A Connecticut woman attempting to reconcile with her husband handcuffed herself to him as he slept and then bit him on his torso and arms, police said.
Helen Sun, 37, told police she wanted to have a conversation with her husband Robert Drawbough without him leaving. They said she changed the locks on their bedroom and handcuffed herself to Drawbough while he was sleeping Monday.
Drawbough used a cell phone to call police. Officers heard his screams when they arrived at the couple's Fairfield home. He was treated at a hospital.
Police charged Sun with third-degree assault, disorderly conduct, reckless endangerment and unlawful restraint. She was due in court on Tuesday.
FORT BRAGG, N.C. — A one-time Army paratrooper was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for killing a fellow soldier and wounding nearly 20 others in a sniper attack at a North Carolina base more than a decade ago.
Sgt. William Kreutzer, 39, of Clinton, Md., had pleaded guilty earlier this month to one charge of premeditated murder and 18 other charges to avoid a possible death sentence. As a result, the sentence the 39-year-old received Tuesday at Fort Bragg was expected.
Kreutzer apologized in a two-page statement read by his attorney during the sentencing hearing, offering his “most heartfelt, sincere apology to each of you. Words are inadequate to express the deep sense of shame and remorse that I feel for the harm that I caused,” Kreutzer’s statement said.
KreutzerÂ’s victims were preparing for a morning run on Oct. 27, 1995, at the massive Army base in eastern North Carolina when he opened fire with a rifle from a concealed position. He hit and wounded 16 soldiers from the divisionÂ’s 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment as they left an athletic field. He also shot three other soldiers who tried to stop him, wounding two and killing Maj. Stephen Badger.
Badger’s widow, Dianne Badger, of Lehi, Utah, told the court at Tuesday’s hearing that her husband loved his soldiers. “He was kind. He was gentle,” Badger said. “He also had an inner strength.” After the sentence was handed down, Badger said that as much as she misses her husband, she forgives Kreutzer for his crimes.“I am at peace. I forgave him years ago and I still have that forgiveness today,” she said. “I pray for him.”
Kreutzer was originally convicted and sentenced to death in 1996, but a military appeals court overturned the sentence after concluding his defense lawyers provided ineffective counsel.
Earlier this month, Kreutzer agreed to plead guilty to one charge of premeditated murder and 18 counts of aggravated assault. The assault charges were elevated to attempted murder last week after military judge Col. Patrick Parrish heard witnesses who testified Kreutzer had talked about an attack, was obsessed with weapons and made threats in the months before the shooting.
As part of his sentence, Parrish also reduced KreutzerÂ’s rank to private, ordered him to forfeit all future pay and be dishonorably discharged. He denied a defense request that Kreutzer be given credit for time served in the event his sentence is ever reduced from life in prison.
“I think he got what he deserved. He’s going to have to live with what he did,” said Christa Griffith, of Henderson, Nev., whose husband, Sgt. John Griffith, was wounded in the attack and later died while fighting in Afghanistan. “I don’t think he could comprehend what he did.”
KreutzerÂ’s parents, William Sr. and Kathleen Kreutzer, left without comment.
#1
I believe in forgiveness... when the culprit has made good to the victims for his crime. Private Kreutzer cannot give back the life of him who he deliberately killed, but what has he done for the widow and those who he attempted to kill beyond a possibly heartfelt apology? Words don't count without deeds.
A lawyer for the court-appointed trustee for locating Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff's assets says over $1 billion have been found.
Around $75 million of the Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities' assets have been found in Gibraltar, allowing the court to return more than $1 billion to the swindler's defrauded customers, a lawyer for trustee Irving Picard said on Monday. David Sheehan also said that French authorities may seize Bernard Madoff's $1 million seaside home in the south of France. The swindler and his wife owned four properties, three of them in the US.
