 A Malaysian princess has been murdered while trying to defend her husband from the couple's 21-year-old son. Police say the youth, who is the nephew of the sultan of the Malaysian state of Pahang, died later in hospital apparently from a drug overdose. Sixty-four year old Princess Kamaria Sultan Abu Bakar, who was the Sultan of Pahang's half-sister, was killed at her family home in the city of Kuantan. Her husband, Prince Ismal Sulaiman, was seriously injured in the attack. He is a member of another of Malaysia's nine royal houses. Police arrested the youngest of the couple's eight children, Shahzan, at the scene - he died some six hours later. ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk
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Editor - 11:39:00 07-25-06
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 Rice regrets Mid-East 'suffering'. Maybe she shed some crocodile tears for the dead, maimed & homeless |
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has expressed concern for the suffering of "innocent people" in the current fighting in the Middle East. She was speaking after talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and following an earlier meeting with Israeli PM Ehud Olmert. Mr Abbas called for an immediate truce but Mr Olmert told her there would be no let-up in army operations. Ms Rice did not back Mr Abbas' call - but urged peace across the region. Ms Rice's diplomatic tour comes as Israeli forces continue operations in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. They have resumed bombing targets in Beirut - after a lull during Ms Rice's visit on Tuesday. Some 380 Lebanese and up to 40 Israelis have died in nearly two weeks of conflict in Lebanon, which began after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on 12 July. ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5212158.stm
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Editor - 11:32:00 07-25-06
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| Big Dig Critics Fault Lack of Oversight of Project's Contractors for Dangerous Problems |
When Boston's Big Dig was still on the drawing board, state and federal transportation officials picked an engineering powerhouse and a smaller, well-established firm to build the forbiddingly complex tangle of tunnels, ramps, bridges and highways. And then, critics say, the officials stepped back and let the two companies do their job with little or no oversight. In the weeks since 12 tons of ceiling panels from a Big Dig tunnel fell, crushing a woman to death in a car, critics say one of the key flaws in the project was the way it was managed. Bechtel Civil Inc., part of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., teamed up with the design firm of Parsons, Brinckerhoff Quade and Douglas Inc. to work on the project, starting in 1985. The consortium was known as Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff. "It's been the fox guarding the hen house," said Sen. Steven Baddour, chairman of the Legislature's Joint Transportation Committee. ...
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2233888
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Editor - 11:24:00 07-25-06
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| ACLU appeals dismissal of German's CIA torture case |
The American Civil Liberties Union said on Tuesday it has appealed the dismissal of a federal lawsuit filed by a German of Lebanese origin who says he was abducted and tortured by the CIA. The ACLU, which represents Khaled el-Masri in the suit against former CIA Director George Tenet and CIA agents, asked the federal appellate court in Richmond, Virginia, to overturn a May 18 ruling by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis tossing out Masri's case as a risk to national security because it would expose state secrets. In a case that has drew wide attention and spawned investigations in Europe, Kuwaiti-born Masri says he was abducted in Macedonia in December 2001, then drugged, beaten and flown by the CIA to Afghanistan, where he was held as a terrorism suspect for five months. He says the CIA then dumped him in Albania. Tenet was director at the time. The CIA declined to comment on the appeal....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060725/ts_nm/security_masri_dc
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Editor - 11:22:00 07-25-06
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| California heat tests power grid |
Scorching heat is still severely stretching power supplies in parts of the US, with consumers warned of more shortages unless they reduce demand. The National Weather Service has issued another excessive heat warning for California with temperatures set to reach 44C (111F) in Los Angeles. The risk of rolling blackouts still remains and a power grid spokeswoman said: "We still have our guard up." About 29 deaths across the US in recent days are being linked to the heat wave. Electricity is now back on in many of the hundreds of thousands of homes hit by power outages in the past few days, including in California and New York. But in Queens in New York, about 1,000 customers were still without power for a ninth day on Tuesday, a utility company told the Associated Press news agency. ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5212650.stm
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Editor - 11:19:00 07-25-06
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| Instrumental but excluded |
If Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice and Ehud Olmert are to be believed, Iran wields significant influence throughout the Middle East, and not least over the current Lebanon crisis. Which, logically, makes it all the more strange that Britain, the US and Israel have so far systematically excluded the Islamic republic from international efforts to end the fighting and achieve a lasting settlement.Tomorrow's Rome conference will be attended by the main western powers and the so-called moderate Arab states. But Iran and its second-string ally, Syria, have not been invited even though it is widely accepted that any peace deal involving their Lebanese political ally, Hizbullah, is unlikely to stick without their support. The UN mission that visited the region and presented its proposals to the security council last week did not travel to Tehran or Damascus. ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1828650,00.html?gusrc=rss
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Editor - 11:17:00 07-25-06
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| post The Good, The Bad and The Ugly |
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