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North Korea shuts down universities for 10 months

Julian Ryall
Telegraph.co.uk
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:52 UTC
Image
© Associated Press
North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il.
North Korea has shut down its universities for the next 10 months and sent students to work in factories, agriculture and the construction sector as it struggles to rebuild its economy.

Pyongyang has told the North Korean people that the nation will have achieved its aim of becoming "a great, prosperous and powerful nation" in 2012, which marks the 100th anniversary of the founder of the reclusive state, Kim Il-sung.

In addition, Kim Jong-il will turn 70 in February and the "Dear Leader" hopes to be able to transfer his power and an economically stronger nation to his son and heir-apparent, Kim Jong-Un.

Reports in South Korea indicated that the government in Pyongyang on Monday ordered all universities to cancel classes until April of next year. The only exemptions are for students who will be graduating in the next few months and foreign students.

The reports suggested that the students will be put to work on construction projects in major cities while there are also indications that repair work may be needed in agricultural regions that were affected by a major typhoon recently.
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Mail

US - Tom Petty reportedly issuing cease and desist letter to Bachmann

David Edwards
Rawstory.com
Mon, 27 Jun 2011 17:41 UTC
Tom Petty may be taking legal action to make sure Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann stops using his songs at her campaign events.

"NBC News: @TomPetty unhappy with Michele Bachmann's use of 'American Girl' and in process of issuing [a cease and desist] letter," Matt Ortega reported on Twitter only hours after hours after Bachmann used the popular song to kick off her campaign.

NBC's Kelly O'Donnell confirmed that report Monday night.

"And details matter, and when Bachmann left the stage here, her campaign played the Tom Petty hit song, American Girl," O'Donnell said. "Turns out petty isn't pleased. His manager says they will ask the Bachmann campaign not to use that song."

Petty also issued a cease and desist letter to then-Governor George W. Bush for illegally using I won't back down at his rallies.

"The impression that you and your campaign have been endorsed by Tom Petty, which is not true," music publisher Wixen Music Publishing Inc. told the Bush campaign.

To make matters worse for Bachmann, former RNC Online Communications Director Liz Mair made this observation about the use of the Petty's tune: "Isn't that what the kidnapped politician's daughter was singing in Silence of the Lambs?
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Pills

Krokodil: The drug that eats junkies

Shaun Walker
The Independent
Wed, 22 Jun 2011 17:05 UTC
Krokodil
© RIA Novosti

A home-made heroin substitute is having a horrific effect on thousands of Russia's drug addicts

Oleg glances furtively around him and, confident that nobody is watching, slips inside the entrance to a decaying Soviet-era block of flats, where Sasha is waiting for him. Ensconced in the dingy kitchen of one of the apartments, they empty the contents of a blue carrier bag that Oleg has brought with him - painkillers, iodine, lighter fluid, industrial cleaning oil, and an array of vials, syringes, and cooking implements.

Half an hour later, after much boiling, distilling, mixing and shaking, what remains is a caramel-coloured gunge held in the end of a syringe, and the acrid smell of burnt iodine in the air. Sasha fixes a dirty needle to the syringe and looks for a vein in his bruised forearm. After some time, he finds a suitable place, and hands the syringe to Oleg, telling him to inject the fluid. He closes his eyes, and takes the hit.

Russia has more heroin users than any other country in the world - up to two million, according to unofficial estimates. For most, their lot is a life of crime, stints in prison, probable contraction of HIV and hepatitis C, and an early death. As efforts to stem the flow of Afghan heroin into Russia bring some limited success, and the street price of the drug goes up, for those addicts who can't afford their next hit, an even more terrifying spectre has raised its head.
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Bad Guys

Dead Dogs Tied to Tracks, Hit by Train

Frank Heinz
Nbcdfw.com
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:44 UTC
Image
© Unknown
A witness says he saw a group of teen boys tie two dogs to railroad tracks in Haltom City moments before a train ran over the animals Tuesday morning.

According to Cpl. Joe Heckfield with the Haltom City Police Department, the witness asked a resident to call the police and report what he had seen from a wooded area near the First Baptist Chruch of Fort Worth on the 5100 block of Northeast Loop 820.

When officers arrived, the witness and teens had left the scene but they did find the remains of two dogs who had been struck by the train. The officers also spotted two other dogs walking around in the area.
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Light Saber

Olbermann: Fire TSA's chief and replace him with 'a human being'

Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:41 UTC
During his reoccurring "Worst Persons" segment Monday night, Current TV's liberal host Keith Olbermann called for John Pistole, head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), to be fired and replaced with "a human being."

