A new alliance of on-campus Palestine solidarity groups has been launched in Canada.

The Canadian Student Coalition for Palestine is hoping to build on recent triumphs by the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Its formation follows votes by seven student unions in Canadian universities - including two campuses in the University of Toronto - to support the BDS call over the past year.

"There are Palestinian solidarity groups across Canadian universities, and though each group is fighting almost identical battles, we are each fighting alone, and now we have the opportunity to come together under a collective coalition," said Sabrina Azraq, co-president of Toronto Students for Justice in Palestine.

Having launched the alliance at a conference in London, Ontario last month, organizers are already planning a follow-up assembly in Toronto toward the end of the year.

There is a long history of Palestine solidarity activism on Canada's campuses; in 1999, several student Palestine advocacy groups in Montreal unified to create Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights. It rose to national prominence in 2002 when protested against a planned visit by Benjamin Netanyahu, then an opposition leader in Israel, to Concordia University in Montreal. Netanyahu's speech was cancelled as a result ("Discordia: When Netanyahu came to town," Palestine Solidarity Review, Fall 2004).

Danish restaurant Noma, crowned the world's best restaurant three years running in one poll, on Friday apologised after 63 guests fell ill with sickness and diarrhoea after visiting the haute cuisine establishment.

According to the Danish health authorities, the guests fell ill during a five-day period in February and the outbreak could have come from a sick kitchen staff employee.

Health inspectors criticised the restaurant for not alerting authorities soon enough and for not taking proper action after the employee was struck ill upon returning home after work.

The two-Michelin-star restaurant recognised in a report that internal procedures had not been good enough and said an e-mail from the employee reporting his sickness had not been seen.

'We are in the business of making people happy and taking care of our guests, so this is the worst thing that could happen to us,' Noma managing director Peter Kreiner told Reuters.

'Since the outbreak we have worked closely with the health authorities to get to the bottom of it and find the source of infection.

'We are extremely sorry about all of this and I have personally been in dialogue with all the guests who were affected and discussed compensation for them,' he said, adding there was never any danger of the restaurant being closed down.

A Southern California school board member convicted of running a prostitution ring in his home has been sentenced to 14 years and four months in prison.

The Riverside Press-Enterprise reports 42-year-old Mike Rios was officially removed from the Moreno Valley School Board after being sentenced Friday.

Louisville - A Louisville police officer has been fined $2 after being convicted of official misconduct and harassment for striking a handcuffed suspect multiple times.

A Jefferson District Jury on Friday fined officer David Graham $1 for each of the charges stemming from the March 31, 2012 arrest of 19-year-old John R. Sanders. A videotape of Sanders' arrest shows Graham poking Sanders multiple times in the throat and slapping him.

Defense attorney Steve Schroering told The Courier-Journal his client was disappointed at being convicted, but thankful the jury gave him the "absolute minimum penalty."

Graham, a Fourth Division officer who has been on the police force since 1999, could still face disciplinary action from the police department.

Ministers, the police and social workers have been accused of a "shocking" failure to prevent the spread of modern slavery in the UK, leading to sexual exploitation, forced labour and the domestic servitude of adults and children from across the world.

Describing government ministers as "clueless" in their response to tackling human trafficking, both into and within the UK, the most exhaustive inquiry yet conducted into the phenomenon concludes that the approach to eradicating modern slavery is fundamentally wrong-headed. Instead of helping vulnerable victims who are trapped into forms of slavery after being trafficked from overseas, the legal system prosecutes many for immigration offences.

The major study by the Centre for Social Justice, which will be published on Monday, says that political indifference and ignorance alongside a leadership vacuum in Whitehall has meant that the country that led the way in abolishing slavery in the 19th century is now a "shameful shadow" of its former self as the practice makes a comeback in a contemporary guise.

To restore Britain's reputation on the issue, the centre's report outlines more than 80 recommendations, including the appointment of an independent anti-slavery commissioner, to ensure proper political focus and new legislation to better protect victims.

