See also: US terror arrest leaves Pakistani villagers stunned...
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The Most Reverend Grings made his comments to a journalist from the O Globo newspaper at a bishop's conference in Rio De Janeiro. More...
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A bench headed by Chief Justice K. G. Balakrishnan said yesterday that narcoanalysis, which involves a suspect being drugged with sodium pentothal and questioned, violates the Constitution, which says that “no person accused of any offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself”. More...
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It would be ridiculously easy to set up Faisal Shahzad. New American, a little on the make, with family in Pakistan and big financial problems. Friendly government agent approaches him and appeals to his patriotism and love of adventure, plus offers to pay well (note the history). First mission: infiltrate a 'terrorist' training camp in Pakistan (little does Shahzad know that the camp is really run by the CIA). Second mission: buy a cheap used car on Craigslist. Third mission: buy some fireworks. Fourth mission: stay at home awaiting further instructions. Shahzad, seeing his car on TV, suddenly got that Lee Harvey Oswald feeling, and decided it might be better to get out of the country before he died in a shoot-out. More...
See also: US terror arrest leaves Pakistani villagers stunned...
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Screener Rolando Negrin's private body parts were observed by his Transportation Security Administration colleagues conducting training on the airport's full-body imaging machines. More...
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The measured passed by Concord would allow the sale of refillable containers of water, which could still be sold and delivered in town. Only plastic bottles that companies cannot reuse would be banned. More...
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“It confirms my fears that after a media frenzy, we’ve now got a political frenzy. And as with the minarets, there’s not much reflection going on,” Stéphane Lathion, head of a research group on Islam in Switzerland, told swissinfo.ch. More...
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Israel, which is the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, is believed to have some 200 atomic bombs. More...
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Rat meat can be roasted, braised in soy sauce, stewed or cooked in soup, he said.One kg of rat meat costs diners about 50 yuan ($7.3), while the restaurant purchases the raw rat meat at about 15 yuan per kg, he said. More...
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"You never know what will happen," Wex said. More...
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Russia has started the annual Days of Defence against Environmental Hazards from the 15th of April to the 5th of June with the announcement of sensational results of an independent work of research. Scientists have proved that Genetically Modified Organisms are harmful for mammals. The researchers discovered that animals that eat GM foodstuffs lose their ability to reproduce. Campbell hamsters that have a fast reproduction rate were fed for two years with ordinary soya beans, which are widely used in agriculture and those contain different percentages of GM organisms. Another group of hamsters, the control group, was fed with pure soya, which was found with great difficulty in Serbia because 95 percent of soya in the world is transgenic. More...
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Twenty-two Kabul schoolgirls and three teachers fell suddenly ill and were hospitalised on Tuesday in what Afghan authorities described as the fourth suspected poison gas attack on a girls’ school in weeks.
The incident was the first in the comparatively secure capital after three suspected poison attacks on girls’ schools in the northern city of Kunduz over the past few weeks, and several at provincial schools last year.Authorities have failed to identify the substance they say caused girls and teachers to fall unconscious, but say it could be a poison gas released by opponents of girls’ education. More...
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A little known Jewish law called mesira, found in the Talmud with some scriptural support, forbids a Jew from reporting another Jew to the gentile authorities. More...
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Yesterday her husband said as a result he had no option but to stop her from going out. More...
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Critics see courses tailored for exceptional students as elitist and not much of an issue when compared with the vast number of students who are lagging grades behind their peers or dropping out of school. But a growing chorus of parents and advocates is asking the contentious question: What about the smart kids? More...
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EU officials nonetheless stepped up their efforts to have India's agricultural markets liberalised during the latest round of talks, which took place in the last week of April. A Brussels source said that moves to open up all agricultural sectors are under discussion. "It has not yet been decided which products will be liberalised and India's sensitivities will certainly be taken into account as negotiations progress," the source told IPS. More...
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"We're definitely happy and a little bit surprised," Al Kabban said. "Usually this type of thing goes in a different way."
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The 28-year-old man and his 24-year-old wife, who remain in Dubai, successfully argued in the appeals court that their car should be treated like a private house. Their lawyers argued that because of the car's tinted windows, a policeman who had raised the charge could not have seen what the couple were doing inside. Full story...
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Now, you might be wondering why that should be of any concern to a musicians' union or why a union set up (presumably) to promote music should be trying to ban a concert, but it's none of your business. As Wasimi points out, his union is the only body "authorised to allow performances by foreign singers in Egypt". More...
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His name is Woodrow, as in Wilson.
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“He would go up to every dog, child and adult, and it was as if he was saying, 'Hi, how are you? Don’t you look so nice today?'” Michel says. “And then he would just move on.”
A friend, who was also watching, remarked at the time, “Oh, my God, Woodrow is mayor.” Full story...
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"The team leader who was standing there told me I needed to stop worrying about these motherf$@%ing kids," said McCord, a father of two. More...
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Part of the collapse in democratic participation in Britain (as elsewhere) is due to growing public realization that the main parties are “out of touch” in terms of putting forward solutions to address the severe problems facing British society: mounting social misery, unemployment, poverty and debt, both individually and nationally. The budget deficit is estimated to be around £163 billion, which, some commentators say, puts Britain on a par with Greece in terms of its gravity. More...
