Authorities in Swaziland's capital Mbabane have launched a crackdown on cockerels amid a surge in chicken-breeding that is disturbing the sleep of the city's residents, a spokesman said Wednesday.
Speaking to AFP, Mbabane Municipal spokesman Bongani Dlamini said authorities would begin to enforce a 40-year-old law that permits residents to raise up to 12 chickens with permission but no roosters. "We know that our people have been hard hit by the sky-rocketing food prices but that does not allow people to raise chickens without the approval of the council," Dlamini said, expressing concern that the city was becoming a farm. "After many instances we have found cocks to be troublesome and they end up making lives miserable for residents," he said.
Artificial lights sometimes confused them, leading to crowing in the middle of the night that disturbed people's sleep.
The law, he recalled, states that residents of Mbabane can raise up to 12 chickens in sheds after seeking the approval of the council but that cockerels are expressly prohibited.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/22/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
I can think of certain American towns that could use such a ban; right this very damn minute I am listening to the constant frigging shrieks of roosters in what is supposed to be a tourist oasis.
#3
Their iron fisted cock rules.
Soon to be regulated by state chicken chokers.
Not so different from the US, is it?
Here, you'd have to pay $25 for a permit to raise them, that's the only difference.
#5
Artificial lights sometimes confused them, leading to crowing in the middle of the night that disturbed people's sleep.
Ours here crow in the middle of the night, too. I didn't realize that was the reason why. You hear them at 2am sometimes. I'm told that a lot of the chickens here are feral. Maybe the county needs to call in the chicken hunters. Two-buck bounty on a pair of feet, and all the stew you can eat.
Google has refused a request from U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Ind.-Conn., to remove videos produced by terrorist groups from its video-sharing site YouTube.
In a statement posted on the YouTube blog, the company said that it had taken down some of the videos identified by Lieberman's staff because they contained hate speech, gratuitous violence or in other ways violated community standards.
"Senator Lieberman stated his belief, in a letter sent today, that all videos mentioning or featuring these groups should be removed from YouTube -- even legal nonviolent or non-hate speech videos," the statement said. "While we respect and understand his views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view."
In his letter, sent Monday, Lieberman said that radical Islamist groups use YouTube to share recruiting and training videos.
I think Both sides should get equal billing as long as they don't go too far.
#1
How long would they stay up if YouTube thought they were propaganda pieces by Michelle Malkin to embarrass/shame Islam? Content wouldn't be different just the poster. Taking bets :)
The final deadline for wannabe candidates to file their nominating petitions to get on the September primary election ballot isn't for another couple weeks and already campaign signs are disappearing.
"I put them up on Saturday and by Monday they were all gone. The only one left up is in my yard," said local attorney Guy Wolf, who volunteered to help Frank Schmuck in his bid for the Arizona Legislature. Wolf put up the signs along Desert Foothills Parkway, Pecos Road and on Chandler Boulevard.
A week later, even that last sign in Wolf's Ahwatukee Foothills yard was missing.
Schmuck, a decorated Gulf War veteran and Air Force Academy graduate, wondered why people are focusing on his signs.
"I do have a funny last name," he admitted, "but this early in the campaign season?"
Schmuck is running as a publicly-financed candidate, which means that in return for not raising money from traditional donors he will get a fixed amount of public funding for the primary and, if he wins, the general election. So when people take his signs, they are really taking public money from the Arizona Clean Election Commission.
"You're not stealing from Frank Schmuck, your stealing from the public," he said.
Taking campaign signs is illegal, a Class 2 misdemeanor punishable by up to four months in jail and a $750 fine, but it's a hard law to enforce since you almost need to almost catch crooks in the act.
Four years ago, Rock Argabright watched as a man took down a John McComish campaign sign, tossed it into his pickup truck and drove away.
Argabright, a supporter and friend of McComish, tried to follow the sign thief but lost him on 48th Street.
Anton Orlich, also running for the House in District 20 during 2004, left his home one morning and passed his large yellow campaign sign. When he returned later the same day his sign was gone and a challenger's sign was attached to the metal posts where his sign had been.
The most famous sign scandal was in 2000 when Arizona Sen. Harry Mitchell was running for re-election. His Republican opponent, Gary Richardson, placed small signs in front of Mitchell's that said "Voted for Alt Fuels Fiasco."
Mitchell pulled the signs down and was charged with "Removing the political sign of a candidate for public office," but the charge was later dismissed by both a Chandler Justice Court and later Maricopa County Superior Court because the signs in question didn't mention Richardson and, therefore, weren't the signs of a candidate for public office.
