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JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Three militants awaiting execution for the 2002 Bali bombings plan to challenge the legality of death by firing squad, but it was unclear if the move would lead to a last-minute stay, their lawyer said Tuesday. Imam Samudra, one of three militants sentenced to death over the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings. Mahendradatta, who goes by a single name, said he would file a petition next week at the Constitutional Court arguing that convicts who go before a firing squad sometimes do not die immediately, causing unnecessary suffering. "We're seeking an execution without pain," said the lawyer,...

European Union foreign ministers say they will not support a military strike on Iran but want more talks to try to resolve worries Tehran might be developing nuclear weapons. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband says it is now up to Iran to respond to global powers and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana after talks in Geneva on Saturday.

BHOPAL, India - Local authorities in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh face a perplexing problem. The authenticity of some of the area's eunuchs is in question, and officials claim they're powerless to resolve increasingly violent disputes between the rival - real and fake - factions. Authorities say problems started more than a year ago, but in recent months the situation has deteriorated into street clashes and murder. In India eunuchs are commonly called hijras and estimates of their numbers range from 50,000 to 5 million. Most earn their livelihood by the age-old tradition of performing at weddings, baby...

As noted here, Chris Matthews yesterday named Tom Vilsack a member of Hillary's "eunuch's chorus," people he derided for "saying whatever the Clinton people told them to say." Today, Chris might be claiming vindication after Vilsack's one-man recital in which he parroted Hillary's word-'o-the-day, "change," no fewer than eight times in an MSNBC interview with Andrea Mitchell. View the edited video clip of "Vilsack's Change Chorus" here.

Despite his war wounds, can Bob Kerrey still kick Chris Matthews' butt? We might soon find out, because on this evening's Hardball Matthews lumped Kerrey into a group of Clinton sycophants he derided as "castratos" and a "eunuch chorus." Chris was kvetching about the way a variety of Hillary Clinton supporters including Kerrey have lined up to take shots at Barack Obama. The former Nebraska senator went out of his way, in endorsing Hillary yesterday, to draw attention to Obama's Muslim background. View video here.

What does it take for a healthy man to choose to have his testicles removed? Roger Davies is one of a surprising number who have found salvation in castration. Like many sensitive teenagers, Roger Davies felt different from his peers. He wasn’t into sport and abhorred the aggression he saw in other boys. When, at the age of 22, he still hadn’t grown out of his sense of isolation, he took radical action: he travelled to America and underwent castration. “I’m really happy with who I am now,” says the 25-year-old cleaner and caterer from Southport. “I don’t have any...

See for example this thread first. Warning! Adult content! Send the kids out of the room. DON'T let them click on the link. Not for the squeamish. I warned you! (Very funny anyway.) OK, here we go... 3... 2... 1... Begin: A Brit chap removed his nuts No regrets, no ifs, ands, or buts! Though he's a sitzpinkler he still kept his sprinkler... will he still be attracted to sluts?

For the third time in 36 years, the Republican National Committee will accept a shared leadership arrangement with a U.S. senator as party general chairman and an RNC member as the full-time chairman. Meeting in Washington D.C., the 167-member RNC today made official the White House’s choice of Florida Sen. Mel Martinez as general chairman of the party and Kentucky Republican National Committeeman Mike Duncan as full-time chairman. But it won’t be with enthusiasm that the RNC gives its approval to the Martinez-Duncan team. As one committee member arriving in Washington for the RNC winter meeting told me, “We’re like...

Tomorrow night, I depart for a few days in Iraq. If all goes as planned I will visit with U.S. and Iraqi troops, interview some of the government leaders, and come home with a better understanding of what we're up against. I go with a pretty clear perspective on Iraq. It has evolved from studying the country and the events affecting it since Saddam invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990. My perspective, inevitably, will be changed by what I see and hear first-hand. But what if I went to Iraq armed with preconceptions based only on what we "know" from the mainstream media and the Democrats?...

WASHINGTON -- A long-threatened showdown over changing Senate rules to stop Democratic filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominations could come as early as next week, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Tuesday. Frist, in his weekly news conference with reporters, said he hopes the Senate finishes a highway bill and an emergency spending package to fund military operations overseas this week. "And then we need to turn to 100 United States senators and move to the issue surrounding judges," he said. Story Continues Below Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said he's ready and expects to win. "I want...