Olbermann was reacting to reports that the TSA instructed a woman to remove her 95-year-old mother's adult diaper before she could go through security at the Northwest Florida Regional Airport earlier this month. The TSA subsequently denied ever making the request and insisted that agents had acted properly.

"If it's not going to change and the agency is really going to defend abusing a 95-year-old Leukemia patients on the incomprehensible premise that they might be suicide bombers, then this John Pistole - the head of the TSA - he needs to be fired and we need to get a human being in there to do his job," Olbermann said.
      Read More...
Bad Guys

Greek police fire tear gas on angry protesters


Youtube.com
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:38 UTC
Greek anti-riot police have fired tear gas at 10,000 protesters outside parliament after youths hurled firebombs as a general strike against the bankruptcy-threatened government turned ugly.
      Read More...
Alarm Clock

Indians pay surgeons to turn girls into boys

Dean Nelson
Telegraph.co.uk
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:25 UTC
Indian doctors have been accused of conducting sex change operations on young girls whose parents want sons to improve the family's income prospects.

Image
© Alamy
There are now seven million more boys than girls aged under six in the country.
Madhya Pradesh state government is investigating claims that up to 300 girls were surgically turned into boys in one city after their parents paid about £2,000 each for the operations.

Women's and children's rights campaigners denounced the practice as a "social madness" that made a "mockery of women in India".

India's gender balance has already been tilted in favour of boys by female foeticide - sex selection abortions - by families who fear the high marriage costs and dowries they may have to pay. There are now seven million more boys than girls aged under six in the country.

Campaigners said the use of surgery meant that girls were no longer safe even after birth.

The row emerged after newspapers disclosed children from throughout India were being operated on by doctors in Indore, Madhya Pradesh.
      Read More...
Attention

Cameroon Bans Night Travel to End Road Carnage

Tansa Musa
Reuters
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:41 UTC
Image
© AFP
Only 20% of Cameroon's roads are tarred
Cameroon has banned night-time public transport between cities after a spate of deadly accidents last year, many involving heavy drinking on the country's infamously poor roads.

"Night traffic represents just about 5 percent of human transport, but represents 35 percent of road accidents," Aoudou Dotel Moussa, director of land transport at the Cameroon transport ministry, said Monday.

Cameroon, the largest economy in the Central African region, has one of the continent's poorest road networks, with less than 20 percent of the country's roads asphalted.
      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Actress Yeoh blacklisted, deported from Myanmar

Aung Hla Tun
Reuters
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© unknown
Michelle Yeoh
Authorities in Myanmar have deported Hollywood actress Michelle Yeoh who plans to play pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in an upcoming film, an immigration official said Tuesday.

Yeoh, a Malaysian known for playing Chinese spy Wai Lin alongside Pierce Brosnan in the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies among other roles, was detained on arrival at Yangon's international airport on June 22 and sent out of the country on the next flight.

"She was deported on the same day because she is on a blacklist," the official told Reuters, requesting anonymity because she was not authorized to talk to the media.

Yeoh, 48, has been in Thailand, Britain and France filming scenes for the film The Lady, as Suu Kyi is known in Myanmar. The film is due to be released in October.
      Read More...
Bell

The Attack on the Middle Class

Sen. Al Franken
Readersupportednews.com
Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
On Saturday, June 18th, I was given the honor of speaking at Netroots Nation 2011 in Minneapolis, the 6th annual convention of progressive grassroots leaders and activists. I was the opening speaker at Saturday's Morning Keynote session, which focused on how to save the middle class and build progressive infrastructure. I had an amazing time at the conference and met a ton of passionate activists and progressives.

It was fitting that Netroots Nation was in Minnesota this year. Minnesota is the state that sent Hubert Humphrey to the U.S. Senate, where he cheerfully waged - and usually won - great battles in the name of the young and the old, the poor and the vulnerable, the oppressed and the disenfranchised.

It's the state where Walter Mondale rose to become the living embodiment of common-sense Midwestern progressive values. And it's the state where Paul Wellstone became my hero - and the hero of a generation of progressives who believed, as he did, that we all do better when we all do better.

These Minnesotans were instrumental in establishing the America we know and love today - from building the social safety net to establishing workers' rights to investing in our manufacturing sector - they helped build the middle class. And defending those progressive values is crucial to saving the middle class today.

My speech, entitled: "The Attack on America's Middle Class, and the Plan to Fight Back," laid out some ideas on what we can do to preserve these values that began as 'progressive,' but have become simply American.
      Read More...
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