A post template

No image available
/ 24 November 2007

YouTube rejects calls to monitor videos

Video-sharing website YouTube is refusing to filter out threatening material, despite calls for more restrictions in the wake of the school shooting in Finland. Pekka-Eric Auvinen (18) used YouTube to publicise his plans to attack his high school in Tuusula, hours before he killed eight people and then shot himself.

No image available
/ 24 November 2007

Saffron pay boost casts cloud over industry

The laborious work starts well before dawn. Frigid temperatures greet pickers like Ebrahim Baratnejad as they head for the fields to set about the crocuses that yield up one of the most precious ingredients of the Eastern kitchen. But despite the fiddly work extracting saffron stigmas from the flowers, he is a picture of contentment.

No image available
/ 24 November 2007

Australia’s Labour claims election victory

Australia’s Labour party claimed victory in national elections on Saturday, signalling an end to 11 years of conservative government led by Prime Minister John Howard. "On the numbers we are seeing tonight, Labour is going to form a government," Labour’s deputy leader, Julia Gillard, told Australian television.

No image available
/ 24 November 2007

Aids taboo broken in Uganda — now for the drugs

Selina Akello sits in a clearing between the mud huts in her village. ”I will tell you anything,” she says. An older man passes within earshot, but she does not falter. This conversation would have been impossible a few years ago; Akello has the disease that used to be called ”slim” because people wasted away. Now it is called HIV/Aids.

No image available
/ 24 November 2007

Big Apple’s murder rate plunges

New York City, once widely feared for its mean streets scarred by random violence, is on course for its lowest murder rate in four decades with this year’s total expected to be below 500. A steady decline in the Big Apple’s violent-crime rate has left the city basking in a new-found glow of safety.

No image available
/ 24 November 2007

Mortar barrage triggers Mogadishu clashes

Insurgents fired a barrage of mortars into an Ethiopian army camp in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Friday, triggering heavy fighting, residents said. The clashes shattered a fortnight lull in the city after weeks of heavy fighting that had claimed dozens of lives, mainly of civilians, and displaced at least 200 000 people.