Tunisia's court of cassation on Wednesday threw out a ruling banning pornographic websites, a judicial source and a press freedom watchdog said.
"The court quashed the first instance and appeals ruling that ordered the censorship of pornographic websites," the judicial source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The source added the case would go back to an appeals court.
"This is rather good news," said Olivia Gre, whose organization Reporters Without Borders had warned against returning to the censorship that prevailed in pre-revolution Tunisia, under the ousted regime of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.
"I respect the court's decision but I think the judiciary has shirked the issue. We will use the same arguments to win this case in the appeals court," lawyer Monaem Turki, one of the plaintiffs, said.
He had said earlier this month that pornographic websites offended Muslim values and should be accessible from Tunisia.
"In France, Hitler apologist websites are censored. Likewise, in Tunisia, there should also be prohibitions and pornographic sites are not tolerable," Turki said.
It's just bandits and so non-WoT, but dang it sure reads like a 'crossfire'...
Bagerhat, Feb 19 (UNB) - The ringleader of a bandit outfit was killed in a gunfight with police at Pici Baroikhali village in Morelganj upazila on Sunday.
On the map, it must be. Special prize for the first one to find it.
The deceased was identified as Sohrab Howlader, 35, ringleader of forest bandit gang 'Sohrab Bahini' and son of Abdul Jabbar Howlader of the village.
The Bahini groups started out as Irregulars gone guerilla in the fight against Pakistan in 1971. After the Army of the Pure was driven out, some degenerated into banditry. It should be noted that many originally came from the left side of the aisle, which is perhaps why criminality came so naturally to them.
Police super Khandaker Rafiqul Islam said police received secret information
"Hey, Sarge, it's that Mahmoud the Weasel again! You have time to talk to him?"
"Give me that, you ignorant #%!@?! Mr Mahmoud, sir, what can we of the police do for you today?"
that 6/7 members of the gang, led by Sohrab, were preparing to commit robbery at the village.
"And then boys, we enter the village and rob it!"
"But boss, what if the police hear about our plan?"
"Relax Mahmoud, there's no chance of that happening!"
As a team of police raided the village, they opened fire on them prompting the law enforcers fire back at about 12:30pm.
Naturally. Even the village police have learnt of the etiquette of the crossfire.
Sohrab was caught in the line of fire
The line from the tip of the pistol to the point just behind his right ear...
and died on the spot
"See the X over there, lads. Shoot him once he reaches his mark."
during the hour-long fight.
Police recovered the body and sent it to a local hospital for autopsy.
"Another one for you, Dr, Quincy."
"Put him over there and mark him 'deceased by natural causes', Jim."
"But Dr. Quincy, you haven't even turned around to look!"
"Don't have to, Jim. There's no sound of breathing, the spreading pool of blood on the floor is bright red, indicating an arterial source, and general silence from the policemen who brought him here suggests there's no hurry to try to save him. Five'll get you ten this one will have a single bullet hole behind the right ear, because crossfires and encounters have a magic effect on the one bullet the miscreant was fated to meet."
One firearm and three bullets were also recovered from the spot.
To be returned after a thorough polishing by the newest recruit to their velvet cases in the evidence vault.
Sohrab was wanted in eight cases, said police.
A second tier miscreant, but a miscreant worthy of his fate, nonetheless. One ponders the empty future of all those go-getting policemen and RABs, once the olde Biplobi and Bahini bandits left over from the 1971 war have toddled --or bled out -- to their graves.
Three police constables-Abul Kalam, Robiul Islam and Hafizur Rahman-were injured slightly and later admitted to upazila health complex.
Bullet-hit feet. Someone needs range time, which is why the encounter took so long.
I'm reliably informed that one had a bruised ego...
A case was filed.
A total of 26 forest bandits, including seven ringleaders, were killed in gunfight with law enforcers in the last one year till the current month.
Not quite RAB numbers, but respectable nonetheless. Three cheers for Bangladesh's law enforcement officers!
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/22/2012 00:00 ||
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No real surprise here. The same thing happened in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Treasury received £10.35 billion in income tax payments from those paying by self-assessment last month, a drop of £509 million compared with January 2011. Most other taxes produced higher revenues over the same period. Senior sources said that the first official figures indicated that there had been "manoeuvring" by well-off Britons to avoid the new higher rate. The figures will add to pressure on the Coalition to drop the levy amid fears it is forcing entrepreneurs to relocate abroad.
