Onion prices rise
Society's Child
Onion prices rise
© Reuters/Paul Hackett
The latest statistics from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) show that £1.3bn was fraudulently claimed in 2012/13. Tax Justice Network figures estimating tax fraud by the super-rich at £60bn, which is around 50 times greater, seem to have 'evaded' Grayling; as has the estimated five times greater figure of £10bn in unclaimed benefits.
The sad fact is simply that tyrants are running the show and rather than pay their fair share they intend to squeeze the poor until the pips squeak.
Clashes between far-right Golden Dawn and anti-fascists raise fears that crisis has reached new stage
It was not the scene that Greece's international stewards envisaged when they last visited the country at the epicentre of Europe's financial mess. When representatives of the "troika" of creditors arrived in June, book-keeping in Athens had been problem-free and monitors described their inspection tour as "almost boring". The great Greek debt crisis, it seemed, had finally gone quiet.
But when mission heads representing the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank fly into Athens on Sunday - for the start of a review upon which the future of Greece will hang - what they will find is a country teetering on the edge: its people divided as never before, its mood brittle, its streets the setting for running battles between anti-fascists and neo-Nazis. And unions girding for battle.
After six years of recession, four years of austerity and the biggest financial rescue programme in global history, it is clear that Greeks have moved into another phase, beyond the fear, fatigue and fury engendered by record levels of poverty and unemployment.
Along with the teargas - fired on Monday for the first time in more than a year outside the administrative reform ministry - there is a new sense of foreboding: a belief that they might never be "saved" and, worse still, could turn against each other.
© Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images
Anti-fascist demonstrators in Athens after the murder of Pavlos Fyssas.
Anti-fascist demonstrators in Athens after the murder of Pavlos Fyssas.
But when mission heads representing the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank fly into Athens on Sunday - for the start of a review upon which the future of Greece will hang - what they will find is a country teetering on the edge: its people divided as never before, its mood brittle, its streets the setting for running battles between anti-fascists and neo-Nazis. And unions girding for battle.
After six years of recession, four years of austerity and the biggest financial rescue programme in global history, it is clear that Greeks have moved into another phase, beyond the fear, fatigue and fury engendered by record levels of poverty and unemployment.
Along with the teargas - fired on Monday for the first time in more than a year outside the administrative reform ministry - there is a new sense of foreboding: a belief that they might never be "saved" and, worse still, could turn against each other.
An animal control officer on disability kept 850 snakes, including two 6-foot Burmese pythons, while running an illegal snake business out of his suburban New York home, according to authorities who made the discovery on Thursday.
Richard Parrinello, of Brookhaven, New York, kept the snakes in his detached garage, all neatly stacked in containers and at the right temperature, according to Roy Gross, chief of the Suffolk County SPCA.
Burmese pythons are illegal in New York, and Parrinello's were taken from the house to a reptile sanctuary in Massachusetts while the rest of the snakes are still in his garage, according to Jack Krieger, communications director for the Town of Brookhaven on Long Island.
Gross said all the snakes appeared to be in good health and there was no animal abuse or neglect.
"It was a well-maintained facility, it was very clean and organized, it was a business," Krieger said.
Two Michigan drivers shot and killed each other Wednesday night after a road rage incident took a fatal turn in a drive-in car wash parking lot, police said.
Robert Taylor, 56, and James Pullum, 43, were driving on a highway in Ionia, Mich., when Taylor began to closely follow Pullum, according to the Ionia Public Safety Department, based on witness reports.
The two drivers eventually pulled into the parking lot of Wonder Wand Car Wash, at the intersection of M-66 highway and Steele Street. where they got out of their vehicles and fired shots at each other, police said. The two men exchanged a total of eight to nine shots, police said.
Robert Taylor, 56, and James Pullum, 43, were driving on a highway in Ionia, Mich., when Taylor began to closely follow Pullum, according to the Ionia Public Safety Department, based on witness reports.
The two drivers eventually pulled into the parking lot of Wonder Wand Car Wash, at the intersection of M-66 highway and Steele Street. where they got out of their vehicles and fired shots at each other, police said. The two men exchanged a total of eight to nine shots, police said.
Kollapriel, Austria - A gunman in Austria killed four people, including three police officers, and fired sporadically at police on Tuesday after barricading himself in a farm building, officials said.
After a 12-hour standoff, police stormed the building with body armor and assault weapons and were searching for the suspect, Interior Ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck told The Associated Press. It wasn't immediately clear whether he was still in the building and the search was widening to other nearby buildings on the farm grounds.
The hunt stretched on more than three hours. Grundboeck said police were moving carefully in an area with many possible hideouts and locked doors. "The safety of our police is our top priority," he said, shortly before midnight.
