A senior member of the Sudanese government accused of supporting ethnic cleansing in Darfur has been allowed into Britain for medical treatment twice in the last six months, Scotland on Sunday can reveal. While Tony Blair and fellow international leaders have condemned the Khartoum government for complicity in looming genocide in Darfur, its intelligence chief General Salah Abdallah has been granted two visas to enter the UK for "urgent" treatment at an exclusive private hospital in London.
Between 1990 and 1996 Abdallah, also known as Al Ghosh, was Osama Bin Laden's main escort when he lived in Sudan. Since 2003, he has organised and carried out the brutal counter-insurgency operation in Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of African Sudanese have been killed by marauding Janjaweed militia. He is one of the Sudanese leaders singled out for condemnation by human rights groups and the United Nations.
But Washington has also courted Abdallah for his inside knowledge of al-Qaeda. American politicians and pressure groups reacted with fury last year after it emerged the CIA had secretly flown him to Washington for high-level meetings on sharing intelligence in the war on terror.
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United Nations peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) intervened to restore order around the Supreme Court in Kinshasa, the capital, today after demonstrators routed national police, opened fired and set a police truck ablaze in the aftermath of the announcement of presidential election results.
The UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC) said 150 men from its Uruguayan battalion reinforced local police after tear gas failed to disperse the demonstrators, while MONUC security personnel evacuated the building, protecting those inside, in the latest incident after results showed President Joseph Kabila beating Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba.
"MONUC strongly deplores this new outbreak of violence and unjustified vandalism and calls on all sides to maintain calm," the mission said in a statement, ascribing the blame to "rogue elements" among some 200 demonstrators.
Last week, UN bodies from Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the Security Council to regional UN envoys, appealed for calm, calling on "all political actors to refrain from any provocation, incitement to hatred or recourse to violence" after violence in Kinshasa had led to the deaths of four people.
The elections, the largest and most complex polls that the UN has ever helped to organize, were aimed at cementing the vast and impoverished country's transition to stability after a brutal six-year civil war, which cost 4 million lives through fighting and attendant hunger and disease. Factional fighting has remained a problem since the end of the war, especially in the east.
The elections for president, national and local assemblies, which began at the end of July and culminated with the presidential run-off on 29 October, were the first free polls in more than four decades. Throughout the long process UN agencies helped to deliver tens of millions of ballots and other supplies to some 50,000 polling stations, train 12,000 polling supervisors and plan for the safety of the 25.7 million Congolese registered to vote.
Islamist candidates swept to victory in Bahrain's parliamentary election, splitting the vote between hardline Shiite and Sunni Muslims while female and liberal candidates fared poorly in the U.S.-allied kingdom, preliminary results showed Sunday.
With several races headed for runoffs, Saturday's vote appeared to reinforce the sectarian divide between the Persian Gulf island's governing Sunni minority and the underprivileged Shiites who make up two-thirds of its 700,000 people. The results also underlined a deepening social and religious conservatism in Bahrain, which has been among the most liberal of Arab states in the region and is host to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.
Of 18 women running, only one won outright - Latifa al-Gaoud, who was unopposed in her district. Another, Munira Fakhro, advanced to a runoff next Saturday but faces a tough race against Salah Ali of the pro-government Muslim Brotherhood, a hardline Sunni group.
No secular liberal candidates won seats outright. At least four were headed for tough second-round battles with Islamic hard-liners.
The runoffs will decide whether parliament's 40-member elected chamber is dominated by pro-government Sunnis or an opposition alliance of Shiites and liberals. The latter would likely press for broad reforms to Bahrain's limited democracy, under which the ruling Khalifa family controls most levers of power.
The religious sweep in Bahrain mirrored results of elections in Iraq, Egypt and Palestinian territories, where Muslim hard-liners have made inroads. The vote was watched closely by neighboring Arab countries planning similar steps toward democracy or dealing with their own Shiite populations clamoring for power. "It looks like our parliament will be dominated by people who see themselves only as Sunnis or Shiites," said Fowad Shihab, a political science professor at Bahrain University. "These are the same Islamists that are gaining control across the Arab world."
The Shiite al-Wefaq movement, which boycotted Bahrain's 2002 election, emerged with 16 seats, the best showing of any party. "The people trusted us and we did well," said al-Wefaq leader Sheik Ali Salman, a Shiite cleric in a rolled white turban and black cloak.
Analysts expect al-Wefaq to throw their runoff support to liberals, most of whom face Sunni opponents from the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist movement.
The election, Bahrain's third parliamentary vote, captivated the nation with a rowdy, sometimes dirty campaign featuring nightly rallies in hundreds of tents scattered across the island's dusty neighborhoods. Saturday brought a huge but orderly turnout. The government said 72 percent of the 300,000 eligible voters cast ballots.
