American Buddhist Net

Mikulov, South Moravia, Feb 8 (CTK) - The Czech police detained three women from Tibet who wanted to illegally travel from Poland via the Czech Republic to Austria last week, foreigner police spokesman Roman Pittner told CTK Monday.

They claimed they want to join their relatives in the celebrations of the forthcoming Buddhist New Year falling on Sunday, Pittner said.

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Council of Europe chair says pharmaceutical companies conspired with WHO to make vast profits from fake hysteria

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THE HAGUE - A DUTCH teenager who wants to become the youngest person ever to sail around the world solo on a yacht will appeal against a court placing her under child supervision, her lawyer said on Thursday.

Laura Dekker, 14, needs to complete her trip before she turns 17 to break the current record. But in October last year, a court in Utrecht barred the teenager from setting off on a round-the-world solo yacht trip for at least eight months, citing safety concerns and placing her in care.

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AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The Internet potentially will lose one of its main sources of bestiality videos under a ban approved on Tuesday by the upper house of the Dutch parliament.

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THE security service MI5 has accused China of bugging and burgling UK business executives and setting up “honeytraps” in a bid to blackmail them into betraying sensitive commercial secrets.

A leaked MI5 document says that undercover intelligence officers from the People’s Liberation Army and the Ministry of Public Security have also approached UK businessmen at trade fairs and exhibitions with the offer of “gifts” and “lavish hospitality”.

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There is nothing hyperbolic in stating that a trial which has just started in Holland will have unparalleled significance for the future of Europe. It is not just about whether our culture will survive, but whether we are even allowed to state the fact that it is being threatened.

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This is what hate speech laws do. I hope Americans will never give up their right to free speech. I also hope that Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, China, and every other nation and region in the world will gain, or regain, this invaluable and fundamental human right. As matters now stand, the USA is the only country in the world with decent free speech protections. Tragically, there do exist Americans who want to abridge this all-important right. We believe they should be opposed every step of the way. Once the right is gone you may not even be permitted to speak about it. Think I am putting it too strongly? From the article: If found guilty of this Alice-in-Wonderland accusation of ‘offending a group of people’, Wilders faces up to two years in prison. For speech. ABN

Back in November, UK ISP Virgin Media announced that it would start using deep packet inspection gear to start riffling through user traffic. The goal was to search some of the leading P2P networks in order to measure copyrighted material passing through them. Today, the European Commission indicated that the plan is problematic, and it will keep a close eye on the trial.

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Vital evidence which could solve the mystery of the death of Government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly will be kept under wraps for up to 70 years.

In a draconian – and highly unusual – order, Lord Hutton, the peer who chaired the controversial inquiry into the Dr Kelly scandal, has secretly barred the release of all medical records, including the results of the post mortem, and unpublished evidence.

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Alert readers should have no trouble figuring that one out. ABN

Was a top contender for the Romanian presidency zapped out of the race by a shadowy parapsychologist enlisted by his rival? The claim might be dismissed as preposterous in most other EU countries. But here, in the homeland of Dracula, Mircea Geoana's assertion that a "negative energy attack" led to his narrow loss to re-elected President Traian Basescu has been the talk of the nation.

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President Obama sent two of his top national security officials to Moscow on Wednesday to clear the last hurdles to a new nuclear pact, but a revelation that U.S. missiles will soon be deployed near Russian territory could complicate the talks.

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Lodwijk Asscher, the deputy mayor, said prostitution should be banned between the hours of 4am and 8am in an effort to fight crime in the district, a famous destination for British stag parties.

"Only the biggest creeps and boozers are walking around at those hours," he said on Dutch radio. "Women really dread working then and sometimes the most vulnerable are used."

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New rules to be introduced by government decree will require people who upload videos onto the Internet to obtain authorization from the Communications Ministry similar to that required by television broadcasters, drastically reducing freedom to communicate over the Web, opposition lawmakers have warned.

The decree is ostensibly an enactment of a European Union (EU) directive on product placement and is due to go into effect at the end of January after being subjected to a nonbinding appraisal by parliament.

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New rules to be introduced by government decree will require people who upload videos onto the Internet to obtain authorization from the Communications Ministry similar to that required by television broadcasters, drastically reducing freedom to communicate over the Web, opposition lawmakers have warned.

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Reporting from London - Northern Ireland's largest Protestant paramilitary group announced Wednesday that it had finally surrendered all of its weapons, more than a decade after the historic Good Friday Agreement formally ended violent sectarian struggle in the province.

