Bonjour Planet Earth

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Calling all parents: here's the real truth on homework...

CHILDREN are being lumbered with hours of homework every week - but the extra slog doesn't do them any good.

Research reveals primary school homework offers no real benefit - and only limited results in junior high school.

Only senior students in Years 11 and 12 benefit from after-school work, associate professor Richard Walker said.

"What the research shows is that, in countries where they spend more time on homework, the achievement results are lower," Dr Walker, from Sydney University's Education Faculty, said. Full story...

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Woman in Taiwan kills herself "live" on Facebook...

A woman in Taiwan killed herself by inhaling poisonous fumes while chatting with friends on Facebook and none of them alerted authorities, police said Tuesday.

Claire Lin killed herself on her 31st birthday, March 18, and family members who reported her suicide were unaware of the Facebook conversations that accompanied it, Taipei police officer Hsieh Ku-ming said.

Lin's last Facebook entries show her chatting with nine friends, alerting them to her gradual asphyxiation. One picture uploaded from her mobile phone depicts a charcoal barbecue burning next to two stuffed animals. Another shows the room filled with fumes.

One friend identified as Chung Hsin, told Lin, "Be calm, open the window, put out the charcoal fire, please, I beg you." Full story...

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Teenager commits suicide on-line as viewers watch...

He asks ex-lover to watch on webcam as he hangs himself..

Polish guy kills himself "live" on the Internet...

Chinese man sends suicide note ... by homing pigeon!!!

The internet users that encouraged suicide pact couple to kill themselves...

Soccer: Singapore race row after "monkey" taunts at black player...

Singapore football officials vowed “zero tolerance” of racism on Wednesday after a visiting Liberian player responded to racial taunts by raising his middle finger to the crowd.

Abuse of Terengganu’s Francis Forkey Doe, 26, began in the warm-up of Tuesday’s Malaysia Cup quarter-final second leg against Singapore’s Lions XII, and was also directed at a dark-skinned linesman, according to witnesses.

“There was a group of maybe seven or eight fans at the opposite end of the grandstand who were making racial slurs ... Orang hitam (black man) and even nigger also came out,” undergraduate Muhammad Nadjad Bin Abdul Rahim, 24, told AFP.

“The rest of the crowd would cheer these guys and some joined in,” he added. Full story...

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Big Brother: Chinese firm helps Iran spy on citizens...

A Chinese telecommunications equipment company has sold Iran's largest telecom firm a powerful surveillance system capable of monitoring landline, mobile and internet communications, interviews and contract documents show.

The system was part of a 98.6 million euro ($130.6 million) contract for networking equipment supplied by Shenzhen, China-based ZTE Corp to the Telecommunication Co of Iran (TCI), according to the documents. Government-controlled TCI has a near monopoly on Iran's landline telephone services and much of Iran's internet traffic is required to flow through its network.

The ZTE-TCI deal, signed in December 2010, illustrates how despite tightening global sanctions, Iran still manages to obtain sophisticated technology, including systems that can be used to crack down on dissidents. Full story...

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Saudi Arabian citizen attacks an Indian receptionist...

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International arrest warrant sought for playboy son of Equatorial Guinea president...

An international arrest warrant is being sought for the son of Equatorial Guinea's President on money laundering charges after tens of millions of pounds worth of art, furniture and cars were seized from his luxury Paris residence.

Two French judges, Roger Le Loire and Rene Grouman, consider there are grounds to suspect Teodorin Obiang Mangue, who is agriculture minister in the tiny oil-rich central African country, acquired real estate in France by fraud.

The government in Malabo recently rejected a request for French magistrates to interview the son.

Last month, police searched the 41-year old playboy's multi-million pound 101-room, five-storey private mansion on the chic Avenue Foch in Paris's expensive 16th arrondissement and were stunned at the opulence they found. Full story...

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Russian president Dmitry Medvedev spends £26m on luxury yacht...

Gaddafi's sons and their lavish spending...

When power corrupts the sons of those in power...

Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev share between them at least two dozen palaces...

Pakistan acid attack victim commits suicide...

