[Daily Nation (Kenya)] A Milan court rejected submissions by Silvio Berlusconi's ...current Italian prime minister, known for his plain (for a European politician) speaking and his liking for hookers a third his age or less... defence team on Monday in the trial against the Italian premier for alleged bribery and paying for sex with a 17-year-old girl.
Lawyers for the prime minister had presented 16 preliminary complaints in the trial -- which began on April 6 -- including a challenge to the court's right to hear the case.
"In light of the charges, the court considers itself to be competent," the ruling said.
Mr Berlusconi is accused of paying for sex with Moroccan-born Karima El Mahroug, better known as "Ruby the Heart Stealer", when she was 17, at a series of wild "dinner" parties held at his private villa in the north of Italia.
The prime minister is also suspected of abusing his powers by having the girl sprung from police custody when she was tossed in the clink in May 2010 for alleged theft -- a move prosecutors say was an attempt to hide his sex crime.
The premier's lawyers argued that the prostitution charge for the television magnate should be heard by a court in Monza, closer to his luxurious personal residence in Arcore, outside Milan, where the alleged crime took place.
His defence also challenged the Milan court's authority to hold the trial at all, saying the abuse of power charge should be considered by a special ministers' court.
The Milan court ruled Monday that the trial should not be held in a special minister's court because Berlusconi was not acting within his role of prime minister when he called the police, but was simply abusing his political power.
It also rejected the defence's request to move the trial to Monza. The 74-year old prime minister, who is a defendant in three ongoing trials and is fighting off growing unpopularity, was not in court to hear the ruling. He faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted of abuse of power.
Mr Berlusconi's defence also contends that the prostitution charge for the television magnate should be heard by a court closer to his luxurious personal residence in Arcore outside Milan where the alleged crime took place.
In the other trial hearing that Berlusconi will attend, he is accused of bribing his former lawyer with 600,000 dollars. Several witnesses living in Switzerland are set to testify in that hearing on Monday via video conference.
Mr Berlusconi is a defendant in a third trial involving alleged tax fraud committed by his business empire Mediaset with distribution rights deals.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/20/2011 00:00 ||
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Gambian ... The Gambia is actually surrounded by Senegal on all sides but its west coast. It has a population of about 1.7 million. The difference between the two is that in colonial days Senegal was ruled by La Belle France and The Gambia (so-called because there's only one of it, unlike Guinea) was ruled by Britannia... President Yahya Jammeh said on Monday that neither the upcoming November presidential election nor a military coup, but only God, could unseat him from power.
State television GRTS broadcast a speech by the 46-year-old leader to a meeting of mostly farmers in Gambia's central river region.
"Elections will not make me to lose power nor will military coups make me lose grip of power.
"It is only the Almighty Allah who made it possible for me to come to power in 1994 in a bloodless coup who can make this possible."
"So if anybody thinks that the oppositions are going to win the forthcoming elections (they are) making a day dream," Jammeh told cheering supporters.
Jammeh, who will be seeking a fourth term in office in the November 24 presidential, legislative and local elections, will on Friday celebrate the 17th anniversary of his rise to power in a bloodless coup.
The outspoken military officer and former wrestler said earlier this year: "It is a foregone conclusion that I will sweep the November presidential polls that will be free, fair and transparent."
Five opposition parties plan to take part in the elections, but analysts say they have no alternative but to unite to pose a credible challenge to Jammeh's ruling party.
Rights organizations accuse him of ruling the smallest country on the African mainland with an iron fist, repressing criticism and brushing off concerns over human rights ...which often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... abuses.
Jammeh has woven a shroud of mysticism around himself and has come under fire from abroad for claiming he can cure AIDS by using a combination of mystical powers and herbs.
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07/20/2011 00:00 ||
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#3
At first glance, I thought it said "Jimmah" - but then I remembered that if the article were talking about the United States, it would say "Jimmah II."
Posted by: Barbara ||
07/20/2011 15:12 Comments ||
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#4
Is one of Jimmah's 'mystical powers' shaped like Florida?
