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'Bin Laden' in warning to France after kidnap in Niger
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Mr Kirchner, 60, who had been operated on in September for heart problems, died in the southern Argentine city of El Calafate, local media reported. His wife, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, is the current president of the country. Mr Kirchner served as president from 2003 to 2007, and was being tipped to stand for election again in 2011. He had remained a member of the Argentine congress and secretary general of the South American regional grouping, Unasur. But he had been dogged by ill health and had undergone two major operations in 2010 alone. In February Mr Kirchner had surgery to remove a blockage in his carotid artery, which carried blood from the heart to the brain. He had a second operation in September, when routine tests revealed a blocked coronary artery. Mr Kirchner was given an emergency angioplasty after complaining of numbness in his legs.
Explosion at Hare Krishna temple in Leicester
A Hare Krishna temple in Leicester has been partly destroyed in an explosion.A third of the terraced property on Thoresby Street has been destroyed and is too unstable for emergency services to enter.There had been reports that worshippers were trapped inside the building, but Leicestershire Fire Service has confirmed everyone is accounted for.
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Would more holiday be good for America?
In theory, the summer is over here. We've just had August Bank Holiday, the British equivalent of Labor Day, the last official three-day weekend of the summer.
A third of the terraced property on Thoresby Street has been destroyed and is too unstable for emergency services to enter.There had been reports that worshippers were trapped inside the building, but Leicestershire Fire Service has confirmed everyone is accounted for.It is thought that gas bottles being used for cooking during celebrations at the temple could have exploded.A wide cordon is in place around the building, which is still on fire.A local councillor told BBC Radio Leicester that the president of the temple had also confirmed that everyone who had been inside the temple was "safe and well".
'People screaming'
BBC reporter Jonathan Cecil said he had seen a couple of "walking wounded" outside the building.Eyewitness Fatima Khatri said: "We were all working and we suddenly heard a big bang and for one split second we thought it was a bomb, so we all ran to the window."Suddenly we heard the other bang and we saw all these flames coming out and we just could not believe it because the whole street was shaken up.
"Everyone was really nervous because all we could see is the fire and people screaming and running around, all the children couldn't stop crying and it was a terrible devastating scene."
Japan reveals long-secretive execution process
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| Red tape marks the trap door through which an inmate falls as he or she is hanged. |
Japan, one of the few industrialized countries with the death penalty, showed one of its execution chambers to the media for the first time.
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Hilton arrested for alleged cocaine possession
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The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallised carbon, 4,000 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus.It's the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk.Astronomers have decided to call the star "Lucy" after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
Twinkle twinkle
"You would need a jeweller's loupe the size of the Sun to grade this diamond," says astronomer Travis Metcalfe, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the team of researchers that discovered it.The diamond star completely outclasses the largest diamond on Earth, the 546-carat Golden Jubilee which was cut from a stone brought out of the Premier mine in South Africa.The huge cosmic diamond - technically known as BPM 37093 - is actually a crystallised white dwarf. A white dwarf is the hot core of a star, left over after the star uses up its nuclear fuel and dies. It is made mostly of carbon.For more than four decades, astronomers have thought that the interiors of white dwarfs crystallised, but obtaining direct evidence became possible only recently.The white dwarf is not only radiant but also rings like a gigantic gong, undergoing constant pulsations.
"By measuring those pulsations, we were able to study the hidden interior of the white dwarf, just like seismograph measurements of earthquakes allow geologists to study the interior of the Earth.
"We figured out that the carbon interior of this white dwarf has solidified to form the galaxy's largest diamond," says Metcalfe.
Astronomers expect our Sun will become a white dwarf when it dies 5 billion years from now. Some two billion years after that, the Sun's ember core will crystallise as well, leaving a giant diamond in the centre of the solar system.
"Our Sun will become a diamond that truly is forever," says Metcalfe.
