“Sir Elton John and David Furnish … have instructed my office to pursue through the justice system the violation of the right to respect for their private life due to the publishing by Closermag.fr, TeleStar.fr and VSD of unfounded rumours about their health,” Vincent Toledano said in a statement on Friday.

Officials raised their alert to its second-highest level after picking up increasing seismic activity around the volcano Sakurajima, which sits just off the coast of Kagoshima, a city of more than 600,000 people.....

The message is believed to be the first time al-Qaeda propaganda has presented Hamza Bin Laden as an official member of the militant group.

In the message, shared by al-Qaeda supporters on Twitter, Hamza Bin Laden urges attacks on the US and its allies.

Osama Bin Laden was killed by US special forces in 2011 in a raid on his compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan.

The group has since been led by al-Qaeda's former second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri..........

These footprints, now fossilized, are helping researchers understand what types of dinosaurs lived in what is now modern-day northern Germany. The tracks show that one dinosaur was large, and the other small. Their prints suggest they walked at a slow, strolling pace — about 3.9 mph (6.3 km/hour) for the large one and about 6 mph (9.7 km/h) for the little one.

At some points, the small dinosaur began trotting, possibly to keep pace with the large one. The footprints also indicate the dinosaurs skid here and there, likely slipping on the wet sand, said study researcher Pernille Troelsen, who earned her master’s degree in biology from the University of Southern Denmark in June.........

The threats came amid escalating military tensions on the Korean peninsula following a landmine attack South Korea blamed on the North and ahead of a major South Korea-US joint military exercise condemned by Pyongyang.

They also coincided with celebrations in both Koreas to mark the 70th anniversary of the Korean peninsula's 1945 liberation from Japanese colonial rule.

Initially there were hopes the anniversary might be an opportunity for some sort of inter-Korean rapprochement, but instead ties have spiralled downwards to the familiar accompaniment of angry rhetoric and mutual recrimination........

Fire has reignited there, sending thick plumes of black smoke into the sky, according to Xinhua news agency.

Authorities evacuated all persons within three kilometers (1.8 miles), Beijing News reported, citing Armed Police. CNN has reported at least one disaster recovery shelter located within the new evacuation radius..........

The father of a soldier killed in the 2003 invasion of Iraq said Wednesday that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair should be tried as a war criminal, as military families pledged to take legal action against the UK government if it does not publish a long-delayed investigation into the war.

“I’d like to see Tony Blair dragged in shackles off to court as a war criminal because we have to bear in mind 180 British service personnel were killed here, over 3,500 wounded, two million Iraqis fled Iraq, over 100,000 innocent Iraqis have been killed,” Reg Keys, who lost his son, Lance Corporal Tom Keys, during the 2003 invasion, told the BBC.........

In a rebuff to coal, oil and gas companies, Rachel Kyte, the World Bank climate change envoy, said continued use of coal was exacting a heavy cost on some of the world’s poorest countries, in local health impacts as well as climate change, which is imposing even graver consequences on the developing world. ........

The haul of prized animal parts was discovered hidden in two containers on board a ship carrying ground stones at the central port of Da Nang on Thursday, Tuoi Tre newspaper said.

"The elephant tusks weighed 593 kilograms and the rhino horn chunks weighed 142 kilograms," the report said, adding that the illegal shipment had come via Malaysia.........

To celebrate they had booked a restaurant close to the campus, and as they are walking in, who is coming out but "Veep" - Vice President Joe Biden.

He stops and talks to the family, and takes the young man by the arm and says: "Always honour your mother and father. They've worked hard to put you through college."

I bet if Mr Biden were reminded of this encounter he would have no recollection of it. But for my friend it made the deepest impression, and she has wanted him to run for the Democratic nomination ever since. .. ........

The justice ministry said in a statement that SK Group’s Chey Tae-won will be among some 6,500 people to be released from prison before the 70th anniversary Saturday of Korea’s liberation from Japan’s colonial occupation.

It said the government decided on pardons for 14 business people including Chey based on their contributions to the national economy.. ........

Hello! asked its readers to vote on ten royal women, including Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, Kate Middleton the Duchess of Cambridge, Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway, Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, and Queen Rania of Jordan.

Nearly 29 percent of the readers voted for Mary as the best dressed, putting her on the top of the list, above Queen Maxima of the Netherlands. Mary truly outclassed her Scandinavian rivals, as Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit took dead last and Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden was voted the second worst-dressed. ........

Radazz Hearns, 14, survived the shooting and is now recovering at a local hospital, NJ.com reported.

Rhonda Tirado a witness, said she was sitting on her front porch during the incident. She told reporters that an unmarked van stopped across the street next to a group of young boys — three officers exited then exited the vehicle to question the youngsters.

The boys immediately ran and Hearns allegedly reached for his waistband as a Mercer County police officer fired 10 shots........

This means instead of being fined up to $9500 for making an illegal download customers will probably pay only the retail price of the film plus costs. This is likely to amount to less than the cost of a speeding ticket or late video fine.

And the court refused to hand over customers details to the film's producers saying the company which owns rights to the movie is engaged in "speculative invoicing".

In a big win for downloaders, Justice Nye Perram said that Dallas Buyers Club LLC is only entitled to demand from each customer the cost of purchasing a single copy of the movie (available for $12.98) and a proportion of their legal costs.......

One farmer in the East who harvested 100 tons of grain last year has already written off his entire harvest this year. The situation is similar in most parts of Iceland, though a good harvest is expected in parts of South Iceland.

Eymundur Magnússon, a wheat farmer at Vallanes in East Iceland, harvested 100 tons of wheat last year, but does not think he will have a harvest at all this year. He told RÚV that even if conditions improve significantly, it is too little too late to save the harvest—the plants have developed too late and are still too sensitive for this time of year. Last summer was among the best in memory in East Iceland, and the harvest was excellent.

Though the light from the bamboo torches gives the protest a festive air, the message the protesters are sending is serious. One handmade sign reads “The corrupt have ripped apart my country.” Another says: “Enough is enough.”

It is a scene that has been repeated every Friday evening for nearly three months, since the government party was linked to a fraud and graft scheme that nearly bled the national health service dry.

The route taken by hundreds of peaceful protesters on a recent Friday was particularly symbolic. It started at the Honduran Social Security Institute (IHSS) whose former director and other officials allegedly siphoned off some $200m through shell companies to pay for luxury lifestyles complete with mansions in Miami, sports cars and lavish parties with highly paid prostitutes..........

The festival, which takes place between 2 and 5 pm offers a variety of bacon inspired dishes from Reykjavik restaurants, beverages supplied by Vífilfell and performances from Vox Feminae, Kveinstafir and more.

A ticket for food at the festival costs 350 ISK for one dish and 100 ISK for one beverage. All proceeds from the festival, which is set up by volunteers, go to charity. In the last years the funds raised have gone to the National Children's Hospital, the National University Hospital Heartward and Umhyggja, an association for children with long term illnesses.

The Reykjavik Bacon Festival is the sister festival of the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival, the largest of its kind, which takes place in Iowa in the US each year.

The suspects, Saad al-Nahian and Masud Rana, are members of the banned hardline Islamist group Ansarullah Bangla Team. Nahian was on bail on a separate charge of attempted murder over an attack on another blogger, Asif Mohiuddin, in 2013.

Last Friday at least four men posing as tenants entered an apartment building and hacked to death 28-year-old Niladry Chattopadhya, who used the pen name Niloy Neel. Chattopadhya’s wife, Asha Moni, filed a murder case against four unnamed persons............

Alexandre de Moraes, the head of the São Paulo state public safety department, said at a news conference that police are trying to determine if Thursday night’s shootings in the suburbs of Osasco, Barueri and Itapevi, on the western outskirts of São Paulo, are related.

He said 15 of the victims were shot dead in Osasco, three were killed in Barueri and one in Itapevi. Seven people were wounded and are hospitalized.

The mayor of Osasco, Jorge Lapas, told the Globo TV network the killings may have been in reprisal for the recent shooting deaths of two police officers.

At least 10 of the dead were shot at a bar after hooded men got out of a car and opened fire...........

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fired back at former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s claim this week that she and President Barack Obama bear responsibility for the continued destabilization of Iraq after U.S. troops left in 2011..........

The family of Kayla Mueller said in an interview Friday that the FBI had informed them that the emir of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had sexually abused their daughter, a humanitarian worker.

Mueller’s parents said the FBI first spoke to the family about the sexual assault in June and provided more details approximately two weeks ago. The bureau pieced together what happened to the American from interviews with other hostages and the captured wife of a senior Islamic State figure.

The FBI also told the Muellers that their daughter was tortured.

The incident has occurred in Guangdong province, in Dongguan. Evidence of the monster disaster first appeared on LiveLeak in the early hours of Thursday.

Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, a former FIFA vice president considering a run to replace Sepp Blatter as president told AFP in an interview this week that the global body should be spending "a hell of a lot more" on football development.

FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke called the comments "quite disappointing".

"It was also surprising, to say the least, given that he served as the deputy chairman of FIFA’s development committee from October 2011 to March 2013," Valcke said in a statement to AFP.

"Football development is FIFA’s first pillar," Valcke added.

"We are spending more than ever on the game around the world, redistributing resources from the FIFA World Cup into development programmes everywhere to reduce the gap between the strong and weak footballing nations."...........

"They're figuring out if there's a path financially and politically," an unnamed Democrat told BuzzFeed about the insiders. "It feels more real than it has in the past months".

Gore, aged 67, was the Democratic candidate in the 2000 election when the US Supreme Court stopped a vote recount in Florida, which ultimately led to Republican George W Bush becoming the country's 43rd President...........

Researchers including Rahul I. Patel, a PhD student in Physics & Astronomy Department of Stony Brook University, New York, are calling the exoplanet a "young Jupiter" because it shares many characteristics of Jupiter.......

A team from the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Beijing environmental emergency response centre has also gone to the area.

