Evidence relating to the death of Government weapons inspector David Kelly is to be kept secret for 70 years, it has been reported.
A highly unusual ruling by Lord Hutton, who chaired the inquiry into Dr Kelly's death, means medical records including the post-mortem report will remain classified until after all those with a direct interest in the case are dead, the Mail on Sunday reported.
And a 30-year secrecy order has been placed on written records provided to Lord Hutton's inquiry which were not produced in evidence.
The Ministry of Justice said decisions on the evidence were a matter for Lord Hutton. But Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who has conducted his own investigations into Dr Kelly's death, described the order as "astonishing".
Dr Kelly's body was found in woods close to his Oxfordshire home in 2003, shortly after it was revealed that he was the source of a BBC report casting doubt on the Government's claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction capable of being fired within 45 minutes.
An inquest was suspended by then Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, who ruled that Lord Hutton's inquiry could take its place. But in the event, the inquiry focused more on the question of how the BBC report came to be broadcast than on the medical explanation for Dr Kelly's death.
Lord Hutton's report in 2004 concluded that Dr Kelly killed himself by cutting an artery in his wrist. But the finding has been challenged by doctors who claim that the weapons inspector's stated injuries were not serious enough.
One of the doctors seeking a full inquest, former assistant coroner Michael Powers, told the Mail on Sunday he had seen a letter from the legal team of Oxfordshire County Council explaining the unusual restrictions placed by Lord Hutton on material relating to his inquiry.
The letter states: "Lord Hutton made a request for the records provided to the inquiry, not produced in evidence, to be closed for 30 years, and that medical (including post-mortem) reports and photographs be closed for 70 years."
Dr Powers asked: "Supposedly all evidence relevant to the cause of death has been heard in public at the time of Lord Hutton's inquiry. If these secret reports support the suicide finding, what could they contain that could be so sensitive?"
#1
And I thought 70-year investigative and evidencury gags only applied to American "civil rights" leaders. Nicely done Lord Hutton. The murder of Dr. David Kelly could not have been more solidly confirmed.
#4
If killed by orders of foreign leadership, failure to take certain steps -- cutting off of diplomatic relations, or even declaring war outright -- would lead to the fall of the government, if not worse. Sometimes, one is forced by dint of circumstances, to hide embarrassing facts. Not always a bad idea. How nice it would have been if the death of Archduke Ferdinand could have been engineered to take the form of an exploding gasoline tank and blamed on shoddy workmanship.
#4
Girl Thursday, there may have been only two comments, but I am certain that many of the 'burgers we're privileged to have here have said a little prayer for the gentleman, and/or given thanks for the fact that we still have heroes among us whether we deserve them or not.
#5
Point well taken Cornsilk Blondie. While I agree my complaint is towards an end, for illustrative purpose:
Many Republicans it seems to me, assume everyone knows how kind, caring, and good they are. This sadly means that they are misunderstood, and labeled as the 'creeps' that Angupers other article mentions by lefties and swing voters alike.
Republicans: it falls to you to sell the niceness. For the next elections, if you don't sell the sizzle, people will liken you to the bumper sticker 'Jesus loves you, but everyone else thinks you're an asshole.' Worse, you might get lumped in the same category as Rush Limbaugh, who many wish were dead.
I wish Republicans pols took this one piece of advice: show you care till it hurts, kill em with kindness you assume everyone can see and you may get more swing voters in the next election based off that alone.
Be sure to crack open a cold one on Jan. 24, the day canned beer celebrates its 75th birthday.
New Jersey's Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company churned out the world's first beer can in 1935, stocking select shelves in Richmond, Va., as a market test. The experiment took off and American drinkers haven't looked back since, nowadays choosing cans over bottles for the majority of the 22 gallons of beer they each drink per year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Canned brewskies may have only hit shelves in 1935, but the drink's history goes back much further - at least 6,000 years, in fact, to ancient Iraq.
Though it is impossible to tell just how many important decisions in world history were lubricated by a pint or two, the potent potable has played a role in at least a few milestone events, from the plagues of medieval Europe to the founding of the United States.
A SUBMARINE commander and two of his officers pleaded guilty at a court martial hearing after being charged in connection with the grounding of their vessel. Commander Steven Drysdale, Lieutenant Commander Andrew Cutler and Lieutenant Lee Blair all admitted an offence of neglecting to perform their duty.
