[Daily Nation (Kenya)] More than 2,000 musicians strummed ukuleles in a Japanese port city Saturday to set a new world record for the largest ever ensemble of the Hawaiian guitar.
Their effort was recognised by Guinness World Records officials who listened to them play "Aloha Mahalo A Hui Ho", a song written by Hawaiian-born former sumo wrestler Konishiki, in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo.
The ensemble consisted of 2,134 people, eclipsing the previous largest ensemble in Sweden in August last year, which was made up of 1,547 players.
The Japanese performance was part of Ukulele Picnic Week which also featured hula dancing.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/29/2012 00:00 ||
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KAMPALA: The deadly Ebola virus has killed 14 people in western Uganda this month, Ugandan health officials said on Saturday, ending weeks of speculation about the cause of a strange disease that had many people fleeing their homes. The officials and a World Health Organization representative told a news conference in Kampala Saturday that there is an outbreak of Ebola in Uganda.
Laboratory investigations done at the Uganda Virus Research Institute...have confirmed that the strange disease reported in Kibaale is indeed Ebola hemorrhagic fever, the Ugandan government and WHO said in joint statement.
Kibaale is a district in mid-western Uganda, where people in recent weeks have been troubled by a mysterious illness that seemed to have come from nowhere. Ugandan health officials had been stumped as well, and spent weeks conducting laboratory tests that were at first inconclusive.
The officials urged Ugandans to be calm, saying a national emergency taskforce had been set up to stop the disease from spreading far and wide.
There is no cure or vaccine for Ebola, and in Uganda, where in 2000 the disease killed 224 people and left hundreds more traumatized, it resurrects terrible memories.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/29/2012 00:00 ||
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[Bangla Daily Star] Mobs beat to death six thieves and injured seven others in Mymensingh and Kushtia districts yesterday.
Thievery is a high-risk occupation in Bangladesh.
In Mymensingh, four transformer thieves were beaten to death while six others maimed by villagers of Balipara in Trishal upazila around 2:45am.
Of the dear departed, only the identity of Sabuj, 18, could be ascertained immediately, reports out Mymensingh correspondent.
Oh dear. It sounds like the villagers were a tad overenthusiastic.
Ram Krishna Das, assistant sub-inspector (ASI) of Trishal Police Station, said the gang of 10 thieves had stolen two transformers from Kanhar and Bhatiapara areas of the upazila. On their way to Baliapara by a truck, they were intercepted by a team of patrol police as two more transformers had recently been stolen in the area and police were cheking almost every truck plying the area to arrest the thieves.
Spotted, the gang had pelted the law enforcers with brick chips and kept speeding away with the truck. The patrol team then began to chase the truck, said the ASI.
Informed, police of the next check post barricaded the road.
"Calling all cars, calling all cars. Thieves heading south in the A-43 toward Baliapara. Set up blockade two blocks before the Main Street intersection. Over."
This time the law enforcers fired eight bullets in the air to warn the gang, said the ASI, adding that the move made the truck stop.
Meanwhile, ...back at the the conspirators' cleverly concealed hideout the long-awaited message arrived. They quickly got to work with their decoder rings... hearing the gunshots locals had come out from all around, chased the fleeing thieves and managed to catch them,
Curly-toed slippers, don't fail me... Argh
said Firoz Talukder, officer-in-charge (OC) of Trishal police, adding that the villagers beat the thieves up leaving two dead on the spot and the rest injured.
"Ow!"
"Ow!"
"Ow!"
"Rosebud"
The driver of the truck, however, managed to escape.
Police recovered the bodies and rushed the injured to the upazila health complex where two of the gang members gave up the ghost, the OC said.
"Dr. Quincy..."
"They're dead, Jim."
"Wow -- you didn't even look, Dr. Quincy. How do you do it?!"
They took four of the thieves -- Hasan, 24, Faruk, 38, Rana, 28, and Milon, 25 -- to cop shoppe while two were undergoing treatment at the health complex.
"Corporal Siddique, fetch the pliers and the barrel of mustache wax. We've a long night ahead of us."
Police seized the truck and recovered the transformers from the spot, the OC said.
In Kushtia, a mob beat to death an alleged cow thief and injured his accomplice.
But what about the cow?
Deceased Sukur Ali alias Babu, 45, was of Raipur village of Shahjadpur upazila in Sirajganj, reports our Kushtia correspondent.
Babu with his accomplice Rustom had allegedly stolen a cow of one Farid Mollah of Cheuria village some time before the sunrise, said police quoting locals as saying.
As they were fleeing around 6:00am, after waiting for a good scope,
Probably not tele- or micro-, which leaves the question of what kind of scope is a good one, up in the upazilla.
villagers surrounded the two and beat them up mercilessly, leaving Babu dead on the spot, said Abdur Razzak, officer-in-charge of Kumarkhali Police Station, adding that Rustom had been admitted to Kushtia General Hospital.
Dr. Quincy has privileges there, so the prognosis is not good. No doubt Kushtia's mother will be mourn his passing, though given that Babu already passed, likely there will be no one else.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/29/2012 00:00 ||
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#2
SentencingSharia follower Hussain Judge Michael Leeming said: 'You're a man of high standingscum sucking douchbag in the local Asian community and take your family, culture and religion very seriouslyholding them below amoeba.
'Its clear that these offencesassault charges were committed in the context of your strict religious and culturalbigoted hateful beliefs.
'I am satisfied this was a strange loss of temper but an attempt to part your own influence and controlbeat the living shit out of her on your daughter an attempt to coerce her in to conformingdo as I say or else with your own beliefs.'