Madoff, once a NASDAQ stock market chairman, confessed to being the Wall Street's all-time biggest fraudster on March 12 by pleading guilty to 11 criminal charges, including money laundering. The previously respected financial adviser, who conned investors out of a record $65 billion over the past 20 years, was jailed in June pending sentencing.
He acknowledged that he had illegally moved hundreds of millions back and forth between Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in New York and his international firm in London.
US prosecutors are currently cooperating with a British agency that investigates organized crime and money laundering to unravel more of Madoff's secrets. Assistant US Attorney Barbara Ward made reference to the British-based Serious Organized Crime Agency, while arguing that a court-appointed trustee should not have power of attorney over the stock of Madoff's London firm. "There may be criminal implications," the prosecutor said.
Sheehan objected, however, by pointing out that the trustee needs the power of attorney to enter foreign jurisdictions 'at a moments notice' to recover as much as possible for the fraud victims.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
He acknowledged that he had illegally moved hundreds of millions back and forth between Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in New York and his international firm in London.
Given all the high profile of moving money associated with terrorism and the drug trade, that such moves did not send signals to those charged with reviewing such transactions is another indicator of regulators who failed to regulate. We don't need new laws. We need the existing ones enforced. Apparently, the phrase 'we're from the government and we're here to help you' actually means that for Wall Street.
NAIROBI, KENYA - Somali pirates have hijacked a yacht from the Seychelles with two men on board, a maritime official said on Wednesday.
The yacht left the Seychelles in February en route to Madagascar but disappeared soon after, Andrew Mwangura of the East African Seafarers Assistance Programme said. He named the two men on board as Gilbert Victor and Andre Conrad, both from the Seychelles. 'The ill-fated yacht is presently under tight security, anchored next to Garacad, Somalia,' he said.
Somali pirate hijackings have fallen in 2009 after international naval forces began patrolling the busy sea lanes in the Gulf of Aden.
Pirates last year made the Gulf, which connects Europe to Asia and the Middle East via the Suez Canal, the most dangerous waterway in the world. Dozens of ships were hijacked and tens of millions of dollars paid out in ransoms.
The pirates have been extending the range of their attacks, and the taking of the Seychelles boat looks like another long-distance strike.
#1
I won't give all the details, but I know a person who carries a tripod mount .30 B MG and uses it on pirates, when I last heard he had sunk three boatloads in the Caribbean who attacked him, and was purchasing another 3000 rounds of belt fed .30.
I say GOOD.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/25/2009 13:21 Comments ||
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#2
yeah don't give out his name or anything or they will prosecute him too the fullest extent of the law unlike they do the pirates
A Rwandan man has been sentenced to 20 years in jail by a court in the Hague for killing two Tutsi woman and their four children in 1994.
Joseph Mpambara, 40, was found guilty by the Hague District Court on Monday for participation in crimes committed during Rwanda's 1994 genocide, in which at least 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus died.
Mpambara, living in the Netherlands since 1998, was acquitted of involvement in the carnage of hundreds of other Tutsis. He was also acquitted of raping four women and killing one of them in a separate incident in the absence of sufficient evidence.
He has faced trial after several European countries and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) have reached an agreement to try genocide suspects in their national courts.
Mpambara was also found guilty of detaining a German doctor, his Tutsi wife and their infant son and threatening their lives.
Previously the ICTR sentenced Mpambara's brother to 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity in Arusha; a Rwandan court sentenced his sister to life imprisonment for taking part in genocide.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
if he was involved in killing 4 then more than likely he helped in the other 700,000
The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Tutsi rebels in the east of the country signed a peace deal on Monday under which the rebel movement is to change into a political party.
International and Regional Cooperation Minister Raymond Tshibanda signed the agreement for the government and the new National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) chief Desire Kamanzi for the rebels at a ceremony in the eastern city of Goma witnessed by an Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent.
The agreement, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, provides for the transformation of the CNDP into a political party and the release of former members of the rebel group captured by government forces.
