swarupkathi upazila.

Upzila's Qazi Bari Mosque's Imam Mohammar Nurul Islam was arrested after the girl's parents lodged a rape case on Saturday with the Swarupkathi Police Station, police said.

Station's inspector (investigation) Surendranath Adhikari told bdnews24.com that Nurul Islam, a Fazil grade student of the upazila's Sarsina Alia Madrasa, was also presented before the court following his arrest. Full story...

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SOPA is dead, long live SOPA...

2012-01-22T19:09:00.000+01:00

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What's going on in Nigeria?

2012-01-22T18:36:00.003+01:00

(...)

I knew what she meant. I was in Lagos in April last year, when violence erupted in the North after the presidential elections. Many hundreds of people died. My Lagosian friends were concerned and saddened, naturally, but I also felt they were somewhat detached. They didn’t see events in the North as a direct threat to their own livelihood or safety. Their own city was doing well economically. I had the sense then that Nigeria was a country diverging, with a relatively prosperous South impatient for more progress, and a North still mired in deep poverty.

Last month, I returned to Lagos, Nigeria's financial capital. I sensed that the worsening situation in the North was starting to have an impact. Expatriate friends, adventurous types who had always loved to explore Nigeria, told me they felt that much of the North was now out of bounds for them. And judging from the many messages of dismay I received from Lagos and the capital Abuja, in the wake of the latest atrocities in Nigeria's second largest city Kano, most Nigerians recognise that their country is now in grave danger.

Wherever you are in Nigeria, it is no longer possible to feel detached from events in the North. Evidently the people behind this violence are doing their utmost to fuel regional and religious tensions. There is no more room for complacency because Nigeria is a notoriously combustible place. Even if much of the talk of it being "on the brink" or "close to civil war" is lazy and simplistic, what we are already seeing is bad enough and there is the threat of much worse to come. Full story...

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New York gang members arrested after boasting of murders on Facebook...

2012-01-22T09:08:00.001+01:00

Police investigating three murders arrested 43 feuding New York gang members on Thursday based on evidence collected from monitoring what the gang members were saying about the cases on Twitter and Facebook, authorities said.

The 25 accused members of the Wave Gang and 18 accused members of rival Hoodstarz have been terrorizing streets in Brooklyn with shootouts that led to the killing of three people and wounding of several others, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

The gang members, ages 15 to 21, bragged about the shootings on the social media sites Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, he said. Full story...

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I did not strangle my wife, a ghost did it!

2012-01-22T08:56:00.002+01:00

A Wisconsin man charged with domestic abuse told cops that a “ghost” was actually responsible for injuries suffered by his wife, according to police.

The bizarre claim by Michael West, 41, did not prevent the Fond du Lac man’s arrest for strangulation, battery, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest. West is pictured in the mug shot at right.

According to a January 18 criminal complaint, West and his spouse got into an argument Sunday that turned violent. The victim told cops that West twice strangled her, and that he punched her in the face when she tried to dial 911. Full story...

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How Facebook, Twitter and YouTube can destroy your reputation. Scary...

2012-01-22T08:22:00.000+01:00

An innocent student who had his name blackened on the internet has comprehensively cleared his name – thanks to the Irish Mail on Sunday.

Dublin student Eoin McKeogh, accused of dodging a €50 taxi fare, has laid bare how the internet can destroy a blameless person's reputation in seconds and put people in the horrifying position of either leaving vile allegations in the public domain or pursuing a difficult and costly legal battle through the courts that will attract more attention from the media.

The entire episode has proven how social media such as Facebook and Twitter constitute something of a Wild West when it comes to laws of defamation, where anonymous users can accuse innocent people of crimes without any proof, in a spiralling nightmare of libel and slander.

Mr McKeogh's ordeal began in December when a taxi driver posted a video taken inside his cab on YouTube of a young man running from his taxi without paying the fare. Full story...

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Soul singer Etta James dies in California...

2012-01-22T01:42:00.001+01:00

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Monsanto abusing illegal workers in "slave-like" conditions...

2012-01-22T01:18:00.003+01:00

Monsanto’s disregard for human health is evidenced by their hazardous GMO crops and herbicides, but a shocking new report has revealed the company’s illegal ‘slave-like’ working conditions. Forcing slave workers to work the cornfields for 14 hours per day and buy their food (most likely GMO) at highly-inflated prices from the company store, Monsanto has been running these slave rings for an unknown number of years.

What’s more is the company not only ‘hired’ all of the workers illegally, but prevented them from leaving the farm premises and withheld their salaries. The information came to light following a raid by Argentina’s tax agency known as AFIP, where it was revealed that the farmhands were being forced to work almost twice as long as legally permissible and given no compensation. Amazingly, AFIP says that it will hold Monsanto responsible for the slave-like conditions.

(...)

This is not the first time Monsanto has abused workers, or even farmers dedicated to using the company’s GM seeds. In fact, Monsanto’s previous crimes against the human race are arguably even more despicable. In 2008 it was revealed that thousands of farmers were committing suicide after using GMO crops. Due to failing harvests and inflated prices that bankrupt the poor farmers, they began to kill themselves oftentimes drinking the very same insecticide that Monsanto supplied them with. Full story...

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Voluntary "de-baptism" rising in Europe...