One of Pakistan's most high profile victims of domestic acid attacks has committed suicide in Rome where she had been undergoing cosmetic surgery to rebuild her face.

Fakhra Yunus, 34, leapt from the sixth floor of an apartment building to her death just weeks after Saving Face, a film on the plight of the 100 women per year disfigured in acid attacks in Pakistan, won an Oscar.

Ms Yunus was a beautiful 22 year old when her estranged politician husband, the son of one of Pakistan's most powerful political families, who allegedly poured battery acid over her face and body in front of her five year old son.

Following the attack she endured 38 surgical operations in 12 years to reconstruct her face and repair severe wounds on her arms and body. Full story...

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Dog saves its own life ... by calling the police!!!

A dog saved its own life by calling the police after it had wound a telephone cord around its neck.

George, a 2-year-old Basset Hound, had got himself into the predicament when, while alone at home on Saturday, March 24, he knocked a telephone to the floor and became entangled in the wire.

Amazingly, he then managed to dial 999, seemingly as he pawed at the phone in a panic.

Although George was unable to ask for help, The Sun reports that the emergency operator alerted police, who then rushed to the home of driving instructor Steve Brown and his daughter Lydia. Full story...

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Argentina: dog saves abandoned baby!!!

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Father in India forces daughter to beg because of poor school grades...

Police in the southern Indian city of Mysore have arrested a wealthy man for allegedly making his daughter beg as a punishment for poor school grades.

The man, named only as Prakash, was arrested under the juvenile misuse act after the girl was seen begging outside a temple in her convent school uniform.

He says he did not physically punish her but wanted her to see "how tough life is without proper education".

The 12-year-old girl has been placed in a government child-welfare centre. Full story...

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Baby-sitter in India rented out baby to beggars!!! WTF!

Stockholm is the capital of ... Scandinavia!!!

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World’s most beautiful girls live in Stockholm, Sweden!!

India needs to streamline visa, infrastructure to tap tourism...

As tourism becomes a key driver of the Indian economy with its growing foreign exchange earnings and income generating potential, the government has to streamline infrastructure and visa procedures to tap the segment's full potential, experts across the industry say.

"Travel and tourism is the second largest employer in India and the second largest revenue earner. It needs no introduction. The country is a continent in itself. But the government has to sort out the visa road blocks and infrastructure loopholes," Iqbal Mulla, president of the Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI), told IANS on the sidelines of a South Asia Travel and Tourism Exchange (SATTE) business forum.

Mulla said: "India gets the second highest tourist traffic from the UK but the new Indian visa regulations stipulate that a visitor from UK cannot return to India within two months of visiting the country". Full story...

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Angelina Jolie: wolf in sheep's clothing?

Angelina Jolie (Angie) the estranged daughter of famed Hollywood Actor John Voight is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. How many people in the world commit years acquiring advanced political degrees to serve as an international ambassador and never get the chance? In a country that elects Hollywood characters like Ronald Reagan to serve as President; endures an economy hijacked by international banking cartels; allows their military to be coerced by a United Nations with a New World Order agenda; and a Congress enslaved by corporate interests – it makes sense to deploy a blood-thirsty, death obsessed, psychologically deranged Barbie doll as a front.

Instantly recognized worldwide for her pouty lips and gaudy appeal, Angie’s past is fraught with clues that will allow an average person to judge whether she is truly a champion of children, a naive participant in the globalist child slavery-eugenics program or a cunning master manipulator of mind control. One only needs to look into her youth, her most formative years, to catch glimpses of darkness. Born the daughter of wealthy Hollywood stalwart Jon Voight, the Beverly Hills High School graduate would have you believe she suffered alienation from her peers due to her mother’s modest income. In 2005 it came to light through a CNN Paula Zhan production that indeed Angie had the roots of a blood thirsty, psychologically deranged, death obsessed individual. Full story...

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More and more rapists in Sweden being acquitted...

Stieg Larsson must be fuming in his grave!

The frequency of rape case acquittals in Sweden has increased dramatically in recent years, new research has shown, and scholars have a theory as to what lay behind the trend.