The deal provides for the CNDP "to agree to transform itself into a political party and fulfill the formalities legally required to this end" and for it "to undertake to pursue from now on the search for solutions to its concerns by strictly political paths and in the respect of institutional order and the order of the republic".
The government has also agreed to pass an amnesty law for former rebels, says the accord.
Present at the ceremony were Nigeria's former president Olusegun Obasanjo, who in recent months acted as a mediator between the two sides, and Alan Doss, the head of the United Nations mission in the DRC.
Goma is the regional capital of the Nord-Kivu region, which in 2008 was the scene of fierce clashes between the army and the rebels in which the CNDP made major advances. At one point their forces had reached the gates of Goma itself.
The CNDP was previously led by renegade Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda and began its uprising in the Kivu hills in June 2003. But in January of this year its leadership went over to Kinshasa's side.
The two sides also agreed on "the principle of a local police force, understood as a branch of the Congolese national police, listening to the people and at their service".
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2009 00:00 ||
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Senegal's main opposition coalition claimed victory on Monday in local elections seen as a test of the leadership of veteran President Abdoulaye Wade. It confirmed it would represent the first defeat of ruling party in its nine years in power.
The government conceded it had lost "several big cities" including the capital Dakar, but said it had held on to "most local authorities".
The vote was the last electoral test before presidential elections in 2012 and could hasten a shift in the political landscape. It could be the opportunity for the president's son and influential adviser Karim Wade to enter the stage as a possible candidate to succeed his 82-year-old father.
The opposition coalition Benno Siggil Senegaal -- Wolof for "United to boost Senegal" -- said they had won in several big cities including Dakar, based on its own party tallies. "We are claiming a large victory. This is a rejection of Wade, of his system and of his plans for the Senegalese people," Benno Siggil Senegaal spokesperson Serigne Mbaye Thiam said.
Wade's Sopi 2009 ruling coalition admitted that the opposition appeared to be headed for victory in Sunday's elections. "Up till now the trends we are seeing from the result in polling stations are sufficiently favourable for the Benno Siggil Senegaal coalition," Makhar Gueye of Sopi said Monday
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2009 00:00 ||
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#2
Yep, not bad. Not sure how much of the problem should be laid at the feet of the EU though. Sure Zanulabor deserves all the crap BUT the tories haven't been complaining about the EU either so save a little for them too.
The Governor of the Bank of England laid bare tensions between Gordon Brown and the Treasury yesterday by warning that Britain could not afford a second economic stimulus in the Budget.
Mervyn King threw caution to the wind as he sided with Alistair Darling and the CBI against Downing Street in raising strong doubts over any prospect of another round of “significant fiscal expansion” next month.
Mr King spoke as the Prime Minister, beginning an international tour to co-ordinate measures for next week’s G20 gathering in London, called on leaders to do “whatever it takes to create growth and the jobs we need”.
President Obama, Mr Brown’s main stimulus ally, writes in the same vein in The Times today, saying that America is ready to lead the world out of recession, while calling for swift and robust action to stimulate growth “until growth is restored”.
No 10 and the Treasury deny any split but ministers admit that Mr Brown is keener than his Chancellor to go for further expansionist Budget measures on April 22.
Mr Darling said two weeks ago that a fiscal stimulus “has now been widely agreed but now needs to be implemented”, hinting that he believes a second boost is unnecessary and unwise. There have been no similar signals from No 10.
Bank governors do not normally talk about Budgets in advance, just as ministers do not comment in advance about Bank decisions on interest rates. The conclusion drawn from the unusual intervention of Mr King, who met the Queen yesterday in her first audience with a Bank governor, was that he was backing the Treasury in resisting pressure for a further stimulus. It seems certain that his already strained relations with No 10 will hit a new low.
Mr Brown told the European Parliament in Strasbourg: “I believe that we are seeing the biggest cut in interest rates the world has ever seen and seeing implemented the biggest fiscal stimulus the world has ever agreed.”
