Exterminator Charged in Pa. Doctor's Murder

An exterminator named Joseph Smith was arrested and charged today in the strangling and burning death of Philadelphia pediatrician Melissa Ketunuti.Smith, 36, had been sent to Ketunuti's home on a service call where the two got into "some kind of argument" in Ketunuti's basement on Monday, Capt. James Clark of the Philadelphia police department said this morning."At her home...

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Cameron promises Britons contentious vote on EU future

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday promised Britons a vote on whether the country should stay in the European Union or leave, rattling London's biggest allies and some investors by raising the prospect of uncertainty and upheaval. Cameron announced the referendum would be held by the end of 2017, provided he wins the next election, and said that while Britain...

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Global elite cautiously optimistic as Davos opens

DAVOS: The world's top politicians and business leaders opened their annual Davos meeting on Wednesday, hoping they might finally have seen the back of a crippling global economic crisis.Kicking off a four-day extravaganza in the picturesque Swiss ski resort, the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, noted there had been "some respite and some stabilisation" on the...

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Justice Verma panel gets tough on sexual crimes, but rejects death for rape

NEW DELHI: In keeping with the public outrage over Nirbhaya's gang rape, the Justice J S Verma Committee has raised the bar of punishment for a wide range of existing and proposed sexual offences even as it rejected the demand for introducing death for rape.The report, released on Wednesday, has proposed codification of a stringent alternative to the life sentence, evolved through judicial activism...

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Scientists to resume work with lab-bred bird flu

WASHINGTON (AP) — International scientists who last year halted controversial research with the deadly bird flu say they are resuming their work as countries adopt new rules to ensure safety.The outcry erupted when two labs — in the Netherlands and the U.S. — reported they had created easier-to-spread versions of bird flu. Amid fierce debate about the oversight of such research and whether it might...

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Manti Te'o Tells Katie Couric His Emotions Were Real

Manti Te'o says that even though he was hoaxed by the supposed existence of a fake girlfriend, his inspirational story of playing through emotional pain "was all real and that's something that I can't fake."Te'o made his comments to Katie Couric which will air the exclusive interview on Thursday.Te'o, 21, has been alternately questioned and lampooned over his role in the hoax...

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Netanyahu appeals for votes amid high Israel turnout

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a frantic, last-minute appeal to supporters to rush to the polls after an unexpectedly high turnout in Tuesday's parliamentary election looked set to benefit center-left opponents. Netanyahu's rightist Likud party, running in a single bloc with the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu group, still seemed certain to win...

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5 foreigners still missing at Algeria hostage site

IN AMENAS: Algerian authorities searched on Tuesday for five foreigners still missing and tried to identify seven charred bodies, days after a bloody hostage crisis, a security source said."Still no news about the five missing foreigners," the source told AFP, after Algerian special forces launched a final assault on Saturday against Islamist gunmen at the remote desert gas plant where...

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I don't mind 'rediscovering' Bombay, Salman Rushdie says

True to magic realism, Salman Rushdie is worried about Indian cities vanishing. In an exclusive interview to TOI, he laughed, "This is going to make me sound ancient but I remember Juhu Beach when there weren't any buildings on it. You'd go through countryside and arrive at this amazing beach. I remember driving from Delhi to the Qutab Minar through countryside. Mehrauli was a little village - that's...

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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws

NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home...

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