A book has been returned to a library 45 years overdue, staff said today.
Stunned librarians in Dinnington, South Yorkshire, could not believe it when they received a package containing a Penguin first edition copy of Quatermass and the Pit, by Nigel Kneale, which was borrowed in September 1965.
There was no clue as to who sent the parcel but the long-term borrower need not have worried about the fine as Rotherham Council has a policy of limiting all penalties to £6 a book. More...
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The incident is referred to in John Simpson’s new book about 20th- century reporting, citing a piece in the Daily Mirror in 1930. I have the article in front of me. Sandwiched between advice on preventing mildew in chrysanthemums and an advert for Barkers’ evening cloaks, it is quite extraordinary, and extraordinarily revealing: about Hitler, the nature of cricket, and why the world’s worst tyrant and the world’s greatest game were never going to get on. More...
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C'est ce qu'indique jeudi l'Association des maires de grandes villes de France (AMGVF) qui a mené une étude auprès de ces 22 grandes villes. Suite...
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L’homme accusé du triple homicide de Vevey (VD) reste en prison. Le Tribunal criminel de Lausanne l’a condamné jeudi à perpétuité à l’issue du procès en révision. Il confirme ainsi le jugement prononcé en juin 2008 par la Cour de Vevey
Après deux heures de lecture, le président de la Cour a déclaré que l’accusé «doit être reconnu coupable des faits qui lui sont reprochés». Le Tribunal de Lausanne reprend en conséquence le verdict prononcé à Vevey: la réclusion à vie pour le meurtre de sa mère et les assassinats de l’amie de cette dernière et de sa propre soeur.
La Cour a jugé que la boulangère dont le témoignage tardif est à l’origine du procès en révision se trompait. Elle «fait erreur» et a confondu au fil du temps le 23 et le 24 décembre. La défense a annoncé que’elle ferait recours contre le jugement. «Je crois que l’on a assisté à une erreur judiciaire en direct», a dit Me Robert Assaël.
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"Hundreds of U.S. air travelers have lodged complaints over use of full-body security scanners in the past year, charging they violate personal privacy and may be harmful to their health, documents released on Tuesday showed," reports Reuters. More...
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In Ireland, which has already seen far-reaching investigations into the abuse, the Archbishop of Dublin said a national inquiry into historic claims may be the only way to fully restore confidence in the church. More...
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The death of 60-year-old Jain monk Sadhvi Charan Pragyaji on September 11 last year was different from any that the tiny town of Bhilwada in Rajasthan had witnessed. Over 20,000 Jains from across the country thronged the hamlet, not in white to mourn the loss but in their finest bandhnis. They came to join a massive celebration to mark Sadhvi's death, for she was the only Jain to have survived a santhara of 87 days, the longest in recent collective memory.
Santhara is the Jain practice of voluntary and systematic fasting to death. Jain texts say it is the ultimate route to attaining moksha and breaking free from the whirlpool of life and death. According to Babulal Jain Ujjwal, editor of the All India Jain Chaturmas Suchi (a veritable fount of information of Jainism), the practice is spiralling — more than 550 Jains took the vow in 2009 compared to 465 in 2008. This year, 45 Jains have already embraced santhara. More...
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Hate has no place in the house of God. No one should be excluded from our love, our compassion or our concern because of race or gender, faith or ethnicity -- or because of their sexual orientation. Nor should anyone be excluded from health care on any of these grounds. In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights. We knew this was wrong. Thankfully, the world supported us in our struggle for freedom and dignity. More...
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According to China's law, assembled pruriency constitutes organizing sexual activities for a group of men and women at the same time and place. More...
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But this is nonsense. For a start, there is no exponential growth. In fact, population growth is slowing. For more than three decades now, the average number of babies being born to women in most of the world has been in decline. Globally, women today have half as many babies as their mothers did, mostly out of choice. They are doing it for their own good, the good of their families, and, if it helps the planet too, then so much the better. More...
