Residents of a fishing village near Hong Kong said that as many as 20 people had been killed by paramilitary police in an unusually violent clash that marked an escalation in the widespread social protests that have roiled the Chinese countryside. Villagers said that as many as 50 other residents remain unaccounted for since the shooting. It is the largest known use of force by security forces against ordinary citizens since the killings around Tiananmen Square in 1989. That death toll remains unknown, but is estimated to be in the hundreds.

20 Reported Killed as Chinese Unrest Escalates

The music industry is to extend its copyright war by taking legal action against websites offering unlicensed song scores and lyrics.

The Music Publishers' Association (MPA), which represents US sheet music companies, will launch its first campaign against such sites in 2006.

Utterly assinine.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Song sites face legal crackdown

A federal air marshal aboard a jetliner on the ground in Miami shot a man who had claimed to have a bomb in a carry-on bag and did not comply with orders to lie down, according to spokesmen for the airline and the government.

Air Marshal Shoots Passenger at Miami Airport

That, says Stephen Gardner, staff lawyer for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, is exactly the problem. In an age of soaring obesity rates among children, he argues that soda and other sugary beverages are harmful to students' health and that selling those drinks in schools sends a message that their regular consumption is perfectly fine.

In a lawsuit they plan to file in the next few months, Mr. Gardner and half a dozen other lawyers, several of them veterans of successful tobacco litigation, will seek to ban sales of sugary beverages in schools.

Lines Are Drawn for Big Suit Over Sodas

Behind the headlines, however, intelligent design as a field of inquiry is failing to gain the traction its supporters had hoped for. It has gained little support among the academics who should have been its natural allies. And if the intelligent design proponents lose the case in Dover, there could be serious consequences for the movement's credibility.

Intelligent Design Might Be Meeting Its Maker

A plan to charge an "iPod tax," or royalties on portable digital music players, unraveled Thursday after a government committee failed to reach agreement on the measure.

Plan for an 'iPod Tax' in Japan Unravels

The family of an Australian man convicted of drug trafficking visited him Thursday, hours before his scheduled execution, and Singapore's prime minister ruled out a reprieve. Nguyen Tuong Van is scheduled to hang early Friday morning (5 p.m. EST) at the maximum-security Changi Prison.

Singapore Leader Says Execution of Australian to Go Ahead

The Transportation Security Administration is making some of the most significant changes in the screening of airline passengers since procedures were revamped after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

What's so special about airplanes anyway?

Small Scissors in Your Carry-On? Welcome Aboard

Heralded in the Nov. 10 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, the new prenatal test provides earlier, more reliable results for all women than the current test, which is routinely offered to only older women who are at higher risk. But for people with Down syndrome and the cluster of other conditions subject to prenatal screening, the new test comes with a certain chill.

Because such tests often lead to abortions, people with conditions from mental disability to cystic fibrosis may find their numbers dwindling. As a result, some fear, their lives may become harder just as they are winning the fight for greater inclusion.

The Problem With an Almost-Perfect Genetic World

President Bush told President Vladimir V. Putin today that the United States was willing to accept a nuclear compromise - rejected by Tehran in recent days - that would move all of Iran's enrichment of uranium to Russia.

Bush Backs Plan to Move Iran's Uranium Enrichment to Russia