Mid Day International News |
- Colombia extradites 17 drug traffickers to US, Europe
- Four die in Ecuador gold mine blast
- 15 die in Afghanistan Quran burning protests
- Indian diplomat asked to pay $1.5 million to abused housemaid
- Obama expresses 'deep regret' over Quran burning
- Argentina train crash kills 50, injures 600
- Branson wins case to own embarrassing richardbranson.xxx porn web address
- Faster than light claim: Einstein was right, after all
| Colombia extradites 17 drug traffickers to US, Europe Posted: Colombia has extradited 17 drug traffickers to the US, Spain and Italy to face prosecutions for crimes in those countries. Those extradited Thursday included 16 Colombians and one Nicaraguan, police said. This is the first massive extradition executed by the Colombian authorities in 2012, Xinhua reported.
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| Four die in Ecuador gold mine blast Posted: Four people were killed and six badly injured in an explosion at a gold mine in the southern province of Azuay, authorities said. The blast took place at the Cascavel mine in the municipality of Canton Ponce Enriquez and was "apparently" caused by the mishandling of dynamite, a source at Ecuador's emergency management agency told EFE. "There are four dead and six seriously hurt," he said, adding that the injured were taken to a hospital in Machala, capital of neighboring El Oro province. The Cascavel mine is located in a remote, sparsely populated area.
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| 15 die in Afghanistan Quran burning protests Posted: At least 15 people have died in violence over the past three days in Afghanistan following reports of burning holy Quran by foreign soldiers. Afghans in various provinces staged demonstrations that entered its third day Thursday. At least 15 people died and dozens of others were injured in clashes with police, Xinhua reported. The protests erupted Tuesday in Bagram, the main US military base 50 km from Kabul, after media reports said copies of the Quran were found in the rubbish that NATO transported in a truck the previous night to a pit where waste is burned. Protests have since swept across the country. US President Barack Obama Thursday apologized over the incident, the Afghan presidency said in a statement. In a letter to President Hamid Karzai, Obama said the incident was not intentional and assured him of full investigation, it said. Karzai has appealed for calm and urged the Afghans "not to resort to violence".
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| Indian diplomat asked to pay $1.5 million to abused housemaid Posted: A New York judge has recommended that a young Indian housemaid deserves nearly $1.5 million for her "barbaric treatment" at the hands of an Indian diplomat and her husband here The proposed award includes $500,000 for the "emotional distress" inflicted on Shanti Gurung by Neena Malhotra, who then served as the Press Counsellor at the Indian consulate here, and her husband, Jogesh Malhotra, according to the New York Post. The Malhotras clearly induced their ex-maid to "work without pay by seizing her passport and visa, restricting her ability to leave their apartment, and constantly warning her that if she travelled on her own without their permission, she would be arrested, beaten, raped and sent back to India as 'cargo,' " Manhattan federal Magistrate Judge Frank Maas wrote. His recommendations are subject to approval by Judge Victor Marrero, who is overseeing the case, the Post said. In December 2010, Marrero granted Gurung a default judgment against the Malhotras, who returned to India before they could be served with their ex-maid's shocking suit. In her lawsuit Gurung alleged that in bringing her over to the US in 2006 on an A-3 visa Malhotra instructed Gurung to tell the US embassy in New Delhi that she would be paid $7 per hour. She also "asked Gurung to lie about her birth date, so that she would appear to US officials be eighteen, not her actual age of seventeen", according to the filing. With a steady deterioration in her living conditions from June 2006 onwards, Gurung was required to "perform substantially more duties than had been represented at the time of recruitment." This included cooking and cleaning, daily massages for Malhotra, grocery shopping and laundry, and waiting upon guests for dinner parties that the Malhotras regularly held, which often went on until 3 a.m., the lawsuit alleged.
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| Obama expresses 'deep regret' over Quran burning Posted: US President Barack Obama sent Afghan President Hamid Karzai a letter of apology over the burning of copies of the Quran overseen by a US officer at a US military base, Karzai's office said yesterday.  Obama said the incident was unintentional and pledged a full investigation, the president's office said, as fierce anti-US protests swept the nation in which at least 14 people have died, including two American soldiers. "I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident," Obama wrote in the letter presented to Karzai by US ambassador Ryan Crocker. "I extend to you and the Afghan people my sincere apologies." "The error was inadvertent; I assure you that we will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding accountable those responsible," the letter said. Karzai told members of parliament that a US officer was responsible for the burning that was done "out of ignorance", his office said.