The blasts struck a warehouse of hazardous chemicals at a port and were so large they were seen by satellites in space, sending shockwaves through apartment blocks a number of miles away.

The exact cause is not yet known but China’s President Xi Jinping has demanded those responsible are “severely handled”.

This footage was captured by a remote control underwater vehicle and shows a 'flying spaghetti monster' living 4,000ft beneath the Atlantic.

BP workers were so amazed by the creature's similarities to the mythical god that they called their discovery after it.

They then sent the footage, filmed off the cost of Angola, to marine scientists in Southampton.

The Toronto-based International Centre for Science in Drug Policy attempted to inject itself into the federal election campaign on Wednesday by releasing a list of 11 common claims about the use and regulation of pot that research shows are actually incorrect. Such false claims about marijuana lead to policies that actually put youth at risk, the researchers say.. ........

The term “cuckservative” caught the eye of puzzled observers this week amid the froth of commentary floating around the race to become the Republican nominee for president in 2016.

It has been dubbed a sign of a “raging civil war” tearing the Republican party apart, “the GamerGate” of white supremacists, and a meme expressing “a certain kind of contempt”. But the dictionaries have yet to step in, leaving readers to take it apart more or less on their own.

The basics are simple: cuckold, a man with an adulterous wife or partner, and conservative, which in context means someone on the spectrum of 21st-century Republican thought. ........

Lavrov and Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubier met Tuesday to discuss how to resolve the worsening Syrian civil war, and the fate of President Bashar al-Assad. The two men disagreed how to deal with the embattled president, as Russia believes Assad, an ally of President Vladimir Putin, should be involved in a coalition against the Islamic State, but Saudi Arabia wants him removed from power.

While the Saudi top diplomat spoke, Lavrov was seen shaking his head, adjusting his glasses, and muttering to himself, "[expletive] imbeciles," according to translators, reported CNBC.

Hillary Clinton “lies”. Hillary Clinton’s “character is flawed.” Hillary Clinton “has blood on her hands”. Fiorina is constantly hitting Clinton with sharp, well-chosen jabs.

Now, as she enjoys a polling boost following the 6 August debate, Republicans are wondering whether Fiorina can expand her repertoire beyond Clinton-baiting and mount a full-bore candidacy. To make her case, the former magazine cover star (of Fortune) is keeping up a schedule befitting her tech titan past, with almost a dozen events planned over five days in Iowa, to culminate Monday in a soapbox appearance at the state fair. .........

Tilburg, a city of 200,000 habitants close to the border with Belgium, will follow Utrecht’s initiative, and the cities of Groningen, Maastricht, Gouda, Enschede, Nijmegen and Wageningen are also considering it.

Supporters of basic income say it is a good mechanism to alleviate poverty and social exclusion. A recent study conducted in 18 European countries concluded that generous welfare benefits make people likely to want to work more, not less..........

“I love light skin,” Fatou said. “I can’t stop.”

Many Ivorian women – as well as increasing numbers of men – are using creams despite their known health risks, defying a government ban introduced earlier this year.

The ban outlawed the sale of whitening products because of associated health problems, ranging in seriousness from white spots and acne to cancer. If applied liberally, the cosmetics can also cause high blood pressure and diabetes, according to Elidje Ekra, a dermatologist at Abidjan’s Treichville university hospital.

The banned products include creams containing mercury, steroids, vitamin A, or with hydroquinone levels above 2%.........

“We’re looking into the reports,” Air Force Col. Pat Ryder, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said Thursday night.

The Wall Street Journal and NBC News reported the allegations, citing unnamed defense and intelligence officials, about the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS.

“As in previous instances of alleged ISIL use of chemicals as weapons, we are aware of the reports and are seeking additional information," National Security Council spokesman Alistair Baskey said in an email...........

The former Florida governor said in general he believed torture was inappropriate and his brother, former President George W Bush, largely ended the CIA’s use of the techniques before he left office. The CIA had been using waterboarding, slapping, nudity, sleep deprivation, humiliation and other methods to coerce al-Qaida detainees – methods the military would be prohibited from using on prisoners of war.

“I don’t want to make a definitive, blanket kind of statement,” Jeb Bush told an audience of Iowa Republicans, when asked whether he would keep in place or repeal President Barack Obama’s executive order banning so-called enhanced interrogation techniques by the CIA..........

Mexico’s National Autonomous University scientists say they found a subterranean cavity about 20 metres deep below the pyramid of Kukulkan, also known as El Castillo.

Geophysics expert Rene Chavez said on Thursday that the underground river chamber is naturally covered by rock. Such underground rivers often connect the open cenotes, or sinkhole lakes, that dot Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula.

The discovery was made using a kind electrical resistance survey, not by excavating. Chavez said one corner of the pyramid rested on the underground chamber, so it was in danger of collapsing..........

Copenhagen Airport on Thursday forwarded complaints of harassment at security check-in points to the Copenhagen Police.

After an opinion column in Politiken described one woman’s reported sexual harassment, a series of other articles appeared in the national press about women who said they too felt violated by airport security personnel. With the media focus on the issue, 53 people have contacted the airport to file similar complaints.

Female travellers have reported that male security personnel have crossed the line when performing body checks, touching the women’s breasts and groin area..........

The girl, known by the legal pseudonym “Mainumby”, gave birth to a girl weighing 3.55kg (7.8lbs) at the Reina Sofia maternity hospital, a facility run by the Red Cross in Asunción, Paraguay’s capital. The baby was delivered by Caesarean section as a natural birth was judged to be too dangerous.

Neither the mother nor the child are reported to have experienced any health complications. “It was like any other Caesarean, but with the age difference,” Reina Sofia Director Mario Villalba told local radio. “She’s well and progressing like in any other surgery, but we’ll see afterwards how she gets on as a mother.”..............

The fish were processed under the watchful eye of a Japanese inspector and will be flown to market in Japan, America and Europe.

The fishing boat Jóhanna Gísladóttir caught the tuna on a five-day tour 150 nautical miles south of Iceland. The fish were caught on lines 35 km long, with 2,000 hooks.

The ship landed 19 fish—each weighing 150-180 kg, RÚV reports..............

Ahead of his official retirement on Friday, Odierno, the former highest-ranking officer in Iraq and one of the architects of the 2007 troop surge there, sought to set the record straight.

“I remind everybody that us leaving at the end of 2011 was negotiated in 2008 by the Bush administration. That was always the plan, we had promised them that we would respect their sovereignty,” Odierno said during his final press conference at the Pentagon.

In a speech on Tuesday at the Reagan Library in California, Bush criticized President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for what he characterized as a premature decision to bring 90,000 troops home.............

The MMR-conducted poll showed that 80 per cent of those surveyed viewed tourism in the country positively, while just 6.3 per cent admitted they were somewhat negative about it and 3.1 per cent very negative. The remaining 12.5 per cent said they were neither positive nor negative on the subject.

The researchers found that the positive views on tourism could be linked in some way to income, with those earning more money tending to be more upbeat, while 17.5 per cent of respondents with a monthly family wage below 250,000 kronor having either a somewhat or very negative view on foreign tourists. Further, just 62.3 per cent were either somewhat or very positive............

The ceremony, raising the flag over the building for the first time in 54 years, comes nearly four weeks after the United States and Cuba formally renewed diplomatic relations and upgraded their diplomatic missions to embassies.

While the Cubans celebrated with a flag-raising in Washington on July 20, the Americans waited until Kerry could travel to Havana............

Japanese leaders have apologised countless times for the exactions of Imperial Japan.

Besides statements by former Prime Ministers Maruyama and Koizumi, Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono, as well as expressions of regrets from the emperor, Japan has paid formal and informal reparations to numerous victims of Japanese aggression.

Yet, the perceived wisdom in many quarters is that Japan has not shown any contrition for the deeds of its empire. These criticisms are always followed by: "Germany, however, has faced its Nazi past honestly, unlike Japan."...........

A team of military chemical experts is testing for toxic gases at the scene and rescuers have been ordered to wear protective clothing, state media said.

At least 50 people died and hundreds were injured, 71 critically, in the explosions on Wednesday evening.

Meanwhile, search teams found a survivor in the debris on Friday.

The survivor was named as 19-year-old firefighter Zhou Ti, state-run news agency Xinhua said.

Officials said earlier that 17 firefighters were among the dead and China's Ministry of Public Security added that, as of Thursday afternoon, 18 others were still missing.

Two men were inside the plane and according to the West Fjords police the men were unharmed and the plane intact. The matter is being investigated but police say it's clear that they were extremely lucky that all went well.

Analysis by technology site Ars Technica has shown that Windows 10 still contacts Microsoft even when these features are disabled, although some of this is simple and non-identifiable testing for an internet connection.

However, other bits of information sent to and requested from Microsoft, including those associated with the company’s cloud storage service, OneDrive, and to an unknown content delivery network, have a user identification number attached.

The machines used for the test were using a local login to Windows 10, not a Microsoft account, and had OneDrive, Cortana, live tiles and every other privacy-protecting setting active...........

The Canadian actress aims to persuade Russian authorities to block the passage of the St Kitts and Nevis-registered cargo ship Winter Bay, which is set to sail over the north-eastern passage as it passes through the Arctic. The vessel recently left Tromso in Norway’s harbour with 1,800 tonnes of whale meat on route to Japan.

Anderson penned a letter to Russian president Vladimir Putin last month urging him to act quickly and stop the shipment. In it, she said that she would love to meet him to talk about her foundation, and develop a constructive relationship with his government on issues linked to the environment, wildlife and animals. She added that she had a voice in the international community, and wanted to use it to ensure the world was a better place for all living things..........

The world-famous “Charlotte’s Web” oil is named after Charlotte Figi, an eight-year-old sufferer of Dravet Syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy. Following her miraculous reduction in seizures the age of five thanks to this CBD oil, Charlotte is now known as “the girl who is changing medical marijuana laws across America.”

