DIA sending hundreds more spies overseas

The Pentagon will send hundreds of additional spies overseas as part of an ambitious plan to assemble an espionage network that rivals the CIA in size, U.S. officials said. The project is aimed at transforming the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has been dominated for the past decade by the demands of two wars, into a spy service focused on emerging threats and more closely aligned...

Read More..

McAfee reportedly captured by police

WASHINGTON: Anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee, wanted by authorities in Belize for his neighbour's murder, has been captured after weeks on the run, his blog said on Saturday."We have received an unconfirmed report that John McAfee has been captured at the border of Belize and Mexico," his official blog whoismcafee.com said.The website, which McAfee launched to counter what he sees...

Read More..

FDI in retail to safeguard international market mafias' interest: BJP

NEW DELHI: India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today said retail reform is a step taken by the Congress led-federal government to safeguard the interests of the international market mafias at the cost of national interest.BJP vice president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said on Saturday that voting inside the parliament would decide as to who is in favour of national interest and who is working...

Read More..

Photos: Kilauea Lava Reaches the Sea

Into the Sea Photograph by Hugh Gentry, ReutersA spectacular natural phenomenon was on display early this week as lava from a vent in Hawaii's Kilauea volcano flowed into...

Read More..

Police: KC Chiefs Player Killed Girlfriend, Self

Jovan Belcher, a linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs, committed suicide today in front of his coaches and police officers outside the team's stadium, shortly after he fatally shot his girlfriend, police said."We heard that they had been arguing in the past [and] as far as recently, they'd been arguing before the shooting occurred this morning," Kansas City Police spokesman...

Read More..

Facebook ordered to remove paedophile monitoring page

LONDON: A Facebook page set up to monitor paedophiles has been removed after a judge in Northern Ireland ruled Friday that it risked infringing the human rights of a convicted sex offender.The man, who cannot be identified, started legal proceedings against the social networking site after discovering his photograph and threatening comments had been posted on the page.High Court judge...

Read More..

15,000 posts lying vacant in KEB, says KPTC MD

MYSORE: Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Ltd MD S Selva Kumar has said that Karnataka Electricity Board (KEB) is short of hands -- two persons perform the work of four. Speaking at the 49th All-Member Convention organized by KEB Engineer's Association at JK grounds here on Friday, he said though the government has sanctioned 60,000 employees, there are 15,000 vacancies. "As many as 1,500...

Read More..

Photos: Kilauea Lava Reaches the Sea

Into the Sea Photograph by Hugh Gentry, ReutersA spectacular natural phenomenon was on display early this week as lava from a vent in Hawaii's Kilauea volcano flowed into...

Read More..

Parents Fight Back Against Deadly Discipline

Parents of children who have died or been injured while being manhandled, held down or locked up in America's public schools are fighting back.Dozens have filed lawsuits and many are speaking out publicly to end what they say is an epidemic of harsh measures being used in schools to subdue unruly or aggressive children – many of whom suffer from autism or other disabilities....

Read More..

Lohan arrested over NY fight, charged over LA crash

NEW YORK: US actress Lindsay Lohan was arrested for assault in New York Thursday, and also charged over a car crash in California, in a double legal blow which could in theory land her back to jail.The perennially troubled 26-year-old, who is struggling to get her life back on the rails and remains on probation for a 2011 jewellery theft, was arrested in the early hours after a fight at...

Read More..

BJP calls paper a ‘whitewash’, seeks SIT probe into projects

MUMBAI: The state BJP on Thursday hit out at the government, saying the white paper on the irrigation scam was a "whitewash". Senior BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis demanded an SIT probe into all irrigation projects in the state. The demand was made during a debate on a news channel. "Based on the information we have received from government sources, the white paper seems nothing but a whitewash...

Read More..

Pictures: Inside the World's Most Powerful Laser

Photograph courtesy Damien Jemison, LLNLLooking like a portal to a science fiction movie, preamplifiers line a corridor at the U.S. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF).Preamplifiers work by increasing the energy of laser beams—up to ten billion times—before these beams reach the facility's target chamber.The project's lasers are tackling "one of physics' grand...

Read More..

Accused WikiLeaker Manning Speaks for First Time

Private First Class Bradley Manning, the American soldier accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified and confidential military and diplomatic documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, took the stand in a military court today to make his first public statements since his arrest in 2010.Manning appeared confident and animated at a pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade...

Read More..

Fight over Susan Rice holds political risks for White House

The choice of a successor to Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state has turned into an unexpectedly nasty political fight that could cost the White House valuable goodwill with Republicans. Republican opposition to presumptive front-runner Susan E. Rice did not fade after the election, as White House officials and her supporters had predicted. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United...

Read More..

Only path to Palestinian state is direct talks: Clinton

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday that the only path towards a Palestinian state was through direct negotiations, on the eve of a contentious United Nations vote."I have said many times that the path to a two-state solution that fulfills the aspirations of the Palestinian people is through Jerusalem and Ramallah, not New York," Clinton told reporters,...

Read More..

Indira Gandhi lent Indian politics the dynastic shift: Ramachandra Guha

BANGALORE: The Congress led by Indira Gandhi fostered a generation of hero worship and dynasty politics after 1969. This inspired many others like Muthuvel Karunanidhi, who started off with noble intentions to fight against caste discriminations, to do the same and has led to a centralization of politics in present India, said Ramachandra Guha, on Wednesday. He was speaking during the launch of...

