Bonjour Planet Earth

Monday, February 22, 2010

Want to be a millionaire? Just glue a gold coin to your doorstep!!! Sydney man's feng shui good fortune...

Here's a story which will have you rushing home to glue a gold coin to your doorstep.

A retired Sydney man who did just that after reading an article about feng shui became an instant millionaire thanks to a stroke of good fortune.

The ex-policeman, aged in his 50s, picked a winning ticket in the latest BoysTown charity lotto, netting him a luxury house on the Sunshine Coast worth more than $1.2 million.

And because he bought four tickets, which cost $15 each, he was given an extra prize - the choice between an Audi sportscar and $75,000 in gold bullion. More...

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Killing of Hamas leader in Dubai is not murder, says Israeli minister...

The killing of a senior Hamas official in Dubai should not be considered as murder, an Israeli minister said today.

Public diplomacy minister Yuli Edelstein insisted that he did not know who carried out the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, which has been widely blamed on the Israeli secret service, Mossad.

But speaking to a meeting of the Henry Jackson Society think tank at the House of Commons, he said that it would be wrong to become "overly emotional" about his death. More...

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Will they never learn? If you're having a party, DON'T announce it on Facebook...

A family home has been left in ruins after more than 50 yobs gatecrashed a party that had been advertised on Facebook.

Rachel Ross, 15, had secretly organised a private gathering on the social networking website while her parents attended an overnight wedding.

But trouble flared when more than 50 uninvited guests turned up at the semi-detached house in Wallasey, Merseyside, on Friday night. More...

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Sunday, February 21, 2010

Dead boy in India charged with murder!!!

Voodoo and Haiti's quake victims...

A month before Haiti's devastating earthquake, prominent musician Theodore "Lolo" Beaubrun and a few friends were summoned by spirits who tried to warn them about the impending cataclysm.

"They told us to pray for Haiti because many people would die," says Mr Beaubrun - the frontman of the group Boukman Eksperyans.

"I thought it was about politics. I didn't know it was going to be an earthquake."

The spirits may have failed to make themselves understood, but according to Mr Beaubrun - whose music and outlook are steeped in voodoo culture - they are standing by the Haitian people in their hour of need.

"We are extremely traumatised," he says. More...

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The martial arts grannies of Kenya's Korogocho slum!!! Wow!

At the age of 60, 80 or maybe 100, the karateka grandmas of Korogocho slum are learning the rudiments of martial arts in order to survive in one of Kenya's most dangerous shanty towns.

Only a dozen or so kilometres (eight miles) from the heart of the capital Nairobi, Korogocho's residents -- all 155,000 of them -- are crammed into an area measuring just 1.5 square kilometres.

Most of the young people here survive by scavenging what they can from the giant rubbish heap at neighbouring Dandora.

Even venturing into one of the main streets in broad daylight to queue at a water point is a calculated risk. More...

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Man bulldozes own home to hit back at bank!!!

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Swiss to appoint lawyers for animals?

They may not be meowing, barking or mooing their way through depositions anytime soon, but if Switzerland's animal-rights activists get their way, domestic creatures may be given the constitutional right to be represented by (human) lawyers in court.

Swiss voters will go to the polls March 7 to decide whether each of the country's 26 cantons (similar to states) should be obligated to appoint a special attorney to represent pets and farm animals in court in cases of alleged abuse. The initiative is just one of many put before the electorate every year in Switzerland's unique brand of direct democracy, in which anyone can bring an issue up for a vote provided he or she has enough signatures on a petition. More...

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Marriage woes in India as nosy parents are replaced by nosy detectives...

Ajit Singh knows about the lies people tell.

He has followed them through the littered, mildewed mazes of New Delhi's middle class neighborhoods. He has photographed them as they leave their lovers' apartments. He hears them exaggerate their salaries and hide their illnesses.

A thin man in an ill-fitting suit, Singh works out of a crowded office around the corner from a muffler shop. An incense stick burns behind his desk. A sign in slightly fractured English warns the staff: "Walls Has Ears And Eyes Too. BE ALERT." More...

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Murdered Malaysian buried in red ... to "return" as ghost and get revenge on his killers!

Taxi driver Lim See Kiat who was brutally killed with over 30 stabs and slashes all over his neck and body was dressed in red from head to toe as relatives wanted him to "return" to punish his killers.

According to Taoist belief, a corpse dressed in red for burial would roam the earth to exact vengeance against his killers.

Lim who was killed last Monday night suffered slashes and stab wounds on his neck, hands, front and back of his body. There were at least five slash wounds on his neck and a deep stab at the side. Several deep slashes were found on his ribs, back and hands. More + photos...

