More than 200 firefighters have tackled a blaze described by London Fire Brigade as the biggest seen in the capital for several years.

The brigade was called at about 13:15 BST when flames took hold at a recycling centre in Dagenham, east London.

Smoke was visible for miles as the single-storey building burned, but there were no injuries.

The brigade said fire cover at Olympic venues had not been affected.

There were initial reports that people could see the smoke from the Olympic Park, approximately six miles away.

One youngster in 10 is living with an alcoholic parent in Scotland, shocking figures reveal. The research shows that up to 93,000 youngsters under the age of 16 are living with one or more parents with a drinkproblem.

Experts warned yesterday that kids were being raised in unstable, chaotic homes plagued by emotional and physical abuse.

Yesterday, kids' protection charity Children 1st said more needed to be done to protect youngsters from abuse, violence or neglect caused by their parents' boozing.

Anne Houston, the charity's chief executive, said: "Up to 93,000 children in Scotland - or one in 10 - could be bearing the brunt of our nation's attitude to alcohol. That should give us all cause for concern.

"From our work helping children recover from the trauma of violence fuelled by alcohol misuse, we know that many of them feel those negative effects for years, with some suffering from depression, anxiety and low self-esteem.

"Too many children are missing out on their childhoods because of their parents' drinking and we all have a responsibility to stop this from happening."

The latest figures were calculated from Scottish Government health surveys. They reveal that between 72,000 and 93,000children at are risk of harm from their parents' drinking.

SNP MSP Marco Biagi said: "We've known for some time that children often bear the brunt of our nation's attitude to alcohol but these figures reveal the scale of the problem.

"Key to addressing the issue is reducing the amount of alcohol adults consume.

"That is exactly what the Scottish Government is focused on doing, through its framework for action on alcohol, investment in health interventions and, most recently, in introducing a minimum price for alcohol. All these measures give us a real chance of changing the culture around alcohol and ensuring that children get the best start in life."

An opposition politician elected in Mexico's July 1 vote and his campaign manager were found shot to death in a truck early Sunday morning in the central state of San Luis Potosi, which has seen a spike in drug gang-related violence in the past week.

Edgar Morales, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who won the mayoral race in Matehuala, and Juan Hernandez were ambushed by gunmen after leaving a birthday party in the town, the state attorney general's office said in a statement.

Authorities found spent rounds from high-powered rifles at the scene, the statement said.

Hernandez's wife, who survived the ambush, did not see the gunmen, and authorities have not established a motive for the murders, said a government spokesperson who requested anonymity for security reasons.

Morales who ran on a coalition ticket between the PRI and smaller Green Party, narrowly defeated a candidate from outgoing President Felipe Calderon's National Action Party, according to state election data.

Malaysian women's groups have questioned a court's decision to free a national bowler who pleaded guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl, reportedly citing his "bright future".

A three-judge panel at the Court of Appeal unanimously ruled on Thursday to release ten-pin bowler Noor Afizal Azizan on probation in the statutory rape case, overturning a lower court's decision to jail him.

In his decision one of the three judges agreed with Noor Afizal's lawyer that, according to national news agency Bernama, "public interest would not be served if Noor Afizal was sent to jail as he had a bright future".

The Joint Action Group For Gender Equality, which comprises six prominent women's groups, in a statement received yesterday, urged the judiciary to clarify its decision.

Santa Maria, California - A teenage police Explorer Scout has sued the city of Santa Maria, claiming she was repeatedly raped by a police officer who was shot and killed by a fellow officer after a struggle to avoid arrest.

The lawsuit filed Aug. 7 in federal court claims negligence and seeks unspecified damages. City officials could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Officer Alberto Covarrubias was killed in January by another officer after he was under investigation for having sex with the 17-year-old girl.

The suit claims Covarrubias raped the girl numerous times and told her if she didn't have sex with him that he would kill her boyfriend and her family.

The suit said city officials failed to act immediately once it was alerted to the allegations.

Source: The Associated Press

About 50 people set out on foot from the Swiss village of Fiesch at dawn on July 31. As the sun rose over 13,000-foot (4,000-meter) Alpine peaks, the procession moved slowly up a mountainside and into the cool of a pine forest, stopping at a tiny church.

