A gay Saudi prince beat and strangled his male servant to death in a frenzied sexual assault at their luxury London hotel suite, a court heard on Tuesday.
Saud Bin Abdulaziz Bin Nasir al Saud, 34, who is a grandson of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, killed Bandar Abdullah Abdulaziz on February 15 after abusing him for weeks, the court heard.
The 32-year-old victim was found with severe injuries including bite marks on his cheeks in a bloodstained bed in the suite at the Landmark Hotel, which he was sharing with the prince, prosecutors said.
Prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw told the jury at the Old Bailey in London, England's Central Criminal Court, that Saud had admitted the lesser charge of manslaughter but denied murder and a separate count of grievous bodily harm.
Laidlaw said the two men had been staying together at the hotel for nearly a month as part of an "extended holiday" that had also taken them to Italy, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Morocco.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/06/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
It's just part of their culture! When will the British understand? Stop being so intolerant!
If we actually had Real Journalists[tm] they would be all over this, exposing cognitive dissonance among the P.C. elite. Since journalists, by definition, are part of the P.C. elite, of course they will make one report and then this story will Disappear[tm].
One day the decadent princelings of the House of Saud will lose control of their country.
Then the people in control of a quarter of the world's known oil reserves will be rabid Islamists who want a global caliphate that resembles the 14th Century.
[Iran Press TV] Archaeologists have unearthed ancient settlements in southern Siberia, which they believe were built by the original Aryan race about 4,000 years ago.
Some 20 of the spiral-shaped settlements were found in a remote area bordering Kazakhstan and date back to the beginning of Western civilization in Europe.
Experts say the Bronze-age structures might have been built by Aryans shortly after the Great Pyramid was constructed some 4,000 years ago.
"Potentially, this could rival ancient Greece in the age of the heroes," Daily Mail quoted TV historian Bettany Hughes as saying.
Good lord, are they still fussing over their non-conquest of Greece in the 5th century BCE? Persia was a world power for more than a millenium, surely that should suffice.
"Because I have written a lot about the Bronze Age world, there always seemed to be this huge missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle," she added.
Remains of the ancient city were first explored around 20 years ago and studies showed that it would have housed between 1,000 and 200 people.
The language spoken by the Aryan people has been identified as the ancestor of some modern European tongues. Some English words, for instance, such as brother, oxen and guest have been traced back to the Aryans.
"We are all told that there is this kind of mother tongue, proto-Indo-European, from which all the languages we know emerge," Hughes said.
Not all of them, Historian Hughes. There are also the proto-languages of the Pacific Islands, sub-Saharan Africa, east Asia, and the Americas, plus some minor ones that don't seem related to anything else. One hopes the Iran PressTV reporter misquoted, one really does.
"I was very excited to hear on the archaeological grapevine that in exactly the period I am an expert in, this whole new Bronze Age civilization had been discovered on the steppe of southern Siberia."
Posted by: Fred ||
10/06/2010 00:00 ||
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Good lord, are they still fussing over their non-conquest of Greece in the 5th century BCE? Persia was a world power for more than a millenium, surely that should suffice.
Whose non-conquest of Greece? I thought a lot of population replacement had gone on in Persia/Iran/Whatever between then and now.
#5
One of the titles of the Shah was "Light and Protector of the Aryans". Also, Basque seems to be related somewhat to Phoenician; enough so that there is now a theory that the Basque are an early "lost tribe" of proto-Phoenicians.
#6
Actually, the proto-Phoenicians are the Sea Peoples which may or may not have been linguistically or ethnically related to the true Phoenicians. That is whom many scientists think the Basque language is related to.
#7
Hungarian is in the same language group as Finnish and Estonian, and some places out in Siberia. It seems that the Indo-European speaking peoples came north and west, dividing them.
I thought I read a while back that they finally found a language in the same family as Basque, in a valley in the Caucasus. It seems that Basque is an ancient tongue. All abstract concepts are loan words.
I've also read a hypothesis that Ainu is related to Basque, which seems completely outlandish but then again maybe not. What with Kennewick Man, the Spirit Cave mummy and red-haired mummies found in New Zealand, there is evidence of a global, European sea-faring culture in the late Neolithic. This knowledge was lost during the first Dark Age.
