Daniel Bedingfield launches EP

The X Factor’s flamboyant judge Daniel Bedingfield is out to show that he has more to give than fancy pants and harsh comments. The New Zealand born, British raised, singer earned a Brit Award, scored six UK Top 10 singles and sold four million album from 2001 to 2004, now almost a decade later he’s back with a seven track EP

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Starbucks Looks for a Fresh Jolt

I’m walking up to a starbucks with Howard Schultz when we spot a barista standing in the parking lot, passing 11 cups of coffee through a car window. “I’ve never seen that,” says Schultz, who took over Starbucks in 1987 and transformed it from a six-shop seller of beans into a thread that runs through our social tapestry

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The Two-Faced Veil: Symbol of Patriarchy or Islamic Feminism?

For Muslims immigrants in America, the days following 9/11 were a harrowing encounter with fear-fueled American hate. IPod bearing, second-generation techies faced insults in Silicon Valley parking lots; schoolgirls wearing head scarves were attacked; and mosques across the country were vandalized or set ablaze.

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Police: Man ran down ‘too Westernized’ daughter

Arizona police are looking for a man who they allege ran down his daughter and her friend because he believed his daughter had become “too Westernized.” Peoria, Arizona, police said Wednesday that Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48, struck his 20-year-old daughter, Noor Faleh Almaleki, and her friend Amal Edan Khalaf with a vehicle he was driving in a parking lot Tuesday afternoon. Faleh Hassan Almaleki was angry with his daughter “as she had become too ‘Westernized’ and was not living according to [the family’s] traditional Iraq[i] values,” Peoria police said in a statement released Wednesday

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A Visit to India’s First Wal-Mart (a.k.a. Best Price)

Amritsar lives in many centuries at once. This holiest city of the Sikhs is home to their most revered shrine, the mystical and awe-inspiring Golden Temple, where nihangs — members of an armed Sikh order — live on in traditions dating back centuries, sporting distinctive electric blue tunics and a panoply of weapons, even speaking a unique martial dialect of the Punjabi language. Other parts of this prosperous merchant city wears Levi’s, hanging out at cafes or following the latest diet fad or carrying the latest iPod

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California officer admits to sexual assault while on duty

A former California police officer accused of sexually assaulting a motorist during a traffic stop pleaded guilty in federal court, the Central District of California U.S. Attorney said Friday. Feliciano Sanchez, 34, admitted in court Thursday that while on duty on May 16, 2007, he pulled over a female driver in a traffic stop and forced her to perform oral sex on him, according to a news release from U.S

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