ACTOR Charlie Sheen spent Christmas Day behind bars after being arrested on charges of domestic assault. The 44-year-old Two And A Half Men actor was allegedly in a fight with wife Brooke Mueller in Aspen, Colorado.
Fox31 News and KDVR reported authorities received a 911 call on Christmas Day morning regarding a domestic violence situation. Officers from Aspen Police Department responded and investigated the incident.
They took Sheen, whose real name is Carlos Irwin Estevez, into custody for felony second-degree assault and criminal mischief. Officials said the charges are coupled with a domestic violence component.
An ambulance responded to the scene but the alleged victim - not named by Fox31 or KDVR but believed to be Ms Mueller, following reports by website Radar.com - did not require hospitalisation. No further details about the incident were released.
Sheen was being held without bond at the Pitkin County Jail.
Ms Mueller is the third wife of Sheen, son of screen legend Martin Sheen. The couple's twin boys, Bob and Max, were born in March 2009. Her family is partially based in Aspen.
Trains between Ashford and Dover were suspended on Monday when cold weather disabled the electric rail. Some commuters at London Victoria faced lengthy delays until Tornado - Britain's first mainline steam engine in 50 years - offered them a lift. They were taken home "in style", said the Darlington-built engine's owners.
Tornado, a £3m Peppercorn class A1 Pacific based at the National Railway Museum in York, was in the South East for one day, offering "Christmas meal" trips from London to Dover.
Its "Cathedrals Express" service, the last mainline journey in its first year of operations, was about to depart when staff heard about the stranded passengers. About 100 people were offered free seats, according to Mark Allatt, chairman of The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust - the charity which built Tornado.
Team him up with Uruguayan peacekeeping troops. What could possibly go wrong?
How about moving boundary markers? The Indians caught UN peacekeepers doing this in Kashmir.
Or they could stand guard while the other side kidnaps our soldiers and plants mines, like UN peacekeepers do between Israel and Lebanon... or merely rape local women and children of both sexes. On the other hand, the Bangladeshis I know personally are wonderful, highly educated, and seriously professional. So perhaps the good general is one of those.
Chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on defence ministry M Idris Ali has said that the United Nations will appoint a high official of Bangladesh Army as the commander of its peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast.
"The United Nations is going to appoint a Bangladeshi major general as the force commander of its peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast," Idris said yesterday while briefing journalists at Zia International Airport on his arrival from an official visit to the peacekeeping missions in Ivory Coast and Congo.
The chief of the JS body said that they visited Ivory Coast and Congo to witness the condition of the Bangladeshi peacekeepers there. They found some problems of the peacekeepers residing in Ivory Coast and Congo and would submit a report to the government with suggestions to resolve them, he added.
"Our peacekeepers in Ivory Coast and Congo have gained love and respect of the local people as well the UN by dint of their sincerity to their duties. They have brought glory for our country. We have also revealed some problems the Bangladeshi peacekeepers are facing abroad. The parliamentary standing committee on defence ministry, in the light of its findings, will make recommendations to the government to resolve the problems," Idris said.
The recommendations would include, among others, taking initiatives to provide the Bangladeshi soldiers with cheap phone call rates for talking to their near and dear ones in the country and chartering airbus to fly them home during annual vacations, he added.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/26/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
(translated)
German fighters patrolling the territory of Estonia are prosecuted by the Russian Su-27. Assistance to NATO by Finns.
This is not a scenario of military maneuvers or war movie, but the real incident, which took place September 15, according to the military industry magazine "Loyal".
Allegedly, two German machine Eurofighter approached the Baltic Sea west of Tallinn to czterosilnikowego jet aircraft Beriew A-50, trying unsuccessfully to establish radio communication with him. One of the German pilots photographed intruder. Then suddenly toward the German planes flew at a speed of two supersonic Su-27 fighters, but no one opened fire.
All five aircraft were soon in the airspace of Finland, where it flew toward the Finnish F-18 fighters. They forced the Russians to retreat, escorting their way to the international waters of the Baltic Sea. The armed forces of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia do not have combat aircraft. Provide them with an air defense fighter aircraft of other NATO countries, based on a rotating basis at the airport near the Lithuanian city of Siauliai.
It sounds like the Eurofighters were vectored to flyby the AEW aircraft, which may have drifted into Estonian airspace and the two Su-27s responded undetected by the Eurofighters to the "threat".
When the four fighter aircraft had drifted into Finn airspace, they were likely warned by the AEW and returned to Russian airspace.
#2
Not good for the Eurofighters if they didn't know the Su-27s were there. Were they flying with AWACS back-up or were they depending on their own local radar?
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/26/2009 0:51 Comments ||
Top||
#3
To my knowledge, there are no AWACs tasked here in Estonia. There are radar installations operated by the country, and they share data with Finland over the Gulf of Finland.
