2006 is oh so close I could almost smell it! Why, You ask? Elections of course! The time to boot out all of the jokers in parliament and hopefully replace them with better people who won't chase capital away from the island, who will recognise terrorists and call them as such, who won't object to Nancy Ajram and create riots, who won't object to staging a play [arabic] because its name has the word "Falujah" in it.
And to back all that up? The Chamber of Commerce and Industry, awakening from a deep slumber shook by Farouq Al-Moayyed put the ante of BD 1 million as cash prizes [arabic] to who they choose to run for parliament with a good economic agenda!
That by itself got our dear MPs to shit bricks, the first of which actually had a heart attack a couple of nights ago and had to be hospitalised. While we wish him a very speedy recovery and Insha'Allah a very long and fruitful life, we will be happy to see the back of him, and his ilk in order to make way for people who care about this country and not use the parliament as their personal pulpit to restrict personal freedoms, and who are not ineffectual fools in the face of continuous government harassment and coercion.
All in all, the past few days especially seem to have been loaded with press releases, posturing, positioning and jostling in a clear indication that the election fever for 2006 has already started...
Saudi Arabia executed on Monday two Thais and a Pakistani convicted of drug smuggling, said the Interior Ministry. The two Thai men were found guilty of smuggling and selling hashish, while the Pakistani was convicted of swallowing packets of heroin and smuggling them into the country. The conservative kingdom executes convicted murderers, rapists and drug smugglers, usually by public beheading with a sword. Monday's executions, in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, brought to six the number of people put to death this year.
Heads rolling everywhere, but they're all drug smugglers. I don't see any snuffies getting the chop, nor any holy men.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2005 00:00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
That's exactly right, Fred, all "alk runners" or drug smugglers. The gunnies just have to spend a couple of months in the cooler memorizing the Koran.
Two Pakistani smugglers arrested earlier will be hanged today after Kuwaiti courts and the state's ameer found them guilty of smuggling heroin into Kuwait. Ayub Shah (30) and Usman Khan (40) were caught by Kuwaiti Customs officials for smuggling heroin in 2002 and both confessed to their crime before a local court, according to Kuwaiti police. After charging the accused, the court awarded them the death sentence and they made mercy appeals to the Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court's decision.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2005 00:00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The past tense would be "Two Pakistanis hung." Just doesn't sound right. On the other hand it does sound just right or right just.
#2
I think the regular and irregular forms are allowed to be aesthetic choices for the rhetorical, artistic or aural pleasure of the writer, John. Sort of like flammable or inflammable, both of which mean, "Watch out, it'll burn right quick if you keep doing that!"
Amnesty International (AI) and human rights activists from the region urged the GCC governments to play a more active role to help stop violence and discrimination against women, calling for the establishment of a regional center to address the issue.
Yeah. That'll do it. We'll just talk and talk. That'll stop the violence.
They also called for the adoption of new laws that criminalize acts of violence against women and for existing laws that protect the rights of women to be enforced.
That and the credible threat of a .38 vasectomy.
The call came during a press conference held yesterday at the end of the two-day "End Violence and Discrimination Against Women in the GCC" conference in Manama.
AI Middle East program member, Dina El-Mamoun, who researched and carried out a field survey of GCC laws and the situation women face in five of the GCC countries said that there was discrimination against women particularly in laws concerning nationality, passports, and housing. "These are some of the apparent cases of discrimination against women we found in laws we reviewed, but there is also the discrimination where officials fail to enforce laws that are there to protect women," she said. El-Mamoun added that there is no exact figure available of women who suffer from violence in the region, but said that the field study and interviews with GCC officials revealed that the number was high.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2005 00:00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
If the current laws aren't being enforced, why bother with new ones that also won't be enforced?
#2
there was discrimination against women particularly in laws concerning nationality, passports, and housing.
Yeah, because most of the complaints we've been hearing from Muslim and ex-Muslim women concern unequal mortgage rates and being identified as the wrong nationality. Right.
