Casey Anthony Sentenced to 4 Years
Casey Anthony, who earlier this week was found not guilty of killing her daughter, was sentenced on Thursday to four years in jail, not including the nearly three years she has served for lying to investigators, though the precise time she will spend in jail has not yet been determined.
Judge Belvin Perry said that he would have to meet with lawyers for at least an hour or so to decide how much time Ms. Anthony should be credited with serving. A decision is to be reached sometime Thursday. She was also fined $1,000 for each of the four counts of lying she has been convicted of.
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Facebook Announces New Design, In-Browser Video Chat With Skype
The new Facebook chat integrates Skype for video conferencing. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
PALO ALTO, California — Facebook unveiled three new products at its headquarters here Wednesday: video calling, group chat and a new design to its chat system.
In a major partnership with Skype, Facebook now offers free video calling between connected users of the site. Beginning Wednesday, a “call” button can be found in the top right-hand corner of each user’s Facebook page. After clicking on the button, the video chat window launches on your Facebook page, inside of your browser window.
“Think of this simply as a mini-Skype client,” said Skype CEO Tony Bates during the announcement. “One that’s obviously embedded in a very attractive way.”
The group chat announcement comes as an add-on to Facebook’s already existing chat function. When chatting with a friend on your Facebook page, a button allows you to add other friends of yours to the chat.
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Indian minister’s homosexuality remarks a setback for gay rights
Health minister Ghulum Nabi Azad says homosexuality is a "disease" © Demotix
The Indian authorities must ensure that the rights of gay men are protected, Amnesty International said today, after India’s health minister described homosexuality as a "disease".
Addressing a conference about HIV/AIDS on Monday, Ghulum Nabi Azad said sex between two men is "completely unnatural and shouldn’t happen".
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UNHCR concerned about malnutrition levels among new Somali refugees
GENEVA, July 5 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency is concerned about the high incidence of malnutrition among Somali refugees flowing into Ethiopia and Kenya amid a devastating drought in their conflict-racked country.
The relentless violence, compounded by drought, has forced more than 135,000 Somalis to flee so far this year. In June alone, 54,000 people fled across the two borders, three times the number of people who fled in May.
"UNHCR is particularly disturbed by unprecedented levels of malnutrition among the new arrivals – especially among refugee children," UNHCR's chief spokesperson, Melissa Fleming, said in Geneva on Tuesday. "More than 50 per cent of Somali children arriving in Ethiopia are seriously malnourished, while among those arriving to Kenya that rate is somewhat lower, but equally worrying – between 30 to 40 per cent," she added.
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Missy Elliott Reveals Past of Sexual Abuse
Just one week after revealing her diagnosis with the autoimmune disorder, Graves' Disease, rapper Missy Elliott has opened up about her troubled childhood, including that she was the victim of sexual abuse. [Via AOL]
In her episode of VH1's Behind the Music, which debuted earlier this week -- and can be streamed in full below -- Missy said that she was abused by her 16-year-old cousin when she was only eight years old. "Each day he wanted me to come to the house after school," she explained. "It became sexual, which, for me at eight years old, I had no clue what that was, but I knew something was wrong."
"Being molested ... it don't disappear," she added. "You remember it as if it was yesterday." She explained that the abuse took place over the course of a year, but that she had never told anyone before.
Missy, who turns 40 on July 1, also talked about witnessing her mother being abused by her father, including an incident when she was 14, in which she saw her father pull out a loaded pistol. Missy's mother, Patricia Elliott, also appeared on the TV special. "Missy saw that the fight was just beyond measures," Patricia said. "My husband said, 'This is it, I'm gonna kill you. It's over!' I was so tired of being beaten over and over I just said, 'Fine, just do it.'"...
My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant
By JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS
One August morning nearly two decades ago, my mother woke me and put me in a cab. She handed me a jacket. “Baka malamig doon” were among the few words she said. (“It might be cold there.”) When I arrived at the Philippines’ Ninoy Aquino International Airport with her, my aunt and a family friend, I was introduced to a man I’d never seen. They told me he was my uncle. He held my hand as I boarded an airplane for the first time. It was 1993, and I was 12.
My mother wanted to give me a better life, so she sent me thousands of miles away to live with her parents in America — my grandfather (Lolo in Tagalog) and grandmother (Lola). After I arrived in Mountain View, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area, I entered sixth grade and quickly grew to love my new home, family and culture. I discovered a passion for language, though it was hard to learn the difference between formal English and American slang. One of my early memories is of a freckled kid in middle school asking me, “What’s up?” I replied, “The sky,” and he and a couple of other kids laughed. I won the eighth-grade spelling bee by memorizing words I couldn’t properly pronounce. (The winning word was “indefatigable.”)...
‘Safety Myth’ Left Japan Ripe for Nuclear Crisis
SHIKA, Japan — Near a nuclear power plant facing the Sea of Japan, a series of exhibitions in a large public relations building here extols the virtues of the energy source with some help from “Alice in Wonderland.”
“It’s terrible, just terrible,” the White Rabbit says in the first exhibit. “We’re running out of energy, Alice.”
A Dodo robot figure, swiveling to address Alice and the visitors to the building, declares that there is an “ace” form of energy called nuclear power. It is clean, safe and renewable if you reprocess uranium and plutonium, the Dodo says.
“Wow, you can even do that!” Alice says of nuclear power. “You could say that it’s optimal for resource-poor Japan!”
Over several decades, Japan’s nuclear establishment has devoted vast resources to persuade the Japanese public of the safety and necessity of nuclear power. Plant operators built lavish, fantasy-filled public relations buildings that became tourist attractions. Bureaucrats spun elaborate advertising campaigns through a multitude of organizations established solely to advertise the safety of nuclear plants. Politicians pushed through the adoption of government-mandated school textbooks with friendly views of nuclear power.
The result was the widespread adoption of the belief — called the “safety myth” — that Japan’s nuclear power plants were absolutely safe. Japan single-mindedly pursued nuclear power even as Western nations distanced themselves from it....