The Russians do this from time to time. A few years ago, a fighter tried to fly in low into Lithuanian airspace, and the idiot pilot crashed his plane.
Yukio Hatoyama, the new Japanese Prime Minister, has stunned a nation already mired in huge public debt by unveiling the country's biggest ever postwar budget: a 92.3 trillion yen (£630 billion) spending spree aimed at "saving people's lives".
The unprecedented budget, which supposedly shifts Japan's fiscal spending focus "from concrete to lives", comes amid rising concern about the solidity of sovereign debt in the world's second-largest economy.
The new budget will require additional debt issuance of Y44.3 trillion -- within the Government's expected band, but still at a level that will raise Japan's debt-to-GDP ratio to nearly 195 per cent.
Of foremost concern, analysts for Nomura said, is that Japanese tax revenues are expected to fall to Y37.40 trillion this year, the lowest that they have been since 1984. It was, analysts said, a watershed moment -- the first time that new debt issuance has exceeded tax revenues since the Second World War. Mr Hatoyama said: "We were just able to stay at a level in which we can maintain fiscal discipline."
He sounds just like Obama calling for fiscal discipline ...
#2
That's because Japan's problems are all of the implosion variety, Anon. What kids they've got left all want to hide in their bedrooms and draw dirty manga or play with hugging pillows instead of forming new families or joining the JSDF. The countryside is emptying out as everybody moves out, and everybody sweats up a storm working in 80-degree office towers because somebody somewhere thought it'd be more environmentally responsible to do so.
Modern Japan is the middle child of the West, and it'll kill itself pretending that nothing's wrong rather than do anything about it.
It'd be nice if they stopped wasting their resources on pointless concrete-pours, but as I understand it, they've pretty much run out of riverbeds that *aren't* encased in concrete.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
12/26/2009 15:08 Comments ||
Top||
#3
and if we all bought American made cars (or at least mostly American made) it might just about end the balance of trade problem we have with China and push Japan back on it's heels ....
If you want to see how Obamacare will hit you and your family in the wallet, look no further than the inside of your medicine cabinet. Open the cabinet door and you may see an antihistamine such as Claritin for allergies, pain relief medicine such as Tylenol or Excedrin, Pedialyte to prevent your kids from becoming dehydrated when they are sick, and prenatal vitamins if you and your spouse are expecting another one.
All of these items in your cabinet have two things in common. One is that they are classified as "over the counter" (OTC) medicines and available without a doctor's prescription. The other is that if you pay for any of these items with money in your flexible spending account (FSA) or health savings account (HSA) -- and according to this guide from FSA administrator Benesyst , all of these are eligible expenses -- you will face an effective tax increase of up to 40 percent on these items in the health care bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is poised to pass the U.S. Senate.
Both bills restrict individuals with these pre-tax accounts to buying a "medicine or drug only if such medicine or drug is a prescribed" one. And ironically, this tax that will raise health care costs substantially by creating incentives for the use of more expensive prescription drugs even when OTC drugs are just as safe and effective.
Continued on Page 49
#1
This could mean that billions will be wasted on the additional costs for prescription drugs in instances when OTC medicines could be just as safe and effective at treating the illness.
Too late for the 1 million self medicating occasional asthma sufferers who now (unnecessarily) go to the doctor to get a prescription inhaler because the Feds and environmentalists have turned nonprescription inhalers into crap.
Posted by: ed ||
12/26/2009 18:24 Comments ||
Top||
#2
I always keep three or more bottles of Aspirin, tylenol, baking soda (Stomach acid instant killer) and whatever else we use regularly, such s underarm deodorant, Mouthwash etc,
I just consider it part of our "Pantry".
(Y'all who don't have any idea what's a Pantry, its a store, or stock so you don't have to shop so often or so much, if something we eat is on sale I'll get as many as prctical and store it for hard times, whatever happens, we'll eat.)
If you don't have one, any closet near the kitchen will do fine, just put some colapsable shelves inside and you're in business.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
12/26/2009 23:40 Comments ||
Top||
The Vatican has said it is impossible to protect the Pope from incidents like that on Thursday night, when a woman grabbed him at Christmas Eve Mass.
Spokesman Frederico Lombardi said the Pope was regularly surrounded by tens of thousands of people at audiences, Masses, greetings and other events. He said it was unthinkable to create a wall between the Pope and the faithful.
The Pope was not injured when Susanna Maiolo, 25, hurled herself at him in St Peter's Basilica at the Vatican but an elderly French cardinal standing nearby, Roger Etchegaray, suffered a broken hip. The woman, who tried to throw herself at Benedict at the same Christmas Eve service one year ago, is now receiving psychiatric treatment and Mr Lombardi said he thought she would be dealt with very leniently by the Vatican.
