Religion. Sindicato. Siria. Population. Rebeliao. US. Vivendi raises full-year outlook. 1 September 2010Last updated at 08:28 Even Lady Gaga could not stop overall sales at Universal Music falling French media giant Vivendi has improved its outlook for 2010 after reporting a 4% rise in first-half profit. Vivendi saw a net profit of 1.53bn euros ($1.95bn; £1.26bn) in the first six months of the year, up from the 1.47bn euros it made a year ago. But revenues at its Universal Music Group fell 5.4%, because of "fewer major local and international releases and reduced demand". It now expects 2010 profit to exceed the 2.59bn euros it made in 2009.
Artists signed to Universal include Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas, Eminem, Justin Bieber and Florence & The Machine. Revenues at French telecom operator SFR, 56%-owned by Vivendi, rose 1.8%. Parmalat founder given 18-year jail term over fraud. 9 December 2010Last updated at 20:44 Parmalat founder Calisto Tanzi had already been sentenced for separate offences The founder and former chief executive of Italian food conglomerate Parmalat has been sentenced to 18 years in jail for his role in a fraud at the firm.
Calisto Tanzi was convicted of criminal association and fraudulent bankruptcy. A court also ordered former Parmalat executives to pay the firm 2bn euros (£2.7bn; £1.7bn) and reimburse thousands of defrauded investors. Parmalat collapsed in 2003 with a 14bn-euro hole in its accounts in what was Europe's biggest bankruptcy. Some 135,000 investors lost the money they had invested in Parmalat's corporate bonds, and about 30,000 of them were listed as complainants in the case. They are expected to share compensation worth an estimated 30m euros, as ordered by the court.
A representative of the investors told Italian television: "I believe [this sentence] is right, since these people have caused much pain and despair to many people. Cuban model no longer works, says Fidel Castro. 9 September 2010Last updated at 15:12 Castro invited Jeffrey Goldberg to Cuba for the interview Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro has said the Cuban model no longer works. He made the comment in an interview with a US journalist, who asked him if Cuba's model was still worth exporting to other countries.
In a previous interview with the same journalist, he criticised Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for what he called his anti-Semitic attitudes. Mr Castro also questioned his own actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Mr Castro was speaking to Jeffrey Goldberg, a journalist with The Atlantic magazine based in Washington, DC, whom he personally invited to Cuba. "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore," he told him. The comment came as the current Cuban leader, Fidel's younger brother, Raul Castro, is reducing the state's control of the economy and allowing private ownership on the communist island. 'Gradual escalation'
UK. Greece. Arab Spring: Where it is now and where it may be going. Mouse heart 're-grows when cut', study shows. 25 February 2011Last updated at 10:13 By Neil Bowdler Science reporter, BBC News The study suggests newborn mice share the zebrafish's ability to heal a damaged heart Scientists in the United States have found newborn mice can re-grow their own hearts. The mice had a large chunk of their heart removed a day after birth, only for the heart to restore itself within three weeks. Fish and amphibians are known to have the power to re-grow heart tissue, but the study in Science is the first time the process has been seen in mammals. British experts said understanding the process could help human heart care. Narrow window The researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center surgically removed what is known as the left ventricular apex of the heart (about 15% of the heart muscle) from mice just a day after birth.
The heart was then quickly seen to regenerate and was fully restored after 21 days. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote Heart attacks. Mais sobre o cacau que já era « Anarquista Amador. Não dá para ser inocente e pensar que o cacau era a planta mais ecológica do mundo, e os barões fazendeiros, pessoas de bem. Mas isso não tem nada a ver com o crime cometido pela esquerda. E o que mais me intriga é a razão desmesurada e inconsequente que parte de uma iniciativa ideologicamente revolucionária. Mais detalhes: “Terrorismo biológico”, a revista conta como Luiz Henrique Franco Timóteo e mais Everaldo Anunciação, Wellington Duarte, Eliezer Correia e Jonas Nascimento, teriam introduzido a doença nas lavouras baianas a partir de galhos contaminados trazidos de Rondônia, onde ela é endêmica, como em toda a Amazônia, onde o cacau é nativo.
