OMG, that's awful news.
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OMG, that's awful news.
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A strong earthquake has been felt in the US city of Los Angeles.
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The quake made buildings in the city shake and was felt as far south as San Diego, witnesses say, but so far there are no reports of casualties or damage.
The US Geological Survey said the tremor had a magnitude of 5.4, after earlier measures of 5.6 and 5.8.
The epicentre of the quake was 29 miles (46km) south-east of central Los Angeles, near Chino Hills in San Bernardino County, officials said.
"It was dramatic. The whole building moved and it lasted for a while," said Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore, who was in the sheriff's Monterey Park offices east of Los Angeles.
There have been no reports of power cuts in the area, although telephone services were disrupted because of a surge in demand on the network, witnesses reported.
More than 20 aftershocks were reported following the quake, the strongest measured at 3.8.
In 1994, a 6.7 magnitude earthquake in Northridge, California, killed 72 people, injured another 9,000 and caused $25bn (£12.5bn) worth of damage in the area.
BBC News
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Seven Bosnian Serbs have been convicted of genocide and jailed over the massacre of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) in Srebrenica in 1995.
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After a two-year trial, the Bosnian war crimes court in Sarajevo ruled that the men helped in the systematic murder of more than 1,000 Bosniaks in one day.
In all, as many as 8,000 men and boys were killed in a week in Srebrenica.
The ruling comes a week after the capture of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, also accused of genocide.
Mr Karadzic is expected to be sent soon to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague to face charges over his involvement in the Srebrenica massacre.
The trial in Sarajevo was the first to be held in Bosnia over crimes committed at Srebrenica, and the first for genocide. Previous such trials have been held at The Hague.
'Permanent extermination'
Eleven men were originally charged with genocide in the case - all of whom were police officers or soldiers with the Bosnian Serb wartime authorities.
Four were acquitted and the other seven were given sentences ranging from 38 to 42 years.
"The defendants knew that by killing the Bosnian Muslim men, they participated in the permanent extermination of Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica," said judge Hilmo Vucinic.
"They consciously killed hundreds of Bosnian Muslims with the aim of permanently removing Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica."
The group of seven played a part in separating more than 1,000 Bosniak men from their families.
The court said that the murdered men were among a group trying to escape from Srebrenica after it came under Bosnian Serb control.
The men were told they would be taken to safety if they surrendered.
Instead, they were taken by bus or on foot to the warehouse of an agricultural co-operative in the village of Kravica before being murdered in a single day.
The convicted men either carried out executions themselves using firearms or hand grenades, or prevented people from escaping from the warehouse.
Killing spree
Munira Subasic, who lost her husband and son in Srebrenica and who runs an association of survivors, said she was pleased with the verdict but that her pain "can never be healed".
"The mothers of these men still have their sons, their wives still have husbands, their children still have fathers and I am still looking for my son's bones," she told AFP news agency.
The massacre was part of a week-long killing spree by Bosnian Serb forces, who overran the UN-protected Srebrenica enclave.
Milos Stupar and Milenko Trifunovic were commanders of special police force units, Milovan Matic was a member of the Bosnian Serb army and the remaining men were special police force officers.
All but two of the men were were born in Bosnia-Hercegovina - Dragisa Zivanovic was born in Serbia and Branislav Medan was born in Croatia.
Five former Bosnian Serb officers have already been jailed by the international war crimes tribunal at The Hague over the Srebrenica atrocities, while further suspects are awaiting trial.
A Serbian court has also jailed four former Serb paramilitaries for their role in the Srebrenica massacre.
BBC News
Published: Wednesday, 30 July 2008, 1:42PM
A paedophile who posed as a pupil at a school has admitted abducting and having sexual activity with a 13-year-old girl.
James Chester, 22, was remanded in custody at Portsmouth Crown Court after he pleaded guilty to the two offences.
He was charged following the abduction of the teenage girl from Portsmouth on August 5 last year. They were found two days later in Northern Ireland.
Judge Graham White ordered two psychiatric reports to be prepared on Chester who will be sentenced in September.
The family of the girl had believed at the time that Chester was a schoolboy.
Her father said: "I hope he gets locked away for a long time. What he has done to my daughter and our family is unforgivable. She's only a young girl. We welcomed him into our family and we were extremely nice to him."
"All the time we thought he was someone else. We trusted him and he wasn't anything he said he was," he said.
Chester had previously used a fake birth certificate and a letter of support to become a pupil at St Edmund's Catholic School in Arundel Street, Portsmouth, in September 2005, when he was 19 years old.
