Ala. Hostage Suspect Had Court Date Scheduled

The retired Alabama trucker who shot a school bus driver and is now holding a kindergarten student in an underground bunker was scheduled to be in court Wednesday to answer for allegedly shooting at his neighbors in a dispute over a damaged speed bump.Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, has been holed up in a 6 by 8 foot bunker 4 feet underground with a 5-year-old autistic boy named Ethan...

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Staff 'live-tweet' sackings at UK retailer HMV

LONDON: Staff at collapsed British music retailer HMV hijacked the company's official Twitter account on Thursday to warn they were being sacked en masse.The tweets were swiftly deleted but within minutes, administrators Deloitte confirmed 190 redundancies had been made across HMV's head office and distribution network as a "necessary step in restructuring the business".On the official...

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Lokpal Bill: What it now entails

NEW DELHI: Salient points of the new Lokpal Bill that was cleared on Thursday by the Union Cabinet headed by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh:* The Lokpal at the centre has been delinked from Lokayukta in the states.* State government will have to enact a law for setting up Lokayukta within a year of the central government passing the Lokpal bill.* The prime minister's office will be under the...

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New Theory on How Homing Pigeons Find Home

Jane J. Lee Homing pigeons (Columba livia) have been prized for their navigational abilities for thousands of years. They've served as messengers during war, as a means of long-distance communication, and as prized athletes in international races.But there are places around the world that seem to confuse these birds—areas where they repeatedly vanish in the wrong direction or scatter on...

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Negotiations Drag Out for 5-Year-Old Hostage

An Alabama community is on edge today, praying for a 5-year-old boy being held hostage by a retired man who police say abducted him at gunpoint Tuesday afternoon.Nearly 40 hours have slowly passed since school bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, heroically tried to prevent the kidnapping, but was shot to death by suspect Jimmy Lee Dykes, a former truck driver, police said.Dykes...

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Thai tycoon takes majority control of Singapore's F&N

SINGAPORE: A Thai tycoon has clinched majority control of Singapore conglomerate Fraser and Neave (F&N), making his offer to fully takeover the company unconditional.TCC Assets, owned by Thai billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, said in a statement late Wednesday that its stake in F&N stands at 50.92 per cent after further purchases in the stock market and more shareholders accepting...

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Wanting dhoti-clad PM may have caused 'Vishwaroopam' ban: Karunanidhi

CHENNAI: Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham (DMK) president M Karunanidhi on Wednesday wondered whether the Tamil Nadu government's ban on Kamal Haasan's movie "Vishwaroopam" was because the actor wanted a dhoti-clad Tamilian as prime minister. In a letter to party cadres, Karunanidhi said some sections of people are of the view that the actor earned the ire of the state government after he said that a...

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Hello Kitty! Please Don’t Kill Me!

Maybe the butler didn't do it. But the cat probably did.A new study, published January 29 in Nature Communications, estimates that cats are responsible for killing billions of birds and mammals in the continental U.S. every year. The estimate: 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion bird victims and 6.9 billion to 20.7 billion mammals. Peter Marra, the senior author of the study, called the results...

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Giffords to Senate: 'Americans Are Counting on You'

Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, whose congressional career was ended by a bullet wound to her head, opened a Senate hearing on gun violence today by telling the panel, "Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important."In a determined and forceful voice, she told the Senators to be "courageous" because "Americans are counting on you."Giffords sat alongside...

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Pitfalls ahead for senators’ immigration plan

The release of a new bipartisan Senate plan to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws and a policy address expected Tuesday from President Obama have launched dramatic new momentum on a long-stalled issue. Now the hard part begins. The blueprint unveiled by senators Monday amid warm bipartisan unity settled some of the most difficult questions that have bedeviled efforts to change...

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