Peeing while swimming in a lake may not just be taboo – it could also be lethal, for the fish.

At least that’s what a group of anglers contend, blaming swimmers for the 500 dead fish that have turned up in a picturesque German lake near Hamburg, The Local reported.

“Swimmers who urinate in the lake are introducing a lot of phosphate,” Manfred Siedler, a spokesman for an angler’s group, told Bild newspaper. “We’re calculating half a liter of urine per swimmer per day.”

Facebook plans to raise as much as $10.6 billion in an IPO that values the company at as much as $96 billion.

The offering could leave Saverin - who once owned 5 percent of the company - with a hefty capital-gains tax bill.

Saverin has sold enough of his Facebook stake that he doesn’t appear in IPO filing documents that list shareholders who own 5 percent or more of the company, though his holdings are still believed to be substantial.

He now lives in the Asian city-state of Singapore, which has no capital-gains tax. That compares with a minimum 15 percent rate for long-term capital gains in the United States for people in higher income brackets.

The Socialist candidate has promised to raise taxes on big corporations and people earning more than 1m euros a year.

He wants to raise the minimum wage, hire 60,000 more teachers and lower the retirement age from 62 to 60 for some workers.

Bamako, Mali (CNN)—Elderly men were keeping watch Saturday over Timbuktu’s main library after Islamists burned a tomb listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The attacks Friday were blamed on Ansar Dine, a militant group that seeks to impose strict Sharia law.

The ancient city in Mali was captured by at least two separatist Tuareg rebel groups—one of which is Ansar Dine—in an anti-government uprising in the northern part of the country that began in January.

The rebels burned the tomb of a Sufi saint where people come to pray, said Sankoum Sissoko, a tour guide familiar with the place. He said the library and other heritage sites remained under threat.

Residents of the Solomon Islands in the Pacific have some of the darkest skin seen outside of Africa. They also have the highest occurrence of blond hair seen in any population outside of Europe. Now, researchers have found the single gene that explains these fair tresses.

A single mutation is responsible for almost half of the variation in Solomon Islanders’ hair color, the scientists reported Thursday (May 3) in the journal Science. Most strikingly, this gene mutation seems to have arisen in the Pacific, not been brought in by fair-haired Europeans intermarrying with islanders.

“[T]he human characteristic of blond hair arose independently in equatorial Oceania,” study researcher Eimear Kenny, a postodoctoral scholar at the Stanford University School of Medicine, said in a statement. “That’s quite unexpected and fascinating.”

MI6 officer Gareth Williams was “on the balance of probabilities” unlawfully killed, coroner Fiona Wilcox has said.

In a narrative verdict, she said it was unlikely he got into the bag his body was found in by himself, but doubted his death would ever be explained.

The 31-year-old code-breaker from Anglesey was found at his central London flat in August 2010.

Police say the investigation remains open and officers would be re-examining evidence gathered.

The naked body of Mr Williams was found padlocked in a red sports holdall in the bath of his home.

The United States is one of the only countries to tax its citizens on income earned while they’re living abroad. And just as Americans stateside must file tax returns each April - this year, the deadline is Tuesday - an estimated 6.3 million U.S. citizens living abroad brace for what they describe as an even tougher process of reporting their income and foreign accounts to the IRS. For them, the deadline is June.

The National Taxpayer Advocate’s Office, part of the IRS, released a report in December that details the difficulties of filing taxes from overseas. It cites heavy paperwork, a lack of online filing options and a dearth of local and foreign-language resources.

For those wishing to legally escape the filing requirements, the only way is to formally renounce their U.S. citizenship. Last year, IRS records show that at least 1,788 people did, and that’s likely an underestimate. The IRS publishes in the Federal Register the names of those who give up their citizenship, and some who renounced say they haven’t seen their name on the list yet.

[...]

Dunn is referring to two filing requirements that affect Americans abroad: the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts - which has been around since 1970 but now carries penalties for noncompliance - and the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, passed in 2010 with the aim of reducing offshore tax evasion.

The first regulation requires all Americans, including those living abroad, with at least $10,000 in overseas bank accounts, to file a supplementary form disclosing all of their foreign accounts. That includes any accounts in which the U.S. citizen has a financial interest. That could include a joint account with a spouse or child, accounts for corporations in which the American owns more than 50 percent of the value of shares of stock, or any trust or estate that benefits the U.S. citizen.

The tax compliance act - the newer law - asks foreign financial institutions such as banks, hedge funds, and private equity funds to provide the IRS with information on U.S. clients.

OSLO, Norway (AP) — A right-wing fanatic admitted Monday to unleashing a bomb-and-shooting massacre that killed 77 people in Norway but pleaded not guilty to criminal charges, saying he was acting in self-defense.

