List unveils top English tongue-twisters

"PHENOMENON", "remuneration" and "statistics" have topped a list of the most commonly mispronounced English words.

Speakers also have a problem getting their tongue around "ethnicity", "hereditary" and "particularly", according to the UK body charged with recording public utterances.

The British Institute Of Verbatim Reporters (BIVR) is the UK's leading organisation for professionals involved in taking down speech at court and tribunal hearings.

A poll of its members found the 10 words that Britons consistently find the most challenging to pronounce.

Completing the list are "conjugal", "specific", "processes" and "development".

Leah Willersdorf, of the BIVR, said: "We work with many different types of professionals and hear all kinds of voices during our work.

"However, when it comes to the English language it always seems to be the same few words that verbally trip people up, with the speaker having to repeat the word in order to get it right, or just abandoning their attempts and moving on."

BIVR members were quizzed by the team behind the popular word game Scrabble.

According to the words buffs, one in 10 players admit to being reluctant to producing words that they cannot pronounce.

Scrabble is a favourite with British families over the festive period, with an estimated 11 million going head to head on Boxing Day, according to its makers.

University of York sociolinguistics expert Paul Kerswill said the English language has evolved to compensate for tricky pronunciations but some words remain a challenge.

"People always find a way of simplifying words that they find difficult to get their tongues round, so that an everyday word like 'handbag' sounds like 'hambag'," Professor Kerswill said.

"Our forebears simplified 'waistcoat' to 'weskit' - but we've turned our backs on that.

"We certainly don't pronounce Worcester and Gloucester the way they are spelt any more. And 'York' used to have three syllables, not one.

"And most people talk about 'Febry' and 'Wensday'."

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Obama vows action after online petition

US President Barack Obama has vowed to take action to stop gun violence in response to online petitions signed by more than 400,000 people after last week's primary school massacre.

"In the days since the heartbreaking tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, hundreds of thousands of you, from all 50 states, signed petitions asking us to take serious steps to address the epidemic of gun violence in this country," Obama said in an online video on Friday. "We hear you."

Obama has called on Congress to pass legislation banning military-style assault rifles and high-capacity ammunition clips. It would would also close loopholes that allow people to purchase guns without background checks.

He has also appointed Vice President Joe Biden to head a task force to explore ways to prevent mass shootings, including by improving access to mental health care, and addressing depictions of violence in popular culture.

"I will do everything in my power as president to advance these efforts, because if there's even one thing we can do as a country to protect our children, we have a responsibility to try," Obama said in the video.

"But as I said earlier this week I can't do it alone. I need your help."

Obama called on ordinary citizens, law enforcement officials and gun owners to campaign publicly and petition Congress in support of his reforms.

Last Friday's massacre of 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School - the latest in a series of mass shootings over the past two years - has galvanised support for reforms aimed at stemming gun violence.

More than 400,000 people have signed "We the People" petitions on the White House's website calling for action on gun violence, making it one of the most popular issues since the launch of the site, a White House official said.

One such petition set the record for being the fastest ever to reach 25,000 signatures, the official said.

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Pope makes new anti-gay marriage stance

THE Pope has taken his opposition to gay marriage to new heights with a strong denunciation of how people are manipulating their sex and gender to alter their God-given nature.

Benedict made the comments on Friday in his annual Christmas speech to the Vatican bureaucracy - one of his most important speeches of the year and one he dedicated this year to promoting family values.

In it, Benedict quoted the chief rabbi of France in saying the campaign for granting gays the right to marry was an "attack" on the traditional family made up of a father, mother and children.

Benedict also issued a denunciation of gay marriage in his recently released annual peace message, saying gay marriage, like abortion and euthanasia, was a threat to world peace.

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Dutch impound Steve Jobs superyacht

STEVE Jobs' Dutch-built superyacht has been impounded in Amsterdam because of a dispute between the late Apple founder's estate and designer Philippe Starck over an unpaid bill.

"The yacht has been impounded," Rotterdam-based lawyer Roelant Klaassen, who represents French designer Starck's Ubik company said on Friday.

"There is some unfinished business, namely two invoices which were issued by Ubik last summer after Mr Jobs died," he said.

Amsterdam court bailiffs seized the 70-metre long yacht following a request from Starck's lawyer.

The Venus reportedly cost over 100 million euros ($126 million) to build and was only unveiled in October, just over a year after Jobs died.

