The epicenter was 76 km (47 miles) ESE of Mohean, Nicobar Islands, India
No Tsunami Warning Issued - No Reports of Injuries or Damage at this time
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The research group, based at Univille university in Santa Catarina, said yesterday that it was the first recorded instance of an albino in the pontoporia blainvillei species, a very shy type of dolphin that rarely jumps out of the water.
It's known in Brazil as Toninha and in Argentina and Uruguay as the La Plata or Franciscana dolphin. Read More
Survivors of the world's worst industrial disaster at Bhopal displayed their violent opposition to the participation of Dow Chemicals in the show piece event.
The company own the Union Carbide pesticide plant which catastrophically leaked, killing 15,000 people and maiming tens of thousands more 27 years ago today.
Children are still being born with deformities to this day and locals claim they have never been properly compensated by the perpetrators of the horrific incident.
Nearly 200 people, some carrying banners that said Down with London Dowlympics' and 'We want justice' marched to the now-abandoned plant.
They burned effigies of Sebastian Coe, the chairman of the London organising committee, and Vijay Kumar Malhotra, the head of India's Olympic Organising Committee. Read More
The woman suffered severe head and chest injuries when the slab smashed through the windscreen of the car at 10.20pm on Thursday.
Police said they were treating the attack, which took place from the West Hanningfield bridge on the A12, near Chelmsford, Essex, as attempted murder.
The woman, from Harold Hill, Essex, was rushed to Chelmsford's Broomfield Hospital suffering life-threatening injuries, including multiple fractures, chest and head injuries.
The driver of the vehicle escaped with minor cuts.
Police are linking the incident to a similar attack less than an hour earlier, in which a car was struck by a block of concrete.
The passenger and driver escaped injury but were left shaken and upset by the attack. Read More
A spokesman for an ultra-conservative Islamist party said that he was hoping to impose Sharia law on Egypt.
Islamists led by the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Salafists appear to have taken a majority of seats in the first round of the vote.
Some protesters had continued to demonstrate outside the complex.
Activists said demonstrations over the use of American drones in Pakistan had been organised by a group calling itself United Ummah.
Scotland Yard intervened after members were linked to the banned group involved in the burning of poppies on Armistice Day last year.
Muslims Against Crusades was added to a list of the UK's banned terrorist groups after an announcement by Home Secretary Theresa May last month.
The group then cancelled its "Hell for Heroes" demonstration against Remembrance commemorations.
It was due to take place outside the Royal Albert Hall in London, where poppies were burned last year. Read More
The 10ft bomb, one of the biggest in the wartime arsenal of Bomber Command, was discovered after 65 years when the river level dropped during the driest November on record.
The fuse is badly corroded, and the authorities are evacuating 45,000 of Koblenz’s 120,000 population to leave a security zone of a mile around the bomb - which is capable of destroying an entire city block.
The evacuation - the biggest in German postwar history - will involve fleets of buses and 1,000 volunteers helping police and firemen.
It is due to take place on Sunday so as not to disrupt Saturday Christmas shopping.
Some 700 patients at two hospitals will have to be moved, as well as the residents of seven old people’s homes and prisoners in a local jail.
The city’s main train station will also have to be emptied as well as several hotels.
Authorities this week built a temporary dam of some 350 sandbags around the bomb which is covered by just 16 inches of water.
The plan is then for bomb disposal teams to pump the water out and get to the bomb proper to begin the delicate job of removing the detonator.
It is expected to take several hours to make the bomb safe. Should it show signs of going off, experts
The low level of the Rhine has already exposed four other unexploded bombs. Read More
Despite warnings today that the country was in civil war and ongoing concerns over terror tactics used against civilians, Moscow will also go-ahead with training the dictator's troops to use the state-of-the-art weapons.
'Supersonic anti-ship Yakhont cruise missiles have been delivered to Syria,' said an informed Russian source.
A total of 72 missiles were ordered by Damascus, but Moscow did not make clear how many had been delivered in the recent past.
'These arms will make it possible to defend Syria's entire coastline against a potential attack from sea,' said another source.
Israel fears the cruise missiles could fall into the hands of Hezbollah militants in neighbouring Lebanon.
The US also sought to halt arms sales to the Syrian ruler after his bloody crackdowns on street protests.
Moscow insists that a deal on the missiles and radar equipment, signed in 2007, is legal under international law.
With instability growing in the region, Moscow may have calculated that by arming the dictator, it reduces the chances of Western intervention in the country. Read More
But this is no TripAdvisor review of some 3-star hotel, rather one boastful prisoner's assessment of his 'holiday' at Her Majesty's pleasure.
