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You could blame the Blacksburg, Virginia massacre on many things. You could blame it on too many guns, or not enough guns. You could blame it on school security officials who, after two lay dead in a campus dormitory, failed to warn anyone that a murderous killer was on the prowl. You could blame it on the lonely misfit himself, that perennial sociological figure who carries around his heavy heart of darkness until he can’t keep it inside any longer. You could also blame a legal juggernaut that adds up to paralysis in the face of the deranged and dangerous....

Science Daily — A naturally occurring compound found in many fruits and vegetables as well as red wine, selectively kills leukemia cells in culture while showing no discernible toxicity against healthy cells, according to a study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. These findings, which were published online March 20 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry and will be in press on May 4, offer hope for a more selective, less toxic therapy for leukemia. "Current treatments for leukemia, such as chemotherapy and radiation, often damage healthy cells and tissues and can produce unwanted side effects...

Two years ago, former senator John Edwards of North Carolina, gearing up for his second run at the Democratic presidential nomination, gave a speech decrying the "two different economies in this country: one for wealthy insiders and then one for everybody else." Four months later, he began working for the kind of firm that to many Wall Street critics embodies the economy of wealthy insiders -- a hedge fund. Edwards became a consultant for Fortress Investment Group, a New York-based firm known mainly for its hedge funds, just as the funds were gaining prominence in the financial world -- and...

Turbines are being submerged in the East River to generate electricity from rapid tidal currents. Working from barges and tugboats off New York City's Roosevelt Island, engineers are battling northeasters and this month's heavy spring tides to install the first major tidal-power project in the United States. The project involves a set of six submerged turbines that are designed to capture energy from the East River's tidal currents. The three-bladed turbines, which are five meters in diameter and resemble wind turbines, are made by Verdant Power of Arlington, VA. Thanks to lessons learned by wind turbine designers, tidal power is...

DER Führer Adolf Hitler ist tot. These six words, announcing the death of the Nazi leader, should have brought the Second World War to an end in November 1943. The sentence was part of a press release drafted by disaffected German officers who hatched an audacious plot to kill Hitler and then use a secret army to seize control of key sites before suing for peace with the Allies. The full story - which surpasses any Hollywood war movie for drama, farce and ironic twists - has been uncovered by a German academic who closely examined detailed records left behind...

Scotland Yard detectives are to issue arrest warrants against three former KGB officers suspected of poisoning ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko. Police have told sources close to Mr Litvinenko's widow Marina that they intend to lay charges of murder and poisoning against the men, who met the victim three weeks before his death in London. The move will damage the already strained relationship between Downing Street and the Kremlin, which is almost certain to block any request for the men's arrest and extradition. Warrants are expected to be issued against Andrei Lugovoy, Dmitri Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko within the next few...

NEW YORK (AP) — The longtime producer for Don Imus' syndicated radio show joined his boss on the unemployment line one week after the disgraced broadcaster was booted from the airwaves for racist and sexist comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team. Bernard McGuirk, who joined the "Imus in the Morning Show" as producer in 1987, was let go late Thursday by WFAN-AM for his role in the ugly incident, CBS Radio spokeswoman Karen Mateo said Friday. CBS Inc., the parent company for WFAN, pulled Imus off the air on April 12. McGuirk was one of Imus' frequent on-air foils,...

In the wake of Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech in which a student killed 32 people, Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg has limited the use of stage weapons in theatrical productions. Students involved in this weekend’s production of “Red Noses” said they first learned of the new rules on Thursday morning, the same day the show was slated to open. They were subsequently forced to alter many of the scenes by swapping more realistic-looking stage swords for wooden ones, a change that many students said was neither a necessary nor a useful response to the tragedy at Virginia Tech....

Spectator, 20 April 2007. It’s a fair bet that you have never heard of a guy called Dave Gaubatz. It’s also a fair bet that you think the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found absolutely nothing, nada, zilch; and that therefore there never were any WMD programmes in Saddam’s Iraq to justify the war ostensibly waged to protect the world from Saddam’s use of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. Dave Gaubatz, however, says you could not be more wrong. Saddam’s WMD did exist. He should know because he found the sites where he is certain they...

A CAMBRIDGE University student who sparked a huge row when he published anti- Islamic material has issued a grovelling apology. The 19-year-old second-year Clare College student went into hiding after he printed a cartoon and material satirising religion in college magazine Clareification. For his own safety and that of others, the student, who is British, has not been named. During the initial furore surrounding the publication he was taken out of his accommodation and put in a secure place. Cartoons which had sparked worldwide protests in the Muslim community were reprinted in the edition. The college has promised to take...

