Hockey: Five-a-side format to make debut in S'pore

SINGAPORE: A new format of hockey introduced by the International Hockey Federation is set to make its international debut in Singapore.The Boys U-16 Asia Cup competition, which will take place in April, will be the first official hockey tournament to use the five-a-side format.Since October, 15 boys from the Singapore team have been training at the Sengkang Hockey stadium and they are...

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15 special teams constituted to crack Hyderabad blasts case, Andhra govt hopeful

HYDERABAD/MUMBAI: Two days after twin blasts rocked the city, the Andhra Pradesh government on Saturday claimed to have got "vital clues" to crack the case soon with the needle of suspicion zeroing in on banned terror outfit Indian Mujahideen."We have already gathered vital clues in the case. We are confident we will crack the case soon," state home minister P Sabita Indra Reddy said after a high-level...

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FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent...

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Cyberattacks Bring Attention to Security Reform

Recent accusations of a large-scale cyber crime effort by the Chinese government left many wondering what immediate steps the president and Congress are taking to prevent these attacks from happening again.On Wednesday, the White House released the administration's Strategy on Mitigating the Theft of U.S. Trade Secrets as a follow-up to the president's executive order. The strategy...

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Iran appears to advance in construction of Arak nuclear plant

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran appears to be advancing in its construction of a research reactor Western experts say could offer the Islamic state a second way of producing material for a nuclear bomb, if it decided to embark on such a course, a U.N. report showed. Iran has almost completed installation of cooling and moderator circuit piping in the heavy water plant near the town of Arak, the...

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Eurozone facing recession right through 2013: EU

BRUSSELS: The eurozone faces another full year of recession in 2013 with unemployment likely to surge above the 20-million mark, and French and Spanish state spending badly overshooting targets, the EU said on Friday.Economic output across the 17-state currency area is set to shrink by 0.3 percent this year after a 0.6-percent contraction last year, the European Commission said.That means...

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Hyderabad blasts: Shinde 'totally disappointing', opposition and UPA allies say

NEW DELHI: Home minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Friday came under sharp attack from opposition as well as UPA allies SP and DMK, which trashed his statement on Hyderabad blasts as "totally disappointing" and "devoid of any concrete and meaningful plan of action". Shinde made a statement in the House on Thursday's blasts saying government will make all possible efforts to apprehend the perpetrators...

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Flu shot doing poor job of protecting older people

ATLANTA (AP) — It turns out this year's flu shot is doing a startlingly dismal job of protecting older people, the most vulnerable age group.The vaccine is proving only 9 percent effective in those 65 and older against the harsh strain of the flu that is predominant this season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.Health officials are baffled as to why this is so. But the...

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Arias Challenged On Pedophilia Claim

Accused murderer Jodi Arias was challenged today by phone records, text message records, and her own diary entries that appeared to contradict her claim that she caught her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, looking at pictures of naked boys.Arias had said during her testimony that one afternoon in January 2008, she walked in on Alexander masturbating to pictures of naked boys....

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French hostages seized in Cameroon found safe: report

PARIS (Reuters) - Seven French hostages kidnapped in Cameroon have been found alive in a house in northern Nigeria and are safe with Nigerian authorities, French television reported on Thursday. The hostages, four children and three adults, were captured by Islamist militants this week while on a tourist excursion to the Waza national park near the Nigerian border with Cameroon. ...

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Man who drowned in NUS pool unlikely to survive despite resuscitation

SINGAPORE: A man who drowned in a pool at the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2007, would likely not have survived despite resuscitaton efforts, according to a cardiologist during a court hearing on Thursday.40-year-old Roland Yeo, who was an IT manager with NUS, drowned after suffering a sudden heart attack in the university's pool on June 6, 2007. His wife is seeking S$1 million...

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SC sets up special team to examine contents of Radia tapes

NEW DELHI: A six-member special team comprising five from the CBI and one from the Income Tax department was today constituted by the Supreme Court to examine the contents of tapped telephonic conversations of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia with politicians, corporate honchos and others. A bench comprising justices G S Singhvi and S J Mukhopadhaya said the working of the team will be supervised by...

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Adults get 11 percent of calories from fast food

ATLANTA (AP) — On an average day, U.S. adults get roughly 11 percent of their calories from fast food, a government study shows.That's down slightly from the 13 percent reported the last time the government tried to pin down how much of the American diet is coming from fast food. Eating fast food too frequently has been seen as a driver of America's obesity problem.For the research, about 11,000 adults...

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Arias Leaves Stand After Describing Killing, Her Lies

Jodi Arias stepped down from the witness stand today after mounting an emotional effort to save herself from death row, insisting to the Arizona jury that an explosive fight with ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander led to his death, and that her lies about killing him masked deep regret and plans to commit suicide.Arias, 32, will now face what is expected to be a withering cross-examination...

