| Russian oil giant can sell cannabis vodka |
Russian oil company Yukos has won a rare legal victory when a court ruled it could sell cannabis vodka.
The court in Voronezh dismissed a case claiming Yukos, and its billionaire owners, were promoting drug use by selling the vodka at petrol stations.
Drug squad officers had confiscated a bottle of the vodka, which is made from hemp seed extract, in April.
But the court said the label on the bottle promoted vodka sales and not drug use.
BERLIN (Reuters) - A German motorway was flooded with 34,000 liters (9,000 U.S. gallons) of pig's blood on Wednesday after an accident that caused a 20 km (12 mile) tailback, police said.
A Dutch tanker spilled its bloody contents after colliding with a truck next to a slip road, police in the central town of Rotenburg said. Heavy rain obstructed the clean-up of the blood, which was on its way for disposal in Hamburg.
| Dog meat used in hot dogs |
Two directors of a Belgian meat wholesaler have been arrested after dog meat was found in hot dogs around Europe.
More than 20,000 kilos of hot dogs were seized by food inspectors during a routine visit to the company's headquarters in Brussels.
Several thousand of the dog food contaminated hot dogs have turned up in Holland, according to the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority.
Checks are being carried out to see in what other countries the hot dogs may have been sold.
| Regular sex helps students |
A German sociologist Werner Habermehl says regular sex can help university students pass exams and get better grades.
Habermehl from the University of Hamburg said he and his team had tested students before and after sex.
They found that regular sexual activity significantly increased mental capability, but they found celibate students found it harder to make the grade.
As well as decreasing the length of time needed to complete a course, students with a healthy sex life also received better marks.
07 June 2004
Ismail is only 10 years old, but the horrors of the past three months will be with him to his grave. He was rescued by the Afghan authorities on Friday, after being kidnapped in March.
Quietly, he told seeing the bodies of four boys of about his age that had been cut open. "They took us to a mountain where I saw the bodies," he said. "They had taken out the organs. They were boys of about our age. I thought I would not live long when I saw them. I was scared."
"We have information they [the kidnappers] killed five children, cutting their heads off and opening their stomachs to extract their kidneys," the intelligence chief for the south, Dr Abdullah Laghmani, said.
He believes the kidnappers, involved in a worrying rise in the number of disappearing children across the country, planned to sell the kidneys in Pakistan, where patients are prepared to pay large amounts of money for healthy organs.
Ali Ahmad Jalali, the Interior Minister, said recently that hundreds of children had been taken out of the country illegally in recent years, and some had been kidnapped for their body parts.
U.S. subsidy keeps gas price low in Iraq
By Jim Krane
The Associated Press
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BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqis pay only about 5 cents a gallon for gasoline — a benefit of hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies bankrolled by American taxpayers.
Some forecasters predicted that by invading Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein, America would benefit from increased exports of oil from Iraq, which has the world's second-largest petroleum reserves.
More than a year after the invasion, the price for gasoline in the United States is averaging $2.05 a gallon — 50 cents more than the pre-invasion price.
Although Iraq is a major petroleum producer, the country has little capacity to refine its own gasoline. So the U.S. government pays about $1.50 a gallon to buy fuel in neighboring countries and deliver it to Iraqi stations. A three-month supply costs American taxpayers more than $500 million, not including the cost of military escorts to fend off attacks by Iraqi insurgents.
Tue Jun 8, 9:42 AM ET |
By Larry Fine
NEW YORK (Reuters) - With thousands of Republicans set to descend on the Big Apple to nominate President Bush for re-election, convention organizers decided to treat delegates to the glitz of Broadway before they knuckled down to the business of politics. But Republican organizers, selling themselves as the family-values party, decided to buy tickets to tame shows like "42nd Street" and Disney productions like "Aida" and "The Lion King," avoiding more offbeat fare. Besides Tony winners such as the naughty puppet musical "Avenue Q" and best play "I Am My Own Wife," about a German transvestite, other hits including Mel Brooks' "The Producers," were vetoed by those arranging Broadway outings. "The Republicans were so desperate to escape Roger DeBris, the cross-dressing buffoon concocted by Mel Brooks, that they have gone and picked two shows set in France," wrote New York Times columnist Frank Rich, referring to evergreen musicals "Beauty and the Beast" and "Phantom of the Opera." The biggest winner at the Tonys with five awards was "Assassins," a Stephen Sondheim musical about nine killers and would-be killers of U.S. presidents, including the man who tried to kill popular Republican Ronald Reagan. Three of the four awards for actresses went to African American performers
Gays Rights 'Leads To Obesity'
by Peter Moore
365Gay.com Newscenter
London Bureau
| Posted: May 28, 2004 12:01 am. ET |
(London) A high ranking Conservative member of the House of Lords says that the push for civil rights by gays is leading to a nation of obese people.
Lord Tebbit, the former chair of the Tory party and its current Whip in the Lords, was debating the growing problem of obesity with a member of the governing Labor party on a British radio program.
He suggested Labor's ''promotion of buggery'' was ''intimately connected'' to the increasing number of overweight people.
''Families now so seldom eat together. They don't prepare meals properly. Wives are pressurized into thinking they ought to go out to work instead of looking after their children. And it is the breakdown of family that is at the root of it.''
''We not only have an epidemic of obesity, we have a huge problem of AIDS and the Government's attitude is to do all it can to promote buggery.''
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