[Townhall] Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin promised to pay the government back for expenses related to his wife’s trip to Europe, but rejected calls to resign after a watchdog report revealed his attendance at a Veterans Affairs summit quickly turned into a "sightseeing" trip.
The inspector general report revealed "serious derelictions" by Shulkin and his staffers leading to "poor judgment and/or misconduct."
The secretary’s top aide was discovered to have doctored emails to make it appear as though Shulkin was receiving "special recognition" at the summit in order to justify his wife’s travel to Denmark on the taxpayer’s dime, amounting to more than $4,000.
Last November, The War Zone posted an exclusive story detailing a bizarre incident involving an unidentified aircraft that transited the skies of the Pacific Northwest in the early evening of October 25th, 2017. What started as a radar target moving at very high speed over Northern California turned into a series of eyewitness accounts made by nearby airline pilots traveling northward over Oregon. Even F-15 fighters were launched to intercept the mysterious intruder that quickly became invisible to radar.
Now, through the Freedom of Information Act, we present what could be one of the most insightful instances of official documentation surrounding such an encounter that had already been confirmed to have occurred by both the FAA and the USAF. These materials include fascinating audio recordings of radio transmissions and phone calls made as the incident was unfolding, as well as pilot interviews, and conversations between FAA officials made in the aftermath of the highly peculiar incident.
#1
I've been thinking about the concept of UFOs lately. Without FTL and more they are pretty much forever a non-starter on pure physics. HOWEVER..
There is a possible way to have craft from elsewhere. It's been in lots of book and TV plots, a few movies and many Physics shows on PBS. Just not with UFOs.
Craft from alternate realities are much more feasible then craft from far distances. To top it of quantum science kind of requires various types of alternate realities when you run the math.
Just something to think about in the back of your mind. Maybe and Maybe Not but a hell of a lot more likely than something from across the galaxy.
Oh and if you did have a device to skip across realities a space or airborne one would be much less likely to embed itself in a block of granite or something awful like that.
#3
There are Heavenly hosts.
You would be fool to mess with them.
They rarely show up but to prevent nuclear confrontations and they are reluctant to do that.
[Free Thought] Amarillo, TX — As news of the tragic shooting in Parkland, Florida dominated the airwaves this week, a massive hostage situation—which was quickly turning into a mass shooting situation—was foiled by a hero in a church. That hero, however, is now in the hospital after police showed up to the scene and shot him.
The situation was well on its way to becoming one of the deadliest shootings in history as the gunman took over 100 people hostage inside the Faith City Mission church on Wednesday.
“They said there was a gun in the building everyone started running all different ways,” said Clay Murdock, a student at Faith City Mission.
According to WLOX, Murdock said he tried to get as many people inside their sound room as possible.
“We’re standing in there and everyone starts praying,” said Murdock. “I went outside to see what was going on if I could get more people in there and right when as I went outside the guy was standing right in front of me with the pistol.”
[All Africa] THE crackdown on individuals that catapulted the then First Lady, Grace Mugabe's meteoric and divisive ...politicians call things divisive when when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never divisive, they're principled... rise to power has netted the Vice Chancellor of the Zim-bob-we's biggest university for awarding her a bogus Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree.
Prof Levi Nyagura, the University of Zim-bob-we (UZ) Vice Chancellor, has been tossed in the slammer Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! on Friday during an ongoing probe by the Zim-bob-we Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) into one of the most controversial episodes to the former First Lady's ascension.
Mugabe graduated with a Doctorate in Philosophy from the Faculty of Social Studies in September 2014, three months into her "studies."
Her husband, Bob Muggsy Mugabe Nonagenarian President-for-Life of Zim-bob-we who turned the former Breadbasket of Africa into the African Basket Case. Dumped in November 2017 when the Missus decided she wanted to be president, and opposed heer might against Crocodile Mnangawa Important safety tip: If your opponent goes by the name Crocodile andf your title is Shopper in Chief let him win.... was at the time the Chancellor of the university and capped her. He held that position in all public universities.
Nyagura was expected to appear at a Harare court on Saturday at the time of going to press.