MAINZ, Germany (Reuters) - Some 7,000 protesters, some carrying banners saying "Bush go home", "War Monger" and "No. 1 Terrorist", marched through the German town of Mainz on Wednesday but were kept away from the visiting U.S. president. The largely peaceful rally never got within a kilometre (half mile) of U.S. President George W. Bush, who is on his first German visit since the 2003 Iraq war, which was deeply unpopular in Germany. "I'm disgusted by the war in Iraq Bush started that has cost thousands of civilian lives," said Thomas Odenweller, 49, a computer technician. "Now he's trying to...

With the Republican National Convention's platform committee convening in New York less than three weeks from now, no draft platform exists, no subcommittees have been named, and no special lodging for committee members has been assigned. Rather than signifying sudden collapse of accustomed Republican efficiency, all this looks more like a coolly calculated plan. The suspicion has grown that President Bush's re-election strategists--Karl Rove and Karen Hughes--do not want the open debate over principles and policy that has characterized Republican platform-making for a generation. The carefully guarded Bush campaign game plan is to present delegates on the platform committee with...

The E.U. isn't taking terror seriously.IN THE WAKE of the March 11 Madrid train bombing, Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, said, "It is clear that force alone cannot win the fight against terrorism." Prodi was hardly the first continental leader to implicitly criticize U.S. policy as short-sighted and to suggest that there are clear and compelling alternatives to America's strategy in the war on terror.Soon after 9/11 itself, French prime minister Lionel Jospin traced terrorist acts to "tension, frustration, and radicalism," which in turn "are linked to inequality," which would have to be addressed. In 2002, France's foreign...

Spain's problem with terrorism is Europe's: It does not want to defend itself.MadridBETWEEN MARCH 11, when terrorists linked to al Qaeda killed 191 Spanish commuters with bomb attacks on four trains, and March 14, when Spanish voters shocked the world by removing José-María Aznar's pro-war Popular party (PP) from power and electing the Socialist (PSOE) candidate José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the world's attention was riveted on Spain. But soon dozens were arrested, and on April 3 another 7, believed to be the ringleaders, killed themselves with a bomb when their apartment in the Madrid suburb of Leganés was surrounded by...

Portugal may withdraw its national guard contingent from Iraq if the security situation in the country continues to deteriorate, Interior Minister Antonio Figueiredo Lopes said. "If the conflict were to deteriorate and the GNR (national guard) did not have what it required to carry out its mission, the only solution would be to withdraw," he told Antena 1 public radio. Portugal's centre-right Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso in November dispatched 128 national guards to southern Iraq to back the US-led coalition in the war-torn country, where they operate under British command. Figueiredo Lopes had said on Wednesday that Lisbon...

The codename Enduring Freedom could only have been dreamt up by the Pentagon - but if the EU went in for such things it would be an apt tag for its forthcoming expansion into Central Europe. The aim is to consolidate peace and democracy in the region, in the wake of the Cold War. The method - to re-make the former eastern bloc states in Western Europe's image, grafting on to them a set of EU values and a new system of government. "It's regime change," says Fraser Cameron, a senior European Commission official seconded to a Brussels think-tank, the...

A group of eunuchs in New Delhi are helping to right faulty telephone lines by taking up complaints on behalf of consumers. They collect complaints from subscribers and present them before telephone company officials the next day. The eunuchs reportedly adopt direct and unorthodox line of actions like threatening to expose themselves to get cases heard. They lay siege to telephone company offices and refuse to move until faults are repaired. A leader of a group of eunuchs, who is known only by her first name Jameelajaan, told the Hindustan Times: "We have less polite ways of dealing with those...

<p>VARANASI, India (AP) -- Thousands of eunuchs ended a weeklong congregation in this temple city on Sunday, demanding greater access to jobs in universities and government.</p> <p>"We are sexually handicapped and should be treated like any other physically handicapped person," said Renee Kapoor of the All India Eunuch Conference.</p>

The title pretty much says it all. The question is, "Do you believe that over the next 10 years Europe will become the next superpower?" Since this is the European edition of Newsweek, it should be fun to Freep the numbers way down. Click here to vote. The poll's on the right-hand side of the page.