PARIS Armed robbers some disguised as women snatched euro85 million ($108 million) worth of diamond rings, necklaces and luxury watches from a Harry Winston boutique on a posh Paris avenue in one of the largest jewel heists in history, officials said Friday.
The gang of three or four robbers threatened about 15 employees with handguns and hit some on the head before taking the jewels from display cases from the store near the Champs-Elysees, said a police official, who was not authorized to be publicly named under agency policy.
At least two of the bandits were men wearing wigs and women's clothes, the official said. The robbers also spoke a foreign language at times and appeared to know employees' names when they robbed the store before it closed early Thursday at the height of Christmas shopping season.
The brazen theft was among the world's costliest jewel heists. Five years ago, thieves plundered 123 maximum-security vaults in Antwerp, Belgium, stealing $100 million (euro78.96 million) worth of diamonds in the biggest theft in the world's diamond-cutting capital. "We are cooperating with the authorities in their investigation. Our first concern is the well-being of our employees," New York-based Harry Winston said.
The boutique on Avenue Montaigne was closed to the public Friday. Employees who came out for cigarette breaks refused to speak to reporters, and three of the five display windows stood empty of their usual wares.
A Paris judicial official said Harry Winston declared to insurers that the stolen goods were worth euro85 million ($108 million). The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. The Harry Winston boutique was targeted in a similar theft in October 2007, when three people forced employees to open safes and hand over euro10 million ($12.66 million)worth of jewels. Who's their insurance company? Raised Eyebrow of Paree?
LAS VEGAS -- O.J. Simpson is going to prison; the question is for how long. The former football star who walked away a free man after a celebrated murder trial was due to learn Friday how much time he'll spend in a Nevada state prison for a botched attempt to recover sports mementoes and personal items from two collectibles peddlers.
Neither Simpson, who was acquitted of the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife and her friend in Los Angeles, nor his co-defendant and former golfing buddy, Clarence "C.J. Stewart, testified at trial. They were convicted Oct. 3 of 12 criminal charges, including kidnapping and armed robbery, and face mandatory prison time -- a minimum of six years and up to life.
Simpson attorney Yale Galanter has said his client won't address the court. Stewart will, said his lawyer, Brent Bryson. "Best-case scenario we're hoping for is six years. That's the bottom-end number before being eligible for parole," Bryson said.
District Attorney David Roger is not expected to call witnesses, spokesman Dan Kulin said.
Simpson lawyer Gabriel Grasso said he expected Clark County District Court Judge Jackie Glass would keep the proceedings short. "She wants to hear from the lawyers and she wants to hear from the defendants. That's about it," Grasso said.
Judges in Nevada have broad discretion in determining whether to run sentences consecutively or at the same time. Glass, known for giving severe sentences, can ignore or accept a recommendation from the state parole agency calling for at least 18 years.
She received written pleas for leniency from defense lawyers and was expected to rule on a request to let Simpson post bail and be freed from jail while he appeals his conviction. The judge already denied the men's request for a new trial.
"Notwithstanding the jury verdict, Simpson continues to maintain his innocence," Grasso said in a brief seeking his client's release.
Jurors who heard 13 days of testimony said after the verdict that they were convinced of Simpson's guilt because of audio recordings middleman Thomas Riccio secretly made of the Sept. 13, 2007, Palace Station casino hotel confrontation with sports memorabilia brokers Alfred Beardsley and Bruce Fromong.
"Don't let nobody out of this room!" Simpson commands on the recordings, and instructs other men to scoop up items he insists had been stolen from him.
On Tuesday, Glass is scheduled to sentence four former co-defendants who took plea deals and testified against Simpson and Stewart. Michael McClinton, Charles Cashmore, Walter Alexander and Charles Ehrlich could receive probation or prison time. McClinton could get up to 11 years; the others face less.
#2
Nice to see he graduated from a knife to a gun.
It'a pretty sad, when the defence team, after the fact (first trial) admits your guilt. Payback a bitch. You can get away with things just so long. I feel he really think he's invincible. What will he pull next, were he let go?
