Many of the sexual attacks on women during protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square are organized with as many as 300 men participating, activists say. Activists describe a tactic that has become known as the "circle of hell," Ahram Online reports. They say the men form two long lines and move through the crowds in the square. Once the groups find one or two women alone they form a circle around them, trapping them. Masa Amir, a researcher at Nazra for Feminist Studies, said the attackers continue to w

A man convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend by dousing her with gasoline and setting her on fire was executed in Texas on Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court refused his final appeal.Carl Blue, 48, was convicted of the September 1994 death of Carmen Richards-Sanders, 38, at her apartment in Bryan, about 160 kilometers northwest of Houston. Blue also tossed gasoline on a man in the apartment, but he survived and testified against Blue, who claimed the attack was a prank gone wrong.In his final

A South Korean activist has sent packages of data verifying South Korea's ownership of the Dokdo islets to Japan's media outlets as part of his protest against the neighboring country's Friday event to promote its territorial claims to the islets.Seo Kyoung-duk, a professor at Sungshin Women's University and activist helping promote Korea's Dokdo ownership, said he sent the packages to about 120 Japanese newspapers and broadcasting firms last week while he was visiting Kyoto.The packages include

A former football player at Southern Utah University has pleaded guilty to charges he downloaded child pornography in 2010, officials say.Cameron Anthony Morgan, 22, was charged last year with 10 counts of second-degree felony sexual exploitation of a minor.Morgan's attorney stipulated during a preliminary hearing Wednesday in Cedar City that child pornography was on his client's computer.Morgan pleaded guilty to all 10 counts.In court documents, Morgan had said he accidentally received the chil

South Korean stocks traded 0.47 percent higher late Friday morning due to gains in carmakers and shipbuilders, analysts said.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) climbed 9.46 points to 2,024.68 as of 11:20 a.m.Carmakers led the market gain, with No. 1 player Hyundai Motor advancing 1.39 percent and its smaller affiliate Kia Motors adding 0.73 percent. Top auto parts manufacturer Hyundai Mobis moved up 0.65 percent.Shipbuilders also gathered ground, with Hyundai Heavy Industrie

South Korean handset maker LG Electronics Inc. said Friday it will release its flagship Optimus G smartphone in Europe this month.LG said the 4.7-inch display phone that runs on Qualcomm Inc.'s Snapdragon S4 Pro processor will go on sale in Sweden this month before being released in France and Germany.The move comes after LG released the premium smartphone in Canada, Japan, South Korea and the United States as part of its efforts to regain its presence in the mobile market.The company has sold m

South Korean stocks got off to a weak start on Friday, tracking overnight losses on Wall Street, analysts said.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) fell 6.68 points, or 0.33 percent, to 2,008.54 in the first 15 minutes of trading.Shares lost ground across the board, with market behemoth Samsung Electronics losing 1.35 percent, and top steelmaker POSCO falling 0.82 percent. No. 2 carmaker Kia Motors moved down 0.73 percent.U.S. stocks ended lower Thursday on concerns that the F

State-run power company Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) is facing the worst debt problems among public organizations due to government regulations, a report said Friday.The report by the Korea Institute of Public Finance classify public organizations in four categories in terms of financial stability -- very dangerous, dangerous, cautious and safe -- and said that KEPCO's financial status is "very dangerous" given its current debt problems.KEPCO received the worst grading as its debt came to

The United States and Japan will discuss North Korea's latest provocation of conducting its third nuclear test during the upcoming summit talks, the White House said Thursday.The U.S. President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet on Friday in Washington. In a conference call with reporters, Daniel Russel, the senior advisor for Asian affairs at the National Security Council, said the leaders of the two countries are expected to exchange opinions on the North Korean issu

Another person suffering from a SARS-like virus has died in Saudi Arabia, the World Health Organization said Thursday, bringing the worldwide number of fatalities from the mystery illness to seven.The Saudi health ministry had informed the U.N.'s health body that the patient had been hospitalized on January 29 and had died on February 10, WHO said in a statement.A laboratory had confirmed on February 18 that the person had died from the so-called novel coronavirus, or NCoV, it added.This brings