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| Argentina train crash kills 50, injures 600 Posted: At least 49 people were killed and more than 600 were injured yesterday when a commuter train crashed in a busy station in Argentine capital Buenos Aires.  The train, which was overcrowded with more than a 1,000 passengers, slammed into a barrier at the end of a platform at the Once station in the west of the city. Police said the train's brakes had failed as it arrived at the station, but survivors claimed the train was travelling too fast. Argentina's transport minister, Juan Pablo Schiavi, said one of the train's carriages had been catapulted six metres into the next. Hundreds were still trapped in the twisted iron of the wreckage, some with serious injuries, hours after the accident during the morning's rush hour and the death toll is expected to rise. He said, "There are people trapped alive in the wagons, some with complex cases of chest trauma. The accident is very serious. There are carriages on top of carriages."
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| Branson wins case to own embarrassing richardbranson.xxx porn web address Posted: Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin boss, has won control of the web address richardbranson.xxx, after wrestling it from an Australian man who registered it as a 'souvenir.' The multi-millionaire took Sean Truman to the National Arbitration Forum, a body based in the United States that rules on web address disputes.  Victory: Richard Branson won control of the web address richardbranson.xxx. File pic It found that Truman 'should have recognised that his registration and control of richardbranson.xxx would serve to vex or embarrass' Sir Richard. "Registering and holding a .xxx domain name identical to [Sir Richard's] mark without having any rights or interests therein is evidence of bad faith registration and use," it said in its ruling,. The dispute began when brand owners were invited to block addresses based on their trademarks for a one-off fee, before .xxx opened for general registrations last year. Defence On December 10, just four days after the .xxx domains were released, Sean Truman picked up and registered richardbranson.xxx for a few dollars. He argued that he should be allowed to keep the address because the name Richard Branson was 'neither unique nor unusual' and that Sir Richard had had 'ample opportunity' to register the address himself. Truman registered richardbranson.xxx in December, but told the NAF "that he is not involved in the sex or pornography industry, and that he does not have connections with that industry". The address served up "parking page with links to adult entertainment related websites", which Truman made no money from. He said he registered it as a "souvenir".
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| Faster than light claim: Einstein was right, after all Posted: Physicists who showed particles that could move faster than speed of light have admitted it was a mistake owing to a faulty wire connection The world of science was upended last year when an experiment appeared to show one of Einstein's fundamental theories was wrong -- but now the lab behind it says the result could have been caused by a loose cable.  You Doubted me? With the error in the experiment, Einstein's reputation has been restored. File pic/Getty images Physicists at the CERN research institute near Geneva appeared to contradict Albert Einstein's 1905 Special Theory of Relativity last year when they reported that sub-atomic particles called neutrinos could travel fractions of a second faster than light. Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, which underpins the current view of how the universe works, says that nothing can travel faster than light. But researchers at the CERN lab near Geneva claimed they had recorded neutrinos, a type of tiny particle, travelling faster than the barrier of 299,792 kilometres per second. Now it seems Einstein's reputation has been restored after a source close to the experiment told the US journal Science Insider that "A bad connection between a GPS unit and a computer may be to blame." Scientists at CERN claimed that neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds earlier than the 2.3 milliseconds taken by light. The report in Science Insider said the "60 nanoseconds discrepancy appears to come from a bad connection between a fibre optic cable that connects to the GPS receiver used to correct the timing of the neutrinos' flight and an electronic card in a computer." "After tightening the connection and then measuring the time it takes data to travel the length of the fibre, researchers found that the data arrive 60 nanoseconds earlier than assumed," it added. "Since this time is subtracted from the overall time of flight, it appears to explain the early arrival of the neutrinos. New data, however, will be needed to confirm this hypothesis." Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the researchers, said at the time: "We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing." Scientists across the world agreed if the results were confirmed, that it would force a fundamental rethink of the laws of physics. However, the first doubt was cast on the findings in November when a team of physicists in Italy conducting a separate study on the same beam of neutrinos at Gran Sasso claimed their findings "refute a superluminal (faster than light) interpretation."
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