[Emirates 24/7] Bangladeshi police nabbed four people including a Mohammedanholy man on Wednesday after a teenage girl, who was accused of having an extra-marital affair with her cousin, was whipped to death.
Should I even bother to ask what happened to the cousin?
Fifteen-year-old Hena Begum died in hospital on Monday after a village court in the southern Bangladesh district of Shariatpur sentenced her to 100 lashes, said local police chief AKM Shahidur Rahman.
"We have nabbed one of the holy men (who sat on the village court) and three villagers including the wife of the man who Hena Begum had an illicit relationship with," Rahman told AFP.
According to Rahman, the teenage girl was "beaten mercilessly" by the family of the married man, who was also Hena's cousin, after the affair was discovered. The teenager was then handed to the village court, which publicly whipped her until she passed out and was taken to hospital, where she died seven days later, he said.
In conservative rural parts of Mohammedan-majority Bangladesh, rights groups say it is common for women to be publicly whipped for "crimes" such as adultery despite a ban on such religious punishments.
In some documented cases, rape victims have been flogged for being a "participant" in their sexual assault.
Last July, Bangladesh's High Court outlawed punishments handed down by religious edict, or fatwa, following a series of public interest litigation cases lodged by local human rights ... which are not the same thing as individual rights, mind you...
groups. But the ruling has had little effect, rights groups say, pointing to a case in December where a woman died after being whipped 40 times after she was accused of sleeping with her stepson by a similar village court.
If whipping someone 40 or 100 times is an appropriate punishment, we should first order the one who is to do the whipping to face that number of lashes himself, so that he might come to know his job. I somehow am convinced, on little theoretical evidence but some bare knowledge of practical human nature, that we'd soon have no volunteers to administer the lash.
Some 90 per cent of Bangladesh's 146 million people are Mohammedans and most live in rural areas.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/03/2011 00:00 ||
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Should I even bother to ask what happened to the cousin?
The poor guy needs to be protected from temptation.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
02/03/2011 12:36 ||
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Goody. Snowball earth. Quick -- everybody start a wood or coal fire in your fireplace, and keep it burning and throwing off dark particulate soot until we offset the light reflectance.
#6
There are some 'winterists' who say the current cold and snow are merely the result of natural recurring cycles. But us True Believers and Devoted Followers of The Goracle (tm) know this is an unprecedented event and you have to go back as far as 1967 to find a similar occurrence. (note to those pedantic nerds who object to the use of the word 'unprecedented' along with a historical reference: shut up!)
Actually, being covered with snow and ice is a good thing since one of the cures for global warming is to paint roofs, roads, cars and everything else white to reflect heat. Of course, the last time the Northern Hemisphere was covered with snow, this scheme to defeat the heat worked so well we had an ice age for 100,000 years. So let's not overdo it, OK?
#10
you realize that violates SO many of EPA head Lisa Jackson's decrees, don't you? Why don't you die frozen and starved in your soon-to-be-KELO'd-abode like a good little Hope-N-Change plebe? Selfish much? It's all about you?
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/03/2011 21:47 Comments ||
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Why don't you die frozen
Oh, sure. And when he finally thaws out and decomposes, it's back to CO2 and more global warming. For CO2 thou art, and to CO2 thou shalt return. Jeez, it's like this stuff just goes around in some kind of cycle or something.
GAROWE, Somalia -- The U.N. and aid agencies are warning of a possible catastrophe in Somalia, where a severe drought has plunged millions of Somalis into crisis.
The drought has increased the number of malnourished children, displaced thousands of people and killed thousands of animals. Officials in a central Somali region said 18 people had died of drought-related effects.
The U.N. says the malnutrition rate among children has jumped to 30 percent in Somalia's southern Juba region, a figure double the emergency threshold. Food prices have soared up to 80 percent.
The drought is the latest in a long line of mostly self-inflicted problems for Somalia, which has been mired in conflict since 1991. So when is the next "We are the World" album?
[Ma'an] The new interim government met Tuesday to review Tunisia's tense security situation as the United Nations, aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society said 210 people died in the popular revolt that ousted strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
It was the first meeting of Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi's government since it was reshuffled on January 27.
A government source, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... , said the meeting was focusing on security developments around the country, including disturbances in the central town of Kasserine, where public buildings were ransacked and looted Monday.
The source said a lifting of the a dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed January 13 appeared premature as "the situation is not yet stabilized".
Tuesday, hundreds of people rallied in Kasserine to press authorities to end the wave of violence and punish hooligans who looted public buildings Monday, residents said.
Several officials of the powerful General Union of Tunisian Workers said the violence was instigated by members of Ben Ali's former RCD ruling party. There was not independent confirmation of the allegation.
