A court in Saudi Arabia has sent eight Saudi nations to prison over convictions that they plotted for Al Qaeda, state news agency SPA reported.

The men have been sentenced to jail terms between 10 and 25 years, AFP reported.

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Plummeting birthrates among all teens — especially Hispanics — has helped bring this vital statistic to its record-low levels, says a new federal report.

Between 2007 and 2011, birthrates to Hispanic teens fell by 40 percent or more in 22 states and the District, said Brady E. Hamilton, a researcher ...

Plummeting birthrates among all teens — especially Hispanics — has helped bring this vital statistic to record-low levels, says a new federal report.

Between 2007 and 2011, the birthrates of Hispanic teens fell by 40 percent or more in 22 states and the District, said Brady E. Hamilton, a researcher ...

The Israeli government cannot reach a consensus over the Palestinian peace process, Israeli Justice Minister, primary negotiator and head of Israel's parliamentary opposition Tzipi Livni announced on Thursday.

Livni's statement came hours ahead of a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is visiting Palestine and Israel as a part of a regional tour. 

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Drone strikes killed four Americans that were “on the so-called kill lists.” For the first time, the Obama administration publicly acknowledged on Wednesday that U.S. drone strikes have killed four Americans abroad. The official admission by the Obama Administration came in the form of a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder to Congress, according to a NPR Politics report on May 22, 2013.

“Members of Congress and national security experts across the political and ideological spectrum have called on the White House to be more transparent about its targeted killing program, particularly when U.S. citizens are on the so-called kill lists.”

In his letter to Congress, Attorney General Eric Holder said that the release of the information about the drone strikes on four Americans was a step towards being more transparent. However, he also made it clear that some information could not be released including of who and where someone on the “so-called kill list” deserves to be killed.

“But the attorney general said some information would remain under wraps, including a still-classified document that sets out the 'administration's exacting standards and processes for reviewing and approving operations to capture or use lethal force against terrorist targets outside the United States and areas of active hostilities’."

According to Holder, Congress members are to get private briefings about the still-classified document that was approved this week by the White House.

Only one of the four Americans killed by drone strikes was specifically targeted; Anwar al-Awlaki.

Anwar al-Awlaki was a radical cleric born in New Mexico and he had received a B.S. degree in civil engineering from Colorado State in 1994. He had become a senior operational leader in al-Qaida's affiliate in Yemen. He was killed in Yemen on Sept. 30, 2011, after an American drone fired on his vehicle. It was the first time, as far as it is known, that a CIA-directed drone strike deliberately targeted and killed an American citizen.

“Al-Awlaki's targeting required approval from several federal agencies and the highest levels of the U.S. government, Holder wrote, and appropriate congressional committees were briefed on the decision a full year before he was killed.”

The other three Americans killed by drone strikes were not directly targeted and included Samir Khan, Jude Kenan Mohammad, and Anwar al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son.

Samir Khan was a U.S. citizen of Pakistani heritage. He was born in Saudi Arabia in 1986 and grew up in Queens, New York, in a typical middle-class family. Samir Khan’s family, who was concerned that their son had become too religious, moved to North Carolina where Samir Khan lived with his family until 2007. “U.S. officials say that Khan began to help violent jihadist groups online, using his skills on the Web. He seemed to be operating on his own and didn't appear to be tied to any terrorist group.” Samir Khan was not specifically targeted by the drone strike and died sitting next to Anwar al-Awlaki.

Jude Kenan Mohammad was a U.S. citizen born in Florida to a Pakistani father and was a former resident of North Carolina. He went to high school in North Carolina, dropped out in 2006, but later received a GED. In 2008, he left the U.S. to visit his father who had moved back to Pakistan. He later disappeared into the tribal areas of Pakistan along the Afghanistan border. In 2009, Jude Kenan Mohammad was indicted by a North Carolina jury on charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism. Jude Kenan Mohammad was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan.

Anwar al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was born on Sept. 13, 1995, in Denver, while his father was a student at Colorado State. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was killed on Oct. 14, 2011, by a drone strike that is said to have been aimed at an outdoor café in Yemen. According to a CBS report, “his family said that he had run away from home and was trying to find his father. He had no known ties to terrorism.”

“Some U.S. officials called it a mistake. Even the president is said, in some reports, to have considered it a bad mistake.”

However, former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs stated that Anwar al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son’s death was justified and that he "should have had a more responsible father."

In response to Attorney General Eric Holder’s admission of drone strikes having killed four Americans, Human Rights Groups are speaking out.

Zeke Johnson of Amnesty International USA is asking for an independent investigation into all alleged extrajudicial killings and is asking for President Obama’s commitment to upholding human rights.

