generalspeaking

The World Today

• U.K. Gang Trend- Man taken off life support after attack by youths: Police are investigating whether a Toronto man who died after an attack by teenagers is the latest victim of a London-born phenomenon called "happy slapping". Happy slapping, a youth craze in which violence is filmed and passed phone-to-phone or on the Internet for others to see, usually involves unsuspecting victims being slapped, punched or beaten. Last Tuesday evening, Peter Ramsey, a 40-year-old man from Toronto who had been living as an artist in England for two years, was walking home from a supermarket with his girlfriend when they were confronted by a group of teenagers.
• Bono called a hypocrite for avoiding Irish taxes: Bono, the rock star and campaigner against Third World debt, is asking the Irish government to contribute more to Africa. At the same time, he is reducing tax payments that could help fund that aid. After Ireland said it would scrap a break that lets musicians and artists avoid paying taxes on royalties, Bono and his U2 bandmates moved their music publishing company to the Netherlands. The Dublin group which Forbes magazine estimates earned US$110-million in 2005, will pay 5% tax on its royalties, less than half the Irish rate.
• Israeli president could be facing rape charges: According to graphic accounts carried by the Israeli press, the head of state is alleged to have behaved like a sexual predator, groping, manhandling and ultimately raping two women, including his office manager, at the presidential residence.
• Militants labelling rockets for credit: Rivalry among militant groups in the Gaza Strip has prompted some to place Hebrew labels on the rockets they fire at Israel to make sure they get credit for the attacks. Israeli authorities nearly always refer to the makeshift rockets fired from Gaza as Qassams, the name of those made by Hamas, the ruling party and Fatah's chief rival. Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for the Hamas armed wing, said the group has no plans to label its rockets in Hebrew, though he said Hamas is pleased the "factions are running an honest and positive competition in rocket-firing".
• No deportation to Egypt: The Federal Court of Canada has upheld the government's case against an alleged Egyptian terrorist caught in Toronto, but said deporting him to a country that practices torture would violate his human rights.
• Shot mother had reconciled with husband: A woman killed along with her two daughters over the weekend had divorced her husband several years ago but reconciled with him for the sake of the children. Mila Voynova, 40, a historian and yoga teacher, and daughters Alice, 10, and Iva, 17, were found shot to death at their home in Beaconsfield, Quebec. Their psychologist father, Dragolub Tzokovitch, was clinging to life in hospital yesterday after turning his .357 magnum pistol on himself in an apparent suicide attempt after the killings.
• Teens to help police Afghan trouble spots: Canadian troops building and guarding a road where six soldiers have died in 16 days will soon receive help policing the treacherous region: local teenagers armed with Ak-47s and just 10 days of training. The new auxiliary force of officers is being thrown together to aid with security in Kandahar province and other troubled spots in southern Afghanistan.
• U.S. "sniffer" plane confirms nuclear test: U.S. scientists confirmed yesterday that North Korea successfully tested a nuclear device last week. A WC-135 Phoenix, the last Cold War-era "sniffer" plane still in service was airborne in international airspace around the renegade dictatorship at the time of the test. Two days after the detonation, the aircraft gathered air samples that contained radioactive fallout.
• Chavez's speech may have cost Venezuela support at UN: As the 192 member states of the General Assembly voted yesterday to fill five seats on the UN's most powerful body, several ambassadors said Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, shot himself in the foot when he called George W. Bush, the U.S. president, "the devil" and said he could detect a "smell of sulphur" in the room. "Many people felt the speech was in bad taste," Augustine Mahiga, Tanzania's ambassador to the UN said of the Venezuelan president's address to the General Assembly in September. Before the speech, many diplomats had named Venezuela as the favourite to win the Latin American seat on the council.
• Musharraf dodges yet another bullet: Two weeks ago, just as he returned from a book promotion tour of Canada, the United States and Britain, someone tried to fire three batteries of Russian-made anti-tank rockets at Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf's home on an army base in Rawalpindi, his office in Islamabad and the headquarters of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
• At least 12 million people enslaved worldwide: At least 12 million people, most of them children, are trapped in slavery worldwide, a human rights activist said yesterday. Children are ensnared in pornography and prostitution, and exploited as cheap labour and child soldiers. "They are more vulnerable, cheaper to hire and less likely to demand higher wages or better working conditions", Sarah Williams of Anti-Slavery International said of the 8.4 million enslaved children.
• Suicide truck bomb is Sri Lanka's deadliest: Sri Lanka suffered its worst suicide bomb attack in two decades of civil war yesterday when Tamil Tiger rebels detonated an explosives-laden truck next to a convoy of sailors, killing at least 103 people and wounding 150 more, police said.
• Indonesian pastor gunned down: A gunman shot dead a Christian pastor yesterday in Indonesia's Central Sulawesi province, sparking fears of a return to sectarian fighting that once gripped the region. Reverend Irianto Kongkoli was killed as he was buying construction materials in the provincial capital of Palu, 165 kilometres northeast of Jakarta.
• Australian drought fuels nuclear debate: Australia's worst drought in living memory is threatening the booming economy of the driest continent on earth, driving global warming and nuclear power to the forefront of political debate. Soaring temperatures and bushfires marking the apparent early onset of another hot and dry summer have dragged the government into a fresh debate about the effects of global warming. Australia has refused to ratify the UN's 1997 Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and is a major exporter of fossil fuels, which produce the gases blamed for rising temperatures worldwide.

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, October 18, 2006