A recent master's dissertation in law found that the percentage of rape cases that are acquitted by district courts in Sweden has increased from 22 percent in 2006 to 33 percent in 2010.

"That a very high percentage of acquittals, the highest among all crimes in the criminal code," Katrin Lainpelto, a doctor of procedural law at Stockholm University who reviewed the dissertation author Lina Tengvar, told the TT news agency.

Their explanation for the dramatic increase in acquittals comes from four precedent-setting rulings by the Swedish Supreme Court (Högsta domstolen) which occurred in 2005, 2009, and 2010. Full story...

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The Motherfucking Pterodactyl - Sarah Donner and The Oatmeal...

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Quietly, cannabis has in effect been decriminalised in Britain...

CANNABOOST plant food is one of the best selling products at the Hydroexpress hydroponics store in Stirchley, a working-class part of Birmingham. The small shop, its windows filled with graffiti-style posters, also sells fertilisers with names like “Nirvana” and “Bud Candy”, alongside strong lights and giant rolls of tin foil to line greenhouses. In one corner, a couple of juicy-looking tomato plants grow in a demonstration set-up. But the youth behind the counter guesses that his customers are “not all growing tomatoes”.

Birmingham now has 58 hydroponics shops, up from 42 just a year ago. Whether aided by the latest plant-growing technology or not, cannabis production is soaring. According to the Association of Chief Police Officers, the number of cannabis factories detected each year increased from around 800 in 2004 to 7,000 in 2010. Birmingham is one of the most fertile areas; West Midlands Police, which set up a Cannabis Disposal Unit in 2010 to tackle the problem, dismantled more than 500 factories last year.

Your correspondent visited one recently closed by police; the gardener was a cocaine-addicted woman growing a few plants in a spare room in the hope of earning a cut. Other set-ups have been found in tents in the bedrooms of high-rise council flats and in the lofts of terraced family houses. Many growers are simply feeding their own habits. As one officer on the West Midlands Police drugs team says, “It’s becoming the most popular cottage industry in the country.” Full story...

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Top secret Visa data center is a fortress, even has moat...

Prisons are easier to enter than Visa's top-secret Operations Center East, its biggest, newest and most advanced U.S. data center.

The 8-acre facility looks like any other industrial park in a sleepy suburb. But the serene setting masks hundreds of cameras and a crack team of former military personnel. Hydraulic bollards beneath the road leading to the OCE can be quickly raised to stop an intruding car going 50 mph. Any speed faster, and the car can't navigate a hairpin turn, sending it into a drainage pond that functions as a modern-day moat.

The data center resembles a fortress, with dogged attention to detail. It can withstand earthquakes and hurricane-force winds of up to 170 mph. A 1.5-million-gallon storage tank cools the system. Diesel generators onsite have enough power, in the event of an outage, to keep the center running for nine days. They generate enough electricity for 25,000 households.

Once you get clearance from a guard station, get an OK from a roving security guy in a golf cart, and surrender a photo and fingerprint inside, the adventure begins. Full story...

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The countries I wouldn't want to live in ...

I am back home in Mexico after nearly three weeks in Argentina and very happy to be here. Home is where your heart is and for me that is right here in Southern Mexico. I'm a believer that there is a "right" place for everyone in the world... and it just so happens that rarely are you lucky enough to be born in that place so it is well worth taking the time to look for it.

My search took my whole life and a devoted five year trip that encompassed 100 countries. In the end there were two outright winners, Thailand and Mexico. Although there were many other places that I'd also have absolutely no problem living for at least a few years, including Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Brazil, Paraguay and Japan just to name a few. In actuality, there are not many places I outright dislike and would not want to live. These include Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, Bolivia, El Salvador and Russia.

But the point is, if you haven't found your place yet you should keep looking. I had one friend from Vancouver who would regularly visit New York. In Vancouver nothing ever seemed to go right for him but every single time he visited NYC it was like all the doors opened for him, beautiful girls came to him, opportunities fell in his lap. I told him, "you've found your place". You know it because everything seems to flow with the greatest of ease. This is how it is for me in Mexico... I am so in tune with the vibe here that anything I want or need comes to me. In places where you are out of tune with your surroundings the things you want and need are repelled by you. Full story...

