While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Feb 6 edition

Sony Pictures boss steps down after damaging hack

Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chair Amy Pascal, whose embarrassing e-mails were leaked in a hack attack on the Hollywood studio blamed on North Korea, is stepping down, the company said Thursday.

Pascal - widely regarded as one of the most powerful women in Tinseltown - was forced to apologise in December for the e-mails, including one which saw her swap racially insensitive jokes about President Barack Obama.

A Sony statement said she would launch a "major new production venture" at the studio, which was rocked by the hacking centred on the controversial North Korea satire The Interview.

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Putin has Asperger's syndrome, claims Pentagon study

A Pentagon study from 2008 claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin has Asperger's syndrome, giving him a need to exert "extreme control" when faced with crises, according to the report released on Thursday.

Experts studying his movements and facial expressions in video footage theorised Putin's neurological development was disrupted in infancy, giving him a sense of physical imbalance and a discomfort with social interaction, according to the report by the Pentagon's internal think-tank, the Office of Net Assessment.

"This profound behavioural challenge has been identified by leading neuroscientists as Asperger's syndrome, an autistic disorder which affects all of his decisions," wrote the study's author, Brenda Connors, of the US Naval War College.

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British singer Gary Glitter found guilty of abusing young girls

British former glam rocker Gary Glitter could spend the rest of his life in prison after being found guilty at a London court on Thursday of historic sex abuse against three young girls.

Glitter, 70, whose real name is Paul Gadd, was convicted of one count of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one count of sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 13 between 1977 and 1980.

The entertainer - deported from Cambodia in 2002 over unspecified claims and convicted in Vietnam in 2006 of sexually abusing two girls, for which he was sentenced to three years in jail - blew kisses at the public gallery as he was led away to the cells.

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Man cuts off nose, alters face to look like Marvel villain Red Skull

How far would you go to look like your favourite comic book character?

For a Venezuelan man, it meant undergoing drastic facial surgery - and cutting off part of his nose - in a bid to resemble Red Skull, Captain America's arch-nemesis in the Marvel universe.

Father-of-two Henry Damon, 37, also had several subdermal implants inserted into his forehead, tattooed his eyeballs black and added red and black face tattoos.

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British botanists find unknown 'warty' orchid species in Cambodia mountains

British botanists have found a previously unrecorded orchid in the mountains of Cambodia, they said Thursday, ahead of a major orchid show at London's Kew Gardens.

The new species was collected in Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains as part of an expedition in 2013 and brought back to London.

But researchers only discovered it was a new species when it flowered in one of Kew's glasshouses in December.

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