#6
O.J. Simpson was sentenced Friday to at least 6 years in prison for armed robbery and kidnapping in a failed attempt to recover sports memorabilia from two collectibles peddlers.
He could serve up to 16 years behind bars, but there will be the possibility of parole after five years plus time served for a total of six years, Judge Jackie Glass said.
His co-defendant Clarence "C.J." Stewart received the same sentence.
Look at it this way, OJ. If the "real killer" is in the Nevada state pen, you got plenty of time to find him.
#7
I think this guy should have been in jail awhile ago. If you want an interesting perspective from a young, black guy who works with me at McDonalds, check this out (warning, his language is pretty bad):
http://deepfriedworldwide.com/archives/132
We all started a webpage at our fast-food store, the workers love it, and we are not pros at this yet (it has been up only 2 weeks), but please let us know what you think!
Posted by: George Vreeland Hill ||
12/05/2008 14:07 Comments ||
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#9
Outside court, Goldman's father, Fred Goldman, and sister, Kim, said they were thrilled with the sentence. "There's never closure. Ron is always gone. What we have is satisfaction that this monster is where he belongs behind bars," Fred Goldman said.
I think they oughta sue for his license plate money...
LAS VEGAS A broken O.J. Simpson was sentenced Friday to as much as 33 years in prison for a hotel armed robbery after a judge rejected his apology and said, "It was much more than stupidity." The 61-year-old football Hall of Famer stood shackled and stone-faced when Judge Jackie Glass quickly rattled off his punishment soon after he made a rambling, five-minute plea for leniency, choking back tears as he told her: "I didn't want to steal anything from anyone. ... I'm sorry, sorry."
Simpson said he was simply trying to retrieve sports memorabilia and other mementos, including his first wife's wedding ring, from two dealers when he stormed a Las Vegas hotel room on Sept. 13, 2007.
But the judge emphasized that it was a violent confrontation in which at least one gun was drawn, and she said someone could have been killed. She said the evidence was overwhelming, with the planning, the confrontation itself and the aftermath all recorded on audio or videotape.
Glass, a no-nonsense judge known for her tough sentences, imposed such a complex series of consecutive and concurrent sentences that even many attorneys watching the case were confused as to how much time Simpson got.
Simpson could serve up to 33 years but could be eligible for parole after nine years, according to Elana Roberto, the judge's clerk.
we all know that O.J. stands for "OFF to Jail!!!" we can't collect $200.00 cause he's broke, and there's no sense in him passing "Go" cause he's way passed "GONE!" so much for the hard game of REAL LIFE.
#15
Get off of his case. 13 years ago he should not even have gone to trial. There are interesting pictures of his bedroom 13 years ago - at 7:30am - NO socks at the FOOT of his bed. THEN at 10:30am there were BLODDY socks at the foot of his bed - INTERESTING..
Then we have Fred Goodman, money hungry (gold digging) to the first degree - FOR 2 YEARS before his son's death the two of them had not even SPOKEN!!!!
AND then we have the present "judge". Her comments, etc., from the "bench" probably will have the case and judgment tossed out and her reprimanded. To say she had "Agenda" is an UNDERSTATEMENT!!!!!!
#23
Well, if someone would be so kind as to instruct me (in great detail) how to edit those videos, I would have put the real targets face in there. As it is, Lloyd deserves it for chewing more scenerey than even Shatner did (in this movie).
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/05/2008 23:27 Comments ||
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#27
BTW Mathews, Simpson's sports agent Mike Gilbert, in his new book How I Helped OJ Get Away WIth It, noted that he told OJ to Not take his arthritis meds so that the gloves wouldn't fit.
A couple accused of beating and torturing a teenager, who authorities say was sometimes kept shackled inside their home, appeared in shackles themselves to face more than a dozen kidnapping and child abuse charges.
It was Michael Schumacher and Kelly Layne Lau's first court appearance since their arrest following the boy's escape in nothing more than boxer shorts and a chain around his ankle. The teen was in search of help after allegedly spending more than a year in captivity. The boy's one-time guardian, Caren Ramirez, also was charged with similar allegations Thursday. She remained under psychiatric evaluation awaiting her court appearance, expected as early as Monday.