Along with disgruntled political opponents and kids looking for a bedroom decoration, candidates also have to worry about signs being knocked down by city and state workers.
"We do have inspectors who will remove illegally placed signs in the right of way," said Doug Nintzel, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Transportation.
The city of Phoenix also pulls down signs that are in parks, on public land, or pose a hazard because they block the vision of motorists. But in almost every case Nintzel and Michael Hammet, from the Phoenix Development Services Department, said workers knock the signs down and then call the campaign to collect them because they are an expensive part of campaigning.
"If a sign is missing, it's not a Development Services Department inspector," Hammet said.
Which leaves unanswered the question of why the Schmuck signs were taken?
"Did someone think it was a joke?" Schmuck asks. More importantly, does the candidate realize that he could make a fortune *selling* his campaign signs on t-shirts? N.B.: "Schmuck" is a Yiddish vulgarism.
Despite more than $22 million in repairs, a levee that broke with catastrophic effect during Hurricane Katrina is leaking again because of the mushy ground on which New Orleans was built, raising serious questions about the reliability of the city's flood defenses.
Outside engineering experts who have studied the project told The Associated Press that the type of seepage spotted at the 17th Street Canal in the Lakeview neighborhood afflicts other New Orleans levees, too, and could cause some of them to collapse during a storm.
The Army Corps of Engineers has spent about $4 billion so far of the $14 billion set aside by Congress to repair and upgrade the metropolitan area's hundreds of miles of levees by 2011. Some outside experts said the leak could mean that billions more will be needed and that some of the work already completed may need to be redone.
#2
The Army Corps of Engineers has spent about $4 billion so far of the $14 billion set aside by Congress to repair and upgrade the metropolitan area's hundreds of miles of levees by 2011.
Funny I dont recall John Edwards mentioning that little fact during his America has turned its back on the people of New Orleans speech.
You know you've hit the big time when you hit numbers like this!
Weary Zimbabweans are facing a new wave of price increases that will put many basic goods even further out of their reach: A loaf of bread now costs what 12 new cars did a decade ago. Independent finance houses said in an assessment Tuesday that annual inflation rose this month to 1,063,572 percent based on prices of a basket of basic foodstuffs. Economic analysts say unless the rate of inflation is slowed, annual inflation will likely reach about 5 million percent by October.
As stores opened for business Wednesday, a small pack of locally produced coffee beans cost just short of 1 billion Zimbabwe dollars. A decade ago, that sum would have bought 60 new cars. And fresh price rises were expected after the state Grain Marketing Board announced up to 25-fold increases in its prices to commercial millers for wheat and the corn meal staple.
The economy was on shop clerk Jessica Rukuni's mind as she left the public swimming pool in downtown Harare's central park with three disappointed children. She found the new admission price of 100 million Zimbabwe dollars 30 U.S. cents out of reach. "The point is that it's far too much for most people who don't get U.S. dollars," she said.
Her income is the equivalent of about one U.S. dollar a day, and her family has one basic meal daily.
The collapsing economy was a major concern of voters who dealt longtime President Robert Mugabe a defeat in March 29 elections. His challenger, Morgan Tsvangirai, topped the poll but did not win the simple majority needed to avoid a runoff. The two face each other in a second round June 27.
Mugabe was to officially launch his runoff campaign with a rally at his party's headquarters in Harare on Sunday, the state-run Herald newspaper reported Wednesday.
The opposition's campaigning has been hampered by violence blamed on Mugabe's government and party. The opposition claims Tsvangirai is the target of a government assassination plot and he has been out of Zimbabwe since shortly after the March 29 first round. He plans to return to Zimbabwe to campaign for the runoff once security measures are in place, his aides have said.
Mugabe, speaking as he reviewed graduating police cadets Wednesday, said the opposition was fanning violence. Independent observers have said that while there have been some retaliatory attacks by the opposition, the vast majority of the attacks have been carried out by Mugabe supporters.
Zimbabwe's official annual inflation was given by the government as 165,000 percent in February, already by far the highest in the world. The government has not updated that the state statistical service has said there were not enough goods in the shortages-stricken shops to calculate new figures.
The economic decline has been blamed on the collapse of the key agriculture sector following the often violent seizures of farmland from whites. Mugabe claimed the seizures begun in 2002 were to benefit poor blacks, but many of the farms went to his loyalists.
"The crunch is going to come when local money is eroded to the point it is no longer acceptable" in commercial activities or as earnings, especially by longtime ruler Mugabe's loyalists, said independent Harare economist John Robertson. Already, more transactions are being done in U.S. dollars, both openly and in secret.
