The two British law graduate idiots who thought it was a good idea to try an insurance fraud in Brazil and falsely claimed they had been robbed were yesterday handed a 16 months community service, and they have to spend at least eight months working in the slum areas around Rio de Janeiro.
Shanti Andrews and Rebecca Turner were handed 16 months’ community service by the judge. The law graduates, both 23, will not be able to …

Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica admitted that they were shocked when they learnt that German team BMW was pulling out of Formula One, AFP reports.
Kubica said he knew nothing at all until he read the news late last month while browsing on the internet.
“It was quite a shock, an unexpected one,” he said. “At the Hungarian Grand Prix, we knew nothing. You could feel maybe something because I had a few talks at the Hungaroring …

A Muslim asylum seeker in Germany has been sentenced to life in prison after killing his German-born wife because she was “too independent”, the Daily Mail reports.
The 27-year-old Kurdish man, identified only as Onder B, was found guilty today of stabbing his wife in the eyes, beating her with a billiard cue and then running over her in his car.
On New Year’s Eve 2008 he stabbed his 18-year-old wife Mujde 46 times and beat her …

Despite that Russia’s propaganda machine tried to claim earlier that they arrested four Estonian citizens for “hijacking” the Russian vessel Arctic Sea, Estonian Security Police says that actually only one of the so-called “pirates” is an Estonian citizen, however, five others are Estonian residents.
According to the Estonian Security Police, Russian authorities have arrested six Estonian residents – two Russian citizens, one Estonian citizen and three people without a citizenship, Estonian Daily Newspaper reports.
All the people …

Record results in this year’s A-levels has prompted the head of one exam board to admit it may be time to “crank up the standard” to pick out the very best students, the Daily Mail reports.
The pass rate rose for the 27th year in a row to 97.5 per cent – up 0.3 per cent on last year. And more than one in four exam entries, 26.7 per cent, was awarded an A grade – up …

Counting has begun in Afghanistan’s second presidential election since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the BBC reports.
There were some attacks by the Taliban, who had vowed to disrupt the vote, but the UN says the vast majority of polling stations were able to function.
Fewer people voted in the south, where militant influence is greater.
Polls officially closed at 1700 (1230 GMT, 1330BST), after being kept open for an extra hour.

The Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has just announced that Lockerbie terrorist, murderer of 270 people, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, will be freed on “compassionate grounds” and allowed to return to Libya.
“Mr Megrahi now faces a sentence handed down by a far higher power. It is terminal and irrevocable. He is going to die,” MacAskill said in the press conference.
MacAskill said that “no compassion was shown” by Megrahi to his victims, “but that alone is not …

In the morning of day 4 we had a dilemma – whether to go to the Isle of Mull, or not. The thing with this island is that it takes hours to drive to the port where a ferry goes from, because the port is on a peninsula and in order to reach there, one has to drive around a loch about 40-50 miles, most of it in a single file road.
But as the weather …

Russia is about to perform large scale military exercises near the Baltic Sea in August and September, Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reports, adding that the exercises are showing muscle.
In Ladoga region near Finnish border a military exercise has been taking place already for one and a half months, in September there will be exercises near Kaliningrad and in Belarus.
According to General Nikolay Makarov, more than 60,000 soldiers will be taking part in the manoeuvers, and …

Libya’s leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi will send his private luxury jet to collect the Lockerbie bomber Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi and take him home to Libya if, as expected, he is released from jail today on compassionate grounds, The Times reprots.
Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary, said that he would announce at 1pm his decision on whether al-Megrahi should be freed, but he gave no indication last night as to what that decision would be.
A luxury …

The CIA hired contractors from the private security firm Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to track and assassinate senior al-Qaida figures, Reuters reports.
Blackwater helped with planning, training and surveillance in a program on which the Central Intelligence Agency spent several million dollars without capturing or killing any terrorists.
It’s not clear whether the CIA had planned to use Blackwater executives to capture or kill al-Qaida operatives or limit the contractors to help with …

Tesco are to create 800 new jobs with the opening of a customer service centre to support their personal finance operation as they push to offer a full banking service, the Daily Telegraph reports.
The site in central Glasgow is expected to open in the first half of next year.
Edinburgh-based Tesco Personal Finance (TPF) have six million customer accounts and offer 28 different financial products and services, including general insurance and personal loans.
Tesco, which have been …

An unknown and unpublished Hercule Poirot novel was found in the attic of Dame Agatha Christie’s holiday home 30 years after her death.
Among the papers found on the attick there were shopping lists, jottings, hastily scribbled notes and page after page of virtually indecipherable handwriting in blue-lined notebooks, the Daily Mail reports.
For when the notebooks were analysed, the draft of an unknown and unpublished Hercule Poirot story emerged.
Now – in a piece of detective work worthy …

New book called “Das KZ Bordell” by Robert Sommer says in 1942 nazis decided forced labourers in concentration camps would work harder if they were promised sex – so they made female prisoners work as prostitutes, Ynet reports.
Sommer’s 460-page work explores the origins, structure and impact of the “Sonderbauten” (special buildings) run by Heinrich Himmler’s SS in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe.
Beginning with the Austrian camp at Mauthausen in 1942, the SS opened 10 brothels, the …

Afghans started to vote for the country’s next President today, but Taliban threats kept voter turnout low in the capital and south of the country.
Terrorists also launched scattered rocket and bomb attacks but no major assaults, FoxNews reports.
Turnout, particularly in the violent south, will be key to the vote’s success in the country’s second direct presidential election. Taliban terrorists have pledged to disrupt the vote and circulated threats that those who cast ballots will be …

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has been accused of agreeing a blood money deal involving the Lockerbie bomber with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi just hours before BP unveiled a £500million oil contract, the Daily Mail reports.
Blair laid the foundations for the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi during a meeting with Gaddafi in a desert tent two years ago. The pair thrashed out a controversial prisoner transfer deal just before BP chairman Peter Sutherland announced …