By 7:30 the group had swollen to around a hundred - too many to fit inside the chapel of Maria Heimsuchung, or Mary of the Visitation, so a makeshift altar was erected outside.

"Glacier is ice, ice is water, water is life," intoned priest Toni Wenger, before beseeching God to stop the glaciers high above them from melting.

By changing a few, crucial words in the liturgy, Father Wenger reversed a Catholic ritual that for 350 years had implored the heavens to push back the glaciers.

The Vatican had approved the change as the effects of global warming became all too tangible in the Alps.

Climate change's effects are accentuated in mountainous regions, and in the 20th century temperatures in Alpine Switzerland increased by twice the global average. Today Swiss glaciers are shrinking by nearly 33 feet (10 meters) a year, on average. What's more, alpine communities are reporting more rain and stronger winds than in centuries past.

On Thursday, August 2, at roughly 12:45 p.m., a small woman with long black hair and a red cardigan sweater stood on the lawn of Seattle's federal courthouse, surrounded by a few friends and around 75 protesters. On the steps behind her, a few dozen law-enforcement officers watched as she nervously spoke into a megaphone, announcing that she would not cooperate with the federal grand jury proceedings taking place inside. She said she would go into the courthouse, give the jury only her name and date of birth, and refuse to answer any further questions. "Under no circumstances," she said, speaking for herself and another recipient of a subpoena, "will we talk about other people."

The woman, a 24-year-old from Portland named Leah-Lynn Plante, was prepared to go to jail for refusing to talk about who may have been involved in the politically motivated vandalism in downtown Seattle on May Day, when activists smashed out the windows of several banks and stores - including Wells Fargo and Niketown - as well as a federal courthouse door.

A suburban New Jersey woman thought she was contributing to an educational video on breastfeeding only to learn, months later, that someone apparently stole footage of her and her newborn daughter and incorporated it into a pornographic video that was attracting thousands of hits on YouTube and elsewhere.

Now MaryAnn Sahoury, 35, worries that the stigma of being associated with Internet pornography will shadow both her and her daughter -- referred to in legal documents as A.S. -- for the rest of their lives.

"A.S. is not even two (2) years old. She will be faced with continuing damage as she engages in elementary school, middle school, high school and then college. This may haunt her for years to come because what has occurred can never entirely be removed from the Internet," according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court against Meredith Corp., the Iowa-based media and marketing giant that filmed Sahoury and her daughter.

Sahoury has sued Meredith Corp. for fraud, misrepresentation and negligence in connection with a video that Meredith said was stolen from its website and misused. In an opinion issued last week, a federal judge wrote that Sahoury's lawsuit could move forward despite Meredith Corp.'s argument that a release form signed by Sahoury allowed Meredith to use her and her daughter's names, and freed Meredith from "any and all claims."

Shorlty after her daughter was born on Dec. 9, 2009, Sahoury was recruited to be a part of a breastfeeding educational video by her lactation consultant, who had been engaged by Parent TV, a Meredith Corp. brand. (Meredith also publishes the popular Parents magazine, Ladies Home Journal and Better Homes and Gardens.)

Three Washington teenagers have filed a personal injury lawsuit against the classified ad website Backpage.com, alleging that the site allowed them to be forced into prostitution for the company's own financial gain.

The three unnamed girls, now aged 15 through 17, filed the suit in Pierce County Superior Court in Tacoma, Washington. In the suit they allege that through the adult listings in Backpage.com the company allowed them to be raped -- and that it profited as a result, making millions of dollars each month.

Dozens of Transportation Security Administration officers at Boston's Logan International Airport have come out with allegations that a program intended to help flag possible terrorists based on passengers' mannerisms has led to rampant racial profiling of minorities.

The TSA told the New York Times, which reported the story on Friday, that it is investigating the claims made by more than 30 officers involved in the 'behavior detection' program who claimed that the operation targets not only Middle Eastern nationals, but also Hispanics traveling to Miami, or blacks wearing baseball caps backward.

At a meeting last month with the agency, officers provided written complaints, some of them anonymous, from 32 officers.

The officers said their co-workers were increasingly targeting minorities, believing that the stops would turn up drugs, outstanding arrest warrants and immigration problems, in response to pressure from managers who wanted high numbers of stops, searches and criminal referrals, the Times reported.