2012-01-22T01:07:00.003+01:00

Sunday evening youth mass in Saint-Germain-des-Pres is overflowing with parishioners. People stand in aisles or sit cross-legged in corners of the cavernous, sixth century Paris church.

Father Benoist de Sinety, parish priest at Saint Germain for the past three years, says he has always had the good fortune of seeing crowds of young people seeking their bearings or rediscovering faith. But he knows it is not the same everywhere.

Churches in France and elsewhere in Europe have been battling falling numbers, a trend evident not only in the empty pews, but in the sharp fall in baptisms. But "de-baptisms", a church's deletion of one's name from the official baptismal registry at a parishioner's request, are a recent phenomenon, and they are taking place in both Protestant and Catholic communities.

There are no official statistics, but experts and activists count the numbers of those seeking de-baptism in the tens of thousands, and websites offering informal "de-baptism" certificates have mushroomed. Full story...

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Swiss govt declares downloading for personal use legal...

2012-01-21T18:15:00.000+01:00

The government of Switzerland has issued a statement declaring that it will not take action to alter current copyright laws allowing the downloading of music and movies for personal use. The statement is the result of a lengthy study conducted by the Swiss government into the impact of so-called “piracy” on the entertainment industry.

The entertainment industry has been complaining in Switzerland – as in the US and elsewhere – that the unauthorized downloading of music and movies has harmed their business. The situation in Switzerland is somewhat unique, in that current copyright law considers the downloading of content for personal use as acceptable and legal. The entertainment industry has been lobbying the Swiss government to change the law. This study is the government’s response.

Despite the industry’s claims that downloading undermines their business, this study shows that the effect of unauthorized downloading on the industry’s bottom line is negligible. One key finding of the study is that downloaders spend as much if not more to acquire content legally as those who do not download. Researchers found no change in amount of disposable income spent on music and movies, despite the fact that roughly one third of Swiss people engage in some form of downloading. Full story...

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FEMEN topless activists protest outside Indian embassy in Ukraine...

2012-01-21T12:29:00.002+01:00

The Indian Embassy at Ukrain vitnessed some unprecedented seance yesterday and were shocked when some women activists protested topless on the balcony of it and shocked the officials and the public.

This was in retaliation to the country’s recent plan to stop young women and girls from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakh from entering India as part of a national anti-prostitution initiative.

The topless activists, partially clad in Indian clothes, holding an Indian flag climbed the Indian embassy’s balcony with a ladder with banners displaying “Ukrainians are not prostitutes!”, “Delhi, close your brothels,” and “We demand apologies.” Full story...

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Women in Malawi beaten and stripped for wearing trousers...

2012-01-21T10:17:00.000+01:00

Hundreds of people have protested in Blantyre in Malawi about attacks on women for wearing trousers.

Some women were this week beaten and stripped by vendors on the streets of the capital, Lilongwe, and Blantyre for not wearing traditional dress.

A BBC reporter says women wore trousers and mini-skirts to the demonstration to show their outrage.

President Bingu wa Mutharika has said on national radio that women had the right to wear what they want.

He denied reports that he had ordered women to stop wearing trousers, and ordered anyone harassing women to be arrested. Full story...

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Social media brings down SOPA/PIPA...

2012-01-21T09:36:00.001+01:00

On Wednesday, January 18, the forces of liberty gained a major political victory over the entrenched meddlers in Congress. The owners of a handful of popular Internet sites joined together to protest SOPA/PIPA. They blacked out their sites and provided information on the threat to Internet liberty this bill posed.

Before the day was over, a majority of our elected representatives were doing a superb imitation of the captain of the grounded Italian cruise ship. They abandoned ship as fast as he did, and for the same reason. (Note: the reason was not that they had slipped and fallen into the lifeboat, then to be carried to safety against their will.)

(...)

First, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a rising Republican star, took to Facebook, one of the vehicles for promoting opposition, to renounce a bill he had co-sponsored. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who leads the G.O.P.'s Senate campaign efforts, used Facebook to urge his colleagues to slow the bill down. Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina and a Tea Party favorite, announced his opposition on Twitter, which was already boiling over with anti-#SOPA and #PIPA fever.

(...)

"This is huge," said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group. "[Social networks] pretty much drove the mass objections and stopped this bill from becoming law. I think we are actually seeing the beginning of a huge change in the political process worldwide that [has] social networks at the core." Full story...

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Rajnikanth website really runs without internet! What???

2012-01-21T04:28:00.001+01:00

It may sound like another Rajinikanth joke, but a new website dedicated to the superstar runs 'without an internet connection'!

Visitors to www.allaboutrajni.com are greeted with a warning that "He is no ordinary man, this is no ordinary website. It runs on Rajini Power" and are advised to switch off their internet connection to enter the website.

Only when the web is disconnected, one is allowed to explore the site.

Netizens can trace the story of the legend from the beginning, read inside scoops from his films and get a glimpse of behind-the-scenes action, while browsing through famous Rajini jokes about impossible feats only he can achieve. Full story...

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Anonymous 'goes nuclear' in Megaupload revenge attack...

2012-01-21T04:13:00.000+01:00

THE SHADOWY Anonymous collective is congratulating itself this morning after a "thermo-nuclear" hacking operation which took down a host of US government and entertainment websites overnight in revenge for the closure by authorities of file-sharing site Megaupload.