Now back to the religiously sanctionned beatings, cutting off of female sex organs and incarceration in the homes-"every thing looks normal here. Next topic?"
Posted by: Dr. Jules ||
01/11/2005 13:50 Comments ||
Top||
KIEV — Ukraine's Supreme Court yesterday rejected four more challenges to President-elect Viktor Yuschenko's polling victory, removing a final legal barrier to official announcement of his victory. The court refused to review the claims filed by Prime Minister Vikor Yanukovich, the loser in the December 26 poll, on procedural grounds. There is no appeal. The Central Election Committee was expected to announce Yuschenko's victory later.Â
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/11/2005 12:36:45 AM ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
THE spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiah says he is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of Aceh's tsunami survivors because of the humanitarian assistance from Australian and US military forces.
A spokesman for Abu Bakar Bashir said the Indonesian cleric, who is on trial for terrorism, regarded the relief operations by Australian and US military personnel as a dangerous development, overshadowing the role of the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI).
"We are suspicious of the presence of foreign soldiers and their show of force and the minimum publicity given to assistance from Arab states," said Fauzan Al Anshari, a spokesman for Bashir's militant Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia group.
"It's dangerous, this idea by Acehnese that US and Australian forces are their guardian angels - more popular than the TNI."
Mr Anshari quoted Bashir as warning against any long-term hidden agenda in the deployment of Australian and US troops, saying he feared their presence in Aceh was like that of colonial invaders.
"If they establish a permanent base there, it will lead to trouble," he said.
Downplaying the mercy role of troops working to rebuild where more than a 100,000 people were lost when the tsunami struck on Boxing Day, Mr Anshari warned that they would promote prostitution and the consumption of alcohol in the devoutly Muslim region.
John Howard announced last week a $1 billion, five-year program for relief and reconstruction in Aceh. More than 500 Australian troops are in Aceh, with another 400 due to arrive in Sumatra on HMAS Kanimbla tomorrow. They are part of a massive multinational force providing relief to the region engaged in a bloody separatist revolt, but both sides have attempted to maintain a ceasefire since the tsunami struck.
Bashir's appearance in a South Jakarta court yesterday on charges of heading a terrorist organisation was greeted by shouts of "Allah Akbar (God is Great)" from scores of youthful supporters. Dressed more like members of an outlaw bikie gang, his supporters wore vests emblazoned with slogans such as "Taliban, Laskar, Mujaheddin and Brigade Al Ishlah", a reference to their allegiance with several home-grown militant Islamic groups.
Mr Anshari also confirmed 19 Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI) supporters had been ordered by Indonesian marines to leave their aid post at Banda Aceh's airport. The expulsion was ordered by Indonesian officials because their presence close to Australian and US troops was considered too provocative, "although we did nothing to provoke them", Mr Anshari said.
He said TNI had apologised, and pointed out that MMI had another 200 volunteers in Aceh. MMI supporters were helping to provide aid and religious counselling to victims.
In a related development, Indonesian Public Welfare Minister Alwi Shihab has ordered all foreign aid workers based in Aceh to register with the Government in order to carry on with their humanitarian relief work.
Posted by: tipper ||
01/11/2005 10:41:34 AM ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
THE spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiah says he is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of Acehâs tsunami survivors because of the humanitarian assistance from Australian and US military forces.
The downer here is that the hearts and minds being won are ONLY the tsunami survivors. The idea that our help might be seen in a favorable light by the rest of the Muslim world is nothing more than wishful thinking.
Posted by: Captain America ||
01/11/2005 14:04 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Every heart or mind won is one more than there was before, and one less that reflexively hates what it doesn't know. And one more, in an area governed by Sharia, open to the seduction of Western ways of thought.
#7
Let's all break into a song...."Will you still love me tomorrow...."
-- everybody now, a one and a two...
Posted by: Captain America ||
01/11/2005 15:03 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Yeah, the last time I heard Soddy had only given 10 million out of all their billions that the royal family can personally claim.