However, Mr King, appearing before the Treasury Select Committee, pointed to the size of the financial deficit and said: “It would be sensible to be cautious about going further in using discretionary measures to expand the size of those deficits.”
He gave himself some leeway by saying that “targeted and selected” measures should not be ruled out. However, monetary policy — interest rates and quantitative easing — should bear the brunt of restoring the economy to health, he said.
George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, said that Mr Brown was now “isolated at home and abroad”. He claimed that Mr King was vindicating the Conservatives’ stance and that Mr Brown’s plans for the G20 and the Budget were “in tatters”.
No 10 and the Treasury appeared relaxed about Mr King’s remarks but some ministers close to Mr Brown were irritated at the “unhelpful” and “poorly timed” intervention.
Britain was urged by Brussels, meanwhile, to make “additional efforts” from next year — code for tax increases or spending cuts — to reduce its burgeoning budget deficit. The situation had worsened substantially since last summer, the European Commission said, as it gave Britain a new target of 2013-14 for cutting its deficit back to below 3 per cent of GDP, replacing the previous target of 2009-10. This leaves Britain with the longest planned period of “excessive deficit” in the EU, after a target of 2010 was given to Greece, 2012 to France and Spain, and 2013 for the Irish Republic.
Costly blunders and redesigns all part of military networking growth pains
The U.S. military originally had a virtual monopoly of certain communications channels. It was one of the few entities to be using internet, and it used many areas of the spectrum untouched by civilian communications. However, with the digital revolution and the expansion of civilians onto the internet and increasing using of the digital spectrum, the military is finding adapting to the deprivation of these bands difficult.
Last year during the bandwidth auction, the portion of the spectrum used by the B-2 bomber's Raytheon APQ-181 radar was accidentally sold to an obscure multinational organization (Russian)according to Military.com. As a result, U.S. taxpayers will be footing the over $1B USD bill to replace the radar in the 20 remaining jets.
Pension Glut Lies at Heart of Crisis Wracking Hungary
By CHARLES FORELLE
This is a lengthy article but it is worth examination because it is a glimpse into a future where entitlements begin to overwhelm the system. The current administration is bent on moving down this path. It is amazing that increasing the role of government and bashing the private sector has any credence whatsoever when we have the benefit of a real time laboratory experiment falling apart.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Omoter Speaking for Boskone7794 ||
03/25/2009 09:01 ||
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The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) cartel's call for compliance with recent production cuts could undermine a global economic recovery because oil prices could spike higher as a result, the Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES) said on Monday.
Opec, which pumps 40% of world oil, called for full compliance with deep cuts agreed late last year when members met earlier this month in Vienna.
The 12-nation Opec cartel agreed to slash output by 4,2-million barrels a day from September in a bid to defend tumbling prices. Questions remain about compliance because some cash-strapped member nations do not want to lose precious income.
"Opec left output targets unchanged but called for full compliance with last December's agreement when it met in Vienna" on March 15, the energy consultancy CGES said in its latest monthly report. "However, full compliance would send oil prices to levels that would undermine prospects of economic recovery."
The global economic downturn has ravaged energy demand and slashed oil prices from record peaks above $147 in July 2008.
"Full compliance ... would remove a further 1,1-million barrels a day of oil from the global market, according to the CGES' assessment of Opec production, forcing a global stock draw of more than 1,5-million barrels a day this year," the CGES warned.
"While this would normally lead to a healthy rise in oil prices, there are very real worries that -- in the present economic climate -- it would simply undermine the chances of recovery, raise the spectre of inflation and delay the upturn in oil demand that Opec member countries need more than anybody else."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Lowest price I have seen for 93 octane at the pump is now $2.30 and rising.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
03/25/2009 9:14 Comments ||
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#2
And the problem is being exacerbated by the falling US$. Ever since the announcement of quantitative easing last week, the US$ has been under pressure and the failed gilt auction in the UK is a sign of things to come. As Rick Santelli said this morning, they won't be able to buy enough treasuries to keep interest rates down - in other words the printing presses will have to move into overdrive shortly to keep down longer term mortgage rates and that is highly inflationary down the track. Nothing good is coming out of this.