Charlotte’s Web products contain low levels of THC, the major psychoactive component in marijuana. Rather, the oil is saturated with CBD—short for cannabidiol—one of many phytocannabinoids found in the cannabis plant.........

Donald Trump’s remarks about Megyn Kelly still make him the most vulgar of the Republican presidential candidates.

But he is no longer the nuttiest.

That distinction was claimed by Jeb Bush in a speech at the Reagan Library, when he declared that President Obama and Hillary Clinton are to blame for the rise of ISIS.

Jeb being the brother of the guy who used 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq in the first place, a venture that then-Senator Barack Obama opposed........

It was nothing that many of the Ukrainian soldiers arriving here hadn’t heard before in the eastern regions of their country, and it was familiar music, as well, to the Americans who have come here to try to make them even better fighters.

The Ukrainians brought stories from the front about the enemy, the arms, and the firepower used against Ukrainian troops. For American soldiers, listening to these members of former Soviet forces talking about their adversaries, also from the former Soviet army, this has been an education. It has given them a chance to study in granular detail a great deal about the evolution of Russian combat forces in the last quarter century.

Up to Aug. 9, 41 tigers have died across the country in 2015, according to data from the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and TRAFFIC India, a wildlife trade monitoring programme. In the same period last year, 42 tigers reportedly died.

While information on the nature of the deaths is limited, the data does show that five tigers died of natural causes. Some of the others died after being caught in snares or traps, likely placed by poachers, or after being poisoned by fearful villagers. One tiger was even shot by authorities in a conflict between humans and tigers in Tamil Nadu in February, according to the NTCA data........

Shade balls are tiny plastic black spheres that are dumped en masse into reservoirs as a conservation and protection measure. As the Los Angeles Daily News reports, you need a lot of them to be effective, and L.A. has released about 96 million of them into its Van Norman reservoir.

D’Silva started to form the idea for Safecity during a visit to Sweden where, having recently begun working on women’s issues following 20 years in the aviation industry, she met the founders of HarassMap – a project that, among other things, uses online and mobile technology to work towards ending sexual harassment and assault in Egypt. Shortly after D’Silva returned home to Delhi, the now infamous gang rape of a 23-year-old medical student on a Delhi bus took place.......

Charged with large-scale fraud, forgery, tax evasion and illegal entrepreneurship, Leyla Yunus, the director of the Institute of Peace and Democracy, faces up to 11 years in jail. Her husband Arif Yunis, accused of large-scale fraud, faces up to nine.

Internationally recognised for their work defending human rights, the verdict in the trial against the Yunuses will sound the death knell for the country’s once-vibrant civil society. That same civil society, which powerfully protested the decision to hold the Eurovision Song contest in Baku in 2012, is now in tatters.

For more than a decade Azerbaijan has made shameless use of caviar diplomacy to charm European governments, its most important oil and gas clients. In return Europe has turned a blind eye to Azerbaijan’s human rights violations. In the name of Leyla and Arif Yunus and all Azerbaijani democracy campaigners, the climate of impunity must end now.

She didn't count on the senator from Vermont.

A stunning new poll has Sen. Bernie Sanders beating presumptive Democratic presidential frontrunner Clinton in New Hampshire.

Sanders has eclipsed Clinton by a 44 to 37 percent margin, according to a new Franklin Pierce University/Boston Herald poll that was first reported by the Boston newspaper Tuesday evening.. .........

The images, released by 38 North, the respected website operated by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, show that a uranium mine and mill near Pyongsan have undergone major refurbishment work in the last 12 months.

"The most recent commercial satellite imagery indicates that the Uranium Concentration Plant is currently undergoing significant refurbishment", the report claims. .........

The interest in Abe's speech stands in stark contrast with the situation in Germany, another major defeated power in World War II. While Chancellor Angela Merkel traveled to Moscow in May to commemorate the end of the war in Europe and gave a statement that said Nazy Germany was "responsible" for millions of dead during the conflict, her comments faced little of the heated public scrutiny that accompanies every word that the Japanese leader says about World War II..........

The blast tore through the crowded Jameela market in the predominantly Shia district of Sadr City.

The Sunni jihadist group, Islamic State (IS), said it was behind the bombing and that it targeted Shia militiamen.

Meanwhile, medics say more than 20 civilians died when bombs dropped by the Iraqi air force hit a maternity and children's hospital in Falluja.

The city lies west of Baghdad and has been controlled by IS since January 2014.......

Police said Wednesday that they are still trying to figure out where the bar comes from and how it got into the Koenigssee lake, a popular tourist destination near Berchtesgaden on the border with Austria.

The 16-year-old girl, who was on vacation, found it around 2 meters (6 ½ feet) under the surface on Friday and handed it in to police.

Divers on Tuesday carried out a thorough search of the area around where the bar was found, but didn't find any more gold or other valuables.

US drones had previously executed a single lethal air strike against an Isis target in Syria but this was the first time manned US fighter jets had carried out raids after taking off from Turkey’s strategically located Incirlik base.

Turkey is currently pressing a two-pronged “anti-terror” offensive against Isis jihadists in Syria and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq and south-east Turkey following a wave of attacks inside the country. .........

The report, by the UK-based charity Freedom From Torture (FFT) and published on Thursday, comes just four days before critical parliamentary elections on 17 August. Sirisena, elected on a promise to lift government repression, is seeking to prevent a comeback by his predecessor, Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose government has been accused of systematic brutality against the country’s Tamils after the military rout of the Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009.

The charity said that more than a third of the alleged torture victims in the report had returned to Sri Lanka from the UK, some forcibly after their asylum applications were rejected.........

Russian PM Dmitry Med­vedev is quoted, saying that, "These countries have explained their decision to support the European Union’s sanctions against Russia by referring to the fact that they're somehow obliged to, due some kind of agreement with the EU but that's only partly true."

(in Swedish)

Till exempel borde skatten på snus vara mycket lägre än på cigaretter, anser flera tobaksforskare.

I Sverige har priset på snus ökat rejält de senaste åren. Men det är fel väg att gå, säger David Sweanor, professor vid Ottawas universitet i Kanada. Han vill att snus ska vara betydligt billigare än cigaretter.

-Det ska vara så stor prisskillnad som möjligt för att människor ska välja mindre farliga produkter, säger han till TT.

Tobaksprodukter bör beskattas efter hur farliga de är, skriver Sweanor och två andra forskare i en artikel i New England Journal of Medicine.. . ........

The 90-year-old Georgia Democrat underwent liver surgery last week at Emory University hospital in Atlanta, during which doctors discovered “cancer that is now in other parts of my body”, he said in a statement on Wednesday.

“I will be rearranging my schedule as necessary so I can undergo treatment by physicians at Emory Healthcare,” he said, promising more details on his care “when facts are known” as early as next week.. . ........

After it was revealed in June that the City of Copenhagen owned stock in Ryanair at the same time that Mayor Frank Jensen and Danish unions were in a high-profile battle with the budget airline, city officials vowed to dump the stock as soon as possible.

This week, the city council made good on those promises and voted to stop all present and future investments in Ryanair, despite the airline’s stock having risen 19 percent since January. . . ........

That seems to be the rationale behind hundreds of U.S. police department requests for armored trucks submitted to the Pentagon between 2012 and 2014. The requests, unearthed in a FOIA request by Mother Jones magazine, shed light on how the war on drugs has directly contributed to the militarization of local police forces in the United States in recent years.

Police departments can request surplus military gear from the Pentagon through the Department of Defense’s 1033 program, which doles out hundreds of millions of dollars in military goods to cops each year. The equipment includes everything from underwear to office equipment to armored combat vehicles. After Ferguson, when images of local cops training assault rifles on peaceful protestors from atop armored trucks flooded the airwaves, the program has come under increasing scrutiny. . ........

This is the latest slap in the face of Maldonado and the entire LGBT community by a high school administration that simply won't accept that one of its star athletes is gay and was harassed for his sexual orientation by an opposing basketball team last December. The school's yearbook has omitted its starting senior point guard from the senior boys basketball tribute page in the yearbook, a deeply insulting blow to an athlete who has contributed to his school.

You can see the two-page spread here - Maldonado is, in fact, missing entirely from the page's call-out list of players (even including underclassmen): . ........

In states where medical marijuana is legal, deaths from Opiate based narcotic overdoses has dropped a whopping 25%.?

The rate at which we see this trend is consistent with the growth of legal, medicinal marijuana use in these regions. It seems the new trend is patients ditching harmfull pain-med narcotics in favor of the much safer Marijuana flower when seeking relief for their pain.?

?Newsweek is reporting that “overdose deaths from these pharmaceutical opioids have approximately tripled since 1991, and every day 46 people die of such overdoses in the United States.” . ........

In the latest example of the ongoing battle for supremacy between the insurgent groups, the Taliban issued a strongly-worded response on Tuesday denouncing the IS propaganda video, which appeared on jihadi social media forums on Sunday.

"A horrific video was released yesterday showing kidnappers who associate themselves with Daesh [IS] brutally martyring several white-bearded tribal elders and villagers with explosives," said a statement posted on the Taliban's website and translated by Reuters. ........

The EU rules could help curb toxic nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions, although campaigners criticised them following revelations that they were partly drafted by the same companies they were meant to regulate.

But a confidential government submission to Brussels, seen by the Guardian, says that the UK would have to import coal from Russia, Colombia and South Africa to meet the new standards, because British coal has such a high sulphur content. ........

The result: Oil prices fell to $43.08 a barrel, a six-year low.

OPEC said Tuesday that its output surged to a three-year high in July. The cartel produced 31.5 million barrels a day, more than 1.5 million barrels above the ceiling it agreed to just a month earlier.

The added oil came from Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Iran's higher output - its highest since 2012 -- is a sign it is ready to take advantage of the proposed nuclear deal.

Sanctions have long restricted Iran's oil production and exports, and the country is eager to regain its status as a global energy power. Iran boosted its production by 32,300 barrels a day in July to 2.86 million a day, the OPEC report said, citing secondary sources. ........

