Mikhail Boytenko, editor of Russia's respected Sovfracht maritime journal, said that the ship may have been carrying a secret cargo

smells of some sort of state involvement.

European waters

Piracy is rare in European waters with only a couple of recent incidents involving private yachts in the Mediterranean.

GHOST SHIP?

safety of the 15-member Russian crew were raised after the Malta Maritime Authority said it received reports the ship had been boarded by armed men in masks posing as anti-drugs police in Swedish waters on July 24.

Swedish authorities said none of its law enforcement agencies had been involved.

"unlawfully infringed" on i4i's patent.

ban would take effect in mid-October. Davis also ordered Microsoft to pay i4i more than $240 million in damages and costs.

Calderon who proposed the decriminalization legislation.

It makes sense to distinguish between small-time users and big-time dealers,

Up to 40 milligrams of methamphetamine, a synthetic and especially harmful drug, is permitted under the legislation, as is up to 50 milligrams of heroin.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, however, said in April that legalization "would be a failed law enforcement strategy for both the U.S. and Mexico."

effort to get some foreclosures off the market and to partner with outside groups and companies to convert those properties into affordable housing.

When you go up and down the streets, 20 to 40 percent of the houses there don’t even have people living in them,” said Cynthia Miller, Tampa’s growth management and development services administrator. “We have to do the best with what we’ve got, so we’re just looking at certain streets so that we can have some land assemblage. This is all about neighborhood stabilization, and we want to make sure vacant structures don’t become a problem.”

EPA said Friday that law is "ill-suited" for dealing with climate change.

President Bush is committed to further reductions but that there is a "right way and a wrong way to deal with climate change."

The wrong way is "to sharply increase gasoline prices, home heating bills and the cost of energy for American businesses," she said. "The right way, as the president has proposed, is to invest in new technologies."

Bush and other world leaders called for a voluntary 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gases worldwide by 2050 but offered no specifics on how to do it.

Supreme Court ruled last year that the government has authority under the Clean Act to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant.

Bush has consistently opposed that option.

Now the baby was having an enormously risky procedure to give her the pulmonary artery she was missing.

also found out she has DiGeorge syndrome, a genetic disorder whose symptoms include a weak immune system.

Teddy bears starting turning up in the newborn's bed. Bright pink bows began adorning her head. Nurses made a point to pop into her room and hold her.

now extinct in Israel,

researchers are hoping that by reviving the plant they may be able to study its medicinal uses.

Carbon dating of the seeds found at Masada revealed that they date from roughly the time of the ancient fortress' siege, in A.D. 73

So far, Methuselah is the only one to sprout.

"When we look at ancient sources and Hebrew texts, the dates were used for all kinds of things — pulmonary problems, tuberculosis, dysentery, cancer. We think of it today as just a food. But in fact the date wasn't just a food."

plan to be the first to exchange vows and kisses in the conference room Weir converted into a wedding chapel that hosts 1,200 couples a year

says Weir

"It's a big deal."

One happy byproduct is that Weir should be able to get Hemm on his long-term health plan. They already have stood by each other in sickness and in health: Hemm has AIDS.

Brazil's National Indian Foundation believes there may be as many as 68 "uncontacted" groups around Brazil, although only 24 have been officially confirmed.

Anthropologists say almost all of these tribes know about western civilization and have sporadic contact with prospectors, rubber tappers and loggers, but choose to turn their backs on civilization, usually because they have been attacked.

Brazilian officials once tried to contact such groups. Now they try to protectively isolate them.

our tribes monitored by Meirelles include perhaps 500 people who roam over an area of about 1.6 million acres.

Loggers are closing in on the Indians' homeland — Brazil's environmental protection agency said Friday it had shut down 28 illegal sawmills in Acre state, where these tribes are located

many people who've arrived over the last century and a half see this Native American land grab as a drain on their tax base and powers of economic development.

tribal leaders are increasingly removing the land from tax rolls by placing it into federal trust.

government officials and critics are trying to fend off the Native American's land rush.

"I don't think in the modern world it makes any sense to tie any individual rights to a tribal entity that is unaccountable," said David Vickers, president of Upstate Citizens for Equality in Verona, N.Y., an organization which disputes the notion of Native American sovereignty. "It's possible to maintain cultural identity without establishing a separate land base."

the nation's largest farming organizations and environmental groups.

