A would-be saboteur was placed in long-term storage today at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland ...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell... made the bizarre claim that he was from the future. Hmmm... Lemme see... Got it! Astounding Science Fiction, August 1961. I forget what the title was...
Eloi Cole, a strangely dressed young man, "What's that on yer head, bub?"
"It's a leather helmet!"
"What's it do?"
"Keeps things off my head!"
said that he had travelled back in time to prevent the LHC from destroying the world. "If the world's gonna be destroyed how can you be from its future?"
"It ain't that far in the future!"
"Well then, how far in the future are you from?"
"'Bout a half hour."
The LHC successfully collided particles at record force earlier this week, a milestone Mr Cole was attempting to disrupt by stopping supplies of Mountain Dew to the experiment's vending machines. "Jorgensen! Sound the alarm! The Mountain Dew supply's been disrupted!"
"Alarm! Alarm!"
He also grabbed credit for the infamous baguette sabotage in November last year. "Mon dieu! The man is a fiend!"
Mr Cole was seized by Swiss police after CERN security guards spotted him rooting around in bins. "You, there! With the cooling fins on your shoulders! Step away from the garbage bin with your hands up!"
He explained that he was looking for fuel for his 'time machine power unit', a device that resembled a kitchen blender. "Oh, yeah? What kind of fuel does it use?"
"Cheese."
Police said Mr Cole, who was wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age,
They dare to correct the fashion sense of a man from the future!?!
would not reveal his country of origin. "Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I'm here to stop it ever happening." "Kit-Kats for everyone? And you want to prevent that?"
This isn't the first time time-travel has been blamed for mishaps at the LHC. Last year, the Japanese physicist Masao Ninomiya and Danish string-theory pioneer Holger Bech Nielsen put forward the hypothesis that the Higgs boson was so "abhorrent" that it somehow caused a ripple in time that prevented its own discovery. "Eureka!"
"You've found something, doctor?"
"Ummm... Never mind."
Professor Brian Cox, a CERN physicist and full-time rock'n'roll TV scientist, was sympathetic to Mr Cole. "Bless him, he sounds harmless enough. At least he didn't mention bloody black holes." "Good God, Professor! Would that make him...?"
"Yes. From some sort of alternate universe!"
Mr Cole was taken to a secure mental health facility in Geneva but later disappeared from his cell. Police are baffled, but not that bothered. "Yeah. I can't understand it. He ordered a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch and then a half hour later he was gone! Didn't even eat the bread!"
#6
He came all the way back for a recipe he is doing, when he discovered he needs a Cup o' Neutrons, and he's fresh out. And if he could also borrow a quantum gravity neutralizer? Because a cup o' neutrons would weight about 480 billion tons.
Posted by: Cincinnatus Chili ||
12/01/2011 14:20 Comments ||
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#8
People who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. -Albert Einstein
[An Nahar] Can there be no trust between a kidnapper and his hostages?
A man who held a Kansas couple hostage in their home while fleeing from authorities is suing them, claiming that they broke an oral contract made when he promised them money in exchange for hiding him from police. The couple has asked a judge to dismiss the suit.
Jesse Dimmick of suburban Denver is serving an 11-year sentence after bursting into Jared and Lindsay Rowley's Topeka-area home in September 2009. He was wanted for questioning in the beating death of a Colorado man and a chase had begun.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reported that Dimmick filed a breach of contract suit in Shawnee County District Court, in response to a suit the Rowleys filed in September seeking $75,000 from him for intruding in their home and causing emotional stress.
Dimmick contends that he told the couple he was being chased by someone, most likely the police, who wanted to kill him.
"I, the defendant, asked the Rowleys to hide me because I feared for my life. I offered the Rowleys an unspecified amount of money which they agreed upon, therefore forging a legally binding oral contract," Dimmick said in his hand-written court documents. He wants $235,000, in part to pay for the hospital bills that resulted from him being shot by police when they jugged him.
Neighbors have said that the couple fed Dimmick snacks and watched movies with him until he fell asleep and they were able to escape their home unharmed.
Dimmick was convicted in May 2010 of four felonies, including two counts of kidnapping. He was sentenced to 10 years and 11 months on those charges. He was later sent to a jail in Colorado where he is being held on eight charges, including murder, in connection of with the killing of Michael Curtis in September 2009. A preliminary hearing originally scheduled for Dec. 6 has been rescheduled for April 12. No plea has been entered in the case.
Robert E. Keeshan, an attorney for the Rowleys, filed a motion denying that there was a contract, but said if there was it would not have been binding anyway.
