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But now, as more details emerge, things are looking increasingly strange. We’re still not sure what the entire story is, but the Connors are clearly more than they first appeared. For starters, they didn’t “accidentally take a wrong turn.” They were caught on video intentionally driving across a grassy strip between two roads, one on the Canadian side and one in the U.S. And things only got stranger from there. It turns out that the Connors had applied for a travel visa to come to the United States last year but they were denied. The reason for the denial wasn’t...

A medical test being developed by Kuwait will be used to 'detect' homosexuals and prevent them from entering the country – or any of the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC), according to a Kuwaiti government official. GCC member countries – Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – already deem homosexual acts unlawful. This controversial stance is being toughened, with members of the LGBT community stopped at the border and banned from entering the country, according to Yousouf Mindkar, the director of public health at the Kuwaiti health ministry.

Hundreds of anarchists and student protesters are plotting to join the battle against the bulldozing of Europe’s largest illegal traveller camp. Police fear bloody confrontations with bailiffs and officers as outsiders attempt to turn the protest into a politically motivated riot. About 50 anarchists have already joined the 1,000 travellers at Dale Farm and Basildon District Council has spent ten years trying to remove around 500 travellers from Dale Farm after they settled beside dozens of legal plots. It ended up in the Court of Appeal last year when 80 families on 52 plots were ordered to leave. The council...

Tourists and business travellers from Europe will have to fork out 100 kronor ($14) in order to travel to the USA after September 8th in a move which has angered the EU commission. The fee will be levied on citizens from countries within the so-called visa waiver system, which includes Sweden, and the Swedish EU commissioner Cecilia Malmström has expressed concern that the charge could be a hindrance to trans-Atlantic travel.

About 50 travellers (gypsies) armed with iron bars and hatchets have rioted in the small town of Saint-Aignan in central France after police shot a man dead. Violence erupted when the crowd, some of them masked, tried to force their way into a police station in the town in the Loir-et-Cher region. In the ensuing riot, a bakery was trashed, three cars torched and trees, traffic lights and road signs damaged. Related stories Four held after French shooting France country profile Three hundred soldiers were brought in to restore order. Nobody is believed to have been hurt during the incident,...

Residents on a housing estate dug a trench and took to the streets to stop travellers bringing their caravans into a nearby field. A dozen police cars were called to the estate in Swadlincote, Derbyshire, where scores of residents had taken to a street to stop travellers entering the field. At one point they'd grabbed their spades and dug a trench across the access road to stop access. One woman claimed a traveller vehicle tried to ram her car after she used it to block off the entrance. Mandy Greenshields, who lives in the street, took direct action after watching...

A group of travellers has set up camp with 30 caravans in a school's playing field, forcing hundreds of children to stay at home. Education bosses immediately set up an exclusion zone at Smithills School, Bolton, after the extraordinary convoy moved in on Sunday evening. Around 300 Year 8 pupils have been told to work from home because their classrooms are next to the playing fields and it was feared the travellers' presence could cause disruption to classes. Police were due to speak to the group last night to inform them that trespass, which is normally a civil offence, is...

BUCHAREST, Romania - At first, fans politely applauded the Roma performers sharing a stage with Madonna. Then the pop star condemned widespread discrimination against Roma, or Gypsies — and the cheers gave way to jeers. The sharp mood change that swept the crowd of 60,000, who had packed a park for Wednesday night's concert, underscores how prejudice against Gypsies remains deeply entrenched across Eastern Europe. Despite long-standing efforts to stamp out rampant bias, human rights advocates say Roma probably suffer more humiliation and endure more discrimination than any other people group on the continent. Sometimes, it can be deadly: In...

All through the night they stood at the gates, ready to repel the invasion. The old RAF camp had never seen an army like this, not in all its years of proud service. There was a nurse, a lorry driver, a shopkeeper and ambulanceman, several young mothers with children at their side – and a Staffordshire bull terrier called Kandie. It might not have looked like a task force assembling for action. But yesterday, in the drenching rain of a West Country morning, it became the front line in a war against a formidable new enemy – the traveller. In...

A respected jeweller has been given a police warning for 'racially offensive' conduct after banning gipsies from his shop in the wake of a series of raids by an Eastern European crime gang. Michael Plant, 62...reacted to the string of thefts with a sign in his shop window reading: 'Sorry, we do not serve Eastern Europeans or Gypsies.' Shortly after posting the sign, he was served with a warning from a senior police officer demanding he take it down, or face prosecution for possible race hate charges.Despite inquiries police have been unable to trace the thieves.... ... 'I've got a...