Phylis Chikundura, ZACC spokeswoman, told journalists the anti-corruption watchdog had substantial evidence regarding the conferment of the PHD degree.
"We picked him up (Nyagura) and took him into custody, where he will stay overnight (Friday). He will appear in court tomorrow (Saturday) on charges of abuse of office," Chikundura said.
Chikundura confirmed the anti-corruption commission was also investigating former Sociology Department chairman, Professor Claude Mararike, who is suspected to have facilitated and presided over Grace's awarding of the contentious degree.
Mararike is a longtime propagandist of the ruling Zanu (PF).
The arrest of Nyagura comes after ten lecturers in the Sociology department petitioning ZACC on the awarding of the degree to the beleaguered former first lady.
They (lecturers) argued they never saw her study transcripts, progress reports and thesis.
The lecturers demand that the academic honour be withdrawn and overruled insisting the vice chancellor abused his office through awarding the undeserving former first lady.
In retaliation to the accusation, Nyagura accused the lecturers of lacking the requisite qualifications to have monitored Mrs Mugabe's progress during her "studies".
Harare provincial magistrate, Elisha Singano, directed the UZ registrar to provide a set of relevant documents, records and articles to the ZACC.
The court would also access to documents proving the former first lady made pre-registration application form, her research proposal submitted to the Department of Sociology, minutes of the departmental board assigning a supervisor to Mrs Mugabe, academic certificates of her supervisor, minutes showing the doctoral degree passed through the Academic Committee and evidence of the UZ senate recommending to the university council the conferment of the doctorate.
The ZACC Sherlocks would also want be furnished with the UZ Faculty Ordinance number 44, UZ quality assurance guidelines and benchmarks for management and supervision of higher degrees by research, General Academic Regulations for Post-Graduate Degrees of the UZ 1998/99 Volume 11 as well as copies of the transcript and notification to the awarding of the PhD.
Mrs Mugabe graduated alongside the then deputy to Mugabe, Joice Mujuru, whose theses were publicly made available.
The academic qualification heralded the rise of the first lady to a position to succeed Mugabe.
These prospects vanised when the military intervened in the factionalism rocking ZANU-PF.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/18/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
To be fair, the vice chancellor was no doubt given the choice of granting the fake degree or being killed, probably horribly. Of all the enablers of the regime, hers was probably one of the least meaningful.
[Al Jazeera] Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... has announced it will host a card-playing national competition for the first time, in a move that has officially legalised the activity that was previously banned under religious pretexts.
Turki al-Sheikh, the kingdom's General Sports Authority's chairman, announced the competition on Thursday.
According to the statement, the winners of the first four places would receive a combined prize of more than one million Saudi riyals ($270,000).
People in the country took to Twitter to share their thoughts on the upcoming tournament, which will take place between April 4 and 8, 2018, under the supervision of the Saudi Arabian Federation for Electronic and Intellectual Sports (SAFEIS).
While some welcomed the move, others criticised it, saying it was "absurd" and considered it a form of gambling.
Translation: "This is what we have come to, legalising a game that is unlawful in religion even without prize, yet we have legalised it while giving away prizes. God forgive us."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/18/2018 00:00 ||
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] More than a hundred relatives and supporters of a Filipina maid whose body was found stuffed in a freezer in Kuwait brandished banners demanding justice as her coffin was returned home on Saturday.
The family of Joanna Demafelis openly wept as the white casket was unloaded at an airport cargo terminal in the central city of Iloilo.
"Justice for Joanna D. Demafelis," was emblazoned on banners and on T-shirts worn by the crowd which included a congressman and local officials expressing their anger over the death of the Filipina whose body was found in a freezer in Kuwait earlier this month.
The incident worsened a diplomatic flap between the Philippines and Kuwait with President Rodrigo Duterte alleging that Arab employers routinely rape their Filipina workers, force them to work 21 hours a day and feed them scraps.
He has also banned the deployment of new workers to Kuwait and ordered airlines to fly home any of the 252,000 Filipinos working there who wish to return.
About 10 million Filipinos work abroad and the money they remit back is a lifeline of the Philippine economy. Their treatment abroad is often a political issue at home.
