Nokia will lay off 10,000 jobs globally and close plants by the end of 2013 in a further drive to cut costs, the company said on Thursday.

The cuts mean that it will close some research and development projects, including in Ulm in Germany and Burnaby in Canada.

The Finnish phone-maker said it would also close the manufacturing plant in Salo, but would keep its research and development operations there.

The company also confirmed the sale of its luxury phone business, Vertu, to the private equity firm EQT.

Nokia, which will retain a 10% minority shareholding in Vertu, said the sale was the best option for the business.

It's not just how it's playing in Peoria: President Barack Obama's standing overseas has eroded sharply since he took office three and a half years ago, even as many of America's closest friends increasingly say that China is now the world's dominant economic power, according to a report out Wednesday.

Solid majorities in Britain, France, Germany and Spain say China - not the United States - is the globe's most potent economy. That perception has changed markedly in the past four years. In Britain, for example, the margin in 2012 is 58-28 percent in China's favor, compared with 44-29 percent for the United States in 2008.

Those are some of the stark findings of Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project, which also found that approval of Obama's handling of world affairs has plummeted 30 points in China, from 57 percent to just 27 percent.

That may not matter at the polls in November, but it could complicate Obama's efforts to hold together international coalitions on issues like Iran's nuclear program or forge a consensus to bring an end to bloody violence in Syria.

A Texas couple who own a ranch that police searched following false information that was provided by a psychic are suing the police and several major news organizations for defamation.

The case began June 6, 2011, when a psychic called police and described a horrific scene of mass murder: dozens of dismembered bodies near a ranch house about an hour outside of Houston, Texas. There were rotting limbs, headless corpses, and, chillingly, many were children in this mass grave they described.

Deputies from the Liberty County Sheriff's office went to investigate but didn't see anything amiss. After a second call the following day, dozens of officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety, the FBI, and the Texas Rangers were on the scene -- not to mention cadaver dogs, news helicopters, and gawkers. It all turned out to be a false alarm. There were no dead bodies; the psychic was wrong (or lying).

Though the incident became a national embarrassment, the police refused to apologize, saying that procedures were followed and that the severity of the claims warranted an investigation: Whether a tip comes from an ordinary citizen, an anonymous informant, or a self-proclaimed psychic, information about mass murders cannot be ignored.

Now the couple that owns the ranch are suing. According to a story in The Dayton News,

Joe Bankson and Gena Charlton, through their attorney, Andrew B. Sommerman, filed a lawsuit on June 5, 2012, in the 193rd Judicial District in Dallas claiming that the sheriff's office and the media groups acted in reckless disregard and caused damage to the couple's reputation and good name. Bankson and Charlton...are now unable to return to their rented home in Hardin because "everyone looks at them askance because of the accusations made against them."

Bankson and Charlton accuse The New York Times, CNN, Thompson Reuters, ABC News, and other news media of publishing false statements claiming that bodies had been found on their property.

Over the weekend, a Texas father beat to death a man he allegedly caught molesting his 4-year-old daughter. Should he stand trial?

Consider it a warning to those who would stoop to sexually abuse children: on Saturday, a Texas father who allegedly discovered a man sexually assaulting his 4-year-old daughter hit him so hard that he killed him.

And few seemed to care. "Dad's a hero in my book," was one of more than 5,400 comments on CNN. "No jury in this country will convict the father," read another.

A Chinese mother-of-two has been left disfigured by tumours which have been growing on her face for the last ten years.

Li Hongfang, 40, is shunned in public because of the rare condition which has caused her face to slowly swell.

She has been unable to get medical treatment for Chordoma because she cannot afford it. The illness is a form of bone cancer which causes tissue to grow.

The trouble started in 2001 when she noticed a small patch of swelling on her forehead which she initially ignored because it was not painful.

When her condition was finally diagnosed four years later, doctors said she had seven tumours growing on her face.

Let this be a lesson to all you aspiring criminals out there: If you're thinking about committing a crime, perhaps don't do it driving a car with a vanity license plate that reads "ZOMBIE."

According to police in Allentown, Pa., Yardley Joy Frantz, a 29-year-old woman, struck a man and young boy late Friday afternoon, then fled the scene in a car with the aforementioned plate.

