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TOKYO (AP) -- Sony said Friday it found a defect in some of its popular Cyber-shot compact digital cameras and offered to repair affected cameras free of charge. The liquid crystal display screens of eight camera models might not display images correctly, images could be distorted or cameras might not take photos at all, Sony Corp. said in a statement. Affected are eight Cyber-shot models sold between September 2003 and January 2005 in Japan and in a similar period globally, according to Sony spokesman Chisato Kitsukawa. Sony will repair for free only cameras that show signs of the problems, Kitsukawa...

Latin America: As rumors fly about Fidel Castro's demise, truths about his regime's failures slip out. His vaunted overseas "free" medical program for the poor, once a propaganda coup, is falling apart. In Bolivia, at least 30 Cuban doctors out of 719 defected to freedom, according to Bolivian media. In Venezuela, 4,000 Cuban doctors out of 15,000 also fled the country, Union Radio reported. These Cuban doctors were at the forefront of Castro's last-ditch effort to rejuvenate his communist dictatorship. Castro cooked up the Venezuelan "Barrio Adentro" plan just three years ago with Hugo Chavez to obscure his record of...

/begin my summary[N. Korean Missile] Taepodong-2 Engine Defect, Exposing its ProblemsThe source of N. Korean Taepodong-2 missile failure is now being narrowed down to its engine problem.According to NIS(S. Korean Intelligence Agency,) Taepodong-2 was launched at 5am, on July 5th, from the launch pad at Munsudan-ri, Hwa-dae County, N. Hamkyong Province. After its vertical ascent, it was flying over East Sea when its engine developed 'shaking.'It is the same as  the situation where imperfect combustion of automobile fuel causes engine to shake. Experts suspect that some technical problems inside booster rockets lead to imperfect combustion of its liquid fuel. According to this scenario, this 'shaking' persisted for (initial) 40 seconds of...

I don't think we can post articles from this slimy source, but it's a severe enough alert to make it important to be widely known. Select the source above for some details.

Cubans defect in Toronto Leave patriotic choir on tour By TOM GODFREY, TORONTO SUN More than 20 members of Cuba's world-famous national chorus are singing songs of freedom today after defecting in Toronto. Members of the National Chorus of Cuba dodged security officers and jumped into waiting cars, some on Sunday and others yesterday, said Cuban exiles who planned the defections. "These people are scared for their lives," said Ismail Sambra, president of the Cuban Canadian Foundation. "They are worried about their families back home. "It took a lot of planning to get this far." The highly acclaimed 40-member group,...

Core Security Technologies, has published a vulnerability in Microsoft's MSN Messenger, an instant messaging program currently used by over 130 million people worldwide. A patch for this had been issued on Tuesday. Core Security is a Boston, U.S.-based information security solutions company. Core researchers discovered that by selecting a specially-crafted graphic as the user's display picture in MSN Messenger, an attacker could trigger a buffer overflow vulnerability on the chat partner's computer and covertly take over machines running instant messaging software. The attack would travel through the established chat session and would pass unnoticed by firewalls, network intrusion detection systems...

New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has long been rumored as desperately seeking the democratic nomination for president in 2008. And while many political observers fully expect the power hungry former First Lady to hit the campaign trail within only a few months of being re-elected as a US Senator in 2006, US News & World report claims to have a confirmation of sorts. From USNews.Com's Washington Whispers: Hillary's in… You don't have to take it from us about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 's desire to run for president. Her brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham, say it's true. Friends...

The Groningen Protocol has left little doubt - there are those humans whose lives are so worthless they are deemed disposable. These useless, undesirable babies are better off dead because their doctors say they must be culled from our midst. Defective babies must be killed when their parents want them killed - and sometimes even when they don't want them to be killed: Under the Groningen protocol, if doctors at the hospital think a child is suffering unbearably from a terminal condition, they have the authority to end the child's life. The protocol is likely to be used primarily for...

(Sgt. Charles Robert) Jenkins Ready for Court-Martial Yomiuri Shimbun Charles Jenkins, the husband of former abductee Hitomi Soga, has confided to his nephew that he is prepared to be court-martialed, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned. Jenkins, who is accused of deserting the U.S. Army while stationed in South Korea in 1965, made the comment in a handwritten note delivered to James Hyman before he returned to his North Carolina home last Sunday. Hyman claimed in a press conference Friday in Tokyo that the Japanese government had prevented him from seeing his uncle. In the letter, Jenkins, whose full name...

China acrobats 'defect' in Canada Xinjiang's native population is distinct from China's Han majority. Seven acrobats from China's largely Muslim region of Xinjiang are reported to have claimed asylum while on tour in Canada. The semi-official China News Service (CNS) quoted a Communist Party chief as saying some acrobats "stayed behind". Canadian news reports say the seven acrobats - five men and two women - hoped to stay in Canada and filed refugee claims in Toronto last week. The acrobatic troupe was in Canada as part of Chinese New Year festivities. It was not clear if the Canada would give...

By Doug Struck Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, April 21, 2003; Page A18 TOKYO, April 20 -- The United States and at least 10 other countries helped arrange the defections of up to 20 top North Korean officials, including key nuclear scientists, in an operation that began in October, according to an Australian newspaper. The Weekend Australian reported that a man it identified as the "father" of the North Korean nuclear program, Kyong Won Ha, was among the defectors and is providing intelligence information to Western officials. Kyong and the other officials had escaped to China and went on to...

Up to 20 high-ranking North Korean military officers and nuclear scientists have defected to the United States and its allies under a plan involving several countries including the Pacific state of Nauru, an Australian newspaper said on Saturday. The defections began last October after 11 countries agreed to provide consular protection to smuggle North Koreans from China, The Weekend Australian said. The man seen as the father of North Korea (news - web sites)'s nuclear program, Kyong Won-ha, was believed among the defectors, the newspaper said. It said a U.S.-based lawyer approached Nauru's former president, Rene Harris, with an offer...

Defect to us, America tells Iraqi scientists By David Usborne in New York 10 November 2002 The United States has signalled that it will reward any Iraqi scientists coming forward with information about Saddam Hussein's clandestine weapons programmes with sanctuary for as long as he remains in power. As Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, prepares to begin his sweep of Iraq for evidence of any prohibited weapons, officials in Washington said the key to tripping Saddam up may lie in tempting his own scientists to defect and reveal whatever he may be hiding. Both Britain and the US...

Study: Marrying cousins not so risky / CNN Health PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (AP) -- The risk of birth defects in children born to couples who are first or second cousins isn't as high as many experts had believed, according to a study that sheds new light on a practice that is stigmatized in many Western cultures. The study released Wednesday says married cousins are still more likely than unrelated couples to have children with a birth defect, significant mental retardation or serious genetic disease. An unrelated couple has about a 3 percent to 4 percent risk of having a child with...