Adam Ghali, 26, has posted pictures of himself from inside his cell on Facebook.
The thief, who is currently serving an 18-month sentence at Camp Hill Prison on the Isle of Wight, took to the social networking site to boast about his sentence.
He also complained about the lack of WiFi internet.
In one post Ghali wrote: 'just on holiday. her majesty has sum fine establishments! camphill is 5star with ensuite facilities, wifi leaves alot to be desired.'
Despite a ban on the devices, the thug then posted his mobile phone number urging his 348 Facebook friends to 'book in' to the jail. Read More
"Fiscal union is the aim, one with real power. There is no other way," she said. "We are working for treaty change, we want to avoid a split between euro and non-euro countries."
During the speech to Germany's Bundestag, the country's national parliament, Merkel warned it will take a long time to resolve the financial crisis.
"The European debt crisis won't be over within a drum beat," she said.
European Union leaders have come under fire to address the debt crisis over concerns it could unravel the euro.
Merkel described it as a "crisis of trust," saying "politics has failed."
A split of the eurozone into members and nonmembers is not an option, according to Merkel. Read More
Activists claim Dow Chemical, the firm which bought the company held responsible for the Bhopal industrial disaster in 1984, is not a fitting sponsor for the Games.
Bhopal is one of the world's biggest environmental disasters and the Indian government is still pursuing Dow for £1.1bn in compensation for the estimated 15,000 victims.
Protesters are holding a series of demonstrations in Bhopal over the next couple of days to coincide with the 27th anniversary of the disaster.
Indian athletes have also asked the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) to take action.
They are also angry about Dow Chemical's £7m sponsorship deal. Read More
It took three months before the volume of radioactive substances returned to normal levels.
The Chiba-based Japan Chemical Analysis Center made the announcement during a radiation research session in Tokyo on Dec. 1, organized by the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry.
Keisuke Isogai from the center denied that the high concentration of radioactive substance posed a health hazard.
"I think xenon-133 drifted from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant to Chiba in the form of a plume. Since the detected amount translates into a cumulative external exposure to radiation of only 1.3 microsieverts over the three-month period, it won't cause a health hazard," he said. Read More
Heavy fog and black ice were thought to have contributed to the crashes on State Highway 386 in Sumner County, said county emergency medical services Capt. Vincent Riley.
The incidents began just before 8 a.m. ET, when a car ran off the highway and caused a chain reaction accident in "heavy, heavy fog," he said.
At least one school bus, with children aboard, was involved in the crashes, he said. None of the children were injured.
The man who died was driving a compact car that went under a semitrailer, Riley said.
The 16 people transported to local hospitals were not critically injured, he said.
The highway remained closed throughout most of the day as authorities attempted to clear the wreckage. As of Thursday afternoon, one side of the highway was still blocked with 50 cars that were not driveable and must be towed, Riley said.
A fog advisory was not in effect for the area at the time of the crashes, said CNN meteorologist Sarah Dillingham, but the heavy fog could have been a localized event. Source
The march went off with none of the violence that has marked previous street demonstrations. Security forces stood aside but were in place near the Greek Parliament building.
Police estimated that 18,000 protesters were out on the streets, while union organizers gave higher numbers, claiming it was their largest march since the economic crisis hit last spring.
The 24-hour strike played havoc with transportation, although essential services remained open, as well as the country's airports and the Athens stock exchange.
In Athens, the atmosphere was calm. While many shops remained open, there was a sentiment of sympathy with the marchers.
"We have nothing left to lose," said Margarita Argyriadou, an unemployed business school graduate. "All aspects of our lives have been depreciated. We will have no life."
"The new government is doing nothing to help us," added Ilias Papadopoulos, an economist taking part in the march. "It helps only to fix the banks... And that works against us because if the work is all to help the banks to survive, then we are going to die." Read More
In the eighth episode of a series called "A Message of hope and glad tidings to our people in Egypt," the speaker sent a "message of support and encouragement" to members of al Qaeda and the Taliban as well as to "our female oppressed prisoners."
"We did not forget you and we will not forget you, God willing, and therefore in order to release you, we have been successful, thanks to God almighty, to capture an American Jew called Warren Weinstein," he said.
He described the captive as "a former employee and a current contractor working with the U.S. government in its aid program to Pakistan, which aims to fight the jihad in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and just like the Americans arrest any suspect linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban, even if they were far related."
