Third Malaysian policeman killed in Borneo: report

LAHAD DATU, Malaysia - A Malaysian policeman was killed by "militants" in a region where Filipino followers of a self-claimed sultan are holed up in a deadly standoff with security forces, state media reported Sunday.The police officer was killed when he was fired upon on Saturday in the Malaysian town of Semporna, 300 kilometres by road from the site of the standoff at Tanduo village...

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'Maharashtra sisters were sexually assaulted’

MUMBAI/NAGPUR/LAKHNI: A fortnight after the suspicious deaths of three sisters in Bhandara, Maharashtra DGP Sanjeev Dayal on Saturday said that, going by preliminary reports, it appeared that the girls had been sexually assaulted and their bodies bore injury marks. Meanwhile, a senior bureaucrat said it was "shocking" that the post-mortem report was still with health officials and had not been forwarded...

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We Didn’t Domesticate Dogs. They Domesticated Us.

In the story of how the dog came in from the cold and onto our sofas, we tend to give ourselves a little too much credit. The most common assumption is that some hunter-gatherer with a soft spot for cuteness found some wolf puppies and adopted them. Over time, these tamed wolves would have shown their prowess at hunting, so humans kept them around the campfire until they evolved into dogs....

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US Seeks to Confirm Report of Terror Leader's Death

American military and intelligence officials said today they are attempting to confirm a report from the Chadian military of the death of al Qaeda leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the alleged mastermind of the deadly attack on an Algerian natural gas facility in January.If the new report is confirmed, Belmokhtar's death would be a significant victory against a growing al Qaeda threat...

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Obama to refocus attention on immigration, gun control

President Obama signaled Friday a desire to refocus his attention on second-term priorities, such as immigration and gun control, after weeks of fruitless wrangling with Republicans over his fiscal agenda. “What I want to try to do is make sure that we’re constantly focused . . . on how are we helping American families succeed,” Obama said at a news conference after failing to strike a...

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US Defence Secretary Hagel scolds budget cuts

WASHINGTON: Major budget cuts will endanger the US military's ability to conduct its missions, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel warned.His comments came hours before President Barack Obama authorized cuts in domestic and defence spending, following the failure of efforts to clinch a deal with Republicans on cutting the deficit.Hagel, whose budget at the Pentagon is set to be slashed by roughly...

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Black Hole Spins at Nearly the Speed of Light

A superfast black hole nearly 60 million light-years away appears to be pushing the ultimate speed limit of the universe, a new study says.For the first time, astronomers have managed to measure the rate of spin of a supermassive black hole—and it's been clocked at 84 percent of the speed of light, or the maximum allowed by the law of physics."The most exciting part of this finding is...

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Obama Signs Order to Begin Sequester Cuts

President Obama and congressional leaders today failed to reach a breakthrough to avert a sweeping package of automatic spending cuts, setting into motion $85 billion of across-the-board belt-tightening that neither had wanted to see.President Obama officially initiated the cuts with an order to agencies Friday evening.He had met for just over an hour at the White House Friday...

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Deadline for benefits e-payments is here

It took 17 years, but Friday marks the deadline to switch federal benefit checks to electronic payments, an initiative Treasury Department officials say will save up to $1 billion over a decade. In 1996, Congress enacted a law that required all federal payments except tax refunds to be issued electronically by 1999. By December 1998, 75 percent of Social Security payments were being...

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Initiatives outlined to make it easier for public to get legal help

SINGAPORE: The overarching theme of the Subordinate Courts Workplan seminar this year is to make it easier for the public to get legal help and information.In his first workplan keynote address, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon outlined a slew of initiatives to resolve informational inadequacy and litigation costs.These include the Primary Justice Project to have a team of lawyers who will...

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