hey guys

Sheriff: Florida man decapitates mother with ax after becoming upset when she asked him to put some boxes away

GUYANA’s oldest and largest existing political party, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) is currently observing its 65th anniversary.

(Reuters) - George P. Bush was sworn in on Friday as Texas land commissioner with his father and potential Republican White House candidate Jeb Bush by his side and his grandfather, former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, watching on the Internet.

The 38-year-old Bush, an attorney and founder of a Fort Worth-based investment firm, one-upped his relatives when in November he became the first person in the political dynasty to win in his first major election.

In his new post, Bush, a Republican, will look over public lands in the massive state and manage the Alamo in San Antonio, the scene of the famed battle for Texas independence from Mexico.

"By utilizing the agency's platform to promote opportunity for all, we will pursue a philosophy that Lincoln called the ‘right to rise.’ After all, every Texan deserves every chance at a better future," Bush said in a speech.

The son of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his Mexican-born wife, Columba, Bush is seen by analysts as having a bright political future because he is a Hispanic-American in a Republican Party that wants to appeal to the growing and increasingly influential electorate of Latino voters.

Former President George H.W. Bush, 90, was released from a Houston hospital on Tuesday after a weeklong stay brought on by breathing difficulties and could not attend the ceremony at the statehouse in Austin. He watched the ceremony at home, officials from George P. Bush's office said.

The other former president in the family, the commissioner's uncle George W. Bush, did not attend the swearing-in ceremony.

(Reuters) - A quarter of all Russian men die before they reach their mid-fifties and their passion for alcohol - particularly vodka - is largely to blame, according to research published on Friday.

A study of more than 150,000 people found extraordinarily high premature death rates among male Russians, some of whom reported drinking three or more bottles a week of the potent clear spirit.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, deaths among heavy drinkers were mainly due to alcohol poisoning, accidents, violence and suicide, as well as diseases such as throat and liver cancer, tuberculosis, pneumonia, pancreatitis and liver disease.

"Russian death rates have fluctuated wildly over the past 30 years as alcohol restrictions and social stability varied under presidents Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin, and the main thing driving these wild fluctuations..was vodka," said Richard Peto of Britain's Oxford University, who worked on the study.

(Reuters) - Only two-and-a-half weeks after U.S. President Barack Obama announced a historic prisoner exchange and re-establishment of long-broken ties with Cuba, his new policy is encountering obstacles that threaten to flare up when Congress returns next week.

Questions surrounding Havana's human rights record and the promised release of Cuban detainees have the potential to inflame anti-Havana passions on Capitol Hill, where the House and Senate are expected to hold hearings soon after they resume on Tuesday.

Whether the obstacles amount in the long run to anything more than speed bumps on the way to wider detente remains to be seen. But at a minimum, they illustrate how benefits from Obama's ditching of a half-decade of U.S. isolation of Cuba won't come quickly or without rancorous debate.

Signaling that it will continue to suppress dissent, the government of Cuban President Raul Castro on Tuesday detained more than 50 activists, dissident leaders said, to squelch a planned gathering in Havana's Revolution Square. And dissidents reported new detentions on Thursday.

The crackdown brought sharp condemnation from the U.S. State Department. All of those detained had been released by the weekend, dissidents said.