The trailer is for a documentary by wetsuit manufacturers Zion on a trip taken by international surf champions to some of the coldest locations on the planet, with one of them being Iceland.

Roskomnadzor, the Kremlin's “Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom Information Technologies and Mass Communications,” announced on Vkontakte (the Russian equivalent of Facebook) that it has asked Reddit to remove the thread in question to no avail. Roskomnadzor doesn't specify which of the many drug-related Reddit posts compelled the possible block, though it does ask any readers with inside Reddit knowledge to reach out.

“Those who have contacts with the administration ask them to check their email for letters from Roskommandzor, otherwise, due to technological features, many operators may block the whole site,” the post read, according to a rough English translation.............

The government said on Wednesday that it has filed a suit with the country's top consumer court, National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC), for 6,400 million rupees ($98.6m) in damages from the Indian arm of the Swiss food giant.

"Our complaint is over their unfair trade practices and the court will now issue them notices to hear their response," G Gurcharan, additional secretary at the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, told AFP news agency.............

A shipment of “dangerous goods” in a warehouse went up in flames shortly before midnight local time (1600 GMT), state media reported, causing explosions so strong that they shook homes on the other side of the city and sent flaming debris arching over nearby high-rise buildings.

Hundreds of injured people crowded into hospitals, arriving on foot and by car after emergency services were overwhelmed.

Early Thursday morning China’s President Xi Jinping urged full efforts to rescue those injured inthe blasts, state media said. Xi demanded that authorities quickly control, and extinguish the fire, and “make full effort to rescue and treat the injured and ensure the safety of people and their property”, China Central Television (CCTV) said on its website.

“When the first explosion happened, it felt like a earthquake,” said Chen Bingzhi, who lives about 4km from the explosion site. “The whole building was shaking. I live on the fifth floor and all the windows are broken.”.......

The report by the European Leadership Network (ELN) thinktank calls on both sides to communicate more and to improve the transparency of their military activities. It also encourages them to wind down the scale of their war games while starting work on a new treaty that would limit the sort of weaponry allowed along their borders............

The move sent fresh shockwaves through global markets, pushing shares sharply lower and sending commodity prices further into reverse as traders feared the move could ignite a currency war that would destabilise the world economy.

There were widespread losses in Asia, and in Europe stock markets suffered falls of about 1%, with the FTSE 100 tumbling almost 2% at one stage...........

According to the world governing body, a large majority of the athletes are retired with "very few" still active.

"The IAAF is provisionally suspending them," it said in a statement.

There are no British athletes among those with adverse doping samples.

The IAAF, which has been criticised after leaked blood test data was obtained by the Sunday Times and German broadcaster ARD/WDR, added that none of the athletes concerned would be competing at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing, which get under way on 22 August.

None of the 28 can be named yet "due to the legal process"..........

One man and two women, including Damache's wife, have already been convicted in U.S. courts of providing material support to terrorists. And Damache was captured by Irish authorities in 2010 in Dublin on a separate charge of making a telephone death threat and held without bail.

But despite requests from U.S. prosecutors to have him extradited to this country for trial in Philadelphia, the High Court of Ireland has refused.

It's not because they want to prosecute him themselves or believe he is innocent. Rather, the Irish court ruled that Damache, if sent to the United States, would probably be locked up in the federal "supermax" prison. And to the court, that amounted to "cruel and unusual" punishment.

The staggering tally of those suffering cancers certified by the feds as 9/11-related includes FDNY members (1,100), cops and other Ground Zero responders (2,134), and survivors such as downtown workers and residents (467). Many have more than one type of cancer.

The FDNY’s chief medical officer, Dr. David Prezant, said over 2,100 firefighters and EMS personnel have retired on disability with World Trade Center-related illnesses, mostly lung disease and cancer, since 9/11.

The US Department of Defense will reclaim a pair of Humvees that were given to the beleaguered St Louis suburb under a controversial program to distribute surplus weapons, vehicles and other gear, according to several government officials involved in the process.

“They have simply informed us they will be taking them back,” Jeff Small, a spokesman for Ferguson, told the Guardian in an email.

David Hyde has been sleeping on a patch of ground overlooking Lake Geneva not far from the the UN Beach Club, where well-heeled employees sunbathe, paddle in the water and sip aperitifs at the bar.

Hyde’s predicament caught the attention of the Tribune de Genève newspaper, which reported on how he struggled to deal with heavy rain from a storm on Sunday.............

The man, who has been identified only by the initials A.I., received his sentence from a Lebanese court after being found guilty of having links to Isis. His lawyer, Fawaz Zakaria, confirmed that his client had been sentenced to three years in jail to Danish media shortly after the verdict.

Zakaria said that he was sentenced to three years in jail for fighting with the Islamic State in Syria, as well as having played a role in an attack in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, which IS was reportedly responsible for............

The poliomyelitis virus attacks the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis within hours of infection. No cases have been identified in Africa since 11 August last year in the Hobyo district of Mudug province in Somalia, meaning that the continent is two years away from being certified polio-free.

But both Somalia and Nigeria, which also saw its last polio case in 2014, are battling Islamist militant groups – al-Shabaab and Boko Haram respectively – raising fears that vaccines will not reach children displaced by conflict............

But this year, pilgrims and hikers have a police escort for part of the way, with a team of five Guardia Civil police officers on horseback covering up to 18 miles a day of the ancient Catholic pilgrimage.

The officers are intended to offer protection in areas of the route where patrol cars can’t reach, amid several reports of harassment and threats, and the ongoing investigation into the disappearance of an American pilgrim in early April.

The Guardia Civil has stepped up efforts to liaise with walkers as well as the hostels and restaurants that cater to them...........

The proposed power station will measure 10 square miles and generate 200 megawatts of solar energy.

The plans will fall in line with the Chinese government’s ambitious initiative to reduce the country’s fossil fuel energy by 20 per cent by 2030 in addition to cutting its green house gas emissions.

Construction began six years ago on the country’s first large –scale power station, according to National Geographic..........

Mahdzir, who is also the new education minister, said this was the biggest threat facing the country's leaders who were being attacked within and outside the country.

"The Jews and the Christians have pledged that as long as there is the moon and the stars, as long as the end of the world is not here yet, they will decide that Muhammad's followers will be confused and split among themselves. This is the pledge of the Jews and Christians.

"And today, those who do things to us are not only from within the country, but from outside the country like Sarawak Report, which does not operate from Kuching," he said when opening the Hulu Langat Umno division meeting today.........

Kiev accused the eastern separatist fighters of launching another missile assault north of Mariupol -- a government-held port that provides a land bridge between rebel territories and the Russian-occupied Crimea peninsula.

"We will use our entire arsenal and all the means at our disposal to beat back the enemy's assault," Ukrainian military spokesman Vladyslav Seleznyov told AFP.

Gross domestic product contracted 4.6 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier after a 2.2 percent decline in the previous three months, the Federal Statistics Service in Moscow said on Monday, citing preliminary data. That was worse than the median forecast for a 4.5 percent slump in a Bloomberg survey of 18 analysts. The Economy Ministry had projected that output shrank 4.4 percent in the period, calling it “the lowest point” for Russia. ..........

Ecologists from the University of New South Wales assessed the likely impact of reintroducing Tasmanian devils to forests in south-eastern NSW and found they would assume the mantle of top predator, deterring cats and foxes.

This would benefit scores of smaller animals, such as bandicoots and potoroos, which are being killed at a rapid rate by feral predators. ..........

That time has come for one global retailer, Ikea. Beginning Sept. 1, the company said Monday, it will sell only LED bulbs, part of its overall sustainability efforts. The company had planned a major investment in compact fluorescent lights, but it redirected it to LEDs.

“Some of these technologies have to be driven faster,” Steve Howard, chief sustainability officer of the Ikea Group, said of the lighting decision. “People are concerned increasingly about climate change but also about household energy bills. So how can you try something that doesn’t take 15 years to develop in this space but takes three or four years?”..........

The vote came on the last day of a biennial meeting in Dublin of about 400 members of the human rights organization from 60 countries. They had gathered to set the group’s future policies.

The proposal about prostitution provoked an aggressive lobbying campaign by international groups opposed to sparing buyers and pimps from penalties. Competing petitions were organized by women’s groups and celebrities— including former President Jimmy Carter, who issued a letter on Monday — appealing to the group to maintain penalties for buyers and to “stay true to its mission.”..........

The Combined Joint Task Force conducted 20 airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and 10 strikes against ISIS targets in Syria, the task force said in a statement.

The air assaults come a day after 29 coalition strikes in the region that destroyed an explosives factory, among other targets, on Sunday. The U.S.-led coalition also launched 23 strikes on Saturday, bringing the three-day total to 82 strikes..........

These are the latest in a string of bombings and village raids that have killed hundreds in recent weeks as officials promise the deployment of a regional army to halt the Nigerian-born Islamic uprising that has killed some 20,000 in six years and spilled across the West African nation's borders.

In Cameroon, troops repelled an attack on Ashigashia, killing 10 and forcing the insurgents to retreat, said military spokesman Col. Jaco Kodji. Two soldiers were wounded but no civilians were reported injured, he said.........

An enormous leatherback turtle weighing several hundred kilos washed up on shore on the island of Lolland over the weekend.

The leatherback sea turtle is the world’s largest marine turtle. Its global population is considered vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature but many subpopulations are critically endangered. According to the World Wildlife Fund, leatherbacks have been spotted as far north as the US state of Alaska and as far south as Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. It is extremely rare, however, to see one near Denmark.........

But further gun violence appeared to have been avoided following the ordering of a state of emergency by county authorities and the announcement of criminal charges against a black 18-year-old who was shot by police after allegedly opening fire on their vehicle during chaotic scenes late on Sunday.