He posed as a year 10 pupil for three weeks before staff became aware of his true age and he was reported to the police.
His victim was not a pupil at this school.
A year later, Chester tried to join the City of Portsmouth Boys School but background checks were conducted and by the time Chester tried to enrol in September 2006 he had been discovered.
Acting sergeant Liam Davies, of Hampshire police, said: "We are pleased that Chester has decided to own up to his responsibilities and acknowledge that both his actions and behaviour were totally unacceptable.
"The two offences to which Chester pleaded guilty are of a very serious nature.
"The result of his actions has no doubt had a damaging effect on all of the parties involved.
"At least with this early plea, the family will not have to go through any further stress than what they have already endured."
ITV News
I hate pedos there are just some sick people in the world.
A Florida court has refused to reduce the £250,000 bond held on the mother of a missing two-year-old girl, hours after pictures emerged of her partying a week into the toddler's disappearance.
Casey Anthony is being held on suspicion of child neglect, making false statements and obstructing an investigation.
Police say the 22-year-old mother lied to them and didn't report daughter Caylee missing for more than a month.
She hasn't been charged with her daughter's disappearance, but prosecutors call her a person of interest in what is beginning to look like a murder investigation.
The 5th District Court of Appeal denied Anthony's request to lower her bonds to £5,000 but her attorney said she planned to appeal to the Florida Supreme Court.
Pictures have emerged showing Anthony, from Orlando, partying on June 20. But on July 15 she went to police and told them Caylee had been missing since June 9.
The photos show Casey Anthony smiling and posing with various people at an Orlando club.
In transcripts of a 911 call, Caylee's grandmother tells an operator she thought her own daughter's car had been used to transport a body.
"There's something wrong," Cindy Anthony told the operator.
"I found my daughter's car today, and it smells like there's been a dead body in the damn car."
In three 911 calls, she said she wanted to press charges against her daughter Casey, 22, for "grand theft", then in a second call she said she had someone in her home who needed to be arrested in relation to a missing toddler.
Casey Anthony claims her babysitter took the child and she did not report the girl missing for a month because she thought she could find the pair.
sky news
A bottlenose whale which became stranded twice on sandbanks in Hampshire has been put down.
Around 50 volunteers and rescue workers tried to save the whale after it became stuck on harbour flats in Langstone.
Blood test results showed it was suffering irreversible kidney failure.
Vets Paul Jepson and Rob Deaville, from the Zoological Society of London, a British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) vet and team of marine medics carried out the mercy killing.
The whale's kidneys failed after its organs were compressed under its body weight, leading to a build-up of toxins.
Earlier, the northern bottlenose whale, like the one stranded in London in 2006, had been stuck on harbour flats in Langstone, Hampshire, for about 12 hours.
Experts were on their way to put down the marine mammal when it was successfully refloated.
But it became stranded again on East Winner sand bank, Hayling Island.
BDMLR organisation director, Faye Archell, said that because the tide came in, "the animal was having great difficulty in righting itself and water was starting to lap around the blow hole".
She explained: "A decision was taken to put the animal to sleep on welfare grounds.
"As they made their way to the animal it did manage to right itself and it is now free swimming but in fairly shallow water so right now the prognosis is not good."
The deep water mammals are usually found in the north Atlantic off the Bay of Biscay.
sky news
It was the right thing to do.If they didn't do it it would have a slow and painful death.
this happend in the town next to mine. there is no freaking way Casey does not know what happend to Caylee. just today they took some evidence out of the grandparents house. mark my words in a few we will learn Casey either killed Caylee or sold her. i have been keeping up with this story.
CHANDIGARH, India - At least 145 people, mostly women and children, were crushed to death under the feet of thousands of pilgrims in a stampede at a temple in northern India on Sunday, police said.
"We have confirmation now that 145 people have been killed," Daljit Singh Manhas, a senior police officer told Reuters by telephone.
Chanting and singing hymns, Hindu worshippers were snaking up a 2.5-mile trail, leading to a hill-top temple in Himachal Pradesh state, when part of iron railings on one side of the road broke, causing the stampede.
Thinking there was a landslide, the pilgrims panicked and started fleeing down the hillside, trampling falling women and children, police and witnesses said.
Earlier, The Associated Press quoted a policeman as saying that at least 68 people, including 30 children were killed at the mountaintop Hindu temple. But the figure changed quickly.
"The injured have been taken to two places and the toll could be more as we are awaiting news from other hospitals," Manhas added.
Thousands of worshippers had gathered at the temple in Bilaspur to pray to a Hindu goddess during an annual festival.