Jobs' estate says Starck should be paid a percentage of the overall cost of the project, which took over five years to complete, while Starck says he should be paid a fixed nine million euros for his contribution, Mr Klaassen said.

Mr Klaassen said he was in contact with a Dutch lawyer representing the Jobs estate, Gerard Moussault.

"Hopefully we will come to an interim agreement with regard to security," Mr Klaassen said.

Mr Moussault declined to comment on the matter.

Jobs' family, including widow Laurene Powell Jobs and their three children Reed, Erin and Eve, was supposed to take charge of the yacht in the United States.

Mr Klaassen said he had seen documents that show Jobs and Starck were "very close in the period that the design was made and the building proceeded".

"That's one of the reasons there was no formal agreement on the job," he said.

"The most important thing for everyone is that the vessel can sail at a certain moment and hopefully funds will be paid into the account of the lawyers of the estate which can then be used as security," Mr Klaassen said.

"Apparently the vessel will be loaded on another vessel to be shipped to the States, I think to California."

The aluminium-hulled yacht was built by Royal De Vries shipbuilder's in Aalsmeer, just south of Amsterdam, with interiors designed by Starck.

The bridge features a control panel made up of an array of seven iMac computers.

Starck said last year that he was working on the yacht, which was mentioned in Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs, who died on October 5, 2011. He said it was "sleek and minimalist", with teak decks.

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Russia cuts Khodorkovsky's jail term

A RUSSIAN court has reduced the sentence of jailed Kremlin critic and former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky from 13 to 11 years, setting his release for 2014.

The Moscow City Court on Thursday decided to cut the prison term served by the Yukos oil company founder and his co-defendant Platon Lebedev by two years due to changes in the criminal legislation that affect the charges against them.

"This way Mikhail Khodorkovsky is to be freed in October 2014, and Platon Lebedev in July 2014," said a statement on Khodorkovsky's media site.

The reduction applies to the charge of money laundering, court spokeswoman Anna Usacheva was quoted by news agencies as saying.

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were convicted of embezzlement and money laundering in their second trial in late 2010.

They had already been serving time for an earlier conviction of fraud and tax evasion.

Khodorkovsky's lawyers reacted angrily to the decision.

They had appealed to the court for the release of the two defendants, arguing that under new legislation, they have already served their sentences in full.

"What can be our reaction to continuing lawlessness and reprisals? Of course, it is negative," one of the lawyers, Vadim Klyuvgant, said after the decision.

"We will continue to fight, and of course we will appeal."

Last month, a district court ruled that there should be a more significant reduction in Lebedev's sentence to allow for his release in July 2013 but the decision was overruled by a regional judge.

Khodorkovsky was Russia's richest man and a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin when he was first arrested in 2003. Since then his company Yukos has been dissolved. Supporters say his prosecution was punishment for daring to finance political opposition in Russia.

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Nigeria gunmen kidnap French national

A GROUP of 30 gunmen who stormed a residence in northern Nigeria where expatriate workers were staying kidnapped a French citizen after killing two people, police say.

"I can confirm the abduction of a French national," the Katsina state police chief, Abdullahi Magaji, said on Thursday of the incident late on Wednesday.

"The kidnappers numbering about 30 stormed the residence where the engineers of (French company) Vergnet were staying," he said, adding that a security guard and a neighbour were shot dead in the attack.

Vergnet, a company that specialises in alternative energy according to its website, was working on a wind power project in Katsina.

Abdullahi said the attack happened at a village called Rimmi, about 25 kilometres from the state capital, Katsina city.

"The gunmen later threw an explosive device into the police station on their way out the town to distract the police from pursuing them," he added.

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WHO head warns diseases set to rise

THE head of the World Health Organisation says infectious diseases will spread more easily in the future due to globalisation, changing lifestyles and rising population densities.

"The future looks very bright for microbes, not so good for humanity," Margaret Chan told a luncheon on Thursday in her hometown Hong Kong, the site of a major outbreak of the SARS virus in 2003 that killed almost 300 people in the city.

Higher population density, industrialisation of food production and the increase in international travel have provided many opportunities for communicable diseases to spread, she said.

"Given this unstable and unpredictable situation, only one generalisation is possible - there will definitely be more new diseases capable of causing outbreaks in humans," Chan said at the event organised by the Asia Society.