Officers in riot gear from St Louis County police and the Missouri highway patrol snatched several demonstrators from the crowds and made 23 arrests through a hot August evening on Monday. Projectiles such as stones and plastic bottles filled with ice were repeatedly thrown at police lines during a standoff on a main street.

“Safety, our top priority, is now compromised,” a St Louis County police spokesman said on Twitter soon after 10pm. “This is no longer a peaceful protest. Participants are now unlawfully assembled.”.........

"I am having a good Friday, so I refuse to talk about the Kardashians today," said news anchor John Brown. You are on your own, Amy. I can't do it."

He walked off of the set and said, "I’ve had enough Kardashians. I can’t take any more Kardashian stories on this show."

A replacement anchor came in and the trio left on camera and tried to talk Brown down from his rant, as he left his microphone on and shouted from off-camera. "I don't care about this family. I’m sick of this family. It’s a non-story!".........

Last week, a speed bump in JLR’s China plan appeared in showrooms in the form of the Landwind X7.

This is because — aesthetically — the X7 is a virtually indistinguishable from the Evoque.

And it looks like the Chinese auto maker has a fair number of customers waiting to take delivery of the X7.

According to Bloomberg, 5,500 buyers have put down deposits for their X7, which sells for roughly $US21,700.

That’s only fraction of the $US65,000 -$US90,000 it takes to drive home in an authentic Evoque in China.........

The world’s most worrisome military flashpoint is arguably not in the Strait of Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, Iran, Israel, Kashmir or Ukraine. In fact, it cannot be located on any map of Earth, even though it is very easy to find. To see it, just look up into a clear sky, to the no-man’s-land of Earth orbit, where a conflict is unfolding that is an arms race in all but name.

The tech company announced on Monday that it would rebrand itself as Alphabet – a new holding company whose largest wholly owned subsidiary will be Google.

In a surprise blog post made public after the stock markets closed Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founders, announced a radical shake-up of the company’s corporate structure and management, handing control of its core search engine business to rising star Sundar Pichai. .........

The two excited nine-year-olds from the village of Gumbi in western Malawi have just done what about 600 million others in sub-Saharan Africa have never been able to do – switch on an electric light in their homes to read a book in the dark.

There is a murmur of approval from the small crowd of people craning their heads through the doorway to witness the arrival of solar electricity in the village. “[These] bulbs will change lives. Our days will be longer and nights shorter. We will be like others,” says one mother, Chikumbutso Chaima. “Children will do better at school. They have a future. We have not been forgotten.” .........

Dill is everywhere in Russia. It’s the national herb, smuggled on to every plate as if it were merely seasoning, rather than a ruthlessly aggressive flavour capable of sabotaging any dish with just a few of its spindly fronds. A Reuters investigation once found that the average Russian eats enough dill each year to fill a large suitcase. .........

It has been claimed that up to 280 girls and boys under the age of 14 were filmed being abused in Hussain Khan Wala, a village in Punjab province, near the Indian border. The videos were then used to blackmail their families as well as being sold to websites that host child abuse images.

Locals say police were reluctant to take action until it became a national scandal.

“Police did not even listen to me when I went to the station,” said the mother of one rape victim, who did not want her name revealed and who first took video evidence to the police in July. .........

Rasim Aliyev died in hospital on Sunday morning after he was attacked by six men on Saturday night.

In an interview before he died, Aliyev claimed he had been invited to meet the football player he had criticised on Facebook. When he arrived at the appointed place, he was assaulted by six people.

But colleagues and rights activists warned that the football story could be a red herring, and pointed to a history of threats and intimidation against Aliyev and the broader climate of fear in Azerbaijan

Aliyev had criticised local footballer Javid Huseynov on Facebook. The footballer, who plays for club side Gabala and the national team, had waved a Turkish flag during a Europa League match in Cyprus, and appeared to make an obscene gesture at a Greek journalist who asked why he had done so.

Aliyev’s wrote on Facebook that he did not want someone “so immoral” to represent his country. .........

"Widespread, drought-sensitive butterfly population extinction could occur as early as 2050," scientists reported in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Under a business-as-usual scenario of continued greenhouse gas emissions, the odds that certain British Isles species will make it beyond mid-century are "around zero", the study concludes.

Protecting wilderness areas - and especially reducing the fragmentation of natural habitats - would give some of these gossamer creatures at least a slim chance of survival.

Such measures combined with a 2 degrees Celsius cap on global warming would boost their odds to about 50 per cent, the researchers said.

And one day the universe will, too. It won't happen for for a long time, but eventually the galaxies will wink out, and the universe as we know it will be a thing of the past.

This has been confirmed by the most comprehensive assessment ever conducted of the energy output of the nearby universe. An international team of researchers examined the energy output of over 200,000 galaxies, and determined that they are currently producing only half the amount of energy they were producing 2 billion years ago...........

Miguel Angel Jimenez, a vigilante leader who participated in the search for the 43 education students who disappeared in the city of Iguala last year, was among the victims, reports Efe.

The killings on Saturday and Sunday followed the recent upward trend in the murder rate in Guerrero, which has been governed by Rogelio Ortega since October 2014, the El Sur newspaper said...........

The plane left Akureyri at 2:01 pm yesterday and was scheduled to arrive at Keflavík International Airport at 4:20 pm. At 5:06 pm, when the plane had not yet been heard from, search and rescue teams were alerted. Both Coast Guard helicopters were also called out. Skies were overcast with a low cloud cover in the north at the time of accident..........

Separatist insurgents staged assaults on Ukrainian villages on Monday, reports Reuters. State officials say the attacks featured the heaviest shelling in the region since February.

The Ukrainian military reported that their troops repelled tanks and around 200 rebel soldiers at the village of Novolaspa and a “battalion”-strength force with tanks and armored vehicles in nearby Starohnativka. Both locations are about 30 miles south of Donetsk, which the separatists declared as their capital early last year.........

In a televised address, Ashraf Ghani also blamed neighbouring Pakistan for what he described as Islamabad’s support to the insurgents whose war against Kabul is now nearing its 14th year, and said he was sending a delegation to Islamabad later this week to demand a stop to this.

“We know they have sanctuaries there, we know they are active there,” Mr. Ghani said, referring to Taliban leaders living in Pakistan. “We need all those activities to be stopped.”........

The villages come with verdant settings, including bread-making hearths, barns and stone and wood granaries used until a decade ago, when the villages had a decent population.

"This is as near as paradise as I can think of," says Mark Adkinson, who founded the Galician Country Homes real estate firm and has recently begun marketing abandoned villages.

This northwestern region of the country is plagued with a shrinking population, resulting in some mayors selling the villages for free to anyone who can repopulate it by bringing people back, more importantly, the youth.

Like in many parts of Europe, population decline is serious issue, especially in the Iberian peninsula that includes Galicia, Asturias, and northern Portugal. Economic crisis has led the young to emigrate and those that remain have restrained from having children.............

The spokesman for National Multitude, a military force in Nineveh province whose capital is Mosul, Mahmoud al-Sauaryih, told EFE that at least 50 of those shot to death at the Al Gazlani camp were women.

Meanwhile, the national office of the Electoral Commission said in a communique that the IS jihadists cut the throats of another group of its employees in Mosul..............

Prosecutors notified Netzpolitik.org in July that its founder, Markus Beckedahl, and fellow journalist Andre Meister were under investigation, triggering widespread criticism from free-speech advocates. The website specialises in coverage of online privacy and digital culture.

The justice minister, Heiko Maas, questioned the decision to open a treason inquiry, and last week he fired the chief federal prosecutor, Harald Range, after the two clashed over public allegations by Range of political interference, which the minister denied.............

Arguing that the videos are a threat to social decency, moral standards, and law and order, the Office Against Pornography and Illegal Publications is demanding that government authorities act immediately when similar cases arise and discipline anyone who uploads and hosts the content. The office is also calling for a hotline to be set up for public reports.

Wednesday saw the emergence of two lewd videos. In one case, Chinese social media exploded when sexual scenes were broadcast on a large display screen at a shopping mall in the city of Lishui. The content spread quickly, and police are investigating to determine who was responsible. Later that day a homemade video of sex acts in the city of Chengdu also went viral on social media. Local authorities have detained one person under suspicion of spreading the video.............

About 60 percent of Americans have dental insurance coverage, the highest it has been in decades. But even so, the nation's older population has been largely left behind. Nearly 70 percent of seniors are not insured, according to a study compiled by Oral Health America. A major reason is because dental care is not covered by Medicare and many employers no longer offer post-retirement health benefits. What's more, the Affordable Care Act allows enrollees to get dental coverage only if they purchase general health coverage first, which many seniors don't need. At the same time, seniors often require the most costly dental work, like crowns, implants and false teeth............

Since 1981, nearly 12,000 civilians have died due to militancy in the northern state, according to data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal. Punjab was the target of terrorist attacks largely orchestrated by Sikh militant groups who demanded an independent homeland, Khalistan.

In the same period, 8,098 terrorists were killed in the state, according to data from the same portal, which is run by the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management, an autonomous, non-governmental, and non-profit society...........

In her recent book When the Soldiers Came, the German historian Miriam Gebhardt takes a close look at the rape of German women by all four victorious powers at the end of the war. She claims members of the US military alone raped as many as 190,000 German women by the time West Germany gained sovereignty in 1955, with most of these sexual assaults taking place in the months following the defeat of the Nazis.

She also compares the rapes committed by US soldiers and the Red Army. She claims similar motives were at work. Soldiers were horrified by the scale of the crimes committed by the Nazis and failed to distinguish between the regime and ordinary Germans. Perhaps it’s not only Russia which is deluding itself about these crimes committed against women?

Mick Hall
Grays, Essex

Kaulback’s pit viper, first discovered in 1938 by British explorer and botanist Ronald Kaulback in northern Burma, is one of the largest pit vipers in Asia. On top of that, according to local reports, its bite is lethal. Despite being a co-author on the most recent paper on the species, I had never before seen a living specimen—few scientists have.