"The Obama administration continues to claim authority to kill virtually anyone anywhere in the world under the 'global battlefield' legal theory and a radical redefinition of the concept of imminence.”

Dixon Osburn of Human Rights First is asking for more transparency in regard to the “so-called kill lists” of U.S. citizens. He expressed his deep concern that “the administration appears to be institutionalizing a problematic targeted killing policy without public debate on whether the rules are lawful or appropriate."

DEDHAM  — A man convicted of raping three women in Massachusetts faces sentencing more than three decades after he fled the state and began living a secret life in Maine.

Gary Alan Irving was a teenager when he was convicted of raping three women. When authorities finally caught up with him in Maine in March, he was a 52-year-old man with a wife and two grown children.

Irving is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in Norfolk Superior Court. He faces a possible life sentence.

Pakistan may get a bailout worth up to $15 billion from Saudi Arabia for its troubled energy sector, a Pakistani official told Dawn newspaper.

The Saudi assistance could consist of supplies of crude and furnace oil on deferred payment at a time when Pakistan's energy sector faces a host of financial and other problems, resulting in constant load shedding or rolling blackouts.

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Plummeting birthrates among all teens — especially Hispanics — has helped bring this vital statistic to its record-low levels, says a new federal report.

Between 2007 and 2011, birthrates to Hispanic teens fell by 40 percent or more in 22 states and the District, said Brady E. Hamilton, a researcher ...

The radio stations were on early this morning - was it right and proper for newspapers to publish front pages pictures of a man they called a terrorist brandishing a meat cleaver?

Answer: yes. There are all sorts of arguments in favour. Practical and technological first - pictures and film clips of the incident were across social media within minutes. Newspapers (and TV) would have looked completely daft to ignore what was already in the public domain.

The man wasn't trying to hide from the spotlight. He was aware he was "speaking to camera" in order to deliver "a message" that attempted to justify his unjustifiable act.

It could be said that the media were playing into his hands by giving him the publicity he was seeking. But, given the situation, there was a need to explain. And the pictures lifted from the filmed footage were therefore essential to the exercise.

This was a highly unusual event that, by its very unusualness, warranted an unusual response from the media. It was barbaric, horrific, tragic, senseless… even a collective of adjectives is inadequate to describe what happened.

I agree that the image was appalling. The meat cleaver. The bloodied hands. The obvious rage of the perpetrator. It prompted my two elder grandsons, who mostly ignore the papers on the table in the mornings, to ask all sorts of questions.

On the way to school, the discussion continued. They were, of course, desperate to understand why two men had hacked another man to death in a London street on a spring afternoon.

After I had dropped them off I thought more about the problems all editors faced and, it should be noted, all but one (the counter intuitive Daily Express) took the same decision.

It is possible to argue against publication from two opposing directions: the image of a brazen killer will encourage others to follow suit, leading to more Islamic terrorist outrages; or the image will encourage anti-Muslim feeling and generate Islamophobia.

But media editors, while wishing to avoid provoking anti-social and criminal behaviour, cannot take be responsible for far-fetched consequences of their decision to publish news stories. It would make the job impossible and, taken to its logical conclusions, nothing would ever get published.

Editors also confronted a second problem in whether to carry pictures of the dead man's body, which also required them to pause for thought. Would it be regarded as an intrusion into the grief of his relatives? Would it be regarded as tasteless?

Again, on balance, I think the newspapers were correct because they needed to convey the brutality of a murder that appeared to have been carried out as an act of terrorism. It was shocking to see it but it was even more shocking that it happened at all.

There may be objections later that the pictured men cannot expect to get a "fair" trial. I somehow feel that a judge will laugh any such legal quibble out of court.

Newspaper editors, in trying to do their job - in company with television news editors - were confronted with a bizarre and barbarous act. They had to react as they did.

PRAGUE — Czech police are searching for an American man suspected of killing four people and say they believe he is on the run and armed.

Brno Police spokeswoman Petra Vedrova identified him as Kevin Dahlgren, born in 1992, and released his photograph. A Facebook page containing the same photograph says that Dahlgren is from Palo Alto, California, and lives in the Czech Republic's second-largest city, Brno.

The program has been unveiled. At the Byblos Sur Mer Hotel Monday morning the organizers of the Byblos International Festival announced the lineup of performers who will tread the boards of this summer’s event.

Byblos will open with a pair of shows by the Greek superstar Yanni on June 30 and 31.

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Two mosques are attacked as English Defence League clash with police at rally and BNP leader calls for protest

The murder of a soldier in south London on Wednesday has prompted fears of a backlash against British Muslims after the English Defence League staged an impromptu rally in the capital and two mosques were attacked.

The BNP leader, Nick Griffin, has also reacted to the killing with provocative tweets calling for a protest in Woolwich and claiming the crime is the result of "mass immigration".