© Hans Punz/Associated Press
Austrian army soldiers in an armored vehicle arrive near the villages of Grosspriel and Kollapriel some 90 kilometers (55 miles) west of Vienna, Austria, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2013, where a man is barricading himself inside a farm building after he killed two police officers and the driver of an emergency rescue vehicle as the dpa news agency said, citing an unidentified police spokesman. Interior Minister spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck said a third police officer was apparently being held by the shooter in the village of Kollapriel. He confirmed that three people were shot but refused to say whether their injuries were fatal, explaining that officials did not want to give the gunman information through news reports he was likely monitoring.
Austrian army soldiers in an armored vehicle arrive near the villages of Grosspriel and Kollapriel some 90 kilometers (55 miles) west of Vienna, Austria, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2013, where a man is barricading himself inside a farm building after he killed two police officers and the driver of an emergency rescue vehicle as the dpa news agency said, citing an unidentified police spokesman. Interior Minister spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck said a third police officer was apparently being held by the shooter in the village of Kollapriel. He confirmed that three people were shot but refused to say whether their injuries were fatal, explaining that officials did not want to give the gunman information through news reports he was likely monitoring.
The hunt stretched on more than three hours. Grundboeck said police were moving carefully in an area with many possible hideouts and locked doors. "The safety of our police is our top priority," he said, shortly before midnight.
© Scott Olson/Getty Images/AFP
Police investigate the scene in Cornell Square Park on the Southside where 11 people including a three-year-old child were shot on September 19, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois.
Police investigate the scene in Cornell Square Park on the Southside where 11 people including a three-year-old child were shot on September 19, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois.
Chicago Fire Department officials report the child is in critical condition.
"They hit the light pole next to me, but I ducked down and ran into the house," Julian Harris, uncle of the wounded child, said. "They've been coming round here looking for people to shoot every night, just gang-banging stuff. It's what they do."
A witness at the scene told the Chicago Tribune that three police officers carried the child to an ambulance.
"I didn't hear any sounds from the child," the witness said.
© ChinaTibetNews
Lhoba people in traditional costumes.
Lhoba people in traditional costumes.
Wearing beaded necklaces and traditional wool costumes, members of the Lhoba people dance around the Yin-Yang tree, a real-life version of the Tree of Souls from the movie Avatar.
Unlike the mysterious Na'Vis, the Lhoba people, with a total population of more than 3100, are performing a traditional sword dance to entertain visitors to the forest-concealed area in the southeast of the Tibet Autonomous Region.
"The costume has been listed as the nation's intangible cultural heritage," said Dawa Chodron, a 31-year-old local tour guide who has returned to her hometown after graduating from a high school in a second-tier city in southwest China.
The sword dance is a Lhoba tradition celebrating harvest, hunting or the practice of becoming sworn brothers, according to Chodron.
"Visitors from home and abroad are also attracted by our ancestral customs and religious practices," she said.
The Lhoba, one of China's smallest ethnic minorities in terms of population, live mainly in Mainling County of Nyingchi Prefecture in Tibet.
Located near the Brahmaputra River, Chodron's hometown of Qionglin Village in Nanyi Lhoba Ethnic Township is the largest inhabitation for the ethnic group.
Chodron's ancestors were the first cultivators in the Himalaya mountains, but they led a primitive life even as late as 1950.
Assad acknowledged that his government has chemical weapons. "It's not a secret anymore," he said, referencing his government's decision to join the international Chemical Weapons Convention.
Assad also said that the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack, in which more than 1,000 people reportedly died, was a violation of international law. "That's self-evident," he said. "This is despicable. It's a crime."
Yet Assad adamantly denied that his government was behind the attack, continuing to push the theory that the opposition was behind the strike.
"We have evidence that terrorist groups (have) used sarin gas," he said. "The whole story (that the Syrian government used them) doesn't even hold together. ... We didn't use any chemical weapons."
© AFP / Fethi Belaid
Tunisians chant slogans in front of the National Constituent Assembly on August 6, 2013 in Tunis.
Tunisians chant slogans in front of the National Constituent Assembly on August 6, 2013 in Tunis.
Saturday's rally was the largest protest since Tunisia's crisis erupted over the killing of an opposition leader in July, increasing pressure on the ruling Ennahda party to make way for a caretaker government before proposed elections.
Waving red and white national flags and pictures of slain opposition leader Mohamed Brahmi, protesters packed streets around a building where a national assembly had been drafting a new constitution until its work was suspended due to unrest.
Protesters gathered at Bab Saadoun, on the outskirts of Tunis, before marching to Bardo square, the scene of regular protests after the killing of Brahmi.
