Astana: Tour winner Contador will not leave

Tour de France champion Alberto Contador will stay with Astana for the 2010 season, the Kazakh-funded team announced on Saturday night. The Spaniard’s future with the team had been uncertain after clinching his second victory in three years in cycling’s most prestigious event, with the 26-year-old unhappy with the recruitment of Lance Armstrong this year.

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U.N. experts say Iran tortured to extract confessions

Three independent United Nations human rights experts have accused Iran of torturing confessions from detainees charged with fomenting political unrest, the international organization said Thursday. “No judicial system can consider as valid a confession obtained as a result of harsh interrogations or under torture,” said Manfred Nowak, who is the U.N

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Iran speaker rejects detainee rape claims

Iran’s influential parliament speaker dismissed allegations that post-election detainees were raped while in custody, calling the claims by an opposition leader "sheer lies," state-run media reported Wednesday. Ali Larijani said that a special panel of Iran’s parliament, or Majlis, conducted a “precise and comprehensive inquiry” into the treatment at Tehran’s Evin and Kahrizak prisons, and found “no cases of rape or sexual abuse,” Press TV reported

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Failing to reform health care ‘truly scary,’ Obama says

President Obama complained Tuesday about opposition scare tactics against a proposed health care overhaul but said that failing to fix problems in the current system would be the scariest outcome of all. Obama addressed a supportive town hall meeting that contrasted with combative events held by Democratic Congress members, which have generated heated and sometimes disruptive responses. Also Tuesday, hostile crowds shouted questions and made angry statements against proposed health-care legislation at meetings in Pennsylvania and Missouri led by Democratic senators Arlen Specter and Claire McCaskill.

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Manson’s lasting legacy: ‘Live freaky, die freaky’

Forty years ago, a group of young people led by a charismatic, 5-foot-2-inch ex-con named Charles Manson set out on a murderous spree in Los Angeles, California. They planned to spark an apocalyptic race war that Manson called "Helter Skelter," after a song by the Beatles. Over two nights in August 1969, the killers took the lives of seven people, inflicting 169 stab wounds and seven .22-caliber gunshot wounds.

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46 killed, hundreds wounded in Iraq attacks

A series of bombings mostly targeting day laborers killed 46 people and wounded 215 in Iraq on Monday, the Ministry of Interior said. Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karrubi, along with former reformist President Mohammad Khatami, should be tried for attempting to lead a Western-backed “velvet revolution” that aimed to topple the regime, the official said. “If Moussavi, Khatami …

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Australia complete innings win over England

Australia completed a comprehensive victory over England in the fourth Ashes Test at Headingley, Leeds, winning by an innings and 80 runs inside three days to level the series at 1-1 with just the deciding Test match at The Oval still to play. Resuming the third morning in a seemingly impossible position, trailing by 261 runs on 82 for five after Australia’s first innings 445, England’s daunting task became all the more difficult when they lost two wickets inside the first hour.

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