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Creepy Big Brother schools spying on students through laptop webcams!!! WTF!

Sting called "hypocrite" for playing concert for daughter of Uzbekistan's 'boil your enemies' dictator...

He is a superstar lauded for his commitment to human rights and passionate defence of Brazil's rainforests.

But Sting has been labelled 'a hypocrite' after playing at a concert in Uzbekistan organised by the brutal regime of Islam Karimov.

Enemies of the 72-year-old dictator have been shot in the street and a former British ambassador to the ex-Soviet state even accused him of boiling alive his political opponents. More...

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Young, educated and jobless in China...

Six months after graduating from university, Guan Jian was unemployed and living in an 8-by-8-foot rented room on the fringes of this sprawling capital.

His quarters were so hastily built that the landlord didn't bother to include a bathroom. When duty calls, Guan must trudge to the neighborhood toilet. Yet at $65 a month, it's all he can afford. Money is so tight at times that he has learned to suppress his hunger with a single steamed bun a day.

This wasn't how things were supposed to be for Guan, a 24-year-old broadcast journalism graduate who sports an easy smile and has a love affair with foreign film. A native of China's northeastern Rust Belt and the first in his family to earn a college degree, Guan thought opportunities would come more easily. More...

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Wife calls police on child porn husband...

A Warsaw family man faces steep child pornography charges after his wife turns him in.

35-year-old Jason Stone was arrested Thursday on child exploitation charges.

Stone is now free after posting a 20-thousand dollar bond.

The Kosciusko County Sheriff's Department searched Stone's Warsaw house. A search warrant was issued on February 8th. More...

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Man in Mumbai kept wife and daughters locked up and tortured them for 7 years! WTF!

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Saturday, February 20, 2010

Saudi religious policeman flogged for having six wives!!!

A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man to 120 lashes for having six wives at the same time.

Muslim men can keep up to four wives at a time under sharia, or Islamic law, which is applied in Saudi Arabia.

Reports say the unnamed man worked for the country's religious police. At his trial, the defendant claimed he did not know he was breaking the law.

The man was also banned from leading prayers and ordered to read two chapters of the Koran. More...

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I envy the people who hate Israel...

At times like these, I envy the people who passionately, frankly, with all their hearts, despise Israel.

Hate Israel enough, and the Jewish state's failings and blunders, its self-satisfied blindness and its resultant self-destructive policies, cause not pain, but delight.

Hate Israel enough, and you're spared all inclination to try to fix what's wrong, to work to set it right. On the contrary, hate Israel enough, and you may come to believe not only that that the country deserves to be punished to the point of replacement by a different state - Israel may well do the job all by itself.

This is one of those times. More...

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5 000 families evicted from farms in Zimbabwe...

At least 5 000 families were displaced from commercial farms in Zimbabwe in 2009 as President Robert Mugabe’s supporters intensified a campaign to evict the few remaining white commercial farmers from their properties, according to the International Organisation for Migration IOM).

The organisation that among other things works to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, including refugees and internally displaced people said: "New displacements and related vulnerabilities have continued to arise as farms are taken over by new owners and farm workers are evicted from their homes. More...

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The stoning of Soraya, honour killings in the Muslim world...

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"Please rob me" site gives useful hints to burglars!!!

Location-based services are all the rage right now. Even everyone seems to agree that the controversial Google Buzz did at least one thing right in adding a location element to its mobile site. But as great as these services are for connecting social networking with actual social activity, there is a downside we’re all well aware of too: privacy.

A new site throws this issue back into the spotlight in a humorous way. Please Rob Me is a stream of updates from various location-based networks (though right now all I’m seeing is Foursquare) that shows when users check-in somewhere that is not their home. The idea, of course, is that if they’re not home, you can go rob them. More...

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Ryanair dumps passengers on wrong island!!!

Budget airline passengers have learned to put up with a lot over the years.

But you wouldn't have thought it too much to ask for travellers to be dropped at the correct destination.

More than 100 tourists on a Ryanair flight to Lanzarote were stunned when they were abandoned on the wrong Canary Island.

The flight from Bournemouth was forced to divert due to stormy weather and land on the neighbouring island of Fuerteventura. The passengers say they were then left to make their own onward travel arrangements to catch ferries and boats to Lanzarote.

To make matters worse, they say that when the weather cleared the plane flew from Fuerteventura to Lanzarote before taking on passengers and returning to the UK. More...

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Filtrage des sites porno à l'Assemblée!!!

Application d'une mesure de filtrage du Net avant l'heure pour les députés qui dans leurs bureaux de l'Assemblée nationale sont notamment privés de sites à caractère pornographique.

