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"Eric how can we begin to thank you...."

Local law enforcement sources were sceptical, yet cautious yesterday about a report alleging a Russian mafia plot to kidnap Sir Mark Thatcher, the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Sir Mark is currently on the Rock amid speculation that authorities in Equatorial Guinea will issue an international warrant for his arrest in connection with a failed coup in 2004. In a further twist to an already bizarre tale, a specialist US newsletter claimed the British secret intelligence agency MI6 had warned Sir Mark that a powerful Russian criminal organisation had offered to kidnap him and take him...

A dozen Tri-state high school students made quite a scene at the school halloween dance when they put on Ku Klux Klan outfits. Students and administrators in Rising Sun, Indiana, say they're upset it happened and shocked the students would do it. The principal made the students take off the outfits right away, but the damage was done. 9News learned the students were told they have to go through sensitivity training or risk suspension. People in the community are also being asked to reach out to each other. "I think you're surprised if one person shows up [in KKK garb],...

Choking game's deadly lure: Some kids cut off own their own oxygen supply for the lightheaded buzz, but the consequences can be deadly By COURTNEY HOLLANDS The Patriot Ledger NORWELL - Brian Moore was halfway through his freshman year at Norwell High School, playing basketball, studying for his driver's license and dating the prettiest girl in the sophomore class. On a day in January, he got together with friends down the street to eat Chinese food and watch the movie ‘‘Anchorman.'' He came home around 7 at night to finish schoolwork and kissed his mom on the cheek as his...

Island dispute splits Tokyo, Seoul Tuesday, March 15, 2005 Posted: 10:04 PM EST (0304 GMT) South Koreans protest outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul. TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- A Japanese provincial assembly voted Wednesday to assert Japan's territorial claim over a cluster of South Korean-held islands, raising the stakes in a dispute that has strained relations between the two countries. The Shimane Prefectural Assembly approved a measure making February 22 "Takeshima Day" to celebrate Tokyo's claim of sovereignty over volcanic islets known in Korean as Dokdo, said assembly official Miho Fukushiro. The outcroppings are surrounded by rich fishing waters. Passions...

John Toland, a best-selling historian whose book "The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945" won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, died on Sunday at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. He was 91 and lived in Danbury. The cause was pneumonia, said his daughter Tamiko Toland. Reviewing "The Rising Sun" (Random House) for The New York Times, Walter Clemons called it a "big, absorbing and finally very moving history of the Pacific war, told primarily from the Japanese viewpoint." In research for his books, Mr. Toland typically sought to do as many interviews as possible, sometimes...

Lest we Forget...December 7, 1941A day that will live in infamy...   USS West Virginia in fire in Pearl Harbor Shortly before 8 AM on December 7, 1941, the Japanese Navy, employing the largest naval attack force ever assembled, launched an unprovoked, sneak attack on the US Pacific Fleet, that lay at rest at Pearl Harbor and on surrounding military bases.  Within short order, 5 of the 8 battleships docked on "Battleship Row" were either sunk or sinking and the rest were severely damaged.  Several other smaller ships and most of Hawaii's combat aircraft were damaged or destroyed, as well. ...