UK lawmakers slammed over expenses secrecy

Anti-secrecy campaigners have criticized a decision by UK lawmakers to censor a report on their expenses claims, some of which was leaked earlier amid huge public outcry. The online publication on Thursday is the result of a newspaper filing a freedom of information request to see the claims by MPs, but some of the information is blacked out. The redaction prompted criticism from campaigners seeking transparancy.

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Birthday release pledge for Nigeria hostage

A Nigerian militant group said it plans to release a British oil worker Monday as a birthday "gift" to Matthew John Maguire, who was abducted last year. Talking exclusively to CNN on his return to Hong Kong, where he had been forging a career in the movies, Chen reveals his side of the scandal that broke in early 2008. It centers on sexually explicit photos of him with other celebrities that appeared on the Internet, leaked by a former employee of a computer repair shop.

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Exclusive interview: Edison Chen breaks his silence

He has been at the center of Asia’s biggest sex scandal, but now actor Edison Chen has broken his silence on the public episode that has ended careers and caused him to suffer death threats. Talking exclusively to CNN on his return to Hong Kong, where he had been forging a career in the movies, Chen reveals his side of the scandal that broke in early 2008. It centers on sexually explicit photos of him with other celebrities that appeared on the Internet, leaked by a former employee of a computer repair shop

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Queen Elizabeth Snubbed: Britain Declares War on France

France and England have fought each other in the 100 Years’ War, the Seven Years’ War, the Napoleonic Wars and scads of less memorably named conflicts. And more recently, the French and English have treated the blood-and-tears clashes between their national rugby and soccer teams as fetishes for those battles of yore.

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Darwinian Struggle: A Poet Felled by Scandal

“I hope wounds will start to heal,” said Ruth Padel, blinking earnestly as flashbulbs popped. Her statement may not have contained the startlingly original imagery that propelled the poetess to prominence, but to her critics it represented a kind of poetry — poetic justice.

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Britain’s Expense Scandal Claims Its First Big Victim

You know things are getting weird when Britain’s largest mass-market daily, the Sun, co-opts a regicidal 17th century republican who shut down Parliament at gunpoint as an avatar of democracy. But Oliver Cromwell’s angry exhortation to MPs supplied the paper’s front-page headline yesterday: “In the Name of God, Go.” British voters — or at any rate, those voters who work for Britain’s robustly opinionated media — are calling for heads to roll as each day brings new revelations about MPs’ overblown expense claims. Today, Michael Martin, the Speaker of the House of Commons, became the scandal’s highest-profile victim, announcing that he will stand down in June, the first time a Speaker has been forced out in 300 years.

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