Ce dispositif de filtrage au palais Bourbon est en place depuis le 20 janvier dernier, et ne fait étrangement parler de lui qu'aujourd'hui alors que quelques-uns de ses ratés constatés par Bakchich.info auraient pu servir à alimenter les débats parlementaires sur le projet de loi Loppsi voté mardi à l'Assemblée. Suite...

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Le transsexualisme n'est plus une maladie mentale en France...

Une avancée historique. Les transsexuels ne sont plus considérés comme des malades mentaux en France. Le ministère de la Santé a en effet publié mercredi au Journal officiel un décret qui retire «les troubles précoces de l'identité de genre» de la liste des affections psychiatriques. Dans l'hexagone, entre 40.000 et 60.000 personnes seraient concernées par cette décision, selon les estimations des associations.

«La France est le premier pays au monde à ne plus considérer le transsexualisme comme pathologie mentale», s'est félicité vendredi Joël Bedos, responsable français au comité IDAHO (International Day Against Homophobia and transphobia, NDLR). «C'est historique», a renchéri Philippe Castel, porte-parole de l'Interassociative lesbienne gay bi et trans. «C'était quelque chose de très important et très attendu depuis la promesse» de la ministre de la Santé, Roselyne Bachelot, le 16 mai 2009, à la veille de la journée mondiale de lutte contre l'homophobie et la transphobie», a poursuivi le porte-parole. Suite...

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Assassinat à Dubaï : Le Mossad sur la sellette...

« Il faut créer une commission d’enquête pour clarifier la situation et le plus rapidement possible. » A l’instar du député d’opposition Israël Hasson (un ancien numéro deux de la Sûreté générale passé à la politique), plusieurs éditorialistes de la presse israélienne exigent des explications circonstanciées sur la « liquidation » à Dubaï du responsable de la branche logistique du Hamas, Mahmoud al-Mahbouh, et sur l’implication alléguée du Mossad (les renseignements extérieurs) dans cette affaire.

L’assassinat d’Al-Mahbouh s’est produit le 20 janvier dans une chambre d’un palace de Dubaï, mais il a été découvert neuf jours plus tard. Grâce au réseau de caméras vidéo couvrant l’émirat ainsi qu’à la collaboration des services égyptiens, syriens et jordaniens, la police locale a pu déterminer que le commando de tueurs comptait 17 personnes dont une femme. Celles-ci détenaient des passeports trafiqués d’origine britannique, irlandaise, allemande et française. Suite...

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Les deschiens: Lessons of English...

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Berlusconi refuse les clandestins, sauf "les jolies filles"

Silvio Berlusconi n'en rate pas une. Le premier ministre italien a rencontré la semaine dernière son homologue albanais Sali Berisha pour finaliser un accord entre les deux pays visant à empêcher les passeurs de transporter des clandestins par la mer Adriatique. "On pourrait faire des exceptions pour ceux qui envoient des jolies filles", a plaisanté Silvio Berlusconi, devant les journalistes, rapporte Le Telegraph. La blague n'a pas fait rire tout le monde. Source

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L’affaire helvético-libyenne contamine l’UE...

La Suisse bloque les visas Schengen pour des ressortissants libyens. Tripoli répond par des mesures de rétorsion qui touchent l’Union européenne, au grand dam de l’Italie. Danger ou opportunité pour la Suisse dans l’affaire des otages?

«Visas bloqués pour les Européens du fait de la guerre entre la Libye et la Suisse», titrait mardi le quotidien italien La Repubblica. Visas bloqués? Oui.

Depuis la fin de la semaine dernière, les Libyens refoulent les voyageurs qui arrivent dotés de ce qu’il pensent être un visa en bonne et due forme. Des Italiens, des Français et des Portugais qui voulaient notamment se rendre à une foire commerciale en Libye en ont fait l’expérience: renvoyés par le premier avion! Suite...

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Man in India kept wife locked up in cow shed for 15 years...

Ammajamma, 45, spent 15 years in a cattle shed, where she was incarcerated by her husband, Honnappa, in Honenahalli village of Tumkur district.

On Friday, locals tipped off the police about the woman's plight. She was rescued and handed over to the women and child welfare department.

It was a strange twist to Ammajamma's happy married life — everything was going well, but the couple did not have children. After seven years, Honnappa began to get restless and angry. More...

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Friday, February 19, 2010

Thousands of Tamils still being held in Sri Lanka detention camps...

Tens of thousands of Tamil civilians, who fled the fighting in the final days of the military’s offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), remain in squalid detention camps in northern Sri Lanka. The official total is 106,000, with around 80,000 people still in the Manik Farm camps near the town of Vavuniya.