The speaker then listed eight demands that he said, if met, would result in Weinstein's release. They included the lifting of the blockade on movement of people and trade between Egypt and Gaza; an end to bombing by the United States and its allies in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and Gaza; the release of anyone arrested on charges of belonging to al Qaeda and the Taliban; the release of all prisoners in Guantanamo and American secret prisons and the closure of Guantanamo and the other prisons; the release of terrorists convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center; and the release of relatives of Osama bin Laden, the founder of al Qaeda who was killed in May in Pakistan. Read More
Postings on the Twitter-like Weibo microblog, from people identifying themselves as being in Wuhan, said that someone put two or three bags of what looked like cement near the bank’s entrance, along with a “work in progress” sign. The bags turned out to be full of explosives and detonated when an armored car full of cash showed up.
The armored car was not punctured and kept going, the postings said.
The cause of the blast is under investigation, said a man answering the phone at the Wuhan municipal police press office, who declined to provide his name.
Explosives are sometimes used in commercial and domestic disputes as well as in crimes in China, partly as an alternative to guns, which are extremely hard to obtain. Natural gas leaks sometimes cause explosions as well, but these have more often been reported at restaurants than banks. Source
At a special meeting at the Cern laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland, scientists from the two main experiments targeting the Higgs boson will disclose their latest findings.
While researchers from the ATLAS and CMS teams regularly present batches of their most recent data, there is particular excitement surrounding the seminar on December 13.
Although scientists are unlikely to announce conclusive evidence of whether or not the particle exists, their data could be strong enough to make a confident guess one way or the other.
There is added excitement within the scientific community because the two teams, both of which include British experts, will not be comparing their results beforehand to avoid biasing their interpretation of their own data. Read More
Islamist success at the polls in the most populous Arab nation would reinforce a trend in North Africa. Moderate Islamists lead governments in Morocco and post-uprising Tunisia after election wins in the last two months.
Egyptians voting freely for the first time since army officers ousted the king in 1952 seem willing to give Islamists a chance. "We tried everyone, why not try sharia (Islamic law) once?" asked Ramadan Abdel Fattah, 48, a bearded civil servant.
Parliament, whose exact makeup will be clear only after Egypt's staggered voting process ends in January, may challenge the power of the generals who took over in February after an uprising toppled President Hosni Mubarak, an ex-air force chief. Read More
Navi Pillay, the High Commissioner for Human Rights will say Syrian forces committed crimes against humanity, including the murder and torture of children, following orders from the highest levels of Bashar al-Assad's regime.
The panel gathered evidence from 233 witnesses and victims on the brutal repression of anti-regime protesters but was not given permission to enter the country.
Activists reported up to 22 people killed Thursday, adding to what has become a daily grind of violence.
"We are placing the (death toll) figure at 4,000 but really the reliable information coming to us is that it's much more than that," Pillay said in Geneva.
"As soon as there were more and more defectors threatening to take up arms, I said this in August before the Security Council, that there's going to be a civil war," she added. "And at the moment, that's how I am characterizing this." Read More
Beachgoers found the striped dolphin on the beach on Saturday, and the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) was called.
A NPWS spokeswoman said, because the dolphin was not a rare breed, they didn’t take the carcass for further examination.
“Based on our reports, there was no reason for us to act,” she said.
She said the dolphin there had no marks or scratches that would suggest that it was killed by “human intervention”.
However, she said there was a large population of marine animals at the moment and stranding incidents were on the increase.
According to the spokeswoman, disposing of the dead dolphin was Eurobodalla Shire Council’s responsibility because it washed up on a council beach.
A council spokeswoman said the dolphin remained on the beach until it was buried on Wednesday morning, after they sought advice from NPWS. Source
There was no report of damage or injuries.
The quakes occurred from 12:11 a.m. until 8 a.m. on Friday, said Phivolcs.
The first quake had a 3.1 magnitude, and was detected at 12:11 a.m. Its epicenter was located 49 kilometers northeast of Burgos, Siargao Island in Surigao del Norte, Philvolcs said.
At 2:25 a.m., a 2.8 magnitude quake was recorded by Philvolcs. Its epicenter was located four kilometers northwest of Caluya, Antique.
At 3:31 a.m., a 3.1 magnitude earthquake took place, with its epicenter located 15 kilometers northwest of Virac, Catanduanes.
A 3.6 magnitude quake was recorded at 4:40 a.m., with its epicenter 57 kilometers northeast of Burgos, Siargao Island in Surigao del Norte.
The strongest of the tremors, a 4.5 magnitude earthquake, was recorded at 5:59 a.m. Its epicenter was located 65 kilometers northeast of San Policarpio in Eastern Samar.
A 2.9 magnitude quake was also detected at 8:25 a.m., with its epicenter located 35 kilometers southeast of Palayan City in Nueva Ecija.
All of the earthquakes were tectonic in origin, Philvolcs said. Source
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