First he encircled them with an 8ft metal fence. And when that failed to move the gipsy camp off his land, he dug a moat. Builder Francis Shiner resorted to the measures when two gipsy families set up home on the disused car park of a building site in Bedford.He asked them to move but they didn't. So he went on the offensive and managed to evict them within 48 hours. Mr Shiner said the gipsies were hindering work on the site owned by Bedford construction company SDC construction and action had to be taken. He said: 'We went...

New Mexico state Rep. Bill Rehm has heard the line more than once, so when a Traveller came calling to his Albuquerque home in March, he recognized the scam."They must go to college to learn this line," said Rehm, a retired sergeant with the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department, recalling the pitch: " 'We are working on a [paving] job just down the street, and we can do your driveway for $2 a square foot. Today. Right now.’ He said they had over-ordered materials."Rehm turned the Traveller away, but others weren’t so savvy.This spring and summer, some Travellers — nomadic clans of...

The US government is demanding the right to ban British air passengers from flying over America en route to other countries – even when the flights will not land in the United States. Under anti-terrorism measures due to come into force within two years, the US authorities insist they need to do background checks on all UK air passengers travelling to Canada, the Caribbean, Mexico and South America. Direct flights to popular holiday destinations such as the Bahamas, Barbados, Toronto and Mexico City would all be covered by stringent US security checks examining people's passport details, travel plans and even...

Time travellers from the future 'could be here in weeks' By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 6:01pm GMT 06/02/2008 The first time travellers from the future could materialise on Earth within a few weeks. Physicists around the world are excitedly awaiting the start up of the £4.65 billion Large Hadron Collider, LHC - the most powerful atom-smasher ever built - which is supposed to shed new light on the particles and forces at work in the cosmos and reproduce conditions that date to near the Big Bang of creation. 1.21 gigawatts of electricity: Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd...

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The batting coach for the Tulsa Drillers was pronounced dead at a hospital Sunday evening after being struck in the head by a line drive as he stood in the first-base coach's box during a Texas League game with the Arkansas Travelers, police said. The game was suspended in the ninth inning after Mike Coolbaugh was hit by a hard-hit foul ball off the bat of Tino Sanchez and taken to Baptist Medical Center-North Little Rock. Phil Elson, spokesman for the Travelers, said Coolbaugh was struck by the ball on the right side of his...

   Protest ... Tina Borer   Britain's No1 gipsy site KO'd By JOHN TROUPFebruary 24, 2007       RESIDENTS of a tiny village swamped by more than 1,000 travellers have won their battle to have the intruders thrown out. Locals were celebrating last night after a planning inquiry ruled those on the illegal site, the biggest in Europe, must go.Families in Crays Hill, Essex, claim the travellers made their life hell after swarming into the village about six years ago.They say some residents received personal threats, that travellers’ children disrupted the local school, and property prices dived dramatically.Council chiefs...

US 'licence to snoop' on British air travellers By David Millward, Transport Correspondent Last Updated: 1:35am GMT 01/01/2007 Air passengers face having credit card transactions and email messages inspected by the American authorities Britons flying to America could have their credit card and email accounts inspected by the United States authorities following a deal struck by Brussels and Washington. By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on...

A store surveillance video captured footage of two small children sneaking behind display cases to steal thousands of dollars in jewellery, apparently on instructions from their mother and grandmother. Bedford police made the video public this week and said Wednesday that they believe they are close to making arrests. They started getting tips minutes after the video first aired on local television. "We're fairly certain . . . they are a family working together," Det. Matt Fleming said. "Can you believe a grandmother, mother and children?" The video, taken Aug. 2 at a store called the Consignment Gallery, shows one...

A MASSIVE 83% of those who responded to an Irish Examiner poll believe that Mayo farmer Padraig Nally should not have been jailed for killing Traveller John 'Frog' Ward. Out of 496 people who responded to the phone/ text poll, a total of 414 said the farmer, who was sentenced to six years, should not have been sent to prison. Only 75 agreed with the sentence handed down by the Central Criminal Court. Interest in the case has provoked major debate and last Tuesday, an RTÉ Prime Time programme on the issue recorded its second highest viewing figures ever when...

The brutal murder of a 26-year-old Sligo man has led to speculation that the country town is fast becoming a crime capital. Cróna Esler investigates. When Hughie McGinley was shot on Grattan Street in Sligo on Thursday April 28, it wasn’t a simple mistake or an argument that got out of control. His assailant was not merely trying to teach him a lesson and he was not the victim of a practical joke that got out of hand. When Hughie was shot, his attacker had only one thing in mind…he wanted to kill the 26-year-old Sligo man. Hughie McGinley was...