After the LTTE’s defeat last May, the army rounded up 280,000 men, women and children and put them in detention centres surrounded by barbed wire and armed soldiers. No one was permitted to leave. Visitors were heavily vetted. Thousands of young men and women were interrogated by police and military intelligence officers, and incarcerated in other, undisclosed centres as “LTTE suspects”. More...

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Tibet was NOT Shangri-La. Debunking a myth...

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The women who travel for sea, sex and gigolos...

An attractive woman sips a cocktail under a bamboo shade. The sand is dazzlingly white, the sea aquamarine. A handsome young man approaches her and showers her with compliments: she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, he says. For the first time in years, she truly believes she is desirable.

But this holiday romance is not all it seems. The woman is white, in her late 50s; the man, black, 18 - and paid for his attentions. The scene - from the controversial new French film, Heading South, which opened this weekend, starring Charlotte Rampling, makes us confront uncomfortable truths about sexuality in a globalised world, and the legacy of colonialism.

(...)

Fast-forward 30 years, and the reality of sex tourism is anything but tender. Today beach resorts in developing countries such as Kuta in Bali, Negril in Jamaica and Boca Chica and Sosua in the Dominican Republic have become Third World pick-up spots for women tourists. Tour companies even market package deals as sex holidays for single and unaccompanied women. Forget Shirley Valentine, these women - who range from grandmothers to teens - don't want a long-term relationship. And there's plenty of live flesh on sale. Full story...

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Teen in India elopes with teacher and marries her!!!

A 15-year-old student, who eloped with his teacher two days ago, surrendered before the police in Warangal town on Thursday.

The boy, a student of Class X in a private school in Warangal, reportedly proposed the 21-year-old female teacher in the same school. The duo fled and got married two days ago, police said.

The student's parents approached the KU Police and complained that their son "eloped" along with a teacher and later got married. However, no case was registered. More...

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French president not that French after all!!! National identity, Monsieur Sarkozy?

Nicolas Sarkozy's immigrant grandparents came close to being deported from France because they did not have university educations, it emerged today.

The revelation will come as a severe embarrassment to the French President at a time when he is trying to ensure that only those with advanced academic or technical qualifications are allowed to settle in the country.

Aron Benedict Mallah, Mr Sarkozy’s maternal grandfather, was a Sephardic Jew who originally came from Greece before immigrating to France as a 10-year-old with his family in 1905. More...

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Little kid smoking a cigarette...

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Thursday, February 18, 2010

Turkey not happy with Tintin ... for smoking!!!

Fictional boy detective Tintin has fallen foul of Turkish television watchdogs because characters in the beloved Belgian cartoons are sometimes portrayed smoking, newspaper reports said Wednesday.

Turkey’s Supreme Board of Radio and Television (RTUK) recently fined a private television channel 50,000 lira ($3,300) for airing Tintin cartoons that contained scenes with smoking in them, the daily Milliyet reported.

A notable offender was Tintin’s cantankerous pal, Captain Haddock, who frequently sports a pipe. More...

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Amnesty condemns caning 'epidemic' in Malaysia...

Amnesty International on Wednesday urged Malaysia to end a caning "epidemic," saying that authorities have meted out the punishment to thousands of men in addition to the high-profile case of three women.

Malaysian authorities said Wednesday that they had caned three women for having extramarital sex in violation of Islamic law, a first in the Muslim-majority country.

But Amnesty International said the case was the "just the tip of the iceberg" and that Malaysia often caned men for routine offenses. More...

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German breaks INTO prison ... for love!!!

Ah, love. It drives us to do the craziest things: climb the highest mountains, run through the fields, scale city walls or walk for miles. Love even drove one man in the western German city of Bielefeld to break into prison. And not only once, but night after night -- until he got caught.

The suspect, 33-year-old Daniele E., was arrested in November for scaling a steel fence to break into the prison where his girlfriend was serving time for drug-related offenses, according to the local daily Westfalen-Blatt. On Tuesday, the Bielefeld public prosecutor charged Daniele E. with trespassing and announced a trial date in March.

Lawyer Carsten Ernst, who is representing Daniele E., said he thought the charges were excessive. "Couldn't we have just laughed this one off and cancelled the trial?" he commented. More...

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Billy Joel and She's always a woman to me...

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Indonesian envoys go on sick leave ... to avoid speaking in English!!!

SOME Indonesian envoys based in embassies abroad are so weak in English language skills that they take sick leave to avoid meeting foreign officials, a senior Foreign Ministry official said.