#3
I'd be less worried about OPEC grandstanding if Congress hadn't made the United States a de facto member of the cartel by obstructing exploration & exploitation of offshore & Alaskan resources.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
03/25/2009 12:04 Comments ||
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#4
Perhaps it is time to 'nationalize' a little of OPEC, he said with an evil glint in his eye.
#5
Just filled up with regular (88 Octane, I think) at $1.71 a bit above normal, it's rising here lately. up around 15 cents in a month and a half or so.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/25/2009 13:28 Comments ||
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#6
OPEC countries are desperate for cash. Like everyone else, they spent too much during the good times and are cutting too little now. So, they are trying to get a short term boost in prices. That won't work, and the desperate members will resort to cheating on their quotas to try and make up the difference. That in turn will bring prices even lower.
Of course, none of that may matter at all. Bammo is doing enough damage that we may all be back to horse and buggies soon. Seriously, I'm looking at buying a couple of horses. Maybe a still too...
#7
The real danger of an OPEC cut and potential price increase foreign policy wise is Russia, who budgeted for $95 min/oil price in 2009 and $110 in 2010. Right now Russia's economy is slowly starving on it's gas revenues and as these start to draw down they have nothing to fall back on. A resurgence in oil prices will only help them. And right now that's the last thing the US or Europe needs.
South Korea announced Tuesday it would spend 28.9 trillion won, or $20.9 billion, this year to create new jobs and shore up the economy as the country endures its worst slump in a decade.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2009 00:00 ||
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Ukraine''s biggest opposition party is resolved to start impeachment procedures against President Viktor Yushchenko, a Ukrainian daily reported on Tuesday.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2009 00:00 ||
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PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech parties will have a hard time agreeing on a new government after Tuesday's no-confidence vote and an early election is difficult to achieve, leaving the country to face protracted political wrangling. Four defectors from the Czech ruling three-party minority coalition voted alongside the opposition leftists in the vote, bringing the government down halfway through its six-month term as EU president and more than a year before an election scheduled for mid-2010.
President Vaclav Klaus, a eurosceptic estranged from Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek's Civic Democrats, will now have the right to pick the next prime minister. Topolanek said he wanted Klaus to give him a new mandate to try forming a new cabinet, a hard task given that neither the left nor the right commands majority in the lower house.
The balance of power lies with a handful of independents who have defected from both camps. The left may also try to lure over some deputies and form a majority, which would include the far-left Communists, but that may be difficult given the parliamentary numbers. Klaus has in the past refused to allow the Communists any share of power.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/25/2009 00:00 ||
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The more I read about the parlimentary form of government, the more it reminds me of the City & County of San Francisco. After years of being run by political mobs, a reform movement passed a new City/County charter in the '30s. The main idea was that to prevent malfeasance by a few, they'd prevent all feasance by the any. It took/takes 100 bureaucrats to say yes but any one can say no. The bottom line is the only way to get anything done is by in-house politics, swapping favors, back-room deals, bribing, etc.
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) -- An F-22 Raptor jet fighter crashed Wednesday in the high desert of Southern California, Air Force officials said. Rescue crews were en route to the crash site and the status of the pilot was not immediately known, said Air Force Maj. David Small at the Pentagon.
The two-engine stealth jet, which was on a test mission, crashed six miles north of the base on Harbor Dry Lakebed, Small said. The plane is flown by a single pilot.
The $140 million supersonic F-22 is the force's new top-of-the-line fighter. The U.S. military has committed to 183 of the jets, down from a plan in the 1980s to build 750.
The representatives of the Society for the Protection of the Rights of Child (Sparc) on Monday announced that a campaign against bonded labour had been launched across Sindh, which would conclude on March 27.
