By Kevin Spak
Results haven’t been officially announced yet in Zimbabwe’s just-completed presidential election, but President Robert Mugabe’s main challenger is already decrying the entire affair as a “huge farce” and declaring the outcome “null and void,” the BBC reports. “It’s a sham election that does not reflect the will of the people,… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
By Rob Quinn
Uruguay – the Colorado of South America? The country is set to become the first to fully legalize and regulate the sale of marijuana after the lower house of parliament narrowly passed a sweeping legalization bill, the BBC reports. The bill, backed by President Jose Mujica’s government, puts the sale… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
British Gas is planning to provide customers with free power on Saturdays in an effort to reduce demand at peaks times, the BBC reported. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
English Premier League newboys Cardiff on Wednesday signed Tottenham defender Steven Caulker for a club record fee believed to be in excess of eight million pounds ($12.1million), the BBC reported. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
From borderline abusive tabloid pictures to divorce in less than seven weeks: Nigella Lawson is free of former husband Charles Saatchi, who announced his divorce plans shortly after the tabloid incident. The High Court granted the divorce in a hearing that lasted less than 60 seconds, the BBC reports, although… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
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BBC Sport is reporting that Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One boss and indicted briber, has said the Indian Grand Prix will “probably not” happen in 2014. The race, which takes place at the purpose-built Buddh International Circuit, is in danger due to a combination of reasons, including Ecclestone’s desire to move India from its current slot in October to the beginning of the season, in March or April.
According to the BBC, this is to accommodate a schedule envisioned by Ecclestone that adds races in Austria, New Jersey and Russia, in addition to the current 19-race calendar. Why the shuffle, though? The teams aren’t too excited about a longer season, and Ecclestone is hoping that by moving India to the start of the season, with China, Malaysia and the season opener in Australia, he can knock out four of the seven Asia-Pacific-region races in one fell swoop.
This poses a problem for India, though, as it’d be forced to run a race in October of 2014 and then do the whole thing over again in six or seven months. According to the head of India’s motorsports federation, Vicky Chandhok, that doesn’t give the country enough recovery time, with Chandhok going so far as to say the early season date “would be impossible for us in terms of finances and resources.”
There’s also a dustup over India’s import tax, that could hamper this year’s race. The Indian government is attempting to tax teams on their Indian earnings rather than on their profits, which would result in teams having to paying considerably more in taxes.
2013 marks only the third F1 race at the Buddh Circuit. But if Bernie doesn’t get his way, and the tax issues aren’t sorted, the track could go the way of Turkey’s Istanbul Park, another circuit built solely to attract F1, that lasted a mere six seasons before being dropped from the calendar.
Indian Grand Prix in jeopardy? originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 29 Jul 2013 17:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Autoblog
By The Huffington Post News Editors
After living in New Zealand for six years, a South African chef may be forced to leave the country because of his weight.
New Zealand authorities have told Albert Buitenhuis, who weighs 286 pounds, that he may be deported because he did not have “an acceptable standard of health,” the BBC reports. Buitenhuis weighed roughly 65 pounds more when he first moved to the country, but this is the first time he has had any trouble renewing his annual work visa.
“It is important that all migrants have an acceptable standard of health to minimise costs and demands on New Zealand’s health services,” an Immigration New Zealand spokesperson told News24. She listed diabetes, hypertension and heart disease as some of the risks Buitenhuis faces because of his weight.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post
A court ban on a research paper that analyzes flaws in a car-lock system should be overturned, according to the Dutch university that employs two of the three researchers who wrote the analysis.
The U.K. High Court of Justice banned the publication of the paper, “Dismantling Megamos Crypto: Wirelessly Lockpicking a Vehicle Immobilizer” on June 25, said the Radboud University Nijmegen in a news release on Monday. The ban came to the attention of the public when the U.K. newspaper The Guardian published a story about it over the weekend.
The U.K. court issued an interim block on the research paper, while considering a permanent ban on request of car manufacturer Volkswagen, the university added. French defence group Thales also requested the ban, according to a report by the BBC.
Roel Verdult and Baris Ege, of the Digital Security faculty at Radboud University, were planning to present their paper with Flavio Garcia a lecturer in Computer Science of the University of Birmingham during the USENIX Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., in August, the Dutch university said.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
By Matt Cantor
Nearly a year after his wife was sentenced in the death of a British businessman, former top Chinese politician Bo Xilai looks set for a trial of his own. He has been charged with corruption, bribery, embezzlement, and abuse of power, the BBC reports. Bo used his job as a… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
By Eamon Murphy
Filed under: Government Spending, World Leaders, People
Here’s a paradox about Great Britain. In many ways, it’s a more progressive country than the United States, its colonial offspring. It has a more generous welfare state (including national health care), a more progressive tax structure, and a third major political party to the left of Labour. Most workers are entitled to at least 28 paid days of vacation per year, and same-sex marriage will soon be legal throughout England and Wales.
And yet Great Britain maintains one of the most conservative institutions on the planet: a hereditary monarchy, something Americans would never countenance. This despite the fact that King Charles I lost two civil wars, leading to his own decapitation and the short-lived abolition of the monarchy, in the mid-17th century.
And though the royal family’s political significance has long since been reduced to the ceremonial, the Windsors still have a massive financial footprint. As sovereign, the Queen owns the Crown Estate, a property portfolio worth £8.1 billion ($12.4 billion) as of last month — the first time its value has exceeded £8 billion. It includes a lot of prime real estate — “large parts of London’s West End,” “15 retail parks in various towns and cities,” shopping centers, offices, agricultural lands, forests, and “most UK coastline,” according to the BBC — and 15 percent of its annual revenues is used to fund the monarchy. The rest goes to the Treasury.