Schumacher and Lau were charged with 13 felony counts, and Ramirez, whom the boy called an aunt, was charged with 10 counts. Among the charges are corporal injury to a child, child abuse and aggravated mayhem, which the San Joaquin County District Attorney's office said could yield life sentences. Superior Court Judge Franklin Stephenson ordered Schumacher and Lau to be held in lieu of $2.2 million bail. They did not enter pleas.
The abuse at the couple's home in Tracy, about 60 miles east of San Francisco, started in July 2007, prosecutors said. The boy escaped from the home on Monday and fled to a nearby fitness center. He appeared emaciated and was covered in soot.
On Thursday, Stephenson ordered all parties not to discuss details of the case. But Lau told KGO-TV of San Francisco in a jailhouse interview a day earlier that the boy and Ramirez, 43, came to live with her family more than a year ago because they had nowhere else to go. Ramirez instructed Lau and her husband to discipline the boy as she did, Lau said. She said she struck the boy in the knee with a baseball bat at least five times, KGO reported.
Lau said she participated in the abuse because she was afraid Ramirez would hurt her own children. Ramirez also burned the boy with an aluminum bat heated in a fireplace, she said. Ramirez would not let anyone else feed the boy, Lau said, adding that the teen would sit in the living room and watch while the Schumacher family, including their four children, ate meals in the kitchen. Those children, between ages 1 and 9, were placed with Child Protective Services after their parents' arrest. Authorities have said they showed no signs of abuse.
Ramirez had been the boy's legal guardian after child welfare officials took him from his abusive father three or four years ago. According to court documents, she pleaded no contest to one felony count of beating the boy.
#1
Even though the chains did actually fit...It will be very tough battle to convict in California, so tell Schumacher, Lau, and Ramirez we'll keep the boy, but they must take Nancy Palosi and we'll call it even.
He knew that his fathers family came from Thibodaux, La., and his mother was from Ireland, and he knew about the 1929 stock market crash and World War II and life in the 1940s.
But he could remember almost nothing after that.
In 1953, he underwent an experimental brain operation in Hartford to correct a seizure disorder, only to emerge from it fundamentally and irreparably changed. He developed a syndrome neurologists call profound amnesia. He had lost the ability to form new memories.
For the next 55 years, each time he met a friend, each time he ate a meal, each time he walked in the woods, it was as if for the first time.
And for those five decades, he was recognized as the most important patient in the history of brain science. As a participant in hundreds of studies, he helped scientists understand the biology of learning, memory and physical dexterity, as well as the fragile nature of human identity.
On Tuesday evening at 5:05, Henry Gustav Molaison known worldwide only as H. M., to protect his privacy died of respiratory failure at a nursing home in Windsor Locks, Conn. His death was confirmed by Suzanne Corkin, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who had worked closely with him for decades. Henry Molaison was 82.
From the age of 27, when he embarked on a life as an object of intensive study, he lived with his parents, then with a relative and finally in an institution. His amnesia did not damage his intellect or radically change his personality. But he could not hold a job and lived, more so than any mystic, in the moment.
Say it however you want, said Dr. Thomas Carew, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine, and president of the Society for Neuroscience. What H. M. lost, we now know, was a critical part of his identity.
At a time when neuroscience is growing exponentially, when students and money are pouring into laboratories around the world and researchers are mounting large-scale studies with powerful brain-imaging technology, it is easy to forget how rudimentary neuroscience was in the middle of the 20th century.
When Mr. Molaison, at 9 years old, banged his head hard after being hit by a bicycle rider in his neighborhood near Hartford, scientists had no way to see inside his brain. They had no rigorous understanding of how complex functions like memory or learning functioned biologically. They could not explain why the boy had developed severe seizures after the accident, or even whether the blow to the head had anything do to with it.
Eighteen years after that bicycle accident, Mr. Molaison arrived at the office of Dr. William Beecher Scoville, a neurosurgeon at Hartford Hospital. Mr. Molaison was blacking out frequently, had devastating convulsions and could no longer repair motors to earn a living.