Five trapped Chile miners 'depressed'
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Facebook alternative Diaspora eyes launch date
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| Many believe that it will be difficult to challenge Facebook |
An audio message said to have been recorded by the al-Qaeda leader says the abduction was retaliation for "France's injustice to Muslims". It says forthcoming French curbs on the full veil are "colonial oppression". The speaker identified as Bin Laden also tells France to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.Bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks on the US and other atrocities, is America's most wanted man.Believed by some to have been killed years ago, he is said by others to be still alive, living in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.
'Free women'
Five French citizens and two others were abducted by al-Qaeda militants at a uranium mine in Niger last month.It is thought they are now being held in the north-west of neighbouring Mali.Officials in Mali and Niger recently told France's AFP news agency they believed the captives were still alive.The speaker on the recording, broadcast by Qatar-based satellite TV channel al-Jazeera, says the kidnapping was "in retaliation for [France's] tyranny... against [the] Muslim nation".France, he says, believes it has "the right to prevent free women from wearing the hijab".To protect its security, the speaker goes on, France must "withdraw from the damned war of [former US President George W] Bush in Afghanistan".
But the little development of flats I live in is still quiet. A majority of folks still seem to be on vacation.Not me, of course. I may have lived in Britain for 25 years but I'm an American by birth, self-employed, and so after nine days away, I'm back in harness, ready for action.And as most of my work this week involves organising a lecture tour in the US in the autumn, I am having a productive time. It may be the last week of summer in the land of my birth but almost everybody I need to be in touch with in America is at their desk sounding harassed as ever.
Month-long shutdown
When people speak of the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism, what they are usually referring to is the remarkable Anglo-American coincidence that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan came to office at the same time and shared identical economic philosophies and policy gurus.
Those days are gone and the Anglo-Saxon model is more nostalgia than reality. But even in the headiest days of the Iron Lady and the Gipper, one place where the model didn't hold was on the issue of paid annual leave.
British workers get generous guarantees of time off, currently 20 days a year. That is one full month of paid leave. Judiciously planned around public holidays, it means this country basically shuts down for most of August and between Christmas and New Year.It's not just Britain where good vacation is the norm.The figures in a 2007 report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) are stark. It looked at 21 of the richest countries in the world, and found that only one, the US, does not impose a legal mandate on employers to provide time off.
Obviously, people in America do get paid annual leave, but for most wage earners it is subject to so many different calculations based on seniority and how much you earn, it can only be described as miserly.In other words, it is a privilege to be earned rather than a normal part of compensation.Nine days of annual leave is what the average American accrues during the course of a year. So you have to be at your job for 12 months before you begin to get even that amount.If you figure that folks might take a day or two at Christmas, maybe Thanksgiving, and keep a day or two in the bank for a family emergency, what you're left with come the good weather is a week of vacation if you're lucky.
Reporters were shown the death chamber at the Tokyo Detention Facility, one of seven used across the country. The unprecedented media access was ordered by Justice Minister Keiko Chiba, who after witnessing the deaths of two condemned prisoners last month, said she wanted to have a national debate on capital punishment in Japan, Mainchi reported. Chiba has previously spoken against the death penalty.
Execution in Japan is carried out by hanging.
The chamber showed to the media on Friday had no noose suspended from the ceiling but showed a trap door outlined in red. The condemned fall to a room below the execution chamber where their deaths are confirmed.Reporters were not shown that room out of "consideration for the inmates' family and wardens," according to the Mainichi report.
They did see other areas involved in the execution process, including the room where a button is pushed to release the trap door, a room where the condemned can get religious last rites or an entry room where inmates are told they are about to be executed.Prison officials described Japan’s execution process, long shrouded in secrecy.The two men executed on July 28, Ogata Hidenori, 33, and Shinozawa Kazuo, 59, were the first put to death since the August 2009 elections in Japan, according to Amnesty International. The organization says 107 prisoners remain on death row in Japan.The hotel heiress was riding in a black Cadillac Escalade which was pulled over in front of the Wynn Hotel on the Vegas strip at about 11:30 p.m. after police detected the smell of marijuana coming from the SUV, Lt. Wayne Holman told CNN.The driver, who police did not identify, was arrested for driving under the influence, he said.Hilton was taken to the Clark County jail. She was released after authorities determined she was not a flight risk, Holman said.Last month, Hilton was briefly detained in South Africa for allegedly smoking marijuana at the World Cup. Her publicist called the July 2 incident "a complete misunderstanding," and the case was dropped.
