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Note: Video included. "Bin Laden's Son Is Hospitalized After He Hears His Father's Voice Omar Bin Laden Is Treated for Schizophrenia, Wife Asks for Divorce" July 9, 2010 SNIPPET: ""It's true that he was put on medication but released himself early," said a spokesman for Zeina Al Sabah, Omar's wife. The spokesman confirmed that Omar had bipolar disorder and was on anti-depressants." SNIPPET: ""Omar loves and hates Osama at the same time," she said." SNIPPET: "Omar, 29, has denounced his father's terrorist tactics and ideology. But he still maintains an emotional bond..." SNIPPET: "Much of Osama Bin Laden's family, comprising...

(CNSNews.com) – Although no group has claimed responsibility for Monday’s deadly bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon, a leading al-Qaeda ideologue last year recommended that jihadists in America include sporting events in their list of prospective terror targets.

Rio De Janeiro - The brutal gang rape of a US student in a Rio bus has revived concern about public safety ahead of the World Cup and the 2016 summer Olympics, despite an overall drop in violence. Over the weekend a 21-year-old American student was repeatedly sexually assaulted and her French boyfriend was beaten during a six-hour abduction aboard a minibus in the famed beach district of Copacabana. The case grabbed international headlines and drew comparisons to last December's similar gang rape of a young Indian woman in New Delhi, which led to a 25% fall in tourist arrivals....

A young woman and her companion were held captive and beaten after boarding a minivan bus in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro on Saturday night. At least three men took turns raping the woman in an assault that lasted six hours. The attack drew comparisons to the gang rape of a young woman on a bus in Delhi in December. That attack, which was so brutal that the victim later died of her injuries, sparked outrage in India and overseas. She too was traveling with a male companion, who was beaten but survived. Here is how the crimes...

From Chicago to Rio, from Jamaica to Nigeria, gang violence is leaving an indelible mark on communities across the globe, leaving authorities at a loss for what to do about the epidemic of lawlessness among young men who see little hope in their futures. Certainly the global economic crisis has much to do with the rise in gang violence and influence, as young men of color in most of the affected countries see few options for gainful employment. In Chicago, among 400 murders that have occurred in 2012, an estimated 80 percent of them have been gang-related. The killing in...

Ahead of Saturday's Champions League final and with Euro 2012 just around the corner, animals of all shapes and sizes are queuing up to succeed Paul the Octopus, the famous clairvoyant cephalopod from the 2010 World Cup. Paul, an octopus who lived at an aquarium in the German city of Oberhausen, rose to fame during the last World Cup for correctly 'predicting' the outcome of eight consecutive matches at the tournament. The tentacled soothsayer, who picked winners by selecting food from boxes decorated with teams' national flags, passed away after the tournament, but there are now plenty of animals bidding...

TOKYO — Anti-smoking campaigners in Japan are accusing one of the world’s leading tobacco companies of marketing products to teenage girls at World Cup volleyball events here. Japan Tobacco’s logo (JT) is on the national team uniforms, court-side digital billboards, TV ads and “gift” packages handed out to schoolgirls, mothers and children entering Yoyogi National Stadium and arenas across Japan during the World Cup, which runs until Dec. 4. While the United States, European Union and other industrialized countries have long banned tobacco companies from sponsoring sporting events, Japan Tobacco has been a major promoter of volleyball, helping to make...

Shelby Township, MI --(Ammoland.com)- The Scholastic Clay Target Program (SCTP) announced today that SCTP athlete, Billy Crawford, an 18-year-old senior attending Northridge High School in Johnstown, Ohio set a new World Record and captured the Individual World Champion Title by scoring 147 hits in Junior Men’s Double Trap at the ISSF Shotgun World Championships currently being held at the Kovilovo Shooting Range in Belgrade, Serbia. Billy Crawford (in center) Crawford, along with USA Shooting Team Members, Derek Haldeman (Sunbury, OH) and Ian Rupert (Muncy, PA), also secured the Team Gold Medal and set a new Team World Record in Men’s...

Hey, America, we just got our fannies spanked in public. We got our pants pulled down and a pie shoved in our face and a firecracker lit in our shoe. We got our big Disney-ending-loving selves made into the dumb bad guys (gals?) in a wonderful fairy tale told in another language, for another people. Think of it — we lost a women’s soccer world championship Sunday to a country that’s a little smaller than Montana, has about 200 million fewer people, a fraction of the female liberation and approximately half the female soccer participants as . . . the state of...