Kuwait's foreign minister previously condemned Manila's "escalation," of the issue but Philippine Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said Friday the Kuwaiti ambassador had assured him his government was "outraged" over the killing and determined to find those responsible.
A distraught Eva Demafelis could only say "I am sad," when asked by news hounds about the death of her daughter.
"She does not deserve the manner in which she died. She was beaten up," said an aunt, Rosela Demafelis Taunan, referring to local news reports about the 29-year-old maid's death.
"She decided to go abroad because she wanted to help her parents repair the house that was damaged by Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan)," in 2013, the aunt recalled.
The slain maid also wanted to finance the college education of her youngest sister, Joyce, the aunt said.
Residents lined the highway as the funeral convoy escorted by police cars and cycle of violences made its way to Demafelis's hometown, about a two hour's drive from the city.
Labour Secretary Silvestre Bello said late Friday that "working groups" from both countries were discussing forging a memorandum for protecting the rights of Filipinos in Kuwait, many of whom are working as maids.
Domestic workers in that country are not covered by ordinary labour legislation, and accounts of Filipinas being subjected to abuse and exploitation in the Middle East have long circulated.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/18/2018 00:00 ||
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[Breitbart] London Modest Fashion Week will "celebrate" Britannia’s growing sharia-compliant fashion industry ‐ less than two weeks after women living under Islamic fundamentalist regimes risked imprisonment when they burnt their hijabs on No Hijab Day.
Described as an "exciting addition to the London fashion calendar" and "a celebration of style and global cultures", London Modest Fashion Week will showcase "modest style" lines on the catwalk this weekend.
The show will also put on a sharia legal clinic and zakat (religious tax) hub at the Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, venue.
Organised by the Islamic clothing curator Haute Elan, the fashion website’s founder Romanna Bint-Abubaker said in 2017: "The fastest growing global consumer is at the moment the Moslem market.
"One in three people by 2030 will be a Moslem in the world ‐ that’s a huge population."
Last year’s inaugural show was sponsored by the makeup brand Illamasqua which promised would "never knowingly sell" their products to supporters of U.S. President Donald J. Trump. This year, it is sponsored by the major American haircare brand TRESammé.
Breitbart London revealed that the British government was promoting the "liberation" of the Islamic veil by encouraging Foreign and Commonwealth Office staff to wear the garment, issuing free hijabs on World Hijab Day (February 1st).
Last week, the government came under fire over hijabs in British culture again, after the former head of the schools’ watchdog Ofsted criticised the Department of Education for being too politically correct to support headteachers attempting to ban Islamic hijabs for underaged girls.
[Al Jazeera] A security company in Venezuela has said that it is offering a "motivational" bonus, hoping to recruit more staff members to its team.
A monthly salary of $10 will be accompanied by a bonus, which will include 144 eggs.
Atlas Security in Zulia state will give the eggs to those who arrive to work promptly and maintain a professional, presentable appearance.
The firm's idea to provide those who qualify with a weekly box of 36 eggs stems from the issue of food scarcity. In the crisis-hot economy, these are worth around $2 at the black market rate.
"Many weren't complying with these basic rules, that's why we've done this," Cindy Fuenmayor, Atlas Security's human resources manager, told Rooters news agency.
"We've had lots of applications since we published the ad. We're being innovative. It's a good incentive."
According to Fuenmayor, some 200 positions are available at Atlas, mainly to guard farms.
Bonuses that include food and transport have become vital for Venezuelans at a time where the country is undergoing hyperinflation.
The currency has collapsed and the minimum wage at the black market rate amounts to about $1 a month.
With one the world's highest murder rates, security personnel are usually victims of assault.
Nicolas Maduro, the country's socialist president, blames these issues on an "economic war" which he believed has been waged by the opposition with the help of the United States.
Meanwhile, ...back at the palazzo, Count Guido had been cornered by the banditti... critics say his government has wrecked the economy through incompetence and corruption.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/18/2018 00:00 ||
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A total of 12 unidentified armed individuals tied to a Ukrainian militant nationalist group were detained and forced to leave a village by local residents and the police in eastern Ukraine, according to Russian language news accounts.