Mayor Ari Artuzi, his wife, deputy, and 25 other people have been arrested on suspicion of fraud and corruption.Prosecutors accuse the mayor of heading a complex corruption racket. Mr Artuzi's allies reject the charges.A judge has been appointed to run the city of 200,000 people in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul.
Prosecutors say Mr Artuzi and his collaborators took a 10% cut of all public works contracts and used the money for election campaigns and to bribe other local politicians.Among those arrested are the city's councillors for finance and administration and a hospital director.A spokesman for the council said Dourados had been left in limbo by the arrests.
Health Minister Jaime Manalich said five of the 33 miners, trapped 700m (2,300ft) below ground, were not eating properly and had refused to be filmed.Mr Manalich said psychologists would attempt to treat the men from the surface over an intercom system.Engineers say work on an escape tunnel, which may take four months to reach the miners, will have started by Monday.The men, who have already been stuck in the shaft for three weeks, were only discovered on 22 August.
'Very isolated' A small tunnel has been drilled down to them from the surface to allow supplies to be sent down.Heavy machinery from Spain and Australia, including a 29-ton hydraulic bore, is now being assembled to drill the escape tunnel.Despite their ordeal, most of the men looked relatively upbeat in a self-made film broadcast on Chilean TV on Thursday.However, Mr Manalich said five of the men were not seen on the film."They are very isolated, they did not want to appear on the film, they are not eating well," he said."I would say depression is the right word."
Relatives of the 33 men have camped out at the surface of the San Jose mine, near the city of Copiapo, some 725km (450 miles) north of Santiago.
The BBC's James Reynolds, in Copiapo, says the relatives are being urged to write to their loved ones as often as possible as part of the effort to keep the men's spirits up.
Jai Jatra being celebrated in the Kathmandu
Locals guised as Hindu gods and goddess during the celebration of Gai Jatra festival at Basntapur, Kathmandu on Wednesday. Gaijatra is observed by the families from Newar community to commemorate their dead relatives.
Diaspora describes itself as a "privacy-aware, personally-controlled" social network.The open-source project made headlines earlier this year when Facebook was forced to simplify its privacy settings, after they were criticised for being overly complex and confusing.The project, developed by four US students, raised $200,000 (£140,000)"We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open-sourced on September 15th," the team wrote on their blog.The team said they had spent the summer "building clear, contextual sharing".
"That means an intuitive way for users to decide, and not notice deciding, what content goes to their co-workers and what goes to their drinking buddies. We know that's a hard [user interface] problem and we take it seriously."The project was started by three computer scientists and one mathematician from New York.Their idea of building it gained momentum earlier this year during an intense period of criticism of Facebook, the world's largest social network.We want to put users back in control of what they share," Max Salzberg, one of the founders, told BBC News at the time.The team turned to the fundraising site Kickstarter to raise the $10,000 they thought they would need to build the network.In the end the team raised $200,642 from nearly 6,500 people.Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, reportedly donated to the project.
The initial release on 15 September will be to "open-source" Diaspora, meaning that the team will make the underlying code available for anyone to see and modify.Many believe that it will be difficult to challenge Facebook, which now has 500 million users and is currently estimated to be worth $33bn.
Wyclef Jean election ruling is final, says lawyer
The 40-year-old hip-hop star has said he will appeal after the council said he was not eligible to stand in November polls.The Haitian constitution requires candidates to have lived in the country for five years prior to an election.Mr Jean lives in the US, but says he has been a roving ambassador for Haiti.He argues that this exempts him from the residency requirement.