Mr Imron Cotan, Indonesia's No. 2 Foreign Ministry bureaucrat, told a parliamentary committee that the problem lies not with his own diplomats but with attaches sent to embassies by other ministries including defence, trade and finance.

'I found that a number of our attaches are not fluent in English,' The Jakarta Post newspaper on Thursday reported Mr Cotan telling a parliamentary committee investigating the performance of Indonesian diplomats. More...

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India moans as China honeymoons in South Asia...

For years, ships from other countries, laden with oil, machinery, clothes and cargo, sped past this small town near India as part of the world’s brisk trade with China.

Now, China is investing millions to turn this fishing hamlet into a booming new port, furthering an ambitious trading strategy in South Asia that is reshaping the region and forcing India to rethink relations with its neighbors.

As trade in the region grows more lucrative, China has been developing port facilities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, and it is planning to build railroad lines in Nepal. These projects, analysts say, are part of a concerted effort by Chinese leaders and companies to open and expand markets for their goods and services in a part of Asia that has lagged behind the rest of the continent in trade and economic development. More...

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Swiss prostitutes to use defibrillators to prevent elderly clients dying on them!!!

Swiss prostitutes are being trained to use defibrillators to prevent clients with heart problems from dying on them, it has emerged.

Brothel owners in the Lugano area say electric shock treatment to restart customer's hearts is needed because so many elderly customers are using their services.

The most recent victim was a pensioner, thought to be having fun with the help of anti-impotence medication. More...

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Hollie Greig, Scotland's massive paedophile and child abuse cover-up...

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Students in India's Tamil Nadu banned from wearing shoes, socks and belts in exam halls!!!

Students appearing for the Tamil Nadu state board examinations in March will not be permitted to wear shoes, socks and even belts inside the examination hall! The Directorate of Government Examinations has come up with this curious restriction, apparently to curb malpractices.

In a handbook on March 2010 higher secondary examination duties, the directorate has given an advisory for examination hall superintendents. The advisory mandates hall superintendents to instruct students to ‘‘keep shoes, socks and belts outside the hall.’’ Besides, students cannot wear ‘‘modern wristwatches’’ or carry mobile phones, calculators and scraps of paper inside the hall. More...

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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Is Dubai murder an own goal for Israel?

"A tactical success but a strategic failure" - that is how one Israeli newspaper described the operation to kill Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

The operation was clinical. The hit-team successfully escaped Dubai. But they left telltale traces.

The false foreign passports used by the alleged team of secret agents have been identified and six of them are British.

That is diplomatic problem number one. More...

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80-year-old man in India has 4 wives, 30 children and 31st. on the way!!!

At 80, Hussain Ali, a small farmer in Assam, is still going strong but is a little worried as his third wife is expecting his 31st child, even as he is busy cradling a bubbly two-month-old baby boy in the courtyard, born to his fourth wife.

"It is all god's gift and wish that I have a large family of four wives and 30 children," Ali said with a hearty smile as his flowing grey beard tickled the infant and made him cry in his arms.

Donning a skullcap, Ali looked frail and emaciated as he sat in a rickety cane chair outside his cluster of mud-and-thatch huts at Mohkhuli village in Lakhimpur district, about 370 km east of Assam's main city Guwahati. More...

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Reel Bad Arabs: how Hollywood propaganda vilifies an entire people...

Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five

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Three women flogged in Malaysia for sex ‘out of wedlock’

Malaysian authorities have caned three women for having sex out of wedlock, the first time women have been flogged in the country.

The sentences were carried out after a religious court found them guilty. Two of the women are reported to have been whipped six times.

Malaysia last year drew international criticism when Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, a mother of two, was ordered to be flogged for drinking beer. Authorities have yet to carry out that sentence. More...

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Beyonce’s underwear guilty of ... copyright infringement!!!

Sony Music bosses are fighting legal action from underwear manufacturer Triumph amid accusations Beyonce’s lingerie in her Video Phone promo is a direct copy of one of their designs.

The R&B superstar dons a black and white two-piece in one scene in the music video, which also features Lady GaGa, complete with matching bracelets and sunglasses. More...

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Footballer gets SIX red cards in one game!!!

An amateur footballer in Hawick who received six red cards in one match has admitted his playing career is over.

Paul Cooper, 39, was given a two-year ban after losing the plot with a referee.

He was given a second yellow card for dissent while playing for Hawick United against Pencaitland in a Border Amateur League match in November.

Cooper then received a further five red cards in the subsequent verbal exchanges with referee Andy Lyon as he left the pitch. More...

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The 3-year-old girl, her Catholic father and her Jewish mother! Poor kid scapegoat for two silly adults...

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