Witnesses said people jumped over broken railings and bodies to save themselves. Children lost their grip on their mothers' hands and were crushed under the feet of scared pilgrims.
"Many children and women were shouting for help and I saw people tumbling down the hillside," pilgrim Dev Swarup, 48, told Reuters by telephone from Bilaspur.
"There were rumors of boulders coming down on us and we all ran like the others," said Swarup, his voice choked with emotion.
'Too many rumors'
Slippers, parts of torn clothes and bags with flowers and offerings lay along the narrow path winding up the hill, television pictures showed.
People crowded into hospitals looking for injured relatives.
A television channel showed a young women pilgrim pleading for water in a corner as rescuers brought more injured people on stretchers for treatment.
More than 10,000 people were trying to get into the temple and police had to struggle desperately to keep the situation under control.
"There were too many rumors, and we tried our best to keep things under control, but it went out of hand," one officer said.
Most of the worshippers were from the neighboring state of Punjab, with numbers rising sharply at the weekend.
Stampedes at temples are not uncommon in India where thousands of people gather to pray during festivals. In 2005, about 265 pilgrims were killed in a stampede near a temple in the western state of Maharashtra.
MSNBC
A Brazilian man accused of murdering and chopping up a British teenage girl after a four-day cocaine binge tried to bribe officers to let him go, police said.
Mohamed D'Ali Carvalho Santos, 20, was recorded by police offering to bribe them with £22,000 to let him off the charge of killing 17-year-old Cara Burke.
However, instead of taking the bribe, detectives broadcast the attempt on national television - with one saying: "The biggest reward we could receive is to see a psychopath like yourself behind bars."
Police also said Santos bragged about the murder in a text message to his brother, Bruce Lee, who lives with their mother in London.
The message, accompanied by a smiling face, read in English: "The bitch is in the bag."
The mobile phone was also used to photograph Miss Burke's severed head after he allegedly placed it on top of her torso along with a bloody butcher's knife.
Miss Burke's torso was discovered stuffed in a suitcase and dumped on a riverbank in the central Brazilian city of Goiania on Monday.
Police believe Santos killed Miss Burke on Saturday after she threatened to tell his parents he was a cocaine-addicted drug dealer.
He told reporters an argument started after Miss Burke threw a plate of cocaine on the floor.
Police said after the murder he went out to a funk concert before returning to cut up the body.
Lawyer Odair de Meneses said his client had confessed, but could not be held fully responsible because he had been taking drugs "non-stop" for four days before her death.
Santos has reportedly said he cut up the body because he was desperate to remove it from the apartment.
He is quoted as saying the dismembering process was "just like cutting beef, except for the bleeding".
Firefighters are continuing the search for Miss Burke's head and limbs, which Santos reportedly said he put into bin bags and threw them from a bridge in a remote area.
sky news
I saw this maniac on the news.
Lol, I actually laughed at the message.
But yeah if you're in a room with a drug addict, yet drug dealer, you should have just run, not argue with the person.
That's just disgusting...
Thanks for the news.
This sounds like an interesting story... I'll have to check back on the info on it later on.
That's terrible news.
Thanks for the news.
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A US military jury has retired to consider its verdict after the two-week trial of Osama Bin Laden's former driver at Guantanamo Bay.
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Yemeni Salim Hamdan faces life in prison if convicted of conspiracy and supporting terrorism.
In closing arguments, the prosecution said he played a "vital role" in the conspiracy behind the 9/11 attacks.
But defence lawyers said he was a low-level employee, who was "not even an al-Qaeda member".
Mr Hamdan, who was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001, has pleaded not guilty and his defence team say he worked for wages, not to wage war on America.
Mr Hamdan has acknowledged working for Bin Laden in Afghanistan from 1997 to 2001 for $200 (£99) a month, but denies being part of al-Qaeda or taking part in any attacks.
He is the first prisoner to be tried by the US for war crimes since World War II.
The jury ended its initial deliberations after 45 minutes on Monday, and will resume on Tuesday morning.
'Guilt by association'
In its closing argument, the prosecution described Mr Hamdan as a loyal supporter of Osama Bin Laden, who protected the al-Qaeda leader knowing his goals included killing Americans.
"Al-Qaeda aimed to literally take down the West, to kill thousands, and they have; to create economic havoc, and they have.
"They needed enthusiastic, uncontrollably enthusiastic warriors, like that accused, right there, Salim Hamdan," said justice department prosecutor John Murphy.
Lawyers for Mr Hamdan said not one witness had testified that Mr Hamdan played any part in terrorist attacks. They questioned the fairness of the trial, which began on 21 July.