Kashif Bajeer, Sparc National Manager for bonded labour programme and other representatives made this announcement at a news conference at the Hyderabad Press Club. He said Sparc wants to fight the menace of bonded labour, particularly the existence of bonded child labour in the province through the mobilisation of government departments concerned and the civil society.
Kashif said Sparc was successfully running bonded labour projects in four districts of Sindh -- Mithi, Umerkot, Sanghar, Hyderabad and one in Muzaffargarh in the Punjab with the support of TroCair International.
He said 6,000 bonded labourers had been helped in provision and issuance of national identity cards, vote registration, birth registration certificates of their respective children and enrolling them with Ushr, Zakat and Bait-ul-Mal departments.
He said so far 5,000 bonded labourers had been gotten released through courts. Kashif said Sparc is starting an awareness campaign from March 23, which will last till March 27. In this campaign, short marches will be arranged in various cities of the province while the final short march will be held in Hyderabad on March 27.
This march will start from Fateh Chowk and end in front of the Hyderabad Press Club. The freed bonded labourers and members of the civil society will join the march, he said. He demanded that existing laws on bonded labour and other labour laws should be implemented in letter and spirit, which are poorly implemented.
He said till amendments are made in the relevant laws, a parliamentary committee should be constituted to review the existing laws such as the Bonded Labour System Abolition Act (BLSAA-1992) and its rules 1995 and Sindh Tenancy Act 1950, which is already pending in Sindh Assembly.
Kashif said in order to expedite the progress regarding National Plan of Action 2001 for
the eradication of bonded labour and rehabilitation of freed bonded labourers effective activation of National Steering Committee and utilisation of Bonded Labour Fund was urgently required.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2009 00:00 ||
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Maoists double up as contract killers. If a politician pays them good money, they eliminate his rival, thus ensuring his win in electoral fray.
Preoccupied with security arrangements in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls, police and intelligence agencies should sit up as the sensational disclosure comes from the horse's mouth -- hardcore Maoist Naresh Kushwaha alias Rahuljee.
Rahuljee is no ordinary Maoist. A member of dreaded CPI (Maoist)'s regional committee, he was wanted by police of at least four states in several cases of violence and was carrying a reward of Rs 5 lakh on his head. Arrested recently from Dehri-on-Sone in Bihar's Rohtas district, he was interrogated not only by top cops of several districts of Bihar, Jharkhand and UP but also by sleuths of Central intelligence agency, Intelligence Bureau.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2009 00:00 ||
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Labor members voted in favor of chairman Ehud Barak's proposal for the party to join a Likud-led government during Tuesday night's convention at Tel Aviv's Exhibition Grounds.
1,071 party members attended the convention, with 58 percent voting in favor of joining the government and 42% voting against it - a margin of 173 votes.
Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu called Barak to congratulate him on the vote's outcome, while Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said he and Barak were grateful to those Labor members who supported the move to join the coalition.
Ben-Eliezer expressed confidence that despite divisions in the party prior to the decisive convention, Labor members would "march together tomorrow."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2009 00:00 ||
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Never mind that shit. How about finishing the job in Gaxa?
Israel's Labor party has voted to join a governing coalition led by Benyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister-designate and Likud's leader.
The poll victory by 680 to 507 votes followed considerable debate and opposition at the centre-left Labor party's headquarters in Tel Aviv on Tuesday.
It means that Netanyahu has secured enough support in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, to form a ruling coalition.
With Labor's support, Netanyahu has 66 seats in the 120-seat Knesset - 27 from Likud, 13 from Labor, 15 from the nationalist Yisrael Beitenu and 11 from orthodox Jewish party Shas.
Earlier in the day Ehud Barak, the Labor leader, had made a deal with Netanyahu to join the coalition - an unprecedented move to unilaterally act before gaining his party's support.
"It has been a scene of mixed emotions here for many of the members of the Labor party - some are speculating that it will be then end, others that it will revive the party," Ayman Mohyeldin, Al Jazeera's correspondent at the conference, said.