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Malawi's President Bingu wa Mutharika brushed off accusations that his presidency is turning autocratic, in an interview with AFP days after Britannia suspended aid over complaints of poor governance.
"I'm a very open person. Some people have dubbed me dictator. They don't know what a dictator is," Mr Mutharika said.
"But there is also discipline, because no nation on this earth can run without discipline," he said. "But dictatorship is never in my bloodstream. I'm a democrat right through."
Civil society groups in Malawi have sounded the alarm over policies they say are rolling back hard-fought democratic gains made since the country's first democratic polls in 1994 removed dictator Kamuzu Banda from power.
In January, Mr Mutharika signed a law allowing the information minister to ban publications deemed "contrary to the public interest", and in May local government elections -- already delayed for six years -- were again postponed.
His government has also imposed a requirement for activists seeking to hold protests to make a deposit of about $15,000 with police, intended as a safeguard against rioting and property damage.
The concerns of civil society were echoed in a leaked British diplomatic cable that accused Mr Mutharika of "becoming ever more autocratic and intolerant of criticism".
That sparked off a diplomatic spat that saw both countries withdraw their ambassadors, while London last week suspended around £19 million ($30.7 million, 21.7 million euros) of budgetary aid meant for anti-poverty programmes in one of the world's poorest countries.
Britannia said the aid suspension was "to address UK concerns over economic management and governance", but Mr Mutharika insisted Malawi was not being singled out and would not apologise.
"It's certainly not a possibility. What do we apologise for? Here is an envoy who insulted our country," Mr Mutharika said.
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07/20/2011 00:00 ||
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[Al Jazeera] An attack on the residence of Guinean President Alpha Conde has left at least one person dead, but the president managed to escape without injury, officials said.
Quoting a presidential source and eyewitnesses, the Rooters news agency said heavily armed assailants attacked Conde's residence at around 1:30am local time on Tuesday.
"The president was there, but he is safe and sound," said the presidency source, adding there had been substantial damage to the residence in a suburb of Conakry, the capital, from gunfire and rocket launchers.
In a televised address to the nation hours later, Conde said: "My house was attacked last night, but I congratulate the presidential guard who fought heroically from 3.10am until 5am (local and GMT) before backup arrived."
Conde tried to reassure the population that he was still in control and that attempts to undermine his plans for reform would fail.
"Our enemies can try everything, but they cannot prevent the Guinean people's march towards democracy," he said.
"Democracy has begun and it will continue. I promised you change and, God willing, change will happen."
Taxi drivers said on Tuesday the red-beret presidential guard had blocked the bridge that is the only way to enter the thin peninsula that leads into downtown Conakry.
Residents in the Kaporo Rail neighbourhood said the shooting erupted as they were sleeping and continued until dawn.
The heaviest fighting appeared to be coming from near the walled compound where Conde lives - the same three-story home that served as his base when he was the head of the country's opposition.
The attack left the presidential building riddled with bullet holes and the main gate was blown out with a rocket launcher, Rooters reported.
Neither the presidential source nor a second source close to the presidency said they had any information on who the attackers were, according Rooters.
Conde came to power in the world's largest exporter of the aluminium ore bauxite last December in what was the first free election in the West African country since independence from La Belle France half a century before.
Guinea has a long history of coups and attempted coups, the last coming in December 2008 when a young army officer, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, seized power after the death of Lansana Conte, who had been in power 24 years.
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07/20/2011 00:00 ||
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Saudi Arabia takes witchcraft so seriously that the government set up the Anti-Witchcraft Unit in May 2009.
When the severed head of a wolf wrapped in women's lingerie turned up near the city of Tabouk in northern Saudi Arabia this week, authorities knew they had another case of witchcraft on their hands, a capital offence in the ultra-conservative desert kingdom. Agents of the countrys Anti-Witchcraft Unit were quickly dispatched and set about trying to break the spell that used the beasts head.
"Tell those people to keep back, Jim-Abdullah Mohammed. This stuff is dangerous, but we are scientists."