I can’t believe my luck at being present for this moment on my first trip to Arunachal Pradesh, a heavily forested state on the northeast frontier of India. This trip is, for me, the culmination of a long personal journey. During my teenage years in India, a family holiday to neighbouring Assam had triggered my curiosity about the natural world, until then only nurtured by tales of exploration and discovery... ............

“The Holuhraun eruption spewed poisonous sulfur dioxide (SO2) over a large area of Europe and the eruption was the biggest in Iceland since the ‘Skaftá Fires’ from 1783 to 1784. The Holuhraun eruption lasted for six months from 31st August 2014 to 27th February 2015,” a press statement on the release of the results in the journal Geochemical Perspectives Letters states.

SO2 can have negative health effects in high concentrations; especially respiratory problems and irritation to eyes, nose and throat. High concentrations in the atmosphere can cause coughs, respiratory illness and chest pains. Sigurður Reynir says that during the eruption SO2 levels in Iceland went well above safe limits at times, and that the impacts were also felt elsewhere in Europe, Vísir reports... ............

Police said they received a call reporting injuries at the store at about 1pm local time. A man has been arrested on suspicion of murder. Police have not ruled out the possibility that he had an accomplice.

Västmanland police said in a statement: “We found a man and a woman who had knife injuries and who later died of their wounds.”

A 35 year-old man was seriously injured, Swedish television reported. Lena Moren, the head duty nurse at Västeras hospital, told the public broadcaster SVT: “He was brought in from the site of the incident with life-threatening injuries.” .. ............

The small Himalayan kingdom is now home to 103 tigers, according to the country’s first-ever tiger survey that was released on Global Tiger Day on July 29. That’s significantly higher than an earlier estimate of 75 tigers in 1998—and even more than the tiger population in Bangladesh’s Sundarbans mangrove forests.

In Bhutan, several of these big cats are found in areas as much as 4,000 metres above sea level, making them the highest living tigers in the world, located up in the mountains that constitute much of the rugged territory of the Himalayan nation.

In 2010, the BBC captured the first video footage showing the high-alpine tigers living in the kingdom.. ............

The safety foundation TrygFonden wants to pay Danes to stop smoking and it has the full support of The Danish Cancer Society (Kræftens Bekæmpelse).

The two groups are in favour of replicating a successful American trail that used financial incentives to get smokers to quit. ............

An enormous tuft of dark smoke ascended over the city after the late morning blast, as police, fighters and ambulances hurried to the site, which is generally thronging with people on foot and vehicles.

Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack............

According to Icelandic tourism and travel website turisti.is, while the number of foreign visitors to Iceland has increased by around 25% since last year, there have so far been 3,528 fewer Nordics than in 2014...........

The company on Monday offered "deep apologies," saying it would take care to avoid such mistakes in the future.

In English, the tweet sent Sunday conveyed "A very merry unbirthday to you!" from a song in the Disney film "Alice in Wonderland." The Japanese translation described the day as "not special," prompting sharp criticism...........

International Space Station (ISS) crew members will sample the "Outredgeous" lettuce grown as part of NASA's plant experiment Veg-01 in the Veggie plant growth system.

Giving new meaning to "clean eating", astronauts must first clean the leafy greens with citric acid-based, food-safe sanitizing wipes before tucking in..........

International Space Station (ISS) crew members will sample the "Outredgeous" lettuce grown as part of NASA's plant experiment Veg-01 in the Veggie plant growth system.

Giving new meaning to "clean eating", astronauts must first clean the leafy greens with citric acid-based, food-safe sanitizing wipes before tucking in..........

Passengers amounted to 40.798 which a record in the 52 year-long history of the airport and an increase by 10,3 percent from last year.

Cemil Bayik told the BBC he believed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wanted IS to succeed to prevent Kurdish gains.

Kurdish fighters - among them the PKK - have secured significant victories against IS militants in Syria and Iraq.

But Turkey, like a number of Western countries, considers the PKK a terrorist organisation.

A ceasefire in the long-running conflict with the group appeared to disintegrate in July, when Turkey began bombing PKK camps in northern Iraq, at the same time as launching air strikes on IS militants...........

Scientists from South Africa have excavated 400-year-old tobacco pipes from Shakespeare’s garden and found them to contain cannabis residue, The Independent reported.

The pipes were analyzed in Pretoria, South Africa using a technique called gas chromatography mass spectrometry, which is sensitive to residues preserved in pipes. The items were on loan from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust...........

This is why most of the leadership of the Freedom Movement were drawn from this middle class. As pointed out by authors like Pavan Varma, the middle class was very politically active during this period.

However, matters changed after Independence. The upper echelons of the middle class took over the reins of power from the British and overnight became the new aristocracy. The Gandhi-Nehru clan is the most obvious example of this phenomenon. This change in status meant that its attitude towards market institutions changed..........

The number of internet users is expected to hit 500 million by 2017, driven by the growing use of mobile devices. That would make the country second in the world after China.

But many of these users are increasingly surfing the web using regional languages, not English. According to a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and research firm IMRB International, the country’s local language internet user base jumped 47% to 127 million in June 2015, compared to a year ago.

It was close to midnight on 16 July when Cai Ying’s Airbus 330 left the runway at Changsha’s Huanghua international airport and set a course for Beijing.

More than 1,500km ahead lay one of the most daunting missions of this 52-year-old attorney’s career: to track down Li Heping, one of China’s best-known human rights lawyers.

Li, 45, had disappeared six days earlier after men believed to be police appeared on his doorstep on day two of a sweeping Communist party crackdown on his trade which has so far seen more than 230 people detained or questioned.

The man was shot by four plainclothes detectives after allegedly firing on their unmarked vehicle as he walked from a gunfight between several people late on Sunday night, St Louis County’s police chief said at a 2.30am (08.30am BST) press conference on Monday.

“We can’t afford to have this kind of violence,” said Jon Belmar, whose department has led the controversial police response to protests over Brown’s death. “There is a small group of people who are intent on making sure we don’t have peace.”

The county police chief stressed that the approximately six people involved in the exchange of fire that led to the shooting by police should not be associated with the demonstrations. “They weren’t protesters; they were criminals,” he said.

Geirsdóttir set off from Dover on England's south coast around midnight on Friday, Icelandic time, and arrived at the cape of Gris Nez in France around midnight last night.

This is St Spyridon the Triumphant Orthodox, a patriotic club aiming to “bring children to the church” through sport and military-style training, says their coach, Michael Lysovskiy.

Thousands of clubs like this exist across Russia, forming an integral part of a nation-wide initiative for the “military-patriotic education of the population”, regulated by the government through a significant programme of financial support.

With an upsurge in support for the armed forces because of the conflict in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, the government is assessing a new programme proposed by the Ministry of Education to significantly increase the budget for military education – and combat awareness – for children and young people............

In statements to Emirates 24/7, Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed Burqibah, Deputy Director of Dubai Police’s Search and Rescue Department, revealed that a 20-year-old girl died after her father prevented two rescue men from saving her from drowning.

“The Asian father took his wife and kids to the beach for picnic and fun. The kids were swimming in the beach when suddenly, the 20-year-old girl started drowning and screaming for help,” said the Lieutenant Colonel, adding that it was one of the most shocking incidents he has ever witnessed.

“Two rescue men were at the beach, and they rushed to help the girl. However, there was one obstacle which prevented them from reaching the girl and helping her.

“This obstacle was the belief of this Asian man who considered that if these men touched his daughter, then this would dishonour her. It cost him the life of his daughter,” explained the Lieutenant Colonel. . ...........

At least six alleged tiger poachers were killed today during a gunfight with Bangladesh police in Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest stretching both Bangladesh and Indian coastlines.

“Police initially detained six of the poachers and asked them to lead us (police) to their hideouts inside the forest... their associates attacked us and we retaliated when the six were killed in crossfire,” a police officer said.

The poachers were arrested from different parts of Koyra area of the forest early in the morning. They died instantly when they got caught in the line of fire during the shootouts in the afternoon at Mandarbari of the Sundarbans, he said. . ...........

The ISIS assault on the Kuweires Military Airbase was the largest attack by the terrorist group at this site and also their largest defeat to the Syrian Armed Forces since the recapture of Al-Hasakah City last month.

The assault began around 9 A.M. (Damascus Time), when over two hundred ISIS fighters stormed the southern and western flanks of the Kuweires Military Airbase with an estimated two dozen armored vehicles that included tanks and BMPs.

Unfortunately for the ISIS militants charging the airbase, they ran into a fierce line of resistance from the Syrian Armed Forces that proved unwilling to yield any ground to the terrorist group. ...........

The rural affairs secretary Richard Lochhead says the move will protect Scotland's 'clean, green status'.

The ban will see Scotland formally opt out of the European Union’s pro-GM farming regime. The Scottish Government will be applying to Brussels to be excluded from approvals for GM crops across Europe.

Under EU rules, GM crops must be formally authorised before they can be cultivated in any EU nation.

Allowing GM would threaten the nation’s “clean and green brand” and be “gambling” with Scotland's £14 billion food industry, according Lochhead. ...........

Miguel Angel Jimenez Blanco's body was found near his home in a town in the south-western state of Guerrero.

He had led search parties after the disappearance of 43 students in the nearby town of Iguala last year threw light on hundreds of other missing people.

Guerrero is a region plagued by gang and drug violence.

At least 15 people were killed there over the weekend.

Mr Jimenez Blanco's body was found in the taxi he owned in the small town of Xaltianguis...........

After months of debate about safety, Japan will begin producing nuclear energy for the first time in almost two years close to the town of Satsumasendai as early as Tuesday.

Restarting one of the Sendai nuclear plant’s two 30-year-old reactors represents a victory for the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who insists that without nuclear energy the Japanese economy will buckle beneath the weight of expensive oil and gas imports.

But his call for Japan to confront its Fukushima demons has been greeted with scepticism by most voters, whose opposition to nuclear restarts remains firm, even in the face of rising electricity bills..........