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Two Emirates airlines cabin crew have been ordered jailed for three months in Dubai over sexually explicit text messages, the latest in a string of indecency cases against foreigners, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
The pair, an Indian flight attendant and her cabin services supervisor, were convicted of "coercion to commit sin" over the messages and initially sentenced to six months in jail, The National newspaper said on its website, citing court documents.
The sentence was reduced on appeal last week to three months and deportation orders against the pair were lifted, it added. It did not reveal the content of the messages. More...
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For the last six days, she has barricaded herself inside her office in Paris to prevent her members from firing her. Ms Pujol, 61, part of a family which owns hotels and restaurants in the southern town of Carcassonne, winches bags of food up to her third-floor office on the end of a severed television cable. More...
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Ms Mayawati, who champions the cause of the poorest of the poor, is criticised for amassing vast personal wealth. More...
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The government says it is never complicit in torture. It is lying – and Madni’s story proves it. More...
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Perez "has had his eye on Rooney for a long time, even more so in view of the great season he's having." More...
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Shell boss Peter Voser insisted that another 1,000 workers would be sacked - adding to the 1,000 employees who are already set to lose their jobs and on top of the 5,000 made redundant last year - to save the company cash.
that "these are exciting times and we are sharpening up," but he refused to reveal whether Shell's 8,000 workers at refineries in Aberdeen and Ellesmere Port would be hit by the cuts.
Shell council rep John Donovan accused executives of "failing to show loyalty, responsibility and good faith" to a workforce that had helped the firm rake in more than £6.5 billion profits last year.
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Think you know who's behind that "friend" request? Think again. Your new "friend" just might be the FBI.
(...)
Facebook's rules, for example, specify that users "will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission." Twitter's rules prohibit its users from sending deceptive or false information. MySpace requires that information for accounts be "truthful and accurate." Full story...
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She kept silent about the abuses as she did not want her aged and ill parents to worry about her. However, recently she could no longer withstand the 'crazy acts' of her 66-year-old retiree husband and ran away from her home in Sarawak on March 6. More...
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Department stores are to start stocking bras with a K-cup in response to the increasing numbers of British women with an ample bosom.
For years, women with large chests have struggled to find the right support, with many of those with the highest cup sizes only served by specialist bra outlets.
Now, one department store is to start stocking a K-cup brassiere, in response to the growing numbers of women with extremely large busts. More...
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Guinness World Records said he had made a "huge impact around the world". More...
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On March 10, the chief exorcist of the Vatican, the Rev. Gabriele Amorth (who has held this demanding post for 25 years), was quoted as saying that "the Devil is at work inside the Vatican," and that "when one speaks of 'the smoke of Satan' in the holy rooms, it is all true—including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia." This can perhaps be taken as confirmation that something horrible has indeed been going on in the holy precincts, though most inquiries show it to have a perfectly good material explanation.
He was wrong twice. In the first place, nobody has had to strive to find such evidence: It has surfaced, as it was bound to do. In the second place, this extension of the awful scandal to the topmost level of the Roman Catholic Church is a process that has only just begun. Yet it became in a sense inevitable when the College of Cardinals elected, as the vicar of Christ on Earth, the man chiefly responsible for the original cover-up. More...
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Other representatives of the Indian business sector here also urged Friday that the problem should be addressed soon. More...
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Each of the babies had been delivered 'in secret' between August 2000 and September 2007, with Lesage 'putting the babies and their dirty clothes neatly in a sealed plastic bag and hiding them', according to Cherbourg prosecutor Michel Garrandaux. More...
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The teacher, Balendra Singh, is associated with the Gayatri Shakti Peet, an organisation that believes in promoting and practicing the Gayatri Mantra. Singh moved to Jaipur two weeks ago after teaching at ashrams in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat.
Three students, all under the age of 10, complained to the Jaipur police that they were being molested by him. One of them tells NDTV that a few days ago Singh asked him to report early for class and kissed him. Then, "He asked me to take off my clothes and lay on top of me. He warned me that if I told my parents or anybody else, he would kill me." More...
