An unidentified man is in critical condition with suspected ricin poisoning after staying in a Las Vegas hotel room where the potentially deadly substance was found, police said on Friday.

The FBI said the incident was not thought to be terrorism related.

Amy Winehouse faces no further action in connection with her husband's alleged attempt to pervert the course of justice, police have said.

Blake Fielder-Civil, 25, from Camden, north London, is charged with trying to pervert the course of justice and inflicting grievous bodily harm.

The singer was interviewed by police in December but is no longer required.

He pleaded not guilty to both charges at Snaresbrook Crown Court on Friday. He was remanded in custody until April.

The singer was questioned by police in December before being released on police bail to return for further questioning at a later date.

The Indian government is to cancel the entire debt of the country's small farmers in a giant scheme that will cost 600bn rupees ($15bn; £7.6bn).

The move is a centrepiece of India's latest budget, with the government also increasing education spending by 20% and health funding by 15%.

Turkey says its troops have withdrawn from northern Iraq after a week-long offensive against Kurdish PKK rebels.

In a statement on its website, Turkey's military said it had achieved its goals, and there was no question of any foreign influence on the decision.

George "dub-u" Bush spoke out this week and offered Turkey some advice on their Incursion into Iraq..They must be in and out, No hangin' about. The incursion must be Temporary....

Pot -kettle -Black.

A worker at the Houses of Parliament has been arrested on suspicion of helping protesters to stage a rooftop protest at Westminster to demonstrate against Heathrow's expansion, police said on Friday.

The 26-year-old, who has worked for at least one MP and one peer, was held at his Westminster home and questioned at a central London police station.

He was arrested for aiding and abetting a criminal offence of trespass under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, Scotland Yard said. He has not been named.

"The blast occurred after people had offered prayers and pall bearers were carrying the coffin for a police salute," said Deputy Superintendent Karamat Shah. He was among more than 500 mourners at the funeral for a senior colleague in Swat district.

The policeman being buried was one of three policemen killed earlier on Friday when their van struck a roadside bomb in another region of North West Frontier Province, where Taliban and al Qaeda fighters are active.

Mohammad Khan, the senior doctor at the hospital in Saidu Sharif in Swat, said 34 bodies had been received and more than 50 people were being treated for wounds after the attack.

But intelligence officials said the death toll was at least 38, and Shah said he saw some people carrying bodies of relatives home to prepare them for burial.

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe denounced his opponents as charlatans and witches as he launched his election manifesto on Friday and promised to give stakes in foreign-owned mines to locals.

Zimbabwe is in the grip of severe economic crisis, with inflation at 100,000 percent, but the opposition's failure to unite behind a single candidate has strengthened the 84-year-old's chances of re-election on March 29.

Mugabe faces former ally Simba Makoni, standing as an independent, and Morgan Tsvangirai, a long time rival of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

"Let the people's voice thunder across the whole country, rejecting once and for all the British stooges, the political witches and political prostitutes and the political charlatans," Mugabe told supporters.

"This is the official start of our march to another election victory ... We certainly are going to win, it is the margin we are trying to build," he said.

Critics accused Mugabe of wrecking Zimbabwe's economy, but he blames Western sanctions for the world's highest inflation rate, high unemployment and shortages of fuel, food and electricity.Mugabe said his government would boost agricultural production by continuing to equip those farmers who had benefited from his seizure of white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.
char·la·tan (shär'lə-tən) Pronunciation Key
n. A person who makes elaborate, fraudulent, and often voluble claims to skill or knowledge; a quack or fraud.

A senior Israeli defence official said on Friday that Palestinians firing rockets from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip would bring upon themselves what he termed a "shoah", the Hebrew word for holocaust or disaster.

The word is rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi Holocaust of Jews. Many Israelis are loath to countenance its use to describe other contemporary events. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the Palestinians faced "new Nazis".

At Edelstein boarding school, the schoolboys wear lip-gloss, the headmistress has a weakness for homoerotic comic books, and there is only one subject: how to serve female visitors.

Welcome to Tokyo's first schoolboy cafe, the latest in a flurry of eateries in Japan where customers and waiters role play themes from manga comics.