#1
Just like the millionaire surcharge taxes in a couple states have reduced revenue as people elected to be residents elsewhere. It's not about paying attention to normal human behavior its about feeding the unceasing appetite to 'legally' steal to feed the power and ego of government.
#3
That's why Leftists want to outlaw any and all off-shoring of wealth, even though it's legal. They think that that way, citizens will be forced to pay their highest domestic tax rate.
Posted by: American Delight ||
02/22/2012 12:31 Comments ||
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#4
Vodkapundit:
The Wall Street Journal has uncovered yet more madness in the Presidents tardy budget plan:
Mr. Obama is proposing to raise the dividend tax rate to the higher personal income tax rate of 39.6% that will kick in next year. Add in the planned phase-out of deductions and exemptions, and the rate hits 41%. Then add the 3.8% investment tax surcharge in ObamaCare, and the new dividend tax rate in 2013 would be 44.8%nearly three times todays 15% rate.
Keep in mind that dividends are paid to shareholders only after the corporation pays taxes on its profits. So assuming a maximum 35% corporate tax rate and a 44.8% dividend tax, the total tax on corporate earnings passed through as dividends would be 64.1%.
#2
And having clicked through to read the teaser available to non-subscribers... the decision to act as if the design work could be separated from the fabrication work is partly why AMD is getting Zilla-stomped by Intel right now.
#4
If you don't care if anyone without an Engineering or Business degree has a job I suppose Manufacturing is not needed. Of course if most of the population has no job it might cut down on the number of folks buying product. And might that affect how many college grads have a job?
#5
Not as long as we have Foxconn. I guess hostile foreign dictatorships can supply all the slave labor we need and it won't matter to the academics in their ivy towers if American workers go unemployed.
#9
Does America really need higher education? Without votec skills solid base education the question is moot, as there will be nobody to work the tools, drive the vehicles, or even answer the phone.
If the welds don't hold, if the worker can't read a ruler, if the person taking orders does not have a functional language ability, unless these types know how to roto. Even recycling is an industry, how is this even a question?
(pounds on desk)
No question, should be in defense of!
#10
Without manufacturing we're nothing -- we're stagnant, sitting in blissfully accumulating ignorance while the rest of the world advances, eventually leaving us so far behind we'll never catch up. We are becoming non-productive by definition.
I really worry that we've become a nation that sells things rather than a nation that makes things. If you're not making things then you're nothing but a consumer, an economic drone. There's creativity involved in marketing, I suppose, but if you're not pushing the boundaries of both creativity and productivity you're still (to coin a phrase) on the Road to Serfdom.
We've dumped the dirty business of industrialization in favor of clean air and no nasty smells and letting our children avoid the boredom of working on an assembly line. We've concentrated on selling each other information -- an economic closed loop -- and singing and dancing and making movies about people being heroic (even while as a society we condemn the people who actually do the things presented as heroic on the screen).
So while China and India and even, in their imaginations, the Medes and the Persians are on their way to the moon and from there to the stars we're singing and dancing for their entertainment. If we don't wake up then a hundred years from now we'll be tugging our forelocks at the approach of the Chinaman or the Hindoo.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/22/2012 14:07 Comments ||
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#11
Harvard. Isn't that where kids who have never had a job go to become politicians/law makers, who will never know the meaning of work?
#14
America doesn't need domestic sources of manufacturing, just like it doesn't need electric power, food delivered to local groceries, water on tap, spare parts for all its gizmos, heat-A/C for its buildings, domestic transportation etc. etc.
#15
It makes absolutely no difference at all if students are taught a political vocation; exactly opposed to market conditions that allows them to participate in the economy.
#16
Um, guys???? If you actually read even just the free intro, you will see that the authors believe US businesses have mistaken short-term savings by outsourcing mfg with longer term business advantage.
The authors also provide executives with a way to strategize how to bring the high value mfg back home.
Knee jerk comments here suggest most people didn't bother to get past the headline. Or don't understand why an executive would need to measure the value of alternate approaches. Before you dismiss either Harvard or this article, you might want to at least sound like you understand it.
No of course not. We can sue each other & tax our way to prosperity. Just ask Obama or any other Dem.
Posted by: Cincinnatus Chili ||
02/22/2012 18:44 Comments ||
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#21
Low value, yes. Higher value, no.
It is not the responsibility of business leaders to make society work if taxes, regulations and unrealistic wage demands from unions or other employees make it uneconomical to manufacture here.