The charge relates to the grounding of the nuclear-powered submarine HMS Superb on May 26 2008. After her grounding Superb returned to Devonport where she was decommissioned.
Drysdale pleaded guilty to "failing to ensure the safe direction" of the submarine while Cutler pleaded guilty to "failing to supervise the plot officer adequately".
Blair pleaded guilty to "failing to take into account all the dangers in or near the planned movements of HMS Superb".
The case at the HMS Nelson court martial centre at Portsmouth Naval Base was adjourned by Judge Jeff Blackett for a sentencing hearing to be held on a date between March 8 and 19.
HMS Superb grounded in the Red Sea damaging to the bow and its sonar equipment causing it to have difficulty diving.
The submarine, which came into service in 1976, was decommissioned in September 2008 although the MoD said the accident had not led to the submarine being taken out of service earlier than already planned.
As some people have noticed, I've been rather quiet in blogging about the Reverend Stephen Sizer's activities of late.
After all, what more can be said of a man forwards emails from Holocaust deniers, shares platforms with Holocaust deniers, and shamelessly flaunts his anti-Zionist theology before Iran's apocalyptic Holocaust-denying regime? As Iranian pastors are arrested and house churches closed down, why is the Khomeinist regime translating Sizer's book on Christian Zionism into Farsi? How many more times can I point all this out?
Yet there's another reason why I've been quiet, and whilst I've held my tongue and my pen for a while, now is the time to speak.
At 10am on Sunday 29th November 2009, I received a visit from two policemen regarding my activities in running the Seismic Shock blog. (Does exposing a vicar's associations with extremists make me a criminal?, I wondered initially). A sergeant from the Horsforth Police related to me that he had received complaints via Surrey Police from Rev Sizer and from Dr Anthony McRoy a lecturer at the Wales Evangelical School of Theology who both objected to being associated with terrorists and Holocaust deniers.
(Context: Sizer has associated with some very nasty terrorists and Holocaust deniers; McRoy has delivered a paper at a Khomeinist theological conference in Iran comparing Hezbollah's struggle against Israel via suicide bombing with the Christian's struggle against sin via the atoning death of Jesus, and describes the world's most prominent Holocaust denier as an intelligent, humble, charismatic, and charming' man who gives quick, extensive and intelligent answers to any question, mixed with genial humour').
"Nyar! Nyar! Nyar! They all think I'm crazy, but I know better. It is not I who are crazy. It is I who am *mad*! Can't you hear them? Didn't you see the crowd?"
Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the "routine" monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.
The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police.
Documents from the South Coast Partnership, a Home Office-backed project in which Kent police and others are developing a national drone plan with BAE, have been obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.
They reveal the partnership intends to begin using the drones in time for the 2012 Olympics. They also indicate that police claims that the technology will be used for maritime surveillance fall well short of their intended use -- which could span a range of police activity -- and that officers have talked about selling the surveillance data to private companies. A prototype drone equipped with high-powered cameras and sensors is set to take to the skies for test flights later this year.
The Civil Aviation Authority, which regulates UK airspace, has been told by BAE and Kent police that civilian UAVs would "greatly extend" the government's surveillance capacity and "revolutionise policing". All things, All people, Everything MUST Be Controlled At ALL Times!
[Al Arabiya Latest] Haitian authorities have collected around 120,000 bodies of those killed in the Jan. 12 earthquake, but the final death toll could be tens of thousands higher, the government's spokeswoman said on Saturday.
"There have been around 120,000 corpses that we have gathered up, not counting those collected by their families," said Culture and Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said.
"We are now in the process of going round the funeral homes to count but that could add some tens of thousands more," she added. Authorities have been burying the dead in mass graves.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/24/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
said Culture and Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue
Where was she went she said it? The French Riviera?
#2
Haiti just got hit with another aftershock. Initially rated at 5.3, it's been downgraded to 4.7. About the same center as the original quake.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/24/2010 17:22 Comments ||
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#3
WMF > CHINA STARTLED: HAITI'S TRAGIC STORY CAN REPEAT ITSELF IN CHINA. "Mud Brick" = SHODDY-IS-BEING-POLITE LOCAL CONSTRUX + poor Govt./Public Regulation-Oversight + EVER-RISING HIGH BIRTH RATES + PERVASIVE, PERENNIAL CIVIL UNREST-SECTARIANISM. This last one is only beginning in CHINA.
* PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > OIL IN HAITI: ECONOMIC REASONS FOR THE US/UN OCCUPATION. The US allegedly discovered OIL in Haiti long ago, + sees the Quake as a real oportunity to covertly achieve direct control of post-Quake LOCAL OIL FIELD DEVELOPMENT AND REGIONAL-GLOBAL TRADE???
SAME > SAUDI ARABIA'S OIL RESERVES IS NOT THE LARGEST | US GEOLOGICAL SERVICE: VENEZUELA'S ORINOCO OIL BELT RESERVES HOLDS 513.0BILYUHN BARRELS [recoverable heavy oil].
Cheapest way to win that war is to build a string of McDonald's along the border and egg the NorKs to attack. They'll all stop to eat at the border and you can get their guns then.....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/24/2010 11:06 Comments ||
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#2
Beside Mickey D'd they could catapult some red cabbage up to the hungry.
#3
NET POSTERS > despite the 1950 massive Chinese mil intervention in NOKOR agz MacArthur [YALU River], NOKOR remained mainly PRO-SOVIET/USSR durng and after the KOREAN WAR 1, whilst SOKOR = PRO-US/UNO, hence a UNIFIED NORTH-SOUTH-KOREA is likely to be ANTI-CHINA in outlook.
SAME > BE IT SOUTH KOREA-ONLY ANDOR JAPAN, OR A UNIFIED NORTH-SOUTH KOREA, THE RISK FOR CHINA IS THERE THAT THE US MAY CHOOSE TO BASE = FWD DEPLOY ITS GMD-TMD CLOSE TO THE CHIN BORDERS.
UNACCEPTABLY CLOSE, as far as China may be concerned.
** WMF > RUSSIA NEW RIVERINE "JOINT CAPITAL" CITY WITH CHINA.
#2
Either that or feeding the jihad with US dollars.
Posted by: ed ||
01/24/2010 13:00 Comments ||
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One quarter of US grain crops fed to cars - not people, new figures show
Isn't it nice we have he grain to spare, I'll remind you that grain grows every year and will easily outlast Oil, no matter how much there is, it will eventually run out, grain won't.
American ingenuity, a pure marvel to behold.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/24/2010 13:44 Comments ||
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It's only "ingenious" if you consider that it's all caused by Government stupidity.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
01/24/2010 14:03 Comments ||
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...Oil, no matter how much there is, it will eventually run out...
If you truly believe that, and don't care how much your taxes are (that pay subsidies) and how much your food costs (competing resources), then,without regard to any preposterous AGW argument, this shouldn't make any difference:
#8
without the ethanol subsidy corn would cost much less per bushel
that's good for keeping beef prices down and its good for our trade balance but it is not all good
- it means we dump on the world market and it ruins the efforts of foreign countries to develop their own ag
- it means subsidies to keep land idle
- it means way less employment, profits, taxes paid, etc. in rural America
Posted by: lord garth ||
01/24/2010 20:01 Comments ||
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#9
In most places corn will produce 165 bushel to the acre and a bushel of grain will produce 2.5 gallons of ethanol producing 412.5 gallons of fuel per acre.In the midwest a farmer might use 6 to 10 gallons of fuel per acre and in the southwest where we have to pump water maybe 25 gallons of fuel. If you do the math it is a good return.
#12
If it's such a great return, why does it require mandates and subsidies?
Iowa. First contest in the quadrennial "Just How Dumb Are You Rubes, Anyway?" election cycle.
And 100 preening idiots in the Senate who think if there were enough of the population gullible enough to buy Oblahblah's load of chit, twice*...they're stupid enough to buy whatever crap they're gonna be flinging.
*~ Remember, Iowa gave him a large margin over Hillary in the caucus, and he won the state with almost 54% of the votes cast. So much for the "wonderful" public edumacayshun here in the Hawkeye State, eh?
#14
And a pet peeve of mine. If these climate change environmentalists really cared about the environment they would return this land to its original forest. Great for carbon capture, preserving wildlife, recreation, etc.
