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Despite opponents’ claims to the contrary, the real controversy concerning the newly enacted Texas Sonogram Law is that it took an act of the legislature to give women considering an abortion the information they deserve about this medical procedure.

Police in Southern California say officers shot and killed a 15-year-old suspected of driving a stolen vehicle. Bakersfield police began pursuing the 2001 Acura around 9:20 p.m. Friday. They say the driver stopped, but then backed into a patrol car after being approached by two officers. The officers opened fire multiple times, striking the teen. Police say he was pronounced dead at Kern Medical Center.

Atrazine Levels across the Nation

A 43-year-old Japanese woman whose sudden divorce in a virtual game world made her so angry that she killed her online husband's digital persona has been arrested on suspicion of hacking, police said Thursday.

HARARE (Reuters) - A Zimbabwean soccer player drowned in a crocodile infested river during a ritual to cleanse his team of bad spirits before a match, a state newspaper said on Tuesday.

- A network administrator has locked up a multimillion dollar computer system for San Francisco that handles sensitive data and is refusing to give police the password, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday. The employee, 43-year-old Terry Childs, was arrested Sunday. He gave some passwords to police, which did not work, and refused to reveal the real code, the paper reported. The new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network) handles city payroll files, jail bookings, law enforcement documents and official e-mail for San Francisco. The network is functioning but administrators have little or no access.

Seventy-seven percent of people in Japan think that the statute of limitations on murders should be abolished, a Mainichi poll has found.

In a study of hospital discharge data for the State of Texas, whistleblowing Catholic medical researchers found that Catholic hospitals reported at least 9,684 cases of sterilizations and 39 legally induced abortions from 2000-2003. While sterilizations and abortions are legal in the United States, they are considered immoral by the Catholic Church and many Catholics.

About 16,000 people were temporarily evacuated and services on a railway line were partially suspended while an unexploded bomb was being disposed of in western Tokyo on the weekend, local government officials said. The Chofu Municipal Government on Sunday morning sealed off an area within a radius of 500 meters from where the bomb was found, and a Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) unit began to dispose of the dud at 11 a.m. The bomb was removed by noon. As the team disposed of the bomb, about 16,000 people, including 150 inpatients at a nearby hospital, were temporarily evacuated. Services on...

NAGOYA -- A man died after turning into a fireball after police supplied him with cigarettes and a lighter and his kerosene-soaked clothes exploded into flames while in a police interrogation room here, police said. The 45-year-old unemployed Nagoya man, whose name was not disclosed, died late Sunday night, about 21 hours after he burst into flames inside an investigation room at the Atsuta Police Station. A 54-year-old police sergeant who tried to extinguish the fire that claimed the man's life sustained minor burns to his right hand. Investigators said they are unsure whether the man set himself alight or...

Dear John, I'm writing because these are crucial times for my country – our country. I don't take political campaign shenanigans lightly, even though I know the whole business costs too much money, takes too much time, avoids critical issues and ultimately gets too dirty. But it leads to the White House and the presidency and "President John McCain" sounds awfully good to you. Yes, yes, I know. Both you and Cindy have said that you want to keep it all on the high road until Election Day – that you don't want to run a negative campaign. I think...

KOFU -- A gravestone manufacturer here is helping bereaved families remember their loved ones with a touch of technology -- mobile phone QR codes on tombstones that link to photographs and video clips of the deceased. The tombstones are being sold by stone processing company Ishinokoe. Behind doors on the tombstone that can be locked is a QR code -- a square code read by mobile phones that can link to Web addresses. Grave visitors can use the code to access images and photographs of the person while they were alive.

The latest battle in the war on illegal immigration isn't over the smuggling of undocumented workers, it's over the trash they leave behind. Government officials and border activists say the garbage dumped in the desert by illegal immigrants and their smugglers is staggering. And the cleanup is costing taxpayers millions.

My column last weekend, "What I'd do as president," received more responses than any other column I've written to date. In that piece, I believe I struck a poignant chord with the American people, as well as with people as far away as Brazil, China, Israel, Africa, Australia and other lands. Therefore, I will continue this theme and apply it to Detroit, the city of my birth. What would I do if I were mayor of Detroit?

Last week, the single most unjustifiably self-righteous former president in our nation’s history, Jimmy Carter, went out of his way to piss off the US government and our allies, the Israelis, by staging meetings in Damascus and Cairo with leaders of the Palestinian terrorist group, Hamas. After the meetings, Carter announced with customary fanfare that he had achieved a breakthrough. Mr. Carter… announced what appeared to be a significant concession in an address yesterday to the Israeli Council on Foreign Relations. Hamas (according to Carter) “said they would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders if approved by Palestinians,...

Photos of carefree Parisians lazing in cafes, flocking to cinemas or enjoying a day at the races during the Nazi occupation have sparked outrage in Paris and calls for the exhibit to be shut down.

Real love is hard to find for one Japanese man, who has transferred his affection and desires to dozens of plastic sex dolls.

A Japanese robot maker on Tuesday unveiled what it called the world's first prototype of an artificial hand with "air muscles" that can do even delicate work like picking up a raw egg.

If you think the government ignores you when you want to know something, imagine how WorldNetDaily columnist Jerome Corsi must feel. His best-seller "Unfit for Command," exposing John Kerry's Vietnam war record, contributed handily to President Bush's 2004 re-election bid. Yet in 2007, Corsi's continued investigative reporting has turned up some shocking allegations about Bush's activities as president – and now the White House won't give him the time of day.

A lawsuit has been filed against Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties for the death of a woman who died of toxic shock syndrome after a clinic worker found – but did not treat – a serious infection.