Stretching from Assam, near China, to the Himalayas and the northwestern deserts of Rajasthan, the outage covered states where half of Indias 1.2 billion people live and embarrassed the government, which has failed to build up enough power capacity to meet soaring demand.

“Even before we could figure out the reason for yesterdays failure, we had more grid failures today,” said R. N. Nayak, chairman of the state-run Power Grid Corporation.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had vowed to fast-track stalled power and infrastructure projects as well as introduce free market reforms aimed at reviving Indias flagging economy. But he has drawn fire for dragging his feet.

By nightfall, power was back up in the humid capital, New Delhi and much of the north, but a senior official said only a third was restored in the rural state of Uttar Pradesh, itself home to more people than Brazil.

The cuts in such a widespread area of the world’s second most populous nation appeared to be one of the biggest in history, and hurt Indians pride as the country seeks to emerge as a major force on the international stage.

“Its certainly shameful. Power is a very basic amenity and situations like these should not occur,” said Unnayan Amitabh, 19, an intern with HSBC bank in New Delhi, before giving up on the underground train system and flagging down an auto-rickshaw to get home.

“They talk about big ticket reforms but cant get something as essential as power supply right.”

India power cut hits millions, among worlds worst outages | Reuters

The aggregating Web site RottenTomatoes.com suspended user comments on movie reviews of “The Dark Knight Rises” after commenters reacted harshly to negative reviews of the film and made profane and threatening remarks about the critics who wrote them.

Matt Atchity, the site’s editor-in-chief, said Tuesday it was the first time RottenTomatoes.com has suspended user comments, adding postings about “Dark Knight” reviews would likely be restored by the end of the week. The final film in director Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy opens Friday.

“The job of policing the comments became more than my staff could handle for that film, so we stopped the comments altogether,” said Atchity. “It just got to be too much hate based on reactions to reviews of movies that people hadn’t even seen.”

Rotten Tomatoes suspends comments on ‘Dark Knight’ after threats to critics.

Beijing – Chinese authorities have rounded up hundreds of activists in the capital Beijing, rights campaigners said on Monday, as they marked the 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

The detentions came as Washington urged Beijing to free all those still jailed over the demonstrations on 4 June 1989, when hundreds, if not thousands, of peaceful protesters were shot and killed by soldiers.

The anniversary of the brutal army action in the heart of Beijing is always hugely sensitive, but particularly so this year ahead of a once-a-decade handover of power marred by fierce in-fighting in the ruling Communist Party.

“They brought in a lot of buses and were rounding up petitioners at the Beijing South rail station on Saturday night,” Zhou Jinxia, a petitioner from northeast Chinas Liaoning province said.

“There were between 600 to 1 000 petitioners from all over China. We were processed, we had to register and then they started sending people back to their home towns.”

Police made it clear that the round up of petitioners – people who gather at central government offices in Beijing to seek redress for rights violations in their localities – was to prevent them from protesting on 4 June, she said.

China still considers the 4 June demonstrations a “counter-revolutionary rebellion” and has refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing or consider compensation for those killed, more than two decades later.

The government attempts to block any public discussion or remembrance of the events by hiding away key dissidents in the run-up to 4 June each year, taking them into custody or placing them under house arrest.

Any mention of the 1989 protests is banned in Chinese state media, and the subject is largely taboo in China. Searches on Chinas popular social media sites for 4 June, the number 23 and the word “candle” were blocked on Monday.

Activists detained on Tiananmen anniversary | News24

Nearly half of Florida high school students failed the reading portion of the state’s new toughened standardized test, education officials said on Friday.

Results this year from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test showed 52 percent of freshman students and 50 percent of sophomores scored at their grade levels.

Students in the 10th grade must pass the exam in order to eventually graduate but can retake it if they fail.

The results came days after the Florida State Board of Education voted to lower the standards needed to pass the writing part of the test, known as FCAT. The test is administered in public elementary, middle and high schools.

The board took the action in an emergency meeting when preliminary results indicated only about one-third of Florida students would have passed this year.

Half of Florida high school students fail reading test – Yahoo! News Canada

Pakistan on Sunday blocked access to Twitter in response to “blasphemous” material posted by users on the microblogging and social networking website, a senior government official said.

“This has been done under the directions of the Ministry of Information Technology. It’s because of blasphemous content,” said Mohammed Yaseen, chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).

“They (the ministry) have been discussing with them (Twitter) for some time now, requesting them to remove some particular content,” he said.

Pakistan blocked access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and about 1,000 other websites for nearly two weeks in May 2010 over blasphemous content.

Any representation of the Prophet Mohammad is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous by many Muslims, who constitute the overwhelming majority in Pakistan.

PTA chairman Yaseen did not specify which users or messages had prompted the ban. The Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan said its members have been asked to block Twitter indefinitely, but no reason has been provided by the government.

Pakistan blocks Twitter access over blasphemous content | Reuters

Police chiefs have banned IT staff from using the word blacklist over fears it is racist.

The computer term whitelist — used to denote a list of acceptable contacts — has also been outlawed.

In an email, Scotland Yard warned staff the words were no longer “appropriate”.

Security services chief Brian Douglas wrote: “IB Information Board are uncomfortable with the use of the term Whitelist and I presume Blacklist.

“I am sure we can appreciate the sensitivity around the use of such terminology today so please ensure it is no longer used.” He suggested using green and red list instead.

Sources at the Met — where 20 officers are under investigation over alleged racism — branded the decision “bizarre”.

One said: “Do we really think these words are discriminatory? The truth is they’re nothing to do with race whatsoever and are very common IT terms. Banning them won’t solve any genuine problems the Met has with racism.”

Scotland Yard said: “This is not a change in policy.  It is a change in internal Information Communications Technology terminology which reflects a more appropriate use of language.”