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The North Korean man says: "In the middle of the night, the secret police knock on the door, shouting: Kang Sung-Mee, you're under arrest! And I say, Kang Sung-Mee doesn't live here, but right next door! That's when we're happiest!" More...
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Mr Mitzscherlich said he had wanted to tie the knot before his asthmatic cat Cecilia died. More...
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Many signatories are from France, where the petition has received much press coverage. France's Jewish community has hotly debated the petition, titled Call for Reason. The president of France's leading Jewish association, CRIF, declined to sign, saying he objected to its tone and some of its language. More...
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A former music teacher at Germany's Odenwaldschule made pornographic films with his students for years, according to a Sunday newspaper report. The school has already been in the headlines due to allegations of widespread sexual abuse.
The article in Sunday's Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung said the teacher, referred to only by the initial H., coerced students during school excursions to pose naked for the camera.
A lover and former student of the teacher allegedly assisted during the filming, helping in particular when it came to inexperienced children. More...
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The pop superstar, 63, stirred controversy after his remarks to US celebrity news magazine Parade in February, where he said 'Try being a gay woman in the Middle East - you're as good as dead', after saying he believed Jesus was 'gay'. More...
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The extradition was itself illegal. Noriega, who was captured after the illegal American invasion of his country in 1989, was classed by the United States as a "prisoner of war." In fact, he is the only official POW in American hands today; the empire's innumerable Terror War captives have been denied this designation and its legal protections under the Geneva Conventions. But of course the United States long ago stopped paying even lip service to those "quaint" strictures, as the Noriega case once again demonstrates. More...
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Make no mistake, this is going to hurt almost everyone here. What is coming – as part of a deal to provide eurozone loans aimed at rescuing Greece from near bankruptcy – are not a few, distant cuts in public spending, or efficiency savings that will erase a consultant here and a fringe project there. The measures – to be finalised at a Greek cabinet meeting this morning – will hit every citizen hard in the money belt. VAT is already 21 per cent and is likely to go to 23 or even 25 per cent. More...
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More than three million colonies in America and billions of bees worldwide have died since 2006.
Pesticides are believed to be a key cause of a crisis known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CDD), damaging bee health and making them more susceptible to disease. More...
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The migrants, many of them from Sudan and Eritrea, say they want to leave Egypt because of poverty and discrimination.
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Facebook, used to be fun and cool, but a large part of what I have to do on Facebook now is adapt to their changes on their terms. This is unacceptable to me, especially when I don’t see the website adding significant benefits. More...
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Acting on a tip-off, a CID team conducted a raid at a godown in Royapuram and found a unit which repackaged goods — both of the edible and non-edible varieties — disposed of by big supermarkets because the items were past their expiry dates. The police sealed the godown, which had stored more than Rs 10 lakh worth of expired goods. More...
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Under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, officers can stop and search anyone they want, regardless of whether they appear suspicious. Refusal to answer a question is a criminal offence.
(...)
“They told me I would not have access to a lawyer and had to answer their questions. They were trying to intimidate me and said: ‘We have very powerful people in this airport and we can do whatever we want’.”
The officers intrusively questioned them, asking if they knew any terrorists, were members of any Islamic organisation and which mosque they prayed at. After several hours of questioning, the pair were asked to spy for Special Branch.Ahmed added: “More and more people have said this is happening to them.” Full story...
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The 29-year-old said she had intended to stop when her son reached six months – like most mothers do - but continuing became the 'natural thing’.
And, despite her critics, Mrs Hurst, who is seven months pregnant, is so convinced of the benefits of breastfeeding that she also feeds other people’s babies as well. More + images...
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"We're not moving till the World Cup is over," a police insider told Liberation. "There is no rush. The implications are too serious." More...
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Une pelle chinoise mieux que le couteau suisse???
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Libyan revolutionary leader Moamer Gaddafi called in a German magazine interview published Saturday for Switzerland to be 'dissolved,' charging that it was a rogue state at odds with the international community.
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'Switzerland conducts money laundering on grand scale. Anyone who robs a bank, deposits the haul afterwards in Switzerland. Anyone who evades taxes goes to Switzerland. And a large number of the owners of such secret accounts then die in mysterious ways,' he asserted.
He attacked Switzerland for allowing assisted suicide.
'A whole lot of people have been deliberately got out of the way using this excuse. The Swiss claim the people concerned expressed the wish to kill themselves. But in reality, it was done to get at their money. More than 7,000 people have been killed this way,' he said.
'It may be that of the Libyans who have died abroad, some died because they had secret bank accounts in Switzerland,' he said. Full story...
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"It's clear Canadian aid was going into Gaza, so it's all right for our government to do it but not for Mr. Galloway?" she asked. More...
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In a growing scandal threatening to rival the crisis hitting the Roman Catholic church, the Boy Scouts of America has been accused of covering up decades of child abuse in order to protect the reputation of what is now a billion-dollar organisation.
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Clark said the scale of the award to Lewis reflects a heightened awareness of sexual crimes against children because of the recent revelations about the Catholic church. But he also said that the jury was shocked by the existence of what in court were called the "perversion files".
"We said they had 75 years of secret files about paedophiles, and that's the way the evidence came in. I think that fact in itself was just staggering to the jury," he said. "They had a regular practice of placing guys on probation and then they would allow them to continue to be active in Scouting, not unlike some of what you saw in the Catholic church." Full story...
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