Meanwhile, states like the US which must donate the hard earned money of their citizens and are therefore much more cash strapped and also more accountable to those tax payers has still managed to legally and lawfully contribute at least 35 million and has donated the exclusive use of an entire carrier group at our own great expense.
But no, the problem isn't that muslims are just stingy bastards, its that they haven't received the same attention.
All too typical shifting of blame. Its the only way they can live with themselves and their beliefs when none of it leads to either greater success or greater morality and righteousness or a better life unless, that is, the muslim is fortunate enough to live in a society dominated by some other faith, ANY other faith.
EFL
Despite their training and combat experience, the US marines working in tsunami-hit Sri Lanka admit that picking through the shattered remains of peoples' lives has been a heart-rending exercise. A few dozen of around 400 marines stationed in or off the southern city of Galle pick up brick after broken brick, the pieces left behind after the Asian tsunami ravaged the seaside village of Gintota. Like survivors right across the three-quarters of Sri Lanka's coastal belt obliterated by the December 26 tsunami, they use their hands -- some gloved in black leather or khaki wool, others simply bare. They toss what's left of entire lifetimes into the mouths of camouflaged bulldozers, brought by the US military themselves, which then transfer the detritus into their dump trucks. Then it's off to a makeshift tip.
"There was rubble everywhere. It was like the Twin Towers," in New York destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks says Private First Class Damon Carr, describing the scene when he arrived. "I didn't know where we were going to start from; everywhere you looked, there was rubble." He found a photo album with a family snap of half a dozen people and says he handed it back to the mother pictured in it. She was the only one still alive. "I almost cried," he says. "We're marines, we've been trained, but I never thought I'd be standing here, picking up the pieces of someone's whole life." They are your sons. They are your neighbors. They may be your husbands. However you chose to phrase it: They are our Marines.
Posted by: Captain America ||
01/11/2005 13:54 Comments ||
Top||
#2
A lot of chaplains are going to be well employed when these Devil Dogs come back from this deployment. Combat's one thing, you expect to see some crazy shite, otoh, seeing innocents massacred by mother nature borders on the incomprehensible. My heart goes out them and the survivors. A very tough deployment to pull to say the least.
By looking at a vast swath of sky, astronomers said on Tuesday they have figured out a way to measure the universe -- using a kind of "cosmological ruler." They found that the universe is flat, with ripples that began as the tiniest variations in radiation left over from the Big Bang, which many cosmologists believe gave birth to the universe. As it cooled after the mega-explosion some 13.7 billion years ago, the infant universe was actually making a sound and those waves produced the ripples, said Daniel Eisenstein, an astronomer at the University of Arizona. The way galaxies are scattered across the sky now corresponds to the sound waves in the early times of the cosmos, Eisenstein told reporters at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. "We regard this as smoking-gun evidence that gravity has played the major role in growing from the initial seeds in the microwave background (left over from the Big Bang) into the galaxies and clusters of galaxies that we see around us," he said. "The most exciting thing from my point of view is the signature of these wiggles in the galaxy distribution ... may be very useful as a cosmological ruler," said Richard Ellis of Caltech Optical Observatories.
Posted by: John Q. Citizen ||
01/11/2005 6:26:58 PM ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
to the sound waves in the early times of the cosmos
SAN DIEGO, California (AFP) - Black holes, the universe's biggest vacuum cleaners, deform space and time surrounding them, two teams of astrophysicists reported on the sidelines of the American Astronomica Society's winter meeting. Great wahrks!
John Miller, of Harvard University's astrophisical center at Boston, Massachusetts, was able to see gas particles literally "surfing" a space-time wave around a black hole known as GRS 1915+105, some 40,000 light years away in the Aquila constellation. "Space surfin' with the starsâŠ"
His observations have confirmed a key theory that nothing is able to escape a black hole's extreme gravitational field, not even light waves, Miller told reporters on Tuesday. That's nothing. DU and Indymedia use similar phenomena to keep facts OUT.
The data shows that "black holes are such extreme objects that they can actually warp and drag the fabric of spacetime around with them as they spin," the scientists reported. "You're coming with me, you little piece of spacetime!"
