[Bangla Daily Star] The army in Democratic Republic of Congo was engaged yesterday in heavy fighting ... as opposed to the more usual light or desultory fighting... in Nord-Kivu province with mutineers who have formed a new rebel force, the rebels and a government official said.
"The festivities are going on at Bunagana. We are six kilometres (four miles) from the town of Bunagana," a mutineer who was formerly a member of the rebel National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) told AFP.
The fighting broke out on Thursday night close to the eastern border with Rwanda and Uganda.
"The situation is bad. The mutineers are close to Bunagana town. Residents who spent the night in Bunagana left this morning for Uganda," said an agent of the government's intelligence service based in the town.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/12/2012 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] King of the Arabians, Sheikh of the Burning Sands Abdullah ... Fifth out of 37 sons of King Abdulaziz to ascend to the throne. He is, after his half-brothers Bandar and Musa'id, the third eldest of the living sons of Abdul Aziz ibn Saud. Abdullah's mother is from the Rashid clan, longtime rivals of the Saud. He has 6 sons and 15 daughters and about $20 billion. His youngest son is just seven years old... on Friday sacked one of his advisers, an outspoken critic of the sexes mingling outside the home, something banned in the ultra-conservative kingdom.
The state news agency SPA published the decree announcing the dismissal of Sheikh Abdul Mohsen al-Obeikan, an adviser to the royal cabinet, without providing further details.
The move comes several days after Obeikan, speaking on local radio, lashed out at the interaction of men and women in court, accusing the judges of seeking to "Westernize society."
"Women suffer from gender mingling and harassment in the courts," said the sheikh, a former judge, while demanding the segregation of the sexes in court.
"Some influential people have plans to corrupt Mohammedan society by seeking to change the natural status of women," he said, accusing judges he did not name of "wanting to replace justice based on (Islamic) Sharia law with secular laws."
His comments provoked an outcry in the Saudi press, with the daily Al-Jazeera ... an Arab news network headquartered in Qatar, notorious for carrying al-Qaeda press releases. The name means the Peninsula, as in the Arabian Peninsula. In recent years it has settled in to become slightly less biased than MSNBC, in about the same category as BBC or CBS... newspaper asking in an editorial: "What is the point in having an adviser... who behaves with such recklessness?"
Posted by: Fred ||
05/12/2012 00:00 ||
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[Bangla Daily Star] Japanese researchers yesterday unveiled a population clock that showed the nation's people could theoretically become extinct in 1,000 years because of declining birth rates.
Academics in the northern city of Sendai said that Japan's population of children aged up to 14, which now stands at 16.6 million, is shrinking at the rate of one every 100 seconds.
Their extrapolations pointed to a Japan with no children left within a millennium.
I don't think it works like that. I suspect that below a certain density of possible mates, people either go outside the group or give up...or choose to have large families.
"If the rate of decline continues, we will be able to celebrate the Children's Day public holiday on May 5, 3011 as there will be one child," said Hiroshi Yoshida, an economics professor at Tohoku University.
"But 100 seconds later there will be no children left," he said. "The overall trend is towards extinction, which started in 1975 when Japan's fertility rate fell below two."
Posted by: Fred ||
05/12/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
See also TOPIX > [Japan] YOUNG POPULATION DECLINING, EXCEPT FOR OKINAWA PERFECTURE.
Oki at 17.7% has Nippon's highest percentage of persons under age 15.
WE-DON'T-HAVE-NUCLEAR-WEAPONS US ALLY NIPPON MAY GO EXTINCT SOONER THAN 100O YEARS IF IT GOES TOO FAR VEE RILING UP WE-DO-HAVE-NUCLEAR-WEAPONS RISING CHINA ....
* SAME > TOKYO RAISES Y$76.0+MILYUHN TO BUY SENKAKUS ISLANDS.