Police chiefs ban the word ‘blacklist’ over fears that it is racist | The Sun |News

Prisoners go to desperate lengths for food: eating rats or eating their own vomit to alleviate hunger. “Everything we ate was horrendous,” says Shin. “But the worst thing was corn kernels picked out of cow dung.”

His father, whose fate is unknown, became a prisoner for being the brother of two young men who fled south during the Korean war. What is known is that Kim Il Sung had his own interpretation of the power of three, stating that “enemies of class, whoever they are, their seed must be eliminated through three generations”. His mother’s name was Jang Hye Gyung. She never told her son why she was imprisoned.

Park Yong Chul was a well-travelled North Korean who’d enjoyed a life of relative luxury before arriving at Camp 14 in 2004. Shin was instructed to befriend Park — and extract a confession. Through him, Shin learned about the existence of other countries, televisions, computers but mostly, he learned about food. Park described chicken, pork and beef, leading Shin to make his first free decision: he chose not to snitch on Park, instead hatching a plan for them to escape together. “Hearing about the food he’d eaten in the outside world was the main trigger,” recalls Shin. “I wanted to eat that kind of food — things unimaginable within the camp.”

Park was electrocuted during the escape as he squeezed through the electric fence. Shin suffered only burns, a small price after years of torture. His body bears many scars — his finger was chopped off by guards who also stuck a hook through his stomach and suspended him over a fire.

Why don’t more people escape? “People don’t know about the outside world. There’s also the systematic brainwashing — ‘I’ve been born as a criminal, I have to live as a criminal until I die and that’s my fate’.”

I thought the outside world was paradise, says the only North Korean to escape from prison camp – London Life – Life & Style – Evening Standard

The bodies were among a herd of 22 animals massacred in a helicopter-borne attack by professionals who swooped over their quarry.

The scene beneath the rotor blades would have been chilling – panicked mothers shielding their young, hair-raising screeches and a mad scramble through the blood-stained bush as bullets rained down from the sky.

When the shooting was over, all of the herd lay dead, one of the worst such killings in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo in living memory.

“It’s been a long time since weve seen something like this,” said Dr Tshibasu Muamba, head of international cooperation for the Congolese state conservation agency, ICCN, as he surveyed the macarbre scene at Garamba National Park.

After the slaughter, the killers set about removing their tusks and genitals before likely smuggling them through South Sudan or Uganda, which form part of an Ivory Road linking Africa to Asia.

Elephant and rhino poaching is surging, conservationists say, an illegal piece of Asias scramble for African resources, driven by the growing purchasing power of the regions newly affluent classes.

Scene of unimaginable horror as helicopter-borne poachers massacre 22 elephants | Mail Online

As many as 100,000 women in Britain have undergone female genital mutilations with medics in the UK offering to carry out the illegal procedure on girls as young as 10, it has been reported.

Investigators from The Sunday Times said they secretly filmed a doctor, dentist and alternative medicine practitioner who were allegedly willing to perform circumcisions or arrange for the operation to be carried out.

The doctor and dentist deny any wrongdoing.

The practice, which involves the surgical removal of external genitalia and in some cases the stitching of the vaginal opening, is illegal in Britain and carries up to a 14 year prison sentence.

It is also against the law to arrange FGM.

Cases of Female Genital Mutilation are increasing across the UK but not one person has been prosecuted for any offences

Known as ‘cutting’, the procedure is traditionally carried out for cultural reasons and in Africa and with large numbers of immigration from countries like Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia it is becoming more common in the UK.

It is believed to be proof of a girl’s ‘purity’ for when she marries, but victims often suffer in silence and are rarely given anaesthetic.

They frequently suffer long-term damage and pain and often struggle to stand or walk properly.

Supermodel turned UN ambassador Waris Dirie was mutilated aged 5

Research suggests that every year up to 6,000 girls in London are at risk of the potentially fatal procedure, and more than 22,000 in the UK as a whole.

The Metropolitan Police said since 2008, it had received 166 reports of people who fear they are at risk of FGM but it has failed to bring forward a single perpetrator.

It is the same for all 43 forces across England and Wales with no convictions for the offence ever taking place.

Only two doctors have ever been struck off by The General Medical Council since 1980.

The Sunday Times uncovered a respected dentist who was prepared to circumcise two girls, aged 10 and 13 and a GP who referred an undercover reporter to the dentist.

They also spoke to a supplier who deals in alternative medicine who offered to circumcise a 10 year-old girl for £750.

100,000 women undergo brutal sexual mutilation illegally in Britain | Mail Online

Egyptian husbands will soon be legally allowed to have sex with their dead wives – for up to six hours after their death.

The controversial new law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament.

It will also see the minimum age of marriage lowered to 14 and the ridding of women’s rights of getting education and employment.

Controversial: The ‘farewell intercourse’ law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament

Egypt’s National Council for Women is campaigning against the changes, saying that ‘marginalising and undermining the status of women would negatively affect the country’s human development’.

Dr Mervat al-Talawi, head of the NCW, wrote to the Egyptian People’s Assembly Speaker Dr Saad al-Katatni addressing her concerns.

Egyptian journalist Amro Abdul Samea reported in the al-Ahram newspaper that Talawi complained about the legislations which are being introduced under ‘alleged religious interpretations’.

The subject of a husband having sex with his dead wife arose in May 2011 when Moroccan cleric Zamzami Abdul Bari said marriage remains valid even after death.

He also said that women have the right to have sex with her dead husband, alarabiya.net reported.

It seems the topic, which has sparked outrage, has now been picked up on by Egypt’s politicians.

Outrage as Egypt plans ‘farewell intercourse law’ so husbands can have sex with dead wives up to six hours AFTER their death | Mail Online