Since 1990, farmers and consumer advocates have relied on the agency's detailed annual report

which states apply the most pesticides and where bug and weed killers are most heavily sprayed to help cotton, grapes and oranges grow.

uses the fine-grained data when figuring out how chemicals should be regulated, and which pesticides pose the greatest risk to public health.

program was cut because the agency could no longer afford to spend the $8 million the survey sapped from its $160 million annual budget.

could find similar data from private sources.

$500,000 it costs to buy a full set of the privately collected data each year

Eliminating the program "will mean farmers will be subjected to conjecture and allegations about their use of chemicals and fertilizer,"

Pesticide companies also rely on the program when they're looking to reregister agricultural chemicals

only do key surveys. Those include the monthly crop report, which influences commodity prices on the futures market, and livestock reports, which set the price for hogs and cattle.

What we'll end up doing is understanding pesticide use through getting accident reports," said Steve Scholl-Buckwald, managing director at the San Francisco nonprofit Pesticide Action Network. "And that's a lousy way to protect public health."

conducted drug raids and made arrests

police chief and two officers have been fired over the incident.

Gerald police officers burst into

the fake agent

personal property and took money.

homes in April and May, made arrests, damaged

some of those arrested had guns placed to their heads.

officials and police should have better verified Jakob's identity.

confronted and confounded thousands of other Iraqis since 2003 who have been freed by their nation's courts but remained in U.S. custody.

amnesty rulings could offer an early exit for many of the 27,000 prisoners in Iraqi hands.

Commanders say the current international mandate in Iraq, as well as general codes of war, allow them to hold any prisoner until the detainee is no longer considered a threat to U.S. forces.

faced by about 3,000 Iraqis since 2003 and stand as a sharp contrast between U.S. policies on the battlefield and Washington's appeals for Iraqis to build credible civic institutions.

"I don't know why the U.S. army brought him to an Iraqi court, if they intend to keep him for an unlimited time," said Humadi's lawyer, Samiya al-Baghdadi.

could wipe the slate for hundreds of the roughly 22,000 detainees held by the U.S. military

"The U.S. army's refusal to release my husband shows that the Americans do not care about how Iraqis suffer," Sundis Nimaa, Humadi's 34-year-old wife said

"They have brought my family down and they have separated the children from their father," she told The Associated Press. "They think they can do whatever they like because they have the upper hand in this country."

accuses Washington of rejecting the very legal system it helped forge.

the detention system is authorized by a U.N. resolution under which the Iraqi government allows U.S. troops to detain people at will.

complies with international laws covering warfare and was created in "the spirit" of the Geneva Conventions.

designed to take fighters off the streets, not determine guilt or innocence.

charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress on the girl.

first time the federal statute on accessing protected computers has been used in a social-networking case

Each of the four counts carries a maximum possible penalty of five years in prison

members agree to abide by terms of service

not promoting information they know to be false or misleading

soliciting personal information from anyone under age 18

not using information gathered from the Web site to "harass, abuse or harm other people."

conspired to violate the service terms from about September 2006 to mid-October that year,

egistered as a MySpace member under a phony name and used the account to obtain information on the girl.

"used the information obtained over the MySpace computer system to torment, harass, humiliate, and embarrass the juvenile MySpace member,"

After the girl killed herself, Drew and the others deleted the information for the account

19-year-old Ashley Grills, told ABC's "Good Morning America" she created the false MySpace profile but Drew wrote some of the messages to Megan.

Drew suggested talking to Megan via the Internet to find out what Megan was saying about Drew's daughter, who was a former friend.

Grills also said she wrote the message to Megan about the world being a better place without her

supposed to end the online relationship

"I was trying to get her angry so she would leave him alone and I could get rid of the whole MySpace,"

about one-fifth of the world's cropland considered degraded

cut production by about one-sixth

The cause of the current global food crisis is mostly based on market forces, speculation and hoarding

"Even the best seeds can't do anything in sand and gravel."

Genetic improvements in corn make it possible to grow up to 9,000 pounds of corn per acre in Africa. But millions of poor African farmers only get about 500 pounds an acre "because over the years, their soils have become very infertile and they can't afford to purchase fertilizers,"