After exhausting other treatments, Dr. Scoville decided to surgically remove two finger-shaped slivers of tissue from Mr. Molaisons brain. The seizures abated, but the procedure especially cutting into the hippocampus, an area deep in the brain, about level with the ears left the patient radically changed.
Alarmed, Dr. Scoville consulted with a leading surgeon in Montreal, Dr. Wilder Penfield of McGill University, who with Dr. Brenda Milner, a psychologist, had reported on two other patients memory deficits.
Soon Dr. Milner began taking the night train down from Canada to visit Mr. Molaison in Hartford, giving him a variety of memory tests. It was a collaboration that would forever alter scientists understanding of learning and memory.
He was a very gracious man, very patient, always willing to try these tasks I would give him, Dr. Milner, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the Montreal Neurological Institute and McGill University, said in a recent interview. And yet every time I walked in the room, it was like wed never met.
At the time, many scientists believed that memory was widely distributed throughout the brain and not dependent on any one neural organ or region. Brain lesions, either from surgery or accidents, altered peoples memory in ways that were not easily predictable. Even as Dr. Milner published her results, many researchers attributed H. M.s deficits to other factors, like general trauma from his seizures or some unrecognized damage.
It was hard for people to believe that it was all due to the excisions from the surgery, Dr. Milner said.
That began to change in 1962, when Dr. Milner presented a landmark study in which she and H. M. demonstrated that a part of his memory was fully intact. In a series of trials, she had Mr. Molaison try to trace a line between two outlines of a five-point star, one inside the other, while watching his hand and the star in a mirror. The task is difficult for anyone to master at first.
Every time H. M. performed the task, it struck him as an entirely new experience. He had no memory of doing it before. Yet with practice he became proficient. At one point he said to me, after many of these trials, Huh, this was easier than I thought it would be, Dr. Milner said.
The implications were enormous. Scientists saw that there were at least two systems in the brain for creating new memories. One, known as declarative memory, records names, faces and new experiences and stores them until they are consciously retrieved. This system depends on the function of medial temporal areas, particularly an organ called the hippocampus, now the object of intense study. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call "The Twilight Zone".
From the Rantburg Unexploded Ordinance Stories desk.
Jeff Heyes kept the foot long shell on his desk at his print firm.
He had been given the object by a friend who had gone diving in the Solent on the South Coast and spotted it on the sea bed.
However, his office landlord, Clive Parks, and his friend Jon Williamson, a keen shooter, realised the detonator on the shell was still live and the TNT was showing.
They carefully moved the bomb out of the building and into a flower bed before calling the police who then contacted the army's bomb disposal unit. Sounds like a 4o mm antiaircraft shell, but the author does not know anything, or asks anything.
Ten police officers arrived at the office in Worcester on Thursday afternoon and two crews from Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service were on standby in the car park of the nearby Oak Apple pub. "Clear the put! There is unexploded ordinance in the flower bed!"
After inspecting the bomb, two soldiers picked it up and placed it in a red box before putting it in the back of a truck. A red box ya say? That is discriminatory to colorblind people, ya know.
They drove it back to their base in Powick Hams, Worcs, where it is understood a controlled explosion took place.
Mr Williamson said: "I saw it on the desk and thought 'that looks dangerous'.
"I shoot so I know about firearms, it still had a live detonator and the explosive TNT was exposed. That would be a hefty firearm to heft for that shell, heh.
"We phoned the managing director and told him and he said, 'I cannot believe it is dangerous, it was given to me by a friend of mine'." Was his name Al Kaboomi, per chance?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/05/2008 16:38 ||
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I need to reload some .308 shells, but I'm short on TNT. Guess I'll need to stop by Shooters Supply and pick up a couple of lbs.
A range of Lego-style fighting figurines - including an Islamic terrorist militant - has sparked outrage among Muslims. The toy mini-figures, made by American Will Chapman, includes a masked terrorist bandit with an assault rifle, grenade launcher and belt of explosives.
So they're life-like figurines ...