As a result of the these assets’ recent performance, the Queen is getting a raise: the Sovereign Grant, as her cut of the Crown Estate’s revenues is called, is set to increase next year from £36.1 million to £37.89 million (more than $55 million) — a gain of 5 percent, and the second consecutive bump to her allowance.
“The Crown Estate as a whole dates from the time of the Norman Conquest,” explains the monarchy’s official website — more than 900 years ago — but the current arrangement came into effect in 1760. That was the year King George III — the intolerable tyrant of the Declaration of Independence — signed the revenues over to the Treasury, and in return, stopped having to pay for the civil government, the national debt, and his own personal debt. Those expenses were covered by something called the Civil List, funded by the Treasury and supplemented more recently by grants from other departments, until the Sovereign Grant Act of 2011. Buckingham Palace called the change “a modern, transparent and simpler way of funding the head of state,” but opponents of the monarchy are unconvinced. “Pegging royal funding to Crown Estate revenue makes no sense at all,” said the group Republic, which advocates replacing the Queen (or King) with an elected head of state. “The two are not related. Crown Estate revenue has always been there to provide funds for the government.”
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
NEW YORK, July 24 (UPI) — Oscar-winning U.S. actor Christopher Walken is to star in Clint Eastwood’s upcoming movie musical “Jersey Boys,” the BBC reported. …read more
The headmistress at the school where 23 children died after eating insecticide-tainted food has been arrested, the BBC reports. Meena Kumari, who allegedly forced students to continue eating even after the quality of the meal was questioned, fled after the deaths but was headed toward court to turn herself in… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
By Matt Cantor
There are believed to be about 60 surviving former Nazis fit to stand trial—and the Simon Wiesenthal Center wants to track them all down. The US-based organization has distributed some 2,000 posters across Berlin, Hamburg, and Cologne calling for tips, the BBC reports. The posters read: “Operation Last… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
Could today’s sleek new TVs be hurting kids—literally? As flat-screens have become more popular, the injury rate of children being hurt by televisions in the US has climbed, the BBC reports. Almost 200,000 kids, 64% of them under 5, were hurt between 1990 and 2011, according to a… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Health
The British government wants Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to block Internet searches that are likely to lead to child abuse images. Internet search providers have until October to commit to banning lists of keywords deemed abusive or the government will consider legislation to force them, the U.K.’s Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday in a speech.
Some people are putting “simply appalling” terms into search engines in order to find illegal images of child abuse and they’re getting results, Cameron said Sunday in an interview broadcast by the BBC.
The U.K. government needs to have a “very, very strong conversation” with Internet search providers and tell them that they shouldn’t provide results for terms that are “depraved and disgusting,” he said.
The interview was in advance of a speech the Prime Minister gave Monday that focused on removing child abuse content from the Internet and preventing children from accessing pornography.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
The fashion world mourned the loss of a pioneer in the modeling industry this weekend when news broke that John Casablancas, founder of Elite Models, had died at age 70.
WWD reported Saturday that Casablancas, who is widely credited with creating the age of the supermodel, had lost a long battle with cancer. He was in Rio de Janiero when he passed away.
Casablancas is credited with helping bring about the age of the supermodel in the ’80s and early ’90s. His agency, which he founded in Paris in 1972, helped launch the careers of Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, and Stephanie Seymour, among many others who got their start at Elite. He told Modelinia in 2010, “When I came into the business . . . the models were blonde, blue eyed, no breasts, practically no curves, and I ignored that. I introduced women with shape, short hair, brunettes, brown eyes, and that was very successful.”
But although he helped revolutionize modeling, Casablancas’s tenure was not without controversy. He famously – and publicly – dated Stephanie Seymour in 1983, when he was 41 and she was 16. The affair ended his second marriage to former model Jeanette Christjansen. In 2000, when a BBC documentary exposed Elite executives bragging about their drug use and relationships with young models, Casablancas resigned from his agency – even though he wasn’t implicated in the scandal.
John Casablancas is survived by his brother Fernando and five children, including jewelry designer Cecile Casablancas and Julian Casablancas, lead singer of The Strokes.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at fashionologie
By Matt Cantor
A pair of earthquakes have killed at least 54 people and left some 300 hurt in China’s Gansu province, the BBC reports. The quakes’ magnitude measured 5.98 and 5.6 respectively, according to the US Geological Survey; Reuters puts the first quake at 6.6. There have been 371… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
By Matt Cantor
Kate Middleton is in London’s St. Mary’s Hospital for the birth of the royal baby, the royal family says. She’s in the “early stages of labor,” the BBC reports, in what CNN notes is the hospital where William and Harry were born. Details are few, and there won’t likely be… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
By Matt Cantor
With Israel-Palestine talks potentially beginning next week , Israel will release some “heavyweight (Palestinian) prisoners in jail for decades,” says top minister Yuval Steinitz. Details are fuzzy, but it’s possible 350 prisoners could be released over several months, a Palestinian official tells the BBC ; some 100 of them have been in… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
By Matt Cantor
Five Costa employees have been found guilty of manslaughter, negligence, and shipwreck in last year’s Concordia disaster. Four crew members and the crisis-response director have been sentenced to prison terms between 18 months and two years and 10 months, the BBC reports, but they’re unlikely actually to serve time, Reuters… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