The Montana man’s body was found on Friday afternoon in a popular off-trail area near Lake Village..........

With the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, in the audience, a representative of Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors told an annual ceremony that security legislation introduced by Abe’s government went against the wishes of the survivors and “will lead to war”.

“We cannot accept this,” said 86-year-old Sumiteru Taniguchi after describing in graphic detail his traumatic injuries and how others died in the 9 August 1945 attack on Nagasaki.

Representatives from 75 countries, including US ambassador Caroline Kennedy, were among those who gathered under the hot morning sun at Nagasaki Peace Park.........

The incident took place near Belabagan Durga temple due to overcrowding. The queue was stretched to four-five kilometers from the temple as there was a surge in devotees lining up to offer prayers.

Deoghar Sadar Hospital civil surgeon Dr Diwakar Kamat confirmed the number of those dead. “Eleven devotees mostly women died. Though we have to wait for post-mortem report, asphyxia is one possible reason”, said the civil surgeon.

A compensation of Rs two lakh to the kin of those killed in an early morning stampede at the temple town of Deogarh. The injured would be given Rs 50,000, an official statement said here.

The Cihan news agency said those involved in the attack on the building in Istanbul's Sariyer district included one man and one woman. Reuters could not immediately confirm the reports.

CNN Turk said there were no casualties..........

Trump is under fire for criticizing Fox anchor Megyn Kelly during and after a Republican debate on Thursday. Asked about Kelly in a CNN interview on Friday, Trump said: "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever."

The real estate mogul and television personality, who remains ahead of his 16 rivals in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, appeared on Sunday news shows to rebut the outrage triggered by his off-the-cuff talk.........

It says the yeast-based product is contributing to anti-social behaviour in some remote communities.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion described the salty spread as a "precursor to misery".

He said it was being bought in bulk to make moonshine.

Brewer's yeast is a key ingredient in the spread and is used in the production of beer and ale.

In communities where alcohol is banned because of addiction problems, Mr Scullion said Vegemite sales should also be restricted.

Sofia Ashraf’s skit Kodaikanal Won’t – named after a tourist resort in the hills of Tamil Nadu state that was contaminated by mercury from a thermometer factory – has been viewed nearly 2m times on YouTube.

A parody of the Nicki Minaj song Anaconda, the video features the 28-year-old, once known as the “burqa rapper”, dancing on a boat and sprawling on a train while demanding that Unilever clean up its “toxic shit”.

The Guardian reported earlier this week claims that organisers of balloon festivals across Europe had been warned of China’s objections to allowing participation of the British-based Tibet balloon called Tashi – Tibetan for “good fortune” – at international events.

Organisers of balloon events in Spain, France and of the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta at which the balloon flew on Friday morning, claimed to have been approached by individuals purporting to be Chinese embassy officials urging a ban on the balloon... ..........

Virgin said its meteorologists had advised that the volcano continued to erupt and winds were blowing in “an unfavourable direction, and are forecast to continue doing so throughout the day”.

Passengers were advised on Friday that Virgin flights the following day had been cancelled because of the poor conditions.. ..........

Security forces and riot police sealed off Iraq's iconic Tahrir Square and searched anyone who entered the area, but tens of thousands of men, women and children thronged the sprawling square, waving Iraqi flags.

"In the name of religion, the thieves robbed us," they chanted long into the evening.

Men with the government-backed Popular Mobilization Forces, the umbrella group made up predominantly of Shiite militias, pulled up in trucks and handed out ice water bottles to the protesters. ..........

Scientists from the Universities of California Berkeley and Durham in Britain have discovered just how much they can learn from pupils. As every householder knows, when the domestic cat narrows its eyes to slits, it does so vertically. Sheep, deer and horses however have eyes with horizontally elongated pupils.

Martin Banks, professor of optometry at Berkeley and Gordon Love, director of the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation at Durham, have learned something else. So important is it for a grazing animal to keep an eye on the ground that when it drops its head, the pupil rotates by up to 50 degrees to stay horizontal. ..........

Crowds danced, sang and waved rainbow flags at the event held outside the capital Kampala, the culmination of a week of celebrations.

One of those attending hoped it would be a "step forward" for the country.

But many people in Uganda strongly oppose gay rights, and homosexuality is punishable with a jail sentence.

Anti-gay legislation allowing for life imprisonment for "aggravated homosexuality" and banning the "promotion of homosexuality" was annulled by Uganda's supreme court last year. ..........

Police in eastern Jharkhand state said on Saturday that a group of assailants dragged the women out of their huts and beat them to death at around midnight on Friday in their village, some 30km from state capital, Ranchi.

"A group (of villagers) dragged the women out and beat them to death with sticks, accusing them of practising witchcraft," Ranchi deputy police chief Arun Kumar Singh told AFP news agency by phone.

At least 21 villagers have been arrested over the killings of the women, who were mostly aged between 45 and 50..........

The enormous stone totem, now split in two and sitting in the Sicilian Channel between Tunisia and Sicily, was hewed from a rocky outcrop some 300m away when the Mediterranean Sea was still a dry basin.

It’s now under 40m of water.........

Sanders gave his talk to a cheering audience of about 12,000 inside a university pavilion a few hours after he was shoved aside by several Black Lives Matter activists who are calling for changes to the criminal justice system. Sanders eventually left the Saturday afternoon event at Westlake Park in Seattle without giving his speech.

At the University of Washington rally, Sanders addressed the issues raised by the protesters.

"No president will fight harder to end institutional racism and reform criminal justice system," he told the cheering crowd at Hec Edmundson pavilion, according to the King5-TV station. "Too many lives have been destroyed by war on drugs, by incarceration; we need to educate people. We need to put people to work." ............

Typhoon Soudelor killed six people in Taiwan earlier on the weekend then moved across the Taiwan Strait and slammed into the mainland's Fujian province late on Saturday. It churned towards the neighboring provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangxi on Sunday, the Xinhua state news agency said. The Tropical Storm Risk website downgraded Soudelor to a tropical storm as it moved inland. Eight people were killed in Hangzhou city, CCTV state television reported, as heavy rain and wind toppled trees and triggered flash floods and mudslides. ............

The death of Lee Kuan Yew in March this year gave an outlet for a raft of reviews of Singapore’s performance. Here we present a few charts to put the city state in a global context.............

Porn-loving Indians—who are among the most prolific consumers of the stuff in the world—now must do without some 850 websites the government has reportedly banned. The country’s internet service providers have to ensure that their users can’t access these websites, and some already have.

While no one is quite sure what exactly prompted this latest crackdown, HuffPost India reports that the Narendra Modi government apparently went for the kill after the country’s supreme court prodded it for its “lethargic approach to the issue” of pornography in India............

Would you take a public policy defeat in your stride, and accept that a noisy group of activists in one market may have scuppered your plans? Or would you use your immense power to persuade, influence, and reiterate your rather shaky argument?

If you’re Mark Zuckerberg, you choose the latter option.

For the past few days, Indian Facebook users have been seeing the following prompt when they log into Facebook, whether through a browser or via the app:

The prompt asks users to “show your support for free basic internet services in India,” a sentiment that is difficult to disagree with. Indeed, that must be why Facebook does not provide the option to disagree. The only possible responses are “Not now” and “Yes, I’m In”.

With the help of 21 men and some porn videos, The College of Wooster researchers showed that guys ejaculate faster and produce more, higher-quality sperm when they masturbate to a "novel female stimulus."

In other words, they really get off with a hot woman they've never previously encountered.

The finding doesn't mean that men are somehow programmed to cheat on their girlfriends and wives. It may suggest that men have evolved such that it's easier for them to have sex with (and impregnate) other women without their usual partners finding out.............

We now have our first African-American president in his second term, we have an embassy in Cuba, and gay marriage is a right. American politics, and the world, can change in the blink of an eye.

Ironically, there are certain liberal voters in America today more interested in sharing memes on social media (mocking their political rivals), than in actually rallying around a politician who is a genuine and authentic embodiment of their acknowledged value system. To these people, Bernie Sanders can't possibly win, even though he championed gay rights when others needed to "evolve," and even though he voted against Iraq, when others deemed their vote a "mistake." ............

The bombings probably killed more than 200,000 Japanese civilians and maimed untold more. Such destruction of life stirs me to sorrow and outrage. That’s even more true given that there was an alternative available: the US could have dropped an A-bomb in or near Tokyo Bay. Such a warning shot could have persuaded the Japanese to end the war, and its humane nature would have enhanced the US’s moral standing.

The atomic bombings are often framed as the only alternative to a land invasion of a Japan that wouldn’t surrender under any but the most-dire circumstances. The possible need for an invasion loomed throughout 1945, and Americans naturally feared many US casualties. Much of a fanatic Japanese soldiery—and possibly many citizens—might fight to the last inch. One early study estimated 40,000 American soldiers’ deaths, yet President Harry Truman and others soon spoke of “half a million.”...........

Watching the opening scenes, my thoughts turned to a poem by Philip Larkin, whose birth anniversary falls this week. It is among Larkin’s most popular poems though by no means his best. The first stanza reads:

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me)—
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles’ first LP............

Cline has said he believes humanity benefits more from cheap energy than from overreacting to carbon emissions and sea level rise, according to a 2010 Bloomberg Markets profile. According to the piece, “Cline says he was so annoyed when his children’s teachers in Palm Beach, Florida, aired Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth that he asked them to distribute literature that showed that climate change may be caused by clusters of sunspots or the Earth wobbling on its axis, not just carbon.”

Two of the residents at threat, Lynne and Chris O'Dell, spoke about their ordeal. Mr O'Dell said that "we are both still standing here by the grace of God".

The two friends, both 33, say they plan to join the Islamist militant group in Syria, 4,500 miles away from their middle-class homes in Medan, Indonesia's fourth-largest city, as soon as they can save enough money to fund the trip.