"The centre of this coalition is to the extreme right: Likud, Shas, Yisrael Beitenu ... What many people here are now saying is that Labor party has now shifted to the right," Mohyeldin said.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2009 00:00 ||
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Earlier in the day Ehud Barak, the Labor leader, had made a deal with Netanyahu to join the coalition - an unprecedented move to unilaterally act before gaining his party's support
Insh' Allah Aircraft Maintainence meets Insh' Allah Piloting with predictable results...
A pilot accused of praying when he should have been taking emergency measures to avoid a crash in which 16 people died has been sentenced to 10 years in jail by an Italian court.
Captain Chafik Gharby was at the controls of a plane belonging to the Tunisian charter airline Tuninter that crashed in the sea off the coast of Sicily four years ago. The 23 survivors were left swimming for their lives, some clinging to a piece of the fuselage that stayed afloat after the turbo-prop aircraft broke up on impact.
Gharby was at first hailed as a hero for having saved the lives of most of the passengers. But after an investigation, he, his co-pilot, and several Tuninter executives and technicians were charged with a range of offences including manslaughter.
The court in Palermo agreed with prosecutors that the chain of events that led to the crash began when a wrong part was installed in the ill-fated plane, a Franco-Italian ATR 72. A mechanic accidentally fitted an outwardly identical fuel gauge intended for the smaller ATR 42.
The plane took off from Bari, bound for the Tunisian island of Djerba, on 6 August 2005. As it flew over Sicily, its engines slowed to a halt, even though the instrument panel showed the aircraft had enough fuel left for the flight.
The judges accepted the prosecution case that the pilots, instead of making a crash landing on the sea, should have been able to glide the plane to Palermo airport. Instead, Gharby was said to have panicked. In cockpit recordings entered as evidence he was heard calling for the help of "Allah and Muhammad his prophet". Sorry. Not today, Chafik...
His lawyer, Francesca Coppi, said: "Faced with danger, he invoked his god as would any one of us." She described her client as "a broken man" who was "convinced he did everything possible to save as many lives as possible".
The co-pilot, Ali Kebaier, also received a 10-year sentence. Tuninter's director-general, Moncef Zouari, and the company's technical director were both given nine years. A mechanic and two executives in the airline's maintenance department each received eight-year sentences. Two of the accused were acquitted. The remaining seven defendants, who were not in court to hear the verdict, will not have to go to prison until the appeals process has been exhausted.
Of the passengers who died, two were Tunisians. The other 14 were Italians and many of their relatives travelled to Palermo on chartered buses to hear the verdict. Angela Trentadue, whose 27-year-old daughter died in the crash, welcomed the sentences. Another relative, who did not wish to be identified, said: "I wanted to hug the judge."
#3
I would find either "OH GOD, Or" OH SHIT' acceptable "Praying, but tending to the controls while "Praying" is an absolutely Necessity.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/25/2009 13:36 Comments ||
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#4
"#2 Cockpit voice recorder...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdAgu38K0Mo
I dunno. It's not like the guy rolled out the rug and started banging his head on the floor."
Not to argue, but what I hear in this tape is incompetence & very shitty comunication skills. I think that those two things counted more towards the guilty verdict than the praying.
That being said, I have worked with muslims in law-enforcement and i found the tendency to, per instance starting to pray to allah instead of doing something constructive like, I don't know checking someone's pulse & breathing while tending to a fellow muslim very disturbing and more than a little unprofessional.
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.
The Governor of the Bank of England laid bare tensions between Gordon Brown and the Treasury yesterday by warning that Britain could not afford a second economic stimulus in the Budget. 
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) -- An F-22 Raptor jet fighter crashed Wednesday in the high desert of Southern California, Air Force officials said. Rescue crews were en route to the crash site and the status of the pilot was not immediately known, said Air Force Maj. David Small at the Pentagon.