But the WHO head said not all new diseases will be as "devastating" as the outbreak of SARS that killed more than 800 people worldwide and the H1N1 epidemic that caused at least 17,000 deaths.

Chan said one reason that infectious diseases have been on the rise in the region and China was due to the habit of eating the meat of exotic animals, as most new diseases are spread from animals to humans.

"Constant mutation and adaptation are survival mechanisms of the microbial world, these organisms are well equipped to take advantage of every opportunity to jump the species barrier," she said.

The WHO issued a global alert in September for a SARS-like coronavirus which killed two people in Qatar, one in Saudi Arabia and two in Jordan.

The WHO says the coronavirus detected in the Middle East this year was unrelated to SARS and is a novel form of the germ.

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Thailand extradites of Italian mafia boss

A THAI court has ordered the extradition of a former banker and Italian mafia boss accused of laundering money for two Sicilian godfathers.

Vito Roberto Palazzolo, who was arrested in Thailand in March after investigators tracked him down through Facebook, is considered to a leading member of the Cosa Nostra Sicilian mafia.

"The court ruled that Palazzolo should be extradited," an official at the Bangkok Criminal Court said.

"The judge ruled his case was not political as it's organised crime and money laundering," she said.

Under Thai law, the 65-year-old is entitled to file an appeal within 30 days, but his lawyer in Italy suggested he was unlikely to oppose the ruling.

"Palazzolo does not intend to appeal and his return to Italy will probably be voluntary," said Baldassare Lauria.

"This is not 100-per cent sure yet but we are speaking to the Italian government and judges. My client wants to speak to prosecutors to clear things up. From his time as a banker in Switzerland, he can shed light on many mysteries and on his ties with institutions," Mr Lauria added.

Palazzolo previously worked as a banker in Switzerland and was convicted in the 1980s of laundering mafia revenues from drug trafficking between Asia and Europe and the United States in an operation named the "Pizza Connection".

He served three years in prison for the crime. A few years after his release, the lead prosecutor in the case was assassinated with a roadside bomb that also killed his wife and three bodyguards.

Palazzolo is accused of being the "treasurer" for the last two godfathers of the Sicilian mafia who are now in jail - Bernardo Provenzano and Toto Riina, who imposed a reign of terror in the 1980s and 1990s.

He was sentenced in absentia by an Italian court in 2009 to nine years in jail for association with the mafia, and had been living in South Africa under the name Robert von Palace Kolbatschenko before travelling to Thailand.

In South Africa - which declined to extradite him - Palazzolo was seen as a major businessman with interests in mineral water, security and ostrich farming.

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Malaysia provides refuge for 'Rohingyas'

MALAYSIA has provided refuge to 40 shipwreck survivors believed to be refugees from Myanmar's conflict-wracked Rakhine state, a Malaysian maritime official says.

The refugees arrived late on Tuesday in the southern state of Johor after they were picked up by a Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency vessel from a Vietnamese cargo ship off Singapore, the official said.

The 40 refugees were rescued by the cargo ship from a boat believed to be carrying 250 people that sank December 5 in the Bay of Bengal.

Many of those on board were still missing.

The official, who requested anonymity, said the refugees were believed to be from Myanmar's Rohingya minority.

All the refugees appeared to be in good health and were undergoing medical examinations, he said.

They were given temporary refuge while they are processed, he said.

Malaysia hosts about 24,000 refugees from Myanmar's Rakhine state, which has seen clashes between Muslim Rohingya and majority Buddhists.

At least 89 people were killed in the violence in October, and more than 5300 houses and religious buildings were burned or destroyed, according to UN figures.

More than 110,000 people have been forced from their homes since the violence first flared in June.

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French judges keep Strauss-Kahn charges

French judges have decided not to drop aggravated pimping charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Source: AAP

FRENCH judges have decided not to drop aggravated pimping charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

His lawyer says the former International Monetary Fund chief will appeal.

Strauss-Kahn's lawyers have argued the investigating judges in the case are biased.

The case revolves around a suspected luxury prostitution ring in northern France.

A court in the French city of Douai decided on Wednesday to retain the preliminary charges.

Strauss-Kahn's lawyers have said he attended "libertine" gatherings but didn't know some women present were paid.

The case is one part of an intercontinental legal saga that exposed Strauss-Kahn's active sex life and buried his French presidential ambitions.

Strauss-Kahn reached a settlement in the US last week with a hotel maid who accused of him of trying to rape her in May 2011.

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