But it definitely is an executive's responsibility to make that analysis in as informed, farsighted way as s/he can. A lot of US companies are doing the kinds of evaluations this article calls for and in response are returning high value manufacturing back to the US.
By the time this sort of article hits the HBR, whatever they write about is already a trend that's picking up steam. This article gives other executives both a way to make that decision and cover in so doing, with their stockholders, their board etc.
#22
Depends what kind of manufacturing you're discussing.
We have few Americans who want to work all day assembling iPhones, making shoes, or assembling stupid plastic toys, just as we have few Americans who want to harvest lettuce and pick tomatoes.
We could pay Americans enough to do those jobs, but that will certainly add to the labor costs and thus to the costs of the products. In a country where even in a rural area you need $40K a year ($20 an hour) to live reasonably well and make work more attractive than (Obama-style) welfare, I don't see it happening.
What we need is more high-end, skilled manufacturing in which a $20 or $30 an hour job provides sufficient value to make it worthwhile. Those jobs also have been outsourced; losing those have hurt us long-term.
I'm happy to let overseas workers sew tennis shoes; the folks in Bangladesh, Honduras and Burma will do these jobs and be better off than they were before. Let's work on getting the highly paid jobs back here to home.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/22/2012 18:49 Comments ||
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#23
However, it's only fair to warn that just because mfg comes back doesn't mean it will look like the mfg of a decade ago, nor that workers who lost jobs when they went overseas will be automatically a good fit for the jobs that return.
The midWest is full of companies trying to find good skilled people who can e.g. program CNC machines. A lot of older machinists, for instance, just haven't got those skills. Some older workers are taking classes at community college to qualify, a few companies have the resources for on the job training of people who demonstrate sufficient math and logic ability to be trainable.
But the move to tech-based mfg will only accelerate over the next two decades. Robotics, intelligent software and on-demand manufacturing are all technologies that are rapidly advancing for practical use. 3-D printers and nanoassembly of materials are close behind. That is a reality we will all face one way or the other.
#24
We have few Americans who want to work all day assembling iPhones, making shoes, or assembling stupid plastic toys, just as we have few Americans who want to harvest lettuce and pick tomatoes.
I lost track of the link two or three dead computers ago, but a lot of the assembly lines moving to China are ones that are automated here but use manual labor there.
I think part of the problem is even with the automation, the management here has to sweat the details if they make the stuff here, but don't have to sweat the details if Foxconn does it.
I'm convinced that's part of the reason the Macbook Pro unibodys are cranked out on CNC mills instead of just forged from aluminum: it's what Foxconn knows what to do, it's "good enough" for both them and Apple, even if it's not the best or lowest cost process, and they don't have to worry about the real details.
#25
I don't know, of course, but I don't think we can based on what information is publically available. Which is to Apple another advantage of the process as it stands.
#26
Yet another reason why Newt is right on the US needing to unilater go back to the Moon circa 2020 or ASAP after - IMO DEEP SPACE is, at least initially, a mostly Govt-led venture. The Fed + our future OWG-NWO need to set up the beyond-Earth, basic space markets in order to finally make use of all those Failed-N-Failing "Green Techs"[Solar] + Flying Car + Spaceship, etc. designs they have thats just collecting dust, or else flying around again and again and again around the Midwest US + overseas.
WHATS THE USE OF BUILDING A DEEP-SPACE BATTLESTAR OR ROMULAN WARBIRD, ETC. IFF ITS JUST GOING TO FLY + STAY INSIDE THE PLANET'S ATMOSPHERE FOREVER-N-EVER?
We thought we had seen it all. It turns out we hadn't. The country that gave the world the alphabet, philosophy, and plates with funny sexually ambiguous drawings on them, has outdone itself again. Because beginning this month some Greeks will have to pay for the privilege of having a job. From the Press Project:
Salary cutbacks (called "unified payroll") for contract workers at the public sector set to be finalized today. Cuts to be valid retroactively since november 2011. Expected result: Up to 64.000 people will work without salary this month, or even be asked to return money. Amongst them 21.000 teachers, 13.000 municipal employees and 30.000 civil servants.
Needless to say the BLS is salivating at the prospect of US workers paying for a job, as this will immediately allow them to double count said person's role in the employed part of the labor force (which incidentally has shrunk by 1% in the time it took to write this), as the money said "worker" pays can be used in the BLS hedonic models to theoretically hire many more people courtesy of fractional reserve lending. Now if only everyone would agree to pay for the joy of playing Solitaire 9 to 5, then all the world's problems would be solved.
