Teachers Denied Schoolboy, 10, Water on the Hottest Day of the Year to Avoid Upsetting Muslim Pupils During Ramadan’

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Photo Credit: Matt Scott-JoyntAn angry mother has accused a primary school of denying her child water on one of the hottest days of the year for fear of upsetting pupils observing Ramadan.

Kora Blagden, 32, claimed a teacher at her son Luke’s school refused to let the 10-year old drink from his water bottle because it was unfair to fasting classmates.

Many pupils at Charles Dickens Primary School, Portsmouth, Hampshire, are fasting during Ramadan, which means they refrain from taking food or water between sunrise and sunset for around 30 days, depending on the moon.

Mother-of-four Kora said: ‘Just before bedtime me and my sons Luke, ten, and Alfie, eight, were talking about Ramadan as we had seen it on the news.

‘Luke said to me he was told he wasn’t allowed to drink in class by his teacher.

‘The reason being, a child who is fasting had a headache and the teacher said it would be unfair if the other children drank in front of the pupil.

Read more from this story HERE.

Horrific Scenes From the Bloodiest Day Yet of This Year’s Running of the Bulls (+video)

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Photo Credit: Reuters He was running excitedly for his life with 1,200lb of raging bull on his tail. And then he tripped.

In that split second yesterday, this young thrill-seeker’s carnival adventure turned into a horror show that put him inches from death.

Before screaming crowds and live on TV, he was trampled, tossed and crushed, gored in the groin and impaled at one stage on the bull’s horn.

He spent 40 seconds at the mercy of the massive black beast before helpers managed to drag him to safety.

Incredibly, he survived. But yesterday the incident reignited controversy over this year’s Running of the Bulls festival in Pamplona, Spain, on what became its bloodiest day.

Three people were gored and at least six badly injured in the run, celebrated annually by participants from all over the world and universally condemned by campaigners against animal cruelty.

Video: (WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT)

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Obama Speaks With Putin Amid Tensions Over Snowden

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Photo Credit: Jedimentat44By Fox News. President Obama spoke Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid escalating tensions between the two countries over NSA leaker Edward Snowden but there was no indication they reached any accord on the fugitive’s future.

Snowden, surfacing for the first time in weeks, held a meeting with human rights groups earlier Friday at the Moscow airport, where he’s been stuck in the transit zone since he left Hong Kong last month.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the meeting amounted to a “propaganda platform” for Snowden, and criticized Russia for its handling of the affair.

“It’s also incompatible with Russian assurances that they do not want Mr. Snowden to further damage U.S. interests,” he said.

The Russian government so far has rebuffed calls to return Snowden to the U.S. to face multiple federal charges. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APInside the Ring: More NSA leaks

By Bill Gertz. U.S. intelligence officials are braced for more disclosures of National Security Agency eavesdropping secrets from renegade contractor Edward Snowden, who is seeking asylum in Venezuela.

New details from Mr. Snowden, who was still in a Moscow airport transit lounge on Wednesday, appeared Sunday. Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine and Brazil’s O Globo newspaper published new details about NSA electronic intelligence gathering, including two code names for programs that had not been made public before.

In an email interview with video maker Laura Poitras and journalist Jacob Appelbaum, Mr. Snowden revealed that the NSA works with German intelligence and other Western governments to track down terrorists and other criminal suspects.

“We [NSA] warn the others when someone we want to catch is using one of their airports, and they then extradite him to us,” he stated. “We can have obtained the information for that, for example, from the monitored cellphone of the girlfriend of a suspected hacker who has used it in an entirely different country that has nothing to do with the matter.”

Mr. Snowden said the NSA’s Foreign Affairs Directorate is the main liaison. Read more from this story HERE.

Cracks in China’s Social Fabric Emerge: Accused of Rape, Son of Chinese General, Plays Victim Card

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Photo Credit: APLawyers of a well-known Chinese general’s son accused of taking part in a gang rape are waging a rare, Western-style war of words against his critics in a reflection of the growing perception that public opinion counts.