On Saturday evening, 12 people, later identified as residing in Ivano-Frankivsk, Kiev and the Kharkov regions, entered the village of Mykulychyn in Ivano-Frankivsk region. Reports say the 12 were dressed in military fatigues and armed with hunting rifles and non lethal weapons.
The group had told villagers they were there to stop illegal logging in the region
A group of about 200 residents surrounded the group and demanded they leave. The article in korrespondent.net said that the confrontation almost came to blows before the police arrived and detained the 12.
The weapons were licensed, but the group was ordered by the police to leave the village.
The group sported emblems which associated them with the National Corps, a civilian paramiltary group with ties to Andrei Bilitsy, leader of the Azov Regiment.
The group was armed with four shotguns, two rifles and a non lethal pistol.
The article said that criminal charges were filed against the individuals, but that they had been released.
A total of two Ukrainian soldiers were killed in a probe launched against Russian backed rebels in the Peski region of northern rebel held Donetsk, according to Russian language news accounts.
The probe consisted of eight Ukrainian effectives, two of whom were killed exchanging gun fire with rebel forces, with two wounded. One Ukrainian soldier was captured. The group was said to be a detachment of the Ukrainian 57th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade.
Back in late 2014 the Peski region was one of the most contested areas in Donetsk, and up until early 2016 also was one of the areas most hit by rebel artillery.
Lugansk
In Lugansk near the Svetlodarsk region of northern Lugansk, three Ukrainian soldiers were killed and another three were wounded placing mines, according to a news account published in the pro-Russian news outlet Russkaya Vesna. The article quoted Lugansk military spokesman Lt. Colonel Andre Marochko.
The soldiers were elements of the Ukrainian 54th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade.
The news report said that the mines were being emplaced in the gray zone between Ukrainian and rebel forces.
A separate news account in Korrespondent.net said that rebel artillery struck targets in the Svetlodarsk area for about five hours early Friday morning, using 120mm and 82mm mortar fire.
A news report which appeared in lb.ua said that more shelling took place in Lugansk 24 hours later, Saturday morning, and in the same areas as before. Two Ukrainians were wounded in the shelling.
[Shephard] Almost three years after the high-profile public debut of Russia’s new armoured platforms – the Armata, the Kurganets-25 and Bumerang families – their large-scale procurement for the Russian military still appears to be a distant prospect.
At the time, observers noted that these vehicles would give Russia a significant technological edge over NATO forces.
But this now appears to have been presumptuous. The vehicles have suffered from funding problems, technical issues and conceptual changes that have caused serious delays to the development effort, and the follow-on launch into production and fielding into regular service.
The Armata heavy tracked platform, developed by Uralvagonzavod (UVZ), is the flagship of the Russian armour recapitalisation effort. It covers a family of three combat vehicles using a common tracked platform – the T-14 MBT, T-15 heavyweight IFV and the T-16 armoured recovery vehicle.
The T-14 has been described as a revolutionary combat vehicle with unmanned turret and crew accommodated in an armoured capsule in the hull for better protection. The tank has all-new sophisticated passive and active protection systems and is equipped for network centric operations.
Officially, the T-14’s development effort is proceeding forward on schedule, and this has been claimed by the Russian Land Forces commander-in-chief, Col Gen Oleg Salykov in November 2017.
He also reconfirmed previously released information that an experimental batch of 100 vehicles is set to be delivered for field testing with that effort slated for completion by 2020. Russia's TASS news agency reported in February 2018 that Russian officials had confirmed an order for two battalions of T-14s and a battalion of T-15s, possibly the test batch vehicles.
There is even more uncertainty surrounding the T-15 IFV, with elements such as the turret configuration still unknown.
The Kurganets-25 medium-class tracked platform, developed by Traktornye Zavody, appears to have the most criticism levelled against it among all the new generation platforms in development.
It was used as the basis for the B-11 IFV and B-10 APC, both criticised by Russian military officers during 2015 for their significant size, much larger than today’s BMP-2 and BMP-3 used by the Russian Land Forces. A redesigned platform was expected to begin testing in 2017 but there is little evidence that this test effort has started.