Wohoooo .... it's gonna start within a few minutes !

Moenchengladbach, Germany - The United States is in the World Cup final for the first time since it last won the title in 1999, and once again Abby Wambach came up big for these Americans, scoring in a 3-1 victory over France on Wednesday. Wambach broke a tense tie with a monstrous header

I hope you were watching the Women’s World Cup just now. The U.S. team put on one of the most amazing, determined, come-from-behind performances you’ll ever see in sports, playing a man down and tying Brazil at literally the very last moment possible then winning on penalty kicks — all in the wake of an awful referee’s call in regulation time that nearly threw the game to Brazil by letting them re-try a missed penalty kick. The call was so bad that the German crowd swung wildly in favor of the Americans, with chants of USA!USA! throughout the extra time....

USA beats Brazil

Alpine skiing’s Wonder Woman completed a remarkable weekend trifecta on Sunday as American Lindsey Vonn won a World Cup Super G race at Tarviso, Italy, and claimed her third discipline title in three days. Vonn had a near flawless run on a sun-drenched course, clocking a time of one minute, 21.75 seconds to beat out teammate Julia Mancuso by .23 seconds and the woman she is chasing for the overall World Cup title, Maria Riesch of Germany, by .50 seconds. With just one Super G race remaining this season, Vonn has an unbeatable 171-point lead over Riesch (560-389) in the...

Are Qatar and the World Cup ready for each other? By Richard Spencer Leaving aside England’s woe, it is another amazing triumph for the anglophile Emir of Qatar and his glamorous wife Mozah. But are Qatar and the World Cup ready for each other? If it all comes off, it will be a major breakthrough not only for the Gulf but also for East-West, Muslim/Non-Muslim relations. If not, it could be a disaster. First things first. Will Israel be allowed to play if they qualify? Remember, Israelis and those with Israeli stamps in their passports are banned from nearly all...

Officials of the Qatar bid team for the 2022 World Cup stand with members of the FIFA inspection group at a showcase stadium in Qatar in September. For most of the past two years, Qatar's bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup has been a punch line in global soccer. The small desert kingdom has just one fully functional soccer stadium, average summer highs of 108 degrees and a population the size of San Diego. But as FIFA prepares to select sites for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, Qatar's quixotic bid, powered by its royal family's willingness to...

--Obama vows to redouble efforts to bring Falconry championship to Boise-- Washington, D.C. — Having failed to score the Olympics for Chicago, President Obama has lost a bid to attract the 2022 soccer World Cup to our shores. FIFA officials in Switzerland awarded the 2022 tournament to Qtar, despite a video-taped address from Obama and an in-person presentation by former President Bill Clinton. Qtar also beat out Australia, South Korea and some Southeast Asian country that swears it has an airport.

Qatar was selected as host of the 2022 World Cup, beating out a bid by the United States to bring soccer's showcase back to America for the first time since 1994. FIFA's executive committee choose Qatar over the U.S., Australia, Japan and South Korea in a secret vote Thursday. Minutes earlier, Russia was announced as host of the 2018 tournament. It was chosen over England and joint bids by Spain-Portugal and Netherlands-Belgium. Qatar, the smallest nation to host the World Cup, used its 30-minute presentation to underline how the tournament could unify a region ravaged by conflict. Presenters also promised...

(CNN) -- Soccer and technology don't normally mix; FIFA, the international football body, has long dragged its studded heels over efforts to introduce microchip sensors into match refereeing. So when Japan based its entire World Cup 2022 bid on a dazzling display of computer wizardry that doesn't yet exist, it was taking a gamble. Japan, which is vying with Australia, Qatar, South Korea and the United States for the 2022 tournament, will find out on December 2 whether its ambitious proposal paid off. But any sense of victory will be tempered by the Herculean task the country now faces in...