The airing of accusations surrounding the high-profile criminal case via the Chinese Internet has been all the more unusual because the teenage defendant is a member of one of China’s wealthy and privileged families, who usually prefer to bury salacious scandals – if they can.

Li Tianyi, 17, the photogenic, baby-faced son of Li Shuangjiang, 72, a military singer who holds the rank of general, has become the newest target of popular anger over abuses of power by the country’s elite.

“At the moment, public opinion is not on Li Tianyi and his family’s side,” said Zhan Jiang, a journalism professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University. “China’s public mood is this way when some wealthy or powerful people are involved and the opposing side is a weaker victim,” he said.

“It’s a protest against Chinese society’s lack of fairness,” Zhan added.

Read more from this story HERE.

Dominicans Outraged Over Obama’s Gay Ambassador Pick

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Photo Credit: Foreign PolicyOpposition to President Obama’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic reached a fever pitch this week as religious organizers stage a “Lunes Negro” or Black Monday protest against James “Wally” Brewster.

If confirmed, Brewster will be the first openly gay ambassador to the country, a prospect that is not going over well with some segments of this conservative Christian country of 9 million people. Local reports indicate that church leaders are pressuring the government to reject Brewster’s nomination and calling on the faithful to dress in black on Monday in solidarity against him.

Praise Christian Church Pastor Sauford Medrano is quoted in Diario Libre as saying that Brewster could cause “the U.S. promotion of gender beliefs in the country.” That supposedly violates a general education law in the country that “all the Dominican education system is based on Christian principles.”

The report was flagged by Cable reader and Dominican expat Will Williams, an architect in New York City. He said he witnessed the animosity toward the ambassador in a visit last weekend. “I could confirm myself that the opposition has been even worse from what have been reflected in the news,” he said. “As a Dominican, I feel ashamed this is happening in my country … The evangelical church is convoking the general public to reject this ambassador … [It’s] asking the public to show a black band, black banner or ribbon on cars or dress showing rejection.”

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Egypt’s Christians Face Backlash for Morsi Ouster

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Photo Credit: APWith a mob of Muslim extremists on his tail, the Christian businessman and his nephew climbed up on the roof and ran for their lives, jumping from building to building in their southern Egyptian village. Finally they ran out of rooftops.

Forced back onto the street, they were overwhelmed by several dozen men. The attackers hacked them with axes and beat them with clubs and tree limbs, killing Emile Naseem, 41. The nephew survived with wounds to his shoulders and head and recounted the chase to The Associated Press.

The mob’s rampage through the village of Nagaa Hassan, burning dozens of Christian houses and stabbing to death three other Christians as well, came two days after the military ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi from power. It was no coincidence the attackers focused on Naseem and his family: He was the village’s most prominent campaigner calling for Morsi’s removal.

Some Christians are paying the price for their activism against Morsi and his Islamist allies in a backlash over his ouster last week.

Since then, there has been a string of attacks on Christians in provinces that are strongholds of hard-liners. In the Sinai Peninsula, where militant groups run rampant, militants gunned down a priest in a drive-by shooting as he walked in a public market.

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Fugitive Snowden to Meet with Human Rights Groups

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Photo Credit: ReutersFormer intelligence agency contractor Edward Snowden asked to meet human rights groups at a Moscow airport on Friday to discuss what he called “threatening behaviour” by the United States to prevent him gaining asylum.

The meeting would be the first of its kind since Snowden flew to Moscow from Hong Kong on June 23. He has been stranded in the transit area of Sheremetyevo airport ever since, unable to take up asylum offers from third countries.

Snowden is wanted by Washington on espionage charges for divulging details of secret U.S. surveillance programs. The email address from which he sent the invitation to human rights groups was confirmed as authentic by an airport official.

“In recent weeks we have witnessed an unlawful campaign by officials in the U.S. Government to deny my right to seek and enjoy this asylum under Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Snowden wrote.

“The scale of threatening behavior is without precedent,” read the letter, a copy of which was posted to Facebook by an official of Human Rights Watch.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hospital in Zimbabwe Where Desperately Poor Women Are Charged $5 Every Time They Scream During Childbirth

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Photo Credit: AFP/GettyPoor women have been exploited at their most vulnerable time by a hospital that charged them $5 every time they screamed during child birth.