Polygamous husbands settling in Britain with multiple wives can claim extra benefits for their "harems" even though bigamy is a crime in the UK, it has emerged. Opposition MPs are demanding an urgent change in the law, claiming that the Government is recognising and rewarding a custom which has no legal status and which is "alien" to this country's cultural traditions. Officials said yesterday a review was now under way into whether the state should continue to pay out income support, jobseeker's allowance and housing and council tax benefits to 'extra' spouses. Islamic law allows a man to take up...

MOSCOW, April 14 — Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion turned opposition politician in Russia, was arrested with nearly 200 other protesters during a rally in Moscow on Saturday that ended in clashes with riot troops. The rally, the third so-called Dissenters’ March held by a loose antigovernment coalition known as Other Russia, was noteworthy because authorities aggressively pursued the organizers, including President Vladimir V. Putin’s former prime minister, Mikhail M. Kasyanov, whom the police jostled but did not arrest. The rally was principally supported by Mr. Kasyanov and Mr. Kasparov, who leads a group here called the United Civil...

Some years ago, Cokie Roberts, faithful to her profession and to the proposition that those engaged in public discourse, at whatever level, should be left free to do as they liked, stopped short. What did it was a speech at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association dinner, an annual affair at which, in 1996, 3,000 guests ate and drank in the company of President and Mrs. Clinton and listened to Don Imus. After that night’s performance, Ms. Roberts changed her mind. “I really don’t think it would be appropriate for any of us to ever go back on [Imus’s show],”...

Thousands of Kremlin critics will march through Russia's biggest cities this weekend in an unsanctioned protest against President Vladimir Putin's clamp-down on democracy. Defying threats of police violence and the detention of dozens of colleagues, leaders of the Other Russia coalition said 2,000 supporters will march through central Moscow today. Led by Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion, and Mikhail Kasyanov, an ex-prime minister, the protests will call for transparent presidential and parliamentary elections, scheduled to be held over the next 11 months. A second rally will be held in St Petersburg tomorrow. Terrified of any form of open opposition,...

Gangsta culture, not an unjust society, drives it, says the outgoing British prime minister. British prime minister Tony Blair has just broken one of the biggest taboos in Western politics: talking frankly about black crime. Give the man a medal for courage. And then ask why American pols are unable to summon such backbone in addressing the biggest impediment holding back poor black Americans: out-of-control crime rates and the gangsta culture that gives rise to criminality, problems that will be with us long after Don Imus is sent into belated retirement. A wave of teen black-on-black murders has struck London...

DURHAM, N.C., April 12 -- Long before the case against three Duke University lacrosse players collapsed in public, a soft-spoken Sudanese immigrant knew that something wasn't quite right. When asked, he told the truth: One of the players had been in his cab that night -- and nowhere near the house where a sexual assault allegedly occurred. But as soon as Moezeldin Elmostafa, 39, a Durham cabbie, became known as a key alibi witness, his attorney says, Elmostafa fell victim to Durham District Attorney Michael B. Nifong's rough-and-tumble tactics. He was arrested. "I was afraid," he recalled at his attorney's...

April 10, 2007 — - The North Carolina Attorney General's office has finished its interviews and could announce a decision on whether to drop all charges against the three former Duke students as early as tomorrow in a Raleigh news conference, ABC news has learned. The three lacrosse players were initially accused of raping an exotic dancer just over a year ago. The state Attorney General took over the case in January, after Durham prosecutor Mike Nifong recused himself under pressure, claiming a conflict of interest because the State Bar Association charged him with misconduct in the case. Two respected...

It is the epitome of romance and style. But Paris is in the grip of an unprecedented 'flight of the young', with the disenchanted looking to London and New York for a new life. On the eve of the French elections a generation of young Parisiens ... are turning their back on the city [snip] The emigration of so many young people is seen most threateningly in the press as the victory of Anglo-American capitalism (most French youngsters dream of London or New York) over the French socialist model. [snip] 'It's not that I dislike Paris or France,' I was...

The 15 British military captives who were released by the Iranians have been authorised by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to sell their stories. MoD officials claimed that the move to lift the ban on military personnel selling their stories while in service was justified because of the “exceptional circumstances” of the case. The hostages are expected to earn as much as £250,000 between them. The story of Faye Turney, 26, the only female among them, is expected to be the most lucrative. She could profit by as much as £150,000 from a joint deal with a newspaper and ITV....

What does it take for a healthy man to choose to have his testicles removed? Roger Davies is one of a surprising number who have found salvation in castration. Like many sensitive teenagers, Roger Davies felt different from his peers. He wasn’t into sport and abhorred the aggression he saw in other boys. When, at the age of 22, he still hadn’t grown out of his sense of isolation, he took radical action: he travelled to America and underwent castration. “I’m really happy with who I am now,” says the 25-year-old cleaner and caterer from Southport. “I don’t have any...