"Gas whipping around the black hole has no choice but to ride that wave of choppy spacetime sea that distorts everything falling into the black hole," they added. Kind of like how See BS distorts facts before destroying them.
The space-time warp caused by extreme gravity was predicted in 1916 by Albert Einstein in his theory of relativity, said Miller, who did his reasearch with Jeroen Homan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
They made their observations with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Rossi-X Timing Explorer satellite, the most powerful orbiting X-ray telescope.
A second team of astrophysicists headed by Jane Turner working jointly with NASA's Goddard space-flight center and the astrophysical center of the University of Maryland was also able to see three extremely hot sets of particles the size of our Sun turn around a black hole at 32,000 kilometers (20,000 miles) per second -- more than 10 percent the speed of light.
In their observations, made with the XMM-Newton satellite of the European Space Agency, scientists were able to see for the first time a particle of matter spinning completely around a black hole.
The information should provide vital clues on mass and other characteristics of a black hole, Turner and her colleague Lance Miller of Britain's Oxford University said.
The small, but very black hole Turner and Miller trained their instrument on lies in the Makarian galaxy, some 170 million light years away in the constellation Coma Berenices.
Posted by: Steve from Relto ||
01/11/2005 12:59:17 PM ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"Gas whipping around the black hole has no choice but to ride that wave of choppy spacetime sea that distorts everything falling into the black hole," they added.
But enough about your lunch with Mike al-Moor, tell us something about space.
#2
Isn't there a glaring error here? If the stuff in the space-time warp is in a different space-time than us, what exactly are we looking at? What does a time-traveler look like when he's travelling in time? Either a statue or a blur, if that.
#3
It appears there's a nomenclature problem here. For physicists, "space-time" is a single concept. Time still only flows in one direction, and causality is preserved.
In an accelerated frame (orbiting a blackhole, standing on a planet, etc), non-accelerated time seems to pass more quickly. Your time traveller might look like a statue... or more likely a slowly dissipating cloud.
#4
there no sucher thing as time, there is only changing probabilities. trust me on this. kitter cat that jumps after a butterfly, is a different cat when it lands. it's all in the triangles you see
#6
To be more precise, gravity distorts spacetime, and black holes are massive gravity sources. Also, they lead to really squishy sandwiches, or is it alternate unverses(universi?).
YENDI, Ghana (AP) -- It was terrible enough that the beloved king was murdered and his head paraded on a spear, causing his 32 widows to cry at the mere mention of his name. Or that more than two years later, his headless body still languishes in a tiny hospital morgue. The brutal family feud that killed the King of Dagbon caused its share of havoc across the dust-blown fields of this northern Ghana kingdom. But family members say it's nothing compared to the violence threatening to erupt once the king is finally buried, in months to come -- launching a war of succession that's already looming.
Sounds like the background setting for a really bad novel...
For centuries, the Abudu and Andani clans -- named after two sons of the ancient Dagbon king -- cordially rotated control of the kingdom, centered in Yendi, 530 kilometers (330 miles) north of Accra, the West African nation's capital. The 1,300-square kilometer (800-square mile) area of Dagbon is one of eight traditional kingdoms in Ghana, the largest with nearly 1 million people and dates back 600 years. A 30-year-old power struggle between the clans ignited in March 2002, when Abudu warriors dressed in battle regalia stormed the Andani palace and slaughtered the king, Ya-Na Yakubu, and 30 of his elders.
This incident, I believe, figured large in the second Ace Ventura movie...
The sacred Dagbon palace -- two dozen mud huts inside a walled compound -- was raked with bullets and burned to the ground.
If you're gonna do something, do it right!
Andani elders say the king's body can be buried when a nearly rebuilt new palace is complete, with a pavilion for the slain ruler to lie in state. They will then name a successor -- most likely a son. But the Abudu contend that since the king is dead -- never mind how he died -- it's their turn to appoint his successor.
