[Tolo News] Balkh province's Attorney General's Office for prevention of violence against women sent the eight-year-old girl who was recently married off to a 12-year-old boy to a safe house after hearing about the incident on TOLOnews.
Chairwoman of Balkh's Attorney General Office Fawzia Hamidi accused TOLOnews of "baseless reporting" claiming such actions would not happen in the province of Balkh, but minutes later contradicted her statement by confirming the marriage took place.
"I am surprised that a religious scholar who claims to represent Islam allowed the marriage to take place without the presence of a witness," Hamidi asserted, confirming the union happened, opposing what she exclaimed earlier. "We transferred the girl, along with her elder sister, to a safe house to ensure their safety."
The girl's father has confessed to his doing, insisting that he made the decision because of poverty-stricken life.
"I was compelled to marry her off so that she is taken care of and I can use the money to find a job and manage my life," Momen, the girl's father, said.
A number of Balkh residents have mounted criticisms on the decisions made by the attorney general, stating that instead of sending the girls to a safe house and the father under custody, the girls should have been sent home to their father and the family been provided with support.
The Chief of the Attorney General's Office in Balkh criticized the holy man who permitted the marriage to take place in the first place.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/03/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
I missed the part about PUBLIC CONDEMNATION OF THE PRACTICE AND ITS ADHERENTS, or social retribution against the perpetrators.
[ARABNEWS] All four members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Haia) team who were involved in an attack against a couple in a Riyadh mall last Friday have been removed from field duties, the commission said on Tuesday.
A statement released by the commission said the four were also banished from Riyadh region and reassigned to administrative work as punishment, said the statement, which was issued in Arabic.
It said the measure was approved by Haia President Abdullatif Al-Asheikh upon the recommendation of a committee he earlier organized to investigate the complaint by the couple -- Briton Peter Howarth Lees and his Saudi wife -- that the Haia team harassed and subsequently attacked them while they were shopping at the Hiteen Plaza in Riyadh on August 29.
As found by the committee, the man who jumped onto the back of the Briton, as shown on a short videoclip of the attack that was posted on YouTube, was the head of the team.
The committee also concluded that members of the team had lied in their statement on the incident that they gave to Sherlocks.
The committee further said the Haia team overstepped their mandate when they entered the mall.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/03/2014 00:00 ||
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[Bangla Daily Star] Three incumbent secretaries and a former secretary obtained freedom fighters' certificates through forgery, the Anti-Corruption Commission has found.
The anti-graft body, which was investigating them, also found they took those certificates illegally at the fag end of their service life to extend their service period.
The three incumbent government officials are Health Secretary Niaz Uddin Mia, Public Service Commission Secretary AKM Amir Hossain and now an OSD and former Liberation War Affairs secretary KH Masud Siddiqui.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
09/03/2014 00:00 ||
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#2
Liberation War Affairs secretary KH Masud Siddiqui......and this is no camel dung. There I was, blinding acrid smoke, knee deep in hand grenade pins and shell casings, with my Makarov and only 5 rounds of bullet remaining.
[DAWN] Britannia's interior minister on Tuesday accused local authorities in the English town of Rotherham of a "complete dereliction of duty" for the way they responded to the sexual exploitation of at least 1,400 children by men of mostly Pak heritage.
Speaking in parliament, Home Secretary Theresa May said the government was considering investigating the local council in the northern English town, and specifically whether "institutionalised political correctness" -- or a fear of being branded racist -- was to blame for the cases being mishandled.
May spoke as the police force in South Yorkshire, the county where Rotherham is located, launched an independent investigation into its own handling of the cases and the opposition Labour party suspended four local councillors.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
09/03/2014 00:00 ||
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I would call them criminally complicit, but that's just me.
#3
A sad thought, CF, but one that is necessary to have and to be investigated. But won't be...
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/03/2014 8:02 Comments ||
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#4
Maybe its past time to bring back some 'accountability' to the bureaucracy. There is an old British tradition waiting for revival.
Admiral John Byng (baptised 29 October 1704 – 14 March 1757)[1] was a Royal Navy officer. After joining the navy at the age of thirteen, he participated at the Battle of Cape Passaro in 1718. Over the next thirty years he built up a reputation as a solid naval officer and received promotion to Vice-Admiral in 1747.