#1
Stand by for pressure being levied on us to pull our forces out of Bahrain; or see an increase in demonstrations / wanna-bee terrorist style attacks on them. It would not be a stretch to see some SAM activity around the airfield against the USAF or USN flights. That could put a serious dent in the carrier's COD usage, and that would lead to some logistics / personel issues.
DHAKA - Two people were killed and nearly 50 injured as clashes intensified between Bangladesh political rivals over elections in January. Police said the clashes involved activists of Awami League led by Sheikh Hasina and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of Begum Khaleda Zia, both former prime ministers.
One of the victims died in Chittagong port city and the other in coastal Patuakhali district. At least 10 people were hurt in clashes there, witnesses said.
Several home-made bombs went off at the Dhaka University as Awami and BNP students sought to tighten respective control on the 50,000-strong campus. Police said no one was hurt but tension was high. But some 40 students were injured in fighting between rival groups at Jagannath University, in the crowded old Dhaka area, witnesses said.
Police said they feared more violence as a pro-Awami Jubo (youth) League called for protests outside Dhakas presidential palace on Saturday afternoon.
A 14-party alliance led by Hasina and a United Front which included dissidents of the BNP have called for a siege to force countrys interim government to fire key election commission officials, including acting chief Mahfuzur Rahman. Rahman took over earlier this week after his boss, chief election commissioner M.A. Aziz went on three months leave to defuse mounting pressure from Hasinas alliance for his dismissal.
The Awami League and its allies said on Saturday they would not take part in an election under Rahman.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/26/2006 00:00 ||
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I thought the Brits had already done this in Northern Ireland - with voice recognition software cued to certain words and phrases. That was many years ago, and with all that practice and technological advancements since, they've probably got a pretty efficient system.
#3
DC is 'thinking' (by which I believe it's a done deal) about putting in microphones in 'bad neighborhoods' that will activate *only* when a gun is fired.
#4
: DC is 'thinking' (by which I believe it's a done deal) about putting in microphones in 'bad neighborhoods' that will activate *only* when a gun is fired.
Weak, in the neighborhood I adjoin the mikes only pick up .50 caliber bursts and above. All else is noise.
Let's see, do I file this under Russia or England?
Detectives investigating the death of Alexander Litvinenko were last night examining the possibility that the former spy killed himself to discredit Vladimir Putin. I guess there are some things you need to look into just to make sure you maintain your own credibility.
Increasing concerns over the reliability of the Russian dissident's death-bed testimony have prompted police to check every detail of Mr Litvinenko's version of events on 1 November, the day he said he was poisoned. Well, I for one believe he was poisoned.
The Russian dissident's death on British soil has triggered an unprecedented investigation headed by Scotland Yard's anti-terror branch and involving forensic experts and nuclear scientists from the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston. They are still trawling through hours of CCTV footage and conducting detailed searches of the places he visited on the day he fell ill. That's gotta be fun.
Meanwhile, nuclear scientists are frantically trying to establish just how radioactive was the dose of polonium-210 that killed Mr Litvinenko. Traces of the material - powerful enough to trigger a nuclear warhead - were found on tables at the Itsu sushi restaurant in Piccadilly, a London hotel, and his home in Muswell Hill. Radioactive enough to kill someone. It's not important how radioactive it is, it's important to know how much there is in any one spot.
But yesterday the Metropolitan Police were still treating Mr Litvinenko's death as an "unexplained death", not as a murder inquiry. One source close to the investigation said: "He was a guy with a colourful past. It's not straightforward." Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Officers are working on several theories, including the seemingly implausible possibility that he took his own life. Using Po. Which is rarer than hen's teeth. And has a half-life of about 140 days or so. Hmm.
The 43-year-old's death on Thursday evening has led to a health scare, with officials yesterday urging anyone who came into contact with Mr Litvinenko to contact a special helpline. The Health Protection Agency has stressed that the risk is minimal, but has also admitted that this is an "unprecedented" incident. It probably is minimal. It is probably not unprecedented.
Detectives are still no nearer to establishing just how Mr Litvinenko, a fierce critic of President Alexander Putin's regime, came to ingest such high doses of polonium. Oh, he just had some in a shoebox somewhere in case he ever wanted to die a miserable death to discredit a sitting Russian Czar Prime Minister.
The presence of radioactive particles in the restaurant where he ate more than three weeks ago adds weight to theories that the poison could have been sprinkled over his food. Maybe some got put in the salt shaker by accident? Morton makes Pollonium, too, you know. Maybe they should change the packaging so the two products don't resemble each other so much.