That's got to be right up there with the Menendez brothers asking for sympathy because they are orphans
That would likely be Mahamadu Abdulai, the 20-year-old Abudu chief from Yendi, who, residents say, was taken out of school and given three wives and a cadre of elders, who pamper him for majesty. One afternoon at the Abudu compound, the young chief sat sullenly in green shiny slippers and refused to speak, allowing one of his elders to explain the effect the feud could have on this otherwise peaceful country. "It is the Abudu's turn to take control of Dagbon," said Alhassan Iddrisu, who like his chief wore the traditional headwraps indicating a king has fallen. "Or there could be trouble."
"Without a strong king, why, anything could happen! For instance, what if someone tried to steal the Eye of Kapoopki?"
"The Eye of Kapoopki?"
"Yes. You know. The 14-pound ruby that's embedded in our idol."
"Oh, yes. That one."
Kings and chiefs have autonomy over their areas, but many are finding it hard to keep the influence of modern politics at bay. Iddrisu explained that his clan has been bitter since 1974, when the now-late king took power after an Abudu king was ousted in disputed circumstances. Confidence runs high among the Abudu that the next reign will be theirs -- a hope bolstered, residents say, by the Abudu's magical juju power, still feared across West Africa.
"So long as we control the Eye of Kapoopki we retain our strong juju! None can stand against us!"
Outside the Abudu chief's chamber, a large stone lay covered in chicken blood and feathers. The young chief yawned from the afternoon heat and swatted at flies. "When the Ya-Na is chosen," Idrissu said, "drums will sound across the land."
"The Eye of Kapoopki will begin to glow eerily..."
#2
Although he wanders around for awhile at the beginning, the author closes strong:
"In other words for the U.N. and its claque, helping the stricken takes second place to getting the credit. They have to obscure the realities revealed by the tsunami crisis. Otherwise, American generosity will re-fashion the global image of the U.S. as a callous superpower and American efficiency will shame a U.N. still struggling to catch up with American aid efforts.
And if the U.N. cannot perform its basic task of disaster relief as well as independent nation states like the U.S., Australia, and India, then its claim to be the center of a future system of 'global governance' will wither and die.
#5
Is he sure it's "Allah"? It looks like "asshole" to me.
Give me a call when we find some mosque wreckage that's all twisted up to look like the Virgin Mary.
#7
You figure god would like mass e-mail mpgs by taking over the internet and quadrupling the bandwidth. But hey, I understand he's old and all, but he's supposed to be pretty quick in the understanding department.
#8
The one screaming omission in this dudes claims is that the place that was worst hit by far was also the most devoutly muslim ie Aceh which had implemented sharia.
But that doesn't square with his little theory so he doen't mention it.
I've noticed that no muslims in fact have even begun to mention this. Again it doesn't square with their unquestioned belief in what the koran teaches that those who obey allan will be successful and safe etc. All of them are in complete denial right now. 100,000 devout muslims were wiped off the face of earth like so many bugs. So much for that idea.
Meanwhile this guy sees a pattern in a meaningless arrangement of waves,which try as i might I could not see, and calls for greater muslim observance. If this is true then the old pagan gods also have proven their existence since you can see them in the constellations if you look hard enough.
sheesh! Asshat indeed. But one that muslims will undoubtly wholeheartedly believe in order to salvage their faith.
Remember muslim boys and girls, the most devout muslims in the area have the greatest casualties and devastation. Repeat that until you see that this doesn't square with what mo told ya. God sure isn't acting pleased with their obedience and orthodoxy is he?
#9
I was eating potato chips and drinking beer. After the 6th beer, I saw Allah in one of the potato chips. It will be for sale on eBay--if anybody really gives a flip.