Shocked by the playthings, British Muslim organisation the Ramadhan Foundation has branded the figurines "absolutely disgusting". Chief executive Mohammed Shafiq said the figures were "glorifying terrorism".
Unlike the various videos and websites of terrorist organizations ...
He said: "I don't think there's any difference between someone that shouts hatred through a megaphone and someone that creates a doll that glorifies terrorists.
"As a parent myself, I'm going to teach my children respect for the law and respect for each and every community. These are the lessons parents should be giving to their children - not lessons about weapons and violence."
Father-of-three Mr Chapman boasts on his website that his nine-year-old son gave him the idea for the range.
The site advertises 31 different Lego-style weapons, weapons packs and 10 miniature militant figurines. Other fighters in the range include World War Two troops, US marines - and a Nazi SS officer.
A spokesman for Lego UK said they were "not associated" with the toys being sold by BrickArms, "which have been customised without LEGO UK's knowledge or permission."
He added Lego is "committed to developing toys which enrich childhood by encouraging imaginative and creative play - and does not endorse products that do not fit with this philosophy." Pic at site is a beaut
#8
As a kid I would play a game with legos where I would build a mechwarrior and duel it out; different weapons=different rubber band lengths, the PPC was a rod lauched by a mini crossbow, etc. Had helicopters, tanks, all lego. Swords became machine guns, lances to rpg's.
They just took that idea to the next level and would have really enjoyed having these guys with my lego A-6 strikes.
#11
I don't think they're disgusting. I want one. Then I can act out destroying it. What's not to like? Besides, it's realistic and historical. Think I'll put it on my desk. Then I'll get a few rubber or plastic animals--a camel and some sheep, bloody them up with paint and lay them on their sides at the figurine's feet. Then I'll get an American GI or two and lay them down with the animals. Then I'll get a little American flag, take it off it's pole, crumple it and burn a bit of it, and lay it down at the moslem figurine's feet. Then I'll make a backdrop of the twin towers and the pentagon and place it behind the group. Yeah, that oughta be a real good visual reminder of the realities coming our way. Luckily, I work at home. : )
I received this in an email newsletter, but the link goes to the source.
Mountains of floating garbage, geological problems, and stranded cargo ships prompted Chinas Three Gorges dam authority to suspend filling the dams reservoir to its final height last month, according to the popular magazine South Weekend (Nanfang Zhoumo).
In early November, with just two metres to go before reaching a final reservoir height of 175 metres, the State Councils Three Gorges project construction committee ordered a stop to the trial filling that began in late September. The decision, according to South Weekend, was prompted by three serious problems a massive surge of floating garbage on the reservoir surface, hundreds of landslides and subsidence problems along the reservoirs unstable shoreline and, most importantly, stranded cargo ships downstream of the dam caused by low water levels during reservoir filling. Story continues at the link.
#1
According to a joint report by the Nanjing Institute for Geography and Lakes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Changjiang (Yangtze) Water Resources Commission, landslides and bank collapses have been identified at 4,719 places in the reservoir area. Of these, at least 627 are associated with filling the reservoir.
#6
PAKISTAN/INDIA > appears that both nations are complaining about the ALARMING MEASURABLE DROP IN RIVERINE WATER LEVELS [e.g. INDUS VALLEY], as perceived to be mainly caused by CHINA's NEW REGIONAL DEV CONSTRUX PROJECTS, INCLUD DAMMING.
Also, WORLD MIL FORUM > threads strongly indic that, among other methods, CHINA FEARS COVERT SUBMARINE = UNDERWATER SAPPER ATTACK ON THREE GORGES + OTHER MAJOR DAMS. It suppors what myself and other Netters had argued back in the mid- and late 1990's.
#10
Since you seem to be a surfer, what would think of the ULTIMATE? When the dam goes, surfing down the big tsunami past all those high-rises of the Pearl Delta Industrial Area, and hopefully out to sea?
Posted by: Rick A Hyatt ||
12/05/2008 20:13 Comments ||
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#11
You guys in India & Pakistan should do something to radically drop the population of Red China, you know what I mean?
