What the world did wrong today ... Part of an update published by The Herald news. Link to full article below. -Unidentified gunmen killed Ibrahim Ismael, head of the education department in the northern city of Kirkuk, police Col. Sarhat Qadir said. Three of Ismael's bodyguards were wounded . - A gruesome video posted on a Web site purported to show militants beheading a Nepalese worker and shooting 11 others in the first mass slaying of foreign hostages during the Iraqi insu...

By RAVI NESSMAN Associated Press Writer 08/31/2004 BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A gruesome video posted on a Web site purported to show militants beheading a Nepalese worker and shooting 11 others in the first mass slaying of foreign hostages during the Iraqi insurgency. If confirmed, it would raise the number of foreign workers known to have been slain by extremists to at least 22 in a terror campaign aimed at forcing foreign troops and contract workers out of the country. I...

from news.com.au: France has vowed to press ahead with a controversial law banning Islamic head scarves in schools, despite demands by militants holding two French journalists hostage in Iraq. Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope told Canal Plus television France would not compromise its values to win the release of the journalists. Militants claiming to hold them demanded the law be overturned within 48 hours - a deadline that expires late Monday. "The law will be applied," Cope ...

In Cairo, Egypt, Islamic militants have released a brief tape showing two French journalists kidnapped recently in Iraq and said they were holding the men to protest a French law banning headscarves in schools. According to footage aired Saturday by (TV station) Al-Jazeera, the group gave the French government 48 hours to overturn the law but mentioned no ultimatum. Five days ago, Al-Jazeera broadcast a videotape purportedly released by the same group showing abducted freelance jou...

Can psychology tell us what motivates terrorists and how they differ from you and me?. How do we get inside the mind of a killer ?. Most of us find terrorism acts alien to our thinking. We simply cannot ever hope to understand. Yet maybe for our own sakes we should understand something of what fuels the violent reality of todays' world. Scientifically, it's a tough task, since terrorists generally don't volunteer for psychological studies. At any rate, terrorism experts tend to differ grea...

I'm the first person to agree that political correctness for the most part forms a good base for decent, or at the very least, tolerable behaviour. Yes, some of the 'rules' annoy me, (ok to be frank, some of the 'rules' make me want to throw things for their unwitting encouragement of segregation and/or their very triviality), but I for the most part at least see the benefits of these 'rules'. Yet even I am beginning to become a little worried about the extremes that this 'PC' stuff see...

'Woman Takes On 6000 new Housemates' *24 year old Malaysian woman Nur Malena Hassan has moved into a glass box containing 6000 live scorpions in an attempt to enter the Guinness Book of World Records. Although current record holder Kanchana Ketkaew of Thailand was stung nine times during her record-setting 32 day incarceration with 3000 live scorpions in 2002, Nur Malena reportedly showed no fear as the creatures began to climb over her face and body. Nur Malena may leave the box for ...

excerpt from etaiwan.news - link below a man convicted of raping and murdering a teenage girl was hanged at dawn wednesday in india's first execution in nine years. dhananjay chatterjee, 39, was executed after spending the last 13 years in solitary confinement. "the execution of dhananjay chatterjee alias dhana has duly been carried out at the scheduled time at 4.30 a.m.," the prison said in a statement. chatterjee's shrouded body was later cremated in an electric furnace, poli...

i changed someone’s life with toilet paper. i bet you're wondering how i did that, right ?. you're thinking that you might like to do that too if that's all it takes, right ?. nothing fancy or unduly glam. just some toilet paper. couldn't be simpler. well, before i tell you, let me just explain why i was in two minds about writing this article. i find it repellant when people perform charitable acts and then go around big noting themselves for it. although i hope it's clear that this i...

the anti-discrimination act came into being as legal direction for people who don’t know how to treat other people ... people who would knowingly discriminate against others unless it were actually illegal . the mindsets of such people are not difficult to imagine ... this world is full of so-called superior beings who would happily take any “advantage” they had over someone they consider “inferior” ...“inferior” being based entirely on grounds that most decent people would now cal...

george orwell (circa 1949): "it was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, as well as here, and the people under the sky were also very much the same ... ... everywhere, all over the world, hundreds of thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same ... ... people who had never learned to think but who were storing up in their hearts and bellies and ...

The media portrayal of Australia as some sunburned expanse largely populated with extremist animal experts, bush-tucker men, and large, life-threatening animals at every turn is getting very old. Ditto the inference that the remaining populace consume only beer, are always happy, work only seasonally, walk around almost naked and speak another language. (Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing). If only it were true !. We are indeed err, blessed with some persons so multi...