#9
The one during the Bronze Age, Pstanley? Between the fall of Troy and the rise of Homer? ;-)
Yeah. Or perhaps lost before that, even. One Jerry Pournelle's favorite sayings is that the thing about dark ages isn't that we forget how to do things... it's that we forget it was ever done in the first place.
#10
So the Kaiser's "drang nach osten" indeed had historical roots? As for 'you know who', a zillion slavs stood in the way of uniting the Siberian Aryans with the fatherland. Also, now we know why he made the Japanese honorary Aryans. //sarcasm off
#11
The last time I checked, Slavs have been speaking Indo-European languages since way way back, and occupy a region fairly close to the estimated origin point of the Indo-European expansion.
We have to go with the real meaning of words instead of "mythical ancestral group who's related to us but not the next-door neighbors we've been putting into forced-labor camps."
(The Germans used to have problems in that regard; the Japanese still do; they're busy looking for the mystical ancestral tribe that practiced celibacy as its armies marched through Manchuria and down the Korean penninsula.)
#13
The last time I checked, Slavs have been speaking Indo-European languages since way way back,
Isolated pockets of original inhabitants or migrating tribes, Snowy Thing. The language of the Roma gypsies is, I think, related to the Indian languages, not European ones, for exactly that reason. They just announced finding a new language at the base of the Himalayas in an isolated village.
[Ennahar] The two workers, jugged during Ramadhan in eastern Algeria for not fasting and tried last month for "violating a precept of Islam", were released Tuesday, said an AFP correspondent.
A judge of the court in Ain El Hamman Kabylia has delivered a non-suit because "no article provides tracking" in such cases of non fasting during Ramadhan, according to a translation in Arabic about the magistrate. The disposition of cases was very rapid.
The judge followed the argument of the defense had argued the acquittal on that ground.
The prosecutor, who can appeal, had requested three years in prison during the appearance of accused Sept. 21.
Hocine Hocini, 44, and Salem Fellak, 34, who appeared free, had been jugged by police on August 13 when they had just finished eating in a discreet place on a construction site.
Outside the court Tuesday, hundreds of people gathered since early morning applauded the ruling.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/06/2010 00:00 ||
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I escaped the fasting police as i didn't fast during Ramadamadingdong either. i also drank alcohol. that makes me a bad infidel......
[Bangla Daily Star] At least 20 people were injured on Tuesday as two groups of the ruling Awami League got into a clash over formation of Bagha upazila committee in Rajshahi.
Critically injured Bagha upazila unit AL General Secretary Mozammel Haque was admitted to the Rajshahi Medical College Hospital, reports our staff correspondent in Rajshahi.
Posted by: Fred ||
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The Bank of Japan has cut interest rates to zero and pledged to buy $60bn worth of assets in an attempt to stimulate the world's third largest economy.
The central bank on Tuesday lowered its key rate to a range of between zero and 0.1 per cent in its first such move since it set the rate of 0.1 per cent at the height of the financial crisis in December 2008.
For months, the central bank had shunned government calls for more decisive action, such as buying more government bonds, and focused instead on a limited funding scheme.
But in the face of growing evidence that the yen's strength was hurting the economy, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) cut its overnight rate target and also said it would keep its benchmark rate effectively at zero until price stability was in sight.
Core consumer prices have been falling from a year earlier since early 2009. With the drop in interest rates, consumers will spend more and in turn begin pushing prices in the opposite direction.
Steps welcomed
The 5 trillion yen ($60bn) asset purchases, which would inject more cash into the economy, roughly matches the size of extra stimulus being considered by the cabinet.
The assets, ranging from government bonds and short-term government securities to commercial paper and corporate bonds, would come under a temporary scheme that would also cover 30 trillion yen of such assets as collateral under an existing loan programme.
"The BOJ is bringing its monetary policy closer to quantitative easing, allowing market rates to hover near zero and pledging to keep a near-zero interest rate policy in the longer term until prices stabilise," Naomi Hasegawa, an investment strategist, said.