Father Lombardi said it was not realistic to think the Vatican could ensure 100% security for the Pope and that security guards appeared to have acted as quickly as possible. "It seems that they intervened at the earliest possible moment in a situation in which zero risk cannot be achieved," he told the Associated Press news agency. "People want to see him up close and he's pleased to see them closely too. A zero risk doesn't seem realistic in a situation in which there's a direct rapport with the people."
Vatican security officials would, the spokesman added, nonetheless review the episode and "try to learn from experience".
Mr Berlusconi, who is recovering from a violent attack in Milan earlier in the month, spoke to Italian TV after the attack on the Pope. "We must really fight back against all these manufacturers of lies, extremism and hatred," he said.
It is still unclear what had motivated Ms Maiolo, who holds dual Swiss and Italian nationality. She told doctors she had not wanted to hurt the pontiff, Italy's La Repubblica newspaper said in a report on its online edition.
French Cardinal Paul Poupard, who was with the pontiff at the time of the incident, said it had been "definitely a threat to the Pope".
"With hindsight, you would say greater vigilance was needed, so those in charge of security should not let their guard drop even for a second," he added.
The Pope is protected by a combination of Swiss Guards, Vatican police and Italian police.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/26/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
[Dawn] As aides prepare the agenda for a proposed meeting between President Asif Ali Zardari and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the PML-N is putting pressure on the PPP to make the summit result-oriented.
This was indicated by a press release issued after Awami National Party leader and Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour called on Mr Sharif here on Friday.
The press release said that the PML-N chief severely criticised the PPP for its policy of not accepting wholeheartedly the Supreme Court decision on the National Reconciliation Ordinance and spoke about unfulfilled promises made by Mr Zardari in the past.
Also on Friday, Mr Sharif declined to meet Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman when he visited the Raiwind residence of the former prime minister.
The JUI-F chief was reported to have gone there to persuade Mr Sharif to show flexibility on the agenda of his proposed meeting with the president.
Mr Sharif's spokesperson said that Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif received Maulana Fazl and held talks with him.
The JUI-F chief insisted he had gone to meet the chief minister, but declined to say anything when asked why he went to Raiwind when he could have met Mr Shahbaz Sharif at his office or residence in Lahore.
The Pakistan People's Party also appears to be testing the nerves of its main rival. It had indicated earlier that the fate of the 17th Amendment, the most critical issue for the PML-N, would be decided on Dec 31, but has now given a new date of Jan 4. Some PPP leaders even say that the issue may not be resolved till March.
Although the PML-N leadership has stopped some hawks in the party from harshly criticising President Zardari, the press release quoted the party chief as telling Mr Bilour that the country was facing a difficult situation because of the government's unwillingness to implement the Charter of Democracy and fulfil written and verbal promises.
He said 20 months had elapsed but the government was being run under a "defaced" Constitution given by former army ruler Pervez Musharraf.
Nothing had been done even to establish an independent accountability system as enshrined in the CoD, he said.
The PML-N criticised the PPP leadership for making Supreme Court's NRO verdict controversial and said that this was angering the masses.
However, he expressed the hope that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani would implement the verdicts on the NRO and written-off bank loans and said that would be a positive move for supremacy of the law and stability of the democratic system and reflect the aspirations of the masses.
He said implementation of the verdicts would improve the country's image and discourage a culture of corruption.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/26/2009 00:14 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
Maybe if he offered him
a cookie, he would think differently.
KARACHI: On the directives of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, Pakistani authorities on Friday released 100 out of the 629 Indian fishermen imprisoned in the Malir District Jail. The prisoners were supposed to be released on Wednesday after spending three years in imprisonment. However, their release was delayed until Friday on the request of the Indian government that wanted to make adequate arrangements for the fishermens return.
Sindh Jails Minister Muzzafar Ali Shajra said Pakistan wants friendly relations with all its neighbours, including India. We hope India will respond positively to this step and also release Pakistani fishermen imprisoned in their jails, Shajra added. Each fisherman was given 100 Indian rupees, a quilt and socks for their journey back home.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/26/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
However, their release was delayed until Friday on the request of the Indian government that wanted to make adequate arrangements for the fishermen's return.
Neither the Indian Embassy nor the Foreign Ministry were informed about this. The Pakistanis then used the delay as PR, with the prisoners chanting slogans criticizing the slowness of the Indian Government and demanding immediate release.
The Indians of course need to check the background of these "prisoners", to ensure they are in fact Indians, and are fishermen reported as having been arrested. It would not be the first time that the Pakistanis have tried to slip in some terror operatives.
Posted by: john frum ||
12/26/2009 7:58 Comments ||
Top||
#2
It must be spawning season.
Posted by: Dave UK ||
12/26/2009 13:00 Comments ||
Top||
Neda Soltan was not political. She did not vote in the Iranian presidential election on June 12. The young student was appalled, however, by the way that the regime shamelessly rigged the result and reinstalled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ignoring the pleas of her family, she went with her music teacher eight days later to join a huge opposition demonstration in Tehran.