"Yes, Dr. Quincy-Mahmudabdul. You lot, clear the room! No telling what might happen if the doctor's elbow is jiggled." BOOM! Bang bang bangety...tinkle
"There. Now she's really dead, Jim. Send in the clean up crew."
Saudi Arabia takes witchcraft so seriously that it has banned the Harry Potter series by British writer J.K. Rowling, rife with tales of sorcery and magic. It set up the Anti-Witchcraft Unit in May 2009 and placed it under the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPV), Saudi Arabia's religious police.
"In accordance with our Islamic tradition we believe that magic really exists," Abdullah Jaber, a political cartoonist at the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah, told The Media Line. "The fact that an official body, subordinate to the Saudi Ministry of Interior, has a unit to combat sorcery proves that the government recognizes this, like Muslims worldwide."
The unit is charged with apprehending sorcerers and reversing the detrimental effects of their spells. On the CPV website, a hotline encourages citizens across the kingdom to report cases of sorcery to local officials for immediate treatment.
In the case of the wolf's head, the Anti-Witchcraft Unit in Tabouk was able to break the spell. The Saudi daily Okaz reported on Monday that the unknown family that had fallen victim to the spell had been "liberated from the jaws of the wolf.
The Anti-Witchcraft Unit was created in order to educate the public about the danger of sorcerers and "combat manifestations of polytheism and reliance on other Gods," the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.
The belief in sorcery is so widespread in Saudi Arabia, that it is even used as a defense in criminal court cases. Last October, a judge accused of receiving bribes in a real-estate project told a court in Madinah that he had been bewitched and is undergoing treatment by Quranic incantations, known as ruqiyah, a common remedy for the evil eye.
Jaber noted, however, that most sorcerers both inside and outside the kingdom were charlatans that take advantage of illiterate citizens who believed they were afflicted by the evil eye. He said that such beliefs were more prevalent among older, rural and often illiterate individuals than with younger, educated Saudis. "A while ago my arm was hurt and I couldn't draw," the cartoonist said. "Many older people told me that I must have been afflicted by the evil eye and should be treated by a Sheikh."
"It's a matter of ignorance," Jaber added. "If people were more educated they wouldn't believe in this."
The last time Saudi Arabia executed a convicted sorcerer was in late 2007, but this did not indicate the penalty has since been lifted, Cristoph Wilcke, a senior Middle East Researcher at Human Rights Watch and expert on Saudi Arabia, told The Media Line. Human Rights Watch had appealed King Abdullah in 2008 to halt the death sentence of Fawza Falih, a Saudi woman, on charges of witchcraft. The sentence was postponed, but Falih died in prison of ill health.
Saudi Arabia lacks a penal code, making court decisions on whether a given act constitutes witchcraft completely dependant on the judge's discretion, Human Rights Watch said. "We hear time and again of foreigners, such as Ethiopians or Nigerians, accused of sorcery in Saudi Arabia because of traditional practices from their countries of origin," Wilcke said. "They are usually apprehended by the religious police, brought to court, and let off with a warning or lashes."
In other cases, however, false accusations are made against foreign domestic workers in order to counter their charges of sexual harassment within a Saudi household. "They will often say that the [female] domestic worker bewitched the Saudi into falling in love with her," Wilcke noted.
Belief in sorcery is not necessarily more widespread in Saudi Arabia than in other Gulf countries, Wilcke added. On Monday, the Emirati daily Al-Khaeej reported that Dubai police had arrested an Arab African national on charges of fraud and sorcery, after he charged 15,000 Dirham ($4,000) from a woman whose husband had left her, promising to bring him back using magic.
But the strictly Orthodox brand of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia, known as Wahhabism, did contribute to the country's zero-tolerance policy on magic, Wilcke noted.
At least 13 people died and dozens were injured as A 6.2 quake hit Central Asia's Fergana Valley. The quake struck at 1:35 a.m. local time with the epicenter just inside Kyrgyzstan's Batken region, but neighboring Uzbekistan bore the brunt of the damage. The quake struck at a depth of just 9.2 kilometers, shaking Fergana, a city of 200,000 people just 42 kilometers from the epicenter.