Some reports in the Russian press have suggested that Mr Litvinenko's death could have been a "martyrdom operation", on the grounds that no state would want to attract the attention of a radioactive poison plot. No state with enough brains not to sell military and nuclear tech to the Iranians, anyway.
But British officials warned against assuming that the spy staged his own dramatic demise. I'll try to keep that in mind.
One senior source warned: "You have to remember this guy was on his guard 24 hours a day. Normal assassination methods may well not have worked." You could put ricin in a spray bottle, too. Much easier.
LONDON, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Polonium 210, the highly toxic radioactive isotope found in the body of poisoned former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko is a very rare, exotic material that is difficult to obtain, scientists said on Friday.
Britain's Health Protection Agency (HPA) said Litvinenko, who died on Thursday in a London hospital, had a significant amount of the radioactive isotope in his body. But how it got there and where it came from is a mystery.
Hmmmm, *who* has people who work in mysterious ways ... [drums fingers] ...
Although the by-product of uranium that was discovered by Polish chemist Marie Sklodowska Curie in 1898 is found in small amounts in the environment, most of it is made synthetically. Radiation and chemistry experts say large-scale equipment, such as a nuclear reactor, would be needed to produce sufficient amounts to cause death. "It is not as simple as the idea that somebody might have broken into a radioactivity cabinet at some local hospital and walked off with some polonium," Dr Andrea Sella, a lecturer in chemistry at University College London, told Reuters.
"You can't make this at home. This is in a different league," he added.
Hmmmm, *who* has reactors that could make polonium ... [drums fingers] ...
Although scientists would not speculate on the source of the polonium, Sella said Litvinenko's death was not the work of amateurs. "This is not some random killing. This is not a tool chosen by a group of amateurs. These people had some serious resources behind them," he said.
Hmmmm, *who* has those kinds of resources ... [drums fingers] ...
Polonium-210 is a solid that can be dissolved in a solution. It is not a radiation hazard unless it is absorbed by the body by inhaling, eating or drinking it or if it gets in a wound, according to the HPA. "It decays mainly by emitting alpha particles, which are unable to penetrate a sheet of paper and so it is not a hazard unless ingested, said Professor William Gelletly of the University of Surrey.
Exposure to a short, intense burst of radiation causes major damage to key control centres in cells. Alpha particles emitted by polonium are absorbed very quickly by the body. "An alpha particle strikes a strand of DNA. It snips it in two, which is bad news, or glues two strands together. Either way normal cell repair mechanisms may be unable to sort that out," said Sella. "The result is that essentially the cellular command and control network (in the body) falls apart. That is what radiation sickness is all about," he added.
Knocks the heck out of your immune system, and since polonium is also a heavy metal it has significant effects on the kidneys. On the immune system side you have a big decrease in white cells responsible for fighting infection, loss of gastric and intestinal lining cells that ordinarily keep the outside out in the gut, etc.
Professor David Ray, of the University of Nottingham, Queens Medical Centre, said even if a high dose of radiation could not be detected externally after Litvinenko was admitted to hospital, it is still possible that a fatal dose could have concentrated in deep tissues such as bone marrow. "The limited information that has been released about Mr. Litvinenko's condition and the timing of his death is consistent with either radiation poisoning or chemicals that stop cell division," he said.
Polonium-210 also has a very short half-life. The longer the half life the less radioactivity is emitted from the material. "Polonium 210 has a half-life of 138 days. That is long enough so you can handle it and deliver it to your target and it will pack punch. A smallish amount of material will pack a significant punch," Sella said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/26/2006 00:00 ||
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This type of poisoning should be a wakeup call to the west; now terrorists will want to work on the unique properties of the alpha wave nature and light mass nature of this potential wmd source! For instance; a non mechanical [completely stealth] delivery system (ie: a balloon filled with Polonium 210 within a balloon filled with Helium).
#4
Polonium decays so rapidly it has been used as a heat source in some space probes (of note is Po-210 was used in the Soviet Lunokhod lunar rovers in the early 1970's for this purpose), so rapidly a half of gram of it will get to 500 deg C and boil itself away in a few days and so radioactive the air around it will glow a pale blue. Chunks of Polonium-beryllium (less than an inch) were used in at least the first three atomic bombs as trigger mechanisms. Some anti-static brushes used for photographic purposes contain polonium. . Extremely small amounts of this material are regarded as fatal when ingested. The maximum permissible body burden for ingested polonium can be represented by a particle weighing only 6.8 x 10-12 g. Weight for weight it is about 2.5 x 1011 times as toxic as
hydrocyanic acid. Polonium radiation has been implicated in smoking-related lung cancer, tobacco fertilized with modern phosphate fertilizers now contains minuscule amounts of polonium, but even this can be significant. The common man's most common exposure to polonium would be through cigarette smoke. You can make this at home just by burning non-organic tobacco, although the amounts released will not be enough to kill you very quickly. Possibly this contamination may be interfering with the forensic investigation into Litvinenko's death. The "trace" of polonium found so far has to be balanced against the sensitivity of the tests used.