U.S. Navy officials say the weekend nuclear submarine accident in the Pacific was caused by running into a undersea mountain at high speed. Pentagon officials said the USS San Francisco was 350 miles south of Guam, bound for Australia at about 33 knots, or 35 mph, when its nose cone containing the sonar dome smashed into the rock formation. Machinist Mate 2nd Class Joseph Ashley, 24, of Akron, Ohio, died Sunday in the accident, and 24 others were suffered broken bones, lacerations, bruises and a back injury. They are being treated on Guam. The nuclear submarine docked Monday at a U.S. naval base on Guam, and some external damage was visible, although the ship's reactor was not damaged, a spokesman with the U.S. Pacific Fleet told CNN. The vessel's commander, Kevin Mooney, has not been relieved of duty while investigators assess the sub's speed, its location and whether the undersea formation was on navigational charts.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/11/2005 9:05:57 AM ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
We need to post speed limits for those mountains - they just move too fast and need to slow down dammit!
#5
Well thats certainly far enough way from the Indian Oceam that the earthquake would have had nothing to do with moving anything.
The Mariana's Trench is to the southeast of Guam, and this area I think is pretty deep without counting the trench, so it probably an undersea volcano that never made it to island status (though this is random speculation of course).
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
01/11/2005 9:50 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Well, it looks like it's about time to impose mandatory seat belts laws in US subs. And helmet laws. And maximum speed limits. And can we sue the sub maker for not installing sufficiently cushioned bumpers?
#10
When you look at the sailing maps of 500 years ago, you find lots of sea monsters. My theory for that phenomena is that if the captain was fortunate enough to survive his ship sinking, it was better to tell the ship's benefactors that "your vessel was attacked by a sea monster *this big*", rather than say, "I ran it onto some rocks."
#13
Any possibility that this "mountain" was in fact a huge mound of sediment created by the tsunami? I have heard that the entire region will have to undergo a massive re-mapping by surface ships to determine such changes.
#14
That's a hell of a smack, testimony to the skill of the builders.
Brings to mind the tragic accident that A-6 caused by cuting a gondola cable in Italy. No one every wondered why Intruders vertical stabilizer was sliced off. Grumman.
#15
From NYT: A nuclear attack submarine that ran aground Saturday in the South Pacific, killing one sailor and injuring 23 others, appears to have smashed into an undersea mountain that was not on its charts, Navy officials said yesterday. The submarine, the San Francisco, was cruising at high speed - about 30 knots - and was more than 400 feet below the surface when the accident forced it to blow air into its emergency ballast tanks to surface. Some of the tanks were damaged by the impact. One officer said the effort to keep the submarine afloat was initially "very touch and go."
The officials said navigational charts are prepared from both government and commercial soundings of the ocean depths, many dating back centuries. Given the vastness of the oceans, they said, there could still be small areas that were never properly charted or where earthquakes have altered the contours. The officials said it appeared that the San Francisco, which was en route to Australia, had not strayed off course.
"The initial reports are that they were using the proper charts, and they were where they were supposed to be and at the depth they were supposed to be," said a former Navy officer who was briefed on the accident. Investigators will check whether the crew made any errors, officials said.
Similar accidents have happened before, in part because submarines typically do not use their active sonar systems, which emit loud pings, to navigate. Instead, submarines try to operate silently, relying on undersea charts, checks with navigation satellites and passive sonar systems that pick up the noises of other vessels.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/11/2005 12:40 Comments ||
Top||
#16
soooo...does the captain still go down with the ship?
#21
I'm no geologist, but isn't it entirely possible that underwater volcanic activity may have caused this mountain to grow over time--making navigational charts for that area obsolete? It'd take a lot of activity to grow rapidly enough to be a navigational threat like this, but it is theoretically possible and wouldn't be as spectacular or noticable as a Mt. St. Helens if it were all underwater.
Additionally, sonar isn't much good for finding underwater obstacles unless it's actively pinging, from what I understand. And active sonar is rarely used because it advertises your presence over a much greater distance than its effective range--submarines generally use passive sonar, i.e. just plain listening, to detect screw noises. A big rock doesn't generate any noise and is undetectable to passive sonar.
I agree with Chuck that at that speed (flank speed?) passive sonar is useless because the water rapidly rushing past the boat masks other noises, but I don't think it'd have made any difference since mountains are basically silent.
