[Ma'an] Egyptian police raided beach chalets in el-Arish and placed in durance vile Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! a man, saying that he headed a "gay sex network."
The man is from Cairo, police sources told Ma'an, and was transferred to prosecutors. The circumstances of the arrest were not immediately clear nor was it known what charges the unidentified suspect could face.
Homosexuality is not illegal in Egypt but other charges have been been used persecute the gay community and imprison gay men.
In June, an Egyptian delegation at the UN Human Rights Council implied that it did not consider members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community to be "real people."
"Concerning the highly controversial notion of sexual orientation, we can only reiterate that it is not part of the universally recognized human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... ," delegate Omar Shalaby said.
Egypt's state persecution of its gay community drew worldwide attention in 2001 when 52 men were placed in durance vile Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! in a raid on a Nile boat cruise and accused of participating in a gay sex party.
Some 23 of the men were convicted and sentenced to up to five years for "debauchery" and "defaming Islam."
Post-revolution, the ruling Moslem Brüderbund's embrace of democracy has not extended to Egypt's gay community.
Egypt's first online magazine for the gay community, Ehna, was shut down earlier this year citing "security reasons," the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya news site reported.
The magazine's Facebook page stated: "We have been forced to shut down the online magazine due to security reasons. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience."
Julian Assange expects to wait six months to a year for a deal to free him from Ecuador's embassy in London, and hopes Sweden will drop its case against him, the WikiLeaks' founder said in an interview broadcast on Thursday.
The former computer hacker has been holed up at the embassy for more than two months, seeking to avoid being sent to Sweden for questioning over rape and sexual assault allegations - and triggering a diplomatic spat with Britannia.
#3
be nice if a female embassy staffer or two got to learn that "no" means "yes" to him
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/01/2012 12:02 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Frank, that raises an interesting question - if a person who has been granted asylum in an embassy commits a crime in the embassy - can he be charged with that crime? If so, how can he be prosecuted? Since he is on Ecuadorean "soil" he would have to be tried by a judge from Ecuador.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
09/01/2012 15:55 Comments ||
Top||
#5
No, he's not on Ecuadorian soil... that's an old myth about embassies. He's on British soil, just that British authorities may not enter without consent of the mission chief.
Any offense committed inside the embassy can and will be tried by British authorities if they can arrest him. He has no immunity.
Btw the Ecuadorian ambassador to the UK is a woman.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
09/01/2012 22:08 Comments ||
Top||
Leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Friday that he is refusing to recognize the results of Mexico's presidential election, raising the question of whether he will launch street protests like those he used to paralyze central Mexico City after losing the 2006 vote.
Lopez Obrador says a federal electoral tribunal made an illegitimate ruling Thursday evening that rejected the leftist's allegations of vote-buying and other campaign violations in favor of Enrique Pena Nieto, the candidate of the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. Lopez Obrador says he is calling a peaceful protest for Sept. 9 in the Zocalo, the historic plaza in the heart of downtown Mexico City.
"I am telling the people of Mexico that I cannot accept the judgment of the electoral tribunal that declared the presidential election valid," Lopez Obrador told a news conference. "The elections were not clean, free and genuine. As a result, I will not recognize an illegitimate power that's emerged as a result of vote-buying and other grave violations of the constitution and the law."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/01/2012 13:52 ||
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[An Nahar] A Russian national channel said Thursday it would censor "The Simpsons" cartoon series to comply with a new law banning scenes of violence, drinking and smoking before a late evening watershed.
The 2x2 channel, aimed at young adults, told Agence La Belle France Presse it would cut scenes where the Simpsons family watches a spoof ultra-violent cartoon called "The Itchy & Scratchy Show" after the law comes into force on Friday.
"Under the new law we cannot show 'The Itchy & Scratchy Show' from 'The Simpsons'" before 11 pm, said general director Lev Makarov.
"We will retouch in an ironic way all the programs where there are scenes that fall under the new law. For example we will black-out the screen and write a joky message in a rolling caption."
Makarov added that the channel would move all its showings of another U.S. cartoon, "South Park", to after the watershed because of a recurring joke about one of the characters being murdered each episode.
