Brazil tops worldwide H1N1 deaths, officials say

Brazil has confirmed 557 deaths caused by H1N1 flu, the highest total in the world, the nation’s Health Ministry says. The United States has counted 522 fatalities through Thursday, and nearly 1,800 people had died worldwide through August 13, U.S. and global health officials said

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Attacks, arrests slowing online news from Iran

Bloody attacks and midnight arrests, combined with a regime growing more technologically savvy, have begun stemming the flow of online information from dissidents in Iran, activists and human rights officials say. Once emboldened by their ability to dodge the government and spread news about their protests to the world, many in the youth-driven protest movement, they say, are now scared of the consequences of getting caught. “It’s absolutely chilling,” said Drewery Dyke, a member of human rights group Amnesty International’s Iran team.

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How an Austrian Murder Brought Out the Army in Punjab, India

Caste rivalries and a fight over offerings at a cash-rich Sikh temple in Vienna echoed far and wide on Monday as sectarian violence once again erupted in India’s Sikh majority state of Punjab. At least two people have been killed and 14 injured since news reached Punjab yesterday via text messages and mobile phones that a Sikh preacher of a lower-caste sect, 57-year-old Sant Rama Nand, had been shot dead in a clash in a temple in Austria

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Financial Woes Spread to Smaller Banks

If you want to know whether the banking crisis is in the third inning or the ninth, consider Corus Bankshares. The Chicago regional bank has made just over $4 billion in commercial real estate loans. The recently completed government bank stress tests assumed that as many as 12% of all such loans could go bad in the next two years

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Backgrounder: The Dutch royal family

Two people were killed and 12 wounded when a car careered into a crowd of people watching the Dutch royal family riding past in an open-top bus Thursday. The accident occurred during Queen’s Day, a national holiday celebrated every April 30 to mark the queen’s birthday. Queen Beatrix’s, the current monarch, birthday is actually January 31

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Iraqi security forces conduct raids in former insurgent hot spot

Iraqi police and soldiers on Saturday launched major raids in a once-notorious insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad. A police official in the Anbar province city of Falluja told CNN that a large number of security forces were scouring its Sinaie district for an array of weapons — machine guns, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms.

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Facebook Takes a Dive: Why Social Networks Are Bad Businesses

The business of having online sites with content created by amateurs to be viewed by other amateurs never had a reasonable chance of making money. The fact that at one point Facebook had a $15 billion valuation, that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp bought MySpace, and that Google bought YouTube only proves the “greater fool” theory. YouTube was started in 2005 and MySpace in 2003

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Rare dolphins discovered deep in jungle

The Irrawaddy, one of the world’s rarest species of freshwater dolphins, have been found in surprisingly large numbers deep in the waterlogged jungles of Bangladesh. Conservationists thought the Irrawaddy had dwindled in number to just a few hundred, but they have now counted almost 6,000 of them in the Sundarban mangrove forests and the adjacent waters of the Bay of Bengal. The forests of the Sundarban — Bengali for “beautiful forest” — lie at the delta of the Ganges and two other rivers on the Bay of Bengal.

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Angola rabies outbreak kills 83 children

A severe rabies epidemics has claimed the lives of at least 83 children within three months in Angola’s capital, Luanda, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said. Describing the situation as “very worrying,” WHO rabies expert Francois Meslin told CNN: “This is a huge number and could be the tip of the iceberg.” A doctor working at the country’s biggest referral hospital Hospital Pediatrico David Bernardino said staff were unable to save any of the children as rabies vaccines had run out. Some of the children were also brought into the hospital too late to be saved, Luis Bernardino, head of the hospital told UN humanitarian organization IRIN.

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