Topic: NEWS english - on February 27, 2005 at 9:53:00 AM CET
Founder of Amnesty International Dies
Peter Benenson, who founded Amnesty International more than four decades ago, has died. He was 83.
Benenson, who was educated in some of Britain's top schools, began his own human rights campaigns as a boy in support of Spanish civil war orphans and Jews fleeing Hitler's Germany.
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Topic: NEWS english - on February 26, 2005 at 11:10:00 AM CET
Tradition, Tech Clash Over Wine
To the horreur of traditional winemakers in old Europe, the ancient art of making wine is being transformed by science and technology.
New vino-producing countries like Australia and Chile are becoming winemaking forces, thanks to new technology shunned by vintners in France and Spain -- to their detriment.
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Topic: NEWS english - on January 9, 2005 at 4:04:00 PM CET
High crime in Vatican City
The Vatican may he a holy city but it is also one of the few places in the world where crime, the worldly type anyway, apparently pays.
According to figures released on Saturday some 90 percent of crimes committed inside Vatican City -- nearly all of them petty thefts, pick pocketing and vandalism -- go unpunished.
Most of the crimes take place among tourists in St Peter's Basilica, St Peter's Square and the Vatican Museums.
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Topic: NEWS english - on January 9, 2005 at 4:00:00 PM CET
Underground farm planned for Tokyo
Tokyo residents are used to going underground to find food at basement supermarkets and restaurants but now one firm is taking the process a step further by planning a subterranean farm.
A 1,000 sq metre former bank vault under an office building in central Tokyo has been chosen as the site for a high-tech farm growing lettuce, tomatoes, herbs strawberries and rice, the Asahi daily said on Sunday.
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Topic: NEWS english - on January 3, 2005 at 1:39:00 PM CET
The Shadow Internet
They start with a single stolen file and pump out bootleg games and movies by the millions. Inside the pirate networks that are terrorizing the entertainment business. Just over a year ago, a hacker penetrated the corporate servers at Valve, the game company behind the popular first-person shooter Half-Life. He came away with a beta version of Half-Life 2. "We heard about it," says 23-year-old Frank, a well-connected media pirate. "Everyone thought it would get bootlegged in Europe." Instead, the hacker gave the source code to Frank - it turned out that he was a friend of a friend - so that Frank could give Half-Life 2 to the world. "I was like, 'Let's do this thing, yo!'" he says. "I put it on Anathema. After that, it was all over."
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Topic: NEWS english - on January 3, 2005 at 1:33:00 PM CET
The oddest stories of 2004
WHILE many serious stories made the news in 2004 there were also some seriously strange ones making the news. Here are some of the oddest events of the year.
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Topic: NEWS english - on January 3, 2005 at 11:44:00 AM CET
Thieves take brain remote control
A medical device which allows a woman to sleep by switching off an implant in her brain has been stolen.
Rita Carlisle, 53, from Knaphill, Surrey, suffers from a condition called essential tremor.
The stolen remote control gadget sends out pulses to calm the condition and can be switched off so she can rest.
Ms Carlisle, who now struggles to sleep, was carrying the device and £600 cash in a handbag which was stolen in Farnborough, Hants, on 23 December.
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Topic: NEWS english - on January 1, 2005 at 9:44:00 PM CET
Anna Nicole Smith loses $88.5 million ruling
A federal appeals court Thursday threw out a judge's ruling that awarded $88.5 million to former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith from the estate of her late husband, an oil tycoon who died at age 90 just over a year after they wed.
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Topic: NEWS english - on January 1, 2005 at 9:39:00 PM CET
Wiener wagon hotbed of sin
A pair of Long Island hot dog vendors allegedly did their job with a little too much relish, selling sex along with hot sausage inside their tan camper.
Police said the women provided personal services along with knishes, Fritos and Cheez Doodles from a wiener wagon parked alongside Sunrise Highway at Rockwood Ave. in Baldwin.
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Topic: NEWS english - on December 29, 2004 at 1:39:00 PM CET
Where are all the dead animals? Sri Lanka asks
Sri Lankan wildlife officials are stunned -- the worst tsunami in memory has killed around 22,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast, but they can't find any dead animals.
Giant waves washed floodwaters up to 3 km (2 miles) inland at Yala National Park in the ravaged southeast, Sri Lanka's biggest wildlife reserve and home to hundreds of wild elephants and several leopards.
"The strange thing is we haven't recorded any dead animals," H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of the national Wildlife Department, told Reuters on Wednesday.
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Topic: NEWS english - on December 29, 2004 at 12:58:00 PM CET
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake
The 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake was an undersea megathrust earthquake of moment magnitude 9.0 that struck the Indian Ocean off the western coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia on December 26, 2004 at 00:58:49 UTC (07:58:49 local time in Jakarta and Bangkok). It was the largest earthquake on Earth since the 9.2-magnitude Good Friday Earthquake which struck Alaska, USA, on March 27, 1964, and the fourth largest since 1900. Tens of thousands were killed by the resulting tsunamis, which were as high as 15 m and struck between 15 minutes and 3 hours after the quake, causing one of the most cataclysmic disasters in modern history.
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Topic: NEWS english - on November 15, 2004 at 1:04:00 PM CET
Young Girl Suspened From School For Cartwheels
Deirdre Faegre has received a one week suspension from San Jose-Edison Academy for performing cartwheels during lunch times. She reportedly disobeyed repeated requests from school staff to not perform gymnastics during school lunch times.
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