At least one team of British reporters for the BBC have been arrested in Tehran, Iran. Officials there say the reporters are suspected of spying on Iran and had the assistance of the British embassy in Tehran. A number of other teams are under investigation for espionage.
"Iran’s security agencies have revealed that several BBC reporters intended to engage in espionage in the Islamic Republic of Iran with the support of the UK embassy, said Foreign Policy and National Security Commission of the Iranian parliament member, Muhammad Karim Abedi.
New outbreaks of H5N2 have been confirmed in Taiwan. Council of Agriculture (COA) Minister Chen Wu-hsiung has confirmed on Saturday that "the recent chicken deaths at a poultry farm in Kaohsiung County’s Luchu Township (on October 21) were caused by the low-pathogenic H5N2 bird flu virus, that is not communicable to humans." They had slaughtered 18,000 chickens on November 14. "The problem has been resolved," he said. COA has been monitoring wild and migratory birds and said "it is still investigating the source of the infection."
Lujhu Townsh
Mauritania's President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi has been freed "without conditions" from house arrest by the military junta on Sunday.
Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi (Arabic: سيدي محمد ولد الشيخ عبد الله) is a Mauritanian politician who served in the government during the 1970s, and after a long period of absence from politics he won the March 2007 presidential election, taking office on 19 April 2007. He was deposed in a military coup d'etat on August 6, 2008.
He was removed from Lemden to his soldiers guarded private residence in Nou
In basketball, the Singapore Slingers defeated Darwin All-Stars 91–65 in a physical game played at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. This was the eighth game of the ten-game Challenger series featuring Southeastern Asian teams. The win takes the Slingers to a 7–1 win/loss ratio with two games left in the series.
Played in front of a small crowd of less then 1 000, the Slingers held the lead throughout the game and continued to extend their lead in each quarter. The second and third quarters proved tight with the Slingers only gaining a one and two
The scientific journal RNA Biology will require authors of articles in a new section on RNA families to submit summaries of their work to Wikipedia, Nature News reports.
Since 2007, the RNA family database (Rfam) has been synchronized with Wikipedia, so that editing Wikipedia alters the database. A small core group of scientists updates the entries in Wikipedia, but a long tail of scientists and other Wikipedians have contributed as well. Due to the scientific nature of the entries, vandalism has not been a large problem, according to Sean Edd
Actress Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, who was the wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, has died of leukemia at the age of 76. According to a spokesperson, Roddenberry died in her home in Bel-Air, California.
Roddenberry was probably most known for her role as the voice of the computers in nearly every Star Trek television spinoff series from the 1960's to present time. She is also the voice of the computer in the upcoming movie by director J.J. Abrams, Star Trek. Majel also played Nurse Chapel in the original Star Trek series starring Will
Camera company Polaroid has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States. The firm, famed for the introduction of instant photography, says alleged fraud by the founder of their parent group is to blame.
Owned since 2005 by Petters Group Worldwide, Polaroid says that the group's founder Tom Petters is "under investigation for alleged acts of fraud that have compromised the financial condition of Polaroid." Authorities believe Petter, currently in police custody, was running fraud worth £3 billion, something he denies.
Pette
A team of eight transplant surgeons in Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, USA, led by reconstructive surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow, age 58, have successfully performed the first almost total face transplant in the US, and the fourth globally, on a woman so horribly disfigured due to trauma, that cost her an eye. Two weeks ago Dr. Siemionow, in a 23-hour marathon surgery, replaced 80 percent of her face, by transplanting or grafting bone, nerve, blood vessels, muscles and skin harvested from a female donor's cadaver.
The Clinic surgeons, in Wednesday's n
Rod Blagojevich, the United States governor of Illinois, will retain his position of governor after the Illinois Supreme Court stopped an effort to have him removed from office. Blagojevich insists that he is innocent and has done nothing to break the law. The court refused to hear the attorney-general's case to impeach Blagojevich on accusations that the latter was politically and legally unable to work.
Lisa Madigan, the state attorney general, voiced her disappointment over the ruling, saying that the governor's refusal to step down has res
Internet giant Yahoo! announced on Wednesday that by January 2009 it will begin purging personal data collected when users access its search page at the 3 month mark, a far shorter time period than any of its search engine rivals such as Google, which retains personal data for 9 months, down from 18 months as of September, and Microsoft, which retains data for an 18 month period, though Microsoft has stated support for a six month industry standard. Prior to the announcement, Yahoo purged data at 13 months.
Just three years ago, the policy of
Twin blasts, allegedly caused by improvised explosive devices, rocked two upscale malls in the main financial district in Aguinaldo Street in Iligan City on Thursday. At least three people were killed and forty-seven were wounded when two improvised crude bombs exploded and damaged the Unicity Commercial Center at 1:35 p.m. and the nearby Jerry’s Shoppers Plaza 10 minutes later.
The mall blasts occurred a day before President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s scheduled visit to the City, her maternal hometown. Lanao del Norte police Superintendent D
An appeals court in Eastern France has confirmed the Swedish car manufacturer Volvo is guilty over the deaths of two schoolchildren aged nine and ten and the serious injury of a third after a brakes failure caused an accident in 1999.
The Volvo 850 TDI was being driven by a local teacher when it struck the children, who had been on their way to school. Driver Catherine Kohtz later asserted that the brake pedal had become stiff and the brakes themselves unresponsive as she traveled along the steep road.
Expert examination of the vehicle after
