China has requested to debate proposals for a new global reserve currency during next week's Group of Eight summit in Italy and the topic could be referred to briefly in the summit statement, G8 sources revealed on Sunday.

Reuters reports that, "an G8 source who was involved in the negotiations said China made the request during preparatory talks about a joint statement to be issued on the second day of the summit in L'Aquilla by the G8 plus the G5 (Brazil, India, china, Mexico and South Africa) and Egypt.

A court in Delhi, the Indian capital, has ruled that homosexual intercourse between consenting adults should not be deemed a criminal act.

According to the BBC News, "the ruling overturns a 148-year-old colonial law which describes a same-sex relationship as an 'unnatural offense.'"

On Thursday, North Korea test-fired two short-range missiles, the Defense Ministry of South Korea said, which aggravates the already high tensions following Pyongyang's recent nuclear teast, and U.N. sanctions imposed to punish the rogue regime.

Fox News reports that, "the misiles were fired from the eastern coastal city of Wonsan on Thursday afternoon, a ministry official said on condition of anonymity citing department policy. He did not say what types of missiles were launched, but Yonhap news agency said they were ground-to-ship missiles."

Tiong Hiew King, the founder of the behemoth Asian logging conglomerate Rimbunan Hijau, a corporation accused of systematically stripping the "paradise" forests of Indonesia, Papua, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

the Guardian Unlimited UK reports that, "environment groups around the world have called for a billionaire businessman to be stripped of his knighthood after claiming that his fortune has been built on the systematic destruction of tropical rainforests."

On Wednesday, a senior Palestinian Muslim cleric encouraged Muslims to visit Jerusalem, which breaks a tabboo against visiting the holy city since it would be perceived as normalizing relations with Israel.

According to the Jerusalem Post, "speaking at a press conference in Cairo, Sheikh Tayseer al-Timimi said Muslims should travel to Jerusalem and perform a pilgrimage to Muslim holy places in the disputed city, backtracking on an earlier edict."

On Tuesday, the regime that ousted Manuel Zelaya in Honduras claimed that the deposed president permitted tons of cocaine to be flown into the Central American nations on its way to the United States of America.

Foreign Minister Enrique Ortez told CNN en Espanol that, "every night, three or four Venezuelan-registered planes land without the permission of appropriate authorities and bring thousands of pounds ... and packages of money that are the fruit of drug trafficking. We have proof of all this. Neighboring governments have it. The DEA has it."

Achievements on the front lines of a government blitzkrieg on gunrunners supplying Texas weaponry to Mexican drug cartels depends on logging heavy miles and knocking on countless doors. Dozens of agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) have been sent to Houston from around the nation. ATF acting director Kenneth Melson needs them to follow what he described as a "massive number of investigative leads."

According to the Houston Chronicle, "all told, Mexican officials in 2008 asked federal agents to trace the origins of more than 7,500 firearms recovered at crime scenes in Mexico. Most of them were traced back to Texas, California and Arizon. Among other things, the agents are combing neighborhoods and asking people about suspicious purchases as well as explanations as to how their guns ended up used in murders, kidnappings, and other crimes in Mexico." 

On Monday, Fox News host Geraldo Rivera arrived in Houston and while enjoying a steak dinner, he received a text mesaage from his 14-year-old daughter. She explained the deep sadness she felt upon hearing the news that Houston police officer Henry Canales was killed last week by a suspected illegal immigrant.

The Houston Chronicle quotes Mr. Rivera's response as saying, "we all deplore violent crime, but what has happened is that with these anecdotal tragedies, we have demonized an entire race of people in this country. Immigrant and nonimmigrant alike. citizen and noncitizen alike."

Licensed drug counselors employed by the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department remain shell-shocked after attending a mandatory meeting last Thursday at 2:45 p.m., when Jim Strickland informed them that all drug treatment programs inside the Dallas County Jail facilities would be eliminated after August 31, 2009.

Sheriff Lupe Valdez’s decision to slash these programs had stunned numerous members of this law enforcement community, according to a confidential source with privileged information of the sheriff’s department.

The bearded, boisterous pitchman, Billy Mays, had become an unlikely pop-culture icon as the undisputed king of TV yell-and-sell. He died in his Tampa, Fla. home on Sunday at aged-50.

Tampa police informed the Associated Press that his wife found him unresponsive early Sunday morning. He was pronounced dead by a fire rescue crew at 7:45 a.m.