In the recent years, the Russian MoD has invested heavily in upgrading its existing armour inventory such as the T-72 MBT and BMP-2 IFV and continues to place orders for newly-built T-90 MBTs and BMP-3 IFVs.
These hefty investments in proven designs are a likely sign that the army’s next-generation armour platforms, including the Armata, Kurganets-25 and Bumerang families, are still being regarded by the Russian military leadership as distant prospects.
#1
...REALITY CHECK: With the qualified exception of some ships, all the Soviet Russian military has been able to get is small quantities of essentially hand-built running prototypes. They may get it sorted out, but for the foreseeable future (I'd say at least 2025 - 2030) all they're running is warmed-over late Cold War tech.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/18/2018 7:50 Comments ||
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#6
The Soviets Russians have been trying to upgrade the T-62/T-72 franchise for a long time with little success. Maybe part of the problem is they need to scrap the original design theory and start again...
[Washington Examiner] United Steelworkers International on Friday offered rare praise for the Trump administration on Friday, when it said it supports the Commerce Department's Friday recommendation for tariffs or quotas on steel imports.
"It is absolutely clear from today’s release of the Section 232 Aluminum and Steel Reports that Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has a comprehensive understanding of the unrelenting attacks and challenges that these industries critical to our nation’s security are facing from unfairly traded imports," USW President Leo Gerard said.
#1
Better do something about computers while you're at it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/18/2018 11:10 Comments ||
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#2
I read a long time ago the Chinese mislabel and Customs can’t tell the difference between rolled steel, etc. I thought at that time the US Steel industry should get involved and work with Customs. I know there would be graft, but would have hoped it would have helped.
#3
Hence the Buy America clauses in Fed-funded projects.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/18/2018 14:56 Comments ||
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#4
...gets embarrassing sometimes when a truck or car with a foreign name is made in America and one with a traditional American name is made elsewhere.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Rape-accused Tariq Ramadan's lawyers have claimed that the Swiss Islamist scholar was suffering from multiple sclerosis and have therefore requested his release under bail.
But an appeals court in Gay Paree which was examining his appeal against his detention on remand ordered an independent medical report on his health situation.
The court refused as well to issue him a special visit permit, according to French outlets quoting his lawyers, outside what the law grants him with in regards to his visit rights.
His lawyers added that Ramadan was carried by an ambulance to court on Thursday and has postponed its decision until Feb. 22.
RELATED: Is this clinching proof of rape? Tariq Ramadan’s team tries to sow doubts
Ramadan’s lawyers claim that his health situation is not in line with his detention and that they are requesting his release and that further legal investigation into their client should continue while he is out on bail.
"His state of health worsens, especially since the judges refused yesterday to issue a visit permit to his wife and children," a source close to Ramadan and his family said on Saturday. That same source confirmed that Ramadan was hospitalized.
French authorities say Ramadan is being investigated for raping two women and could be held in long-term custody while the probe continues.
Ramadan, who travels frequently and has written numerous books on Islam and the integration of Moslems in Europe, is being investigated by French authorities because the rapes took place in Gay Paree and Lyon, according to the case documents.
Ramadan is a grandson of Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Moslem Brüderbund, an organization listed terrorist in some countries.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/18/2018 00:00 ||
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[UKDefenseJournal] "It’s a real disaster for the Navy, it’s the first time in history that there will not be any submarine operating for months," warns the president of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Parliament, Hans-Peter Bartels, in an interview published on Sunday in the Berlin weekly Bild am Sonntag.
The problem, he explained, has worsened over time due to the German military not replacing out of date equipment.
The German Navy lost its last submarine in October, as the rudder of its last Type 212A was severely damaged in a collision with a rock off the Norwegian coast while the rest of the fleet was out of service.
It is also understood that none of the new frigates, the Type 125s, are able to enter into operational service due to defects and a similar situation is faced by auxiliary ships, Berlin and Bonn, which were sent to dry dock for a year and a half of repairs.
