US chides Russia over missiles as peace plans suffer
BEIRUT, May 18 (Reuters) – The United States chided Russia for sending missiles to the Syrian government as plans for a peace conference promoted by Washington and Moscow were hit by diplomatic rifts over its scope and purpose. Sectarian bloodshed in neighbouring Iraq during Friday prayers, a hacking attack on a Western newspaper by sympathisers [...]
Afghan parliament halts debate on women’s rights law
A debate by Afghan MPs about beefing up a law to prevent violence against women has been halted amid angry scenes. Parliament’s speaker ended the debate after 15 minutes after traditionalists called for the law to be scrapped. A law banning violence against women, child marriages and forced marriages was passed by presidential decree in [...]
Pakistan’s Sharif free to rule without unwieldy coalition
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan Prime Minister-elect Nawaz Sharif won enough seats in Saturday’s parliamentary election that he won’t need to form a coalition with other major parties to push through badly needed reforms, final figures showed. Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) won 124 of a total 272 seats, with its nearest rival, the Pakistan People’s [...]
N. Korea fires short-range missiles into Sea of Japan
SEOUL, May 18 (AFP) -North Korea toady launched three short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan, apparently as part of a military drill, South Korea’s defence ministry said. US and South Korean forces had been on heightened alert for a medium-range ballistic missile test in recent weeks amid tensions triggered by North Korea’s nuclear test [...]
Umbrellagate? Obama breaches marine protocol
President Obama was criticised for asking a marine to hold his umbrella because it made him ‘look like a butler’, a military general claimed today. Thomas McInerney, a former United States Air Force Lieutenant General, said that the President showed a ‘lack of respect’ by making the soldier shelter him from a shower. He also [...]
UN, fluent in Anglo-French, seeks to go multilingual
UNITED NATIONS, (IPS) – When Egypt’s onetime Foreign Minister Boutros Boutros-Ghali was running for the post of U.N. secretary-general in late 1991, he had to contend with the candidature of Bernard Chidzero, then foreign minister of Zimbabwe. As the campaign began to intensify, Boutros-Ghali recounted a brief encounter with Chidzero, a longstanding friend, at a [...]
Electrocuting the environmentalist
If you have been trying save electricity and keep your bill down, remember this: the CEB is after you. The new tariff announced last week has made one thing obvious. The CEB does not want you to even think of saving electricity. They need the cash; and they are going to squeeze it out of [...]
Chinese man abducted as a five-year-old is reunited with his parents 23 years later
A Chinese man has been reunited with his biological family more than 20 years after he was abducted as a little boy – and claims he has Google Maps to thank for finding his way home. Luo Gang, who was born in a small town in Sichuan province, but grew up some 1,500km away in [...]
Pope Francis calls on world leaders to end ‘cult of money’
Pope Francis has attacked the global financial system, saying it has created a ‘cult of money’ that is turning humans into expendable consumer goods. In his first major speech on the subject, Francis demanded that financial and political leaders reform the global financial system to make it more ethical and concerned for the common good. [...]
World’s ‘most racist’ countries
The global social attitudes study claims that the most racially intolerant populations are all in the developing world, with Bangladesh, Jordan and India in the top five. By contrast, the study of 80 countries over three decades found Western countries were most accepting of other cultures with Britain, the U.S., Canada and Australia more tolerant [...]
‘I can’t sleep’: Bernie Madoff tells how he is racked with guilt
He was once head of a multi-billion dollar empire, now Bernard Madoff makes $40 a month from prison. The convicted fraudster has taken a job looking after telephones and computers in the North Carolina prison where he is serving a 150-year sentence. Madoff works for only ‘a few hours’ a day, which leaves him plenty [...]
Bunga hunga: Showgirls dressed as Obama, nuns at Berlusconi party
Rome, (Reuters) – The nightclub dancer at the center of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s “bunga bunga” sex trial told a court on Friday that guests at the media tycoon’s parties dressed as nuns, nurses and U.S. President Barack Obama. Karima El Mahroug, better known by her stage name “Ruby the Heartstealer”, spoke as [...]
‘F*** America’: Boston ‘bomber’ scrawled ‘confession’ on side of boat
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev thought he was dying when he was hiding out in a boat following the Boston Marathon bombings and chose to write a note confessing his connection to the blasts and explaining why he and his brother made the two pressure cooker bombs. The 19-year-old found a pen in the boat but no paper [...]
Russia names CIA’s Moscow station chief
Russia’s Federal Security Bureau has breached protocol to name the man they say is in charge of the CIA’s work in Moscow. A spokesman for the bureau named the CIA’s ‘rezident’ while speaking to Russian media about the capture of alleged spy Ryan Fogle. The diplomat’s name matched that of a U.S. embassy counsellor in [...]
Aleppo soap: War threatens an ancient tradition
Aleppo soap – widely considered to be the first soap ever made – is popular across the Middle East and far beyond. But the intense fighting is making business in Syria’s second city all but impossible – and the soap’s future is uncertain. One of Nabil Andoura’s earliest memories is making soap with his grandmother. [...]
Gold dinar expected to sell for £500,000
The first ever coin to record the famous Islamic phrase ‘There is no God but Allah’ is set to sell for hundreds of thousands of pounds when it goes under the hammer. The historic gold dinar from 690 AD was minted in Damascus by the Umayyad dynasty – the first Arab empire, which stretched from [...]