The shocking discovery was made by a U.S. group that campaigns against corruption, as it released its annual Global Corruption Barometer.

At the hospital in Zimbabwe, one of the poorest countries in the world, the fine was said to be for ‘raising a false alarm’, according to Transparency International.

Women who were unable to pay the fine were allegedly kept in the hospital until their families could pay. Interest was also added to the fines, according to the Washington Post.

Many mothers already avoid hospital deliveries in the African nation because of the $50 cost, which is about the third of the average $150 income.

Read more from this story HERE.

Libyan Official Ties Egypt’s Morsi to Benghazi Attack

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Photo Credit: WNDBy Jerome R. Corsi. A letter by a top Libyan official blames the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens on Mohamed Morsi, the now deposed president of Egypt.

WND has verified the authenticity of the letter by Col. Mahmoud al-Sharif, the chief of the Department of Security of the Libyan government in Tripoli, written four days after the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi.

The letter mentions Morsi as being implicated in the planning that led to the Benghazi attack and identifies the Egyptian jihadist group Ansar Sharia as the group responsible.

The letter discloses that the bodies of three Americans killed in the attack along with Ambassador Stevens were desecrated in revenge for the production of an anti-Islam film, assumed to be “Innocence of the Muslims.” The film was produced by the imprisoned Mark Basseley Yousef, the person the Obama administration erroneously claimed was responsible for triggering for attack itself.

White House press secretary Jay Carney confirmed Wednesday the Obama administration has no change in plans to deliver F-16s to the Egyptian military. The U.S. most likely will deliver four F-16s in August, with another eight slated for December. The deliveries are part of the continuing U.S. $1.5 billion in aid scheduled to be dispersed to Egypt in the current fiscal year, despite the military coup that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Morsi. Read more from this story HERE.

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Egypt Orders Arrest of Brotherhood Leaders

By Thomson/Reuters. Egypt’s public prosecutor ordered the arrest on Wednesday of the leaders of ousted President Mohamed Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood, charging them with inciting violence in a clash that saw troops shoot dozens of his supporters dead.

A week after the army toppled Egypt’s first democratically elected leader, bloodshed has opened deep fissures in the Arab world’s most populous country, with bitterness at levels unseen in its modern history.

Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad said the announcement of charges against leader Mohamed Badie and several other senior Islamists was a bid by authorities to break up a vigil by thousands of Mursi supporters demanding his reinstatement.

This week’s unrest has alarmed Western donors and Israel, which has a 1979 peace treaty with Egypt. Washington, treading a careful line, has neither welcomed Mursi’s removal nor denounced it as a “coup”. Under U.S. law, a coup would require it to halt aid, including the $1.3 billion it gives the army each year.

The Brotherhood’s downfall has, however, been warmly welcomed by three of the rich Arab monarchies of the Gulf, who showered Cairo with aid to prop up the collapsing economy. Read more from this story HERE.

Saudi Princess Arrested in California Human Trafficking Probe

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Photo Credit: APA Saudi princess was charged Wednesday with human trafficking for allegedly holding a domestic worker against her will and forcing her to work at an Orange County condominium, prosecutors said.

Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas identified 42-year-old Meshael Alayban as a Saudi princess who was charged with one count of human trafficking. If convicted, she faces up to 12 years in prison.

Alayban was arrested after a Kenyan woman carrying a suitcase flagged down a bus Tuesday and told a passenger she believed she was a human trafficking victim. The passenger helped her contact police, who searched the Irvine condo where Alayban and her family were staying, authorities said.

The 30-year-old woman told authorities she was hired in Kenya in 2012 and her passport was taken from her on arrival in Saudi Arabia. She was forced to work excessive hours and was paid less than she was promised and not allowed to leave, authorities said.

“This is not a contract dispute,” Rackauckas told the court during a bail hearing Wednesday afternoon, likening the case to slavery. “This is holding someone captive against their will.”

Read more from this story HERE.