In 2015, it was revealed that only 29 of Germany’s 66 Tornado jets are airworthy. Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen then stressed that only six of the operational Tornado jets would be needed for the proposed German mission in Syria. German chief of staff General Volker Wieker said: They're saving money by not spending on defense. And who can blame them? They have a sucker to pay it for them. They live in a socialist paradise and they get to criticize the Americans who protect them as baby-killing fascist warmongers.
Of course the freeloading world is upset that the good old American all-you-can-eat buffet of handouts is coming to an end. Pulling their own weight is something strange and new to them. I'm not interested in the US military being the world's police or some other countries' mercenary army.
Posted by: Herb McCoy7309 ||
02/18/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
Given their history I am not terribly upset at Germany not having an effective military...
How to change several hundred years of militaristic social behavior - bomb the s*** out of them, reduce the place to rubble, then rebuild the country and society.
#3
P2k,that's the enduring legacy of the USA being in WW2. We did it in the Pacific and Europe and both Japan and Germany are scared to pick up the load for their own reasons.
#4
Scared? What do you mean scared? The Japanese are not scared at all. The Germans are just freeloading jerks.
Germany and much of Europe continue to suffer from living under a US security umbrella for almost 3 generations. Let us not forget the vaunted German exports are protected by the American taxpayers funding the US navy as it keeps the shipping routes open all around the world.
Posted by: Herb McCoy7309 ||
02/18/2018 7:41 Comments ||
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#5
I'm sure Vlad would be more than happy to pick up the load for them....or maybe Yippee.
#6
Yet, German companies continue to supply dual-purpose materials to Iran
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/18/2018 9:35 Comments ||
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#7
And yet German shipyards provide working submarines to Israel, India, Iran, Egypt, and a bunch of others. The Israeli missile boats that dominated the eastern Med for a decade were German designs built in France (because of diplomatic pressure).
The Germans know how to build good stuff, they just seem to have an operational problem.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
02/18/2018 9:58 Comments ||
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#9
U-boats were always going to be ineffective against an enemy you invited into your country as refugees. At least this means that when the time comes the Islamic Republic of Germany won't have them.
#11
Make all of the sailors part of the Naval Reserve and force the shipbuilding companies to hire them as trainers... Unless you can explain to me what strategic reasons Germany has for maintaining a submarine fleet.
#13
Magpie, look at the question from the German point of view: Historically, which part of the German Navy did any good in a conflict, and which part was a dud. Anyone? ... Buellar?... Anyone?
Posted by: ed in texas ||
02/18/2018 19:03 Comments ||
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#14
NATO is a *mutual* defense alliance. Germany is a freeloader who refuses to spend money on defense. That's why the U-boats are laid up. If they wanted, they could operate them, but they don't want to.
Why should they care, when the US Navy keeps the seas open for those vaunted German exports? And does it all for free?
Posted by: Herb McCoy7309 ||
02/18/2018 19:21 Comments ||
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#15
Moves to "unify" all the peoples of Europe centered on Germany seem to have a history of failure.
[DAWN] The Supreme Court on Friday regretted extending a fair chance to runaway Rao Anwar ‐ a senior Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... police officer ‐ and issued a show-cause notice to him for committing contempt of court by not surrendering himself before the court and ordered law enforcement agencies to locate his whereabouts and arrest him.
"The officer has lost a great opportunity by not appearing in court today," observed Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, adding that the officer should have taken the chance. "The sympathy now for him has ended," regretted the chief justice while heading a two-judge SC bench.
The Supreme Court had taken notice of the tragic murder of 27-year-old Naqeebullah Mehsud from South Wazoo who was killed in an encounter by a police team allegedly led by Senior Superintendent of Police Rao Anwar in Karachi on Jan 13.
The murder sparked outrage on social media when his family rejected claims that Mehsud was a member of the Tehrik-e-Taliban ...Arabic for students... Pakistain. The dear departed was aspiring to become a model and the social media contains several of his pictures that appear to have been taken for a modelling photo shoot.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/18/2018 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] Police raided a marriage ceremony in Hassanabdal, foiling a bid to marry off a teenaged girl with a 55-year-old man, it emerged on Saturday.