But cooler heads are warning yesterday's attacks might have destroyed in one fell swoop public support for the 'blackout' campaign against two restrictive new anti-piracy laws being debated in Congress.

CNN reports that Megaupload is accused of "massive worldwide online piracy of copyrighted works" costing the entertainment industry $500m in lost revenue. The US Justice Department said yesterday that 20 search warrants had been executed in eight countries and that approximately $50m in assets had been seized. Megaupload's co-founders Kim 'Dotcom' Schmitz and Mathias Ortmann were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand. Full story...

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Deadly cancer drugs make cancer worse and kills patients more quickly...

2012-01-20T15:50:00.000+01:00

Cancer drugs, pushed by many drug companies as the only ‘scientific’ method of combating cancer alongside chemotherapy, have been found to actually make cancer worse and kill patients more quickly.

The findings come after research was conducted on the cancer drugs at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Sold at a premium price to cancer sufferers, it turns out these drugs are not only ineffective but highly dangerous.

Something known as anti-angiogenesis is the primary function behind many such widely-used cancer drugs that were analyzed in the study. Researchers examined drugs such as imatanib (a leukemia drug that goes by the brand name Gleevec) and sunitinib (a drug for gastrointestinal tumors — brand name Sutent), finding that these drugs may initially reduce tumor size, but afterwards cause tumors to ‘metastasize ’ aggressively. This means that the tumors come back much stronger and grow much larger than their original size. Full story...

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Indonesian Facebook atheist attacked by mob, faces jail...

2012-01-20T09:39:00.002+01:00

An Indonesian civil servant who posted “God does not exist” on his Facebook page has been taken into police custody for his own protection after he was badly beaten.

The man, identified as Alexander, 31, now faces the prospect of losing his job, or even being jailed, if he fails to repent and accept one of six official state religions.

Blasphemy carries a maximum sentence of five years in jail.

Local media reported that when Alexander arrived at work at the Dharmasraya Development Planning Board (Bappeda) on Wednesday, a group of men, also understood to comprise government officials, attacked and beat him before police arrived and took him into protective custody. Full story...

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Techno-stressed and addicted to smart phones...

2012-01-20T08:56:00.002+01:00

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Racism very much alive in Australia...

2012-01-20T08:26:00.001+01:00

HERALD Sun readers have overwhelmingly endorsed the claim by one of Australia's most respected neurosurgeons that racism still plagues the nation.

Dr Charles Teo, the son of Chinese immigrants, who prolonged the life of Jane McGrath and has saved the lives of hundreds of Australians, said it was wrong to deny there was racism in Australia.

At a launch of Australia Day Council celebrations yesterday, Dr Teo said that racism was still "very much alive in Australia".

"I don't quite like it when I hear politicians reassuring the Indians that there's no racism in Australia. That's bull-----," he said. Full story...

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U.S. shuts Megaupload.com, hackers hit back...

2012-01-20T08:05:00.006+01:00

The U.S. government shut down the Megaupload.com content sharing website, charging its founders and several employees with massive copyright infringement, the latest skirmish in a high-profile battle against piracy of movies and music.

The Department of Justice announced the indictment and arrests of four company executives in New Zealand on Friday as debate over online piracy reaches fever pitch in Washington where lawmakers are trying to craft tougher legislation.

The movie and music industries want Congress to crack down on Internet piracy and content theft, but major Internet companies like Google and Facebook have complained that current drafts of the legislation would lead to censorship.

(...)

Vocal critics of the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and Protect IP Act (PIPA), quickly showed their opposition to the shutdown of Megaupload.com, with hackers attacking the public websites of the Justice Department, the world's largest music company Universal Music, and the two big trade groups that represent the music and film industries.

'The government takes down Megaupload? 15 minutes later Anonymous takes down government & record label sites,' a member of Anonymous said via Twitter. Full story...

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Feds close in on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom...

Feds close in on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom...

2012-01-20T03:28:00.004+01:00

Kim Dotcom is a hard man to reach. The founder of Megaupload.com, the popular file-sharing site the Federal prosecutors just shut down, has been accused of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated content uploaded to his service--movies, music, TV shows, and so forth. But the chief innovation officer, who oversees more than 30 employees in nine countries, has made a business of testing the legal limits--his umbrella company has pulled in roughly $175 million, according to court filings, of which he received more than $42 million in 2010.

Inquiries to Megaupload over the past year have not been responded to; when I reached out to a source this week who had a connection to Dotcom, the source responded, "Sorry, but Kim told us explicitly not to put him in contact with journalists." But Dotcom hasn't been able to evade the Feds: Prosecutors have indicted him and six other defendants over online piracy, and are seeking the forfeiture of $175 million, dozens of bank accounts around the globe, as well as a stable of Mercedes-Benzes, Maseratis, Rolls-Royces, and Lamborghinis boasting vanity license plates that likely reflect the Dotcom era of Megaupload: "Good," "Evil," "CEO," "God," "Stoned," "Mafia," "Hacker," and perhaps most telling, "Guilty."

According to court documents, Dotcom owns roughly 68% Megaupload.com, Megaclick.com, and Megapix.com, subsidiary sites of the Mega Conspiracy brand. Dotcom also owns 100% of registered companies Megavideo.com, Megaporn.com, and Megapay.com. This family of sites grew to include more than 180 million registered users. Premium members of the service helped bring Mega Conspiracy more than $150 million, according to the Feds, while online advertising help the company bring in another $25 million. More + videos...

