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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Bangalore to face Chargers in IPL final

Royal Challengers Bangalore booked their place in the Indian Premier League final with a six-wicket victory over the Chennai Super Kings thanks largely to a 72-run partnership between Rahul Dravid and Manish Pandey. Bangalore, one of the worst teams in the inaugural IPL, will now face another side that battled in the 2008 season, Deccan Chargers, in Sunday’s climax at the Wanderers.

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2-Min. Bio: Tamil Tiger Leader Velupillai Prabhakaran

For more than a quarter-century, the Tamil Tigers have waged a guerilla war against the Sri Lankan government in their attempt to establish an independent state — which they call Eelam — for minority Hindu Tamils in the north and east of the island nation.

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Pirates seized after threatening Navy ship

The French Navy said they seized 11 pirates Sunday after they apparently mistook a French military vessel for a commercial ship and made a run at it. Two pirate assault boats approached the Nivose “at great speed,” Capt. Christophe Prazuck said, but a French helicopter intervened before the attackers had time to fire at the French Navy ship.

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Pirates hijack UK-owned ship in Indian Ocean

Pirates hijacked a British-owned bulk carrier Saturday in the Indian Ocean, but NATO forces stopped an attack on another vessel in the Gulf of Aden hours earlier, NATO maritime authorities said. The UK cargo ship, the MV Ariana, was carrying 35,000 tons of soya about 250 nautical miles (287 miles) northwest of the Seychelles when it was seized around dawn.

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