British officials are investigating the unexplained death of a Russian businessman, a key witness against Russian officials who allegedly stole $230 million from a London hedge fund in a money laundering scheme.

Alexander Perepilichny's body was discovered Nov. 10 outside his rented house south of London. Police said a second post-mortem on the 44-year-old former milk factory owner would begin Friday after a previous one had proven inconclusive. It could still take months to get the new toxicology results, Surrey Police spokeswoman Nicola Burress said.

The case evokes memories of the 2006 death of former Russian spy-turned-Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned with polonium-210, a rare radioactive isotope that was secretly slipped into his tea at a London hotel. The case took relations between Moscow and London to a post-Cold War low, a relationship that has yet to fully recover.

Doomsday hysteria has gripped Russia and some of its neighbors. Travel agencies are selling tours to either heaven or hell and people are stocking up on food and fuel. Officials are publicly denying the apocalypse, hoping to calm the hype.

Those awaiting Doomsday have three weeks to finish their preparations before the date of the much publicized apocalypse allegedly predicted by Mayan calendar, that is going to happen on December 21, 2012.

Thousands of people across Russia keep stocking up their back rooms and balconies with food, fuel and other supplies they might need when disaster strikes. Some are even moving outside of cities because of the widely spread rumors that cities would be impossible to survive in after an apocalypse on Earth.

According to one of the most popular scenarios, on December 21 the sun is going to line up with the center of our Milky Way galaxy which will cause an entire blackout on Earth and a wave of different natural disasters.

Doomsday merchandize offered in Russia and Ukraine include survival kits. In the Siberian city of Tomsk such items for "meeting the end of the world" include ID cards, notepads, canned fish, a bottle of vodka, rope, a piece of soap, among other items. The packages are said to be popular among customers, more than 1,000 kits have been already sold, the company says.

Ukrainian entrepreneurs also offer a version of a doomsday kit. Just like Tomsk package, the Ukrainian one also includes alcohol: champagne for ladies and vodka for gentlemen. The rest of the kit consist of jack-knife, two-minute noodles, shampoo, soap, rope, matches and condoms.

Suspected murderer Luka Magnotta has been in custody for months, the details of his gruesome alleged crimes still etched but fading in the minds of Canadians. We were held captive for weeks by the bizarre web of lies and misdirection spun around the Toronto youth, and the international manhunt that ended in his arrest for the murder of Montreal's Jun Lin.

The death and dismemberment, in which Magnotta is suspected, has shocked many Canadians. Magnotta has been named Canada's most notorious murder suspect by some, a ticking time bomb by others.

When it all began, he was simply known as a kitten killer.

A documentary by CBC's the fifth estate details the bizarre path of Luka Rocco Magnotta, from lonely Scarborough, Ont., teenager to Montreal murder suspect.

I am not really a doomer. But I do think that societies and individuals that do not prepare for the worst (and hope for the best) are needlessly endangering themselves. Tail risk events happen. An MIT study earlier this year predicted that the global economy would collapse by 2030.

A new national survey by National Geographic and Kelton Research finds some interesting results:
Which cataclysmic movies do Americans worry might come true?
7% of Americans think the Planet of the Apes might come true? Really? 30% of Americans think that the events of Roland Emmerich's 2012 might occur?

Cotonou - Tomb raiders have dug up more than 100 graves at a cemetery in Benin since Saturday for what authorities suspect is a black-market trade in human organs and skulls for voodoo ritual fetishes.

The incident is the most serious case of grave-robbing in the West African state, the world capital of voodoo where most of the country's 9 million residents practice a benign form of the official religion.

Authorities in Dangbo, a village 10 km (6 miles) from the capital Porto-Novo, began an investigation after a mason working at the cemetery said he spotted several masked men digging up the graves, from which organs and skulls were removed.

Mystery surrounds "Please do not eat the flowers" signs which have been placed in floral displays in a Suffolk town centre.

The two printed signs have appeared in the Market Hill area in Sudbury.