Pedro Gonzalez Jr. told police a car driven by Frantz hit his father, Pedro Gonzalez Sr., and nephew Carlos Correa, "who was riding a toy car," according to the criminal complaint published by the Lehigh Valley Morning Call. When Gonzalez Jr. confronted Frantz as she attempted to flee, Frantz "zapped him in the chest with a stun gun."

Louisiana is the world's prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran's, seven times China's and 10 times Germany's.

That paragraph opens a devastating eight-part series published this month by The Times-Picayune of New Orleans about how the state's largely private prison system profits from high incarceration rates and tough sentencing, and how many with the power to curtail the system actually have a financial incentive to perpetuate it.

The picture that emerges is one of convicts as chattel and a legal system essentially based on human commodification.

The case of an honors student in Texas shines light on a national problem: teens going to jail for absurd reasons.

Last week, the country was riveted by the story of young Diane Tran, a high school junior age 17, who was tossed in jail for a night because she was missing too much school.

The reason her case attracted so much attention? Tran missed those days of school--or arrived late--due to exhaustion. She worked two jobs to help support her siblings. Her parents had split and moved out of town. She became, in essence, a poster-girl for both the recession and for the criminalization of youth. Even those local newscasters expected to be dispassionate were moved to say their "hearts went out" to this girl.

Clarence Aaron is serving three life terms for a small-time college cocaine deal, another victim of heinous mandatory drug sentencing laws.

The Ugly Truth about Mandatory Drug Sentencing

This is a simple truth: the United States is the only country in the first world that imposes life sentences to teenagers for small-time, non-violent drug offenses. In fact, the American legal system does so with alarming regularity, spending $40 billion a year to lock up hundreds of thousands of low-level dealers. The practice began when Ronald Reagan declared a "War on Drugs" in 1986, and has spread steadily since then. The following year, Congress enacted its federal mandatory sentencing guidelines, which automatically buried tens of thousands of low-level, non-violent drug offenders in the belly of the beast for decades - even for multiple life terms. Just ask Clarence Aaron, inmate number 05070-003.

At the age of 24, Aaron was sentenced to three life terms for his role in a cocaine deal. That's effectively three times the sentence imposed upon Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square in 2010. Aaron was a student and football player at Southern University in Baton Rouge. He'd never been arrested. In 1992, he made the mistake of being present for the sale of nine kilograms of cocaine and the conversion of one kilo of coke to crack. Aaron would have earned $1,500 for introducing the buyer and seller. He never actually touched the drugs.

I do not want to appear disrespectful or ungrateful, but should we meet on the street one day, do say "Hello," or "Fine day" or other such nicety, but please do not thank me for "my service" as a United States Marine. I make this request because my service, as you refer to it, was basically, either to train to become a killer or to actually kill people and blow shit up.

Now, that is not something for which a person should be proud nor thanked. In fact, it is regrettable, and for me a source of guilt and shame, something I will have to live with for the rest of my life, as the past cannot ever be undone. So, when you thank me for my service, it disturbs me ... a lot. First off, it brings to mind my wasted youth and lost innocence, and the horrible and unnecessary deaths of good friends and comrades. Second, it reminds me of my responsibility and culpability for the pain and suffering I caused innocent people, again something I would rather forget, but cannot. Third, it reinforces my belief that you have absolutely no idea about the nature and reality of the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, because if you did, you would understand that thanks are inappropriate. Fourth, it reminds me that many of those who feel the need to offer thanks were apathetic about - or even supportive of - the war, while they refuse to participate themselves or did little or nothing to end it. And lastly, I have to admit that I doubt the sincerity of these expressions of supposed gratitude, as "Thank you for your service" is just something to say not because you care about what I did or sacrificed, but only to demonstrate your supposed good character, or patriotism and/or "support" for members of the military and veterans.

In making this request not to be thanked for my service, I am, of course, expressing only my opinion, and, perhaps, my idiosyncrasy, and I make no claim to be speaking for other veterans. I would wager, however, that many, perhaps even most, who have experienced the horror of war and have the courage and presence of mind to think about and evaluate what the war they served in was truly about would understand and probably concur with this request. Those veterans, however, who may not agree, who cling to the mythology of heroism, glory, honor and nobility of war, do so in large measure from fear that acknowledging war's reality would somehow diminish their sacrifice and the sacrifices of those whose lives were lost. Perhaps understandably, they view such sacrifices and loss as difficult enough to live with when they had value and purpose, and as intolerable if they were misguided and unnecessary. To these brothers and sisters, I would offer the following questions and observations for them to ponder.