Global News

The U.S. Government wants its money back from Lance Armstrong.  The Feds are joining in a lawsuit claiming the fallen cyclist defrauded taxpayers because he was on illegal performance enhancing drugs while on the U.S. Postal Service Cycling Team.

82-year old Cuban president Raul Castro is suggesting there might be a big announcement this weekend when he is sworn in for a new term, saying he has the right to retire.

China is acknowledging long leveled criticism that areas of the country are so-pollution with industrial waste and toxins that entire towns have been labeled “Cancer Villages”.

An Italian newspaper is claiming that the historic resignation of Pope Benedict XVI is linked to an internal investigation that discovered several Gay clergy inside the Vatican who were being blackmailed by outsiders.

Satellite images show signs of snow removal and other preparation work going on at North Korea’s nuclear test site.  That is leading to speculation that the world may not have to wait too long for the next blast.

North Korea’s latest nuclear weapons test and taunting threats are not sitting well in Seoul.  South Korea’s ruling conservative party is now calling for the sunny side of the peninsula to begin making its own nuclear weapons.

North Korea says it tested a nuclear weapon.  Western governments say North Korea tested a nuclear weapon.  Seismic sensors produced data that show that North Korea tested a nuclear weapon.  And that has the spies and scientists wondering..
Where’s the radiation

The Australian government dealt a blow to the Sea Shepherd conservation society when it refused to dispatch the Navy to deal with Japanese whaling vessels in Aussie territorial waters.  But the environmentalists are getting support from the Japanese people.

Myanmar held preliminary peace talks with an umbrella group of ethnic minorities to try and resolve the conflict in the north part of the country.  This week’s talks are in addition to early discussions with Kachin separatists taking place in China.

China is keeping the lid on the trial of an 80-something year old man accused of murdering a doctor as part of that country’s notorious “Cultural Revolution”.  And it’s sparking debate about the something the government usually prefers no one talk about.

Detective Hilton Botha has been replaced as the chief investigator in the murder investigation against South African Olympic Sprinter Oscar Pistorius.  This comes after embarrassing revelations that Botha himself is charged with seven counts of attempted murder in a separate case.

Russia’s economy is losing billions of dollars because of corruption at the top.  This comes from Russia’s central bank Governor Sergei Ignatiev.

A scene one tourist described as out of an action movie terrified people as a high-rolling shooting between luxury vehicles and explosive crash on the famed Las Vegas Strip has killed three people and injured 4 more.  And it has many visitors questioning their safety amid rising violence in America’s gambling Mecca. 

Syria is blaming “terrorists” for a massive car bomb explosion in central Damascus outside the headquarters of the ruling Ba’ath Party and near a school and the entrances to the Russian Embassy.  Children from the school are among the dozens killed, and hundreds more people are wounded. 

Mankind’s time at the top of the evolutionary pyramid may be growing short, as crafty members of the air, land, and sea branches of animal kingdom are learning to break of our best secrets. 

The lead detective in the Oscar Pistorius murder is himself facing attempted murder charges in an unrelated case.  Olympic sprinter Pistorius is denying charges he deliberately shot and killed his girlfriend Reeve Steenkamp.

Around 60,000 protesters flooded the streets of Athens and other cities in Greece’s first massive anti-austerity demonstrations of the year.  Despite the peaceful nature of the demonstration, police got violent in a couple of cases

Egypt’s increasingly authoritarian regime is limiting the sale of Alcohol.  This is ringing alarm bells with Liberals and human rights activists who say the country’s Islamist leaders are creeping in on personal freedoms.  

91-year-old Prince Philip is known for his verbal gaffes and did not disappoint during a goodwill visit to the cardiac unit a London hospital.  He told a Filipina nurse that her country must be “half empty” because so many from there at in the UK “running the NHS”.

British Prime Minister David Cameron in India visited the site of one of Britain’s worst-ever massacre of civilians during the colonial era.  There he became the first UK leader to express regret over the Jallianwala Bagh (Amritsar ) massacre, but he stopped just short of apologizing.