"All the scenes from 'South Park' where 'they killed Kenny' should disappear until 11 pm. So 'South Park' will air after 11 pm," he said.
The wide-ranging law on "protecting children from information causing harm to their health and development" says that scenes encouraging children to try drugs, tobacco or alcohol or justifying violence must not be shown until 11 pm.
It won wide criticism from Russia's Internet companies with amendments signed into law by President Vladimir Putin ...Second President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits he is the current Prime Minister of Russia. His sock puppet, Dmitry Medvedev, was installed in the 2008 presidential elections. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law. During his eight years in office Russia's economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase, poverty decrease and average monthly salaries increase. During his presidency Putin passed into law a series of fundamental reforms, including a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile... in July that allow the state to create a black list of websites and enforce their closure.
It is not the first time that the 2x2 channel has faced legal difficulties over its cartoons.
In 2008, Moscow prosecutors charged 2x2 with extremism over a Christmas-themed episode of "South Park" after a complaint was filed by members of a conservative group, but the charges were eventually thrown out.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/01/2012 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under:
#1
A righteous, mighty HOMER-IAN "DOH!" is appropriate.
[An Nahar] Russian President Vladimir Putin ...Second President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits he is the current Prime Minister of Russia. His sock puppet, Dmitry Medvedev, was installed in the 2008 presidential elections. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law. During his eight years in office Russia's economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase, poverty decrease and average monthly salaries increase. During his presidency Putin passed into law a series of fundamental reforms, including a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile... 's chief front man on Friday denounced as "inadmissible" a threat by Republican White House challenger Willard Mitt Romney ...former governor of Massachussetts, currently the Publican nominee for president. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney has a record as a successful businessman, heading Bain Capital, and he rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics from the midst of bribery and mismanagement scandals. More to the point, he isn't President B.O... to take a tougher line with Moscow.
"Moscow and Washington have at various levels repeatedly stressed... that it is inadmissible to have situations in which bilateral relations turn into the victim and hostage of election campaigns," Dmitry Peskov told RIA Novosti.
U.S. President Barack Obama How's it going, Sunshine?... 's rival used a part of his presidential nomination address Thursday to attack the Democrats for pursuing a "reset" with Russia that rewarded it for adopting further nuclear weapons cuts.
Republican conservatives argue that the strategy has backfired because it allowed the Kremlin to crack down on its political opponents without facing much criticism from Washington for most of the past four years.
Romney also criticized Obama for abandoning part of a European missile defense shield that Russia has strongly opposed and which was promoted earlier by his Republican predecessor.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/01/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
Russia + Iran.
Now, now, give Vlad a break - he didn't have any hair either as a kid visiting Guam wid family long long ago.
Quebec police are on the lookout for thieves with a sweet tooth after a considerable amount of maple syrup disappeared from a large warehouse stocking over $30 million worth of the amber nectar.
Quebec Provincial Sgt. Claude Denis said Friday it was too soon to determine the exact quantity or value of the syrup stolen from the facility where over 10 million pounds (4.54 million kilograms) is stored.
The Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers says they discovered the missing syrup during a routine inventory where empty barrels were found at the site at St-Louis-de-Blandford, Quebec.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/01/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
Aaaaawww, I would've gone wid one of the giant Ants from "THEM"!
[Dawn] The district coordination officer of Mardan on Thursday ordered the arrest of six people for refusing vaccination of their children against polio ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set... and creating obstacles to immunisation of other children.
"Cases have been registered against them under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance. Police have been ordered to arrest them," Zakaullah Khattak told Dawn.
He said the people in question belonging to Takhtbai and Mardan city would be tossed in the slammer ... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not... for one month as they harassed female vaccinators and threatened male health workers taking part in immunisation campaigns.
He said they also refused to get their children vaccinated against polio and pressured other locals to do so.
"Polio is one of the top priorities of the government because it has been causing disability among children. Giving polio drops to children until five years of age safeguard them against crippling disease," he said.
The DCO said the said people were also involved in propaganda against vaccine.
He said he had issued strict directives to the health department to report such incidents to his office for action.
Mr Khattak said the government had twice sent a jirga to persuade the said people to stop opposing polio vaccination, but to no avail.