Byng is best known for the loss of Minorca in 1756 at the beginning of the Seven Years' War. His ships badly needed repair and he was relieved of his command before he could see to his ships or secure the extra forces he required. He was court-martialled and found guilty of failing to "do his utmost" to prevent Minorca falling to the French following the Battle of Minorca (1756). He was sentenced to death and shot by firing squad on 14 March 1757.
[DAILYCALLER] A British social worker says her boss forced her to take a two-day diversity training class and that she was told to never mention race in her reports after she documented that Pak men had committed hundreds of acts of sexual abuse in Rotherham, a town of around 250,000 in northern England.
Working as a researcher for the British Home Office in 2002, the female social worker told the BBC that she was intimidated after she turned in a report documenting 270 cases of sexual exploitation involving men of Pak or Kashmiri heritage.
"You must never refer to that again. You must never refer to Asian men," the social worker was told by a superior, she told the BBC. "And her other response was to book me on a two-day ethnicity and diversity class."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
09/03/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
She probably shouldnt have mentioned race as it was clearly a Muslim rape gang since it wasn't just one race.
it was just one strand of religious fascism though.
she still would have got diversity training even if they got that right
Why has the Police Commissioner not been sacked for this?
China's formidable People's Liberation Army (PLA) had some bitter lessons from a recent war drill, where they were defeated in six out of seven battles by an "opposing force," a media report said on Sunday.
The drills pitted for the first time PLA's 'red' teams from seven military area commands against the 'blue' team, or the "opposing force", playing the enemy, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The country's first permanent professional "opposing force", an infantry brigade from Beijing Military Area Command, was the rival during the exercise which ended on Monday, a report in Sunday's People's Daily said.
Before the exercise commenced, no one was sure about the outcome, it said. In the end, however, the blue team won six out of seven battles, defeating every area command except Shenyang, Xinhua said.
The exercises were aimed at toughening up the PLA troops by making soldiers practice as if they were fighting a real war has offered valuable new training methods, it said.
Unlike previous exercises, which were usually scripted, this year's exercise was "for real".
Wan Fazhong, brigade commander of a 'red' team from Lanzhou Military Area Command said that the exercise was the first step for the army to become combat-ready.
"The more the opposing force resembles the enemy, the more we can toughen up our combat capabilities," Wan said.
Earlier Col Geng Yansheng, a ministry of defense spokesman, said China has established its first professional "opposing force" and that it was an important step to strengthen real combat training. Geng said what kind of enemy the "opposing force" would play will be decided by the purpose and content of the training.
#2
The Opfor (like at the NTC) is rolling and training 6+ times a year. The 'red' teams get to do this about every second or third year. There's going to be a competency difference in execution regardless. Training and team building are an effectiveness multiplier. Period. The more you do, the better you get. Hasn't changed in thousands of years.
Their drills are bloodless battles, and their battles bloody drills. - Flavius Josephus, Jewish Historian, AD 37-101, on the Roman military
#4
This is actually quite a troubling development.
The Chinese do not like losing face, and yet they put their first rate units into a training exercise where they got their butt's kicked.
It seems they are suddenly serious about land combat, which is a new thing. Now why is that? Not the U.S. for sure we have been there all along, but perhaps Vietnam? Korea? Russia? India?
I am thinking Vietnam, based on their recent spat, but relations with Korea and India are kind of a mess right now too.
[Iran Press TV] Ukraine's military says nearly 90 government forces have been killed in the southeastern town of Ilovaysk in the Donetsk region.
Mykhailo Logvinov, a military official in the southeastern region of Zaporizhye, said on Wednesday that the bodies of 87 forces were delivered to a local morgue in the area.
Logvinov said that local forensic experts have identified the remains.
He claimed that the soldiers were surrounded and captured by pro-Russian fighters last month.
Elsewhere in Donetsk, six non-combatants were killed in government shelling of the town of Yenakiyevo. They died when artillery shells hit a parking lot.
Ukraine's mainly Russian-speaking regions in the east have witnessed deadly festivities between pro-Moscow forces and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched military operations to silence the pro-Russians there in mid-April.