Posted by: Rick A Hyatt ||
12/05/2008 20:15 Comments ||
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#12
Now you know why the major corporations are pulling their factories out of the Industrial Delta zones, lest they lose them all in a flood. Why the CHICOM "Economy" is sinking faster than the Titanic. Funny, did the CHICOMS go and steal US geological data the way they have nuclear stuff, economic data that was clearly disinformation, and like from the downed spy plane? That they used to build their own, that fell out of the sky on 6/6/6?
Well, that's what the CHICOMS get for being corrupt thieves. At least real thieves had a code of honor.
Posted by: Rick A Hyatt ||
12/05/2008 20:18 Comments ||
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#13
Enlighten my ignorance, please. How could a submarine get all the way to the dam undetected?
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/05/2008 23:35 Comments ||
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#17
*sigh* He wouldn't take me with him to Moscow back in the '90s, either, for fear I'd get myself kidnapped by the Mafiya. He has this odd idea I wouldn't recognize bad people, and would be devastated to see true poverty in action.
More than 130,000 inflatable breasts have been lost at sea en route to Australia. Men's magazine Ralph was planning to include the boobs as a free gift with its January issue.
The cargo is worth about $200,000, which is another blow for publisher ACP's parent company PBL, which is already in $4.3 billion of debt.
A spokeswoman for Ralph said the container left docks in Beijing two weeks ago but turned up empty in Sydney this week. The magazine has put out an alert to shipping authorities to see if they have the container, but if they don't turn up in the next 48 hours it will be too late for the next issue, she said.
Ralph editor Santi Pintado urged anyone who has any information to contact the magazine. ``Unless Somali pirates have stolen them its difficult to explain where they are,'' Pintado said.
Posted by: Mike ||
12/05/2008 06:43 ||
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#1
Lost containers are a real hazard at sea, as they are like icebergs, partially submerged and impossible to see at night. I love the irony that pirate boats could be sunk by a bunch of boobs, when the international boobs have put the squeeze on us.
Assuming the container really was on the ship when it sailed, what are the chances a ship's crew of all men could have made the container - and the cargo - disappear (separately, of course).
Anybody search the living quarters on the ship?
/off sexist thoughts ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
12/05/2008 12:26 Comments ||
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#3
Yarr, inflatable breasts? Tell the cabin boy I've got good news, and bad news...
Five interior ministry staff have been arrested on charges of taking bribes from operators of underground brothels and illegal bars, United Arab Emirates newspapers reported on Thursday.
The men, aged between 19 and 24, are Emirati inspectors with the Criminal and Investigative Directorate, a branch of the interior ministry.
An anti-corruption undercover team rounded up the five security personnel, along with three Asian nationals who served as their informers, after complaints they posed as security officers and extorted money from illegal brothels and alcohol vendors in Abu Dhabi, capital of the oil-rich UAE.
The eight have allegedly confessed to carrying out raids on these venues and extorting money from the owners, according to The National.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/05/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Yeah, that's a smart move. Put guys 19-24 in charge of investigating illegal situations involving money, liquor and nubile young women. Naw, there won't be any temptation there, no sirree. Them young fellers will be 100% on the straight and narrow all the time. Yup.
And I'm just a simple country lawyer named Clarence Darrow.
A BRISBANE school that banned the national anthem at assemblies says it will review the policy and that it loves the values embodied in the song. Australian International Islamic College teacher Pravin Chand was sacked in November, four months after his proposal for students to sing Advance Australia Fair was ruled to be against the "Islamic view and ethos".
A memo sent to teachers at the Durack school in July and obtained by The Courier-Mail, also said "the singing of the anthem will be put on hold".
But school trustee Keysar Trad said news the anthem was not played regularly at school assemblies came as a shock. Mr Trad said the anthem was performed at every major school function but was removed from daily assemblies by the principal without the endorsement of the school board.
Trustees and the board would meet to discuss performing the anthem at every school assembly, he said. "My personal recommendation is that it be performed at every assembly," he said.
Mr Trad said the students were proud to sing the anthem and were known locally for their performance of it. "Personally, I love the content because it's full of these wonderful words which reflect values that we all share," he said.