He said some vaccinators felt demoralised after facing threats but the government's action against troublemakers had restored
their confidence.
Local health officials said refusals against OPV had risen in recent months because of misconceptions against vaccines.
"The arrest warrants against six persons by the DCO will help decrease refusals," an official said.
He said the government and its partner organizations had miserably failed to cope with increasing number of refusals against OPV but lack of a communication system hampered social mobilisation to woo families opposing vaccination.
"We need a proper system to tell the people that vaccine is the only solution to protect children from poliomyelitis. It is not difficult to do away with refusals when we adopt socially acceptable communication policies at grassroots levels," he said.
The official said the people were under misconception that vaccines caused impotency and infertility and were therefore not allowed in Islam.
According to him, last year, former Beautiful Downtown Peshawar DCO Siraj Ahmad Khan had ordered FIR against five families in Peshawar for
refusing OPV.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/01/2012 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Pak police Friday won permission to hold a young Christian girl accused of blasphemy in jug for a further 14 days while her case is investigated, officials said.
Rimsha was placed in long-term storage Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! in a poor suburb of Islamabad on August 16 after a neighbor accused her of burning papers containing verses from the Koran, in breach of Pakistain's strict blasphemy laws.
Her case has prompted concern from Western governments and anger from rights campaigners, who say the legislation is often abused to settle personal vendettas.
She arrived at court for the unannounced remand hearing in an armored police van amid tight security, guarded by heavily-armed commandos and covered with a white sheet to conceal her face.
"She was produced in the court of a magistrate where we requested an extension of 14 days in her judicial remand," Munir Jafri, a police officer investigating Rimsha's case, told Agence La Belle France Presse.
"We wanted more time for further investigation and the court accepted our request."
Another hearing is scheduled for Saturday to decide on a bail application and whether to accept a medical report that said Rimsha is 14 years old, which would mean her case would be treated under juvenile law, and has a mental age below her actual age.
Some reports have said she has Down's Syndrome.
Tahir Naveed Chaudhry, one of Rimsha's lawyers confirmed to AFP that Rimsha was produced on Friday and remanded for a further 14 days, while Shamaun Alfred Gill, a front man for All Pakistain Minorities Alliance (APMA) said Friday's hearing was a "routine procedure".
Blasphemy is an extremely sensitive subject in Pakistain, where 97 percent of the 180 million population are Moslems, and allegations of desecrating the Koran or insulting Islam often provoke public fury.
Last year two leading politicians were assassinated after raising their voices against the blasphemy legislation, which includes the death penalty for insulting the prophet Mohammad.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/01/2012 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan
[An Nahar] Amazon.com Inc. says it has sold out of its Kindle Fire tablet computer amid expectations of a new model for the holiday season.
The Internet retailer has a major presser scheduled for next Thursday in Santa Monica, Calif. It's widely expected to reveal a new model of the Fire there, so Thursday's announcement that the first model is "sold out" suggests that Amazon halted production a while ago to retool for a new model.
Amazon launched the $199 tablet last November. It was the first Kindle with a color screen and the ability to run third-party applications, placing it in competition with Apple Inc.'s iPad, at half the price of the cheapest iPad.
Amazon doesn't say how many Fires it has sold, but says it captured 22 percent of U.S. tablet sales over nine months. That would make it the second-most popular tablet, after the iPad. Tom Mainelli at research firm IDC said that figure matches his estimate of 6.7 million Fires sold, all in the U.S.
The Fire, which is about half the size of the iPad, could face a tougher challenge this holiday season. Many analysts expect Apple to introduce a smaller, cheaper iPad to take on the threat of the Kindle Fire and reach buyers who can't afford a full-sized iPad. In addition, Google ...contributed $814,540 to the 2008 Obama campaign... just launched its own Kindle-sized tablet, the Nexus 7, and is selling it for $199.
Amazon kept the price of the Kindle Fire low by keeping it small, stripping it of features and taking a small or zero profit margin. Its strategy is to make the Fire a means for people to buy more e-books, music and movie downloads from the Amazon store, which is intimately linked to the device. That's a contrast to the strategy of Apple, which sees content sales as a sideline and wants to make a profit on every device sold.
