Mid Day International News |
- French soldier commits suicide live on webcam
- Internet 'weighs' no more than a strawberry!
- Model convicted of drug smuggling in Argentina
- Dubai cinema hall bans lungi-clad patrons from entering
- 'Tintin in Congo' book comes with warning over racism
- Texas judge caught on video hitting daughter
- Berlo puts musical career on hold
- Putin 'beat his wife and had affairs'
| French soldier commits suicide live on webcam Posted: A 22-year-old French soldier shot himself in the head while showing himself live on a webcam as he chatted with another user, a media report said The soldier, identified as Jean-Edouard A., killed himself at his uncle's home in Marseille, during an online chat on health forum Doctissimo.fr, the Daily Mail reported citing French newspaper Le Parisien. The footage of the dead man could be seen on the website for several hours after his death. The other user alerted other people after witnessing the horrifying event. One user got in touch with the website's administrators in Canada, who identified the address of the computer the soldier was using. The website alerted Interpol and the French police.
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| Internet 'weighs' no more than a strawberry! Posted: The weight of the Internet is as meagre as 50 grams, which is equivalent to a strawberry, according to Vsause, a science show on YouTube. The study, which seems to be inspired by a mathematician who recently calculated that eBook readers "gain weight" when adding new books to the library, said that the weight equals that of a strawberry only if counting the data not the electricity required to make it work, the Daily Mail reported. The calculations use Einstein's famous "E=MC" squared formula, which relates energy to mass. Vsauce says that the 50g figure is the weight of all the electrons in the electricity required to make the internet work, assuming 75-100 million servers supporting the internet, and not including the home PCs running it. The whole lot equates to around 40billion watts, which weigh in around the same as a plump strawberry, and if all the home PCs using the net are included, the figure is roughly three strawberries. Since it's difficult to quantify how much data there is in the Internet, Vsauce used a dated estimate by Google's Eric Schmidt. Schmidt guessed that there were 5,000,000 terabytes of information in the internet out of which Google indexed 0.04 per cent and that the entire weight of that information would work out, Vsauce estimates, to 0.02 millionths of an ounce.
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| Model convicted of drug smuggling in Argentina Posted: Colombian model Angie Sanclemente Valencia was convicted here of attempting to smuggle cocaine to Spain in late 2009 and sentenced to six years and eight months in prison, judicial officials said The Buenos Aires court also handed down the same sentence Wednesday to Argentines Nicolas Gualco, the model's boyfriend, and Daniel Monroy, while Venezuelan Gustavo Paez Ameses was sentenced to six years and two months behind bars for attempted drug smuggling, the officials said. Argentine Ariel Letizia and countrywoman Maria Noel Lopez Iglesias were each given three-year suspended sentences, while Micaela Sansalone was acquitted. The Colombian model's defense team had asked the court Wednesday to acquit her of the charges, arguing that the 31-year-old defendant was not the organization's "international nexus". It also requested that, if found guilty, she be convicted only of covering up the crime. Prosecutor Sandra Benavente had asked the court Tuesday to sentence the Colombian woman to five years in prison, but the court handed down a longer sentence. Sanclemente, jailed at a women's lockup outside Buenos Aires since May 2010, pleaded not guilty at her arraignment last month. "I didn't come here to commit a crime. I'm no drug trafficker. I never thought that Nico (referring to Nicolas Gualco) could get involved in weird stuff. All I did was make a few calls," she testified. According to her attorney, the model traveled to Argentina to marry Gualco and found herself a suspect after his arrest. Gualco, for his part, acknowledged recruiting young women to smuggle cocaine to Europe, but he said his girlfriend was not involved in this activity and that he had only asked her to call Monroy when he was wanted by the authorities. The investigation began in December 2009 after a shipment of 55 kg of cocaine bound for Europe via Mexico was discovered at the Ezeiza international airport outside Buenos Aires, authorities said. Lopez Iglesias was arrested at the airport, while most of the remaining suspects were detained shortly afterward in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Nunez and in the city of Mar del Plata, 400 km south of the Argentine capital. The model, who had been a fugitive for five months and changed her appearance, was arrested May 26, 2010, at a Buenos Aires hostel. The Colombian woman was convicted based on testimony from two voice experts and from Ariel Letizia, who accused her of giving "orders" when the drug ring was packing the cocaine later discovered at the international airport. According to prosecutors, Sanclemente arrived in Argentina with the goal of forming a large drug ring that would smuggle cocaine from the South American country to Europe via Cancun, Mexico.
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| Dubai cinema hall bans lungi-clad patrons from entering Posted: A cinema hall in Dubai has banned 'lungis' over complaints that the dress was a little too racy The manager at Bollywood Cinemas at Al Quoz said that women and men had complained that men were coming to the theatres with "half mast" lungis, which effectively turns them into loincloths or short skirts. "Husbands complained, 'how can we bring our wives and kids here?'," Gulf News quoted the manager as saying. "Even Emiratis wear lungis " but under their kandouras. They are home clothes, not something you come to a cinema in. "Many families were uncomfortable so we asked people to wear pants," the manager added. Notices in South Indian languages have been put up at the cinema in Al Quoz Mall where labourers in lungis are common. Ironically the theatre regularly screens south Indian movies featuring lungi-clad stars.
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| 'Tintin in Congo' book comes with warning over racism Posted: 'Tintin in Congo' has been banned for children over racism fears, and is currently embroiled in a row about political correctness. "Whilst being frequently requested by fans and collectors who had seen it available in other languages, the work contains scenes which some readers may find offensive," the spokesman added.
