International

A group of 41 paleontologists and researchers reaffirmed the cause of dinosaur extinction. The research team concluded that a giant asteroid killed dinosaurs over 65 million years ago. The asteroid crashed into Yucatán, Mexico creating the Chicxulub crater. Their report was published Friday in the academic journal Science.

Two passengers on a Mediterranean cruise ship were killed by a giant wave on Wednesday. The incident occured off the north-east coast of Spain. The ship, named the Louis Majesty, had left from Barcelona, Spain and was headed for Genoa, Italy.

 A scientist for NASA has said that the recent magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile, which killed at least seven hundred people, may have moved the Earth's axis, and caused the day to shorten. Richard Gross, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, computed how the globe's rotation should have been altered by the earthquake; he and fellow scientists determined that the day had been shortened by approximately 1.26 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second).

Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has called for Muslims to declare jihad against Switzerland, citing the recent Swiss ban on the construction of new minarets at mosques. Libya and Switzerland have been in a diplomatic dispute since the Swiss arrested one of Gaddafi's sons in 2008. Gaddafi now states he would invade if the two shared a common border.

Thailand's Supreme Court today ruled that the family of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra be stripped of 46.3 billion baht (US$1.4 billion) in frozen assets, more than half of a contested $2.3 billion fortune. According to the court, the seized assets were illegally gained while Thaksin was Prime Minister; specifically, his familial involvement and connections with Shin Corporation.

 Toyota has been accused by a U.S. House of Representatives committee with misleading the public and investigators over itsrecent recalls.

Former Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, said that "I think 2010 will be a phenomenal year for the conservative cause and I think Barack Obama is a one-term president," at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Other speakers at the conference included the newly elected Senator Scott Brown, the former Attorney General John Ashcroft, and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

 A new website, PleaseRobMe.com, was created earlier this week, claiming to indicate the location of empty homes based on social networkers' posts online, especially Twitter.

The developers of the site told the BBC they had intended to display how dangerous it is to share one's precise location over the Internet. The site takes its information from posts by users on Twitter who have revealed their address and say when they are not at home.

 Belgian authorities have confirmed that at least eighteen people died in a head-on collision between two passenger trains in the suburbs of Brussels. Other reports suggest that the death toll could be as high as 25. More than 125 passengers are reported injured, 11 of them "very seriously".

 A court in the Netherlands ruled yesterday that the fast-food company McDonald's over-reacted in dismissing an employee who added a piece of cheese to a colleague's hamburger without charging for it. McDonalds has been ordered to pay compensation since, the court ruled, "The cost of a slice of cheese is not comparable to a severe step such as redundancy".