A UK mother convicted of beating her seven-year-old son to death after he failed to memorize passages from the Koran has been jailed for life. ­Sara Ege, 33, collapsed as the sentence was read out at Cardiff Crown Court. The judge presiding over the case announced Ege would serve a minimum of 17 years behind bars for killing her seven-year-old son Yaseen. She was also convicted of perverting the... 

Nazi chief Hermann Goering, seeking retaliation for US strikes in Dresden, devised a bizarre plot to attack New York using a manned space rocket equipped with a dirty bomb. In an effort to gain Hitler’s favor, Goering established a lab and assembled a team of scientists to explore the possibility of a radioactive attack on American soil. Inspired by the ideas of Austrian engineer Eugen Saenger,... 

Rohingya Muslims have been trying to flee the sectarian violence in Myanmar and cross into neighboring countries in wooden boats. The UN refugee agency says about 13,000 people, mostly Rohingya Muslims, fled Burma (also known as Myanmar) by boat last year, with hundreds dying during the sea voyage. “We know of at least 485 people who have drowned or are lost at sea,” Vivian Tan, spokeswoman... 

A newly revealed top secret document indicates that the US once instituted a military plan by which it would launch an instantaneous “full nuclear attack” against both China and Russia, if attacked by one of the two, even accidentally or by conventional arms. The document, published Wednesday by the Washington-based National Security Archives, shows that until 1968, the US had a protocol in place... 

Pope Benedict XVI has claimed the entire Christian calendar is based on a miscalculation and that Jesus was born several years earlier than commonly believed. In the book Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives published on Wednesday, the octogenarian pontiff claims the ‘mistake’ was made by a sixth century monk known as Dionysius Exiguus. “The calculation of the beginning of our calendar... 

Superhumans, supercities and supercomputers: US intelligence’s vision of 2030 Things are about to get a little weird. This according to the National Intelligence Council, at least, a US-based coalition of spy agencies that has just released its predictions for what’s in store for the Earth in 2030. The NIC released on Monday “Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds,” an 140-page report that... 

Gay weddings will be held in churches under radical plans to be unveiled by David Cameron, it emerged today. The Prime Minister is to defy opposition from more than 100 Tory backbenchers to back religious groups hosting same-sex weddings. He will stop short of forcing groups which are against the policy from having to hold gay weddings, but will argue that homosexual couples should have the same rights... 

A view of the Dutch parliament in The Hague The Dutch parliament will approve a motion to abolish a law that criminalizes blasphemy, mainly due to strong support by the Liberal Party (VVD). On Wednesday, a majority of parties in the Netherlands stated that the blasphemy law was no longer relevant in the 21st century. The VVD party had refused to support efforts to annul the law during the tenure of... 

Egypt’s Constituent Assembly tasked with drafting the country’s new constitution has voted to keep “the principles of sharia” law as the main source of legislation in the country. The article’s language however, remains unchanged from the previous constitution used under the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak. The assembly gathered on Thursday to vote on each of the new draft constitution’s... 

Cleaning a monument to Vladimir Lenin, Krasnoyarsk. Russian lawmakers believe it is time to remove monuments to the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, Vladimir Lenin, from town and city squares across the country. Memorials to such “a controversial figure” should be re-located in museums or alleys with statues of other historic persons, suggested the author of the initiative, Liberal-Democratic... 

We are used since a century to denounce and comment the so-called decline of the West; the great essay of Spengler, unfit for the public of today, was published during the WW1 and it has been quickly fulfilled, Western Europe becoming an American colony and a bureaucratic disaster, both economically and spiritually. Her ageing population is rapidly disappearing and it will be replaced during the next... 

Jews should “rejoice” at the fact that Christian Europe is losing its identity in favor of Islam as “punishment” for its “wickedness” and “corruption,” a leading Israeli settler rabbi has announced. According to a report on YNet news, the well-known rabbi Baruch Efrati, a yeshiva head and community rabbi in the West Bank settlement of Efrat, made the remarks on a Jewish website in... 

Scientists have been analyzing different aspects of the collapse of the classic Maya civilization for years, offering theories such as social unrest, disease, warfare, drought and deforestation. A new study shows that climate change led to the end of the Classic Maya civilization, confirming an earlier drought hypothesis. The study, conducted by an international team of researchers, was published in... 

Egyptian Salafists shout slogans during a demonstration at Tahrir Square in Cairo to demand that sharia, or Islamic law, be the basis for legislation in a new constitution being draf ted for Egypt on November 9, 2012 More than 10,000 ultraconservative Muslims staged a demonstration in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday, demanding that Egypt’s new constitution be based on Sharia law. The protest reflects... 

It is the most powerful painting in the world. The work is extremely thought- provoking with a depiction of the human brain in an abstract form, against a surreal background. The Brain, an acrylic on canvas that measures 1.5 meters by 1.2 meters, will be up on the market for GBP 333,000,000 (over 500 Million Dollars) from the 12th of December this year. Kean Hughes, a fine arts dealer from London,...