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Indian dude's crazy train stunt...

2012-01-20T02:38:00.001+01:00

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Western banks and nation-states are the walking dead.

2012-01-20T02:28:00.004+01:00

(...)

It seems as though it is only a matter of time before they each fall to bankruptcy, no matter how many bailouts they can muster. It's almost enough to make us change our logo. But, we've always said the euro would fall before the US dollar. The dollar will be the last in what will be a crescendo of currency collapse.

What the students of the Austrian School (aka real economics) have understood since the turn of the 20th century was that this was the inevitable result of the pursuit of the socialist utopia where humans would not have a worry in the world, cared for from cradle to grave by the all knowing state.

The modern Welfare/Warfare state was born in the in late nineteenth-century Imperial Germany under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck – his intention was clear from the outset:

“My idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake and interested in their welfare”

Bet you never saw that quote in your government run schoolbooks. Frideric Howe, an admirer of the german systeml wrote that under that system, “The individual exists for the state, not the state for the individual.” Full story...

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Israel's "humane" society...

2012-01-20T01:58:00.001+01:00

The compassion shown for animals may well surpass that shown towards Israel's Arab population...

Last week, Israel's High Court voted to uphold a law denying Israeli citizenship or residency not only to Palestinians married to Israeli Arabs, but also to spouses of similarly distasteful nationality (Lebanese, Iraqi, etc).

I read the news of the court verdict on the Haaretz website, where it was offset by another breaking headline of a more compassionate nature: "Serbian vulture set free after treatment at Israeli veterinary hospital".

According to the article:

The vulture was found injured at Kibbutz Lehavot Habashan in northern Israel, and was rushed to an Israeli veterinary hospital specializing in wild animals. There, the bird was diagnosed with multiple gunshot wounds.

Following two months of treatment, the vulture was set free. The Serbian embassy in Tel Aviv was reportedly "delighted to hear about the bird's recovery, and Serbian diplomats attended the release of the Serbian 'patient' back into the wild". Full story...

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'Nanny state' warnings are rubbish, says man who drinks 40 pints a day...

2012-01-20T01:28:00.003+01:00

A former pub landlord who regularly drank 40 pints a day has dismissed health warnings over alcohol as part of a ‘nanny state’.

Ken Chappell said tests ordered by a doctor concerned about his beer belly showed his liver was normal, even though he used to consume 30 times the recommended intake.

The 78-year-old has now cut down to six pints a day from his heyday in the 1980s and 1990s.

But he criticised government health officials for allegedly overstating the effects alcohol has on the body. Full story...

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Bahraini women and children are being terrorized, raped and tortured...

2012-01-19T15:00:00.004+01:00

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Indian couple have children taken away by Norwegian social workers because they fed them with their hands!!!

2012-01-19T14:49:00.003+01:00

An Indian couple have had their children taken away by Norwegian social workers because they were feeding them with their hands and sleeping in the same bed as them.

Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya lost custody of their three-year-old son and one-year-old daughter eight months ago after authorities branded their behaviour inappropriate.

The drastic measure led to intervention from the Indian government who contacted Norwegian authorities in an a desperate attempt to return the children.

Norwegian Child Protection Services removed the youngsters from their home in May, 2011, leaving their parents horrified with the outcome of the report. More + photos...

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Nanny state takes seven "fat" children from their parents...

Schools bar parents from sports day... to keep out paedophiles!!!

Man accused of being a pervert, for taking photos of his own kids!!!

Parents banned from taking photos of their own children!!!

At least they didn't name him "Sue..."

"Fuck" is no longer considered an offensive word in Australia...

2012-01-19T14:26:00.000+01:00

A snack maker in Australia has persuaded trademark regulators that the f-word is no longer offensive.

Lawyers for the company said the word was now part of the country's vernacular, reports the Daily Telegraph.

They won their case and approval to call the product 'Nucking Futs' so long as it was not marketed to children.

The case overturned a ruling last year that the name was an "obvious spoonerism" that was shameful and inappropriate. Full story...

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Korean dude's lesson on how to swear in English!!!

A child swearing and cussing...

In Spain, you can call your boss a son of a bitch!!!

Asian grandma learns English!!!

Man in Thailand marries his dead girlfriend...

2012-01-19T02:42:00.004+01:00

A man recently married his deceased girlfriend in a combination funeral and wedding ceremony.

Chadil Deffy, also known as Deff Yingyuen, placed a ring on the finger of Sarinya "Anne" Kamsook, his girlfriend of 10 years, during the ceremony in Thailand's Surin province.

The couple had planned to get married in the future, but Yingyuen wanted to focus on his studies before tying the knot, the Thai-Asean News (TAN) Network reported.

Unfortunately, Kamsook unexpectedly died in an accident before the couple could set a date. Full story...

More photos here...

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Frenchman to wed dead sweetheart...

Frenchwoman marries boyfriend ... who died one year ago!!!

Man in Vietnam slept beside dead wife for 5 years!!!

Your dead lover reborn as a sex doll???

His wife is a ... doll???

Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani banned from homeland after naked magazine shoot in France...

