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Big chill dampens X'mas bonhomie
7 dead in Iran quake
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‘Assange fathered a son at 19’
Sexual Assault Allegations
Al-Qaida planning poison attack in US
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Big chill dampens X'mas bonhomie
London, December 21 Eurocontrol, the umbrella group for air-traffic control across 38 countries, said more services were likely to operate on Tuesday after about 3,000 flights across Europe were cancelled on Monday. But cancellations remained widespread. British Airways said it expected to make a "significant number of cancellations" to its shorthaul services from London's Heathrow airport. "Severe weather continues to cause disruption to our operation and will do so in the run up to Christmas," the airline warned. Analysts believe the freezing conditions will hit BA's profit by around £10 million ($15.55 million) a day. Shares in BA were 1 per cent up at 268 pence by 1022 GMT, in line with the FTSE100 bluechip index, up 0.78 per cent. BAA, the company owned by Spain's Ferrovial which operates Heathrow, said its south runway would remain closed again on Tuesday, meaning the world's busiest international airport would operate at significantly reduced capacity. Thousands of passengers have been stranded at Heathrow for days as flights have been delayed and cancelled. The British government has relaxed regulations on night flights at Heathrow, allowing for arrivals until 0100 GMT each day until Christmas. London's Gatwick Airport re-opened at 0600 GMT after closing overnight. Flights to and from the Frankfurt airport, continental Europe's biggest, also resumed after the airport had been shut for several hours in the morning, operator Fraport said. "It is our goal to return to normal flight operations as quickly as possible," said a Fraport spokesman. In Belgium, handling agents at its main airport managed to get hold of de-icing fluid after saying on Monday they might run out, allowing the departure of some planes on Tuesday. Britain's Met Office has issued severe weather warnings for most of the country for the remainder of the week. Eurostar said it was running a restricted service due to the bad weather. Big queues of Eurostar passengers were building up at King's Cross St Pancras station in central London. — Reuters
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7 dead in Iran quake
Tehran, December 21 “So far the damage has been concentrated in villages in the areas of Sahraj. Seven bodies and hundreds of injured persons have been removed from the debris,” Mehr quoted Kerman governor Esmail Najjar as saying. “Considering the damages, the death toll is expected to rise,” he said. The quake struck at 10.12 pm last night (0012 IST) and was even felt in the bordering province of Sistan-Baluchestan. Mohsen Salehi, head of disaster management of Kerman province, said the communication lines in the area were down. — AFP
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‘Assange fathered a son at 19’
London, December 21 An investigation by the Daily Mail throws new light on his formative teenage years - the WikiLeaks founder had an affair with a 16-year-old girl when he was 18 and fathered a boy who is now 20-year-old. In the late eighties, Assange, his mother and stepbrother were living in a tiny bungalow in Dandenong Ranges, east of Melbourne. And it was at that time that he developed his obsession with the computers. “He didn’t go out much at all. He spent almost all his time in there with his Commodore computer. He rarely came out of the bedroom,” said his former neighbour. A year after, 18-year-old Assange met a local girl of 16, with whom he developed a relationship. Soon after, the couple moved a few miles away to a cottage. It was here his lover became pregnant. Even then he would spend hours on his computer daily, learning to hack into other computers as the web began to spread around the world. Their son Daniel was born when Assange’s girlfriend was 17, but it seems that even the arrival of a child was not enough to drag the fledgling-hacker away from his screen. “We’d see her walking down to the shops with the baby in a pushchair. She almost always seemed to be alone...,” recalled one former resident. Assange was already a computer hacker in October, 1991, when the police raided the couple’s house in Melbourne. He was charged with a number of offences relating to computer hacking. It was at that point that his girlfriend fled with their baby. He and his ex-girlfriend spent nine years battling for custody of their son, which ended with a 1999 agreement. Today, Daniel is 20 and is working for a software design company in Australia. Pictures identified as him on the Internet show he has a strong resemblance to his father. — ANI
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Sexual Assault Allegations London, December 21 In an interview at the mansion in Norfolk where he is staying under strict bail conditions, he said he feared he would be held “incommunicado” and gagged if he goes to Sweden. He claimed the two women making the allegations had gone to the Swedish police for advice rather than to push for charges. He told the BBC: “What is requested is that I be taken by force to Sweden and once there, be held incommunicado: That is not a circumstance under which natural justice can occur. I don’t need to go back to Sweden.He added: “It appears from the records that we do have that they (the women) went to the police for advice. They did not go to make a complaint.” “What they say is that they found out that they were mutual lovers of mine, and they had unprotected sex and they got into a tizzy about whether there was possibility of a sexual transmitted disease … they wanted me to have a test.” “That was a ridiculous thing to go to the police about.”Assange said the police “jumped in on this and bamboozled the women”.He said claims that he was a sexual predator who targeted women and deliberately had unprotected sex with them were “ridiculous”. In a separate interview, he said he was not promiscuous but just “really likes women”.Mr Assange said the allegations were made by women, one of whom he described as a “radical feminist”, who were seeking revenge.
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Al-Qaida planning poison attack in US
Washington, December 21 “We don’t have a specific target or time frame, just the intent,” the source said. Nevertheless, the authorities are not convinced that the outfit has the capability to actually carry out such an attack, the source added. The CBS News recently reported that the plot may involve the use of ricin or cyanide. White House's chief counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, has described AQAP as "now the most operationally active node of the Al Qaeda network". — IANS
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Pak test-fires Ghauri
UK cops sell goods on eBay Indian-origin airhostess held
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Snow and freezing temperatures grounded flights across northern Europe on Tuesday, while retailers fretted they would struggle to make up sales lost due to bad weather with just four shopping days to Christmas.