On the first day of his long-awaited trial, Anders Behring Breivik defiantly rejected the authority of the court as it sought to assign responsibility for the July 22 attacks that shocked Norway and jolted the image of terrorism in Europe.

[...]

Breivik has said the attacks were necessary to protect Norway from being taken over by Muslims. He claims he targeted the government headquarters in Oslo and the youth camp to strike against the left-leaning political forces he blames for allowing immigration in Norway.

LONDON (Reuters) - American revolutionary leader George Washington has been voted the greatest enemy commander to face Britain, lauded for his spirit of endurance against the odds and the enormous impact of his victory.

In a contest organised by the National Army Museum, Washington triumphed over Irish independence hero Michael Collins, France’s Napoleon Bonaparte, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.

Making the case for Washington, historian Stephen Brumwell said the American War of Independence (1775-83) was “the worst defeat for the British Empire ever.”

“His personal leadership was crucial,” he said.

Washington was a courageous and inspirational battlefield commander who led from the front but also had the skills to deal with his political counterparts in Congress and with his French allies, Brumwell said. Above all, he never gave up even when the war was going against him.

“His army was always under strength, hungry, badly supplied. He shared the dangers of his men. Anyone other than Washington would have given up the fight. He came to personify the cause, and the scale of his victory was immense.”

Moscow (CNN)—Former Soviet spy Leonid Shebarshin, who was very briefly head of the KGB, was found dead Friday in his apartment in Moscow, an apparent suicide, officials said.

The 76-year-old left a suicide note, the state-run news agency Itar-Tass reported Friday, citing city police. A weapon was found near the body, Investigation Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said.

The contents of the note were not disclosed “in the interest of the investigation,” according to police, the news agency said. Shebarshin was alone in the apartment, it added.

WASHINGTON — The White House abruptly announced Monday that it had scuttled plans to hold the upcoming G-8 economic summit in Chicago, and would instead host world leaders at the presidential retreat at Camp David in Maryland.

It was an unusually late location change for a large and highly scripted international summit and came with little explanation from the White House. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel — the former White House chief of staff who personally lobbied President Barack Obama to hold the summit in Chicago — was informed only hours before the official announcement.

Updated at 1:52 p.m. ET: A gunman killed two Americans inside the heavily guarded Afghan Interior Ministry in the center of the capital Kabul on Saturday, as protests against the burning of copies of the Muslim holy book roiled the country for a fifth day.

The Americans, who were U.S. Army officers serving as advisers to the Afghan security forces, were sitting at their desks inside the government ministry building when they were shot, NBC News reported.

The federal law will end the requirement for lawful gun owners to register their long guns, and it relaxes rules around selling or transferring guns. Gun licences for individuals will still be required, and the registry for restricted and prohibited firearms such as handguns will be maintained.

Gun control has been ferociously debated in Canada for decades, particularly since the Montreal massacre of 1989, when a gunman shot and killed 14 women with a rifle. This event prompted the Liberal government of Jean Chretien to tighten gun controls and create Canada’s first mandatory long-gun registry in 1995.

Puerto Rico, plagued by iguanas for years, is taking a violent stand against the ubiquitous reptiles.

The government is proposing an iguana eradication project that would both eliminate the long-time nuisances, and bolster the territory’s lackluster economy by exporting the reptiles’ meat for as much as $6 a pound.

“That is a lot more than chicken,” said Daniel Galan Kercado, secretary of the Department of Natural Resources. “It has great economic potential.

The reptiles have cost the U.S. territory hundreds of thousands of dollars annually by sunbathing on San Juan’s airport runways and disrupting traffic; causing power outages by building nests near power plants and wrecking building foundations by burrowing holes underneath them.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada’s national interest makes the $5.5 billion pipeline essential. He was “profoundly disappointed” that U.S. President Barack Obama rejected the Texas Keystone XL option but also spoke of the need to diversify Canada’s oil industry. Ninety-seven percent of Canadian oil exports now go to the U.S.

“I think what’s happened around the Keystone is a wake-up call, the degree to which we are dependent or possibly held hostage to decisions in the United States, and especially decisions that may be made for very bad political reasons,” he told Canadian TV.

[...]

Meanwhile, China’s growing economy is hungry for Canadian oil. Chinese state-owned companies have invested more than $16 billion in Canadian energy in the past two years, state-controlled Sinopec has a stake in the pipeline, and if it is built, Chinese investment in Alberta oil sands is sure to boom.

“They (the Chinese) wonder why it’s not being built already,” said Wenran Jiang, an energy expert and professor at the University of Alberta.