Samuel Pierre, from the electoral council's legal department, said that according to article 191 of the country's electoral law, decisions by the election authority's disputes tribunal cannot be challenged."Therefore, there is absolutely no possibility for Wyclef Jean to be added to the list of candidates approved to run in the next presidential elections," Mr Pierre told Reuters news agency."So it's over," he said.The country is the poorest in the region, and still recovering from January's earthquake, which killed an estimated 230,000 people and left more than one million homeless.Following the ruling on Friday, Mr Jean issued a statement saying he accepted the decision but did not agree with it.But he later told reporters that he was refusing to give up and would challenge the ruling in court.On Tuesday, in an interview with MSNBC, he said he had presented documents demonstrating that he met all the requirements, and alleged that the electoral council was corrupt.
He said potential rivals did not want him to run.
Mr Jean was one of 15 candidates disqualified from running in polls which will elect a successor to President Rene Preval.
He said potential rivals did not want him to run.
Mr Jean was one of 15 candidates disqualified from running in polls which will elect a successor to President Rene Preval.
Liverpool will be without captain Steven Gerrard and striker Fernando Torres for their Europa League second leg tie with Trabzonspor on Thursday.
14 killed in Makwanpur air crash
KATHMANDU -
Fourteen persons, including five Nepalis, four Americans, a Japanese, a British national and three crew members, were killed when an Agni Air aircraft crashed in Sikharpur VDC-2 in Makwanpur district on Tuesday morning.Preliminary investigation revealed that bad weather caused the 9N AHE D-228 (15-seater-Dornier) aircraft to crash at Bastipur.Airport officials said the accident occurred at around 7:30 am when the aircraft that was headed for Lukla in Solukhumbu district in the northeast diverted to the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) in Kathmandu due to bad weather.The plane had five Nepali passengers and three crew members.Bimlesh Karna, manager of the Air Traffic Section at the TIA, said the cause of the crash was not known immediately though it appeared bad weather played a part.“Weather was clear at both the TIA and Lukla airports when the aircraft took off, but after some 15 minutes the pilot reported that the weather went bad mid-way,” he said.The control room then instructed the aircraft to divert to the South towards the Simara route.
The gateway to Mt. Everest, Lukla had reported bad weather for eight consecutive days. The aircraft was directed to fly 16 nautical miles towards the south. However, after the aircraft reached 8 nautical miles, the pilot again contacted the tower saying that the weather was clear there and that he was making a direct flight to the TIA from that point, Karna said. “Since than, we lost contact with the aircraft,” he added. Binod Giri, Director, Aviation Safety Department, Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) said the cause of the crash could not be ascertained immediately. “It can either be some mechanical problem or a weather problem,” he said. However, Agni Air’s marketing manager Pramod Pandey said the aircraft that was added to Agni’s fleet four years ago had no technical problem as such. The government formed a five-member committee led by aviation expert Kumar Prasad Upadhyay to investigate Tuesday’s crash. It has been asked to prepare a report within 65 days.
Fourteen persons, including five Nepalis, four Americans, a Japanese, a British national and three crew members, were killed when an Agni Air aircraft crashed in Sikharpur VDC-2 in Makwanpur district on Tuesday morning.Preliminary investigation revealed that bad weather caused the 9N AHE D-228 (15-seater-Dornier) aircraft to crash at Bastipur.Airport officials said the accident occurred at around 7:30 am when the aircraft that was headed for Lukla in Solukhumbu district in the northeast diverted to the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) in Kathmandu due to bad weather.The plane had five Nepali passengers and three crew members.Bimlesh Karna, manager of the Air Traffic Section at the TIA, said the cause of the crash was not known immediately though it appeared bad weather played a part.“Weather was clear at both the TIA and Lukla airports when the aircraft took off, but after some 15 minutes the pilot reported that the weather went bad mid-way,” he said.The control room then instructed the aircraft to divert to the South towards the Simara route.
The gateway to Mt. Everest, Lukla had reported bad weather for eight consecutive days. The aircraft was directed to fly 16 nautical miles towards the south. However, after the aircraft reached 8 nautical miles, the pilot again contacted the tower saying that the weather was clear there and that he was making a direct flight to the TIA from that point, Karna said. “Since than, we lost contact with the aircraft,” he added. Binod Giri, Director, Aviation Safety Department, Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) said the cause of the crash could not be ascertained immediately. “It can either be some mechanical problem or a weather problem,” he said. However, Agni Air’s marketing manager Pramod Pandey said the aircraft that was added to Agni’s fleet four years ago had no technical problem as such. The government formed a five-member committee led by aviation expert Kumar Prasad Upadhyay to investigate Tuesday’s crash. It has been asked to prepare a report within 65 days.