The 13-year-old girl's father and the accused groom were placed in durance vile Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! while raids are being conducted to arrest the nikah khawan (officiator of the marriage), police said.
According to police, the father hailing from Mardan had agreed to marry his daughter off to a man more than four times her age in exchange for the promise of a five-marla plot. The nikah was already performed on February 11 while the rukhsati (bridal departure) was scheduled to take place in village Pind Mehri on Friday.
However, if you can't say something nice about a person some juicy gossip will go well... on the day of the rukhsati, neighbours alerted police about the child marriage bid after which police personnel conducted a raid and arrested the minor's girl father and groom. Police also took the girl into custody and sent her to a Darul Aman.
SHO Saddar cop shoppe Tariq Mehmood told DawnNews that the 55-year-old groom had been living in Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... for the past 20 years and had returned home only recently. His wife had left him six months ago and he already has two daughters, aged 12 and 6.
The groom had offered to the victim's father, who is poor, that he would give him a five-marla plot in the same area if he lets him marry his daughter, to which the father had consented.
Police have registered cases against the father, the groom and the absconding nikah khawan under the Child Marriage Restraint Act on behalf of the state, the SHO said. The two arrested men were presented before a local court, which handed them over to police on physical remand.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/18/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
His wife had left him six months ago and he already has two daughters, aged 12 and 6.
Might wanna inquire what they've been subjected to, as well
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/18/2018 9:52 Comments ||
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[DAWN] Sindh Inspector General (IG) of Police A.D. Khowaja on Saturday said that police 'encounters' indicate a failure of the criminal justice system as a whole and not of police.
Speaking at a seminar organised by the Citizens Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) titled Effective and Accountable Policing, the IG opined that it was ’extremely difficult’ to strike a balance between effective policing, due process and people’s expectations.
Citing three recent high-profile cases namely Naqeebullah Mehsud, Intizar Ahmed and Maqsood ‐ all of whom were killed in police shootouts ‐ the IG admitted shortcomings on the part of police but also emphasised that this was perhaps the first time that police has offered itself for accountability before the judiciary and society.
Referring to civil society’s petitions through which he was granted ’administrative autonomy’ over provincial police by the Supreme Court, Khowaja explained that transfers and postings were not the only jobs of the IG office and that his role also demands strategic planning.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/18/2018 00:00 ||
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[Al Jazeera] A Pak serial killer convicted of rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl Zainab Ansari has been sentenced to death, prosecutors say.
The trial was held in the eastern city Lahore by the country's special anti-terrorism court on Saturday in the presence of the killer, Mohammad Imran Ali.
Zainab was found dead in a rubbish dump on January 9 in Kasur district near Lahore, in Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... province, several days after her disappearance.
Imran was tossed in the slammer Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! two weeks after he committed the crime that ignited nationwide protests.
"I am very thankful to the chief justice; he treated Zainab like his own daughter," Zainab's father Amin Ansari told Al Jazeera.
Imran Ali is sentenced to death on four counts but Zainab's mother deems this as insufficient for the crimes he committed.
"I want him hanged where he threw Zainab's body. And he should be stoned. Hanging him is just ordinary for him," Nusrat Amin told Al Jazeera.
"Everyone should take part in stoning him. And this thing about four hangings, one hanging, two hangings, what difference does it make? I want him hanged where he killed my girl."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/18/2018 00:00 ||
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An Aseman Airlines plane carrying 66 passengers and crew has crashed in a mountainous area in central Iran, killing everyone on board..
The airline confirmed there were no survivors after the ATR 72 aircraft went down and vanished from radar on Sunday morning.
One child was said to be among those on board.
The plane was flying from the capital Tehran to Yasuj when it crashed into the Desa mountain range in Isfahan province about 50 minutes after take-off.
Posted by: lord garth ||
02/18/2018 06:21 ||
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#1
What odds it will turn out to have been an issue of maintenance not done?
Boycott NBC's Olympics coverage
U.S. figure skater Adam Rippon, the openly gay Olympic team bronze medalist who has become one of the best-known names at these Games, has been hired by NBC to work as a correspondent during the remainder of the Olympics, NBC spokesman Greg Hughes told USA TODAY Sports Sunday evening.