BOJ policymakers have signalled in past weeks that they were considering a further easing of policy after Tokyo's intervention in the currency market in mid-September to check the yen's strength offered only temporary relief.
Most market players, however, had expected the central bank to opt for a relatively minor adjustment of its 30 trillion yen loan scheme that supplies banks with funds at its 0.1 percent rate.
"These steps are more aggressive than markets had expected. The BOJ's decision is a surprise and will have an impact on currencies due to the message it delivers," Hasegawa said.
Global effects
The surprise move weakened the yen against the dollar, pushed up Japanese government bond futures and helped stock prices turn positive.
Japan's Nikkei average bounced back to post its biggest daily percentage gain since mid-September, with shares jumping more than one percent, leading Asian equities higher.
Benchmark oil for November delivery was up 14 cents to $81.59 a barrel at late Tuesday afternoon Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
"The oil price strength is very largely a response to the weaker dollar," said David Wech of JBC Energy.
Central banks in Japan, the United States and Britain have been under political pressure to do more to support economies showing only tepid recovery from the worst recession in decades.
In Japan, slowing export growth, a surprise fall in factory output and companies' worries that the strong yen may hurt the outlook have heightened the case for the central bank to ease policy.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Israel, one of the world's leading makers of unmanned aircraft, unveiled today a new, small drone that can hover like a helicopter and fly like an airplane.
Israel Aerospace Industries debuted its Panther unmanned aerial vehicle in Israel, touting its ability to take off without a runway and then fly for up to six hours. "An intriguing option is the Panther's ability to hover or land quietly in enemy territory, conduct surveillance like a ground sensor and then take off again," industry magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology reported.
The Panther, Israel Aerospace Industries' tilt-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle for tactical missions, will be exhibited for the first time internationally at a U.S. Army trade show in Washington D.C., later this month.Like the American V-22 Osprey, the Panther is a tilt-rotor, meaning it has rotors mounted on the end of its wings that can rotate and allow the aircraft to transition between hovering and fixed-wing flight. This gives the aircraft the ability to take off like a helicopter without the need for a runway, but then fly like fixed-wing aircraft.
As an unmanned aircraft, however, the Panther is much smaller than the V-22 Osprey, which is designed for transporting troops. The Panther weighs in at just over 140 pounds and is designed for spying rather than transporting.
Israel Aerospace Industries is expected to display the aircraft later this month at a U.S. Army trade show to be held in Washington. The company says that special forces in other countries are interested in buying the vehicle, according to Flight International.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which has dominated the Web browser market since blowing by Netscape in the late 1990s, last month fell below the 50% market share level for the first time in years.
IE's share of the worldwide market fell to 49.87% in September, down from 51.3% in August and 58.4% a year ago. It is followed by Firefox, which increased its share slightly from 30.09% to 31.5% and Google Chrome, which grabbed 11.54% share, more than triple its September 2009 share, according to market watcher StatCounter.
"This is certainly a milestone in the Internet browser wars," said Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter, in a statement. "Just two years ago IE dominated the worldwide market with 67%."
Back in 2002, IE had more than a 90% share in the wake of operating system/Web browser bundling that got the Department of Justice's attention in the form of an antitrust lawsuit. If you don't use Chrome I highly recommend you give it a try. It beats IE hands down, and the only advantage Firefox has is its estimable error console for programmers.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/06/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
After all these years MS still can't make a browser that doesn't crash all the time.
#5
I've done a fair amount of web programming. The more of it that I have to do with IE, the more I despise Microsoft. The deficiencies in IE are features, not bugs. IOW, Microsoft does it that way on purpose. The way they interpret Javascript is different from the industry standard way that all other browsers do. The way they render content is different from the industry standard way that all other browsers do. They think they're big enough to impose their own standards and they think it will discourage the use of other browsers. They think programmers will be lazy enough to do it their way and let their work look like crap on other browsers. I'd rather let my work look like crap on IE so I can tell my users what an inferior product it really is. My bosses insist that I do it both ways so my work doesn't look like crap but it's a pain in the ass. IBM used to do the same thing, insisting on EBCDIC when the rest of the world was using ASCII. Jackasses.
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.