Attorney General Holder heads to Zurich, Switzerland tomorrow to lobby to bring the World Cup to the U.S. in 2022.Justice Dept. says Holder is making the trip to Zurich at the request of Pres. Obama to show US commitment to host World Cup in 2022. Pres. Obama lost U.S. effort in '09 to host 2016 Summer Olympics. WH hopes Holder's mission to Zurich doesn't end up a Swiss miss.Perhaps we'll find out more about the World Cup mission from Holder's cables in the next WikiLeaks document disclosures.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP)—Paul the Octopus, the tentacled tipster who fascinated soccer fans by predicting results at the World Cup, died Tuesday. Paul had reached the octopus old age of 2 1/2 years and died in his tank on Tuesday morning at the Sea Life aquarium in the western German city of Oberhausen, spokeswoman Ariane Vieregge said. Paul correctly tipped the outcome of all seven of Germany’s games. He made his predictions by opening the lid of one of two clear plastic boxes, each containing a mussel and bearing a team flag.The octopus seemed to be in good shape when he...

Spain's soccer team, along with members of the Spanish Soccer Federation, are in Mexico to offer the 2010 World Cup trophy to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Video at link...

Fifa has launched an investigation into allegations that the North Korean World Cup coach and players were punished by the government after they lost all three of their games in the tournament in South Africa. Last month, Radio Free Asia said that the Korean squad, apart from two foreign-based players, were subjected to 'harsh ideological criticism' after their team conceded the most goals of all 32 at the tournament. Their coach Kim Jong-hun was also publicly humiliated and sentenced to hard labour for their performance. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1302110/Claims-North-Korea-World-Cup-squad-tortured-early-exit.html#ixzz0wKV1nAuy

England's failed footballers should count themselves lucky that their ignominious World Cup exit was met with little more than a public mauling by the media. Their counterparts from North Korea, who lost all three of their group games, have been subjected to a six-hour excoriation for "betraying" the communist nation's ideological struggle, according to reports. There are even fears for the safety of the team coach, Kim Jung-hun, who was accused of betraying the son and heir of the regime's "dear leader," Kim Jong-il. Early this month the players were summoned to an auditorium at the working people's culture palace...

Sport in N.Korea Is Not for the Faint-Hearted In 1974, a popular North Korean actress named Woo In-hee was found unconscious in an exhaust-filled car after having an affair with a man who was born in Japan. The man died in the car but Woo survived and was forced to stand in front of a committee for an ideological criticism session. Rather than blaming herself, Woo revealed that she had been sleeping with high-ranking movie industry officials in return for top roles in films. She was executed by firing squad soon after. Students at Kim Il-sung University may skip classes,...

/begin my excerpts RFA: N. Korean National Soccer Team Put to Ideological Criticism Session after their Return 2010-07-27 09:33 According to report by Radio Free Asia (RFA) on July 27, N. Korean national soccer team, who lost all three games including 0-7 rout by Portugal at 2010 World Cup Soccer Tournaments, was put to ideological criticism session after their return. Quoting a Chinese businessman who is a reliable source of N. Korean affairs, it reported, "On July 2, there was an 'ideological struggle' session at People's Cultural Palace in Pyongyang for players of national soccer team who took part in...

BERLIN - Some Germans are calling for a public roasting of the oracle octopus who correctly picked the winner of all six of their national soccer team's World Cup matches -- including a bitter defeat to Spain on Wednesday. Paul, a two-year-old octopus in a German aquarium, turned into a global celebrity for his uncanny ability to predict the winner of all Germany's matches -- even a group stage defeat to Serbia and an ousting by Spain in the semi-finals.... Not an ordinarily superstitious people, Germans became believers in Paul's possible psychic powers. The country was shocked and distraught when...

www.catholicnewsagency.com Spanish soccer coach fulfills wish for Down’s Syndrome son Madrid, Spain, Jul 19, 2010 / 04:18 pm (CNA).- The coach of Spain’s world champion soccer team, Vicente del Bosque, is a man of few words and gestures.  However, last week he experienced one of the most emotional moments of his life when he fulfilled the dream of his 21 year-old son Alvaro, who suffers from Down’s Syndrome, by allowing him to hold up the World Cup trophy to the applause of the team. “My son changed my life,” Del Bosque has said on more than one occasion.  Alvaro is...

An American who recently lived in Raleigh for a year was the lone American killed when explosions tore through crowds watching the World Cup final Sunday at a rugby club and an Ethiopian restaurant in Kampala, Uganda, killing at least 64 people. Nathan Henn, 25, who worked with Invisible Children, a San Diego-based aid group that helps child soldiers in Africa, was killed on the rugby field. Henn was a native of Wilmington, Del., but his family moved to Raleigh in 2007, and he lived here for about a year, his sister, Brynne Henn, said this morning in a telephone...