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Your iPhone may not be your friend, could betray you...

I love my iPhone but I always look at it with deep suspicion. It probably knows more about me and my secrets than my puffy pillows. It could even betray me.

Blame it on Steve Jobs but I assume I'm not alone. Most of us have fallen prey to the modern digital world to the point of no return – as we take for granted the increasing number of things we can do with our smartphones, we expose ourselves to bottomless risk, knowingly, unknowingly or simply without regard. The amount of information that is contained in the average smartphone can include bank details and other personal data that would be highly profitable to the wrong person who might pick up your phone where you forgot it.

The fact is that they may not even need physical possession of your phone. Consider the extent of what a smartphone can do, based on a true story of what actually happened at several McDonald's restaurants in Australia between 2010 and 2011. Full story...

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Yahoo condemned over plans to snoop on emails on behalf of advertisers...

Like the iPhone, Android phones record user-locations too...

Oklahoma cops drag hand-cuffed man face down...

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Death penalty 2011: Alarming levels of executions in the few countries that kill...

Countries that carried out executions in 2011 did so at an alarming rate but those employing capital punishment have decreased by more than a third compared to a decade ago, Amnesty International found in its annual review of death sentences and executions.

Only 10 percent of countries in the world, 20 out of 198, carried out executions last year.

People were executed or sentenced to death for a range of offences including adultery and sodomy in Iran, blasphemy in Pakistan, sorcery in Saudi Arabia, the trafficking of human bones in the Republic of Congo, and drug offences in more than 10 countries.

(...)

In the Middle East there has been a steep rise in recorded executions – up almost 50 per cent on the previous year.

This was due to four countries – Iraq (at least 68 executions), Iran (at least 360), Saudi Arabia (at least 82) and Yemen (at least 41) – which accounted for 99 per cent of all recorded executions in the Middle East and North Africa. The rise in Iran and Saudi Arabia alone accounted for the net increase in recorded executions across the world of 149, compared to 2010.

Thousands of people were executed in China in 2011, more than the rest of the world put together. Figures on the death penalty are a state secret. Amnesty International has stopped publishing figures it collects from public sources in China as these are likely to grossly underestimate the true number. Full story...

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New Agers flocking to Bugarach in France as "doomsday" approaches...

A mountain looming over a French commune with a population of just 200 is being touted as a modern Noah's Ark when doomsday arrives – supposedly less than nine months from now.

A rapidly increasing stream of New Age believers – or esoterics, as locals call them – have descended in their camper van-loads on the usually picturesque and tranquil Pyrenean village of Bugarach. They believe that when apocalypse strikes on 21 December this year, the aliens waiting in their spacecraft inside Pic de Bugarach will save all the humans near by and beam them off to the next age.

As the cataclysmic date – which, according to eschatological beliefs and predicted astrological alignments, concludes a 5,125-year cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar – nears, the goings-on around the peak have become more bizarre and ritualistic. Full story...

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Don't panic, folks! The world will NOT end in 2012! Six myths debunked...

No end of the world, so members want money back!!!

"Kill the Indian first".

“We have no difficulty with Indians, they’re just like Thais,” gushed Mr Maneechote, who was helping us move house from one Bangkok lane to another. “They speak our language, they respect our customs, and they are kind, generous and gentle. It’s the Chinese we have trouble with.”

Sometimes you have to tell a lie if you want to hear a truth. “Me, personally,” I said, “I have some difficulty with these so-called Thai Indians. They are a discredit to their country. I find them arrogant and greedy.”

Something in Mr Maneechote’s eyes changed as it dawned on him that it might be safe to open up a little. “We have a saying in Thailand,” he said, leaning forward. “We say, if you see a snake and an Indian,” he dropped his voice, “kill the Indian first.” His smile remained courteous and pleasant. Full story...

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Monday, March 26, 2012

Mad men: Set me free...