"In order for parties to form a binding contract, there must be a meeting of the minds on all essential terms, including and most specifically, an agreement on the price," he wrote.
Keeshan said the contract also would have been invalid because the couple agreed to let Dimmick in the home only because they knew he had a knife and suspected he might have a gun.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/01/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
So-o-o IIUC, he's suing for BREACH OF ORAL CONTRACT, MISREPRESENTATION BY HOSTAGE + UNJUST IMPRISONMENT DUE TO FILING OF FALSE POLICE REPORT BU HOSTAGE + CONDUCT/MALICE UNBECOMING A HOSTAGE(S)???
IIRC 1990's "DREW CAREY" SHOW character quip >
D *** NG IT, "THIS IS AMERICA, + YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS - SOMEONE ELSE IS RESPONSIBLE! THANK GOD FOR OUR OVERWORKED, OVERPAID, CONGESTED, BROKEN DOWN CRIMINAL/LEGAL JUSTICE SYSTEM"!
As the sun sets on the career of Maj. Gen. Alfred K. Flowers, he looks back with a sense of accomplishment.
Flowers, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Budget, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management and Comptroller, is set to retire from the Air Force on Jan. 1, 2012.
With 46 years of service to his country, Flowers is the longest serving Airman and currently the longest serving Air Force officer who began their service since the creation of the U.S. Air Force in 1947.
"When you start at age 17, you can get a lot done by the time you are 60," Flowers said.
A Kinston, N.C., native, Flowers was raised by his grandparents, who were sharecroppers. He credits humble beginnings as the foundation that carried him to where he is today.
"Being raised by grandparents who instilled the morals, the values, the integrity of doing the right thing and treating people the way you want to be treated has been important," he said. "I credit a lot of my makeup, morals and ethical values and attitudes to them."
These values guided Flowers to perform his best in school and propelled him to graduate high school at 17.
#1
As a former SAC weenie ("To err is human, to forgive is not SAC policy."), kudos and thanks to General Flowers. Obviously entered as an enlisted man and "bootstrapped" himself into the Officer Corps (How do you pronounce that again?)....
#2
I saw another story that appeared recently in several locations that awed me:
A wonderful story about a Marine who was one of the last to leave the Embassy in Saigon, and is still serving as an E-6 Psyops soldier in Afghanistan. A Doctor in the civilian world no less, and still runs his 2 mile in just over 12 minutes!
Staff Sgt. Don Nicholas disproves the old refrain: Old soldiers do not, in fact, fade away. They re-enlist.
At 59, Sgt. Nicholas is the oldest of the 6,000 soldiers in the 25th Infantry Division in eastern Afghanistan, the Army says. And he is probably one of the very few Vietnam vets now back for more in Afghanistan. He's certainly the only one who saw first-hand the ugly end of that war from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon.
"It's really not a fascination with war itself," Sgt. Nicholas explains. "It's more trying to keep people from getting killed. I'm taking the spot of some 19-year-old."
Raised in Magnolia, Ohio, Sgt. Nicholas dropped out of high school and joined the Marines in 1971, expectingalmost hopingto go to Vietnam. At the time he was a believer in the domino theory. He remembers telling a local TV reporter at the recruiting station that he didn't want his children "living under communism."
#2
..except we're now dealing with a generation that doesn't even know about WWII - for example the pejorative they hurl at others actually stands for National Socialist Workers Party.
#3
That sounds like a "cookie" to me and you don't want to mess around with one of them. A Lancaster would drop one of them and a bunch of smaller bombs in one raid. Four thousand pounds of unstable explosives and the fusing bits and pieces underneath it and stuck in the mud. No thanks.
#6
Not long after I move back from Germany, I read that a (fairly new) parking garage somewhere north of Frankfurt (don't remember which city now, but it was a fairly large one) just exploded/imploded one day. They finally concluded it was from an old WWII bomb that had somehow survived all the construction. Ouch.
Posted by: Barbara ||
12/01/2011 23:09 Comments ||
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[Emirates 24/7] An Indian worker was accidentally beheaded when his body got stuck inside the lift at a building under construction in Kuwait, a newspaper said on Wednesday. Ow. Maybe ow-ow-ow.
The 31-year-old man put his head out of the elevator to speak to other workers when the lift door suddenly shut, squeezing his neck and prompting work mates to rush for his help, Alwatan Arabic language daily said. "They workers struggled to open the lift door but they could not... suddenly the elevator fell down because of a technical failure... the worker's head was severed off his body," it said.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/01/2011 00:00 ||
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It was three short years ago that the small former British colony of Zimbabwe was spewing forth 100 trillion dollar bills. Since then, courtesy of a few trillion extra percent of inflationary RDA, the country had given up on its currency and replaced it with US Dollars.
