Behaviour. History. Antropologia. Cultura. US 'slavery' woman given 11 years. A wealthy New York woman has been sentenced to 11 years in jail for keeping two Indonesian women as slaves. Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 46, and her husband Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, kept them as slaves and abused them physically and psychologically. The couple had been found guilty on 12 charges in December, including involuntary servitude, harbouring aliens and forced labour. Mr Sabhnani is to be sentenced later on Friday and may get a shorter term. In addition to prison, his Indian-born wife was fined $25,000 (£12,600). "I just want to say that I love my children very much," she told the federal court in Central Islip, on New York state's Long Island, as two of her grown children looked on. "I was brought to this earth to help people who are in need. " Her husband wept as his wife's sentence was announced.
The wealthy couple, who run a perfume business and have four children, had brought the women to their large house to work as housekeepers, and forced them to work up to 18 hours a day. Who are the Taliban? Media playback is unsupported on your device The hardline Islamic Taliban movement has proved to be a formidable fighting force in Afghanistan and a major threat to its government. The Taliban have also threatened to destabilise Pakistan, where they have controlled areas in the north-west in recent years. Despite a major military offensive against them since 2014, they continue to mount frequent suicide bombings and other attacks across the country.
Many observers now believe that future peace in Afghanistan can only come if the government in Kabul negotiates with the Taliban. The announcement of Taliban plans to open an office in Qatar in June 2013 was seen as a positive step in those negotiations, but mistrust on both sides remains high. Despite this, talks between the Taliban and Afghan government officials took place for the first time in July 2015. Those talks came a month after a group of Afghan women met Taliban representatives in Oslo.
Austere rule Image copyright AFP/Getty Images. Argentina police arrest 'Lord of Death killer' 31 August 2010Last updated at 12:50 ET An Argentine man has been arrested on suspicion of murdering at least six people after making a pact with a spiritual figure known as San La Muerte (Lord of Death), police say. Marcelo Antelo was captured after a shootout in the capital, Buenos Aires. The 22-year-old had apparently promised to kill one person a week in return for protection and prosperity.
San La Muerte is said to have a large following in the country's prisons and shanty towns. The BBC's Daniel Schweimler in Buenos Aires says the spirit's followers ask for favours, such as to win a fight or protect a harvest, but they also use it to request the death of an enemy. The figure evolved in poor communities in the north of Argentina, where characters from traditional indigenous religions merged with elements from Roman Catholicism, our correspondent adds. Five of his alleged victims have been identified, but a sixth was burnt beyond recognition. Intel unveils 22nm Ivy Bridge processor. 4 May 2011Last updated at 17:31 Traditional planar chip design (left) and Intel's new Tri-Gate technology (right).
The company believes that 3D transistors perform more efficiently Intel has unveiled its next generation of microprocessor technology, code named Ivy Bridge. The upcoming chips will be the first to use a 22 nanometre manufacturing process, which packs transistors more densely than the current 32nm system. Intel said it would also be using new Tri-Gate "3D" transistors, which are less power hungry. Rival chip manufacturers including AMD and IBM are understood to be planning similar designs. Traditional microprocessor transistors are "planar" or flat as they pass through the switching gate Tri-Gate The Tri-Gate system features 3D "fins". The announcement marks a significant step forward in the commercial processor industry, which is constantly striving to build more transistors onto silicon chips. A human hair is around 60,000 nm wide. Moore's law An early 22nm test chip. Business | The steady rise of Islamic finance.
London has become one of the biggest centres for Islamic finance in the world, with five Islamic banks, and many others in the high street offering Islamic financial products, or "windows" as they are known. The growth of Islamic finance has been an unexpected outcome of the attacks on the World Trade Center of 11 September 2001. Islamic finance is based on rules from Islam's holy texts - the Koran. Scholars claim the fundamental difference to conventional banking is that Islamic finance is more ethical. First it bans any form of "riba" or interest, preventing consumers being exploited by high rates of borrowing. 'Sinful' Secondly, it regards speculative trading as sinful. He said: "$600 trillion were wasted on options, futures and derivatives, all gambling.
Some Muslims regard ordinary mortgages as sinful. The most common form of Islamic home purchase loan works like this: When a couple wants to buy a house, instead of borrowing the money, the Islamic bank buys 80% of the house for them. Kinect hacked days after release. 12 November 2010Last updated at 11:15 The Kinect works by flooding a room with infra-red light Microsoft's Kinect controller has been hacked only a few days after it officially went on sale. Code to control the motion-capture device has been produced that allows it to be used with a PC rather than the Xbox game console. Those behind the hack are keen to use the device in schools, art projects and to aid human-robot interaction. Microsoft has said it was not happy with the unofficial modifications made to the gadget's control system. The attempt to hack the control system for the Kinect gadget was kick-started by electronics kit maker Adafruit.
It upped the bounty to $3,000 (£1,871) following comment from Microsoft saying it did not condone the reverse-engineering of its motion controller. The Adafruit bounty was won by hacker Hector Martin who was the first to produce drivers and make them available for others to download and improve. Cash contest. BBC - Meeting Spain's last anarchist. Hours after flying on a rickety 19-seater propeller plane and landing on a dirt strip, you get to the village of San Buenaventura in the heart of the Bolivian Amazon.
