Dec
19
2012
The woman, a physiotherapy student, was last night fighting for her life in hospital. She had been travelling home from watching a film at a shopping mall in the south of Delhi when she and a male friend were attacked by a group of drunk men on a largely empty bus.
Police say six men attacked the couple and took turns to rape the woman as the bus toured the city’s streets on Sunday. Tinted windows …
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Dec
19
2012
Russian MPs have overwhelmingly backed a bill that would ban US citizens from adopting Russian children.
The move is in retaliation for the Magnitsky Act, passed in the US this month, introducing sanctions on Russian alleged human rights violators.
It follows several cases in which Russian children have apparently been mistreated by US adoptive parents.
But senior figures in the government of President Vladimir Putin have chided Russian MPs for going too far.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov criticised the …
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Dec
18
2012
Only weeks after climate change talks in Doha produced no significant plan to address climate change, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday that coal will likely rival oil as the world’s largest source of energy within five years, dramatically increasing global warming.
An Indian worker shovels coal at a depot in Siliguri on October 18, 2010. (Photo: Diptendu Dutta/AFP/Getty Images)
The report, released Tuesday by the IEA, states that while the growth of coal use is slowing …
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Dec
18
2012
Roughly one in six people around the world has no religious affiliation, a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life found, making the unaffiliated the third-largest religious group worldwide, behind Christians and Muslims, and about equal in size to the world’s Catholic population.
The religiously unaffiliated population includes atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion in surveys, the study issued Tuesday reads. Many of the …
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Dec
18
2012
“[Police are] going to be in SWAT gear and have AR-15s around their neck,” Stovall said. “If you’re out walking, we’re going to stop you, ask why you’re out walking, check for your ID.”
Stovall said while some people may be offended by the actions of his department, they should not be.
“We’re going to do it to everybody,” he said. “Criminals don’t like being talked to.”
Gaskill backed Stovall’s proposed actions during Thursday’s town hall.
“They may not …
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Dec
18
2012
Georgia state and local police may start enforcing one of the most controversial parts of the state’s immigration law for the first time now that a federal judge has lifted an injunction he placed against it.
The statute — nicknamed by critics as “the show-me-your-papers law” — gives police the option to investigate the immigration status of certain suspects. It also empowers police to detain people determined to be in the country illegally and take them …
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Dec
17
2012
The Times’s examination reveals that Wal-Mart de Mexico was not the reluctant victim of a corrupt culture that insisted on bribes as the cost of doing business. Nor did it pay bribes merely to speed up routine approvals. Rather, Wal-Mart de Mexico was an aggressive and creative corrupter, offering large payoffs to get what the law otherwise prohibited. It used bribes to subvert democratic governance — public votes, open debates, transparent procedures. It used bribes …
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Dec
17
2012
Israel has approved a construction plan to build 1,500 housing units in annexed East Jerusalem, prompting the Palestinians to warn they would seek a UN Security Council meeting on the issue.
Efrat Orbach, Israel’s interior ministry spokeswoman, said on Monday that the ministry’s planning committee had given developers the go-ahead but told applicants to trim their request to build 1,600 new housing units at Ramat Shlomo to 1,500 and resubmit it “for final approval”.
The plan caused …
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Dec
17
2012
Pasadena police officers acted lawfully when they fatally shot an unarmed college student, prosecutors said Monday.
The officers reasonably believed Kendrec McDade, 19, was armed with a gun based on false information from a 911 caller, according to a report on the March shooting released Monday by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.
The controversial shooting sparked protests and outrage in Pasadena, with some drawing comparisons to the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida.
McDade, …
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Dec
17
2012
Only hours after news broke of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary, thousands took to the White House website, calling on the Obama administration to lead on gun control by introducing a bill to Congress.
The goal of this petition is to force the Obama Administration to produce legislation that limits access to guns. While a national dialogue is critical, laws are the only means in which we can reduce the number of people murdered in …
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