Now, the country's cult central banker Gideon Gono has made it clear he wishes to avoid another episode of transplant currency hyperinflation courtesy of his counterpart in the Marriner Eccles building and "has warned that Zimbabwe's nascent economic recovery is at the mercy of the United States dollar, which is facing new pressures from the Euro-zone debt crisis."
Yet the screaming sarcasm is the following: "Gono says Zimbabwe should in fact be looking to the Chinese yuan as its main currency, while urgently seeking to restore its own currency which was abandoned in 2009 after a dramatic loss of its value. With the continuous firming of the Chinese yuan, the US dollar is fast ceasing to be the world's reserve currency and the Euro-Zone debt crisis has made things even worse."
And the terminal slap in the face of all that is American: "As a country, we still have the opportunity to avoid being caught napping by adopting the Chinese yuan as part of consolidating the country's look East policy."
Well, if recently hyperinflating Zimbabwe is complaining about the US as being on the same path as itself, and instead wants to become a Chinese FX vassal state, perhaps alarm bells should go off somewhere. So the next time Tim Geithner is up on stage somewhere, it may be prudent for a question to be be asked: how and why is it that the world's (formerly) de facto banana republic is complaining that the next up and coming B-Rep is about to replace it in the annals of idiotic monetary policy?
#4
Zim-Bob has trading partners, EH - major or otherwise?
What the hell do they have to trade? Seems to me the other countries that would deal with them already have enough abject misery. What else can Zim-Bob export?
Posted by: Barbara ||
12/01/2011 20:57 Comments ||
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JEDDAH A 23-year-old unmarried woman was awarded one-year prison term and 100 lashes for committing adultery and trying to abort the resultant fetus.
The District Court in Jeddah pronounced the verdict on Saturday after the girl confessed that she had a forced sexual intercourse with a man who had offered her a ride. The man, the girl confessed, took her to a rest house, east of Jeddah, where he and four of friends assaulted her all night long.
The girl claimed that she became pregnant soon after and went to King Fahd Hospital for Armed Forces in an attempt to carry out an abortion. She was eight weeks pregnant then, the hospital confirmed.
According to the ruling, the woman will be sent to a jail outside Jeddah to spend her time and will be lashed after delivery of her baby who will take the mothers last name.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/01/2011 09:13 ||
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#1
adultery /= where he and four of friends assaulted her all night long.
[An Nahar] Kuwait's ruler on Wednesday appointed Defense Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak al-Sabah as the new prime minister of the oil-rich Gulf state, state-run Kuwait Television announced.
"An emiri decree was issued appointing Sheikh Jaber Mubarak al-Sabah as prime minister," the report said.
Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah asked the new premier to form the cabinet which will be the eighth since February 2006 when the former premier was appointed to the post.
Sheikh Jaber, a senior member of the ruling family, replaces outgoing premier Sheikh Nasser Mohammed al-Ahmed al-Sabah who quit on Monday under pressure from the opposition and after graft charges.
Sheikh Jaber, 69, has been in the cabinet since 2001 and was also the first deputy premier in the outgoing cabinet.
Opposition Islamist MP Falah al-Sawwagh told Agence La Belle France Presse on Wednesday the new government is likely to be a transitional cabinet mainly to oversee the next election after dissolving parliament.
Sawwagh said that a decree by the emir dissolving parliament and calling for snap polls "was expected to be issued late Wednesday." The current parliament's term ends in May 2013.
New elections have to be held within two months, according to Kuwaiti law.
Kuwaiti opposition MPs have repeatedly called for dissolving parliament as members of the 50-strong house are facing allegations of corruption.
Sawwagh told news hounds that the Kuwaiti opposition decided after a meeting Wednesday to "suspend all mass rallies in respect for the emir who is currently taking decisive decisions."
The Kuwaiti opposition and youth activists have been launching a campaign since March to oust the former prime minister accusing him of failure to fight corruption and manage the wealthy Gulf state effectively.
The campaign intensified in August after allegations that about 15 pro-government MPs received illegal deposits into their bank accounts estimated by the opposition at $350 million.
At a massive opposition-sponsored rally on Monday, MPs appealed to the emir to dissolve parliament saying they cannot sit with suspected corrupt politicians in the same chamber.
Kuwait is OPEC's third largest producer, pumping around three million barrels per day. It has amassed over $300 billion in surpluses but development has been stalled due to almost non-stop political disputes.