Segundo Timóteo, a idéia partiu de Geraldo Simões, que já era figura de proa do PT de Itabuna – município vizinho onde se localiza a estação experimental e a sede da CEPLAC – órgão federal dedicado à melhoria e expansão da lavoura do cacau, onde, acreditem, todos trabalhavam. Franco Timoteo, em pessoa Matéria na revista Veja. Curtir isso: Investigating Machine Identification Code Technology in Color La.
Note: As of October 13th, 2005, some information in this paper may be out of date. Please visit for the most up-to-date information on this project. Introduction On Nov. 22, 2004, PC World published an article stating that "several printer companies quietly encode the serial number and the manufacturing code of their color laser printers and color copiers on every document those machines produce. Governments, including the United States, already use the hidden markings to track counterfeiters.
" According to the article, the high fidelity of outputs from color machines to their original documents suggests that counterfeiters can potentially succeed in creating high-quality counterfeited currency and government documents using these machines. The U.S. government is not the only national government using the marking technology to deter counterfeiting activities. Motivations Methodology With Canon documents, the markings also consisted of tiny yellow dots. CIA agents guilty of Italy kidnap. An Italian judge has convicted 23 Americans - all but one of them CIA agents - and two Italian secret agents for the 2003 kidnap of a Muslim cleric.
The agents were accused of abducting Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar, from Milan and sending him to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured. The trial, which began in June 2007, is the first involving the CIA's so-called "extraordinary rendition" programme. The Obama administration has expressed its disappointment at the convictions.
"We are disappointed by the verdicts," state department spokesman Ian Kelly said in Washington. He declined to comment further pending a written opinion from the judge, but said an appeal was likely. Three Americans and five Italians were acquitted by the court in Milan. Symbolic ruling The Americans were all tried in their absence as they have not been extradited from the US to Italy. Lawyers for the 23 Americans said they would appeal against their convictions. Secrecy laws. Comunidade Europeia contra o abuso do Estado. The UK government has been accused of failing to protect citizens' privacy by the European Commission. It said the government should have done more to guarantee online privacy when trials of a controversial ad-serving system were carried out in 2006. The Commission said it had now started the second phase of legal action over the trials.
If the UK fails to answer the criticism satisfactorily, it faces being taken to the European court. "People's privacy and the integrity of their personal data in the digital world is not only an important matter, it is a fundamental right, protected by European law," said Viviane Reding, EU telecoms commissioner. Law change The Commission started the legal action following trials of the Phorm ad-serving system on BT's network in 2006 and 2007. Although the UK government was happy with the way that the trial was run, critics said BT's customers who were unwittingly enrolled in it should have had the chance to opt out. Ecologia - sistema de cotas. The bluefin is highly prized for many dishes, notably sushi Banning trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna is justified by the extent of their decline, an analysis by scientists advising fisheries regulators suggests.
The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas' (ICCAT) advisers said stocks are probably less than 15% of their original size. The analysis has delighted conservation groups, which have warned that over-fishing risks the species' survival. ICCAT meets to consider the report in 10 days' time. The analysis was triggered by Monaco's recent proposal to ban international trade in the Atlantic bluefin under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) - a proposal that has gathered support from several other European countries. "What's needed to save the stocks is a suspension of fishing activity and a suspension of international commercial trade," said Sergi Tudela, head of fisheries with the environmental group WWF for the Mediterranean region.
Asilo e o contexto da saude x o budget do estado. 13:59 30 October 2009 Most people associate the word "asylum" with squalor and brutality – an impression strengthened by portrayals in books and films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest – but they were originally designed to be places of sanctuary. Christopher Payne visited and photographed 70 such institutions across the US for his book Asylum: Inside the closed world of state mental hospitals, which documents how their fall from grace reflects changing attitudes to mental illness Image 1 of 15 Mental institutions have a bad reputation. Many people think of them as little more than prisons for the insane, their populations of violent or stupefied patients forcibly confined to dismal wards ruled over by tyrannical matrons. There's some truth in that: this picture shows Matteawan State Hospital in Beacon, New York – which is now Fishkill Correctional Facility. (Image: Christopher Payne)
Saving Africa's precious written heritage. A drizzle of dust and sand falls over Ahmed Saloum Boularaf's fingers as he gently lifts the ancient, camel-skin bound manuscripts from a wooden box and puts them on a desk in his makeshift library in a mud-brick house close to the centre of Timbuktu. "Termites, rain and mice," he said in an accusing voice, brushing a few flecks of 15th Century parchment from his jacket. "This was my grandfather's collection. It covers topics from science to medicine, history, theology, grammar, geography - a little of everything. " Threatened Across Timbuktu, in cupboards, rusting chests, private collections and libraries, tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of manuscripts bear witness to this legendary city's remarkable intellectual history, and by extension, to Africa's much overlooked pre-colonial heritage.