2012-01-19T02:26:00.001+01:00

An Iranian actress has been told she is no longer welcome in her homeland after she posed naked in a French news magazine as a symbolic protest against strictures on women.

The nude photo of Golshifteh Farahani has been published by Madame Le Figaro magazine. The publication has attracted a wave of visitors to her Facebook page from Iran and the Middle East.

The Paris-based actress left Iran last year in protest against restrictive Islamic codes that the Iranian cinema industry has to follow under Ahmadinejad's conservative cultural policies.

Now she said the government has sent a communication telling her not to travel back to her homeland. Full story...

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Why French children don't throw food...

2012-01-19T01:52:00.003+01:00

Paris-based writer Pamela Druckerman had something approaching an epiphany while on a seaside holiday in France with her husband and 18-month-old daughter, who she nicknames ‘Bean’.

"We were staying in a little hotel and had all our meals in restaurants around the port,” she explains when we meet in a café in Paris’ Marais district.

“Each meal got worse. Bean would eat some french fries, then tear apart some sugar packets, then demand to get up."

So far, so toddler. Yet Druckerman also noticed something else.

"After a couple of days of this I looked around and realised there were all these French families who were having a completely different experience. They were having long multi-course meals with children who were eating their vegetables and sitting in their high chairs.” Full story...

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What do French school children have for lunch?

Children in parts of India refuse free school lunches because...

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Britons waste £17bn worth of food a year...

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Polio vaccines now the no.1 cause of polio paralysis...

2012-01-19T01:39:00.000+01:00

The Polio Global Eradication Initiative (PGEI), founded in 1988 by the World Health Organization, Rotary International, UNICEF, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, holds up India as a prime example of its success at eradicating polio, stating on its website (Jan. 11 2012) that "India has made unprecedented progress against polio in the last two years and on 13 January, 2012, India will reach a major milestone - a 12-month period without any case of polio being recorded."

This report, however, is highly misleading, as an estimated 100-180 Indian children are diagnosed with vaccine-associated polio paralysis (VAPP) each year. In fact, the clinical presentation of the disease, including paralysis, caused by VAPP is indistinguishable from that caused by wild polioviruses, making the PGEI's pronouncements all the more suspect.1

According to the Polio Global Eradication Initiative's own statistics2 there were 42 cases of wild-type polio (WPV) reported in India in 2010, indicating that vaccine-induced cases of polio paralysis (100-180 annually) outnumber wild-type cases by a factor of 3-4. Even if we put aside the important question of whether or not the PGEI is accurately differentiating between wild and vaccine-associated polio cases in their statistics, we still must ask ourselves: should not the real-world effects of immunization, both good and bad, be included in PGEI's measurement of success? For the dozens of Indian children who develop vaccine-induced paralysis every year, the PGEI's recent declaration of India as nearing "polio free" status, is not only disingenuous, but could be considered an attempt to minimize their obvious liability in having transformed polio from a natural disease vector into a manmade (iatrogenic) one. Full story...

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TSA admits wrongdoing in cases of two elderly woman who were strip-searched...

2012-01-19T01:31:00.004+01:00

In an about-face, the feds have admitted wrongdoing in the cases of two elderly women who say they were strip-searched at Kennedy Airport by overzealous screeners.

Federal officials had initially insisted that all “screening procedures were followed” after Ruth Sherman, 89, and Lenore Zimmerman, 85, went public with separate accounts of humiliating strip searches.

But in a letter obtained by the Daily News, the Homeland Security Department acknowledges that screeners violated standard practice in their treatment of the ailing octogenarians last November.

Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Betsy Markey concedes to state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Queens) that Sherman was forced to show security agents her colostomy bag — a violation of policy. Full story...

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TSA officer stole $30,000 from travellers with boss's approval! WTF!

American marines urinating on dead Taliban soldiers...

2012-01-18T14:42:00.004+01:00

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Big Pharma routinely suppresses data from clinical trials...

2012-01-18T13:54:00.001+01:00

... but FDA approves these dangerous drugs anyway!

Drug research, even from clinical trials sponsored by the federal government, is routinely suppressed, according to a new study in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), an international peer-reviewed medical publication. The study found that less than half of all NIH-funded clinical drug trials were published in a medical journal within two and a half years of the trial’s completion—with fully one-third of trial results remaining unpublished even four years after the trial. Why? Because the drug manufacturers didn’t like the data.

One example cited in the study was the FDA-approved diabetes drug Avandia, which in 2007 was found to increase heart attacks and cardiovascular deaths—even though the drug’s maker, GlaxoSmithKline, had known about the risk before the drug was approved. The BMJ study found that 35 of the drug’s 42 clinical studies had never been published, and were obtained only because a court case required the pharmaceutical company to turn over the data.

Not only does this irresponsible practice harm patients, it also increases healthcare costs. Eugene Carragee, a Stanford University orthopedic surgeon and editor-in-chief of the Spine Journal, spearheaded an unprecedented independent analysis showing that the medical device manufacturer Medtronic—not to mention a circle of orthopedic surgeons who received millions of dollars in royalties from the company—systematically failed to report serious complications with Medtronic’s bone-growth stimulating back surgery device known as Infuse. The results of a crucial clinical trial of the product were not published until nearly five years after the trial had to be halted because unwanted bone was growing around the spines of the trial volunteers. Full story...

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Preacher is jailed after 15 years of child abuse...