Who is this judge?? Sounds like he's justifying these assault charges.
I wonder with these jokers having 100 hours unpaid, will they qualify for government assistance of some kind, making us the ones actually paying for his crimes.
It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall of his congregation to see how he reports on his actions.
Posted by: Jan ||
07/29/2012 9:31 Comments ||
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#3
Are there still some who don't think Sharia law is a threat to our Western values and way of life?
#1
The editorial, titled WikiLeaks, a Post Postscript, was purportedly published over the weekend by the Times and in every way appears to be the real thing from Keller, who until last September was the paper's executive editor.
It was so realistic that none other than the newspaper's technology editor Nick Bilton posted the link on his Twitter account, calling the apparent defence of Julian Assange's controversial organisation an "important piece".
One of the few clues to the forgery was the web address of http://www.opinion-nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/keller-a-post-postscript.html,since the real website's URL begins with www.nytimes.com.
Born American in the wrong country, Arjumand Hashmi rectified the error. Read more about this moderate Muslim at the link.
[NY Times] Mr. Musharraf may seem an unlikely adviser to the mayor of a Southern town where crickets chirp shrilly and the leafy streets are dominated by places pledging to fix your truck. But even more unlikely is the man he advised: Mayor Arjumand Hashmi, a Pak-born cardiologist who has become one of the United States' most improbable politicians.
He is like the opening line of a joke: "So a Texan, a Mohammedan, a Republican, a doctor and the mayor of Gay Paree are sitting at a bar ..." Except that he is, by himself, all of the people in the joke.
Part of his strategy has been to embrace his newness to the city, where he arrived in 2006 after many years in Tampa, Florida. He says that, because he is an outsider, no one in Gay Paree is his cousin or classmate, and that he is thus free to govern by reason. He says he is trying to save the city from the cronyism that he has seen strangle his own country: "In most of third world countries, yes, there are rules and laws and regulations. But it ends up that related people get things done," he said. He saw that same phenomenon afflicting Gay Paree. "I have lived it personally and seen why it doesn't work," he said.
One wonders what his knowledge of Pakistan leads him to think about controlling the border...
The Questions [and WaPo's Dan Balz answers]
(Select from the questions below) [At the link]
1.) Will the campaign be relentlessly negative to the end?
2.) Will Romney's choice of a vice presidential running mate make any difference?
3.) Which campaign is likely to have the advantage in money?
4.) Does Romney's wealth and business record make him more or less electable?
5.)Which groups of voters do the two campaigns care most about?
6.) Is the president hostage to the economic news between now and November?
7.) How important are the debates likely to be this year?
8.) With the conventions back-to-back, will either candidate get any real bounce in the polls?
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/29/2012 11:26 ||
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#1
Will the campaign be relentlessly negative to the end?
IMHO, Team Mittens hasn't been anywhere near negative enough. They need to make Obama himself the central issue; his utter lack of private-sector experience, his supporting rogues' gallery of fixers, nutcases and terrorists, his artfully concealed academic and political background and his not-so-artfully concealed hatred of this country and the people who keep its wheels turning.
Which campaign is likely to have the advantage in money?
Per Opensecrets.org, the Lightbringer still has big advantages vs. Romney in total cash raised, spent and remaining on hand. And Dear Leader's campaign website's finance page STILL isn't asking for the three-digit CVV code for credit-card donations...which means God knows how many millions of dollars will be funneled to him from God knows where. The only thing that can possibly keep Romney in the hunt is the conservative Super PACs.
How important are the debates likely to be this year?
I hadn't even thought that much about debates, but now that I do, the prospect scares the s#!t out of me as an unshakeable opponent of the red-diaper, affirmative-action baby currently defiling the Oval Office. Team Bambi is going to demand debate conditions that will be exclusively friendly to The One. Romney's a better debater and is light-years ahead of Obama in intelligence, but you know damn well that the moderators are all going to be MSM Obama stooges who will spend every debate asking Romney if he's finally stopped beating his wife and making his dog ride on the station wagon's roof, while asking Obama to explain just what it is that makes him sooo transcendently awesome.
Alternatively, I can imagine a scenario in which Team Mittens pushes back on Obama's debate conditions, in which case the Obamedia will deep-six the debates entirely and spend the remainder of the campaign season blanketing the airwaves with ads castigating Romney as a gutless wonder who lacked the cojones to face Dear Leader in one-on-one competition in front of the electorate.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
07/29/2012 14:20 Comments ||
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As a Rantburger once quipped, Newsweak and the Daily Beast found a way to lash the lifeboats together. Now to resolve the problem of one sinking the other. Can I do anything to make the hole in either boat bigger?
The company operating the US magazine Newsweek indicated Wednesday the venerable publication is likely to go digital to stem its losses and could undergo other changes by next year.
Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive at the conglomerate IAC, said his firm is looking at options now that its partner in the Newsweek/Daily Beast operation has pulled out.
Diller told a conference call that the Harman family, which had been part of the news operation, had pulled out following the death of magnate Sidney Harman.
He said one of the options is a transition to a digital magazine, but did not offer any specific plans.
#2
in the future, they'll downsize to email editions, then tweets for pay, which will only go as well as we all know it will. Couldn't happen to a better bunch of low-achievement uber-snotty Dem operatives
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/29/2012 15:06 Comments ||
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#3
Oh no. What am I gonna read in the doctor's office?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/29/2012 18:00 Comments ||
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#4
They don't have National Geographic anymore?
Posted by: Fred ||
07/29/2012 18:34 Comments ||
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#5
...not since their big issues on MMGW and Peak Oil.
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.