Violence intensified in May after the two flashpoint regions of Donetsk and Luhansk held local referendums, in which their residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence from Ukraine.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/03/2014 19:15 ||
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"surrounded and captured" then all dead = executions. Putin's tools have much to answer for. I'ma thinkrn we should ship some FAE MOABS to the Ukrainians and help them drop them, right (g)rom? A baked Russian is a good Russian
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/03/2014 20:53 Comments ||
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A baked Russian is a good Russian
Then may I suggest weapons-grade pot mixed into the Mother Of All Brownies. And some balalaikas. The Russians are a soulful people.
PARIS -- France is suspending the delivery of a warship to Russia amid security concerns about Moscow's actions in neighboring Ukraine, President Francois Hollande's office said Wednesday. The announcement comes a day before the start of a NATO summit and after months of pressure on France from allies to suspend the sale amid tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
Hollande's office, in a statement after he met with top defense advisers, called the fighting in eastern Ukraine "grave," and said Russia's recent actions harm "the foundations of security in Europe."
The Vladivostok, the first of two Mistral-class helicopter carriers ordered by Russia, was to be delivered next month. The second, named Sevastopol, ironically, after a port in Russian-annexed Crimea, has been slated for delivery next year.
Helicopter carriers, or heavy amphibious assault ships as we might call them, would be very useful to the French Navy. Just saying...
Despite talk Wednesday of a possible cease-fire in Ukraine, Hollande said that's not enough to allow France to authorize the delivery of the Vladivostok. His office made no mention of the second warship.
As recently as July, Hollande said the deal was too costly to cancel, and even this week, his advisers had indicated that France was ready to go ahead with the first delivery. In July, the president said that the Russians had paid for the ship, and France would have to reimburse 1.1 billion euros ($1.5 billion) if it cancelled the delivery.
Put the money into a trust account. For the next 30 years...
Unyielding to months of pressure from allies, including from some U.S. senators, French officials had argued that France needed to respect an agreed contract, and said recent sanctions against Russia didn't apply retroactively to the contract agreed three years ago. French officials have also argued that the ship would be delivered without any weapons.
There's quite a nuanced statement. Of course the Russians wouldn't know how to arm the ship, that goes without saying...
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/03/2014 00:00 ||
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[Al Ahram] Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Wednesday rejected a ceasefire plan proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin ...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead... as an attempt to deceive the West about Moscow's real intentions. "This latest plan is another attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the international community ahead of the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... summit and an attempt to avert the EU's inevitable decision to unleash a new wave of sanctions against Russia," he said in a statement.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/03/2014 12:52 ||
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[Iran Press TV] Ukraine's military sources say 15 government soldiers have been killed during fighting in the eastern parts of the country over the past 24 hours.
Senior defense front man, Andriy Lysenko, said another 49 troops and their accompanying irregular forces were maimed in various attacks.
Lysenko added that Ukraine's army forces retreated from the airport of the eastern city of Lugansk as well as a nearby village on Monday after an hours-long battle against a "reinforced tank battalion of the Russian armed forces."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/03/2014 00:00 ||
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[Iran Press TV] Pro-Russian protesters in eastern Ukraine say they have taken control of a strategic road that links Donetsk to the strategic port city of Mariupol.
The self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) headquarters reported on Tuesday that they had taken control of the Donetsk-Mariupol road and several other roads to Mariupol.
Pro-Russia protesters in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk also say they are close to recapturing its airport from government forces who have been defending it since capturing it two months ago.
"The airport is 95 percent under our control. Practically, we are holding it by now. Some remaining Ukrainian troops need to be cleared," said a leader of one of the main pro-Russian units in Donetsk.
Earlier on Tuesday, Ukraine's military sources said that 15 government soldiers had been killed during fights in the eastern parts of the country over the past 24 hours.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Monday that it was "shocked" by Ukrainian Defense Minister Valeriy Geletey's remarks accusing Moscow of launching a "great war" that could claim tens of thousands of lives.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/03/2014 00:00 ||
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#3
Said it before, I'll say it again -- kill the F35 program dead, dead, dead.
1) re-open the factory and turn out a couple hundred more F22s.
2) let the Air Force decide between an updated F16 and updated F18E/F as its 'mud-mover' ground-attack aircraft.
3) keep the A10 around a while longer.