2012-01-18T13:39:00.005+01:00

A PREACHER who stood as a Tory candidate for Holyrood has been jailed for eight years for carrying out a 15-year campaign of child abuse.

John Smart, 48, preyed on three youngsters he met through the Edinburgh City Mission.

He began abusing one of his victims when the boy was just three years old.

Smart persuaded the parents of his victims to let him take the two boys and a girl on trips, and also attacked them during overnight visits to his home. Full story...

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Arundhati Roy: Beware the ‘gush-up gospel’ behind India’s billionaires...

2012-01-18T13:32:00.003+01:00

Is it a house or a home? A temple to the new India, or a warehouse for its ghosts? Ever since Antilla arrived on Altamount Road in Mumbai, exuding mystery and quiet menace, things have not been the same. “Here we are,” the friend who took me there said, “pay your respects to our new ruler.”

Antilla belongs to India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. I’d read about this, the most expensive dwelling ever built, the 27 floors, three helipads, nine lifts, hanging gardens, ballrooms, weather rooms, gymnasiums, six floors of parking, and the 600 servants. Nothing had prepared me for the vertical lawn – a soaring wall of grass attached to a vast metal grid. The grass was dry in patches, bits had fallen off in neat rectangles. Clearly, “trickle down” had not worked.

(...)

Having worked out how to manage the government, the opposition, the courts, the media and liberal opinion, what remains to be dealt with is the growing unrest, the threat of “people power”. How do you domesticate it? How do you turn protesters into pets? How do you vacuum up people’s fury and redirect it into blind alleys? The largely middle-class, overtly nationalist anti-corruption movement in India led by Anna Hazare is a good example. A round-the-clock, corporate-sponsored media campaign proclaimed it to be “the voice of the people”. It called for a law that undermined even the remaining dregs of democracy. Unlike the Occupy Wall Street movement, it did not breathe a word against privatisation, corporate monopolies or economic “reforms”. Its principal media backers successfully turned the spotlight away from huge corporate corruption scandals and used the public mauling of politicians to call for the further withdrawal of discretionary powers from government, for more reforms and more privatisation. Full story...

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Arundhati Roy: the dead begin to speak...

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Wikipedia begins blackout in protest against US anti-piracy laws...

2012-01-18T12:02:00.004+01:00

Wikipedia has taken its English-language content offline as part of a "day of darkness" in protest at US anti-piracy laws that it says could "fatally damage the free and open internet" and "severely limit people's access to online information".

As of 5am on Wednesday, anyone trying to access the online encyclopedia will have been greeted with a blackened screen and a message exhorting them to "imagine a world without free knowledge".

"For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history," reads the message, adding that the website will still be available on smartphones and mobile devices. "Right now, the US Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia." Full story...

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Youth in India has face blackened, gets donkey ride, 2-year exile for affair with widow!!!

2012-01-18T07:12:00.001+01:00

A widow, Nirmala Devi, belonging to Yadav community and a scheduled caste youth, Naveen Kumar, were reportedly having an affair for some time and eloped from the village on December 22. The family of the woman lodged a complaint with police about her disappearance and also launched a hunt for her. The couple was traced in a neighbouring village and was brought to the village on Thursday.

Villagers said that the panchayat ordered Naveen Kumar not to enter the village for two years and also blackened his face before making him ride a donkey around the village. He was also fined Rs 5,100. The woman was also given two months' exile from the village and was ordered to dig 10 square yard area in the village pond.

Village sarpanch Kanwar Singh however denied having any information about any panchayat taking place in the village. However, Sadar police station SHO Satbir Singh said that a police team had gone to the village to enquire about the incident. "No one from the village complained to police about the incident, so no police action has been initiated. As per our information, the woman and the youth are still living in the village and there is no threat to them," he said. Source...

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Rats nibble on paralysed man as hospital staff sleep...

2012-01-18T06:58:00.001+01:00

A 70-year-old paralysed man on ventilator in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a government hospital here was allegedly attacked by rats who nibbled on his ears, nose, lips and cheeks while hospital staff slept, hospital sources said.

The authorities at the government hospital have launched an investigation into the incident. The man, whose identity was withheld, was unable to move due to paralysis when the incident took place early Tuesday at the Mathura Das Mathur Hospital.

'The hospital staff - from doctors to security guards - go to sleep before 11 p.m., leaving the patients on their own,' a doctor in the hospital told IANS on condition of anonymity.

He said the man was found seriously injured Tuesday morning by his family members. Full story...

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12 children die in Indian state hospital due to negligence...

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Salman Rushdie persuaded to stay away from Jaipur Literature Festival...

2012-01-18T06:47:00.004+01:00

A major flashpoint ahead of the Jaipur Literary Festival has been avoided with a jittery Rajasthan government on Monday persuading organizers to ask Salman Rushdie, the main draw at the book-lovers' jamboree, to call off his visit.

Rajasthan chief secretary Salauddin Ahmed is learnt to have called the organizers to discuss Rushdie's presence that, sources in the state government said, would have created a huge security risk, given the threat of protests by Muslim groups.

"Rushdie's trip has been cancelled. We have been informed," said a senior Rajasthan police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The organizers, however, didn't confirm the cancellation but the Booker Prize-winning author's events on the January 20-24 programme were purged from the JLF website. Full story...