"This is a classic case of guilt by association," said Lieutenant Commander Brian Mizer, a military defence lawyer appointed by the Pentagon.
"Mr Hamdan is not an al-Qaeda warrior, he is not al-Qaeda's last line of defence - he's not even an al-Qaeda member," said Mr Mizer.
Black hole
About 270 suspects remain in detention in Guantanamo Bay.
Among the dozens of other inmates due to be tried there in the coming months are men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks.
Human rights campaigners have accused the court of operating in a legal black hole.
They and the other accused will be watching the out come of the Hamdan trial closely, correspondents say.
BBC News
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The US and Britain have threatened Iran with new economic sanctions if it does not respond positively to incentives for Tehran to halt uranium enrichment.
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The US said the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany had agreed they would have no choice but to take further punitive measures.
Britain said it would back sanctions if Iran failed to give what it called an unambiguous response by Tuesday.
The move follows "inconclusive" talks between the EU and Tehran.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, spoke by phone to European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana earlier on Monday.
Mr Solana had given Iran until last Saturday to respond to an offer not to impose further sanctions against Iran in return for a freeze on its uranium enrichment programme.
A spokesman for Mr Solana described the talks as "inconclusive". Mr Jalili said Iran would issue a formal written response to the offer on Tuesday.
Iran says its nuclear programme is for entirely peaceful purposes, while the US and its allies believe it could be used to develop a nuclear weapon.
No imminent crisis
The five permanent members of the UN Security Council - China, France, Russia, the UK and the US - along with Germany set the offer in June in an effort to persuade Iran to halt its uranium enrichment programme.
Last month, the Bush administration's third most senior state department official travelled to Switzerland to participate in a meeting between European and Iranian officials.
The BBC's diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says all the signs were of one last diplomatic push to try to win over the Iranians before a significant toughening of sanctions.
That may be the game-plan in London and Washington, and doubtless in Paris and Berlin, but it may not be the way things are seen in Beijing and Moscow, our correspondent says.
What Iran says in its written response matters because this will determine how far Russia and China are willing to go to bring in additional UN Security Council measures, he adds.
The Americans and the Europeans could choose to reinforce sanctions of their own.
But our correspondent says the Iranians have clearly made a judgement that despite all the talk of potential air strikes against its nuclear facilities, the US presidential campaign, Israel's political uncertainty and high oil prices mean that a crisis is not imminent.
BBC News
A man accused of beheading another passenger on a Greyhound bus in Canada has pleaded in court for someone to "please kill me".
Vince Weiguang Li is accused of stabbing 22-year-old carnival worker Tim McLean to death in front of terrified fellow passengers.
He is then said to have cut his head off and eating some of his flesh. The attack appears to have been completely unprovoked.
At the Provincial Court of Manitoba prosecutors asked the judge for a mental evaluation on Li, who emigrated to Canada from China in 2004.
Prosecutor Joyce Dalmyn revealed new details about the attack, which occurred last Wednesday night.
She said Li had a plastic bag containing his victim's ear, nose and part of a mouth in his pocket when officers arrested him.
The only response officers received from him was: "'I have to stay on the bus forever."
Li is charged with second-degree murder and is yet to enter a plea. Since his arrest he has refused to speak to prosecutors or to his court-appointed lawyer.
When asked by Provincial Court of Manitoba Judge Michel Chartier if he wanted a lawyer, Li shook his head and then quietly said: "Please kill me."
Ms Dalmyn said many heard the plea, adding: "There were some people in the courtroom that were taken aback by it.
"Those were the only words I heard him utter in the courtroom."
Li is due back in court on September 8 when a new lawyer could be appointed for him.
Thirty-seven passengers were aboard the Greyhound from Edmonton, Alberta, to Winnipeg, Manitoba, as it travelled at night along a desolate stretch of the TransCanada Highway about 12 miles from Portage La Prairie.
Some were napping and others watching the movie The Legend of Zorro on bus television screens when Li attacked McLean, allegedly stabbing him dozens of times.
As horrified passengers fled the bus, Li severed McLean's head, displaying it to some of the passengers outside the bus, witnesses said. He then began hacking at the body.
A police officer at the scene reported seeing the attacker hacking off pieces of the victim's body and eating them, according to a police tape leaked on the internet.
A church pastor, Tom Castor, who helped hire Li soon after he immigrated in 2004 with his wife, Anna, said the man never showed any sign of anger or emotional problems when he worked there as a custodian.
In the wake of the attack, Greyhound scrapped a billboard ad campaign that extolled the relaxing side of bus travel.
The ad said: "There's a reason you've never heard of 'bus rage'."
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