Farooq Murad of the Muslim Council of Britain said the EDL's rally in London on Wednesday night was cause for concern.

"When attacks like these happen there's always the danger of far-right extremism also raising its head," he told the BBC.

"I think any form of extremism, any form of encouragement or incitement to violence, is something we stand firmly against."

The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, stressed that the murder should not be viewed as a religiously motivated crime, saying: "I want to make one obvious point that is that it is completely wrong to blame this killing on the religion of Islam and it is also equally wrong to link this murder to the actions of British foreign policy."

The blame, the mayor added, lay "wholly and exclusively in the deluded mindset of the people who did it".

Julie Siddiqi of the Islamic Society of Britain pointed out that the British Muslim community had been quick to condemn the atrocity and warned against letting the far right exploit the situation.

"We can't allow the voices of Nick Griffin and the far right to become louder than ours in the coming days," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"They will say what we have to say and it gives us even more incentive to speak out and come together and not allow people like that to divide us as a country," she said.

"The people who did this act yesterday do not speak in my name, do not speak for my community or the rest of the country. We have to come out with the strongest condemnation, which is what I'm seeing this morning.

"All of the Muslim organisations have come out with the strongest possible terms to say there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever, no justification for anything like this.

Scores of supporters of the English Defence League threw bottles at police and chanted anti-Muslim slogans in Woolwich hours after the murder of the soldier on Wednesday afternoon.

About 100 men, including some wearing balaclavas printed with "EDL", engaged in running battles with police for less than an hour.

A police commander said officers cited section 60 of the Public Order Act, which allowed them to stop and search individuals within a specific area without evidence of a crime being committed.

The EDL leader Tommy Robinson said: "They're chopping our soldiers' heads off. This is Islam. That's what we've seen today. They've cut off one of our army's heads off on the streets of London.

"Our next generation are being taught through schools that Islam is a religion of peace. It's not. It never has been. What you saw today is Islam. Everyone's had enough. There has to be a reaction, for the government to listen, for the police to listen, to understand how angry this British public are."

The men congregated near Woolwich Arsenal station with flags bearing the cross of St George after plans for a protest were circulated on social media. Hundreds of police including riot police were stationed around Woolwich.

Elsewhere, two men were arrested after separate attacks on mosques. A 43-year-old man is in custody on suspicion of attempted arson after reportedly walking into a mosque with a knife in Braintree, Essex. The secretary of the mosque, Sikander Saleemy, told Channel 4 News he felt it was a "revenge attack".

He added: "The police said it's too early to try and link it to what happened in Woolwich, but those of us who were here feel that it was some sort of revenge attack. It was clear from the man's behaviour.

"We absolutely condemn what happened in Woolwich, but it had nothing to do with us. It was an appalling act of terror – but it wasn't Islamic in any way. I wish it wasn't described like that, because sadly people will now start to blame Muslims."

Meanwhile, police in Kent were called to reports of criminal damage at a mosque in Canterbury Street, Gillingham, at 8.40pm. A spokesman said a man was in custody on suspicion of racially aggravated criminal damage.

Police in Manchester are investigating a "malicious" tweet sent after the attack. Greater Manchester police responded to people who had been offended by the message and raised the alarm on Wednesday night, tweeting: "For everyone who highlighted the Woolwich tweet thank you, we are aware and looking into it." The tweet has since been deleted.

A spokesman for the force said on Thursday: "We take all reports of abuse on social media very seriously and are reviewing this matter to establish whether a criminal investigation is required."

Public service minister Lindiwe Sisulu wants to unify national, provincial and local government with a bill affecting 1.6 million staff

Every public servant in South Africa will have to be retrained if a bill to align national, provincial and local government in the country is passed.

According to an article on South Africa's Business Day Live, public service minister Lindiwe Sisulu has said the country's 1.6 million public servants would all need training if the Public Administration Bill were to be passed. Directors-general would also have to sit a compulsory exam, the minister reportedly said earlier this week.

The bill is part of a wider programme of reform which aims to cut corruption and create a more unified civil service, satisfying the preconditions of South Africa's National Development Plan.

Sisulu plans to set up a school of government to train and develop government employees by October, which will form the basis of this training should the bill be passed. She claimed this will "entrench professionalism" in public services, and has previously said that new government employees would not qualify for promotion or pay rises without this training. Public sector unions in the country have already agreed to compulsory induction courses for new public servants.

However, the public service spokesman of South Africa's opposition party the Democratic Alliance, Kobus Marais, has questioned where the budget for the new school of government would come from. He added that "nothing that we have seen so far" has suggested that unifying the three departments would offer better value for money.