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Then there's the Swiss hotel that has no stars and is defiantly proud of it. It's even in the name -- the Null Stern Hotel in Teufen, Switzerland, literally means "Zero Star Hotel" and there's a reason for that self-inflicted designation: the place is a bunker.
It isn't just bunker-like, it's the real thing, built inside a former Cold War bunker. There are no views of the surrounding Swiss countryside because there are no windows. There's no entertainment because the lone TV set shows surveillance camera video. There's no privacy because up to 14 guests at a time share just two bedrooms and a single bathroom. More...
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Ainsi, les mots comme : "pénis", "homosexualité", "baiser", "pénétration" et bien d'autres sont immédiatement censurés par Bing et la page d'Internet-Explorer affiche un message d'avertissement à l'internaute arabe du genre : "Désolé, dans votre pays, nous ne pouvons pas afficher de résultat relatif à cette requête", nous confie Sébastian SEIBT de France 24. Suite...
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Une femme de 31ans à Owensboro dans le Kentucky est en état d'arrestation, accusée d'avoir agressée un shérif adjoint avec le lait maternel.
Toni Tramel a été arrêtée jeudi matin et accusée d'ivresse publique. Pendant qu'elle mettait son uniforme de détenu, les enquêteurs disent qu'elle a giclé du lait maternel dans le visage d'un député féminin.
Le lait maternel étant considéré comme un produit de biorisque, le député a dû être décontaminé.
Tramel est accusée d'agression troisième degré à un agent de police.
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Who's to blame for the current global financial crisis? According to a bestselling book in China, which is leading the sales charts in the country, the answer is clear: The Jews.
In the eyes of most Chinese, Jewish people are considered "smart," "rich" and "good at making money." Bookstores in China offer a variety of self-help books titled, "How to make money like Jews," and "The secret of Jews' global success."
Until recently, the notion that Jews and money were inseparable carried no anti-Semitic undertone in the country, but a relatively new book called "Currency Wars" threatens to change all that. More...
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David Cameron has angered the French government by apparently mocking the diminutive height of Nicolas Sarkozy.
The Conservative leader is said to have made a remark about "hidden dwarfs" whilst discussing a photograph of himself and Mr Sarkozy, who is seven inches shorter than him.
The disclosure comes after it emerged that George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, also made a quip about the French president's stature at a conference hosted by The Spectator. More...
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It says that 35 activists critical of the government have been listed according "to their level of dissent". More...
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The UK Border Agency said measures were in place to try to prevent such abuse. More + video...
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The recent spread of claims into the Netherlands, Austria and Italy has analysts and churchmen wondering how deep the scandal runs, which nation will be affected next, and whether a tide of lawsuits will force European dioceses to declare bankruptcy like their American cousins. More...
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“The main reason we found for the continuation of the practice is a drive to control a woman’s sexuality before marriage as a means of ensuring her virginity and therefore her marriageability by delivering an intact bride to her prospective husband,” the study said. More...
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The priest was sent from Essen to Munich for therapy in 1980 when he was accused of forcing an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex. The archdiocese confirmed that the Pope, who was then a cardinal, had approved a decision to accommodate the priest in a rectory while the therapy took place. More...
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As this news was revealed on the day of Biden’s arrival it was clear that the Israelis were signalling that they would not be bullied by the US into giving way on the question of building Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. More...
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“A department officer told me that my birth certificate contained false information,” he told The Star recently. More...
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One in 20 of the 1,000 pupils polled thought Star Wars character Luke Skywalker or Richard Branson had been the first to set foot on the Moon.
Some 60% of nine- and 10-year-olds thought Sir Isaac Newton discovered fire, the survey for science campaign Birmingham Science City found. More...
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His statement was the latest report of abuse by Catholic clergy or church employees in Europe, which has recently seen fresh allegations of sexual and physical abuse in Germany, the Netherlands and Austria. Source...
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