The officials condemned what they see as a destabilisation campaign by the transitional administration set up after Ben Ali's fall on January 14.
Ben Ali decamped to Soddy Arabia after weeks of violent protests against his 23-year autocratic rule.
In Tunis, the head of a UN human rights ... which are not the same thing as individual rights, mind you... mission said Tuesday that 219 people were killed and 510 injured during the popular revolt that led to Ben Ali's ouster.
Bacre Ndiaye told a presser that 147 people had been killed since the popular revolt began in mid-December while another 72 had died in the country's jails.
The head of the UN mission made it clear that these figures were not final and said the world body was continuing its investigations.
The previous UN corpse count for the Tunisian anti-government uprising was "at least 100 dead."
Late last month, Tunisian authorities put the corpse count from the uprising at 74, including 48 people who died in a jail in the central town of Monastir.
The UN mission, which arrived in Tunisia January 27, was able to inspect two jails in Bizerte, northwest of here, and reported that they were now back to normal after they were the scene of disturbances that included inmates' escapes, fires and bloody festivities, Ndiaye said.
"The Tunisian state was a police state. There were abuses by the security apparatus which must be throughly reformed. The security system must work for the people, not against," he added.
Ndiaye however insisted that relatives of Ben Ali "have the same rights as other Tunisians".
"The children (of the Ben Ali clan) must not pay for their parents," he stressed,
Tuesday the Interior Ministry also sent 30 senior coppers into early retirement for their conduct during the Ben Ali years, a police official speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... told AFP.
The interim government is also grappling with another headache: growing discontent among the police force nationwide over pay and working conditions.
Police in the cities of Sousse, Kairouan and Bizerte went on strike Monday to be allowed to set up a union.
In Sousse, they called on the government to expel "former mafiosos" from the force and "to improve the police's image in the media."
A strike by ground staff also disrupted traffic at Tunis airport Monday but the situation appeared to be back to normal Tuesday.
In the cabinet reshuffle late last month, several old regime figures were removed from key posts including the defence, finance, foreign and interior ministries, but Ghannouchi and two other ex-Ben Ali allies remained in the cabinet.
The 69-year-old prime minister -- a holdover from the Ben Ali regime who has been in office since 1999 -- has promised to hold democratic elections within six months.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/03/2011 00:00 ||
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IIRC MEMRI.ORG > AQIM URGES TUNISIANS TO CONTINUE JIHAD UNTIL COUNTRY IS UNDER SHARIA LAW.
[Arab News] The Justice Ministry is currently working on new regulations to control marriages involving maidens of very tender years, ministry sources told Arab News Tuesday.
They said under the new regulations, marriage contracts will be made at specialized courts to ensure that prospective brides are not too young and will not be harmed by marriage. They will also decide whether the age of the would-be groom is suitable.
The sources said the ministry is working on the new rules and regulations with the Ministries of Interior, Health and Social Affairs.
The age of consent was a controversial issue during recent discussions held at the Shoura Council. While many members called for making it 18, others believed that 15 was enough. Underage marriages are not uncommon in Soddy Arabia.
Meanwhile, ...back at the ranch... 67 percent of over 1,000 people surveyed by the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) criticized underage marriages and called for the age of consent to be 18.
They said though underage marriages were permissible under Islamic teachings, the possible harm to the wives might be totally against Islam.
Supporters, however, do not agree, citing the marriage of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) to Sayidah Aisha when she was only 11 years old.
I thought he married her at six, "taking her from her dolls," but waited until she was nine to exercise his conjugal rights.
They said though Islamic teachings have given guardians the right of marrying off their daughters even if they are very young, they should not abuse it.
Many people believe that setting an age of consent is very important in the modern age to ensure happy married lives.
Though the gap is still wide between opponents and supporters of underage marriages, the majority of Saudi citizens support fixing an age of consent under which girls could not be forced to marry.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/03/2011 00:00 ||
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Three men have appeared in court charged with stirring up anti-gay hatred in Derby in the first prosecution of its kind.
Ihjaz Alie, 41, Mehboob Hussain, 44, and Umer Javed, 37, appeared at Derby Magistrates' Court on Friday to face charges of distributing threatening propaganda to stir up hatred after handing out leaflets outside a mosque.
Another two men, Razwan Javed, 30, and Kabir Ahmed, 27, were charged in December over accusations they also handed out the leaflet called 'The Death Penalty?' outside a mosque in Derby. The leaflet calls for homosexuals to be executed.
The leaflet was dispersed outside the Jamia Mosque in Derby in July 2010 and through mailboxes during the same month.
Alie, Hussain and Umer Javed are also charged with several counts each of sending communication of threatening messages and displaying signs of writing with abusive or insulting messages.
