The attack — in an area near South Waziristan, a center of Taliban and al Qaeda activities where Pakistan’s government began a military offensive last fall — marked a bloody start to 2010 for the country. Pakistan has seen a surge in attacks by Taliban militants in recent months as Islamist fighters avenge military operations in their strongholds along the border with Afghanistan.

Friday’s blast, among the deadliest in the area since October, underscores the hurdles Pakistan and the U.S. face in efforts against the Taliban and al Qaeda.

In many parts of northwestern Pakistan, the government has helped arm and fund local militias to counter the Taliban, as part of the effort that has sent more than 30,000 troops into South Waziristan along the border with Afghanistan. But the strategy has met with limited success, largely because the military has been unable to provide adequate protection against Taliban reprisals.

Locals in remote Shah Hasan Khel village, near the town of Lakki Marwat, had organized their own militia to counter Taliban activities in the area. While no one had claimed responsibility for the attack late Friday, local law-enforcement officers viewed it as a retaliation.

“It seems that the villagers have been targeted for supporting [Pakistan's] military,” said provincial police chief Malik Naveed.

Witnesses said a

Police in central Sweden are on the hunt for a gang of tattooed women who sexually molested a 50-year-old man as he was riding by on his bicycle.

The incident took place around 9pm on July 8th as the man was cycling down Vintergatan in central Örebro, the Aftonbladet newspaper reports.

Suddenly, someone grabbed hold of the rack on the back of the man’s bike, causing him to fall to the ground.

“The girls ran up to him and pulled the bicycle down so he fell,” Örebro police spokesperson Annika Haaster told the newspaper.

As the man was lying defenceless on the ground, the women proceeded to pull off his trousers and underwear and molest him sexually before fleeing the scene.

According to police, the 50-year-old was not otherwise beaten or physically assaulted by the gang of five girls.

The victim told police that the girl who actually pulled down the bicycle was about 175 centimetres (5 feet, 7 inches) tall and had tattoos on her forearms.

Authorities are hoping that tips from the public can help them apprehend the suspects responsible for the bizarre attack.

“It’s downright unusual for five girls [to do something like this]. Perhaps there are others who’ve had the same thing happen to them,” Haaster told Aftonbladet.

David Landes (david.landes@thelocal.se/+46 8 656 6518)

He said: “I’m living in south west London. It’s lovely. It’s a slightly rude awakening, like, ‘Oh my God! I’ve got to do so much more for myself.’ Got to do the washing. But I still live close to my parents and take it round there sometimes.”

The actor also branded the attention he gets from girls “ridiculous”, insisting his fans are interested in his famous wizard character, rather than himself.

He told Time Out magazine: “You laugh off a lot of the attention. You have to dismiss it as being ridiculous. And realise they’re not there for you, they’re there because you play this character.

“If I play another role, there won’t be 5,000 people to greet me at an airport. It’s Harry more than me. “It’s only when you start to believe you’re as good as they think you are that things go badly wrong.’ Daniel is currently filming the seventh and eighth movies in the franchise, but doesn’t think he has been typecast by the character.

He added to Britain’s Time Out magazine: “A lot of people will be generous and open-minded enough to see me as other people. But I think that to a lot of people I will always be Harry.

“However, there’s one thing that might work in my favour, and that’s that I’m still going to change so much, I hope.

“You know, people say to me, ‘Are you worried about being typecast?’ – I’ve got to say no. I haven’t been so far, so I don’t know why I should in the future.”

Psychologist Neal J. Roese and computer scientist Eyal Amir from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, authors of the report “Human-Android Interaction in the Near and Distant Future,” say people can expect to be sharing a lunch break with robots in our lifetime.

Published in the journal ‘Perspectives on Psychological Science,’ Roese and Amir look ahead a half decade to envision a world with robots that can “speak in human-like voices, identify spoken words with precision, answer questions from a body of textual information, walk and run in a human-like motion, display realistic facial expressions, and detect others’ emotions through visual processing.”

However, they warn that the most difficult part of creating true artificial intelligence (AI) is programing the “Theory of Mind,” or “the effortless human ability to process other people’s speech, actions, underlying motives, and emotional state.”

According to the pair, robots will take over tasks such as toll collectors, “where the presence of a non-human is practical, but not frightening.” Androids could also take up work at factories.

A 35-year-old man who had been seen masturbating near the entrance of a Willy’s grocery store on more than one occasion was arrested on Friday by police in Örebro.

The man was first seen on Thursday night pleasuring himself at the Willy’s store entrance, the Nerikes Allehanda newspaper reports.

Described by witnesses as sporting a deep sun tan and masturbating shamelessly, the man was reported to police shortly after 8pm.

But by the time police arrived on the scene, the mystery masturbator had vanished on a bicycle.

While store personnel reportedly considered the incident inappropriate, they opted not to file a formal complaint.

On Friday, however, the 35-year-old came again to his favourite spot outside Willy’s to give himself a helping hand.

But this time police were primed and ready to strike as soon as the man began to busy his hands.

Police are now preparing to launch a preliminary investigation into bringing sexual molestation charges against the man, who will soon be interrogated by police as part of the process.

The Sun reports a total of 231 sightings passed on to the MoD so far this year; compared to to 285 in 2008, 135 in 2007 and 97 in 2006.

The newspaper quoted leading UFO expert Nick Pope as saying: “We are now on track for a record year.”

“I thought the number of UFOs reported last year was high, but we now know they are being reported in increasing numbers,” he said.

Experts are divided over whether there has been a spike in UFO activity over Britain in the last two years as suggested by the number of sightings reported to the Ministry, or whether this could be the prevalence of digital cameras and mobile phones which are more easily able to record such phenomena.

Alleged government cover up of UFO activity in both the United States and the UK has been the subject of controversy in recent months with NASA releasing videos of alleged UFOs during the space agency’s missions.

Ufologists have called on the governments to “come clean” on reports of UFO activity.

by Rich Bowden – Jul 13 2009

The top nine selling items at Apple’s iTunes Store were albums by Jackson, with first and second being a “hits” album and the 1982 album Thriller.

Amazon.com similarly reported selling more Jackson merchandise in the 24 hours following his death than it had sold in the preceding 11 years, and that sales of Jackson CDs accounted for 60% of its total business on Thursday. Yesterday morning the top seller in the album chart for Amazon’s U.K. division was Off the Wall, followed by Bad and Thriller in second and third places.

In Las Vegas, 21 items of Jackson memorabilia, including handwritten lyrics for Jackson’s song “Bad” and the shirt that Jackson wore on his Victory Tour in 1984, sold at auction for a total of USD$205,000, with the shirt, at USD$52,500 the most expensive individual item.

FIRE crews are investigating whether a cat urinating on a laptop sparked a fire that has destroyed most of a home in a Gold Coast gated community.

Police said two teen boys, aged 16 and 18, were home alone for the weekend when the fire broke out about 9am yesterday morning in the Royal Pines Golf Resort at Benowa.

An emergency services spokeswoman said the blaze began in the corner of one of two bedrooms at the back of the two-storey rented house.

It is understood initial investigations traced the fire to a laptop computer.

Police investigations revealed the boys said they had let the pet cat out of the house at 5.30am, but it had somehow made its way back inside and urinated on a laptop in the corner of one of the boys’ rooms.

Emergency services said smoke alarms alerted the teens to the fire and they evacuated.

The 16-year-old suffered mild smoke inhalation and was taken to the Gold Coast Hospital as a precaution.

The emergency services spokeswoman said investigations into the incident would continue today, but added the fire was not believed to be suspicious.