"This is the proof," said Mr Boularaf. "Africa was not wild before the white man came. "We are losing manuscripts every day. 'African renaissance' "There's a lot to be uncovered here. International : Blair savait que l'Irak n'avait plus. Le chef du gouvernement britannique a adhéré au plan de guerre de Bush dès avril 2002 En seulement trois journées d'auditions, la commission d'enquête britannique sur la guerre en Irak a déjà permis de lever le voile sur des points cruciaux de l'attitude de Tony Blair en 2002 et 2003 avant le début de l'invasion militaire menée conjointement avec les Américains. Jeudi, sir Christopher Meyer, ancien ambassadeur britannique à Washington, a ainsi révélé que George W. Bush aurait convaincu Tony Blair de la nécessité de renverser Saddam Hussein lors d'un séjour en avril 2002 dans son ranch de Crawford au Texas.
Personne n'a assisté aux discussions privées qui ont eu lieu entre les deux hommes, mais l'ambassadeur remarque que le lendemain Blair s'est prononcé pour la première fois en faveur d'un «changement de régime à Bagdad» dans un discours. Risque exagéré » Irak : enquête sur le mensonge de Tony Blair. CIA tried to get mafia to kill Castro - ABC News (Australian Bro. Washington Correspondent Michael Rowland and wires Updated Wed 27 Jun 2007, 8:02am AEST New documents confirm the CIA worked with the mafia to try and assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. The CIA has declassified nearly 700 pages of top secret records, known in the spy agency as the 'family jewels'. They record some of CIA's illegal activities from the 1950s to the 1970s, including overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying and kidnapping. The documents reveal the agency's efforts to persuade Johnny Roselli, believed to be a mobster, to help plot the assassination of Mr Castro.
A CIA official at the time, Richard Bissell, in August 1960 approached Colonel Sheffield Edwards of the agency's Office of Security to determine if Col Edwards "had assets that may assist in a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action," according to the documents. "The mission target was Fidel Castro," one memo said. -Reuters. 'Dangers' of a free market in forensic science.
'Luke' (not his real name) was sentenced to three years in jail when a court decided he had "kicked another man's head like a football". Part of the evidence heard in court was based on the spots of the assaulted man's blood which were found on his shoe. Luke claims he had gone to stop another man assaulting the victim, saying the blood on his shoe: "Put me at the scene of the crime, which I never denied anyway. " After his conviction, Luke's family hired private forensic science provider Forensic Access who carried out a further test and called a blood pattern analysis (BPA). 'Vital' test According to Dave King, Business Manager of Forensic Access the test came to a stark conclusion.
Mr King said that the BPA would have doubled the cost of the forensic evidence, adding it was why he believed the test was not called for by the police. "Cost is always a factor," he says. "You've got to look at the whole evidence. Cost-cutting Cash crisis. Lithuania hosted secret CIA prisons. The CIA set up at least two secret detention centres in Lithuania after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks on the US, a Lithuanian inquiry has found. A parliamentary committee report says in 2005 and 2006, CIA chartered planes were allowed to land in Lithuania. It says that no Lithuanian officials were allowed near the aircraft, nor were they told who was on board. Poland and Romania hosted similar CIA "black sites", say reports by ABC News in the US. In Lithuania, one centre on the outskirts of the capital Vilnius had room for eight terror suspects at a time, according to ABC News. It was formerly a riding school and suspects were reportedly held there between 2004 and 2005.
But the parliamentary report appears to absolve Lithuania's political leaders of responsibility for any human rights violations that may have been committed by the CIA, the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Moscow. It says even the president was unaware of exactly what the US intelligence service was doing. Americas | US 'considers assassination squads'
Ousted Honduras president sees world support crumble. Africa drug trade fuelling terrorism and crime, says. Brazil's police accused of routinely killing suspects.