Headlines News

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- "The Da Vinci Code" banked an estimated $29 million at the box office on its first day in theaters, an industry official said Saturday, positioning the film to turn in the strongest opening weekend for any movie this year. Preliminary results showed that the movie, based on a runaway best-seller and starring multiple-Oscar winner Tom Hanks, appealed to moviegoers despite lackluster reviews. The Columbia Pictures movie opened in 3,735 theaters in the U ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Women who eat a vegan diet -- a strict vegetarian diet that excludes all animal products including milk -- are one-fifth as likely as other women to have twins, a U.S. researcher reported on Saturday. The reason may be hormones given to cattle to boost their milk and meat production, said Dr. Gary Steinman, an obstetrician specializing in multiple-birth pregnancies at Long  ...

Afghan asylum seekers on hunger strike in a Dublin cathedral have been removed from the building by Irish police following a seven-day stand-off. An estimated 41 men and youths took part in the protest. Seven minors were taken into the care of the health service and the adults were arrested. The police surrounded St Patrick's cathedral on Friday and told the Afghans that they had to leave. Earlier, talks to end the hunger strike had reached an impasse.  ...

DUBLIN, Ireland (CNN) -- The weeklong hunger strike by 41 Afghan asylum-seekers holed up in Dublin's St. Patrick's Cathedral ended peacefully Saturday evening, a journalist at the scene said. The standoff began Sunday afternoon when the men, ranging in age from 16 to 45, refused to leave the church until they were granted asylum by the Irish government. Several were treated for dehydration earlier in the week, and all but three, who saw doctors Friday, were permitted to return to the protest ...

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish police removed a group of Afghan asylum seekers on Saturday from a Dublin church where they were in the seventh day of a hunger strike, state broadcaster RTE reported. Earlier in the day church mediators halted attempts to broker a deal to end the hunger strike following a request from the Department of Justice, who handed the matter to the police. The 41 asylum seekers, ...

By Adrian Croft LONDON (Reuters) - A proposed new scheme to persuade Britons to save for their pensions must be simple and cheap to run if it is to succeed, a parliamentary panel said on Sunday. The House of Commons' Treasury Committee's report comes days before the government is due to release eagerly-awaited proposals for reforming Britain's pension system to cope with a looming crisis caused  ...

Almost 80,000 sick and disabled people a year are being wrongly denied benefits, according to a BBC investigation for Radio Five Live. It has emerged that medical reports on people claiming some benefits are unreliable or inaccurate. As a result, thousands claiming Incapacity Benefit or Disability Living Allowance have had to appeal. The government says that it is "responding positively" when criticisms are made. The investigation found that some handwritten medical reports were altered so  ...

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish police removed Afghan asylum seekers on Saturday from a Dublin church where they had staged a 7-day hunger strike, state broadcaster RTE reported. Some 40 hunger strikers, who said their lives would be in danger if they were sent back to Afghanistan, began a sit-in at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Sunday to press their demand to be allowed to stay in Ireland as refugees.