JOHANNESBURG — Players from the Netherlands and Spain should have behaved better during the World Cup final, FIFA president Sepp Blatter said Monday. "It was not exactly what we have, or what I have, expected for fair play on the field of play in the final," Blatter said at a news briefing to mark the end of the tournament. English referee Howard Webb showed 14 yellows cards — a record for a World Cup final — and one red for Dutch defender John Heitinga as Spain won 1-0 in extra time on Sunday night. ...Five Spain players were booked, and...

BERLIN -- No more World Cup, no more octopus oracle. Paul, the octopus who became a pop culture sensation by correctly predicting the outcome of as many World Cup matches as he has legs -- all seven of Germany's games plus the Spain-Netherlands final -- is going to retire. The intuitive invertebrate will "step back from the official oracle business," Tanja Munzig, a spokeswoman for the Sea Life aquarium in Oberhausen, told AP Television News."He won't give any more oracle predictions -- either in football, nor in politics, lifestyle or economy," she said. "Paul will get back to his former...

All that was missing was the water for the players to plunge into. Still, referee Howard Webb must be a fan of the aquatic and artistic sport of diving, and he must have thought grass a reasonable substitute for a pool, because he ran over to judge appreciatively each performance of a player splaying himself onto the green. We watched him write his ratings of form and originality down, and then show his judgments (9.7?, 9.5?) to the players on a little yellow card. Although he whipped out his card fourteen times, the TV cameras never caught what he had...

Among the headlines in Dutch newspapers was "Not Again" above pictures of dejected Dutch players following the final whistle. The Netherlands also lost to hosts West Germany and Argentina in 1974 and '78. The Algemeen Dagblad daily's headline was "Orange tears." For Chris Nielen, 38, a sales manager who watched the match at a bar in a crowded square in The Hague, it was the third loss of his lifetime. "In '74, I was in diapers. In '78, we were closer when we hit the post in the second half," he said. "Now, we have to wait another 32 years."

Germany's 20-year-old midfielder Thomas Muller captured the Golden Boot on Sunday as the top scorer at the FIFA World Cup. Muller was also honored as the Best Young Player in South Africa. Muller had five goals and added three assists, beating Spain's David Villa and the Netherlands' Wesley Sneijder for the honor. Muller beat Villa and Sneijder for the award on a tiebreaker on assists. Villa and Sneijder each had just one assist, although both played one more match than Muller.

64 die in bomb attacks in Uganda during World Cup By MAX DELANY and JASON STRAZIUSO , 07.11.10, 10:21 PM EDT KAMPALA, Uganda -- In simultaneous bombings bearing the hallmarks of international terrorists, two explosions ripped through crowds watching the World Cup final in two places in Uganda's capital late Sunday, killing 64 people, police said. Americans were among the casualties. The deadliest attack occurred at a rugby club as people watched the game between Spain and the Netherlands on a large-screen TV outdoors. The second blast took place at an Ethiopian restaurant, where at least three Americans were wounded.

In the end, it's Spain hoisting the 2010 FIFA World Cup trophy. It's the first World Cup championship for Spain, the pre-tournament favorite, which defeated Netherlands 1-0 in the World Cup final. Spain is the eighth country to win the World Cup, and the first first-time winner since France won in 1998 ...

JOHANNESBURG — A spectator ran onto the field and tried to grab the World Cup trophy Sunday, moments before the Spain and Netherlands players were due to walk out at Soccer City for the tournament's final match.

Last Saturday afternoon, my sister and her husband were out in Lemont to attend their niece's fourth birthday party. Burgers and brats were sizzling on the grill, presents were piled on the living room coffee table, and the U.S.-Ghana World Cup game was playing on the flatscreen. When one of the other guests discovered that my sister and her husband were not rooting for the Americans, but rather were quietly pulling for the underdog Ghana, he became belligerent, calling them a number of names that are unprintable in a family newspaper but also asserting that they were "a couple of...

Sami Khedira scored in the 82nd minute to give Germany a 3-2 victory over Uruguay and third place for the second straight World Cup.

Hey it's the third place game This applies to Germany and Uruguay, warning bad language.

