Apparently female driving isn’t the only thing that’s banned in Saudi Arabia. Tattoos, too, are another no-no in the ultra-conservative Middle Eastern nation — a lesson that one man and his family have learned all too well. Juan Pablo Pino, a 24-year-old soccer player from Columbia, was reportedly arrested in Saudi Arabia last Friday. Pino’s apparent offense was walking through a mall, while... 

A scathing report authored by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the United States President’s role in protecting the Afghanistan drug trade essentially labels Barack Obama as the most powerful drug cartel leader our world has ever known. Speaking at a conference this week on communicable diseases Lavrov lashed out over Obama’s refusal to eradicate Afghanistan’s poppy crop and stated,... 

Traditional words ‘father’ and ‘mother’ will be replaced with official terms Parent 1 and Parent 2 in Britain reported the BBC and the Daily Mail. The terms will be used in official documents. The authorities decided to make such a “politically correct” move to accommodate same-sex couples. Experts are sure, though, that the matter is not about the requirements... 

Charged with numerous counts of child molesting including murder, Sergey Kutnyuk was sentenced by Sverdlovsk Region Court to life imprisonment. The Russian parliament has approved a law on pedophilia in a first reading. From now on people found guilty of sex crimes against children under the age of 14 will face chemical castration, while repeat offenders face a life sentence. ­According to the new... 

Therapy: Thomas Lobel, who now calls himself Tammy, is undergoing controversial hormone blocking treatment. Parents say it’s better for Thomas to have sex change before he is adult. The lesbian parents of an 11-year-old boy who is undergoing the process of becoming a girl last night defended the decision, claiming it was better for a child to have a sex change when young. Thomas Lobel, who now... 

Tiny Goshen College in Indiana has banned the “The Star Spangled Banner: at all sporting events because the Mennonite school’s president considers the National Anthem’s words to be too violent. The 1,000-student school had already banned the words last year, but the band could still play the music for patriots in attendance. Now, the school has banned the song entirely, according... 

The Federal Reserved reached into public funds — about $1.2 trillion — to help bail out banks during the 2008 financial crisis, a new report reveals. A Freedom of Information Act request put together by Bloomberg has allowed for the hard numbers to finally be made available to the public about the loans the Fed dished out to keep financial firms afloat in the midst of an economic collapse. The... 

Social networking sites have fallen victim to the British Prime Minister’s irk after the worst unrest in a generation, as defined by UK authorities, rocked the country. Prime Minister David Cameron made a statement to the parliament on Thursday warning to unleash a clampdown on social media including social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Research in Motion (Rim), the maker of... 

The London Metropolitan Police is encouraging businesses and the general public to immediately report anyone who holds anti-government political beliefs to the authorities as terrorists, calling on people to become volunteer informants as the state prepares for widespread social unrest. “This was the surprising injunction from the Metropolitan Police issued to businesses and members of the public... 

In a new twist to the TSA saga to which we can only say, “We told ya so,” the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that reveal TSA employees are reporting “cancer clusters” among their own employees who work near radiation body scanners. At the same time, DHS refuses to issue dosimeters to TSA employees... 

Rabbi Yosef Feldman ONE of the state’s most high profile Jewish leaders is fighting off calls for his resignation after he urged rabbis not to report allegations of child abuse to the police. Rabbi Yosef Feldman, president of the Rabbinical Council of NSW and based at the Southern Sydney Synagogue, has sparked outrage in a series of emails to other rabbis when he said it should be up to them... 

The BBC’s director general has admitted that the corporation has avoided speaking about the problems of ‘taboo’ subjects such as immigration. Mark Thompson said ‘sensitive and difficult issues’ like immigration were ignored because the broadcaster was ‘anxious’ about appearing to have a right-wing agenda. In an article for the New Statesman magazine, he admitted: ‘There have been occasions,... 

The stunning reversals in the criminal case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a putative French presidential candidate, have reawakened a dormant anti-Americanism here, fueled by a sense that the raw, media-driven culture of the United States has undermined justice and fair play. There was shock in France after the arrest of Strauss-Kahn and intense criticism of the manner in which he was displayed... 

The United States Congress has severely encroached on Americans’ civil liberties and constitutional rights with its post-9/11 adoption of the contentious Patriot Act, says writer and radio host Stephen Lendman. “The Patriot Act in fact was written many months before the 9/11 event that made it possible for the Congress nearly unanimously to pass this police-state act,” Lendman said... 

A pre-school in Sweden has decided to stop referring to children as “him” or “her” in an effort to obtain equality between the sexes from childhood. The Egalia preschool, in the Sodermalm district of Stockholm made the decision as a part of the national curriculum for Swedish preschools to stop children falling into gender stereotypes. Staff at the school has tried to shed...