* WORLD MILITARY FORUM > EXPERTS: US + JAPAN FORCING WAR ON CHINA IN NE ASIA DUE TO PLANNED JAPANESE SDF GARRISONS ON YONUGUNI ISLAND NEAR TAIWAN AND TINIAN ISLAND IN MARIANAS NEAR GUAM BASE, TAKEOVER OF US MILITARY BASES IN OKINAWA. A
Or vee ASEAN in the South China Sea...
* CHINA DAILY FORUM > [Scarborough Shoal] WAR DECLARATION? CHINA PREPARED TO RESPOND TO ANYTHING THE PHILIPPINES DOES, including but not limited to Military.
* SAME > MILITARY NEWSPAPER WARNS MANILA [+ US by implication or inference]. "Seizure" by the PHIL, OR ANYONE SUPPORTING OR BACKING THE PHILIPPINES, of Huangyan Island sovereignty is unacceptable to China + PLA.
* SAME > MAJOR GEN. LUO > CHINA WILL NOT ABANDON THE "WAR OPTION".
* FREEREPUBLIC > CHINA WARNS PHILIPPINES OF WAR.
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > CHINA-PHILIPPINES STANDOFF - WILL THE US GET INVOLVED?
US in difficult position of supporting its Treaty obligations to defend its PHIL Ally while simul attempting to appear neutral.
* SAME > [PHIL Senator] TRILLANES: PHILIPPPINES CAN'T [militarily] FIGHT CHINA, as it lacks the unilateral mil capability to either seriously confront or combat China, let alone defeat China.
* SAME > PHILIPPINE MILITARY [is now] MUM/QUIET ON PANATAG SITUATION.
#9
Water Modem: I did not need to know that. Now I have the image of fat Otaku's running around in diapers.
Posted by: Charles ||
05/12/2012 16:45 Comments ||
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#10
Oh, look! Someone drew a straight line on a logarithmic graph and extrapolated ten centuries into the future. Social scientists should not be allowed anywhere near numbers.
#12
This is stupid to extrapolate so far out. Here in Estonia, we've been at 1.2 since the fall of communism. Now we're at replacement rate. Gotta have something to do during the global recession ...
Greece's deputy prime minister has said the country will run out of money in six weeks unless it honours its bitterly-disputed EU bailout deal.
Speaking exclusively to The Sunday Telegraph, Theodoros Pangalos said he was "very much afraid of what is going to happen" after Greek voters rejected the deal in elections last Sunday.
"The majority of the people voted for a very strange mental construction," he said. "We want to be in the EU and the euro, but we don't want to pay anything for the past."
The main beneficiary of the election, the hard-Left Syriza coalition, came a startling second on a promise to tear up the deal, which promises EU loans to keep massively-indebted Greece afloat, but demands crippling spending cuts in return. Germany, the principal lender, has said it will stop payments if Greece breaks its promises on spending.
Mr Pangalos warned: "There is a school of thought that says the Germans are bluffing. They need Greece and will never throw us out of the eurozone. But what will happen, which is almost certain, is they will not give us the money to pay our debts.
"We will be in wild bankruptcy, out-of-control bankruptcy. The state will not be able to pay salaries and pensions. This is not recognised by the citizens. We have got until June before we run out of money.
#3
"The majority of the people voted for a very strange mental construction," he said. "We want to be in the EU and the euro, but we don't want to pay anything for the past."
#2
Count up how much its cost already and see what would have been saved had they faced reality at the start rather than buttress up the failing fantasy.
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] A family member of one of Anders Behring Breivik's 69 victims in his shooting massacre on Norway's Utoeya island last July threw a shoe at him in court on yesterday, screaming "you killer, go to Hell!"
The shoe hit Breivik's lawyer and the incident, followed by applause, "bravos" and tears among onlookers in the courtroom, led to a temporary suspension of proceedings on the 17th day of the trial.
The attacker, a man of Iraqi origin whose brother was one of the 69 people Breivik killed on July 22, was quickly brought under control by security guards and escorted out of the courtroom as he continued to shout in English: "Go to Hell!"
