From The Grauniad, near the obituaries...
Stockholm's appeal court has rejected a demand by Julian Assange's lawyers to lift the arrest warrant against him, leaving the WikiLeaks founder still facing extradition to Sweden should he renounce his asylum in Ecuador's London embassy.
But the court also noted that Sweden's investigation into Assange had come to a halt and prosecutors' failure to examine alternative avenues of investigation "is not in line with their obligation – in the interests of everyone concerned – to move the preliminary investigation forward". The ruling is expected to put pressure on prosecutors to find new ways to break the deadlock.
Per Samuelsson, one of Assange's lawyers in Stockholm, said the court's criticism of the prosecutor was aimed at her refusal to come to London to question Assange. After the ruling he had spoken to Assange, who was disappointed but confident that they would prevail in the long run.
Following a rejection of their demands by a lower court in July, Assange's lawyers argued in submissions to the appeal court that a European arrest warrant issued in November 2010 was being employed as a "coercive measure" against him because it could not be carried out, thereby condemning him to "deprivation of liberty" in order to exercise his right to asylum.
In response to the appeal, the Swedish prosecutors in the case, Marianne Ny and Ingrid Isgren, said they accepted there was "a temporary obstacle" to executing the arrest warrant, but that it was nonetheless essential to prevent Assange from evading justice. His presence in the Ecuadorian embassy was voluntary and so did not constitute a deprivation of liberty, they said, thereby nullifying defence arguments about disproportionality.
Assange has always claimed he is innocent and that he would be prepared to face a Swedish court were it not for a threat that he would be extradited to the US for political crimes. Neither the US nor Swedish governments have responded to his requests for guarantees. Assange has not been charged with any crime, but is being investigated over allegations of rape and sexual molestation.
Legal opinion in Sweden is sharply divided on the case, with some arguing that the deadlock must be broken, principally by the prosecutors travelling to London to interview Assange. Politicians are reluctant to be seen to put pressure on prosecutors, while public opinion has wearied of the case.
Mats Larsson, a columnist for Expressen, Sweden's largest tabloid, argued last month: "Everyone is tired of the Assange circus … it is high time it was resolved."
[NYT] The international response to West Africa’s Ebola epidemic, coupled with more effective action by local communities, has stopped the exponential spread of the disease in one of the hardest-hit countries, Liberia, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.
“There’s been a substantial change in the trend,” CDC Director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden said during a conference call with reporters. “There is no longer exponential increase, and in fact, there’s been a decrease” in the rate of infections in Liberia.
Health officials are less certain of the rate of infections in Guinea, another of the three most affected countries. Dr. Frieden said that in the third country, Sierra Leone, “both their epidemic and their response are several weeks behind Liberia.”
His comments came a day after the Pentagon said it was scaling back the size and number of Ebola treatment facilities that American troops are building in Liberia.
In addition, two other units that were to have been built by American troops will be built instead by an international aid group, administration officials said. Defense officials also said they were scaling back the number of American military personnel responding to the epidemic in West Africa, to 3,000 from 4,000.
[NYT] A woman who died of an apparent heart attack at a New York City hair salon on Tuesday will be tested for the Ebola virus out of "an abundance of caution" because she had recently been in West Africa, city health officials said.
The woman, whose name was not released, came to the United States 18 days earlier from one of the four West African countries most affected by the Ebola outbreak, the health department said. She did not show symptoms of the virus before her death.
Health officials said they were testing the woman's remains because she had a travel history within the 21-day incubation period for the virus. Test results were expected early Wednesday.
The city has been tracking about 300 people who had traveled in West Africa. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gives the city a daily list of travelers coming to New York City from those countries.
Fire Department officials said they were called to the hair salon, African Queen Hair Braiding, at 32 Belmont Avenue in Brooklyn, around 2:30 p.m. Tuesday for a patient in cardiac arrest. The woman was pronounced dead there, fire officials said.
#3
Demographic shifts and migrations brought on by political change makers are nothing new. Sometimes the former inhabitants are simply slain, sometimes they are permitted to move off peacefully. I've found only a few successful re-patriations throughout history.
#6
Airandee, Supreme court doesnt het involved until a case is brought before them. Republicans have promosed to do so.
Congress gets involved with budgets. Republicans have promised to do so.
Constitutional folk are divided on partison lines and are worthless.
Free press joined Democrats as cheersection decades ago.
Basically this move is a reaction to their coalition disappearing. They hope to import 5 million voters but will likely divide the black bote, lose blue collar vote, as well as the legal immigrant vote in the process.
#10
We expect this from Pelosi. We expect it from the Champ.
The real heart breaker is all the Republicans who supported this over the summer. You know, the ones who will still be leading our newly elected majority.
What I would have liked to have seen Thursday night is 50 lawsuits filed in 50 states by 50 governors seeking to declare Champ's action unconstitutional. But that won't happen -- in large part because many so-called Republicans support this.
#11
Yeah, but you don't have the people on your side.... A plurality of Americans do not want President Barack Obama to enact an executive amnesty for the country's illegal immigrants.