Apple has sold more than 84 million iPads since its debut in 2010, contributing to strong quarterly earnings and a market valuation that has exceeded $625 billion -- the highest ever for a public company. The iPad 2, released in March 2011, sells for $399. The newest models, out this past March, sell for $499 to $829, depending on the amount of storage and wireless capabilities.
Amazon itself was the main outlet for the Kindle Fire. Its website now directs customers to used Fires available from other merchants. Staples stores recently sold it for $179. It wasn't immediately known whether some stores still had it on shelves.
Amazon could update the rest of its Kindle line at next week's event, too. The current models were launched a year ago. In the intervening time, competitor Barnes & Noble Inc. has launched a Nook e-reader with a built-in screen illuminator for reading in the dark.
ABI Research said Thursday that sales of dedicated e-readers, like the non-Fire, black-and-white Kindles, peaked last year. It expects worldwide sales of e-readers at 11 million in 2012, down from 15 million in 2011.
The research firm expects tablets to outsell e-readers 9 to 1 this year, despite costing four or five time as much. Still, e-readers won't go away completely, ABI analyst Joshua Flood said.
"We believe there will always be a niche market for the dedicated reading device for voracious readers, business travelers, and educational segments, particularly ones that are low-priced," Flood said.
Shares of Amazon, which is based in Seattle, fell $1.40, or 0.6 percent, to $245.72 in afternoon trading Thursday.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/01/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
They don't sell the old K Fire in Oz. I've been waiting a year to buy one.
#3
We got a Kindle Fire when my wife's old Kindle died on vacation. She sent it back in two days- it's a lot heavier and thicker than the old one, and really awkward to handle.
#4
I have a Kindle Fire and a Blackberry Playbook. This is my third (or fourth, maybe) Kindle. I usually have one or the other with me, particularly when I'm on my way to a doctor's appointment or the emergency room. My old K's were lighter than the Fire, which is backlit and has a better browser. The old K was 3G, which was occasionally convenient, though its browser suckled.
The Playbook is slightly heavier than the Kindle, has four times the storage, and it's more versatile. I use it for everything but working on the Burg. It doesn't have the Kindle app, but I've got another that works just as well, so it's as chock full of books as the Kindle. It's also got a camera and vid conferencing and my calendar and a bunch of stuff that I've never gotten around to playing with. It's designed as a tablet rather than strictly as a book reader.
When it first came out the Playbook was overpriced at $600. It's down to $200 (for the 16GB version) last I looked.
I have an iPad but I'm not fond of it. Everything of interest seems to have to go through iTunes. I can use it a bit more now that I have a keyboard for it but I still haven't fired up over it.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/01/2012 12:20 Comments ||
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#5
I've got a Kindle DX, helpful for tired eyes and reading tables and figures in technical docs.
Looked at tablets, couldn't quite justify one so bought a dell ultrabook. It's lovely but if you get one, stick to 128 gig on the flash memory - in a fit of enthusiasm I got the 256G, which draws down battery power much more quickly. Still, full PC capability at about 3 lbs and a nice screen.
#6
I have a kindle but I wind up reading a lot of my kindle books on my ipod touch instead. I also wind up using it as a camera a lot, because I always have it.
To improve security and traffic during the Non-Aligned Conference, the Iranian capital gave itself a five-day holiday and kept its residents off the streets
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.
A Russian national channel said Thursday it would censor "The Simpsons" cartoon series to comply with a new law banning scenes of violence, drinking and smoking before a late evening watershed.
...Second President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits he is the current Prime Minister of Russia. His sock puppet, Dmitry Medvedev, was installed in the 2008 presidential elections. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law. During his eight years in office Russia's economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase, poverty decrease and average monthly salaries increase. During his presidency Putin passed into law a series of fundamental reforms, including a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile...
Quebec police are on the lookout for thieves with a sweet tooth after a considerable amount of maple syrup disappeared from a large warehouse stocking over $30 million worth of the amber nectar.
The district coordination officer of Mardan on Thursday ordered the arrest of six people for refusing vaccination of their children against 
[An Nahar] Pak police Friday won permission to hold a young Christian girl accused of blasphemy 