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Singapore PM says Obama earns less but has lots of perks...

2012-01-18T06:35:00.003+01:00

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Tuesday he may earn more than the US president but Barack Obama has much better perks such as free travel on Air Force One and holidays in Camp David.

Mounting a vigorous defence of the high salaries of Singapore ministers, Lee said the city-state cannot emulate the lower pay structures of bigger countries like the United States or Britain.

Lee’s ruling People’s Action Party has been on the defensive since general elections in May last year during which the government was heavily criticised over the million-dollar salaries of top officials.

Lee, 59, promised a review of the salary structure to ease public anger and an officially-sanctioned committee recommended steep pay cuts of at least a third.

But Singapore ministers remain among the highest paid in the world. Full story...

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Chinese kid beaten up by 7 hoodlums...

2012-01-18T02:08:00.003+01:00

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Guy gets beaten up for refusing to kiss???

Shanghai schoolgirl being beaten up! WTF!

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Chinese internet users surges past half a billion...

2012-01-18T01:54:00.004+01:00

The number of internet users in China has surged past half a billion and online citizenship continues to grow fast, according to latest figures.

The China internet Network Information Center report also shows the use of social media sites – Twitter equivalents called weibo – has greatly expanded among the country's 513 million netizens.

The number of microbloggers expressing themselves in the relative privacy of cyberspace has exploded – quadrupling from 63 million in 2010 to just over 250 million in 2011, or half the entire internet population, the figures show.

Such self-expression on such sites run by Sina Corp and Tencent Holdings, greatly worries the government, however. Full story...

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China hails toddler rescuer as 'national role model'

2012-01-18T01:44:00.003+01:00

A Chinese rubbish collector who tried to save a toddler who was run over in the street last October has been named a national role model by the official news agency Xinhua.

Online video showed at least 18 people walk past two-year-old Yue Yue as she lay bleeding and unconscious in the street in southern China before the rubbish collector picked her up and moved her to the kerb.

Yue Yue died of her injuries after the incident but the video went viral, shocking the Chinese public and triggering an outbreak of national soul-searching about the impact of rapid development and urbanisation on society.

Xinhua gave the accolade to the 58-year-old rubbish collector, Chen Xianmei, in a televised ceremony held on Monday evening after millions of Chinese people voted for her online. Full story...

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Woman offered blow-jobs for chicken McNuggets!!!

2012-01-18T01:35:00.002+01:00

A US woman has been arrested after apparently offering McDonalds customers a sexual favours in exchange for some chicken McNuggets.

Khadijah Baseer was reportedly going car to car at a drive-thru in Los Angeles and opening doors before making her offer.

The 31-year-old is said to have told a number of men that she would give then a blow job if they bought her a portion of chicken McNuggets.

Baseer was charged with misdemeanor solicitation and will now appear in court where she could be handed a year in prison and a $1,000 fine. Full story...

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'Pinned to ground by six policemen, because I couldn't pay my bus fare'

2012-01-18T01:23:00.001+01:00

A mother today claimed she was thrown to the ground by six policemen and held in a cell for eight hours after being stopped and searched because she did not have enough money on her Oyster card to cover her bus fare.

Ann Roberts, 38, claims she was treated "violently" by Met officers and wrongly accused of fraud and being a crack cocaine user - allegations she was later cleared of.

Mrs Roberts, who has an 18-year-old son, claims the police stop-and-search power is being used in a racist way. She has launched a landmark legal challenge, asking the High Court to rule it incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

She was on her way home from work in September 2010 when she was taken off by a conductor because she did not have enough on her Oyster card. Mrs Roberts, from Edmonton, then a college special needs assistant in Tottenham, was told she must be searched as she was in a gang and knife crime hotspot. Not wanting to be seen by colleagues or students, she asked to go to a police station. Full story...

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"Indian Snake Girl". Eight year old loves her pet cobras...

2012-01-11T11:24:00.001+01:00

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Two snakes in India kill a boy in "revenge" attack...

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Kids in India whose pets are ... pythons!!!

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Kevin Richardson, the lioness and her cubs! Wow!

Is Syria torturing babies to death now?

2012-01-11T11:03:00.003+01:00

Country's darkest secrets leaked online in world's first YouTube war.

These are the videos that Syrian President Bashar Assad does not want the world to see.

The lifeless corpse of four-month-old Afaf Mahmmod Al-Sarakb lies limp and motionless in a chair - tortured to death by government security officers after her parents were arrested.

The disfigured body of a tortured taxi driver is seen dumped in the street, while a third video shows blood pouring from the arm of a woman gunned down by a sniper. More + videos...

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The rise of atheism in Pakistan...

2012-01-11T10:37:00.002+01:00

(...)

Atheist groups and movements are a global trend. PAA is a part of that but it is different. The problem is that most of the groups for freethinkers are in secular countries. In my view the battle for reason, rationality and freethinking doesn’t need to be fought (with urgency) in England, Holland or Canada. It is here, in countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia where we need to fight the battle for reason. It is here where the battle will be the most hard-hitting, it is here where reason needs to triumph, and it is here where we can’t afford to lose.

Almost every Muslim-majority country is under-developed economically or socially. I believe that when a religion is adopted by a state it stifles progress. Pakistanis are running 40,000 Madrasas but 30 percent of the children under the age of 5 are malnourished.