DINERS at a sushi bar where a former Russian spy was possibly poisoned have been offered medical help. Urine tests will be offered to clients at the Itsu restaurant in Piccadilly, central London, who fear they came into contact with ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.
The Health Protection Agency asked anyone who was in the restaurant or the Pine Bar in the Millennium Hotel, Grosvenor Square, where Mr Litvinenko went on November 1 to contact NHS Direct. They will be screened using a questionnaire to find anyone who may have been in contact with him or the food he ate.
And go over them with Geiger counters ...
An HPA spokeswoman said: We expect that we are going to do tests and we expect that they are going to be negative and we have no reason to think customers are at risk.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/26/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
This can open up 'new can of worms' in the intelligence communities, and their refreshing database updates. Think about what any possible 'false negatives' will do to the psyche of people as they are 'tethered' to the system!
This guy blogs from Oaxaca, and his words and photos are amazing - go to the link for the photos..
UPDATED: Please scroll down. It has exploded!
If you just flew into Oaxaca, you're not reading this because you're stuck in the airport and you'll be there for a few hours. APPO's march started just a few minutes ago at the Government Palace at Santa María Coyotepec which effectively closes the airport highway.
If you are attempting to enter the city from Mexico City/Puebla, you may or may not be able to do that. In any event, the toll that you pay at the toll booth will go directly into the pockets of APPO.
If you are attempting to leave the city for Mexico City/Puebla/Tehuacan, turn around and come back because those highways are blocked.
If you had a meeting scheduled today with the "Voice of APPO", Cesar Mateos Benítez or Jorge Sosa, Flavio's cousin, it has been canceled. Poof! They were "disappeared" last night by PFP supersecret undercover commandos. Abracadabra. Now you see them, now you don't.
Keep an eye on this one; if it blows up big Mexico is going to be shaken to its core.
#2
It is extraordinarily bad, not in itself, but because it may be the tinderbox that ignites all of Mexico. There is a good chance that the whole freaking country could explode in a grotesque civil war like the last one they had that lasted years and was completely genocidal. It is ripe for such a disaster.
The US will have to deploy at least a Corps of military to keep the refugees out, or we could be inundated with 30 Million people overnight (out of a 107M population), and much of the Mexican and Mexican-American and ethic Mexican population of the US could become radicalized and want to continue the fighting up here.
The US may be inclined to intervene militarily as a "peacekeeping" force, and God alone knows how disasterous or not *that* might be.
#3
Hold a plebiscite on this side of the border of Mexicans [legal or otherwise] on whether they would support annexation and autonomy on the lines of Puerto Rico, with the same privileges and rights of citizens of Puerto Rico with American federal oversight of real prosecution of corruption and patronage. Tag on mandatory independence votes very 10 years. Well take any surge of refugees as a yes vote. When Mexico City expresses its outrage, just point out their sterling work on closing the border.
#4
Mexico needs an enima. If that means a revolution let it happen. Let Venezuela fund and sponser nasty folks and get themselves trapped in an unpopular war while the gringos sit this one out (okay, perhaps some targetted assassinations of drug lords but beyond that) and guard our border.
How convenient. In my mind it doesn't matter much because the Russians are still at least partialy culpable for being stupid enough to let security lapse. The US should have gone in there with an offer to secure what they could have. Did they? Isn't the half life of this stuff short enough that after a few years there wouldn't be much left? Probably enough to kill someone, but after much longer I doubt it will be useful. I'm curious what the isotope ratios were so we can find out how old this batch is. That would say a lot.
An investigation was under way last night into Russia's black market trade in radioactive materials amid concern that significant quantities of polonium 210, the substance that killed former spy Alexander Litvinenko, are being stolen from poorly protected Russian nuclear sites.
As British police drew up a list of witnesses for questioning over the death, experts warned that thefts from nuclear facilities in the former Soviet Union were a major problem. A senior source at the United Nations nuclear inspectorate, the International Atomic Energy Agency, told The Observer he had no doubt that the killing of Litvinenko was an 'organised operation' which bore all the hallmarks of a foreign intelligence agency. The expert in radioactive materials said the ability to obtain polonium 210 and the knowledge needed to use it to kill Litvinenko meant that the attack could not have been carried out by a 'lone assassin'.