Posted by: Dave UK ||
02/03/2011 2:21 Comments ||
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Interesting the sudden number of prosecutions of Muslims misbehaving badly. Hopefully it means the tide is turning, rather than that the number of misbehaviours is up.
[El Universal] Ricardo Molina, the Minister of Housing and Habitat, believes that houses bought with loans granted by the Venezuelan government should not be tradable
Posted by: Fred ||
02/03/2011 00:00 ||
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In the picture of the article, check out the poor craftsmanship on the house under construction.
Feb. 3 -- Oil advanced for a second day in New York as protests in Egypt turned violent, prompting concern that supplies may be disrupted and unrest may spread to other parts of the Middle East.
About 2.5 percent of global oil production moves through Egypt via the Suez Canal and the Suez-Mediterranean Pipeline, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
"If the Egyptian situation results in the removal of the current administration quickly, then the consequences may be that other regions will follow," Jonathan Barratt, managing director of Commodity Broking Services Pty in Sydney, said by telephone today. "It could create a contagion that could see the Middle Eastern premium being brought back in a big way because you do have that risk to the Suez."
The March contract gained as much as 31 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $91.17 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange and was at $91.16 at 11:38 a.m. in Sydney. Yesterday, it climbed 9 cents to settle at $90.86. Futures are up 18 percent the past year.
Brent crude for March settlement increased 60 cents, or 0.6 percent, to end the session at $102.34 a barrel on the London- based ICE Futures Europe exchange yesterday. It was the highest settlement price since Sept. 26, 2008.
Oil prices retreated yesterday after an Energy Department report showed that U.S. crude and gasoline supplies increased more than forecast last week. Crude inventories increased by 2.59 million barrels to 343.2 million in the week ended Jan. 28, the Energy Department said. They were forecast to climb by 2.5 million barrels, according to the median of 15 analyst estimates in a Bloomberg News survey.
There is "no real threat" to flows through the canal, Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said yesterday in a Bloomberg interview in Moscow. "We hope to see the market calm down because it is not good news for anybody in the market: consumers, producers or anybody."
Crude capped the biggest two-day rally since May on Jan. 31 on concern the unrest in North Africa will spread to crude- producing countries in the Middle East. Jordan's Prime Minister Samir Rifai resigned and King Abdullah asked Marouf Bakhit to form a new government.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/03/2011 00:00 ||
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I'm actually pretty sanguine today that the Canal is safe, and this isn't going to infect the oil-producing regions, excepting maybe Algeria.
On the other hand, a food price shock seems to be in full effect, with word of various autocratic and authoritarian regimes hording the hell out of grain stocks in the wake of the two Maghreb uprisings. I say that it is a moral imperative that the US terminates the ethanol subsidy, immediately.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
02/03/2011 9:52 Comments ||
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Terminating the ethanol subsidy isn't going to do anything about the price of wheat; there isn't enough overlap between the corn belts and the wheat belts to matter in the first place.
#5
Overlap between corn and wheat belts - more 'n you'd think. I do technical and customer support for agricultural databases, with an emphasis on soil test data. Insofar as growers don't switch between the two in the corn belt, it's a cultural thing rather than a scientific thing. Although they don't double-crop wheat and soy in the deep cornbelt the way they do in the Mid-Atlantic.
Corn certainly has been displacing cotton in the Delta, and wheat used to be a significant secondary crop down in cotton country. I say "used to" only because we lost our major Delta country reseller three years back, and I don't deal with the Delta as much as I used to do. Not sure what they're up to these days - in 2008, it was the big, big push into corn for ethanol.
Anyways, corn and wheat can be demand-substituted, as well as imperfectly supply-substituted. When you're a bureaucrat stockpiling staples for His Excellency's rainy riot day fund, you'll buy whatever is cheapest, and if wheat's expensive-because-rare-due-to-bad-harvests and corn's priced out of your range due to ethanol (ptui!), you grab rice, which inflates because you and every other tinpot's bureaucratic purchasing agents are scrabbling for your respective hoards.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
02/03/2011 13:42 Comments ||
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I'm with Donald Trump on this one.
He's probably right with the caveat that while OPEC might not be the least effective cartel in the history of the planet they're certainly in the running for that title. The ongoing implosion of the dollar and all of the world's fast money seeking safe havens from said event almost certainly have a much greater impact on oil prices than does OPEC.
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.
GAROWE, Somalia -- The U.N. and aid agencies are warning of a possible catastrophe in Somalia, where a severe drought has plunged millions of Somalis into crisis.
[Arab News] The Justice Ministry is currently working on new regulations to control marriages involving 
Feb. 3 -- Oil advanced for a second day in New York as protests in Egypt turned violent, prompting concern that supplies may be disrupted and unrest may spread to other parts of the Middle East.