Researchers were stunned at the lack of awareness of the problem among frontline officials whose job it was to identify and help trafficked victims. "We have encountered unacceptable levels of ignorance and misidentification of victims among the police, social services, the UKBA [UK Border Agency], the judicial system and others," said the report.

Social workers, it added, were "not equipped" to identify victims of modern slavery. One charity described how it was normal for just a couple of hands to be raised when a room holding 40 social workers was asked if anyone knew about the national referral mechanism, the government's system for identifying and protecting suspected trafficking victims.

On Saturday afternoon, Yale hosted a "sensitivity training" in which students were asked to consider topics such as bestiality, incest, and accepting money for sex.

During the workshop, entitled, "Sex: Am I Normal," students anonymously asked and answered questions about sex using their cell phones, and viewed the responses in real time in the form of bar charts.

The session was hosted by "sexologist" Dr. Jill McDevitt, who owns a sex store called Feminique in West Chester, Pa.

Survey responses revealed that nine percent of attendees had been paid for sex, 3 percent had engaged in bestiality, and 52 percent had participated in "consensual pain" during sex, according to an article published in the Yale Daily News on Monday.

More than 40 young children were injured and transported to area hospitals after a swarm of bees attacked them at a park in the northeastern region of South Africa, paramedics said on late Friday. Four of the children were critically injured.

The freak incident happened at around 3:30 p.m. local time on Friday when 80 children from a pre-primary school were waiting to board their bus after visiting a bunny park in Benoni, a city on the East Rand in Gauteng province. All of the children were between the ages of 2 and 6.

"They were waiting for a bus when things went drastically wrong. A swarm of bees came out of nowhere and attacked the children," said Chris Botha, a spokesman for ambulance service Netcare 911. The incident sparked a large emergency response with ambulances from across the region being sent to the scene.

Police in Whitefish, Montana said on Friday that Sportsman Channel host Gregory Rodríguez was shot and killed by a friend's jealous husband.

According to KRTV-TV, Rodríguez, host of A Rifleman's Journal and an editor for Guns & Ammo Magazine and other outdoors publications, was visiting the state as part of a business trip when he went to see the woman at her mother's house on Thursday night.

Whitefish Police Chief Bill Dial said the woman's husband, 41-year-old Wayne Bengston, "came into the house, immediately shot Mr. Rodríguez and killed him almost instantly. Dial also said Bengston beat his wife before leaving the house with her 2-year-old son.

An 82-year-old Florida woman appears to be preparing for a legal battle against transit officials in Miami after video surfaced online of her being pulled to the ground and out of a local train.

WPLG-TV reported on Friday that an attorney representing Emma Anderson has filed a Freedom of Information Act request against Miami-Dade Transit asking for their policies regarding dealing with elderly passengers.

The request could be the first legal salvo in the wake of a Feb. 20 incident in which Anderson was ejected from a local Metrorail train for allegedly singing a religious song too loudly.

"I was beating my little beads with the bottle and I was singing a song," Anderson told the station on March 6. "[The security guard] came up to me and said, 'Ma'am, you're making too much noise.'"

The video, filmed on a cell phone by another passenger, shows the guard grabbing Anderson's bag by the handle while she held on to the other end. Shortly thereafter, Anderson is seen falling to the ground. Her attorney, Al Carbonell, said the fall caused injuries to her hip and shoulder.

"Right now, physically, she can't walk," Carbonell said. "She can't move around."

On Friday, a 9-year-old boy in Detroit brought cupcakes to Schall Elementary School for his birthday. Pretty innocent, right? You would think so, but no. Both the boy and his parents were reprimanded for a decoration on the cupcakes that the school principal found to be inappropriate - little green Army men.

According to CBS, school principal Susan Wright called the parents and said the cupcakes were insensitive. She then reportedly had the school staff remove the Army men before serving the cupcakes.