Even if a bullet goes through my heart its not important, she told Caspian Makan, her fiancé. What were fighting for is more important. When it comes to taking our stolen rights back we should not hesitate. Everyone is responsible. Each person leaves a footprint in this world.
Ms Soltan, 26, had no idea just how big a footprint she would leave. Hours after leaving home, she was indeed shot, by a government militiaman, as she and other demonstrators chanted: Death to the dictator.
Arash Hejazi, a doctor standing near by, remembers her looking down in surprise as blood gushed from her chest. She collapsed. More blood spewed from her mouth. As she lay dying on the pavement, her life ebbing out of her, I felt she was trying to ask a question. Why? said Dr Hejazi, who tried to save her life. Why had an election that generated so much excitement ended with a government that claims to champion the highest moral values, the finest Islamic principles, butchering its own youth?
A 40-second telephone clip of Ms Soltans final moments flashed around the world. Overnight she became a global symbol of the regimes brutality, and of the remarkable courage of Irans opposition in a region where other populations are all too easily suppressed by despotic governments.
Her name was invoked by Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and other world leaders. Outside Iranian embassies huge crowds of protesters staged candlelit vigils, held up her picture, or wore T-shirts proclaiming, NEDA Nothing Except Democracy Acceptable. The internet was flooded with tributes, poems and songs. The exiled son of the Shah of Iran carried her photograph in his chest pocket.
She was no less of an icon inside Iran, whose Shia population is steeped in the mythology of martyrdom. Vigils were held. Her grave became something of a shrine, and the 40th day after her death an important date in Shia mourning rituals was marked by a big demonstration in Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in Tehran that riot police broke up.
It was not hard to see why Ms Soltan so quickly became the face of the opposition, the Iranian equivalent of the young man who confronted Chinas tanks during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations 20 years earlier. She was young and pretty, innocent, brave and modern. She wore make-up beneath her mandatory headscarf, jeans and trainers beneath her long, black coat, and liked to travel. She transcended the narrow confines of religion, nationality and ideology. She evoked almost universal empathy.
The story of her death was so potent that the regime went to extraordinary lengths to suppress it. It banned a mourning ceremony, tore down black banners outside her home, and insisted that her funeral be private. It ordered her family to stay silent.
In the subsequent weeks any number of leading officials, ayatollahs included, sought to blame her death on British and American intelligence agencies, the opposition, and even the BBC accusing its soon-to-beexpelled Tehran correspondent, Jon Leyne, of arranging her death so that he could get good pictures.
The regime announced investigations that, to no ones surprise, exonerated it and all its agents. It managed to coerce Ms Soltans music teacher into changing his story, but it failed to do the same with Mr Makan, despite imprisoning him for 65 days many of them in solitary confinement. Released on bail, he fled the country making a five-day overland journey to escape.
Dr Hejazi also fled, back to Oxford where he had been taking a postgraduate course in publishing. There he confirmed in an interview in The Times that Ms Soltan was shot by a Basij militiaman on a motorcycle. But the regime still hounds him. It has harassed his family in Tehran, is trying to close his publishing company in the capital, and has accused him of helping British agents to kill Ms Soltan. It stages demonstrations outside the British Embassy demanding his extradition. He would be arrested the moment he returned to Tehran, meaning that he, his wife and infant son are now exiles.
When The Queens College, Oxford, established a scholarship in Ms Soltans name the regime sent the university a furious letter of complaint.
Back in Tehran, the regime tried to buy off Ms Soltans parents by promising them a pension if they agreed that their daughter was a martyr killed by foreign agents.
Her mother, Hajar Rostami Motlagh, was outraged. Neda died for her country, not so that I could get a monthly income from the Martyr Foundation, she said. If these officials say Neda was a martyr, why do they keep wiping off the word martyr in red which people write on her gravestone? ... Even if they give the world to me I will never accept the offer.
Soon afterwards, government supporters desecrated her grave. The regime has not arrested or investigated Abbas Kargar Javid, who was caught by demonstrators seconds after he shot Ms Soltan. The crowd, unwilling to use violence, and with the police the enemy, let him go but not before they had taken his identity card.
Six months on, it is obvious that Ms Soltan did not die in vain. The manner of her death, and the regimes response, has shredded what little legitimacy it had left. She helped to inspire an opposition movement that is now led by her generation, which a systematic campaign of arrests, show trials, beatings, torture and security force violence has failed to crush, and whose courage and defiance has won the admiration of the world.
As the new year approaches, the so-called Green Movement appears to be gaining confidence and momentum. It no longer seems impossible that the regime could fall in 2010. If and when it does, Ms Soltan will be remembered as the pre-eminent martyr of the second Iranian revolution.
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.