#5
Glenmore, many hair dressers rent a chair in the shop where they work. A lot of cabbies rent the cabs they drive, the rental fee includes the dispatch service.
It's an old and still prevalent services model, but rather .... unusual .... for white collar workers.
#7
WORLD POLITICAL, MILITARY HISTOIRE' suggests that not even the Superpower or Hyperpower USA is Immune from doing such a thing, espec as per its US$15.3TRILYUHN DEBT-N-RISING = RISING CHINA.
Which in turn belies the potency of 1960's GUAM TAOTAMONAS [+ decades later HUGO CHAVEZ] where the Ghosts claim the US will develop ISLAND/LAND-SINKING "EARTHQUAKE/TECTONIC BOMBS" TO DENY USE OF STRATEGIC ISLANDS TO ITS ENEMIES.
D *** NG IT, SILLY MORIARITY THOUGHT THE ISLAND SANK BECAUSE OF AN MASSIVE EARTHQUAKE - WELL, THE ANSWER IS YES-N-NO!?
There has not been a single recorded new case of the disease since January last year, and if that remains the case for the rest of the year the disease will be officially eradicated.
This is what enlightened, advanced nations do...
It is an extraordinary achievement for a country where as recently as 1995 there were 32,000 polio cases and young victims can still be seen with misshapen limbs begging at traffic lights throughout the main cities. But officials believe this will soon be a symbol of India's past as rising wealth is reflected in better basic healthcare.
The campaign to eradicate polio in India was launched by its government in 1999 and has been supported by international health charities and groups like Rotary in whose volunteers, including many from Britain, have helped distribute the vaccines.
To achieve "polio-free" status by January next year officials and volunteers are staging "National Immunisation Days" around the country to immunize more than 170 million children under five - around 15 per cent of India's population.
"It was a gigantic task, where we had to reach out to millions and millions of children in last 10 years," said Dr RN Srivastava, of the Expert Advisory Group for Polio Eradication in India. There had been resistance to immunizations campaigns in some parts of the country, he said, but "tremendous public support" had won through.
It was now on course to eradicate the disease, alongside Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, but India could not afford to be complacent. "We have to be on alert and not let our guard down," he said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/22/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
Meanwhile, Across the border in Pakistan, there were 198 cases in 2011, the most in the world.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
02/22/2012 11:17 Comments ||
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#1
"I am disturbed by people..... we don't know what is the cause of her death yet.....," said the governor during a briefing in northern New Jersey. "I just reject that on a human level."
The Repbulican VP Candidate governor is correct. Bathroom Solor Flares, rabies, and numerous natural causes have yet to be ruled out.
#6
Not to disparage a talent, but remove the celebrity and "Single African-American mother with history of drug abuse found dead in hotel bathtub" does not have the same impact.
But I didn't have much sympathy for Heath Ledger, MJ, etc. either. Apparently celebrity is a high-stress high-risk vocation and should probably be banned.
#7
Apparently celebrity is a high-stress high-risk vocation and should probably be banned.
There are many high-stress jobs that don't necessarily lead to drug abuse. Police, firemen, soldiers in combat, surgeons, teachers in some schools, and many other high-risk jobs.
#9
Have been for quite a while, CF. Jannis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix are just two.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/22/2012 12:15 Comments ||
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#10
JohnQC, I did debate a sarc tag, though the entertainment bloc not only advocates regulation of people to protect people from themselves, it also tends to make boucoup bucks from when its members rehab and/or die, invariably blamed upon the inheirant stress of the industry. I would wager heavy that the total amount of TV time devoted to simply explaining celebrity deaths over the last year would overshadow all other occupations combined.
I think its high-time they self-regulate their industry, and also cut energy usage by 50% (no outsourcing!), within the next 5 years, then come back and tell us plebes whats what. It is an industry which sells a culture of decadence and false-imagry whose prominant members make millions. It is unfortunate that genuine talent gets ground up and instead are sold barely legal coke heads who dry hump the camera until they gain 15lbs.
#12
industry which sells a culture of decadence and false-imagry whose prominant members make millions. This applies to other parts of American culture outside of the entertainment industry. The housing bubble got its impetus from the same mechanism.
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.
Tunisia's court of cassation on Wednesday threw out a ruling banning pornographic websites, a judicial source and a press freedom watchdog said.