The revelations follow an outcry on the Gold Coast this week at a plan by the same college to open another campus at Carrara. A vocal crowd draped in Australian flags accused the college of promoting segregation, anti-Australian values and even terrorism.
Muslim leaders slammed the protests as "un-Australian" and claimed religion should not be used as a reason to protest against a school.
But Mr Chand, whose version of events was backed by a second teacher, said he had not heard the anthem once this year. "No national anthem to me means no integration with Australian kids," Mr Chand said. "Western values (at the school) are a no-no.
"It's like a paramilitary camp that place."
Mr Chand's employment was terminated by the college board last month on the grounds he was "not fitting into the school's ethos".
Outgoing principal Azroul Liza Khalid, who started at the school in July, said she had not heard the anthem once at assembly, although it was played two or three other times. Ms Khalid said she was told by a board member not to play the anthem or any songs on Friday because it was a holy day. In July, school assembly day was moved from Monday to Friday.
A spokeswoman for Queensland Education Minister Rod Welford indicated it was unlikely a public school had banned the national anthem. "It's not compulsory for schools to play the national anthem," she said. "There's an expectation it would be played on formal occasions when the Australian flag is being raised."
The future of the proposed 60-student college at Carrara will be decided by Gold Coast City Council next year.
Posted by: Oztralian ||
12/05/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Australian National Anthem should ban Islamic College, then.
Newton's Law III: "To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."
#3
Somebody reported that the Australian National Anthem is even harder to sing properly than "The Star Spangled Banner." It was the winner of a national contest, and I suspect the judges were all academics. An Australian official supposedly said, in announcing the anthem, "All right, everybody--wince!"
Does anyone have a link to the anthem, so we can judge for ourselves?
#4
AHA! there it is, right in front of me in Besoeker's post, where I couldn't miss it. I'll blame that on blurry bifocals.
So either I misremembered the story, or else it was the stodginess of the lyrics that caused the official to wince.
In any case, what we have here is a failure to assimilate. The line "Religion should not be used as a reason to protest the school" is particularly rich under the circumstances.
#6
Moslem schools is one thing.
American public schools are getting tentative about such things (the Pledge, ex) as well.
But the public schools have no excuse.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
12/05/2008 12:11 Comments ||
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#7
It's the damn cross on the flag. Soon to be replaced by a crescent. Second post from top has link to anthem. Sweetness-light has a story on GB school first canceling, then postponing Christmas pageant so the bloody and cruel EID holiday, rather, UNHOLYday, could be "celebrated" by the little Muzzie students. Gives them practice butchering infidels, and breaks down barriers to murder in childhood. The moslems won't stop until they're forced to stop. "Woe to those who withhold the sword from whom it is due . . . " didn't someone kind of important say that? Just wondering.
Anti-immigration Northern League Party of Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni is seeking a moratorium on the building of mosques as a preventative measure to future terrorist attacks. The demand for blocking mosque building comes as a reaction to the recent arrest of two men suspected for planning attacks in Milan, Italy's northern financial hub.
La Stampa, a local Italian newspaper quoted Maroni on Thursday stating that "Islamist terrorism" runs deep in Italy and must be stamped out.
"These arrests show that Islamist terrorism is entrenched in Italy, and that we must be vigilant," Maroni told the paper. "Unfortunately it is not easy to distinguish between places of worship and those that recruit terrorists and finance the planning of attacks," he added.
Ally of the conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the Northern League began a motion in the lower house of parliament banning the construction of places of worship for Muslims and cultural centers in Italy. The motion comes as a preliminary step to curb the increasing number of mosques until parliament passes an official law on their establishment.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/05/2008 00:00 ||
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"Unfortunately it is not easy to distinguish between places of worship and those that recruit terrorists and finance the planning of attacks,"
No distinguishing necessary. They worship recruiting terrorists and financing the planning of attacks. Easy.
#3
The Northern League gets it more than any other western political party, but they have cause and effect reversed. No muslims then no need for mosques. No need for massive and intrusive security measures to protect the native population from terrorism and islamic colonization.
