Voting begins in South African elections

South Africans headed to the polls Wednesday, in elections that the ruling African National Congress is expected to win in a landslide. Polls indicate that the ANC might lose its two-thirds parliamentary majority. The ANC, led by Jacob Zuma, has gained votes in every election since 1994, but a new player, Congress of the People, threatens the party’s grip on power.

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Scientists Claim CIA Misused Work on Sleep Deprivation

German and French researchers whose work has been cited by the CIA and the Justice Department to help justify the legality of harsh interrogation techniques, including prolonged sleep deprivation, condemned the Bush Administration on Tuesday for misusing their scientific findings. “It is total nonsense to cite our study in this context,” said Dr.

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Twitter, WordPress execs in Iraq to help country use new media

Mobile phone use is nearly universal in Iraq. However, the country is served by various phone networks, resulting in a "bit of comical" situation — many residents carry at least two phones from separate providers to ensure that they are always connected

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Top jobs for night owls

At 2 a.m., most workers are asleep in their beds, blissfully unaware that their alarm clocks will sound in a few short hours. But for 41 percent of Americans this is the time of day is when they are most productive, according to a 2005 poll by the National Sleep Foundation. You can probably pick these folks out of your own office — they’re your co-workers who slouch into work, never a minute early but often several late, bleary-eyed and lackadaisical during the earlier part of the workday

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How Somalia’s Fishermen Became Pirates

Amid the current media frenzy about Somali pirates, it’s hard not to imagine them as characters in some dystopian Horn of Africa version of Waterworld. We see wily corsairs in ragged clothing swarming out of their elusive mother ships, chewing narcotic khat while thumbing GPS phones and grappling hooks.

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