During the past five years, Kuwait had seven governments and parliament was dissolved on three occasions.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/01/2011 00:00 ||
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Via Instapundit
The Chinese have called it their "Underground Great Wall" -- a vast network of tunnels designed to hide their country's increasingly sophisticated missile and nuclear arsenal.
For the past three years, a small band of obsessively dedicated students at Georgetown University has called it something else: homework.
This bunch will not complain they were not prepared for life outside the ivy-covered walls...
Led by their hard-charging professor, a former top Pentagon official, they have translated hundreds of documents, combed through satellite imagery, obtained restricted Chinese military documents
How does one acquire copies of restricted Chinese military documents?
and waded through hundreds of gigabytes of online data.
The result of their effort? The largest body of public knowledge about thousands of miles of tunnels dug by the Second Artillery Corps, a secretive branch of the Chinese military in charge of protecting and deploying its ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads.
The study is yet to be released, but already it has sparked a congressional hearing and been circulated among top officials in the Pentagon, including the Air Force vice chief of staff.
Most of the attention has focused on the 363-page study's provocative conclusion -- that China's nuclear arsenal could be many times larger than the well-established estimates of arms-control experts.
But the strongest condemnation has come from nonproliferation experts who worry that the study could fuel arguments for maintaining nuclear weapons in an era when efforts are being made to reduce the worlds post-Cold War stockpiles.
Not whether the report is accurate, but whether it interferes with their pre-conceived agenda.
India is not aware of a proposal to enter into a security pact with the United States and Australia, the foreign ministry said on Thursday, pouring cold water on statements made by Australia's foreign minister.
Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said in an interview with the Australian Financial Review newspaper on Wednesday that he backed the creation of a trilateral security deal and that the response from the Indian government had been "positive.
"We have seen media reports about the comments attributed to the Australian Foreign Minister Mr. Kevin Rudd on a possible three-way economic and security pact with the U.S. and India. We are not aware of any such proposal," India's foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement on its website.
Talk of such a pact could fuel China's worries of being fenced in by wary neighbors.
It was unclear why Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking Sinophile, would risk irritating Australia's top trade partner China which is already nervous that U.S. President Barack Obama's latest diplomatic push into the Asia-Pacific is part of broader U.S. policy to encircle it.
But Rudd earlier this month said Australia's security arrangements with the United States were not "snap-frozen in time," and while China wanted to see the elimination of U.S. alliances in East Asia, Australia disagreed.
Indian defense analyst Uday Bhaskar has said India was unlikely to enter into such a pact, partly out of reluctance to risk riling China, and partly because of its long history of keeping out of such arrangements.
Snip, moderator's call. Not appropriate for the Burg. Sorry, but let's stay some focused on the WoT, the world around the WoT, and the politics of the WoT.
Many thanks, AoS
yeah yeah, I know we have lots of stuff that isn't WoT here. Sigh. I try. Really. Noone appreciates me. Natter natter mumble mumble...
#1
"I once spent a year in Philadelphia, I think it was on a Sunday" - W. C. Fields
Posted by: Cincinnatus Chili ||
12/01/2011 16:38 Comments ||
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#2
"yeah yeah, I know we have lots of stuff that isn't WoT here. Sigh. I try. Really. Noone appreciates me. Natter natter mumble mumble..."
LOL, Steve. We love ya', really we do. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara ||
12/01/2011 17:51 Comments ||
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#3
"First prize was a week in Philadelphia. Second prize was two weeks." - W. C. Fields
Posted by: Carl in NH ||
12/01/2011 18:18 Comments ||
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#4
Good call, moderator. Thanks for keeping the place tidy! Focus on War on Terrorism news. The other crap I can get from any of the internet's other 10,000 sites.
Unexpectedly
Reality once again creeps back in, confirming that the 4 sigma beats in the economic indicators pointed out yesterday were mostly duds, except of course for the drop in the Employment index in the Chicago PMI. After a few brief weeks with a 3 handle in initial claims, initial layoffs once again jumped over 400k, to 402,000 in the Thanksgiving shortened week.
As is now par for the course of the data fudgers at the BLS, the previous number was revised higher as is 100% the case always now on a weekly basis, from 393K to 396K. As a reminder, last week's forecast had been for a 388K print, so the 5k miss certainly looked better than an 8k, or 60% higher miss.
#3
I think one of the reasons the 'next week adjustment' has been up lately (and this has been true for quite a while, not just 2011)is because of reporting problems in California. The unemployment rate there has been over 11% for some time and the various offices processing claims have been overwhelmed.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
12/01/2011 10:13 Comments ||
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[Iran Press TV] Standard & Poor's rating agency has lowered the rating of Romania's currency to junk status.