Pakistan's cricketers donate bonuses to floods relief
Pakistan's top cricketers have dug into their pockets to help the flood relief effort in the country.
Players and officials on the national team agreed to donate bonuses totalling $54,400 (£35,000; 4.6m rupees).They pledged half their bonuses after beating England in the third Test last week, the Pakistan Cricket Board said.The rare good news came as an earthquake in the Hindu Kush mountains rocked parts of the country, although there were no reports of casualties.Tuesday's 5.2 magnitude tremor shook the Swat Valley and regions close to Hindu Kush, Zahid Rafi, director of the seismic centre at Pakistan's meteorological department, told the AFP news agency.As flood waters were predicted to rise further in some areas, Pakistan's leaders held high-level talks aimed at preventing a mass health crisis.Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the government was "seriously concerned" about the potential spread of epidemic diseases in the flood-hit country.Defoe poised for groin operation
Tottenham striker Jermain Defoe is to have an operation on a groin injury next week that will keep him out of England's Euro 2012 qualifiers in September.
General warns on Afghan deadline
A senior US general warns that President Barack Obama's deadline to begin pulling troops out of Afghanistan is encouraging the Taliban
LP Ariyawathie, 49, said her employer in Saudi Arabia inflicted the injuries as a punishment, according to medics at Kamburupitiya Hospital, Sri Lanka."She was brought in complaining her Saudi employer drove nails into her body," said hospital director Prabath Gajadeera."X-rays showed that there were 24 nails and a needle."The nails were up to two inches (5cm) long, said Mr Gajadeera."There is one nail on the forehead, just under the skin," he added.
'Deeply traumatised'
Ms Ariyawathie, a mother of three, travelled to Saudi Arabia in March to become a housemaid.
Doctors say this X-ray shows nails embedded in the housemaid's hand.Last week, she flew back to Sri Lanka and was admitted to hospital in the south of the island, where she told doctors she had undergone abuse for more than a month."When we checked her, we found 24 metal pieces in her legs and hands. She still can't properly sit down and walk," Dr Kamal Weerathunga told BBC Sandeshaya.Doctors said Ms Ariyawathie was deeply traumatised and unable to give full details of her experience.
But she is not in a serious condition and surgeons are expected to try to remove the metal objects from her body on Friday.
Sri Lankan authorities have told journalists in Colombo that an investigation has been launched.Around 1.8 million Sri Lankans are employed abroad, 70% of whom are women.Most work as housemaids in the Middle East, while smaller numbers work in Singapore and Hong Kong.
Google offers free voice calls via Gmail
The service allows users to make calls to landlines and mobiles from inside their Gmail account.
Phoning anywhere in the US and Canada will be free until the end of the year, while calls to the UK, France, China and Germany will cost 2 cents a minute.
Until now Google offered computer-to-computer voice and video chat services.
"This is a real big deal because now hundreds of millions of Gmail users can make phone calls right from their Gmail page," Craig Walker, product manager for real-time communications told BBC News."They don't need to download an additional application or anything to start making really high-quality low-cost calls. For the user it means much more efficient and low-cost communications."The product will initially be rolled out in the US, the firm said, although some users in other countries have already reported that they can use the feature.The product link will appear on the left hand of the Gmail page within the "chat" window. A "call phone" option will pop up along with a number pad to let you dial the number of the person you want to talk to.Google said money raised from international calls will pay for the free US and Canadian calls."What surprised me was that they actually said they hope to make money off the calls," said Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of technology blog SearchEngineLand.
"Normally Google is like 'We don't know how we are going to make the money' or 'We will make money down the way, don't worry about it' and this stands out as a big benefit that they get actual revenue early on."
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