In keeping with the schoolboy theme, waiters with manicured hands and soft voices pretend to be teenage students, chatting and flirting with well-dressed Japanese women playing the roles of benefactresses visiting the school.

"Chemical Ali", Saddam Hussein's cousin convicted for his role in killing up to 180,000 Kurds in the 1980s, will hang within days after Iraq's presidency council approved his execution, officials said on Friday.

A motorist who ploughed into a cyclist while sending a text from her mobile phone was jailed for four years on Friday.

Hotel manager Keira Coultas crashed into Jordan Wickington after the cyclist jumped a red light at a junction in Southampton in February last year.

The 25-year-old mother from Hythe, near Southampton, had been answering a text message from her estranged husband at the time, a court had heard.

Venus is made of the same stuff of Earth, but is bone-dry, hot enough to melt lead and has a chokingly thick atmosphere. It even spins backwards.

Astronomers have spent decades trying to explain Venus' mysterious properties. Now one scientist thinks the planet's formation may explain all: Two huge, protoplanetary bodies collided head-on and merged to form our planetary neighbor, but obliterated nearly all water in the process.

"The probability that two protoplanets collided to form Venus is not at all implausible," said John Huw Davies, a geodynamicist at Cardiff University in the U.K. who developed the idea.

Venezuela's state oil company has asked a British court to lift a $12 billion (6 billion pound) freeze granted to U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil pending arbitration over the seizure of oil fields in the South American country.

Lawyers for PDVSA argued on Thursday that the court had no right to impose the freeze because the assets under dispute, the parties and the arbitration that Exxon (XOM.N: Quote, Profile , Research) has applied for were not in or connected with Britain.

EBay Inc. has settled a seven-year patent dispute with MercExchange LLC that prompted an important intellectual-property ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court. The online auction company said in a statement Thursday that it bought the three MercExchange patents it had been accused of violating. The price was not disclosed; eBay said the figure would not materially affect its financial results.

Billionaire Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling would feel "exploited" if a fan's unofficial encyclopaedic companion to the boy wizard series was published, she said in court papers made public on Thursday.

Steve Vander Ark has written "The Harry Potter Lexicon" -- a 400-page reference book based on his popular fan Web site (www.hp-lexicon.org). Rowling and Warner Bros. are suing RDR Books, which planned to publish the book last November.

"I am very frustrated that a former fan has tried to co-opt my work for financial gain," Rowling, 42, who wrote the seven hugely successful Harry Potter novels, said in a declaration filed in U.S. District Court this week.

"I believe that RDR's book constitutes a Harry Potter 'rip off' of the type I have spent years trying to prevent, and that both I, as the creator of this world, and fans of Harry Potter, would be exploited by its publication," she said.

The lawsuit filed in October names RDR Books, an independent publisher based in Michigan, and unidentified persons as defendants. It seeks to stop publication and requests damages for copyright and federal trademark infringement and any profits to be gained.

Rowling has said she plans to write her own definitive Harry Potter encyclopaedia, which would include material that did not make it into the novels, and donate the proceeds to charity. The novels have sold more than 400 million copies.

"I feel intensely protective, firstly, of the literary world I spent so long creating, and secondly, of the fans who bought my books in such large numbers," said the writer ranked by Forbes as the world's 48th most powerful celebrity.

He's a multi-millionaire maverick entrepreneur, part-time daredevil and now Richard Branson has beaten Jesus Christ in a survey to find the top role model for children.

A federal appeals court denied on Thursday Conrad Black's request to remain free on bond during the appeal of his convictions for fraud and obstructing justice, though the judges indicated his appeal had at least a chance.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit extended the bond of two other former Hollinger International Inc executives convicted along with Black in July, but did not tip their hand on which way the court may ultimately rule on the appeal.

The ruling means in all likelihood the flamboyant former press baron and member of the House of Lords must surrender on Monday to a Florida prison to begin serving his 6-1/2-year sentence.

"Defendant Black must report to prison on or before March 3, as required by the district court's order," the panel wrote.

In December, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve sentenced Black for obstructing justice and defrauding shareholders of Hollinger International, once the world's third-largest publisher of English-language newspapers where internal auditors once accused Black of operating the chain as a "corporate kleptocracy."

But there is a Slowdown.