All this is the opinion of someone who gets all his sub-knowledge from Clancy books, however. I would welcome some enlightenment from anyone in the know!
Posted by: Dar ||
01/11/2005 15:39 Comments ||
Top||
#22
Something sounds fishy here. If a sub was going that fast ran head on into a mountain there should have been a h*** of alot of damage. Unless it barely scraped an outcropping.
Posted by: Stephen ||
01/11/2005 22:00 Comments ||
Top||
(2005-01-10) -- Veteran CBS News anchor Dan Rather greeted today's release of the 224-page report on the 60 Minutes 'memogate' scandal by saying, "Our long national nightmare is over. Now is the time, in fact, it is past time to move on."
The report showed that Mr. Rather, and at least four colleagues, suffered from a condition called 'myopic zeal,' which is apparently terminal in four-out-of-five cases.
"Usually, the buck stops here," said Mr. Rather. "But in this case, the buck stopped over there. So, now I return to the seat of trust, behind the desk of integrity at CBS."
After his retirement from the CBS Evening News in March, Mr. Rather said he may pursue doing commercial endorsements.
"My agent has already been contacted by Dupont," he said, "about a series of educational TV spots on the benefits of Teflon."
Posted by: Korora ||
01/11/2005 12:03:54 AM ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"My agent has already been contacted by Dupont," he said, "about a series of educational TV spots on the benefits of Teflon."
Just make sure they're not pieces peddling its use as an engine oil additive....
The Supreme Court yesterday granted Kanchi priest Jayendra Saraswathi conditional bail in the Sankararaman murder case for which he was arrested Nov. 11. The court ordered him not to return to his mutt before formal charges are brought.
Oh, what will he do without his mutt?
While granting bail, the three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice R.C. Lahoti, Justice G.P. Mathur and Justice P.P. Maolekar said: "We are of the opinion that prima facie a strong case has been made out for grant of bail." Admitting Saraswathi's appeal challenging a Madras High Court order that had refused him bail, Justice Mathur said: "He will be relieved from prison after furnishing a bail bond and two sureties to the satisfaction of the trial court." Justice Mathur delivered the verdict in a jam-packed court and also wrote the judgment for the bench. The priest was ordered to surrender his passport, cooperate with the investigation and appear before police when required. The court dismissed objections from the prosecution that if the priest was set free, a number of witnesses in the case could be bumped off feel pressured into lying.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2005 00:00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Fred, about the picture: I thought orange robes were more associated with buddhist monks?
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
01/11/2005 9:11 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Hinayana Buddhists wear yellow, Mahayana wear orange, for the most part. Various Hindoo sects may also have color coding. Proper Buddhists don't live in mutts, though...
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2005 14:57 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Or have mistresses, mysterious caches of gold, or murder charges levied against them.
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.
Saudi Arabia executed on Monday two Thais and a Pakistani convicted of drug smuggling, said the Interior Ministry. The two Thai men were found guilty of smuggling and selling hashish, while the Pakistani was convicted of swallowing packets of heroin and smuggling them into the country. The conservative kingdom executes convicted murderers, rapists and drug smugglers, usually by public beheading with a sword. Monday's executions, in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, brought to six the number of people put to death this year. 
Two Pakistani smugglers arrested earlier will be hanged today after Kuwaiti courts and the state's ameer found them guilty of smuggling heroin into Kuwait. Ayub Shah (30) and Usman Khan (40) were caught by Kuwaiti Customs officials for smuggling heroin in 2002 and both confessed to their crime before a local court, according to Kuwaiti police. After charging the accused, the court awarded them the death sentence and they made mercy appeals to the Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court's decision.
KIEV — Ukraine's Supreme Court yesterday rejected four more challenges to President-elect Viktor Yuschenko's polling victory, removing a final legal barrier to official announcement of his victory. The court refused to review the claims filed by Prime Minister Vikor Yanukovich, the loser in the December 26 poll, on procedural grounds. There is no appeal. The Central Election Committee was expected to announce Yuschenko's victory later.Â
The Supreme Court yesterday granted Kanchi priest 
