[An Nahar] Turkish police placed in long-term storage an Iranian passenger on a domestic flight after he attacked cabin crew because he was angered by a six-hour delay, the Anatolia news agency reported on Tuesday.
The passenger, identified only as S.R.I., was scheduled to fly from Istanbul to Antalya in southern Turkey on Monday evening on an Onur Air plane, but heavy snowfall in Istanbul caused long delays.
Turkish authorities cancelled almost 200 flights Monday in Istanbul.
Angered by a three-hour delay before boarding and another three-hour wait inside the plane, the Iranian passenger broke one of the plane's window protectors and attacked cabin crew, Anatolia reported.
He also stole food being served and attempted to force his way into the cockpit, leading the pilot to call police and an ambulance. Police placed in long-term storage the passenger and the flight was cancelled.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/01/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
I hear Turkish prisons are lovely at this time of year
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/01/2012 9:58 Comments ||
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#2
So, Angered by a delay (that probably annoyed the crew as well), he angered all the passengers by cancelling their plane and delaying them ,some for probably over a day.
[An Nahar] Hundreds of Egyptian protesters demanding the end of military rule were prevented on Tuesday from reaching parliament by backers of the Moslem Brüderbund, which holds the majority in the assembly.
"We are standing here as a human shield, because if the protesters go any further, they will clash with the police. They want to enter parliament, what do you expect me to do?" Moslem Brüderbund member Hamdy Abdul Samad told Agence La Belle France Presse.
Behind him, anti-military protesters chanted against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that took power when Hosni Mubarak ...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011... was ousted by a popular uprising last year.
Activists had called for a march from Cairo's Tahrir Square -- the symbolic heart of the Egyptian uprising -- to parliament to press the newly-elected MPs to implement the goals of the revolution.
They want the ouster of the military junta, an end to the military trials of civilians, the restructuring of the interior ministry and a guarantee of freedoms and social justice.
Islamist and secular protesters stood side by side in Tahrir Square during the 18 days of protests that toppled Mubarak in early 2011.
But tensions have risen between them since parliamentary elections propelled the long-banned Moslem Brüderbund to the center stage of politics, with its Freedom and Justice Party now controlling 47 percent of the assembly.
Secular protesters accuse the Islamists of colluding with the ruling military to maintain their new-found power.
"Badie, you are selling the revolution!" the anti-military protesters chanted, in reference to Mohammed Badie, the Islamist movement's supreme guide.
"The Moslem Brüderbund youth are blocking all roads to the parliament, preventing the anti-military protesters ... There are huge numbers of them standing in rows like militias," one anti-military protester told AFP.
Riot police was also deployed near the parliament building were MPs were holding a session.
After several hours, protesters decided to abandon their plans to reach parliament and headed to the state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
building in the Maspero district, another focal point of the protests.
Since January 25, pro-democracy groups have organized a series of rallies and protests to mark one year since the uprising that toppled Mubarak and left the military in power.
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, led by Mubarak's ex-defense minister Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, has pledged to hand power to civilian rule by June when a new president is to be elected.
The military enjoyed hero status at the start of the uprising last year for refusing to shoot on demonstrators, but became the target of protester wrath over human rights ...not to be confused with individual rights, mind you... abuses and the stifling of dissent.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/01/2012 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Kuwait's Islamist-led opposition appears headed for a key victory in this week's general election, described as crucial for the future of the oil-rich Gulf state.
The outcome of Thursday's ballot, the fourth in just under six years, is not expected to end political turmoil that has paralyzed development in OPEC's third largest oil producer, however.
"All indications show the opposition dominating the next parliament and immediately pressing for constitutional reforms," said Saad bin Taflah, a prominent political analyst.
"But I am not optimistic the elections will lead to political stability unless fundamental democratic reforms are undertaken," bin Taflah, a former information minister, told Agence La Belle France Presse.
The opposition is a loose formation of Islamists, liberals, nationalists and independents who can be united on reforms and development plans but differ on other issues.