The town council, which owns the displays, said it has not added the signs and does not know why anyone else would.

Jacqui Howells, deputy council clerk, said: "It's a mystery and we have no idea where the signs have come from."

The council has about 40 floral troughs in the area around the town hall and St Peter's church.

It said the troughs are too high for dogs to eat from, so the signs are not needed to warn owners.

The council said the winter pansies were not poisonous, so there was no health risk.

Ms Howells said: "It's not a publicity stunt by us, although it is good publicity for Sudbury before Christmas.

"I don't know what to make of the signs - people do some weird things."

Unauthorised man acting for Spain's Gas Natural Fenosa signed agreement for new liquid gas plant

It was the deal of the century, a $1bn contract for a brand new gas plant that would rescue Ukraine from its dependence on energy supplied by Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Prime minister Mykola Azarov oversaw the signing ceremony as a video feed appeared to show welders already at work on the liquid gas plant and the representative of the Spanish company Gas Natural Fenosa, Jordi Sardà Bonvehí, put his name to the agreement.

Not until several days after the event on Monday did it emerge that no one at Gas Natural had heard of Bonvehí. "This person does not represent the company," a spokesman for the firm said.

"Gas Natural Fenosa has not signed any contract to invest in a LNG plant project in Ukraine," the company added. "Nor does it have representatives working in Ukraine on this issue."

6,000 person-years humanity will never get back

Op op op op oppan, sexy lady - Gangnam Style!

Yes, if you're still upset by the four minutes of your life you'll never get back from watching internet sensation PSY bust some horsey moves on YouTube, then fear not - more than 820 million people made the same mistake.

This means that pop2.0 prince Justin Bieber has been knocked off the top spot with his video for Baby, which had previously been the most viewed vid ever on Google's service.

At the last count, Psy's elasticated jockey-popping on an invisble horse had racked up 824,665,713 views on YouTube compared with Bieber's 2010 hit, which has now been watched by 805,345,307 on the video-sharing site.

People in three southern New Jersey towns were told Friday to stay inside after a freight train derailed and several tanker cars carrying hazardous materials toppled from a bridge and into a creek.

Emergency management officials issued the advisory to residents of Paulsboro, West Deptford and East Greenwich Township as a precaution.

At least one tanker car may contain vinyl chloride, Gloucester County Emergency Management director J. Thomas Butts told WPVI-TV.

TV helicopter footage showed at least two tankers in Mantua Creek and one hanging over a trestle, part of which is seemingly collapsed. The creek empties into the Delaware River just across from Philadelphia International Airport.

The Environmental Protection Agency said short-term exposure to high levels of vinyl chloride can cause dizziness and drowsiness.

A spokesman for the state Environmental Protection Department says officials are trying to determine what the cars were carrying.

The Gloucester County Times says 18 people are reported to be having difficulty breathing.

It's not clear what caused the derailment.

Calls to Conrail have not been returned.

Iranian and Turkish officials in a series of meetings in Istanbul are due to explore avenues for further increase in economic cooperation between the two countries.

An Iranian trade delegation from the Northern Semnan province's Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Mine departed on Wednesday for Istanbul to expand the province's economic cooperation and trade with Turkey.

Members of the team will hold talks with their counterparts and partners to promote economic cooperation and trade during the one week visit to Turkey.

They will visit Polytan company in Istanbul as the largest Polymer company and hold talks with the Board of Directors of Etishkan Company which produces plasters for construction projects.

According to the figures released by the Turkish Statistical Institute, Iran became Turkey's third biggest business partner with a trade exchange of $17.52bln since the beginning of the current Iranian year (started on March 20, 2012).

Turkey imported $8.94 billion in goods from Iran, and exported $8.58 billion in goods to the Islamic Republic during this period.

Trade between Turkey and Iran has risen sharply over the past decade.

Turkey was Iran's fifth-largest oil customer in 2011, buying around 200,000 barrels per day, 30 percent of its total imports and more than 7 percent of Iran's oil exports.

The two countries' officials plan to mutual trade to $30bln by 2015.