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| Texas judge caught on video hitting daughter Posted: A Texas judge is under investigation after his disabled daughter posted a YouTube video of him savagely beating her with a belt during a tirade several years ago when she was a teenager Click here to view vedio A judge who was filmed whipping his disabled daughter with a belt yesterday remained unrepentant claiming his life had been made difficult after the violent footage emerged.
He said, "She's mad because I've ordered her to bring the car back, in a nutshell, but yeah that's me, I lost my temper." The Court-at-Law Judge, from Aransas County, Texas, added, "It was a long time ago... I really don't want to get into this right now because as you can see my life's been made very difficult over this child." He added, "In my mind I have not done anything wrong other than discipline my child when she was caught stealing. I did lose my temper, I've apologised.. it looks worse than it is." The video shows the motive for the attack was because Adams, who suffers from cerebral palsy, had been caught downloading music to the computer in her bedroom. In the footage, Judge Adams can be seen delivering around ten powerful strikes across his daughter's legs and backside. His wife then grabs the belt from him to take over, at which point he walks out only to return moments later with another belt so he can continue beating her. In total the girl receives 20 hard lashes from her father and one from her mother. 'Addiction' Taken when the girl was 16, Adams, now 22, said she decided last week to make it public to help her father despite admitting that she may have ruined his reputation. She said, "It had happened before and had been escalating. I set up a camera and I caught it." The judge's wife Hallie Adams, who it is believed is separated from him, posted on Facebook an emotional plea to her husband to end the abuse. She wrote, "I am praying for my daughters and me and my family to heal in all ways from emotional and physical abuse, for the current and continuing abuse of my children and me that has been ongoing to end." She added that the abuse was a kind of addiction for her then husband. Police Chief Tim Jayroe, of Rockport, Texas, said yesterday that an investigation had been launched following phone calls from members of the public after the film swept the Internet. Feeling guilty Adams said she decided now was the time to show the secretly-filmed footage because she was tired of being harassed by her father. She said, "My father's harassment was getting really bad, so I decided to finally publish the video." But yesterday Adams said via Twitter she was sorry she had posted the video. She tweeted, "I'm feeling some regret for publishing the video because to ruin my own father is heavy indeed. But I really want him to seek help." Disturbing video In the 8-minute video Judge Adams can be seen delivering around ten powerful strikes across his daughter's legs and backside. His daughter begs him to stop he can be heard snarling: 'Bend over the f***ing bed. Lay down or I'll spank you in the f***ing face." As the child lies crying on her bed, her father shouts: "Do you want to put some more computer games on? Are you happy disobeying your parents?"
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| Berlo puts musical career on hold Posted: Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, has reportedly delayed the release of his latest CD of cheesy love ballads to focus on the political and economic crisis engulfing his country. Berlusconi is known for his love of song, regularly serenading his parade of starlets invited to his 'bunga-bunga' parties. He had been expected to release an album of 11 songs, entitled True Love, in September. The soppy Neopolitan tunes were written by Berlusconi, a 75-year-old billionaire, and sung by Mariano Apicella, a Naples-based singer who has become the prime minister's de facto personal minstrel. Berlusconi seems to have put the brakes on the launch of the sentimental strains out of deference at a time when millions of hard-pressed Italians are feeling anything but sentimental towards him. One of the songs was inspired by the Zorba the Greek-style sirtaki dance -- ironic, since Italians fear that their economy is about to be swept up in the sort of financial meltdown that has brought Greece to its knees.
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| Putin 'beat his wife and had affairs' Posted: According to old German files, the Russian PM abused his wife and 'had numerous sexual affairs' when he was a high-ranking KGB officer Russian PM Vladimir Putin was branded a wife-beating love cheat in intelligence files unearthed by a spy expert. The former KGB boss allegedly had a string of flings when he worked in the German city of Dresden. The documents from the archive of the BND, Germany's spy agency, paint a dark picture of the Russian prime minister, who plans to return to the presidency next year.  Spy vs spy: According to German spy Balcony, the then KGB spy Putin cheated several times on his wife Ludmilla, adding substance to speculation that Putin left behind an illegitimate child in Germany. File pic/getty images Gathering information through the work of an agent posing as an interpreter for Ludmilla Putina, Putin's wife, the BND heard that the then youthful 33-year-old spy chief was a "wife beater and a philanderer" during his stint in the German city from 1985 to 1990. The information surfaced in a story run by the newspaper Berliner Zeitung based on documents found by Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, a respected BND expert who has published books and papers on the agency. Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian prime minister, dismissed the allegations in the documents, saying that the "stories were complete nonsense." In a coup for the German intelligence services the agent code-named Balcony owing, apparently, to her large breast size gained the confidence of Putina and became something of an agony aunt to her. In a series of meetings with the BND spy at the Putins' house Putina, angered by her treatment at the hands of her husband, claimed to be the victim of a man prone to both violence and extramarital affairs. The allegations of philandering added substance to long-standing speculation that when the Putins left East Germany in 1990 following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Vladimir left behind an illegitimate child. By then the BND, fearful that Balcony's cover might be blown, had withdrawn her back to West Germany where she retired from the service. Dieter Arndt, a BND spokesman, refused to discuss the revelations contained in the documents. Putin surges ahead in 'Most Powerful list' Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was listed by Forbes magazine as the second-most powerful man in the world. In 2010, Putin ranked number four on the Forbes list of most powerful people. US President Barack Obama was ranked first on the list followed by Putin and later by Chinese President Hu Jintao.
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