Posted by: ed ||
12/05/2008 7:20 Comments ||
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#4
The Northern League gets it. I would remind them that fire is their friend.
#8
Can we call fire down on certain areas of the lands of the Pure and of the Meads and Persians first, Ptah? Surely God would agree that those two are more urgent than northern Italy...
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Many of you have asked me over the last year and half who I am. The time has come to introduce myself. Galrahn is an alias for Raymond Pritchett. I a technologist, entrepreneur, and own a technology consulting company in upstate New York.
Emerging markets are the car industrys big hope. But it wont be an easy ride
Not all is doom and gloom. Mature vehicle markets may be close to saturation, but there is huge unsatisfied demand in the big emerging car markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China (the so-called BRICs). Although not immune from the rich countries troubles, they are likely to suffer much less. For one thing, levels of personal debt are far lower and a smaller proportion of cars are bought on credit. For another, the BRIC economies have been expanding so fast that even a slowdown should still leave them with growth rates that look respectable to Western eyes.
One measure of the BRIC countries new importance to the car industry is that, recession or not, global car sales in 2008 may still hit an all-time record of about 59m. For the first time passenger-vehicle sales in the BRICs, at around 14m, are likely to overtake those in America, which are expected to be the worst since 1992.
#1
Guaranteed to give the Green Gang a collective heartburn hot enough to raise global temps a tenth of a degree Celsius. They have gotten *leverage* over the American market now... just as it ceases to be important enough to do what they want done.
Unlike a lot of people I otherwise agree with, I don't actually think that the greens deliberately and consciously think that they're doing the shit they do to seize power over others. They have faith in their Apocalypse - real, true religous Faith.
And I'm afraid that may mean literal Green Crusades are in the offing.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
12/05/2008 9:50 Comments ||
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#2
As per MMGWCC, aren't world Govts suppos to working to get their countries' techs and econs "back to the future" of the PRE-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION - THE GOOD NEWS IS THE GREENIES ARE ALLOWING MANKIND THE HONOR AND PRIVELEGE OF STILL USING THE WHEEL!?
E.W. Scripps Co. says it's putting the Rocky Mountain News up for sale after losing $11 million on the Denver operation in the first nine months of the year. The newspaper announced the development on its Web site Thursday.
Cincinnati-based Scripps has owned the News since 1926. Since 2001, the News has been in a joint operating agreement with The Denver Post, owned by Denver-based MediaNews Group Inc.
Rich Boehne, president and CEO of Scripps, says the company's 50 percent share of the joint operating agreement's cash flow "is no longer enough to support the Rocky, leaving us with no choice but to seek an exit."
The News was founded in 1859 and is Colorado's oldest newspaper. It has won four Pulitzer Prizes since 2000.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/05/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
How the big boys put out a newspaper.
Posted by: Bob Themp8495 ||
12/05/2008 0:56 Comments ||
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#3
This used to be the "right" paper, as opposed to the left birdcage-liner the Denver compost Post. But now its failing because it went left - its now merely the less left-ish paper in Denver, with some seriously stupid hippies like Mike Littwin writing for it.
I would hope a conservative company would take advantage of this to buy and run a conservative newspaper (and fire a lot of the editorial trash).
#4
both the news and the post are owned by the same company? I'll miss the news because I found it easyer (layout)to read during breakfast at the "Other Side." I won't miss the editorials except the ones by the KOA guy (can't think of the name).
#5
Agree, OldSpook, but the DP bought out, essentially, the RMN, and by osmosis sucked up all the revenue. We all knew more than 10 years ago it would come to this. That's what the left does--eliminate ALL competition. Just look at socialist/communist/dictatorships, etc. they all do it that way.
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.
LAS VEGAS -- O.J. Simpson is going to prison; the question is for how long. The former football star who walked away a free man after a celebrated murder trial was due to learn Friday how much time he'll spend in a Nevada state prison for a botched attempt to recover sports mementoes and personal items from two collectibles peddlers.
A couple accused of beating and torturing a teenager, who authorities say was sometimes kept shackled inside their home, appeared in shackles themselves to face more than a dozen kidnapping and child abuse charges.