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Man Utd. magazine provokes outrage with "grief junkie" comment about Fabrice Muamba...

FOOTBALL fanzines are designed to provoke discussion, but the Manchester United publication Red Issue appears to have gone too far with its latest edition, which pokes fun at the public reaction to the collapse of Fabrice Muamba.

The magazine goes on sale around Old Trafford before tonight's Fulham game. But it was posted online this afternoon, provoking outrage among some fans, and sparking an almighty row on Twitter.

The cover shows a picture of paramedics battling to save the life of Muamba, who collapsed on the pitch during Bolton's game with Tottenham nine days ago.

It sits under the headline Grief Junkies Run Wild and there are Private Eye-style speech bubbles with fans saying things like "good mourning" and "I've tweeted my condolences just in case". Full story...

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Washington pastor charged with raping 10-year-old girl...

A local man was arrested and charged this week with repeatedly raping a 10-year-old girl while he was serving as the assistant pastor at an Enumclaw church.

Court documents filed by the King County Prosecutor's Office allege that Malcolm J. Fraser assaulted the girl over a period of several months in 2005 and 2006, when Fraser was 32 and the girl was 10.

The accusations came to light Monday when the girl, now 17, came forward and told Enumclaw police that Fraser had sexually abused her a number of times while he and his wife were staying with her family from 2005 to 2006, court documents say.

During that time Fraser was an assistant pastor at the small, nondenominational Sound Doctrine Church in Enumclaw. It was not immediately known if Fraser still works for the church.

According to court documents, the girl told detectives that Fraser came to her room after midnight more than 20 times while staying with her family. Full story...

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Racist acid attack on black woman and baby in Manchester...

WHILE pushing her baby in a pram, a black woman had acid thrown on her by a white male in a racist attack in Salford, Greater Manchester, on Thursday (March 22).

As a result, the 29-year-old victim of African heritage suffered burns to her chest and back but is in a stable condition. The baby narrowly avoided injury.

Police have issued an e-fit image of the man wanted in questioning over the attack.

The mother was out with her baby at 2pm on March 22 at the subway on Broad Street in Pendleton, Salford, where she was approached by the man who is said to be in his 40s. Full story...

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French parents boycott 'useless' homework, accuse teachers of outsourcing their work ...

French parents and teachers are calling for a boycott of all homework in schools for a fortnight. They say homework is useless, tiring and increases inequalities between pupils.

"Teachers don’t realise the pressure they are putting on children," says Jean-Jacques Hazan, president of the FCPE, the main organisation representing French parents, in an interview with daily Le Parisien.

The FCPE is calling for a fortnight without homework. This is a first in France and they hope to get parents and teachers to discuss better ways to help children learn.

Homework is banned in primary schools in France but many teachers still give their pupils exercises to do at home. Children in France spend 30 minutes to an hour in the evening doing their homework and sometimes more at the weekend. Full story...

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Blind dog living in trash pile gets rescued ... and is no longer blind! Wow!

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Locator chips keep track of students in Brazil...

Grade-school students in a northeastern Brazilian city are using uniforms embedded with locator chips that help alert parents if they're cutting classes, the city's education secretary said Thursday.

Twenty thousand students in 25 of Vitoria da Conquista's 213 public schools started using T-shirts with chips earlier this week, secretary Coriolano Moraes said by telephone.

By 2013, all of the city's 43,000 public school students, aged 4 to 14, will be using the chip-embedded T-shirts, he added.

Radio frequency chips in "intelligent uniforms" let a computer know when children enter school and it sends a text message to their cell phones. Parents are also alerted if kids don't show up 20 minutes after classes begin with the following message: "Your child has still not arrived at school." Full story...

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Texas schools track students with radio waves, just like tracking cattle...

Welcome to GPS Big Brother America...

Tibetan sets himself on fire in India in anti-China protest...

A Tibetan protester set himself on fire at a demonstration in the Indian capital today ahead of a visit by China's president.

The man was engulfed in flames as he ran near the speakers at the rally near the Indian Parliament in New Delhi. Fellow activists beat out the flames with Tibetan flags they were carrying.

