Obama courts Florida after poor jobs report
SAINT PETERSBURG, Florida, Sept 8(AFP) -US President Barack Obama turned his attention to the state of Florida yesterday as he fended off attacks by Republican rival Mitt Romney, who used a weak US jobs report to accuse the president of failing to mend the economy. Florida, where the president will spend two days, is one [...]
Asia-Pacific leaders call for unity at summit
VLADIVOSTOK, Russia, Sept 8 (AFP) -Asia-Pacific leaders called for unity in tackling a raft of economic challenges, as an annual summit began amid deep divisions over worsening territorial disputes and other rows. Summit host President Vladimir Putin opened the two-day gathering of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation bloc in the Far East Russian port of Vladivostok [...]
Syria conflict raises intervention question
PAPHOS, Cyprus, Sept 8 (AFP) -The spiralling conflict in Syria is raising questions about the “duty of intervention”, Belgian’s Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said during talks with European Union counterparts on Saturday. “We’re at a point where we increasingly have the feeling we’re slipping little by little into a lengthy civil war,” Reynders told AFP [...]
Putin leads crane migration in hang-glider
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has tracked a Siberian tiger and posed with a polar bear, on Wednesday took his love of wildlife to new heights by flying with cranes – to lead them on a migration route. Putin has communed with wild animals several times as part of an effort to [...]
Italy wants the Mona Lisa back
Italian campaigners have collected over 150,000 signatures calling on the Louvre museum in Paris to hand over Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to its ‘home city’ of Florence. The world’s most famous painting should be returned to the Uffizi museum where it was displayed early in the 20th Century, according to the National Committee for [...]
Osama book by ex-SEAL is not accurate: Pentagon
The head of U.S. special operations has concluded that the claims made by former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette about Osama bin Laden’s last moments are incorrect and do not convey an accurate assessment of the al-Qaeda chiefs killing. Admiral William McRaven took the personal step of contacting members of the Navy SEAL Team Six that [...]
HITLER clothing store will change name
AHMEDABAD, India (AFP) – The owner of an Indian store called “Hitler” said Tuesday he had agreed to drop the Nazi dictator’s name and re-brand his shop following protests from the Jewish community and the government. The shop, which sells Western menswear, opened in Ahmedabad city in the western state of Gujarat last month with [...]
Depressed Thai woman ‘fed herself to crocodiles’
A woman who was suffering from depression is believed to have fed herself to the crocodiles at a popular tourist attraction in Thailand. The 36-year-old Thai woman told her husband that she was going to see a doctor and would then go to popular Crocodile Farm in Samut Prakarn just outside Bangkok. She never returned home [...]
Branching out the Buddha
A pear grown in the shape of one of the world’s most important spiritual teachers? You Buddha believe it. These bizarre Buddha-shaped pears were invented by a farmer in China who is planning to export his novel idea to the UK. Hao Xianzhang has created 10,000 of the mini marvels at his orchard this season [...]
Zuckerberg stalker launches bizarre counter-lawsuit
Mark Zuckerberg’s alleged stalker is trying to turn the tables by claiming the Facebook founder is trying to destroy his reputation.Mr Zuckerberg got a restraining order against Pradeep Manukonda, 31, last year after the Indian allegedly bombarded him with online messages, sent him flowers and even turned up at his home. Mr Manukonda eventually agreed [...]
Green tea isn’t just good for your heart, it’s good for your brain too
Green tea is not just good for you heart – it could boost the memory as well, say researchers.A study from China found that the chemical properties of the healthy beverage promotes the generation of brain cells, providing benefits for memory and spatial learning. Study leader Professor Yun Bai from the Third Military Medical University, [...]
McDonald’s to open first ever vegetarian-only restaurant in India
McDonald’s will open its first ever vegetarian-only restaurant in the northern Indian city of Amritsar, the fast food chain said today. The world’s second-biggest restaurant chain after Subway tailors its menus to suit local tastes, which in India means no beef to avoid offending Hindus and no pork to cater for Muslim requirements. The first [...]
Scientists find we can learn while we sleep
We can learn as we sleep, new research suggests.A study found that the body is able to take in new information while it sleeps and unconsciously modify the waking behaviour.Sleep learning experiments are notoriously difficult to conduct, not least because the researchers need to be sure that the subjects are actually asleep throughout. Now scientists [...]
The 100 year Starship project
A dramatic plan to put humans on another star within 100 years today received the backing of former President Bill Clinton. The 100 year Starship project, which was set up with US military seed funding, plans to develop huge ‘starships’ to send humans to other stars. Next week it will meet to discuss the project [...]
With conventions over, final campaign sprint begins
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) – President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney launch a two-month sprint to the November 6 election on Friday, hours after Obama closed the Democratic convention with an urgent plea for more time and patience to finish his economic agenda. Obama’s high-stakes nationally televised acceptance speech for a second term [...]
India’s Coalgate explodes
On the embers of the coal scam a national contest has begun. As the countdown for 2014 starts, the soot seems to have settled on the visage of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who held charge of the coal portfolio for a long stretch. Still, it’s a game of ash, smoke and mirrors, with the BJP [...]
Taiwan urges talks to solve territorial dispute
PENGJIA ISLET, Taiwan, Sept 8 (AFP) – Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou has called for talks with China and Japan to solve a territorial dispute involving an archipelago in the East China Sea claimed by all three sides. Ma made the comments while visiting a Taiwan-held islet about 140 kilometres (90 miles) west of the disputed [...]
China and its neighbours: Nationalism at sea
CAMBRIDGE – Will war break out in the seas of East Asia? After Chinese and Japanese nationalists staged competing occupations of the barren landmasses that China refers to as the Diaoyu Islands and Japan calls the Senkaku Islands, angry demonstrators in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu chanted, “We must kill all Japanese.” Likewise, a [...]
Assange and Sweden’s other rape suspects
NEW YORK – It is difficult for me, as an advocate against rape and other forms of violence against women, to fathom the laziness and willful ignorance that characterise so much of the media coverage of the sexual-assault allegations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. To report that we are simply witnessing Swedish justice at work, [...]
The liberal way to run the world
What is the world’s most powerful and violent “ism”? The question will summon the usual demons such as Islamism, now that communism has left the stage. The answer, wrote Harold Pinter, is only “superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged,” because only one ideology claims to be non-ideological, neither left nor right, the supreme [...]