4) learn from the Navy X47 program and get working on drone ground-attack aircraft that can go into harm's way.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/03/2014 12:56 Comments ||
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#4
I might agree Doc, but I want to know the variable cost of the next F-35 built. If it is too high cancel. I would also want to know the variable cost of the next Lawn Dart +++ as a comparo. We must also consider the costs in kicking the Royal Navy in the balls. I suspect the loss of the F-35B would lead to the two new fleet carriers being scrapped or repurposed into some sort of LPH.
#5
That's the Brits problem. They used to have an aircraft industry -- they can build a plane for their carriers, if those carriers end up being built (and I think they won't and it won't be our fault either).
F16 or F18 upgraded to gen4.5 would be a lot less expensive and work 95% as well. For the money I'd do that and build more F22s.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/03/2014 18:40 Comments ||
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#7
A new block 50 F-16 (with stuff to keep it flying) costs about $75M (in 2014 dollars) based on FMS to Oman and other Gulf States.
A F-35 (with stuff to keep it flying) costs about $175 (in 2014 dollars) based on FMS to Korea.
The F-35 is VASTLY better than an F-16 block 50. Like 50-1 in air-air combat, and faster, and better avionics, and longer range, and and and.
So, yes we could buy about twice as many F-16s, with the same money we are spending on the F-35, but why bother? Especially, if you guys are worried about fighting newish MIGs and SUs then the F-16 is really a bad place to make a big investment.
#8
Cause the Germans had better tanks than the Americans and got a much higher kill ratio. How did that play in the end? Sometimes quantity makes up for quality. The problem here is that someone may have tried for one tech too far down the production line. Reminds me of the Germans having the ME262 by '43 but kept screwing with the tech trying to make it do things it wasn't intended to and never getting into production in numbers that were really needed to be effective by '44 and '45.
#9
The downsides of the F-35 aren't its costs, but its design.
The inclusion of a pilot is a huge burden in weight and performance. This is probably the last fighter plane that will have a pilot.
The single engine decision is going increase losses of pilots by at least a dozen and fail hundreds of additional missions over the life-cycle of the plane.
Also, its range is pretty short for its mission, which again is going to cause some additional pilot deaths and mission failures due to airborne refueling mishaps. This can be mitigated by adding another few thousand pounds of fuel in some sort of disposable take-off tank, which will increase range a lot while not compromising mission stealth. But carrier operations would be more dangerous, and some additional sailors would probably be lost.
So, there are things to critique about the plane, and the program to build it. But is not terrible. And if history is any guide then the ones we build today, will be flying 50 years from now; so, let's take some time and spend the money to get them right and invest in our future.
#10
We are talking planes not tanks and before the war not during it. Big difference.
Compare the Zero to the P-41 in China (or the underpowered Brewster F2A Buffalo in Indochina) at the beginning of the war. From that example I infer that it is better to start out with a better plane.
Once the war gets going, well then saturating the enemy is a fine strategy, but it is not cheap.
Right now we are not involved in an actual air to air campaign, and any money saved in military procurement can be redirected to buy a lot of Obama-phones. Be thankful that the F-35 program is still funded.
[TIME] If we're genuinely committed to improving the circumstances of women, we need to get the facts straight
Much of what we hear about the plight of American women is false. Some faux facts have been repeated so often they are almost beyond the reach of critical analysis. Though they are baseless, these canards have become the foundation of Congressional debates, the inspiration for new legislation and the focus of college programs. Here are five of the most popular myths that should be rejected by all who are genuinely committed to improving the circumstances of women...
Posted by: Fred ||
09/03/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
"...there is a lot of statistical illiteracy among journalists, feminist academics and political leaders."
The numbers may be bogus and inflammatory but that does not invalidate the premise.
#4
Myths get created to satisfy agendas. Define a minimal or non-existent problem. Amplify. Propose a program for addressing these minimal or non-existent problems. Federal money will follow in exchange for votes. Taxpayers foot the bill. Recycle.
#6
The interesting point was that Obama is mentioned as constantly repeating most of these myths.
(Could Obama be a liar? Say it ain't so!)
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
09/03/2014 13:39 Comments ||
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#7
The Left digests its own lies and then wonders why things keep falling apart and become unmanageable when they take actions predicated upon those lies.
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.
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...
