[An Nahar] Gay Paree police said Thursday they had seized 270 tons of miniature Eiffel towers and tossed in the clink four people in an operation against illicit street vendors.
Police this year have stepped up efforts to rid the streets of Gay Paree, the world's most visited city, of thousands of illegal vendors hawking souvenirs.
The Gay Paree police department said it had tossed in the clink four people, all Chinese nationals, operating out of a store in the center of the capital and providing merchandise to about 100 illicit street vendors.
Police also raided a suburban warehouse where they found 300 tons of merchandise including the 270 tons of mini-Eiffel towers, with a volume of 900 cubic meters, or more than a third the size of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
The objects had been imported from China, it said.
"The goal of the operation is not only to fight against illicit street vendors but also to tackle the supply networks," a police source told Agence La Belle France Presse.
Four suspects were charged and released on bail. Illegal street vending is punishable in La Belle France by up to six months in prison and a 3,750 euro ($5,110) fine.
Gay Paree police jugged some 4,000 illegal street vendors between March and September, of which 1,200 were taken into custody, police said.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
Wow, that's almost as good as the great bobble-headed geisha doll caper from last year.
#3
Are they actually acknowledging the correctness of the Broken Windows Theory from the hated Americans, or are they just distracting themselves from their dereliction of duty in les banlieues?
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
11/12/2011 7:23 Comments ||
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#4
When Mini Eiffel Towers are made illegal only criminals will have mini Eiffel towers...
#5
That's almost too funny; I was in Paris in June, went to the Tower and even browsed the gift shoppe for baubles and trinkets to bring back for the Spousal Unit; yet all the Eiffel Tower replicas THEY were selling also had a made in China sticker or casting.......
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was confirmed the victor of a run-off poll boycotted by the opposition, and vowed to reach out to her opponents and reconcile the divided nation.
Sirleaf's re-election was seen as a foregone conclusion after rival Winston Tubman pulled out of the race and urged his supporters to boycott the polls over fears the process was rigged.
The National Elections Commission announced that with results tallied from 86.6 percent of polling stations, Sirleaf had won 90.8 percent of votes cast and Tubman nine percent.
Only 37.4 percent of the country's 1.8 million registered voters cast their ballots, with many believed to have stayed away due the boycott call and violence on the eve of the poll, when police fired on a group of opposition protesters.
The Carter Center's 52-person observer mission said the vote was "conducted transparently", though: "Regrettably, the election was marred by an opposition boycott, violence on the eve of the election, and low voter turnout."
The United States urged Liberians to "peacefully accept" the results.
"We're obviously concerned and expressed those concerns about pre-election violence, and we continue to monitor very closely the situation on the ground," State Department front man Mark Toner told news hounds.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2011 00:00 ||
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[Wall Street Journal] The kidnapping ordeal of Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos ended after two days when Venezuelan police commandos swooped in to rescue him in a flurry of gunfire and locked away five alleged abductors.
Mr. Ramos said he was happy and thankful to be alive, and that the final moments had been hair-raising as police and the kidnappers exchanged heavy fire in the remote mountainous area where he was being held.
"The truth is I'm still very nervous, but thanks to God everything turned out well," Mr. Ramos told Venezuelan state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
, speaking by telephone after arriving at a cop shoppe in his hometown of Valencia early Saturday.
He thanked the police and National Guard commandos who rescued him, saying "the boys did a great job."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2011 09:37 ||
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MOSCOW: President Dmitry Medvedev says Russia will maintain a "reasonable and sufficient" military presence on Pacific islands.
The islands -- which Russia calls the Kurils and Japan calls the Northern Territories -- have been a consistent irritant between Moscow and Tokyo, but tensions rose sharply when Medvedev toured them a year ago during the first visit by a Russian president.
Medvedev said Friday that the "Kurils is our land." He added that the Russian troops presence there is needed to protect the border and shouldn't be seen as "militarism."
The islands off the northeastern tip of Japan's Hokkaido Island were seized by Soviet troops in the closing days of World War II. They are surrounded by rich fishing grounds and are believed to have offshore oil and natural gas reserves, plus gold and silver deposits.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/12/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
IMO read, LET THE US-JAPAN-ROK, ASEAN, + UNO, ETC, DEAL WID RISING CHINA "OVER/DOWN THERE" [southward].
#2
Back in the day when Russia was super-broke they should have traded the islands to Japan in exchange for Japan building them some kind of bullet train to replace the transsiberian railway. They could have opened up the East and joined the Pacific century.
Now its just a way to poke Japan from time to time.
A futures exchange that handled trades by failed broker MF Global
Run by Jon Corzine, Democrat. Don't forget to mention that, since the MSM never will again...
said Friday that it will cover as much as $300 million to help speed the release of funds frozen since the firm filed for bankruptcy protection. CME Group's announcement that it will provide a "financial guarantee" to the trustee overseeing the liquidation of the brokerage unit of MF Global followed the trustee's disclosure that he fired all of the unit's 1,066 employees.
MF Global collapsed after making a disastrous bet on European debt. The company traded derivatives contracts whose value was based on the value of an underlying asset, like interest rates, oil prices or currency rates. It filed for bankruptcy protection on Oct. 31. MF Global was one of the biggest players in the derivatives market.
Regulators are investigating whether the firm used money from clients' accounts as its own financial condition worsened. That would be a violation of securities rules. Wouldn't those "securities rules" overlap the law about fraud? Fiduciary responsibility?
Earlier Friday, James W. Giddens, the trustee in the case, said in a statement that he cut MF Global workers in accordance with a bankruptcy court mandate. Between 150 and 200 former employees are being re-hired to assist with the liquidation and court proceedings.