Suggestions that the death may have involved some form of state sponsorship were being investigated by MI5 and MI6 who are looking at theories that foreign agents may have been behind the death of Litvinenko. Scotland Yard has asked the Kremlin for help with its inquiries, though Russia has dismissed any involvement in the death as 'absurd'. Litvinenko received British citizenship this month.
The pic at the link is SFW. Damnit.
Danish road safety officials have come up with a novel way of warning motorists about the dangers of speeding - by using topless blonde women. I've found topless blonde wymyns very useful, myownself.
They have produced a spoof news report where the blondes carry road signs showing the Danish speed limit: 50km/h. Note that this is only 31mph. No wonder it's ignored, lol.
The video - posted on the web - is aimed at grabbing the attention of young male drivers, but feminists say they hate it. Penis [mumble] envy.
Speeding has been blamed for 25% of road deaths in Denmark. Where would we be without stats? Dependent upon common sense, I guess.
Julia Pauli of the Danish road safety council told the BBC that the reaction to the Speedbandits video had been mostly positive. "If you want to reach the young people, you have to communicate on their conditions... So, topless women are working," she said. At least among the hormone-addled young men who do most of the speeding. Go figure, huh?
She said the advertising campaign had been tested and in the target group it was really positive - more than 50% said they were thinking more about the dangers of speeding when driving. Yeah, I'll bet they were, er, are.
Asked if the council would consider using a man exposing his bottom to appeal to speeding women drivers, Ms Pauli said: "Maybe. We'll see." Sure. Makes sense. In Europe.
Okay, if you've gotten this far you deserve to see what this story is about... NSFW, lol.
#3
OMFG. After five years in Eurabia, I thought I'd seen it all.
The turbaned fella seemed real enthusiastic. Hmm. Maybe they could post these chicks outside moskkks on Fridays, with signs that say "terrorists suck -- don't blow sh*t up!"
Weeks before Pope Benedict16 made his Regensburg speech, a Dutch newspaper reported on a Turkish best-seller, "Who Will Kill the Pope in Istanbul?" Click the link for reason #995843 why Turks don't deserve membership in even the depraved European Union. Their Dervishes can twirl in their own turf.
#2
Some background: http://amywelborn.typepad.com/openbook/2006/08/just_fiction.html
Is it only a novel? I have to read some wishful thinking into Turk interest in this type of work. Maybe I will write a novel about some retired CIA agents - born again Christians - who build a time machine and go back to the time that Muhammad was claiming prophet status, and debunk his claims. I will call the book: "Muhammad Made It All Up." Could I interest a Turkish publisher?
#5
IF they do kill the Pope it's the beggining of the gears for the next all out World War. I don't think it will cause the boom to start it, but I think it will be the lighting of the fuse.
Posted by: Charles ||
11/26/2006 6:34 Comments ||
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#6
Will all due respect, if Pope Benedict would pull his thumb out and call for a Crusade I will convert to Catholicism and take holy orders.
#12
It shows courage. Something to be applauded, not mocked.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/26/2006 15:41 Comments ||
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#13
Okay. Mock? And what will it accomplish? Let's be honest. He won't score any points with them because they don't share his / our reality. Period. Full stop. All that can happen is either nothing or something dumb, something for the ummah to get hinky about.
I'm glad he inspires you - honest. Doesn't do that for me.
#14
Think about it. What is the preeminent sacrifice in the Christian religion? If it takes the forfeiture of his life to awaken the West to the danger so long rationalized with the usual liberal-socialist hand wringing, why would the number one symbol of that religion not make a similar sacrifice?
#16
he's taking the risk and speaking the truth - that's courage. If he's a martyr, he's done the highest duty, and could mobilize nations.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/26/2006 21:30 Comments ||
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#17
Except that as soon as he's dead, those many who would prefer not to hear can begin forgetting the whole thing. He does more good by continuing to live and demonstrate courage by speaking aloud what those many would prefer to pretend isn't so.
#18
he's taking the risk and speaking the truth - that's courage. If he's a martyr, he's done the highest duty, and could mobilize nations.
I'm with Frank on this one and in a big way. I gave this exact issue some extensive thought last night. The risk Pope Benedict is taking has everything to do with the titanic gulf that separates Catholicism and Islam. As the Vicar of Christ, Benedict is not just obliged but beholden to emulating his Good Shepherd in every possible way.
At first blush, both Christianity and Islam would seem to share a common fixation upon martyrdom. In reality, there is a monstrous difference, in every sense of the terrible word. More often than not, Christian martyrs were sent to the stake only after, if not entirely because, they refused to renounce their belief in God. It was precisely this unwillingness to forsake their savior that brought down such wrath upon their heads.