"According to initial information, 13 people were killed as a result of the damage to the houses," the Uzbek emergencies ministry said in a statement. "The emergency services provided medical assistance to 86 people and 35 people were taken to nearby hospitals."
Residents of the Kyrgyz city of Osh, the principal city in the country's south, said that that the earthquake caused panic in the city. Tremors were felt as far away as the capital, Bishkek.
The quake was also registered at 6.0 in Tajikistan's second city of Khujand, with 150,000 people. In Khujand, a man threw himself out of a second-floor window, killing himself. The 43-year-old man thought that he would live by jumping out the window during the earthquake.
"Maybe he was sleepy, maybe he figured 'if everything collapses, I will remain under ruins,' and so he jumped out and died," a source in the Tajik interior ministry said.
[Dawn] Fifty Seven lawyers of the Rawalpindi bar association were alleged with fake degree during a hearing of a case in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, DawnNews reported.
The former president of the Rawalpindi Bar Association Malik Waheed Anjum revealed in the court that 57 lawyers from the Rawalpindi bar had fake degrees.
The supreme court has summoned records of the lawyers from relevant authorities.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/20/2011 00:00 ||
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A civil court in Malaysia has refused a woman permission to leave Islam in order to avoid being jailed for apostasy.
Kamariah Ali, 60, says she shouldn't be tried under Islamic law because she is no longer a Muslim. She follows the Sky Kingdom sect, known as the teapot cult because it built a giant teapot to symbolize its reverence for the healing purity of water.
But the judges ruled that Malaysia's Islamic courts must decide on the case because Kamariah was born a Muslim. The Islamic courts have authority over only Muslims - the rest of the population are not bound by them.
Kamariah had asked the civil courts to declare her freedom to worship, as guaranteed by the constitution. But the panel of judges said she had to go through the Islamic courts system to renounce her faith - something not often granted.
#4
It impresses me that someone could cause considerable consternation among Muslims by publishing a small newspaper loaded with thing that would incite them.
Like in Malaysia: "Large number of wealthy Muslims converting to Jedi Knight religion." "Thousands of Korans accidentally used as pig food." "Prominent Imam admits being a secret Jew, says several others Jewish as well."
#1
Thanks, 'moose. I sent the link home to remind me to send them a donation.
I've started building up my political donations fund again in advance of 2012; guess a small chunk of that should go to the border fence, since the Feds' lack of border enforcement is entirely political.
Posted by: Barbara ||
07/20/2011 14:12 Comments ||
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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.
Saudi Arabia takes witchcraft so seriously that the government set up the Anti-Witchcraft Unit in May 2009.
In the case of the wolf's head, the Anti-Witchcraft Unit in Tabouk was able to break the spell. The Saudi daily Okaz reported on Monday that the unknown family that had fallen victim to the spell had been "liberated from the jaws of the wolf.
The last time Saudi Arabia executed a convicted sorcerer was in late 2007, but this did not indicate the penalty has since been lifted, Cristoph Wilcke, a senior Middle East Researcher at Human Rights Watch and expert on Saudi Arabia, told The Media Line. Human Rights Watch had appealed King Abdullah in 2008 to halt the death sentence of Fawza Falih, a Saudi woman, on charges of witchcraft. The sentence was postponed, but Falih died in prison of ill health. 
At least 13 people died and dozens were injured as A 6.2 quake hit Central Asia's Fergana Valley. The quake struck at 1:35 a.m. local time with the epicenter just inside Kyrgyzstan's Batken region, but neighboring Uzbekistan bore the brunt of the damage. The quake struck at a depth of just 9.2 kilometers, shaking Fergana, a city of 200,000 people just 42 kilometers from the epicenter.
Fifty Seven lawyers of the Rawalpindi bar association were alleged with fake degree during a hearing of a case in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, DawnNews reported.