Read More..

Caterpillar Fungus Has Anti-Inflammatory Properties

In the Tibetan mountains, a fungus attaches itself to a moth larva burrowed in the soil. It infects and slowly consumes its host from within, taking over its brain and making the young caterpillar move to a position from which the fungus can grow and spore again. Sounds like something out of science fiction, right? But for ailing Chinese consumers and nomadic Tibetan harvesters, the parasite...

Read More..

Factory Workers: We Were Locked in, Flames Spread

More survivors of the factory fire in Bangladesh that killed more than 100 garment workers this weekend have told human rights and international labor groups they were actually locked in by security gates as the flames spread."The police and the fire department are confirming that the collapsible gates were locked on each floor," said Charles Kernighan, executive director of...

Read More..

Keeping the financial regulators on their toes

When members of Congress need factual information and insights into the effectiveness of the financial laws put in place after the 2008 economic crisis, they regularly turn to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Orice Williams Brown. Initially as director and now as managing director of the GAO’s financial markets and community investment section, Brown and her staff have issued...

Read More..

"Two and a Half Men cursed" says former star Sheen

LOS ANGELES: Perennially troubled US actor Charlie Sheen said Tuesday that hit TV series "Two and a Half Men," on which he starred for years, is "cursed," after one of its stars called the show "filth".Sheen, who was sacked from the comedy show last year following his own public meltdown, was speaking as the show's producers remained tight-lipped about how they will deal with the outburst...

Read More..

Mamata to decide on voting over FDI

KOLKATA: With the Congress likely to garner a majority in Parliament over the FDI issue, the Trinamool Congress is yet to carve out its strategy in Parliament, in case Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar allows the debate under rule 184. Trinamool leaders have left it to Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee to decide whether the party will stage a walkout along with parties such as Samajwadi Party and Bahujan...

Read More..

Pictures: Falcon Massacre Uncovered in India

Photograph courtesy Conservation IndiaA young boy can sell bundles of fresh Amur falcons (pictured) for less than five dollars. Still, when multiplied by the thousands of falcons hunters can catch in a day, the practice can be a considerable financial boon to these groups.Since discovering the extent of Amur hunting in Nagaland this fall, Conservation India has taken the issue to the local Indian...

Read More..

Petraeus Scandal: Socialite Jill Kelley Fighting Back

Tampa socialite Jill Kelley is fighting back. Today, sources close to the woman who was caught in the media crossfire during the David Petraeus sex scandal have released new letters aimed at reclaiming her reputation.In one, Kelley's attorney goes after a New York businessman who claimed Kelley was using her connections to Petraeus to broker a deal with the South Korean government."It...

Read More..

Rethinking rocker in Bahrain

It seemed like a pretty neat idea when rocker ­Andrew W.K. posted on his Web site last week that the State Department was sending him as a cultural ambassador to Bahrain to help folks in that deeply unsettled country. Just Monday, the government used tear gas to disperse thousands of demonstrators and street battles flared, the Associated Press report...

Read More..

Oscars buzz for Bigelow's Osama bin Laden film

LOS ANGELES: Oscar-winning filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow's long-awaited movie about the hunt for and killing of Osama bin Laden is generating Academy Awards buzz, even before its release next month.The director, who won Academy Awards in 2010 for Iraq war drama "The Hurt Locker", had extensive access to classified material in the making of "Zero Dark Thirty", a process that began long before...

Read More..

Green tax on diesel cars: Auto sector slams cess proposal

NEW DELHI: The automobile industry has come out against any proposal to impose an additional tax on diesel cars over environmental issues. "Diesel is not as polluting as it is made out to be. How can you tax a technology that is very clean and more fuel efficient?" said Vishnu Mathur, DG of industry lobby group, Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers. While diesel is not a big polluter, there...

Read More..

Space Pictures This Week: Space "Horse," Mars Rover, More

High Horse Photograph by Greg Parker, Your Shot The Horsehead Nebula rears its pretty head in a November 17 photograph submitted to National Geographic's Your Shot photo community.Taken...

Read More..

Rx OD Risks: Grapefruit-Meds Warning Expanded

Nov 26, 2012 5:48pm Image credit: Johner/Getty ImagesABC News’ Ben Maas reports:It has long been known that grapefruit juice can pose dangerous — and even deadly — risks when taken along with certain medications. Now, experts warn the list of medications that can result in these interactions is longer than many may have believed.Check below to see whether your medication...

Read More..

‘Fiscal cliff’: Consensus on increasing tax revenue, a wide gulf on how to do it

For the first time in decades, a bipartisan consensus has emerged in Washington to raise taxes. But negotiators working to avert the year-end “fiscal cliff” remain far apart on crucial details, including how taxes should go up and who should pay more. Neither side gave ground in an opening round of staff-level talks last week at the Capitol. As President Obama and congressional leaders...

Read More..

New eurozone talks to save Greece from financial collapse

BRUSSELS: Eurozone finance ministers meet in Brussels Monday for the third time in two weeks for talks on unlocking the next slice of aid to debt-crippled Greece, which is in danger of running out of money.Greece has been waiting since June for a loan instalment of 31.2 billion euros (US$40 billion), part of a 130-billion-euro financial assistance package initially granted early this...

Read More..