Compare this to a so-called faith that permits its adherents to deny loyalty, feign conversion, simulate apostasy and commit a host of other cardinal sins against their own beliefs in the name of propagating said putative faith. What then is the significance of a Muslims destructive martyrdom when it all too often results in the slaughter of innocent life and the destruction of hard won property?
This is the yawning breach that divides Christianity from Islam. One refuses to disown its Supreme Being at any cost, even that of life itself. While another cheerfully dissimulates the most egregious of trespasses if that will permit even a slight advantage in besting those who would show great good humanity towards them.
.com, I am not familiar with your own religious training, but I have studied comparative religion and made a point of trying to comprehend the basis of this worlds numerous faiths. I think you may wish to reconsider your assessment of Benedicts supposed desire for any sort of shallow center ring entertainment. He in no way approaches this situation so lightly. His life is at stake, he knows it and carries forward with courage and fortitude that can only be termed as exemplary.
Not the best title since the French won't go to war over anything, but you get the idea.
Shareholders in the Franco-German aerospace group EADS are at war after the Paris government said it wanted to increase its stake in the company to fund development of a new long-range A350 aircraft for its Airbus division.
EADS cancelled a board meeting yesterday when France indicated it would block a proposal by the company's two main industrial investors to raise a substantial amount of the aircraft's 10bn (£6.78bn) launch aid from the capital markets.
Since the French would rather go down with a sinking airplane maker than make the changes that would open up their economy and generate the needed jobs.
Giving France a higher stake in EADS risks upsetting the delicate political and commercial balance. The French state and Lagardère own 29.99pc through a holding company. DaimlerChrysler owns 22.9pc, and the Spanish government 5.48pc. The rest of the shares are in free float. A source said France wants to raise its holding by up to 15pc. DaimlerChrysler has already said it wants to reduce its stake and the Bonn government is trying to ensure the shares are placed with German institutions. The German government has said it does not want to buy a direct stake in EADS.
They'd rather someone else buy the shares but at the same time don't want the French to get the upper hand. But what private German company would buy the shares given that their own government won't touch them?
EADS is in financial crisis because of delays and cost overruns on Airbus's A380 super-jumbo jet. The problems have sparked a wholesale review of Airbus operations, and a report next year is expected to recommend factory closures. If France has the upper hand in the EADS boardroom, Germany fears it could be forced to bear the brunt of any cut-backs.
You could bet the farm on that one.
The Toulouse-based Airbus believes it must fund the development of its proposed A350 extra wide body (XWB) passenger aircraft to help meet the challenge from a resurgent Boeing.
And since they can't sell paper on the commercial markets right now, they go to the governments with their hands out ...
The British government is expected to be asked to provide some launch aid for the A350 because of Airbus's extensive UK interests. The company employs 12,000 people in the UK, mostly making aircraft wings. However, any launch aid is likely be linked to promises that Airbus does not cut back its UK manufacturing sites.
This week Airbus executives were in London to set out the company's long-term market outlook, which sees demand for more than 5,000 mid-sized planes like the Dreamliner 787 A350 over two decades. Although Airbus received some orders for earlier versions of the 250-seater A350, the new XWB model, unveiled in July, has seen no contracts. The aircraft is designed to compete with Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, which has 432 firm orders. The executives said a decision on whether to press ahead with the A350 would be made before the end of November.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/26/2006 00:00 ||
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Sort of like wrestling a diving belt out of someone's hands just as the Titanic begins listing to port.
Yet another dictator who needs to be overthrown. Your turn, Europe.
MINSK - Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, berated in the West for his authoritarian methods, has ordered that children be taken from families deemed immoral and sent to orphanages. This would be done bypassing the courts under Lukashenkos decree, which was signed late on Friday and will come into force on Jan. 1, 2007.
Parents would have to repay the costs of their childrens stay in orphanages and their own homes could be confiscated.
If it is established that parents are leading an immoral life which corrupts their children, if they are hardcore alcoholics or drug addicts, or if they in any other way neglect their parental duties, their children will be placed under state guardianship, Lukashenkos press service said. Thus, such procedures are envisaged to be implemented bypassing courts, it said.
In a move strikingly similar to Soviet-era campaigns against spongers and ill-gained profits, Lukashenko said careless parents would be prosecuted if they dodged compulsory labour or misreported their real incomes.
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VILNIUS - Lithuania has arrested a man suspected of espionage, state radio reported on Saturday. The man, who was detained in a joint operation between Lithuanian and Polish security services, is a citizen of Belarus, Polish public television said on its Web site.