The agency cut the economy's long and short term local currency rating one level to BB+, one notch below investment grade after European markets closed on Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Romania suffers from high external debt, and the dominance of Greek and Austrian banks in its finance sector has put its economy at risk because of "the high level of euroization of the economy," a statement from the agency said.
"Romania is generally seen as an improving credit story given the International Monetary Fund program remains on track," said Tim Ash, the chief emerging markets strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland in London.
"This might mark rating agencies taking a more aggressive/cautious line overall with Emerging Europe [a large British investment trust dedicated to investments in emerging countries in Europe] given the concern over European bank de-leveraging," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/01/2011 00:00 ||
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Under a measure approved by the House Tuesday, with a 389-15 vote, family-based visa limits rise from 7 percent per country to 15 percent per country, an adjustment that could slightly ease the backlog for naturalized citizens, particularly from Mexico and the Philippines, trying to bring relatives into the United States.
The majority of immigrants in the United States are admitted through family-based visas. Mexicans account for about 30 percent of the U.S. immigrant population -- that includes Mexicans of all immigration status -- and nearly all Mexicans who are granted U.S. permanent residency, known casually as having a "green card," are admitted into the country on family-based visas.
Almost 60 percent of Mexicans admitted into the United States were immediate relatives sponsored by U.S. citizens, about 35 percent were non-immediate relatives.
Immediate relatives of a U.S. citizens include a spouse, unmarried children under 21 years of age, or the parent of someone who is at least 21. Visas for these categories typically are not subject to caps. Working in the Healthcare field I see these as additional Medicaid and Medicare patients that have never paid into the system. Many of the ethnic medical practices our company services are made up of aging parents brought to this country for healthcare. As healthcare gets more scarce thank this kind of nonsense.
#2
Congress is very confused about the difference between "virtual" or "administrative" control and real control.
For example, they think that a virtual border fence is the same as a real physical fence, and that having vast and redundant dossiers on citizens will protect them from non-citizen criminals and terrorists.
[Dawn] President Asif Ali President Ten Percent Zardari ... sticky-fingered husband of the late Benazir Bhutto ... on Wednesday offered Korea to establish its economic zone in Pakistain to boost trade ties between the two countries.
The President was chairing a meeting to discuss his forthcoming visit to Korea and to highlight investment opportunities for the Korean businessmen and investors in Pakistain.
Representatives of Korean companies were also present.
Briefing about the meeting Spokesperson to the President Farhatullah Babar said President Zardari invited Korean companies to take advantage of most attractive investment opportunities available in Pakistain in different sectors including oil and gas, mining, trading, energy, information technology and telecom, food and agriculture, Small and Medium Enterprises, infrastructure and tourism.
Zardari said he looked forward to his visit to Korea which would help boost economic and trade ties between the two countries.
He said with emerging market of 180 million people, Pakistain was a potential hub of the economic activities in the region as it was located at the crossroads of West Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and China and provided shortest access to North and South Asia through Gwadar Port.
He said Pakistain was a force multiplier for the economies of the countries in the region and held the key to economic development in the area.
The Spokesperson said the President appreciated managers and heads of Korean companies operating in Pakistain for their investment and their interest to further explore business opportunities here.
He assured the participants that Pakistain government would continue to extend maximum facilitation and provide them with every possible support in realizing their investment objectives.
He said the government was keen to transform the existing relationship with the Republic of Korea into economy-oriented equation for the benefit of the two countries.
"We need to translate our existing relations in economic terms," the spokesperson quoted the President, "so as to take advantage of each others' resources and opportunities."
Highlighting Pak-Korea relations, the President mentioned landmark infrastructure projects completed with the help of South Korean companies and said it testified lasting relationships between Pakistain and the Republic of Korea.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/01/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
Is he also referring to Kimmie + North Korea???
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka: An official says thirteen people have been injured after protesters against the budget clashed with police in Sri Lankas capital. Pushpa Soysa, a spokeswoman for Colombo National Hospital, says eight policemen and five protesters were hurt in Wednesdays protest.
Police barricaded the road to stop the march from reaching the presidents office and later used a water cannon to disperse defying protesters.
The protesters say the budget contains no proposals for employing the countrys youth.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/01/2011 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.
A would-be saboteur 
[An Nahar] Can there be no trust between a kidnapper and his hostages?
[Emirates 24/7] An Indian worker was accidentally beheaded when his body got stuck inside the lift at a building under construction in Kuwait, a newspaper said on Wednesday.
JEDDAH A 23-year-old unmarried woman was awarded one-year prison term and 100 lashes for committing adultery and trying to abort the resultant fetus.
Asif Ali 