At present, 1.3 million public servants are employed in 45 national and 207 provincial departments in South Africa, and a further 300,000 staff in 270 local municipalities.

According to Business Day Live, the bill is due to be tabled in parliament this week.

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Sometimes I wonder how "little fit", aka my son, can be mine (kidding of course). He created yet another great moment of laughter for me. While at T-ball the other day, little fit walks up to his coach and says, "Coach I think we need a break". Now, that was after half the team was sitting on the ground for 10 minutes counting the blades of grass. How can I know not laugh and love this little guy. 

Until next time....

Stay Active, Stay Fit!

Crude oil prices fell below $100 for the first time since mid-2012 in April on seasonal factors and softening market fundamentals. This was followed by a small rebound in early May, according to NBK’s latest Economic Update.

NBK said crude oil prices dropped significantly through April, taking them to their 10-month lows. The price of Kuwait Export Crude (KEC) fell below $95 per barrel (pb) in mid-April, while Brent crude fell to $96. In both cases, this was the first spell below $100 since last July, and at least $11 below their March averages.

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The Man who Laughs is a graphic novel adaptation of a 1869 Victor Hugo novel that is chiefly remembered for inspiring a 1928 film whose poster-art, in turn, inspired the character of the Joker.

As legions of disappointed Batman fans have discovered, the Victor Hugo novel is just not very good. It's one of Hugo's later works, written from exile in the Channel Islands, and it's a meandering political treatise grafted onto a novel. But there is a novel in there, buried amongst the self-indulgence and sloppiness, and it's this that author David Hine and illustrator Mark Stafford have teased out to make an absolutely stunning and grotesque new work.

The titular Man of Laughs is Gwynplaine, a horribly deformed boy who rescues a blind baby from her frozen mother's breast and then rescued by a traveling doctor who takes them both in and turns them into performers. They tour the countryside, and Gwynplaine and his blind adopted sister Dea fall in love, even as their mountebank father, Ursus, teaches them about the injustices of the English monarchy and shows them the relationship between the dire poverty around them and the fatted lords and ladies in London.

Gwynplaine's destiny becomes further entangled with the English aristocracy when he is discovered to be a long-lost nobleman himself, and is inducted into the House of Lords, where he makes impassioned, revolutionary speeches that fall on deaf ears -- and is forced to confront that all the riches he's gained have cost him his family and his love.

This adaptation is remarkably streamlined and razor-sharp, flensed of Hugo's excess by Hine's pen; the accompanying grotesque illustrations by Stafford hit the perfect of horror and sorrow. The Man who Laughs is out in the UK now, from the great press Self Made Hero, and will be out in the USA on Oct 1.

The Man who Laughs     

Two people were killed and 26 others were wounded in fierce clashes in Tripoli, north Lebanon, which continued until the early hours of Thursday morning, security sources said.

Security sources identified Abed Sankari and Fawzi Hawshar as the latest fatalities from the overnight fighting, raising the death toll from the daily violence that began Sunday to 16.

Among the deaths were two Lebanese Army soldiers killed Monday. A total of 190 people – including 40 soldiers – have been wounded since the latest round of fighting erupted Sunday.

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Plummeting birthrates among all teens — especially Hispanics — has helped bring this vital statistic to record-low levels, says a new federal report.

Between 2007 and 2011, the birthrates of Hispanic teens fell by 40 percent or more in 22 states and the District, said Brady E. Hamilton, a researcher ...

Our photo coverage of the day's events in the UK and around the world

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BRUNSWICK - A Glynn Academy senior due to graduate Wednesday night died that morning at a “senior house” on St. Simons Island where police found alcoholic beverages. Twelve underage people were charged with possession of alcohol, officials said.

William Dalton Collins, 18, was pronounced dead about 5 a.m. at Southeast Georgia Health System’s Brunswick hospital, County Coroner Jimmy Durden said.

Collins was a soccer player at the school and the grandson of former school board member Ruby Robinson, school system spokesman Jim Weidhaas said.

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For deeply personal reasons, Michael Buchholz wants to compete in the Ironman World Championship triathlon in Hawaii. On a beach in Guam, he made a 90-second video of himself explaining why.

“I want to honor my wife and I want to do it out of love,” Buchholz, a sailor in the Navy, says on the recording. “I want to do this for everybody that’s ever lost anybody. And I want to do it for the future people that might be affected by hyperthermia. I want to show people what is possible no matter what they face in life. Just keep breathing and you keep moving forward.”

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BOSTON — The Massachusetts Senate has passed a bill to ensure that off-duty first responders who provide emergency care are not subject to lawsuits.

Senate President Therese Murray said the so-called "Good Samaritan Bill" will provide legal protections for off-duty firefighters and emergency medical technicians who race to help in the event of a disaster like the Boston Marathon bombings.