THOUSANDS of mine workers have downed tools at South Africa’s Lonmin mine after a union leader was shot dead in the restive platinum belt at the weekend.

“Lonmin operations are suspended this morning due to an illegal work stoppage,” Lonmin spokeswoman Sue Vey told AFP on Tuesday.

Work had stopped at all of the firm’s 13 shafts in the northwestern Rustenburg mining town, the world’s top platinum producing region, she added.

The reasons for the strike remain unclear …

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PARIS, France — It’s Paris under the spring sunshine. Couples stroll hand-in-hand, steal kisses while window shopping past chic boutiques, or whisper sweet-nothings over marble-topped tables at a sidewalk cafe.

These are familiar cliches of the romantic French capital, except that along the Rue des Archives, the couples in question are likely to be same-sex.

This is the Marais neighborhood, a favorite hangout of gay Parisians and a scene of celebration on April 23 when lawmakers in …

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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Five-months pregnant, Im Chanthy was told that her husband’s body had been found in the trunk of his car, brutally hacked to death for reporting on illegal logging and land concessions in Cambodia.

Many of these concessions, a new report by environmental watchdog Global Witness found, are owned by two Vietnamese rubber companies, which — with the financial support of Deutsche Bank, an arm of the World Bank and local governments — …

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A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced two men to lashes and prison terms for converting a woman to Christianity and helping her flee the conservative Islamic kingdom, the Saudi Gazette reported yesterday.

A Lebanese man was sentenced to six years in prison and 300 lashes for converting the woman, while a Saudi man was sentenced to two years and 200 lashes for aiding her escape abroad, the English-language daily said.

It added that the pair had …

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As sequestration went into effect in March, some lawmakers argued that the impact of the cuts would not be as immediate as had been claimed, as they would take place over a matter of years. But there are some areas that felt the impact immediately. One of those is schools on military bases or Native American reservations. Because schools on or near federal lands don’t collect as much in property and sales tax revenues as …

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CHAMBERLAIN, S.D. — Native American students will not be recognized with an honor song during this year’s commencement ceremony at Chamberlain High School in southeastern South Dakota, despite a renewed effort to add to the graduation tradition.

The school board voted 6-1 Monday night to reject a request to allow the song, The Daily Republic newspaper reported (http://bit.ly/12rwDHQ ). Board President Rebecca Reimer said a feathering ceremony led by the district’s Native American Club the night …

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Obama’s Justice Department is under fire following revelations revealed by the Associated Press that the government secretly obtained two months worth of private phone records from the news agency in 2012 during what appears to be a brazen attempt to discover the source of an intelligence leak.

Calling the seizure of records a “massive and unprecedented intrusion,” AP itself disclosed the events on Monday after being informed by a US attorneys office on Friday:

The records obtained …

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JERUSALEM — The Israeli government approved a two-year austerity budget early Tuesday that would cut spending and raise taxes, outraging many Israelis who voted in a new government this year after promises of economic relief.

Yair Lapid, Israel’s new finance minister, in Mr. Netanyahu’s office on Monday for discussions on spending measures intending to help close a $10.5 billion budget deficit.

Even before the new government’s first budget was approved, 12,000 Israelis took to the streets …

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With just over a week before the Chicago Board of Education votes on a proposal to close 54 schools, the Chicago Teachers Union and other activist groups said Monday they would hold marches over three days to protest the plan.

The marches will begin Saturday in the South and West side neighborhoods where many schools are slated for closing and culminate in a rally Monday afternoon outside City Hall.

The marches “will continue to unite us, make …

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In this spoof documentary, Bankwatch with Bill Oddie, the naturalist protests against HSBC’s illegal logging by entering the den of a creature closely related to humans: the banker. HSBC has made nearly £100m bankrolling some of the world’s most destructive logging companies in Sarawak Malaysia, and is at risk of violating international money laundering rules, according to NGO Global Witness

Click here to see the video. …