The protester was being treated for severe burns at a New Delhi hospital, a Tibetan organiser said.

Chinese President Hu Jintao is expected to arrive in India later this week for a summit meeting.

More than 600 protesters, carrying banners and posters, marched across New Delhi to a central plaza near the Indian Parliament to hold a protest meeting. Some carried posters saying "Tibet is burning" and "Tibet is not part of China". Full story...

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Why no one is watching porn on their TV anymore...

It was only a matter of time until Internet porn put a significant blow in cable and satellite companies' profits. These porn distributors of yesteryear are hurting, reports the Wall Street Journal's Sam Schechner and Jessica E. Vascellaro. "On Thursday, satellite provider DirecTV cited lower adult buys" as a cause for weaker pay-per-view revenue in its second quarter earnings. That followed Time Warner Cable Inc.'s admission last week that shrinkage in the adult category was responsible for more than a third of a $14 million drop in video-on-demand revenue." TV porn is on its death bed, but why now? The proliferation of x-rated Web content isn't a new phenomenon, but at this point Internet technologies have reached a point where making and viewing online porn just makes more sense.

More people are flocking to the Internet for their porn fix. "The average time spent during each visit to an adult site has grown 26% since 2008, to eight minutes and 35 seconds, according to Experian Hitwise, a unit of Experian PLC," Schechner and Vascellaro note. But the following improvements in online porn technologies are the real reason people have forgone the tube for PornoTube.

(...)

Not only can more people make their own porn in a cheap, easy, and quick way. But it has also created a new type of fetish: the live-cam show, continues Wallace. Some enjoy the idea of watching a live-web cam--you can't get that from Pay-Per View and because of piracy laws, these became especially successful business models, continues Wallace. Full story...

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Sunday, March 25, 2012

How to say "dangerous" in Japanese?

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Sri Lanka minister Mervyn Silva threatens to "break the limbs" of journalists and human rights activists...

A Sri Lankan cabinet minister has threatened violence against journalists and human rights activists who he says have been opposing the government.

Mervyn Silva also admitted forcing a journalist to flee two years ago.

The remarks come one day after the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution critical of the country's rights record.

A police spokesman told the BBC that officers would now investigate Mr Silva's remarks.

(...)

In Friday's remarks, which were filmed, the ardent Sinhalese nationalist warned that he would "break the limbs" of some named journalists and human rights workers whom he called "traitors".

He also mentioned another journalist, Poddala Jayantha, who fled the country in late 2009 after being severely beaten up.

"I'm the one who chased Poddala Jayantha out of this country. I am telling you about this incident today. He went because of me," Mervyn Silva said. Full story...

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Spanish police arrest 22 gang members that tattooed bar codes onto prostitutes’ wrists...

Spanish police arrested 22 suspected pimps who allegedly used violence to force women into prostitution and tattooed them with bar codes as a sign of ownership, officials said Saturday.

Police are calling the gang the “bar code pimps.” Officers freed one 19-year-old woman who had been beaten, held against her will and tattooed with a bar code and an amount of money — €2,000 ($2,650) — which investigators believe was the debt the gang wished to extort before releasing her.

The woman had also been whipped, chained to a radiator and had her hair and eyebrows shaved off, according to an Interior Ministry statement.

All those arrested were of Romanian nationality and had forced the women to hand over part of their earnings, the statement said. Full story...

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Swedish home-schooling family "broken to pieces" after State abducts 7-year-old son...

It's been called one of the worst cases of government abuse ever committed against a home schooling family: the abduction by Swedish authorities of Domenic Johansson, a happy, healthy, 7-year-old boy taken from his parents Christer and Annie Johansson in 2009 as they waited to leave Sweden on a flight to India.

After the abduction, the Johanssons' story spread quickly on the Internet.

But three years later, Domenic is still being kept from his parents, and Swedish authorities keep finding new reasons for why the child can't go home.

(...)

"They took Domenic from the plane," Christer recalled. "Then he threw up until they took him to ER. That's how severe the trauma is. If someone throws up so you have to take him to the hospital, that's severe."