The dramatic shooting was something out of a violent action movie with bullets flying from a black Range Rover at a gray Maserati as the vehicles raced toward a red light on the Las Vegas Strip, the city's main boulevard.Beneath the neon lights, police say, the Maserati ran a red light at a busy intersection and smashed into a taxi that exploded into flames early Thursday, killing the two people inside.Three more cars and a utility truck also collided at a crossroads home to several large casino

U.N. nuclear inspectors recently counted nearly 200 advanced machines fully or partially installed at Iran's main uranium enrichment site, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported Thursday, confirming diplomats' accounts that Tehran has begun a major upgrade of a program that can be used to make atomic arms.Iran denies it wants such weapons and says it is enriching only to make reactor fuel and for scientific and medical purposes under international law specifically allowing such activiti

Ex-U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico has revealed he fathered a son outside his marriage over 30 years ago with a daughter of Senate colleague Paul Laxalt.The son was identified as Adam Paul Laxalt, now a lawyer in Nevada, in the statement given to the Albuquerque (N.M.) Journal by Domenici, now 80, who served six terms in the Senate, and the son's mother, Michelle Laxalt of Alexandria, Va., the newspaper said.Michelle Laxalt is the daughter of Paul Laxalt, who represented Nevada in the Sena

Sales at the country's major discount outlet chains plunged from a year earlier last month with sales of department stores also dropping significantly, the government said Thursday, pointing to worsening consumer sentiments here.The combined sales of the country's three major discount outlet chains fell 24.6 percent from the same period last year in January, according to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy. The three outlet chains are Lotte Mart, E-Mart and Homeplus.The ministry attributed such a

Sony unveiled a new-generation PlayStation 4 system on Wednesday and laid out its vision for the "future of gaming" in a world rich with mobile gadgets and play streamed from the Internet cloud.At a press event in New York, computer entertainment unit chief Andrew House said PS4 "represents a significant shift from thinking of PlayStation as a box or console to thinking of the PlayStation 4 as a leading place for play."PS4 was designed to get to know players, ideally to the point of being able t

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Wednesday that France would not give in to "terrorists" after the kidnapping of seven members of a French family in northern Cameroon.Seeming to exclude the possibility of paying a ransom, Fabius told the National Assembly: "We must do the maximum (to free the hostages) but nothing would be worse than yielding. We will not yield to terrorist groups."The family -- a couple, their children aged five, eight, 10 and 12 and an uncle -- were snatched in northern Ca

In a disheartening signal to world powers at upcoming Iran talks, Tehran has started installing high-tech machines at its main uranium enrichment site that are capable of accelerating production of reactor fuel and _ with further upgrading _ the core of nuclear warheads, diplomats said Wednesday.Iran already announced last week that it had begun mounting the new enriching centrifuges, but one diplomat said at the time that the announcement was premature with only a “small number” on site and not

The stock market posted its biggest loss this year on news that Federal Reserve officials suggested the central bank scale back its effort to keep borrowing costs low.Minutes from the Fed's January meeting seemed to catch investors by surprise when they were released at 2 p.m. EST. Several Fed policymakers worried that the bank's program of buying $85 billion of bonds each month could eventually unsettle financial markets or cause the bank to take losses. Even so, most of the Fed officials thoug

Scientists have discovered a 200-kilometer-wide impact zone in the Australian outback they believe was caused by a massive asteroid smashing into Earth more than 300 million years ago.Andrew Glikson, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University, said the asteroid measuring 10 to 20 kilometers in diameter was a giant compared to the plunging meteor that exploded above Russia a week ago.While that event set off a shockwave that shattered windows and hurt almost 1,000 people in the Urals

An Oklahoma man was killed at his home by a mysterious fire, as investigators say they have not ruled out spontaneous combustion as cause of death, U.S. media reported Tuesday.The body of the 65-year-old victim was discovered by his neighbors on Monday who rushed to his home after seeing smoke coming out. They found completely charred remains of the victim in his kitchen, but no other damage was done to the home. Sheriff Ron Lockhart of the Sequoyah County, who reportedly spent 20 years as an ar