Independent monitors confirmed that the Ulster Defense Assn.'s guns and bombs had been put out of commission, meaning that the main armed organizations on both sides of the loyalist-republican divide have been disarmed.

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The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.

Privacy campaigners claim the images created by the machines are so graphic they amount to "virtual strip-searching" and have called for safeguards to protect the privacy of passengers involved.

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The shortage of donor sperm in the UK has prompted British women to travel to Denmark in the hope of conceiving a child.

Ten-month old Oscar burps and babbles - like any healthy baby. But Oscar's origins are unusual.

His father is an anonymous Danish sperm donor and if it had not been for a recent law change in Denmark, Oscar would not be here at all.

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A former soldier is haunted by the memory of the Christmas Day firing squad that killed Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena

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The gist of this, and most news stories on the subject, is that it is an embarrassment to Lithuania, which it is. But they were American prisons and similar ones had been constructed in 13 other European countries, according to this report. Seems we are the ones who should be most embarrassed about it. ABN

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - A Dutch teenager who went missing after child welfare authorities thwarted her attempt to become the youngest person to sail single-handed round the world has been found in the Dutch Antilles.

The Dutch Council for the Protection of Children said on Sunday that Laura Dekker, 14, had been found on the island of St. Maarten after being reported missing by relatives in The Netherlands on Friday.

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Former Lithuanian president Rolandas Paksas has claimed that his 2004 impeachment was orchestrated by the US because he refused to host CIA secret prisons in the country.

The statement was made during a parliamentary hearing into claims that at least eight al-Qaeda terror suspects were held at a facility just outside the capital Vilnius between 2004 and 2005.

"When I was a president, I knew that there were people who wanted to bring terror suspects to Lithuania. I think that my principal disagreement to do this led to the subsequent anti-presidential campaign and impeachment,” Paksas was quoted by NTV TV Channel as saying.

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Russian authorities have told Sky News that Western forces in Afghanistan are to blame for the country's status as the world's biggest heroin consumer.

The head of Russia's anti-narcotics federal agency says that British troops in Helmand Province are not doing enough to stem production of the world's deadliest drug.

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The head of Lithuanian intelligence resigned Monday in the wake of ABC News' exclusive report that the CIA operated a secret prison for al-Qaeda detainees in 2004 and 2005.

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Total financial collapse, once a problem only for developing countries, has now come to Europe. The International Monetary Fund is imposing its "austerity measures" on the outer circle of the European Union, with Greece, Iceland and Latvia the hardest hit. But these are not your ordinary third world debtor supplicants. Historically, the Vikings of Iceland repeatedly repulsed British invaders; Latvian tribes repulsed even the Vikings; and the Greeks conquered the whole Persian empire. If anyone can stand up to the IMF, these stalwart European warriors can.

Dozens of countries have defaulted on their debts in recent decades, the most recent being Dubai, which declared a debt moratorium on November 26, 2009. If the once lavishly-rich Arab emirate can default, more desperate countries can; and when the alternative is to destroy the local economy, it is hard to argue that they shouldn't. That is particularly true when the creditors are largely responsible for the debtor's troubles, and there are good grounds for arguing the debts are not owed. Greece's troubles originated when low interest rates that were inappropriate for Greece were maintained to rescue Germany from an economic slump. And Iceland and Latvia have been saddled with responsibility for private obligations to which they were not parties.

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MILAN (Reuters) - Souvenir vendors reported brisk business on Tuesday in statuettes of Milan's cathedral like the one hurled at Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in an attack at the weekend.

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Dharamsala, December 14: In a diplomatic note to Beijing on Thursday, Copenhagen said Denmark will oppose Tibetan independence and carefully consider China's reaction before inviting the Dalai Lama again.

"Denmark is fully aware of the importance and sensitivity of Tibet-related issues and attaches great importance to the view of the Chinese government on these issues," AFP reported the note as saying.

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Don’t use anti-terror laws to prevent pictures being taken, officers told

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Good he is saying that, but why was it ever necessary to say that? ABN

Six doctors have launched a legal action to demand that the inquest into weapons expert David Kelly's death is reopened.

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I would like to see a similar move here in the Bruce Ivins case. See this for the latest development in that case: Bruce Ivins' "therapist" accuser Duley was under house arrest when she colluded with FBI. ABN

In the cold night air, they gathered.

First in threes and fours, until it became a bigger group. They carried candles and their anger - upset that Switzerland had approved a vote to ban minarets, the prayer towers on top of mosques.

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