#15
We've been doing our bit to reforest the landscape since the Green Revolution, phil_b, and probably since the beginning of the 20th century... as we've turned farms into suburbs.
#16
It requires mandates to force oil companies to blend and requires subsidies to entice investers to start up industries that will require possibly a decade to get a full return on their money.We use fuel, do we create the industry and make it here or continue to be hostages to the arabs and Hugo?
Britons who travel to suicide clinics in Switzerland to kill themselves face a new "death tax" of up to £30,000. In Britain anyone who aids a suicide can be jailed for up to 14 years in prison, although no one has been prosecuted. More than 115 Britons have traveled to Switzerland for euthanasia in the last 11 years.
To end this so-called 'death tourism', right-wing Swiss politicians have launched an initiative for a public referendum that would make it extremely costly for foreigners to end their life in clinics.
Evocative symbols of Europe's troubled past, such as the swastika, have long been illegal in countries across the continent. But now Poland has gone one step further, revising its criminal code to include a ban on symbols of communism. Poles can now be fined or even put in prison if they are caught with a red star, a hammer and sickle, or even a Ché Guevara T-shirt.
To some, it may seem like a natural reaction for a country that suffered so much under the Soviet Union. There are exemptions for artists, educators, and collectors. But the ban doesn't sit well with the younger generation of Poles, many of whom see communism not as a threat but as a source of satirical fun and creativity.
In high schools it's cool to wear Ché Guevara or the hammer and sickle. Some fashion brands even promote these symbols as part of their clothes,' says Justyna Kopczynska, a sociologist from Warsaw University. Right-wing politicians are so radically against [these symbols] that they don't see the difference between being ideologically conscious of being a communist, and just being young.'
A number of trendy communist-themed bars have appeared around Poland, poking fun at life under the old regime. One restaurant in Warsaw fills its menu with dishes such as trout from the fish shop with the three-hour queue' and Bulgarian peach pie: bartered for irons and Soviet cameras during the International Tourist Exchange.' ' You can even order communist-era coffee' made of corn and chicory.
It's interesting because it's gone; it belongs to the past,' says Grazyna Saniuk, an artist who creates T-shirts using designs from communist-era matchboxes. Certain images of that epoch look funny and exotic to 20- or 30-year-olds, but they are no longer meaningful. They cannot reappear as serious symbols, or as a threat.'
#6
This is grand, first of all because it properly equates communism with Nazism. Second of all, because when the EU tries to coerce Poland to rescind this law, the Germans will have to side with Poland, as it would force them to rescind their anti-Nazi laws.
Third, there is the EU-wide criminal extradition for national laws. Germany has already used to to arrest Holocaust deniers in other countries to face trial in Germany. Poland can now do so for communists that are offensive to Poland.
#8
"In high schools it's cool to wear Ché Guevara or the hammer and sickle. Some fashion brands even promote these symbols as part of their clothes"
And there's the problem right there, idiot.
Try living under communism for a few years (if you can call it living) and see how you like it then. Fool.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/24/2010 10:28 Comments ||
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#9
I changed the unit counter for the Wehrmacht to this, the flag of the Reichswehr just before they started to use the swastika, to accommodate the censors in the EU.
#12
I can understand and appreciate the sentiment, but mockery and beatings are more appropriate than banning, IMHO. Still, the Poles lived thru Communism and know it all too well. I'm not going to tell them what to do.
WASHINGTON, Jan 21 (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force is eyeing some changes to "financial arrangements" for a multibillion dollar competition for new aerial refueling tankers, but Pentagon officials declined to say whether that could signal a departure from the fixed price terms they initially sought.
Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz said on Thursday he did not expect any substantial changes on the requirements for the tanker, but declined to elaborate on possible changes to what he called the financial arrangements.
Schwartz, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an aerospace conference, said the Air Force planned to release the final terms for the competition within a month after the release of the Pentagon's fiscal 2011 budget on Feb. 1. Industry executives have said they expect the terms to be released around mid-February, possibly around Feb. 12.
Schwartz said possible changes to the financial structure of the tanker competition were sparked by the Air Force's dialogue with industry about possible financial risks associated with the proposed contract terms.
Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn also declined on Thursday to discuss any possible changes, saying the Pentagon and Air Force would explain their views when the final request for proposals (RFP) is released next month.