Posted by: Fred ||
05/12/2012 00:00 ||
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A German man has died after being stabbed in the backside by a stranger wielding a poison umbrella which injected him with mercury, fatally poisoning him.
Police have admitted they have been left at a loss by the attack, which took place nearly a year ago, when the 40-year-old man was attacked by the mysterious stranger in Hannover.
A post-mortem and toxicological examination being carried out on the German man are expected to point to mercury poisoning as the cause of death, Der Spiegel news magazine said on Friday.
The man was diagnosed with mercury poisoning a few weeks after the attack, and fell into a coma.
He had said he was attacked by a slim stranger who had a sticking plaster on his face.
After months in a coma, the victim had seemed to be improving, a spokeswoman for the state prosecutor said. He had been in a rehabilitation centre, but this Wednesday he suddenly died.
The prosecutor are now searching for the mysterious assailant, investigating a possible charge of grievous bodily harm resulting in death.
#1
If mercury was the cause, dimethyl mercury was probably the agent used. It's probably the strongest neurotoxin. It has a delayed effect. By the time symptoms are noted, little can be done to reverse them. Getting a few drops on latex gloves worn over the hands skin killed Prof. Karen Wetterhahn. Two of the lab techs who first synthesized dimethyl mercury died within weeks.
#3
Bear in mind that in the Markov case the poison used was ricin. The only physical evidence was the tiny ball used as the delivery mechanism, otherwise most likely no one would have connected the incident to anyone.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/12/2012 8:39 Comments ||
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#5
Oddly, an Italian nuclear scientist was kneecapped, a Libyan oil minister found floating in the Danube, several Iranian scientists killed, a British UN inspector in Iran in an untimely accident, a British MI5 codebreaker murdered bizarrely, and several years ago an ex-KGB poisoned with radioactive thalium--a flashback to the Cold War by those that fought it?
[Dawn] Exhibiting little remorse lawyers on Thursday beat up a policeman who showed up at the sessions court to record his statement in a case.
Pakistan is a very, very special place.
On Wednesday, an assistant sub-inspector of the Green Town police fell a victim to a lawyer's violence on the sessions court premises.
During Thursday's proceedings Imtiaz Wahla, a sub-inspector of the Quaid-e-Azam Industrial Area cop shoppe, came to record his statement before Additional District and Sessions Judge Zafar Iqbal in connection with a theft case.
A former Lahore Bar Association vice-president, Qamar Shahid, got a theft case registered against Atif whom the SI exonerated following an investigation. The policeman told the judge the theft case was bogus, inviting wrath of Advocate Qamar Shahid who abused the SI.
The judge concluded the proceedings and asked the counsel to advance final arguments on the next date of hearing.
Advocate Shahid and his associates, however, continued 'proceedings' outside the courtroom and stopped SI Wahla on his way back. The lawyers thrashed the police official and tore his uniform.
Eyewitnesses said the incident created panic and no one dared rescue the cop who fell unconscious, with bleeding on his head and bruises.
The Islampura station house officer shifted the injured official to hospital and started the paperwork but haven't done much else against Qamar Shahid, Touseef Ulfat, Sajid Awan and other lawyers.
Meanwhile, ...back at the sandwich shop, Caroline was experimenting with ingredients of increasing volatility... the lawyers secured pre-arrest interim bails from the court of AD&SJ Nadeem Shaukat till May 25.
LBA President Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali condemned the incident and said a general house meeting would be convened soon to take notice of such incidents.
He hastened to add the coppers also provoked lawyers to act violently.
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05/12/2012 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.
[Bangla Daily Star] The army in Democratic Republic of Congo was engaged yesterday in 
King of the Arabians, Sheikh of the Burning Sands Abdullah
... an Arab news network headquartered in Qatar, notorious for carrying al-Qaeda press releases. The name means 
A German man has died after being stabbed in the backside by a stranger wielding a poison umbrella which injected him with mercury, fatally poisoning him.