Here, in a simple one-storey brick house next to a row of wooden shacks, is the home of Antonio Garcia Baron. He is the only survivor still alive of the anarchist Durruti column which held Francoist forces at bay in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the founder of an anarchist community in the heart of the jungle. Mr Baron, 87, was wearing a hat and heavy dark glasses. He later explained that they were to protect his eyes, which were damaged when he drank a cup of coffee containing poison nine years ago. It was, he said, the last of more than 100 attempts on his life, which began in Paris, where he moved in 1945 after five years in the Mauthausen Nazi concentration camp, and continued in Bolivia, his home since the early 1950s.
Stateless On the walls of Mr Baron's house is a picture of him taken in the camp. GM plans to cut 10,000 Opel jobs. Peter Mandelson: "There will be a future for the Vauxhall plants in the UK" General Motors (GM) has confirmed that it plans to cut 10,000 jobs across its European car unit Opel, which includes the Vauxhall brand in the UK. The announcement comes a day after GM said it was cancelling its deal to sell Opel to Canadian car parts firm Magna.
Unions in Germany said workers would begin walk-outs from Thursday in protest at GM's decision. The German government, which had backed the sale of Opel, demanded GM repayment of a 1.5bn euro ($2.2bn; £1.3bn) loan. Union anger The 10,000 job cuts which GM now plans is broadly similar to the number Magna proposed, though the company has yet to reveal where the axe will fall. German trade unions now fear two of the four Opel factories in the country could close under the GM plan, whereas under the Magna agreement they had been given a guarantee that all four factories would have been kept going. UK relief Unite will now have to seek a fresh agreement with GM. Dubaï : prison ferme pour un baiser en public. Israel reprimands officers over UN compound shelling. Clip from an archive report filed on 15 January 2009, showing the UN compound on fire Israel has revealed it has reprimanded two top army officers for authorising an artillery attack which hit a UN compound in Gaza last year.
In the attack on 15 January 2009 the compound was set ablaze by white phosphorus shells. The admission is contained in the Israeli response to the UN's Goldstone report, which concluded both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes. Both officers have retained their ranks, according to reports. The Israeli army has not specifically said the rules of engagement were broken over the use of white phosphorus. During the 22-day conflict last year, media pictures showed incendiary shells raining down on a UN compound. The officers were named in Israeli media reports as Gaza Division Commander Brig Gen Eyal Eisenberg and Givati Brigade Commander Col Ilan Malka.
The officers were charged with "exceeding their authority" in ordering the use of the weapons in the attack. 'Evidence' Business - Mulheres ganhando espaco no mundo ne negocios. Michelle Mone (right) left school at 15 with no qualifications Underwear tycoon Michelle Mone has said she is "thrilled, honoured and delighted" to have been appointed OBE. The 38-year-old Glaswegian, who created the cleavage-enhancing Ultimo bra, was recognised for services to business in the New Year Honours list.
Now one of the UK's most successful entrepreneurs, she has expanded her brand into stores around the world. Ms Mone said she would never have dreamed of such recognition having left school at 15 with no qualifications. She was in her mid-20s when she had the idea for the Ultimo bra while at a dinner dance with her husband Michael. While wearing an uncomfortable push-up bra, she vowed to create an "attractive, comfy and affordable design". She set up MJM International with her husband and in 1999 the Ultimo bra, with its patented technology of liquid silicone gel, was born. Lithuania shuts its only nuclear power station. Lithuania has shut down its one and only nuclear power station in Visaginas.
The Ignalina plant, the only nuclear reactor in the Baltic states, stopped producing electricity at 2300 local time (2100 GMT). The closure of the Soviet-era plant was a condition of Lithuania's membership of the European Union. The move will mean an increase in power prices for Lithuanians and more reliance on Russia for energy supplies. Just before the shutdown, Energy Minister Arvydas Sekmoka said: "We are keeping our word to our European partners. " 'Minute risk' The facility was opened 26 years ago, when Lithuania was still part of the former Soviet Union. It was built to the same design as Chernobyl, which was behind the worst civil nuclear disaster in history when one of its reactors overheated in 1986. BBC correspondent Gabriel Gatehouse says Brussels insisted the place be closed down, and allocated around 820m euro (£731m) to cover part of the costs of decommissioning the plant.
Ku Klux Klan leader guilty of murder. A Ku Klux Klan leader has pleaded guilty to murdering a woman recruit, a day after an initiation rite in the US state of Louisiana in 2008. Raymond Foster, 45, of the Louisiana town of Bogalusa, was sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder of Cynthia Lynch. A former KKK member testified that Foster shot Ms Lynch, 43, after she told him: "I want out", AP reports.
Foster apologised to the victim's mother, and his own family, in court. "I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me," he said. Ms Lynch was shot dead in November 2008 a day after initiation rites in rural Tammany Parish, about 50 miles (80km) north of New Orleans. Photographs taken by a witness at the intitiation ceremony show the group in white Klan outfits. In one photo, Foster uses a sword to "knight" Ms Lynch; in another, they are shown embracing. Disabilities The victim's mother, Victoria Lynch, said outside the court that she forgave the killer. "I feel sorry for both him and the entire family.