Pentagon budget documents obtained by Reuters include funding for development of a new aerial refueling tanker at an estimated cost of $35 billion, forecasting a contract award this summer and procurement to start in fiscal 2013.
Northrop Grumman Corp and Europe's EADS won a projected $35 billion contract for 179 tanker planes in February 2008, but the Pentagon canceled it after government auditors upheld a protest filed by rival Boeing Co. Northrop and EADS have told the Pentagon they will not bid for the work this time around unless major changes are made to draft rules for the competition that were released last year.
Asked if he was worried about the prospect of awarding a sole-source contract to Boeing given the long history of the Air Force's attempts to buy new tankers, Schwartz said the clear preference was to have a competition. "I'm not going to speculate what others might do, but clearly we hope to have two or more offerers," he said. "But the bottom line is again that we on the customer side get to decide what we need."
Congress killed an earlier Air Force plan to buy 100 767-based tankers from Boeing amid a huge procurement scandal that sent a former top Air Force official and Boeing's former chief financial officer to prison for violating federal conflict of interest rules.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/24/2010 00:00 ||
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India successfully conducted the static test of its largest solid booster for launching heavier satellites using the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-Mk III), the space agency said Sunday.
The solid booster (S200) will form the strapon stage for the GSLV-Mark III, which is in advanced stage of development for launching fourtonne class of communication satellites,' the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement here.
The test was conducted earlier in the day at ISRO's spaceport (Satish Dhawan Space Centre) at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, about 80 km north-east of Chennai.
The successful test makes S200 the third largest solid booster in the world, next to the reusable solid rocket motor (RSRM) solid booster of Space Shuttle of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and P230 solid booster of Ariane-5 of Arianespace, a launch service and solutions consortium of European countries.
Posted by: john frum ||
01/24/2010 10:56 ||
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Heavier 'satellites', huh? Why, you could lift all sorts of heavy things. Wonder what the Chinese think of all this?
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/24/2010 11:17 Comments ||
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#2
10 tons to LEO
Posted by: john frum ||
01/24/2010 11:35 Comments ||
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#3
10tons, Hmmm that gives me all kind of cool ideas, How about a huge baloon with a thick enough wall to be self sealing to micrometeorite punctures, could be used as a storage "Tank" for water, oxygen ,fuel or simply as a human habitat, emergency or standard.
Fasten such "Baloons" to a tube and have an instant habitat (Zero Gee, of course)
My mind whirls.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/24/2010 13:38 Comments ||
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#4
Posted by: john frum ||
01/24/2010 17:56 Comments ||
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The Indian and Chinese governments have had a rethink on signing the Copenhagen Accord, officials said on Saturday, and the UN has also indefinitely postponed its Jan 31 deadline for countries to accede to the document.
An Indian official said that though the government had been thinking of signing the accord because it did not have any legal teeth and would be good diplomatically'; it felt irked because of repeated messages from both UN officials and developed countries to accede to it.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has written to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon seeking a number of clarifications on the implications of the accord that India -- with five other countries -- had negotiated in the last moments of the Copenhagen climate summit in December, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
That letter, and the defeat of the Democrats in the Massachusetts bypoll, has forced the UN to postpone the deadline indefinitely,' an official said. With the Democrats losing in one of their strongholds, the chances of the climate bill going through the US senate have receded dramatically.
So if the US is not going to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent, which was a very weak target anyway, why should we make any commitment even if it does not have any legal teeth?' the official said.
China also appears in no mood to sign the accord.
With the deadline postponed, we are not going to sign now,' said a Chinese official now here to take part in the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) meeting to chalk out a climate strategy.
The meeting of the four environment ministers Sunday is likely to end with the announcement of a fund they will set up to help other developing countries cope with the effects of climate change, said an official of the environment ministry.
Only four countries -- Australia, Canada, Papua New Guinea and the Maldives -- have signed the Copenhagen Accord so far, though Brazil, South Africa and South Korea have also indicated their willingness to do so.
Though Australia and Canada have signed, they have not indicated the greenhouse gas emission reductions they are committing under the accord -- something developed countries are supposed to do.
Posted by: john frum ||
01/24/2010 14:13 ||
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How irresponsible of them to refuse to trash their economies based on spurious and falsified "scientific" data.
The chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has used bogus claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Rajendra Pachauri's Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), based in New Delhi, was awarded up to £310,000 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the lion's share of a £2.5m EU grant funded by European taxpayers.
It means that EU taxpayers are funding research into a scientific claim about glaciers that any ice researcher should immediately recognise as bogus. The revelation comes just a week after The Sunday Times highlighted serious scientific flaws in the IPCC's 2007 benchmark report on the likely impacts of global warming.
The IPCC had warned that climate change was likely to melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 - an idea considered ludicrous by most glaciologists. Last week a humbled IPCC retracted that claim and corrected its report.
Continued on Page 49
#1
The Fraud Bill, which aims to reform the existing statutory offences of deception, was introduced in the House of Lords in May 2005.
The Fraud Bill defines a general offence of fraud, with a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment, as consisting of:
fraud by false representation
fraud by failing to disclose information
fraud by abuse of position
It also revises offence of obtaining services dishonestly (to fill a legal loophole, since a machine cannot be 'deceived') with a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment, and builds on the existing 'going equipped' offence so far as it relates to fraud, to criminalise the act of possessing or making material for use in frauds. The Bill will also extend the scope of the existing offence of fraudulent trading.
Posted by: Chusoling Scourge of the Geats5019 ||
01/24/2010 8:44 Comments ||
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The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.
Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.
Opposition activists say the Sri Lankan government is planning to use vote rigging and violence to win the presidential election, as campaigning officially ends.
The next step is a boycott ...
The two main candidates in the poll, President Mahinda Rajapakse and former army chief General Sarath Fonseca have held their final campaign rallies ahead of Tuesday's vote. Both are closely associated with the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels.
Looking tired after a heavy campaign schedule, Mr Rajapakse wowed the large but somewhat regimented crowd of supporters, who cheered politely but not wildly. As always, he spoke of last year's war victory against the Tamil Tigers, and the need to fight corruption.
With music and fireworks, the president's team say they're already celebrating certain victory.
But General Fonseca says the ruling party is planning to use violence and vote rigging to disrupt the poll. He says the government wants to deter voters from turning out but he is urging his supporters not to retaliate.
The government has denied any use of violence in the campaign and says security has been increased.
Four people have died and dozens have been injured in pre-election unrest.
The election is the first since the end of the civil war last year. The result is expected on Wednesday.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/24/2010 00:00 ||
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TEHRAN, Iran -- A Russian-made Iranian passenger plane carrying 157 passengers and 13 crew crash landed in northeastern Iran Sunday injuring at least 46 people, state television reported.
The broadcast said no one was killed in the accident.
The TV said the private Taban Air plane caught fire upon landing at Mashhad airport at 07:20 local time (03:40 GMT). The injured have been taken to hospitals in Mashhad, the report added. It said plane has been seriously damaged.
Iran has about a dozen Soviet-built Tu-154 airliners.
Iran has seen numerous crashes in recent years and its airlines have been plagued by maintenance problems. In part, Iranian carriers are chronically cashed-strapped and unable to buy new planes.
Iranian officials often blame U.S. sanctions that prevent it from updating American aircraft bought before the 1979 Islamic revolution and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes as well.
Don't they have machine shops and master mechanics?
U.S. sanctions prevent Iran from updating its 30-year-old American aircraft and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes as well. The country has come to rely on Russian aircraft, many of them Soviet-era planes that are harder to get parts for since the fall of the Soviet Union.
#3
One would think Russian airliner parts are cheap and plentiful just by picking at the thousands of derelicts sitting on airport tarmacs all across the FSU. Perhaps some imam forgot the bless that aircraft (for a fee) so allan did not smile down upon it.
Posted by: ed ||
01/24/2010 12:20 Comments ||
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Don't they have machine shops and master mechanics?
#5
"Plane Crash, Lands in Iran, injuring dozens"
or
"Plane Crash-lands in Iran, injuring dozens"
Pardon, but I'm in a mood today. I read the headline as the first illustrates, scratching my head. Editors & copywriters sometimes deserve to be waterboarded, such as the case when "SUV kills pedestrian" or
"SUV plunges into canal, killing 7 people inside." (Damned suicidal SUVs)
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2007/11/19/dont-you-hate-it-when-suvs-kill-people-ap-sure-does#ixzz0dYndPBeq
...in which case the following headline makes more sense for the above article:
"Russian plane crashes on landing in Iran; all survive"
...as survivors of a Russian-manufatured plane involved in a crash are usually unlikely to view blue sky again without 'Parfum d'embalmment' & open casket.