At Cannes, shock movie tests China’s boundaries
CANNES, France, May 17 (AFP) – Disgusted by corrupt local leaders, an angry miner picks up a shotgun. A migrant worker returning home looks to armed robbery to escape a life of relentless bleakness. A pretty receptionist at a sauna is driven to the limit when a gangster tries to rape her. And a young [...]
Women in Hollywood films ‘grossly underrepresented’
Despite the successes of recent Hollywood blockbusters with strong female leads – from The Hunger Games, Twilight and Anna Karenina, to The Iron Lady, Bridesmaids and Snow White And The Huntsmen – speaking roles for women in cinema have hit a five-year low, with men now being given more than 70 per cent of speaking [...]
Busted! Escaped Colombian convict dresses as a woman in bid to avoid recapture
An escaped Colombian convict got breast implants and dressed as a woman to avoid being sent back to jail, police said. Giovanni Rebolledo – sentenced in 2012 to 60 years in prison for kidnapping, robbery and extortion – underwent surgery to become ‘Rosalinda.’ After his extreme make-over, he started working as a prostitute in the [...]
India’s missing daughters
New Delhi, India (Reuters) – Atika, 10, woke up early one morning in August 2008 and was sent by her mother to buy a few items from a nearby shop. She returned and told her mother she would prepare tea for her father before quickly going to use a communal toilet close to her house. [...]
Indian woman forced into slavery in Britian
An Indian woman was forced into modern-day slavery by two women who locked her indoors and forced her to work 16-hour days. The victim was also raped by the women’s accomplice, 54-year-old butcher Enkarta Balapovi. At a sentencing of three people, the court heard he subjected the 39-year-old to four months of sexual abuse behind [...]
‘Cheque’ out his honesty: Rickshaw driver turns down Rs 1.9 crore bonus
He could have been a billionaire overnight, but autorickshaw driver Raju Bharwad chose honesty over a cheque of Rs 1.9 crore sent in his name by Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation. Bharwad was surprised to receive the cheque, which also had the name of his mother as the co-recipient. The accompanying letter said the money was [...]
Google reveals the hilarious prototypes for its Glass wearable computer
Google has revealed the decidedly low-tech prototypes is used to perfect its Glass wearable computer. They range from a bizarre contraption built on top of a bicycle helmet to a pair of mobile phones strapped to a head. The rare glimpse into Google’s production process also revealed the firms plans to mass produce ‘google-loads’ of [...]
Mount Everest losing its cloak of ice and snow
Mount Everest is losing its snow and ice at an alarming rate, researchers have found. A major new study of Everest and the national park that surrounds it concluded the area has been warming since the early 1960s – with many small glaciers having already disappeared. The researchers said Everest itself was ‘shedding its frozen [...]
Office colleagues may be the best friends you ever make – especially if you work in a stressful environment
Colleagues in a stressful office form the strongest friendships they may ever know with each other, according to a new study. Research from Lancaster University found that far from falling out with each other or being rivals, the day-to-day demands of office work mean friendships formed there are closer and more emotional than any other. [...]
Will the next iPhone handset be available in gold?
Parts from Apple’s much-anticipated new iPhone claim to have been revealed online, showing major internal changes to the phone. Expected to be called the iPhone 5S, the handset is expected to look almost identical to the current version, with the exception of a fingerprint sensor, and could go on sale in September. The leaked parts, [...]
Scientists create human stem cells through cloning
NEW YORK (Reuters) – After more than 15 years of failures by scientists around the world and one outright fraud, biologists have finally created human stem cells by the same technique that produced Dolly the cloned sheep in 1996: They transplanted genetic material from an adult cell into an egg whose own DNA had been [...]
The bad habits that are good for you
From an early age we are taught to curb our bad personal habits – so it might come as a surprise to learn that some of these have health benefits. From burping and finger-cracking to spitting, we reveal the upside of our horrible activities… Biting your nails It’s a habit most sufferers try hard to [...]
Forget coffee, now you can get caffeine on your toothbrush
It could be an important time saver for those who want an extra five minutes in bed. Colgate has revealed plans for a toothbrush with a built in caffeine patch to deliver the morning coffee as you brush. A patent application reveals the firm is even considering flavour patches and even drug delivery using the [...]
What should Americans die for?
“The American people are weary. They don’t want boots on the ground. I don’t want boots on the ground. The worst thing the United States could do right now is put boots on the ground in Syria.” That was the leading Senate hawk favoring U.S. intervention in Syria’s civil war. But by ruling out U.S. [...]
A New Deal for fragile states
PARIS – Today, roughly one-quarter of the world’s population lives in conflict-affected and fragile states. Despite vast sums of money spent aiding such states over the last 50 years, armed conflict and violence continue to blight the lives of millions of people around the world. International and national partners must radically change the way they [...]
Made in Bangladesh: The terror of capitalism
On Wednesday, April 24, a day after Bangladeshi authorities asked the owners to evacuate their garment factory that employed almost three thousand workers, the building collapsed. The building, Rana Plaza, located in the Dhaka suburb of Savar, produced garments for the commodity chain that stretches from the cotton fields of South Asia through Bangladesh’s machines [...]