"Thursday's polls will not lead to stability because enemies of democracy will not remain silent after their defeat," another analyst, Anwar al-Rashid, said.
"Their plan is to convince people that democracy is harmful and it is the parliament that is blocking development projects," said the secretary general of the Gulf Civil Society Forum.
The opposition groups held around 20 seats in the 50-member parliament which the emir dissolved in December following a bitter political crisis and youth-led street protests inspired by the Arab Spring.
"Based on our studies and polls, I believe the opposition will win between at least 26 and 33 seats," said Talal al-Kashti, general manager of Ittejahat Studies and Research Centre, an independent think-tank.
"(Sunni) Islamists are expected to double their strength to between 15 and 19 seats," up from nine in the dissolved chamber, Kashti told AFP.
About 50 opposition candidates are among 286 hopefuls, including 23 women, competing for seats. Kuwait has more than 400,000 eligible voters, 54 percent of them women.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/01/2012 00:00 ||
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[Iran Press TV] In a bid to secure its last outpost in South America, the British government is to deploy its most sophisticated warship to the occupied Falkland Islands to give a clear war message to Argentina.
The Ministry of Defense revealed that destroyer HMS Dauntless will sail to the South Atlantic in order to substitute frigate HMS Montrose in the coming weeks. It was claimed that the deployment was long planned but the decision is evidently put in practice when a war of words between Argentina and Britannia over the disputed Falkland islands (known as Las Malvinas to Argentina) has intensified. The islands, located about 250 nautical miles from Argentina, have been a British colony for over 180 years. However, death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... Argentina also claimed illusory sovereignty as it controlled the islands before, and the two countries fought a destructive 74-day war over the islands in 1982.
As 30th anniversary of the Argentina-Britannia war nears, the dispute over the territory is heating up once again. The British government is attempting to prevent any counter-move taken by Argentina to reclaim its occupied islands.
Jeremy Browne, Foreign Office minister in charge of Latin America, will travel to the islands in June to attend the anniversary of capturing the islands from Argentina. It was formerly announced that the Duke of Cambridge Prince William will also be posted to spend six weeks on the islands as an RAF search-and-rescue pilot next month. Buenos Aires described the move as being "provocative."
The destroyer is a £1billion warship equipped with supersonic Sea Viper missiles, radar and an air defense system, being able of shooting a cricket ball moving at three times the speed of sound out of the sky. Which is about as fast as those little suckers move...
A Navy source said that the warship could "shoot down Argentine fighters as soon as they take off from their bases," insisting the deployment would give the Argentina government "serious pause" for thinking about their claims.
Meanwhile, ...back at the desert island, Bert was realizing to his horror that he'd had only one bottle for one message, and he'd forgotten to include a return address... Foreign Secretary William Hague underplayed the deployment of the warship, claiming they were routine moves, but warning "the Royal Navy packs a considerable punch."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/01/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
Basically, Argentina's claim is based on uti possidetis juris from a Spanish claim of sovereignty even while a British settlement existed.
Seems pretty sketchy.
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
02/01/2012 12:19 Comments ||
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Citing a concern to "justify the origins of such resources", Partido Accion National (PAN) president Gustavo Madero Munoz filed a complaint with the Procuradoria General de la Republica (PGR) or attorney general demanding an investigation into the origins of the MP $25 million (USD $1.9 million) seized from two Veracruz state political operatives in Toluca, Mexico state Friday.
The filing, colloquially known as a denunciation, follows the arrest of Miguel Morales Robles, an employee of Partido Revoluionario Institucional (PRI) Veracruz governor Javier Duarte de Ochoa, and Said Sandoval Zepeda, who is reportedly on Governor Duarte's security staff after the two men had flown aboard an official Veracruz state aircraft carrying two packages -- later revealed to be a suitcase and a backpack -- containing MP $25 million, all in cash.
With the new filing he is attempting to place the financial antics -- to call them what they are -- of PRI politicians and officials front and center in the debate over who should lead Mexico for the next six years.
