NightBlogger

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has confirmed a ban on Iraq from competing in the Beijing Games in a major blow to seven Iraqi athletes who had hoped to travel to China this August, an IOC letter said. In the letter dated July 23 and addressed to the Iraqi Minister of Youth and Sports, Jassim Mohammed Jaffer, the IOC said it was moving ahead with a ban first imposed on Iraq’s athletes last month. More

THE Church of Scientology has been banned from a Midland shopping centre after a string of complaints that they had been preaching to children. Church leaders understood to be from Birmingham set up a stall at Wolverhampton’s Wulfrun Centre after making a booking under the name Dianetics, the church’s main theory. Bosses ordered preachers to pack up and leave after angry parents said their children had been invited to take part in “stress tests” and then lectured about the religion. More

(CNN) — Lifestyle guru Martha Stewart hopes to return to the United Kingdom as soon as a reported travel ban stemming from her criminal history is “resolved,” the chairman of the company she founded said Friday. The statement was released after British newspapers, led by the Telegraph, reported that she had been refused a visa to enter Great Britain because of her criminal convictions four years ago.

Stewart was scheduled to meet at the Royal Academy with several figures in the fashion and leisure industry, the Telegraph reported. A representative of the British Borders Agency would not comment on Stewart, saying only that “we continue to oppose the entry to the UK of individuals where we believe their presence in the United Kingdom is not conducive to the public good or where they have been found guilty of serious criminal offenses abroad.” More

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CNN - The 50-year-old actress suggested last week that the devastating May 12 earthquake in China could have been the result of bad karma over the government’s treatment of Tibet. That prompted the founder of one of China’s biggest cinema chains to say his company would not show her films in his theaters, according to a story in The Hollywood Reporter.

Ng See-Yuen, founder of the UME Cineplex chain and the chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, called Stone’s comments “inappropriate,” adding that actors should not bring personal politics to comments about a natural disaster that has left five million Chinese homeless, according to the Reporter. More

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Alison Benjamin
Germany has banned a family of pesticides that are blamed for the deaths of millions of honeybees. The German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) has suspended the registration for eight pesticide seed treatment products used in rapeseed oil and sweetcorn.

The move follows reports from German beekeepers in the Baden-Württemberg region that two thirds of their bees died earlier this month following the application of a pesticide called clothianidin. “It’s a real bee emergency,” said Manfred Hederer, president of the German Professional Beekeepers’ Association. “50-60% of the bees have died on average and some beekeepers have lost all their hives.”

Tests on dead bees showed that 99% of those examined had a build-up of clothianidin. The chemical, produced by Bayer CropScience, a subsidiary of the German chemical giant Bayer, is sold in Europe under the trade name Poncho. It was applied to the seeds of sweetcorn planted along the Rhine this spring. The seeds are treated in advance of being planted or are sprayed while in the field. More