A former aide to French senator Charles Pasqua, whose name was cited by a recent report by a United States Senate investigation panel, has admitted that the Iraqi government had intended to reward Mr Pasqua with a grant of oil through the oil for food program.
The aide, Bernard Guillet, was arrested in April 2005 and was put under formal criminal investigation on April 28 by French judge Philippe Courroye, under the charges of egregious influence peddling and of being an accessory to an abuse of corporate belongings. He is suspected of having
Pop starlet Kylie Minogue has announced through her management that she has an early stage of breast cancer. The 36-year-old has said she will be going through the treatment in her native Australia. Due to early diagnosis the singer stands a good chance of making a full recovery.
Kylie, who had spent the past week in Melbourne, has revealed that due to the cancer the rest of her Showgirl tour of Australia will be postponed and her appearance at this year's Glastonbury festival will be cancelled.
The Showgirl tour was due to hit Sydney, Melbou
On Thursday the 22nd of March, 2005, Anna Ayala, a woman from Las Vegas, claimed to have found a human finger in her bowl of chili at a Wendy's restaurant located at 1405 Monterey Highway, just south of downtown San Jose, California, owned by Fresno-based Jern Management.. The finger, which probably belonged to a woman as it had a long and manicured fingernail, did not belong to any of the restaurant employees. The food supplies were seized by officials to be traced back to its manufacturers, while the restaurant was permitted to open again lat
The recently started bus across the Line of Control in Kashmir completed its third round-trip free of any untoward incident. The third bus from Srinagar to Muzzafarabad, carrying 37 passengers, left Srinagar at around 0815 hours IST on Thursday. The return trip from Muzaffarabad carried 41 passengers.
Heavy security arrangements were made to ensure no untoward incident took place. Authorities kept the names and addresses of the passengers secret to avoid a repeat of violent attacks launched by militants when the service started. The traveler'
A chemical part of the saliva of a poisonous lizard, the Gila monster, has become an integral partner in the control of Type 2 diabetes. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved its use for people who have not achieved adequate control of their diabetes with oral medications.
Byetta, or exenatide, is produced by Amylin Pharmaceuticals. It is injected before eating morning and evening meals as part of a combination treatment with oral drugs. The FDA said it could be approved as a stand-alone treatment if the drug companies can support
At least two university students have been shot and killed, and a third may have been mortally wounded after clashing with police at the University of Buea in the west-central African nation of Cameroon. The deaths come after sporadic confrontation between students and police during strikes that began last Wednesday, following by one week mostly peaceful strikes which began April 20 at another Cameroon university, Yaoundé One. A delegation of five students is said to have traveled from Yaoundé One to UB, instigating the strike at the second u
Swedish company Korsnas Packaging has extended its operations in Romania by transferring two production lines from Germany and the United Kingdom to its Romanian subsidiary in Ploieşti, an industrial city close to Bucharest. The first production line will be designed for producing packing material for food and the building industry. This line will be transferred to Romania at the beginning of May, with the transaction being worth €1.5 million. The second production line will be transferred in 2006, depending on the 2005 financial results of Kor
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales spoke at the Harvard Law School tonight with a presentation titled "Wikipedia and the Digital Divide." Projected on a screen behind Wales was a running list — in real time — of edits to the German and English Wikipedias. Over the course of the hour, the list showed changes to topics like "Time Travel," "Dante Alighieri" and, in German, "The Maronite Patriarchs of Antioch."
Wales started with a summary of Wikipedia's goals; the bulk of the time was given over to questions from audience members. Approximately 65 p
The All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health has begun a campaign to instruct street vendors in India how to safely prepare food for their customers to avoid inflicting 'Delhi belly'–severe diarrhea–which afflicts about half of the visitors to the region. Over 150,000 "stall wallahs" in Calcutta will be shown how to properly prepare dishes such as jhalmuri (a rice, tomato, and onion dish) and ghughni (a chick pea curry dish).
"Do not set up your stall in the middle of a rubbish dump, drain or sewage channel," the report recommends. "W
In a convoy ambush Monday in southeastern Afghanistan, 8 Taliban rebels were killed and 16 captured after a fire fight that ended after Afghan coalition forces called in U.S. air power for support. There were no reported coalition casualties.
The convoy was travelling in the Zabul's Dai Chopan district when the ambush occurred. Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman General Muhammad said, "After the ambush, fierce fighting broke out and we called in coalition air support," according to Reuters.
U.S. ground forces were also involved in the fighting
The Norwegian Dawn, a 965-foot-long luxury vessel, was struck by “a freak wave that caused two windows to break in two different cabins,” the owners, Norwegian Cruise Line, said in a statement. It changed course, docking in Charleston late Saturday afternoon instead of completing its planned travel to New York.
The wave, estimated at 7-stories-high, flooded 62 cabins and injured 4 passengers with cuts and bruises. Company spokeswoman Susan Robison said the wave reached to deck 10.
The hull was damaged but the vessel was not in any trouble, ac
NB This story has also been covered in the article Killer virus sent worldwide. There have NOT been two incidents.
The World Health Organisation (WHO), in a statement issued Tuesday, urged scientists to destroy samples of a deadly flu virus that could potentially cause a global pandemic.
Shipments of the influenza virus sent to Mexico and Lebanon are unaccounted for. The U.N. health organization said 10 countries receiving samples already destroyed them, while 5 more countries are in the process of doing so.
The virus, A/H2N2, was detected b