The flight originated in Veracruz city, the capital of Veracruz state and ended in Toluca in Mexico state. There the two men and the aircraft were met by Policia Federal (PF) agents, who subsequently detained them and seized the cash.
Morales Robles reportedly had on his person a letter from Veracruz state offices stating the money is "transportation money", and was being flown to pay 3 Industries for services to be rendered in three upcoming festivals in Veracruz City.
In an explanation provided Monday evening, Veracruz state government spokesman Gina Dominguez told an internet radio station that the cash had been gathered as a counter to the pre-holiday rush. The explanation has been met on Twitter with good deal of skepticism as various individuals have protested that the exchange looks like money laundering.
In Mexico it is not illegal for government officials to have large sums of cash on their person.
Charges were levelled by rival politicians in Veracruz state that the money had been taken to Mexico state to be used in the political campaign of PRI frontrunner Enrique Pena Nieto, which is illegal.
A similar charge that state money was being diverted to PRI electoral activities, was also laid against former PRI leader Humberto Moreira Valdes last fall as Moreira fought calls both from inside his own party and from rivals that he step down as PRI president until he provided an explanation to the massive run up of public debt in his state of Coahuila while he was governor.
Bowing to pressure, Moreira stepped down as PRI president last December 2nd.
To date the money seized last Monday remains in the possession of the PGR, which the agency refuses to release without an explanation of where the money originated.
In a press release PRI president, Pedro Joaquin Coldwell -- Moreira's replacement -- asked the two other major parties, PAN and Partido Revolucion Democratica (PRD), not to politicize the standoff between the government of Duarte de Ochoa and the PAN-staffed PGR.
Citing two other cases Pedro Joaquín Coldwell claimed were politically motivated, drug charges against former Jalisco state governor Arturo Zamora and against former Guerrero state governor Manuel Anorve, he said in his statement that charges that the money was being diverted from Veracruz state coffers to the election campaign of Pena Nieto were "willful and reckless" and "absolutely false."
Madero Munoz -- who is credited with forcing the resignation of Moreira, who left his state of Coahuila as governor with record breaking public debt -- is apparently taking a lesson from the saga of Moreira. With the new filing he is attempting to place the financial antics -- to call them what they are -- of PRI politicians and officials front and center in the debate over who should lead Mexico for the next six years.
At the moment, Madero Munoz is raising a ruckus over financial matters of PRI governors, which in Mexico is apparently a fat and easy target since PRI owns more than half of Mexico's statehouses. Last summer a report showing the large number of states with record breaking debt, including Coahuila, was used against Moreira and will likely be used in some way against PRI frontrunner Pena Nieto, who left his office as governor of Mexico state in 2011 when his term ended.
The Mexican electoral process is still in the candidate selection phase.
[An Nahar] Supporters of Vladimir Putin ...Second President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits he is the current Prime Minister of Russia. His sock puppet, Dmitry Medvedev, was installed in the 2008 presidential elections. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law. During his eight years in office Russia's economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase, poverty decrease and average monthly salaries increase. During his presidency Putin passed into law a series of fundamental reforms, including a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile... Tuesday called on people to attend a "counter-revolutionary" rally in Moscow
Remember the olden days, when Russians thought counter-revolutionaries were evil incarnate?
on the same day as Russia's opposition holds its third mass protest in the Russian capital.
Organizers called on "anti-Orangist forces" to mount a show of strength against Saturday's opposition rally, in a reference to Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution that ousted its old order from power and infuriated the Kremlin.
Their website anti-orange.ru. features little information beyond a YouTube clip that warns against a "bloodbath" triggered by opposition rallies.
"The United States has long used the 'Orange overthrow' scheme, paying discontented protestors money," the clip says, featuring footage from war-torn Libya and the Orange Revolution uprising.
One of the organizers of the pro-Putin rally, veterans group Heroes' Fund, expects up to 80,000 people to turn out, according to its chairman Vyacheslav Sivko.