Polish national prosecutor Janusz Kaczmarek was quoted as saying that the arrested man has acted against Polish economic and defence interests for some time. He did not elaborate. Both the Lithuanian State security department and Foreign affairs ministry declined to comment.
The arrest follows the expulsion in October by Lithuania of a senior Russian diplomat also accused of espionage, and comes days before a NATO summit in neighbouring Latvia. Russia denied that the diplomat was involved in spying.
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Only Clinton had a perfect record, you peasants. Gotta smack this guy down before 2008.
He has been a successful venture capitalist and management consultant, and he saved the tainted 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics from scandal. But it is his single term as Massachusetts governor that is Mitt Romney's chief credential in his bid for the Republican nomination for president.
He began his term four years ago on a high note, rescuing the state from an inherited budget deficit. But now, as he prepares to leave office and focus full time on his White House aspirations, his tenure is being viewed in a more mixed fashion.
#1
St. Andrew of the Bleeding Heart and Gay Marriage Agenda ™ has noted that Romney is a Christianist and *horrors* a .....Mormon! He even posted pics on Time of the Mormon undergarments for whatever reason.... Romney better have thick skin
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/26/2006 9:03 Comments ||
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#2
Don't forget the 1972–1973 Miami Dolphins, .com.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
11/26/2006 10:06 Comments ||
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#3
Gawd amighty! You can't say the garment on a blog.
#4
Lol. Youse guys are skeery. I'm glad you're on my side. You are on my side, right? Right? I'd ask Ethel to hold me but she's Fred's squeeze. I'll hafta settle for Kim Basinger - she's available, again, I hear.
WaPo post-election story with *gasp* some truth mixed in. Who'da thunk it?
It sounded simple enough on the campaign trail: Free the government to negotiate lower drug prices and use the savings to plug a big gap in Medicare's new prescription-drug benefit. But as Democrats prepare to take control of Congress, they are struggling to keep that promise without wrecking a program that has proven cheaper and more popular than anyone imagined.
House Democrats have vowed to act quickly after taking power in January to lift a ban on Medicare negotiations with drugmakers, which they hope will save as much as $190 billion over a decade. But House leaders have yet to settle on a strategy and acknowledge that negotiation is, in any case, unlikely to generate sufficient savings to fill the "doughnut hole," the much-criticized gap in coverage that forces millions of seniors to pay 100 percent of drug costs for a few weeks or months each year. Eviiiil corporations. Continued on Page 49
Balasore (Orissa), Nov 26 (IANS) People of five villages in Orissa's Balasore district were evacuated early Sunday to safer places as India prepares to test fire two home grown missiles against each other later in the day.
In the Prithvi Air Defence Exercise (PADE), being undertaken for the first time, one missile will be fired from the shore-based Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur-on-sea and the other from Inner Wheeler Island, said a defence official. Both the test ranges are located 150 km from state capital Bhubaneswar.
The exercise is being carried out to validate the capability of the weapon to achieve its design parameters, he said.
"While the missile from the ITR will be the attacker, the missile from Wheeler Island would act as the defender and will be fired five seconds later," said a defence official.
"If their trajectory is perfectly aligned, it would be termed a success of the operational status of the Prithvi-II missile programme," the official added.
The aim of the exercise is to test the missile's ability to provide an air-shield cover to important Indian metros against hostile attacks, he explained.
"We have evacuated 600 families from Kusumalipahi, Khadupahi, Jayadevkasabapahi, Bardhanpurpahi and Bhimpurpahi villages, which are within two km area of the testing site," a district administrative official told IANS. The villagers have been moved to nearby schools.
The Prithvi is one of the five missiles being developed under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). First tested in 1988, Prithvi-I has a range of 150 km and can carry conventional or low-yield nuclear warheads for use against troops or armoured formations.
Its two variants, the Prithvi-II and Prithvi-III, have a range of 250 km and 350 km respectively.
Prithvi-II was first tested in January 1996. It flew 250 km and is said to have accurately landed at a pre-determined point. The Indian Army has already inducted Prithvi- I and II.
Prithvi-III was successfully test fired for the first time in October 2004. Prithvi-II was again test fired Nov 19.
"We are happy this test met all the parameters. This has promoted us to conduct the air-defence exercise and we hope the first ever experiment will also be fruitful," a scientist involved in the mission said.
The air-defence exercise will be followed by a three-day national conference on range technology to be held Nov 28-30 at the ITR. To be inaugurated by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the conference will be attended by 15 renowned defence scientists from the US, Britain, France, Germany and Denmark.
Posted by: john ||
11/26/2006 19:31 ||
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#1
During the exercise, two P-II missiles, one each from launching complex-3 (LC-3) of the ITR and LC-4 on the Inner Wheeler Island, would be fired. Both the missiles will have an alignment in the air before dropping into the sea.