Posted by: Bobby ||
11/12/2011 08:26 ||
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Silvio Berlusconi has resigned as prime minister of Italy, after dominating the country's politics for 17 years.
President Giorgio Napolitano accepted his offer and is likely to appoint technocrat Mario Monti his successor.
Mr Berlusconi lost his majority amid an acute debt crisis that threatens the eurozone. He promised to go once MPs had approved new austerity measures.
Crowds celebrated outside the presidential palace, shouting "buffoon" as he entered.
The BBC's Alan Johnston in Rome says Mr Berlusconi's last journey as prime minister was an undignified one.
Police struggled to control a large, hostile crowd which booed and jeered as his convoy swept by, and after his resignation he left by a side exit to avoid the protesters.
He said he felt "embittered" after hearing the insults.
#3
Berlusconi was the best thing to happen to Italy since Giuseppe Mazzini. Managing to get dominance in a political system full of schism and infighting, and keeping it for 17 years, is about miraculous.
His biggest mistake was in not preparing his party and Italy for an orderly succession after he was gone.
ATHENS: Technocrat Prime Minister Lucas Papademos took office on Friday to save Greece from bankruptcy, heading a coalition cabinet filled with many of the same politicians who led the nation into crisis. But they'll turn it around this time, see...
At a colorful swearing-in ceremony, bearded Orthodox priests, led by the Archbishop of Athens, blessed Papademos, a former vice president of the European Central Bank, and a cabinet dominated by the two main parties which had bickered for four days before agreeing on the crisis coalition.
Apart from Papademos, who has no political experience, the main new face in the cabinet is a minister from the LAOS party the first time the far right has entered a Greek government since the country returned to democracy in 1974 following years of military rule.
The line-up includes socialist party power broker Evangelos Venizelos, who keeps the post as finance minister that he held in the outgoing government of George Papandreou, which imploded last week. Nothing points to a commitment of austerity like a socialist finance minister...
Analysts said Papademos would have to assert his authority over a cabinet packed with the conservative and socialist party politicians who alternated power for decades as Greece built up a huge debt that it could not manage, forcing a bailout.
Greece has a government that is the result of political compromise among three parties. It is obvious that there was a dealing of the cards, said Costas Panagopoulos, head of ALCO pollsters. It all now depends on how the prime minister handles them. A never-politician 'technocrat', now prime minister, against the wily rats who ran the country into the ground. I know how I'm betting...
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/12/2011 00:00 ||
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This is somewhat funny. As far as the EU is concerned, they want Greece looted to pay back their loans from EU bankers, and screw the Greek people. So they have emplaced an EU insider to be the new PM. And they plan the same approach to Italy, and probably other nations as well, even Britain.
That is, they are willing to throw democracy out the window to preserve their own fortunes, appointing "special masters" to run countries in default. This is a subtle form of foreign tyranny, and those peoples should reject it, and these overlords.
(Rooters) - Herman Cain ...the personable former Godfather's Pizza CEO and quite possibly the next president of the U.S... , who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, has hired a high-profile defamation lawyer to keep an eye on the sexual harassment accusations made public by two women this week.
Atlanta attorney Lin Wood told Rooters Thursday he was not hired to scare, intimidate or threaten anyone from making statements, but to monitor the accusations against Cain and respond accordingly.
Wood, a top libel and defamation lawyer, was hired on Monday morning when it became clear that Sharon Bialek was about to become the first of four women alleging inappropriate behavior by Cain to go public with her accusations.
"I would certainly at some point and time give him my legal evaluation of whether any of these particular statements are potentially actionable," Wood said. "But I was not hired to run out and file a lawsuit against anybody."
The two public accusers -- Bialek and Karen Kraushaar -- are planning to hold a joint news conference, but it has not been scheduled. They have accused Cain of inappropriate behavior in the late 1990s when he was head of the National Restaurant Association.
Cain has repeatedly denied the sexual harassment accusations. At a Republican debate Wednesday, he said: "The American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion based on unfounded accusations."
Wood represented Richard Jewell, who was suspected and cleared of the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing and later filed libel suits against media organizations and a local college, some of which were settled.
Wood's other notable clients included John and Patsy Ramsey, suspected but later cleared in the unsolved murder of their daughter JonBenet Ramsey. The couple filed defamation suits against a number of media companies.
Wood also filed a defamation lawsuit against Vanity Fair writer Dominick Dunne on behalf of former congressman Gary My wife has no thumbs Condit ... lover but not murderer of Chandra Levy ... , who was romantically involved with intern Chandra Levy but never an official suspect in her 2001 murder. The suit was settled for an undisclosed amount.
Wood said he was monitoring what was said about his client. "If there are public statements, the decision about whether they merit legal action is something that can be decided much further down the road," he said. "There is no rush to deal with that issue at the present time."
It is difficult under U.S. law for a government official or public figure to bring a successful libel or defamation claim. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1964 that a public official must prove "actual malice," meaning the accuser knew it was false or showed reckless disregard for whether it was false.
The actual malice standard would be "an almost insurmountable burden to meet" for someone in Cain's position, said Robert Corn-Revere, a lawyer specializing in free speech and other First Amendment issues. "I think courts would be reluctant to try and assess the truthfulness of political charges and countercharges."
Wood acknowledged that it is difficult for a public figure to bring a defamation lawsuit -- "the question of do you file a lawsuit or not is not simply based on whether you have false accusations."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2011 00:00 ||
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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.
MOSCOW: President Dmitry Medvedev says Russia will maintain a "reasonable and sufficient" military presence on Pacific islands.