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Bulgarian government resigns amid growing protests

SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria's government resigned on Wednesday after violent nationwide protests against high power prices, joining a long list of European administrations felled by austerity during Europe's debt crisis. Prime Minister Boiko Borisov, a former bodyguard who swept to power in 2009 on pledges to root out corruption and raise living standards in the European Union's poorest...

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Tunisia president holds crisis talks over new PM

TUNIS: President Moncef Marzouki was holding urgent talks on Wednesday with political leaders in a bid to steer Tunisia out of a weeks-long crisis exacerbated by the resignation of Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali.Marzouki was meeting in the morning with leader of the Islamist ruling Ennahda party, Rached Ghannouchi, and later with Maya Jribi of the opposition Republican party, his office...

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DRDO says it has capability to produce VVIP choppers

NEW DELHI: With the deal for procuring VVIP choppers from AgustaWestland facing the prospect of being scrapped, DRDO today said it has the capability to manufacture such helicopters even though it contended that producing anything entirely indigenously was impractical."We have the capability to manufacture any system. We are manufacturing LCH (Light Compact Helicopter). We have already manufactured...

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Drug overdose deaths up for 11th consecutive year

CHICAGO (AP) — Drug overdose deaths rose for the 11th straight year, federal data show, and most of them were accidents involving addictive painkillers despite growing attention to risks from these medicines."The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed...

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Chavez back in Venezuela, on Twitter with four million followers

CARACAS (Reuters) - After Hugo Chavez spent two months out of the public eye for cancer surgery in Cuba, the Venezuelan government hailed his homecoming on Monday and said the president had achieved another milestone - four million followers on Twitter. The 58-year-old flew back from Havana before dawn and was taken to a military hospital. No new details were given on his health, and...

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S'pore's fiscal surplus for FY2012 expected to surpass govt's estimates: economists

SINGAPORE: Despite booking a slower GDP growth of 1.2 percent last year, economists expect Singapore's fiscal surplus to surprise on the upside for FY 2012.The projections, which range from S$1.6 billion to nearly S$5 billion, surpass the government's estimates of a S$1.27 billion surplus for the year.The record number of new homes sold last year despite additional cooling measures and...

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UPA won't return to power, Sharad Yadav says

BHOPAL: The Congress-led UPA government was "mired in corruption" and had "failed on all fronts", and there was no way it could return to power at the Centre after next general elections, NDA convener Sharad Yadav said on Tuesday. "The UPA government has been hit by one scam after another during its second tenure. There is no doubt that it has failed on all fronts and it would not return to power...

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Hip implants a bit more likely to fail in women

CHICAGO (AP) — Hip replacements are slightly more likely to fail in women than in men, according to one of the largest studies of its kind in U.S. patients. The risk of the implants failing is low, but women were 29 percent more likely than men to need a repeat surgery within the first three years.The message for women considering hip replacement surgery remains unclear. It's not known which models...

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Russian Meteor: Close Encounter, Preventing Impacts

Feb 18, 2013 7:03pm MOSCOW — As if Friday’s massive meteor explosion over central Russia weren’t enough, just hours later a large asteroid buzzed dangerously close to Earth.And that evening, the California sky was lit up by a fireball, apparently entering Earth’s atmosphere.It’s a barrage from space that has people asking: Are we ready for the big one?Nearly 100...

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U.N. says has list of Syrian war crimes suspects

GENEVA (Reuters) - Syrians in "leadership positions" who may be responsible for war crimes have been identified, along with units accused of perpetrating them, United Nations investigators said on Monday. Both government forces and armed rebels are committing war crimes, including killings and torture, spreading terror among civilians in a nearly two-year-old conflict, they said. ...

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India's first monorail in Mumbai to open by August

MUMBAI: India's first monorail will be opened to the public in the next six months in Mumbai. Built at a cost of half a billion US dollars, it will be the world's second longest monorail which aims to improve the city's rapid transport systems.India is undergoing an infrastructure building boom.The government recently approved a budget of one trillion US dollars on infrastructure development...

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British PM David Cameron seeks 'special' relationship with India

MUMBAI: British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday began his India visit seeking a "special relationship" between the two countries, saying it is "about the future and not the past" for which sky is the limit. "I want Britain and India to have a special relationship...this is a relationship about the future, not the past," Cameron said in his first public engagement here-- an interaction with...

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Study: Better TV might improve kids' behavior

SEATTLE (AP) — Teaching parents to switch channels from violent shows to educational TV can improve preschoolers' behavior, even without getting them to watch less, a study found.The results were modest and faded over time, but may hold promise for finding ways to help young children avoid aggressive, violent behavior, the study authors and other doctors said."It's not just about turning off the television....

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