Rippon, 28, will work for the network on a variety of platforms, including television, digital and social media, Hughes said.
Always outspoken, Rippon made news in mid-January when he criticized Vice President Pence in a story in USA TODAY. When Pence fired back little more than an hour after the story appeared online, Rippon's profile was on the rise. Attention whores support each other
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/18/2018 09:30 ||
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Wednesday the first two StarLink sats go up. Just a drop in the bucket for the first deployment of 4,000 ending up 12,000 in the end. It might be a Comcast killer and Comcast OWNS NBC.
[NationalReview] Mueller’s indictment is an ineffectual response to a provocation by Russia.
The Russians are engaged in "information warfare" against the United States. That was the big soundbite at Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s press conference Friday afternoon, announcing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s election-meddling indictment against 13 Russians and three Russian businesses.
That is certainly a fair assessment of what the indictment alleges. The account is disturbing, but its form leaves many of us underwhelmed. Our government says Russia is levying war. It is attacking a foundational institution ‐ the electoral system of our democratic society and, more basically, our society’s cohesion as such. Our response should not be, nor appear to be, the filing of a lawsuit. That is provocatively weak.
The Russia probe has been a counterintelligence investigation, as it should be. That is why I’ve complained from the first that it was inappropriate to put a prosecutor in charge of it. This contention is reiterated in my weekend column. The main thrust of this complaint has been that a prosecutor should not be assigned unless there is first strong evidence of a crime. But that is not the half of it.
A government lawyer is a hammer who sees every problem as the nail of a lawsuit. As we saw in the Clinton and Obama years (and will tend to see in transnational-progressive governments that prize legal processes over the pursuit of national interests by the most effective means available), administrations dominated by government lawyers find even belligerent provocations by foreign power to be fit for judicial resolution.
To the contrary, we use counterintelligence rather than criminal investigation to thwart foreign adversaries because prosecution is a woefully inadequate response. The point of counterintelligence is to gather information so we can stop our enemies, through meaningful retaliation and discouragement. Generally, that means diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and, in extreme cases, military means. It could mean deploying our own cyber capabilities. The idea is not to invade every rogue nation. It is to respond to provocations in a manner that hurts our rivals ‐ conveying that the prohibitive cost we will exact makes attacking us against their interests.
That cannot be accomplished by a mere indictment on which no one will be tried.
#1
The intent with the Mueller witch hunt is to manufacture an excuse to impeach the president. It's neither a criminal investigation not a criminal investigation -- it's a coup attempt.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
02/18/2018 8:40 Comments ||
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The Deep State is taking the rest of us for complete fools.
#6
I would agree wholeheartedly with this article. It's disturbing that with all the supposedly awesome power of agencies like the CIA and NSA we can't quietly and effectively counteract the type of thing Mueller claims the Russians did in his indictment. We shouldn't even be hearing about it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/18/2018 15:25 Comments ||
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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.
[Townhall] Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin promised to pay the government back for expenses related to his wife’s trip to Europe, but rejected calls to resign after a watchdog report revealed his attendance at a Veterans Affairs summit quickly turned into a "sightseeing" trip.
[Breitbart] London Modest Fashion Week will "celebrate" 
A total of two Ukrainian soldiers were killed in a probe launched against Russian backed rebels in the Peski region of northern rebel held Donetsk, according to Russian language news accounts.
[Shephard] Almost three years after the high-profile public debut of Russia’s new armoured platforms – the Armata, the Kurganets-25 and Bumerang families – their large-scale procurement for the Russian military still appears to be a distant prospect.
[UKDefenseJournal] "It’s a real disaster for the Navy, it’s the first time in history that there will not be any submarine operating for months," warns the president of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Parliament, Hans-Peter Bartels, in an interview published on Sunday in the Berlin weekly Bild am Sonntag.
Wazoo
[DAWN] Sindh Inspector General (IG) of Police A.D. Khowaja on Saturday said that police 'encounters' indicate a failure of the criminal justice system as a whole and not of police.