An employee at a Philadelphia branch of ACORN, the national community organization under fire for allegations of wrongdoing, has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the two filmmakers who set off the controversy last fall with their undercover videos.
The civil lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia accuses the filmmakers, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, of illegally recording their conversation with the worker, Katherine Conway-Russell, and then publicizing the videos, which Conway-Russell says "caused emotional distress, harm and injury."
Conway-Russell is featured in one of several videos recorded by O'Keefe and Giles, who posed as a pimp and prostitute and visited ACORN offices around the country with a hidden camera. The videos, released initially through the conservative Web site BigGovernment.com, showed ACORN employees seeming to offer to help the couple skirt tax and housing laws while setting up a brothel.
Posted by: Posted by Snitch and Tell ||
01/24/2010 00:00 ||
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I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that the discovery in this case should be VERY interesting.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/24/2010 1:43 Comments ||
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#2
Don't know about the discovery (I'm not a lawyer either). Seems that since the employees, and not ACORN, are filing the suit - ACORN's not involved. And I'm sure ACORN sent a team and scrubbed every scrap of paper at the local office.
#3
She can sue all she wants. She will be subjected to discovery, and the ACORN office will be served, too, since the action she's sueing about too place there.
ACORN undoubtedly scrubbed the office, but can they be sure every piece of paper they deep-sixed isn't duplicated elsewhere?
Filing a suit like this is the same as volunteering for a personal proctology exam at high noon in Times Square. With 10 minutes to draw a crowd.
Wonder who's paying the lawyer? (Yes, he/she may have taken it on contingency, but in that case the lawyer has to put out the money up front for all the expenses and hope they win. Either the lawyer's pretty sure they'll win AND there's money to be had from the sue-ees, or somebody's bankrolling this.)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/24/2010 10:42 Comments ||
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#4
I'm guessing someone is bankrolling this. Contingency is too risky. Lawyers I know who do contingency work generally want the case to be a near sure thing to go forward, because otherwise you've wasted a lot of time and effort for nothing.
Not only will the depositions be fun, but there are the interrogatories -- the questions the lawyers get to ask and have answered in writing prior to the depositions. The judge has to approve the questions in advance but still, all sorts of opportunities there.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/24/2010 11:12 Comments ||
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#5
I'm with you re the bankrolling, Dr. White. Rare would be the lawyer who would take such an iffy case on contingency.
Britebart's lawyers (whom I'm sure are going to be defending this) should have lots of fun.... :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/24/2010 11:16 Comments ||
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#6
Thanks Barb for the correction and education. As I mentioned I'm not a lawyer - don't even play one on TV (for which you should be thankful...).
I also wonder about the 'Freedom of the press' aspects of this.
#7
It is interesting that the suit is being brought by an individual and not ACORN. If it were being bankrolled, the legal fees would be imputed income and taxable to the individual. So I suspect it is being brought by an attorney on contingency and for pro bono credit.
Having an individual bring it also creates a more sympathetic plaintiff. It also creates a veil which must be pierced in order to go after ACORN for the really juicy stuff. Given that this trial is taking place in Philadelphia where the polls are guarded by the New and Improved Black Panthers there should be no surprised if the veil proves to be an iron curtain.
Now, it would be interesting to know what other clients the attorney is working for and what the total billable hours versus potential hours are.
But in any case this suit has taken so long to prepare that ACORN and its legal team have undoubtedly tested all these avenues and created what they think is the suit likely to cost Breitbart the most money at the least risk to ACORN, regardless of the outcome.
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.
Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the "routine" monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.
Britons who travel to suicide clinics in Switzerland to kill themselves face a new "death tax" of up to £30,000. In Britain anyone who aids a suicide can be jailed for up to 14 years in prison, although no one has been prosecuted. More than 115 Britons have traveled to Switzerland for euthanasia in the last 11 years. 
An employee at a Philadelphia branch of ACORN, the national community organization under fire for allegations of wrongdoing, has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the two filmmakers who set off the controversy last fall with their undercover videos.