Manufacturing industries, running at below 30 percent of their capacity, reported growing absenteeism by workers facing soaring commuter bus fares. Hee hee! Check this out: Zimbabwe introduces half-a-billion dollar note
#3
"Introducing the new 500,000,000 bearer cheque for your convenience," read a Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe full-page advert in the state daily, The Herald, displaying specimens of the new note.
Here's an idea. Instead of taking out ads, why don't they cut down on the middleman and just print them in the newspaper?
I mean, what's the friggin difference...
#6
If it works anything like the U.S. does, the the richest 0.5% of Zimbabweans are getting so filthy rich that they cant find a yacht big enough to hold their new helicopter.
In a short time, a few hundred thousand people are going to possess virtually all the worlds wealth.
Is it too late to inject some sense into Zimbob?
To stop this runaway inflation they need to exchange ALL their "Currency" for some other, such as Euros or US Dollars where they DON"T control the value, then burn it all and stay as a "Foreign" Currency nation.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/22/2008 20:07 Comments ||
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TBILISI, Georgia (AP) - Partial returns Thursday and an exit poll showed President Mikhail Saakashvili's ruling party heading for a strong majority in Georgia's parliamentary election, drawing a challenge from his opponents. A dispute over results could set the stage for another round of political squabbling that has spilled into Tbilisi's streets repeatedly over the past year, but a late-night opposition rally fizzled.
The election was seen as a test of the pro-Western leader's commitment to democracy, crucial to his aim of bringing the former Soviet republic into NATO.
Returns from 214 of some 3,500 polling precincts gave Saakashvili's United National Movement more than 61 percent of the vote by party list, the Central Election Commission said on its Web site hours before dawn Thursday. The main United Opposition bloc was a distant second with more than 14 percent, it said.
The preliminary numbers were roughly in line with exit poll results released after polls closed Wednesday. Saakashvili's opponents rejected those findings, accused the authorities of widespread violations and vowed to contest the official results.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/22/2008 00:00 ||
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Still learning the rules, I guess.
Beijing - A Chinese magazine has been shut down for printing pictures of scantily clad women posing in rubble for a special report on the country's devastating earthquake, officials said on Wednesday. The New Travel Weekly, a small lifestyle magazine, ran photos of sultry models in their underwear amid the debris in an issue that hit the stands on Monday - the first of three days of national mourning.
The press and publication department of the southwestern city of Chongqing, where the magazine was based, said it decided to close the magazine down for "rectification". The department said the magazine "seriously violated propaganda discipline and went against social morals" and the report constituted an "extremely evil social influence."
"If the outcome of the rectification is satisfactory, it is possible to reopen the magazine," an employee of the press and publication department with the family name Cai told AFP. "After all, only part of the staff made the decision to print that shoot. It wouldn't be fair to just close it for good."
The company that manages The New Travel Weekly said it had sacked the magazine's managing editor, editor and deputy editor, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
China has seen an outpouring of emotion after the earthquake, which killed more than 41 000 people. The government declared official mourning for the first time since communist China's founder Mao Zedong died in 1976. As part of the official grief, it temporarily pulled entertainment networks off television and closed down cinemas, karaoke bars and other leisure venues.
#7
This is the positive side of media control - when they do something disgustingly tasteless, they get smacked down for it.
Not really. When the Chinese government does disgustingly tasteless stuff, such as carving Falungong members up for organ sales or mowing them down with machine gun fire, nobody gets to say anything about it. The truly tasteless stuff has nothing to do with women in skimpy costumes.
It's back. Yet another initiative Proposition 98 is on the ballot masquerading as "eminent domain" reform and trying to scare people with the prospect that their homes might be "taken" by the government.
Yet Proposition 98 is really about a sweeping agenda to lard up the California Constitution to end forever the ability of local governments to enact rent control or affordable housing ordinances, to set rules that set liquor store hours or to require developers to pay fees to build schools.
In Sacramento, for example, the city's Mixed-Income Housing Ordinance would go if Prop. 98 passes. Whether to set requirements for affordable housing is something city residents and officials should be able to decide. It is not something that should be banned by the state constitution.
The worst part of Proposition 98 is a vague line prohibiting any regulation that would "transfer an economic benefit to one or more private persons at the expense of the private owner." What? Any regulation that has a broad public purpose such as limiting the number of liquor licenses might incidentally benefit some private individuals over others. All these could be wiped out.