While the missile from the LC-3 will be the attacker, the LC-4 missile would be the defender. A P-II missile from LC-4 would be fired hardly five seconds after the launching of another P-II from LC-3. If they strike each other with perfect alignment, then it would be assumed successful, defence sources said.
The main objective of the exercise is to provide an air-shield (cover) to important metros, the defence source said, adding that the missile would be parked close to the Indo-Pak and Sino-Indian borders during wartime.
Posted by: john ||
11/26/2006 19:33 Comments ||
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Russia, India and South Korea have stolen the show with their hi-tech armaments at the ongoing Defense Expo, eying Indonesia as a potential buyer.
Russia, represented by at least four arms manufacturers, is showcasing an array of defense systems, ranging from conventional military equipment to the state-of-the-art Sukhoi bomber, submarines, missiles, tanks and heavy weapon transporters.
India has been displaying weapons on par with those of Russia, with its new air-to-air and sea-to-air missiles attracting the attention of expo visitors.
Also vying for attention at the show is South Korea, which has been exhibiting main battle tanks, armored recovery vehicles, armored personnel carriers, heavy equipment transporters, armored combat vehicles and corvettes, small armed escort ships.
South Korean giants Samsung, Hyundai and Rotem have contributed to the development of the country's defense system.
#1
I would think that Indonesia ought to invest in a tsunami warning system first, but what do I know?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/26/2006 11:31 Comments ||
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#2
Amen, AP.
Funny though, why would the Russkies, et al, think the Indos are gonna be needing hi-tech defense systems? When were they last invaded or attacked by anything more than machete-wielding natives?
#3
The corvettes would be useful and cost-effective in anti-piracy operations... Personally, I think we should be building this class of ships ourselves, instead of bloated money-hogs like the DDX.
Pseudo-Science, WaPo.
At hundreds of screenings this year of "An Inconvenient Truth," the first thing many viewers said after the lights came up was that every student in every school in the United States needed to see this movie. Cuz it's so truthy.
The producers of former vice president Al Gore's film about global warming, myself included, certainly agreed. So the company that made the documentary decided to offer 50,000 free DVDs to the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) for educators to use in their classrooms. It seemed like a no-brainer.
#4
So let's see, on one side we have long-established American industries which produce trillions of dollars in revenue every year while providing vast amounts of energy, paper and wood resources for our economy. They also employ millions of workers, directly and indirectly, and have created tremendous prosperity for all. They also need the scientists of tomorrow to have good educations, as many of them will be their future employees.
Okay, these would be the good guys.
On the other side, there are people who for their entire adult lives have worked in government, or non-productive, non-profit advocacy organizations.
They admittedly are willing to twist the truth for their own political ambitions; are more than willing for the American people to sacrifice their prosperity, not so that other nations will increase their own, but so that by having less, America will be more like these less-prosperous nations.
Last but not least, they are not supporting science education in any way, just offering some inexpensive DVDs full of dubious information with hopes that school children will grow up to be as misinformed, anti-business and anti-American as they are.
Schools should never be used for political soapboxing, but those who pay a substantial amount to help students learn also have a right to omit criticisms against themselves, as long as what they do provide is scientifically valid. Teachers are both able and willing to fill in any blanks left behind.
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.
A senior member of the Sudanese government accused of supporting ethnic cleansing in Darfur has been allowed into Britain for medical treatment twice in the last six months, Scotland on Sunday can reveal. While Tony Blair and fellow international leaders have condemned the Khartoum government for complicity in looming genocide in Darfur, its intelligence chief General Salah Abdallah has been granted two visas to enter the UK for "urgent" treatment at an exclusive private hospital in London. 
United Nations peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) intervened to restore order around the Supreme Court in Kinshasa, the capital, today after demonstrators routed national police, opened fired and set a police truck ablaze in the aftermath of the announcement of presidential election results.
DHAKA - Two people were killed and nearly 50 injured as clashes intensified between Bangladesh political rivals over elections in January. Police said the clashes involved activists of 
LONDON, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Polonium 210, the highly toxic radioactive isotope found in the body of poisoned former Russian spy 
Weeks before Pope Benedict16 made his Regensburg speech, a Dutch newspaper reported on a Turkish best-seller, "Who Will Kill the Pope in Istanbul?" Click the link for reason #995843 why Turks don't deserve membership in even the depraved European Union. Their Dervishes can twirl in their own turf.
VILNIUS - Lithuania has arrested a man suspected of espionage, state radio reported on Saturday. The man, who was detained in a joint operation between Lithuanian and Polish security services, is a citizen of Belarus, Polish public television said on its Web site.