In Detroit, for that glorious game of soccer-on-ice-with-sticks, we—I still say “we”; you can never separate yourself from your birthplace—know what to do with octopuses, octopii as were: We toss them on the ice. In Germany, they use them as crystal balls. Paul is its name. He is an octopus. And he has, so it is reported, correctly predicted the result of each German game this World Cup. How? The Fate of Paul Well, inside Paul’s tank are two clear boxes, and inside each of them is placed a clam, one labeled “Germany” and the other the name of the...

TV stations spend thousands hiring people with impeccable records of footballing achievement to clue us in on what's going on and still we sit on our sofas and proclaim them idiots. Yet the opinion of Paul le Poulpe – he might have been born in England and adopted by Germans, but like pretty much everything else he just sounds better in French – is considered of such importance that it makes the evening news. It took until yesterday for anyone to emerge who had a better record than Paul at predicting events in South Africa and, with exasperating inevitability, that...

What has eight legs but no backbone? No, not the England team's lily-livered defence. It's Paul the octopus - who, incredibly, has correctly predicted the outcome of all six of Germany's World Cup matches. Today, during a live television broadcast, Paul predicted Germany would beat Uruguay in the third place playoff match on Saturday - his seventh prediction of the tournament. And now he has made his eighth - and possibly the most important - prediction: that Spain will win the final.

Spain worried about safety of new world star Paul the Octopus Posted : Thu, 08 Jul 2010 13:42:23 GMT By : Wolfgang Dahlmann Oberhausen, Germany - Paul the Octopus has turned into a global superstar revolving around the 2010 World Cup, with top political leaders in Spain even worried about the oracle mussel-eater's safety. /snip Two glass cubes are baited with mussels and marked with flags of Germany and Uruguay. The mussel Paul chooses first is viewed by his handlers as his prediction. While Spanish football supporters are in heaven about La Roja reaching their first World Cup final, politicians...

South Africa’s streets can be dangerously distracting for the news junkie. Everywhere, they’re lined with trees and poles bearing placards with head-turning headlines in bold print, such as this: “The Day We Earned Respect.” It celebrated national team Bafana Bafana’s unlikely tie last month with Mexico — ranked some 65 places ahead of South Africa. But it really sums up the swelling pride that South Africans feel in successfully hosting the World Cup, in defiance of apocalyptic warnings to the contrary. Beyond the scoreboard, there has long lurked a sense that South Africa must prove itself capable of presiding over...

Johannesburg, South Africa (CNN) -- Organizers of the 2010 World Cup hoped the soccer tournament could provide a catalyst for a "re-branding" of South Africa, and arguably there is no group within the Rainbow Nation that needs this makeover more than the Afrikaner community. The Afrikaners -- who count Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron and former athlete Zola Budd among their number -- are descendants of European, mainly Dutch settlers, who moved to the southern tip of Africa in the 17th century. Making up just under six percent of the population -- numbering around three million from an overall population of...

JOHANNESBURG — For some South Africans, there is still a "home" team to cheer for in the World Cup final. When the Netherlands faces Spain on Sunday at Soccer City, a good part of the Afrikaner population will be watching closely, and mostly because of their Dutch roots. "I feel a strong connection to them because of my heritage," said Anja Bredell, a 25-year-old fashion design student from Pretoria. "I also have blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin like most of the Dutch." The Dutch East India Company established its first settlement in Cape Town in 1652, creating what...

DURBAN, South Africa – Soccer fans were left heartbroken on Wednesday when air-traffic chaos allegedly caused by celebrity charter flights caused hundreds of supporters to miss the World Cup semifinal between Spain and Germany. Durban’s King Shaka International Airport was temporarily shut down in the hours leading up to Wednesday’s game due to an unplanned influx of air traffic traveling from Cape Town, where the first semifinal was held Tuesday night. The anger of fans was only intensified by claims that delays of more than five hours, plus redirected flights, were caused by the addition of specially chartered services for...

Had Germany been triumphant in today's semifinal match, all the talk would have been about the Dutch seeking revenge for World War II. Instead, Spain scored the one and only goal, proving once again that Paul the Octopus is all-knowing. (He is now taking bets for the Super Bowl.) Nevertheless, being Europe with its long history of cross-border conflict and bloodshed, a grudge match it will be come Sunday—at least if you are Dutch and are familiar with the War of the Spanish Succession as well as Schiller's Don Carlos, Infant of Spain (not to mention Verdi's opera of the...