"The Islamic State is like a dream come true for me and all Muslim people," said Rahmat, a perfume trader wearing a Quicksilver T-shirt and a G-Shock watch, who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name. "Now is the time to return to Islamic glory, like we experienced in the old days."..............

The slide has prompted fears the market may be oversupplied with oil. In some sense, the story is the same as when oil prices first started falling last summer: one of increased supply, paired with a slow recovery (America) and a slowdown (China) in oil-guzzling economies..............

The Sheikh Omar Ali al-Saqaff mosque was targeted by the militants presumably on the basis that they oppose its Sufi Islam affiliation.

Al Qaeda have a far-reaching presence in Yemen, although they do not control vast amounts of territory.

The group, viewed by the United States as al-Qaeda's most dangerous branch, has grown in power as Yemen has become embroiled in a civil war supplemented by a Saudi-led coalition launching a campaign of airstrikes to push back Houthi militiamen.............

Videos of these assaults were filmed and thousands of copies are believed to have been sold for Rs50 each in Hussain Khanwala village in Kasur district. One of the victims said he was injected in the spine with a drug before he was assaulted.............

Two assailants burst into the studio of Radio Liberdade FM in Camocim and fired three shots at Gleydson Carvalho before fleeing.

The journalist died en route to a nearby hospital.............

Nineteen-year-old Zachary Hammond was on a date July 26 when he was fatally shot by a police officer while in parking lot at a Hardee's fast-food restaurant in Seneca, South Carolina, according to Eric Bland, the attorney representing the teen's family.

The Seneca Police Department said the officer was conducting a drug investigation and shot Hammond in self-defense.............

A total of 101 people have been injured and four left missing in Taiwan, according to AP. All 279 domestic and at least 37 international flights were canceled on Saturday.

Thousands have been evacuated, with 1,300 people in temporary shelters across the island, according to AFP. All schools and workplaces were shut on Saturday.

The research, which looked at the glacial melting occurring in the North Atlantic island as a result of climate change, showed that the country’s glaciers are losing around 11 billion tonnes of ice each year. As a result, not only do global sea levels rise, but Iceland itself is elevated.

The study – Climate driven vertical acceleration of Icelandic crust measured by CGPS geodesy – was carried out by researchers from the University of Iceland and the University of Arizona. The group studied data from 62 GPS sensors around Iceland to work out how the earth responded to climate change-driven glacial melting; they found that the country is actually rising by as much as 35 millimetres a year.

Researcher Kathleen Compton explained that as the glaciers melts, the pressure on the rocks beneath lessened, and that rocks at a high temperature could remain solid if the pressure was high enough. She further explained that as the pressure was reduced, the melting temperature was effectively lowered.

According to Compton, this means that Iceland could expect more volcanic eruptions like the Eyjafjallajokull one in 2010.

James Holmes was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole but was spared the death penalty after jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict on executing the murderer.

Holmes stood with his hands in his pockets as Judge Carlos Samour Jr read the jury’s decision, which was reached after about six and a half hours over two days. In order for a death sentence to be handed down all 12 jurors must be unanimous in their decision.

“We the jury do not have a unanimous final sentencing verdict,” Samour Jr read as shock swept the audience of victims and their family members. “As a result the court will impose a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.”........

The incident happened at 5.45am on Saturday at the Rwandan battalion headquarters in Bangui, the CAR capital, according to a Rwandan defence ministry statement.

The Rwandan Defence Force is investigating the killings with terrorism and the mental wellbeing of the suspect killer among its lines of inquiry.

“Investigations have immediately commenced to establish the motive behind this deplorable shooting of his RDF colleagues,” Brig Gen Joseph Nzabamwita said. “We suspect terrorism without ruling out mental illness to be the cause.”.........

“We live”, Kafka concluded, “on the razor’s edge”.

Most would find Kafka’s parable, published in 1931, a mischaracterisation of the rule of law. In democracies with a separation of powers, there are checks and balances between legislative, executive and judicial branches of government. There is transparency, rigour and reason, rather than secrecy. There is accountability and oversight. ........

Slutsky will be heading Team Russia during the four remaining matches in the qualifying group stages of the Euro 2016 and, if necessary, the two games in the playoffs, the Sport-Express paper reported.

The 44-year-old coach will be combining jobs at the national team and his club CSKA Moscow in the Russian Premier League........

The hostages were taken in the town of Al Quaryatayn, which is the biggest capture by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria since the taking of Palmyra in May.

It has a mixed population of 40,000 and shelters thousands of refugees, who have fled from fighting elsewhere in Syria.

There are many children and women among the abducted Christians, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.......

Sosa used 3D printing technology to create the decidedly-unofficial merchandise, which he is selling from his store on the Shapeways website for £21.34. The plug is made from full-colour sandstone, promising “a coarse finish and a delicate feel”.

“I usually make Butt plugs to insult dictators, homophobes and politicians. However, when I heard Donald Trump’s remarks about Mexicans and latinos from South America I was extremely angry,” explained Sosa in the product listing, adding that he was born and raised in Mexico before moving to the US aged 11.

These were our lands too, and we women fought to defend them even when our activities were criminalised by the Filipino government. We didn’t give up until the government and the World Bank cancelled the project.

Since then, I have witnessed indigenous women around the world standing up for their rights, demanding that their voices be heard and refusing to back down. ........

Niloy Chakrabarti, who used the pen name Niloy Neel, was hacked to death with machetes after a gang broke into his apartment in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka. He is the fourth blogger to have been killed in Bangladesh since February.

In an interview with the Guardian in May, Chakrabarti said he was scared that he would be killed and that he had tried to file reports with local police about continued harassment. He claimed his complaints were not taken seriously.

Imran H Sarker, head of the Bangladesh Blogger and Activist Network, said Chakrabarti had been a “listed target”. “They entered his room on the fifth floor and shoved his friend aside and then hacked him to death,” Sarker told Agence France-Presse........

He tweeted that Ms Kelly and the other moderators were "not very good or professional", and retweeted similar viewpoints from other Twitter users.

Ms Kelly had challenged the tycoon about his views on women.

Mr Trump was one of 10 candidates who took part in the first debate.

They had been selected from a crowded field of 17 candidates by Fox News on the basis of recent national polls.......

Filming for the hotly-anticipated sixth season has commenced, and the 86-year-old Swede is to make a guest appearance, according to US magazine Entertainment Weekly.

Von Sydow is reportedly set to play the role of the mysterious Three-Eyed Raven, a character who made a brief appearance in the finale of season four, although was not played by the Swede. The actor’s presence in the show is likely to add yet more Nordic flair, after renowned Danish and Norwegian stars have also made appearances in earlier series.

Von Sydow is one of Sweden’s most renowned actors, having starred in The Exorcist and Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. However, despite being in the twilight of his career, retirement seems a long time away as he is also scheduled to star in the next Star Wars movie.

The Lund-born actor currently resides in France with Catherine Brelet, who he has been married to for 18 years.

Most of the aircraft’s passengers were Chinese, and around 30 of their relatives protested near the embassy, as dozens of police blocked off roads near the building. Earlier they gathered at an office in the hope of meeting Malaysian officials, although none arrived.

Several demanded that Kuala Lumpur organise travel to the French island of Réunion, where a wing part, which Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, said came from the plane, was washed ashore. ............

Geri Halliwell, Emma Bunton, Mel C and Mel B will re-form for an international tour next year, according to the Sun newspaper.

2016 will see the 20th anniversary of the band’s debut single Wannabe, which was released in 1996 and catapulted the five-piece to global stardom.

Beckham, who was known as Posh Spice, posted a picture of an official Spice Girls photo album on Twitter, including the hashtag #TBT which stands for “Throwback Thursday” and is used when people post old photos on social media.

She wrote: “love my Spice Girls.” ............

American Indologist Wendy Doniger, who teaches at the University of Chicago and has written nearly half a dozen books on Hinduism, believes so.

But why? After all, Kama Sutra, written in Sanskrit - the literary language of ancient India - by Vatsyayana, who claimed to be a celibate himself, is possibly the most celebrated treatise on love and sex.

Google Kama Sutra and it spits out more than 14 million results in less than a second. There are Kama Sutra condoms, toys, wristwatches, apps, chocolates, a TV series and films. Cosmopolitan magazine published Cosmo Kama Sutra, offering "12 brand-new mattress-quaking sex styles". ............

Singapore is known for its efficiency and Singlish is no different - it's colourful and snappy.

You don't have a coffee - you "lim kopi". And if someone asks you to join them for a meal but you've already had dinner, you simply say: "Eat already.". ............

“For too long, citizens of the world have suffered under the tyranny of unattractive leaders,” reads the quirky website. “Some people say that this is just the way things are: unattractive people have a death grip on the levers of power that will never be loosened. We say: Not with that attitude it won’t. By ranking the world’s leaders by looks, we hope to heighten voter awareness of this problem and shame the citizens of countries with unattractive leaders into rising up and staging coups or something.”............

"I went outside Dunkin' Donuts with a couple of my classmates and started to wait in line," explains Úrsúla who lives in the city centre just near the famed US doughnut chain. So what did her parents think of that little venture? "When my family found out I was waiting in the line they thought it was very silly," she laughs. "I felt very silly myself but once I'd waited there for a while I thought, why not just stick it out seeing as I'm already here."............

Saudi Arabia is an expensive country to run for the House of Saud. Fearful of Iran, it has imported the latest military kit to show that it is the Middle East’s regional superpower. Higher defence spending has also been needed to fund action in Yemen and to counter the threat from Islamic State. In addition, Saudi Arabia has an unemployment problem that it fears may become a social unrest problem. Two-thirds of the population is under 30 and the unemployment rate for the 16-29 age group is 29%.

As the CIA puts it in its World Factbook: “Over 6 million foreign workers play an important role in the Saudi economy, particularly in the oil and service sectors, while Riyadh is struggling to reduce unemployment among its own nationals. Saudi officials are particularly focused on employing its large youth population, which generally lacks the education and technical skills the private sector needs.”............