A USA Today poll found that nearly half of Americans (46%) do not want Obama to unilaterally give amnesty to illegal immigrants while 42% said Obama should act. Twelve percent did not know how they felt or refused to answer. Democrats who were surveyed (60%-28%) wanted Obama to act while a strong majority of Republicans (76%-17%) did not want Obama to unilaterally grant amnesty to illegal immigrants.
A Polling Company exit poll of the midterm electorate found that 74% of voters did not want Obama—who is reportedly expected to give temporary amnesty and work permits to as many as five million illegal immigrants as early as this week—to act unilaterally while another 80% did not want foreigners taking jobs from Americans and legal immigrants already in the country.
The USA Today poll, conducted by Princeton Survey Research, was taken Thursday-Sunday and has a margin of error of +/- four percentage points.
[AnNahar] NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... said Thursday there have been around 400 intercepts of Russian military flights near its member countries this year, amid heightened tension between Moscow and the West over the Ukraine crisis.
"If you look at the number of intercepts around NATO, we can talk about 400 intercepts, 50 percent more than last year," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told news hounds in western Estonia.
"Most of these flights are taking place in an international airspace, but they are close to our airspace, and they are interfering with commercial flights.
"It is a pattern that we haven't seen for many years, back to the time of the Cold War."
He spoke from the Amari air base that hosts the Western defense alliance's air policy mission over the Baltic states, following talks with Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Roivas.
It was his first stop on a tour of the three Baltic states that were once ruled from Moscow and which, like fellow newer NATO member Poland, have been deeply concerned by Russia's actions in Ukraine.
The West believes Russia is pulling the strings in the deadly seven-month conflict between pro-Western government forces and pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine's east -- an accusation the Kremlin denies.
Stoltenberg said NATO had seen "more than 100 intercepts, which is three times more than last year" around the Baltic region alone, but reiterated that the alliance would protect its members.
"It is all for one and one for all," he said.
He later traveled to Latvian capital Riga, where he reacted to Russia's Wednesday call for Ukraine to stay out of the NATO alliance.
Requiring Kiev to give such a guarantee violates "the idea of respecting the independence, the illusory sovereignty of Ukraine," he said after talks with Latvian President Andris Berzins.
"Each and every country has the right to decide its own security arrangements."
He said he expects Russia to "respect" the decision of Ukraine were it to apply for NATO membership "later on".
#1
The only way Vlad + his FlyBoyz can effec patrol the Caribbean as threatened is via MilBases in Cuba, which is dubious at best once Uncles Fidel + Raul go off to that Great Spicy Black Ham in the Sky; or by flying over, down the US Midwest via the Arctic, aka violating de facto US sovereign territory, + prolly in + near + over that broad future US North-to-South DMZ known as the KEYSTONE PIPELINE - TAKE THAT, MISSISSIPPI RIVER!
[TU-95 BEARS OVER, NOT AROUND, GUAM, CNMI? here].
At least the UK had a formal referendum/plebiscite on Scottish independence.
It may be the timeliest -- and most troubling -- idea in climate science.
Back in 2012, two researchers with a particular interest in the Arctic, Rutgers' Jennifer Francis and the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Stephen Vavrus, published a paper called "Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid-latitudes." In it, they suggested that the fact that the Arctic is warming so rapidly is leading to an unexpected but profound effect on the weather where the vast majority of us live -- a change that, if their theory is correct, may have something to do with the extreme winter weather the U.S. has seen lately.
In their paper, Francis and Vavrus suggested that a rapidly warming Arctic should interfere with the jet stream, the river of air high above us that flows eastward around the northern hemisphere and brings with it our weather. Sometimes, the jet stream flows relatively directly from west to east; but other times, it takes long, wavy loops, as in the image above. And according to Francis and Vavrus, Arctic warming should make the jet stream more wavy and loopy on average – some have called it “drunk” -- with dramatic weather consequences.
#4
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive…This in turn means that everyone would become miserably poor and economic growth would cease.
#5
The problem with renuables is they can't solve everything. They chip away at the problem. Chipping away is a good thing.
The real answer is nuclear power but the greens are too corrupt and hell-bent on removing all power generation from the world.
Barring that solar on the houses in the sunbelt. Wind across the prarielands. Whatever it takes to lessen the drain on the grid and to provide some redundancy in case of catastrophe.
#6
So nobody's up for that. And yet, stalwart environmentalists like Koningstein and Fork - and many others - remain convinced that the dangers of carbon-driven warming are real and massive.
What is the assumption of carbon-driven warming is erroneous?
That, however, means that such expensive luxuries as welfare states and pensioners, proper healthcare (watch out for that pandemic), reasonable public services, affordable manufactured goods and transport, decent personal hygiene, space programmes (watch out for the meteor!) etc etc would all have to go - none of those things are sustainable without economic growth.
There goes the means by which Democratics buy votes. It is also noted that they shoot themselves in the foot by doing everything they can to curb/destroy economic growth.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