We missed our millennium goals to eradicate polio because we couldn’t run the refrigerators that housed the vaccine, but we spent a fortune on the ‘Islamic bomb’.

This country would praise Mumtaz Qadri (the murderer of Salman Taseer), and yet marginalize the only Nobel laureate of the country because he was from minority sect.

If you want to see how much a hindrance religion can be in the progress of a nation, look at Pakistan. Full story...

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German hackers are building a DIY programme to put their own uncensored internet into Space! Wow!

2012-01-10T15:26:00.000+01:00

There’s more than one way to stick it to The Man. There’s civil disobedience, subversive propaganda, political art, outright violent revolt--each possessing its own degree of difficulty and consequence. In a decidedly 21st-century twist, team of German hackers bent on fighting the powers that be has chosen a rather ambitious means of taking the power back: building a hacker-owned and -operated space program, complete with a constellation of communications satellites beaming uncensored Internet to users on the ground.

The Hackerspace Global Grid was borne out of a call to action at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, where hackers of all stripes gather to mull the issues of the day as they relate to their craft. Hacker activist Nick Farr--motivated by legislation like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S.--called on the community to contribute to a project that would remove the power of censorship from governments and corporations by creating an uncensored Internet in the free frontier of space.

Of course, building both a space program capable of placing satellites in orbit and a terrestrial network of tracking stations is easier said than done. Then again, it’s easier now than it’s ever been. Space--and even low earth orbit--has long been the dominion of state entities with the resources and large-scale organizations capable of very big undertakings. Full story...

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"Two Against One" by Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi

2012-01-10T15:06:00.000+01:00

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Paraphernalia...

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Top German cop hacks daughter's computer with Trojan spyware...

2012-01-10T14:44:00.000+01:00

A hacker attack which infiltrated Germany’s federal police computer system using Trojan programs and a system of routes via Russia last summer was due to a row about internet usage between a top cop and his daughter.

It resulted in the “Patras” server being closed down – meaning that federal police had to halt operations tracking suspects and their vehicles. Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich subsequently said computer security would be made a top priority.

Der Spiegel magazine reported on Sunday that the Frankfurt officer concerned had put a Trojan program on his daughter’s computer to monitor her activities in the internet. Full story...

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Big Brother Germany plants spyware on citizens’ computers...

Not paid for 5 months, Air India cabin crew refuse to fly...

2012-01-10T08:41:00.001+01:00

Air India has run into serious trouble again. Eighty-nine of its flight attendants, who were rostered on international flights, refused to fly on Monday, leaving the airline scampering for stand-by cabin crew. The flight attendants have not been paid their salaries for two months and sustenance allowance for five months.

The number of flight attendants refusing to fly grew through the day and is expected to grow further. Nine of the 89 protesters joined in around 10pm on Monday. They were rostered on flights scheduled to depart from Delhi early on Tuesday. The number is expected to go up and affect airline operations. Air India spokespersons were not available for comment. Full story...

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Sri Lankan president's relative greeted with slippers and stones in India...

2012-01-10T08:32:00.002+01:00

Suspected MDMK and Nam TamizharIyakkam activists today allegedly barged into the house of the Ramanathaswamy Temple priest here and threw stones and slippers when a relative of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa was about to perform a 'pooja'.

Priest R C Anandha Dikshithar said the group broke open the gate and door of the house and shouted slogans against the Sri Lankan President when Tirukumaran Natesan was about to perform a "parikara pooja" (prayer seeking to remedy ill- effects of some sins).

Stones and slippers were hurled inside, the priest alleged, adding, he suffered minor bruises.

"They were under the impression that the pooja was being performed for continuance of Rajapaksa's regime, and abused me for performing the pooja...," the priest said. Full story...

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Sri Lankan army commanders 'assassinated surrendering Tamils'

Eric Cantona seeking French Presidency???

2012-01-10T08:13:00.003+01:00

Former Manchester United striker Eric Cantona has plans to run for French president - but he faces a tough contest.

The retired footballer, who needs to persuade 500 elected officials to back his bid in order to run, has reportedly sent a letter to mayors across France asking for their support and describing himself as "an engaged citizen".

The 45-year-old former Manchester United striker is pledging to represent "the millions of families who have been forgotten", according to a copy of the letter printed by French daily newspaper Liberation.

"I am a committed citizen," Cantona writes. Full story...

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French blockbuster star snubs Sarkozy...

The Beatles would have supported Ron Paul...

Louis CK on being white...

2012-01-10T08:02:00.002+01:00

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Dave Chapelle on Blacks and chicken!!!

Black youths beat up whites at Wisconsin State Fair ...

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Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim acquitted in sodomy trial...

2012-01-09T07:33:00.003+01:00

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was acquitted on Monday in a surprise end to a politically-charged sodomy trial he has called a government bid to cripple his opposition ahead of forthcoming polls.

The ruling by Judge Mohamad Zabidin Diah set off pandemonium in the Kuala Lumpur High Court, with Anwar mobbed by his wife, daughters and opposition politicians in joyous scenes.

Thousands of Anwar supporters who gathered outside under heavy security erupted into cheers and raised their fists in the air as news of the verdict filtered out.

Shortly afterwards, two small explosions went off in the carpark outside the courthouse, according to a police spokesman. Two people were injured in the blasts. Full story...

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