"I have no clue what went on," Annie added. "There was just a stampede. My child had no clue, and I have no clue still what's going on. I can just hear the screams of my child all the time." More + video...

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European bishops condemn Saudi fatwa against Gulf churches...

Christian bishops in Germany, Austria and Russia have sharply criticized Saudi Arabia's top religious official after reports that he issued a fatwa saying all churches on the Arabian Peninsula should be destroyed.

In separate statements on Friday, the Roman Catholic bishops in Germany and Austria slammed the ruling by Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Shaikh as an unacceptable denial of human rights to millions of foreign workers in the Gulf region.

Archbishop Mark of Yegoryevsk, head of the Russian Orthodox department for churches abroad, called the fatwa "alarming" in a statement on Tuesday. Such blunt criticism from mainstream Christian leaders of their Muslim counterparts is very rare.

Christian websites have reported Sheikh Abdulaziz, one of the most influential religious leaders in the Muslim world, issued the fatwa last week in response to a Kuwaiti lawmaker who asked if Kuwait could ban church construction in Kuwait. Full story...

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Arab spring? Freedom for women? Let's not kid ourselves...

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10 reasons why nothing you do on the internet will ever be private again...

The Internet is rapidly being transformed into a Big Brother control grid where privacy rights are being systematically strangled to death. The control freaks that run things have become absolutely obsessed with watching, tracking, monitoring and recording virtually everything that you do on the Internet. One thing that you can count on is that nothing you do on the Internet will ever be private again. In fact, if you are obsessed with privacy then the last place you want to be is on the Internet. Most Americans have absolutely no idea how far Internet surveillance has advanced in the past few years. At this point, it would be hard to imagine any place less private than the Internet. Do not ever put anything on the Internet that you would not want the authorities or your employer to hold you accountable for. Basically, the Internet is creating a permanent dossier on each one of us, and we contribute to this process by freely posting gigantic volumes of information about ourselves on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. The Internet is the greatest tool for mass communication that the world has perhaps ever seen, and it gives average citizens the ability to communicate with each other like never before, but there is also a downside to using the Internet. Everything that we do on the Internet is being watched, monitored and recorded and there is no longer any such thing as Internet privacy. If you think that you still have any privacy on the Internet, then you are either ignorant of what is going on or you are being delusional.

The following are 10 reasons why nothing you do on the Internet will ever be private again: Full story...

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Private jets, 13 mansions and a $100,000 mobile home just for the dogs: Televangelists 'defrauded tens of million of dollars from Christian network'

Two former employees of the world's largest Christian television channel Trinity Broadcasting Network are accusing the non-profit of spending $50 million of its funding on extravagant personal expenses.

Among purchases, the network founded by Televangelists Paul and Jan Crouch, is accused of misappropriating its 'charitable assets' toward a $50 million jet, 13 mansions and a $100,000-mobile home for Mrs Crouch's dogs.

Their granddaughter, Brittany Koper, 26, recently filed her allegations in court after a brief appointment as the network's chief finance director in July.

She claims she was fired in September after discovering the 'illegal financial schemes' according to the lawsuit obtained by the Los Angeles Times, and consequently reporting them to Mr Crouch. Full story...

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Saturday, March 24, 2012

Pregnant French woman to marry dead soldier...

The pregnant girlfriend of a French soldier killed in a dramatic gun rampage will wed her partner posthumously, a family lawyer said Saturday.

Paratrooper Abel Chennouf was shot dead earlier this month at a cash machine in southern France, one of a series of killings blamed on 24-year-old Islamist fanatic Mohamed Merah.

Lawyer Gilbert Collard said that Chennouf's pregnant girlfriend, 21-year-old Caroline Monet, is applying for permission to get married to her late partner at an official ceremony in a few weeks' time.

Such ceremonies are unusual but not unheard of in France, where the law allow posthumous marriages in cases where a fiance dies before the wedding. The law states that such weddings can only be approved by the French president "in grave circumstances." Full story...

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Frenchman to wed dead sweetheart...

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