This initiative also would ban government from using eminent domain for "consumption of natural resources." Be ready to say goodbye to future water storage facilities and energy projects if Proposition 98 passes.
Voters should reject Proposition 98 as they rejected a similarly sweeping initiative in 2006. Proposition 98 advocates are trying to capitalize on public sentiment against the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. New London. But California is not Connecticut. Here eminent domain for redevelopment can be used only to remove blight, and that power is rarely used.
Here's the evidence. After the Kelo decision, the federal Government Accountability Office studied the use of eminent domain. For that study the California Redevelopment Association commissioned researchers from the University of California, Davis to survey all 386 of the active redevelopment agencies in California. The researchers looked at property acquisitions from Jan. 1, 2000, through Dec. 31, 2004.
The findings: Out of 12.7 million land parcels on the tax rolls in California, these agencies reported that they acquired 2,798 parcels during the five-year period. Of those, 78 were acquired through eminent domain. The rest were negotiated purchases.
The researchers found that only three single-family, owner-occupied homes were taken through eminent domain. And two of those were due to clouded title problems in which a court needed to decide who rightfully owned the property.
Since that time, California has tightened the laws to increase state oversight and make it easier for people to challenge redevelopment decisions.
In an attempt to head off the fear-mongering generated by Proposition 98 advocates, others have put a Proposition 99 on the ballot. It would "prohibit government agencies from using eminent domain to take an owner-occupied home to transfer it to another private owner or developer."
As the UC Davis research showed, this is a nonissue. For the rare abuses, legislators can pass a law. There's no need to add Proposition 99 to California's constitution. Voters should reject both of these initiatives.
#1
"As the UC Davis research showed, this is a nonissue"
And since it comes from UC Davis, it's also "Non-Research" in the truest sense of what scientific research is supposed to be.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
05/22/2008 14:17 Comments ||
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#2
both Props are badly written, flawed laws, and their ad campaigns are lie-filled panders. That said, it should be very hard for eminent domain to be used for "redevelopment" without strict oversight and a public vote. Too many instances where the politicos are taking homes and businesses to make way for wealthy friends' projects. "Blight" is usually required, and that is hard to define...
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/22/2008 14:18 Comments ||
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#3
"Voters should reject both of these initiatives."
I generally tend to vote "no" on ALL ballot initiatives. It is the legislature foisting their responsibility onto the people so they don't have to be held responsible for their vote. We are a republic, we should ACT like one.
#4
Actually M.Richard, UCDavis has a very fine School of Veterinary Science.... though I wouldn't believe anything from the school if didn't relate to animal husbandry.
#6
It is the legislature foisting their responsibility onto the people so they don't have to be held responsible for their vote.
Agreed, crosspatch. But in California the legislature is beholden to developers and other special interests. You can't trust them any further than you can spit. I wouldn't trust the Sacramento Bee either. I don't live in Sacramento and never look at the paper but I would bet good money that a significant portion of their revenue comes from developers advertising massive new housing tracts. The only way we ever get good laws in this state is with ballot propositions like Prop. 98 and then half the time the courts overrule them just like the recent ruling in favor of gay marriage.
I read Prop. 98 and it seemed reasonable to me because I've heard the horror stories about crooked politicians using eminent domain for the benefit of their owners developer buddies. Prop. 99 was a response from developers and all it does is to nullify Prop. 98. That's an old trick that developers like to use and it's surprising how often it works. Big money will flow into this campaign because there is big, big money at stake and the advertising will be deceptive.
Yeah, and there will be a lot of whining about rent control and affordable housing. Sorry, if you can't afford it work harder, get a better job or go somewhere else. But the argument about affordable housing has never been anything but a red herring anyway. They've been building as much as they can as fast as they can for as long as I can remember and that's a long, long time. But you still see average homes priced at half a million bucks. It's all a lie and newspapers like the Sacramento Bee are all too happy to perpetuate it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
05/22/2008 16:27 Comments ||
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#7
Sorry UG and to all the UC Davis School of Vet Med students/alumni, didn't mean to disparage the sections of the campuses' curriculum that actually matter (and I've met a couple of their Medical grads who seem to have their heads screwed on straight, too).
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
05/22/2008 16:53 Comments ||
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#8
One of their medical grads is one of my best friends and colleagues.
And I know a half-dozen of their vet school faculty well, since I collaborate with them from time to time.
Just so you know.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/22/2008 19:29 Comments ||
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#9
Teh sad thing is that had the US Surpeme court done the right thing in the Kelo cade, we'd not have to worry about making laws ourselves to counter bad judges and lazy/crooked legislators.
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.