The opposition hopes to attract similar numbers to its rally on the same day.
"We are against civil war, we are for stability," he said.
"What is happening now does not benefit the people, it's only a struggle for power," he said of two massive demonstrations in Moscow in December against Putin's monopoly on power ahead of his candidacy for a third term in the Kremlin.
The rally's symbol -- a man's fist strangling an orange snake -- was immediately recognized by bloggers as a copy of Stalin-era propaganda posters that called on Soviet citizens to report supposed spies in the 1930s.
Russian media reported earlier this week that newspapers in the Moscow region received instructions from the regional government on how to report on pro-Putin rallies, namely to show "happy faces, mothers with children" and avoid any mention of Putin's party United Russia.
Despite the attempt to distance the rally from United Russia or Putin himself, some of the groups listed as organizers have a connection to the authorities.
"Our superiors advised that we send people to this rally -- that would be 100 to 200 people," said Mikhail Kolchev, head of the Moscow branch of the Congress of Russian Societies, one of the listed organizers.
The Congress of Russian Societies is chaired by a parliament member in United Russia. It is a former party of current deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/01/2012 00:00 ||
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[Iran Press TV] Recent reports indicate that the US is on track for a fourth consecutive year with a budget deficit topping one trillion dollars.
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the US will be short USD 1.1 trillion in its 2012 budget, ending September 30. The CBO has revised its 973-billion dollar estimate for fiscal 2012. The budget analysis predicts the country's spending to remain unchanged, while expecting revenues to grow by 9.6 percent.
Over the past two fiscal years, the US posted a 1.3 trillion dollar deficit after posting a record 1.4 trillion dollar deficit in fiscal 2009. Under the current policies, the CBO predicts the national debt to jump to USD 15.3 trillion over the next ten years. The country's official unemployment rate is also expected to rise in 2013.
Meanwhile, ...back at the wreckage, Captain Poindexter awoke groggily, his hand still stuck in the Ming vase... the nation's gross domestic forecast (GDP) has also been revised down to two percent.
Since the 2008 economic crisis, the US budget deficit has topped the one-trillion-dollar mark.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/01/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
From the source article, in Branson's words: If we move quickly and get on top of this issue we could regulate the earth's temperature so that we need never go back into another ice age.
Utter B.S.! At least Branson did the rest of us a courtesy by spelling out the underlying flaw in all reasoning about MMGW, that humans can quickly assume command of regulating the earth's temperature. The global warmists avoid saying that because it is nonsense on stilts.
#4
Liberals gotta regulate the crap out of everything. They don't trust their fellow man or nature. Then there is a class of folks that like to take advantage of this for their own benefit. Bad combination.
#5
Ya see, this is why I blame CAPT. Jean Luc Picard + Starfleet for not dev the Sun/Star-destroying NEXUS mega-Missle - THAT D *** NGED MILYUHN-N-DILYUHN EARTHS-SIZED SUN WON'T SURRENDER LIKE FRANCE TO TINY EARTH-SIZED EARTH UNLESS IT KNOWS WE HUMANS CAN DESTROY IT IN RIGHTEOUS GLORIOUS SPACE JIHAD!
The Council on American-Islamic Relations announced Monday night that it had successfully prevented retired Lieutenant General William G. "Jerry" Boykin from speaking at an upcoming prayer breakfast at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
"We welcome Mr. Boykin's withdrawal from this event and hope that the speaker who replaces him will offer cadets a spiritual message that promotes tolerance and mutual understanding," said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad in a statement.
West Point initially balked at the calls to remove Boykin -- a former military intelligence officer -- from the event.
Lt. Col. Sherri Reed of West Point told The Associated Press that cadets are "purposefully exposed to different perspectives and cultures."
"The National Prayer Breakfast Service will be pluralistic with Christians, Jewish, and Muslim cadets participating," Reed said. "We are comfortable and confident that what retired Lt. Gen. Boykin will share about prayer, soldier care and selfless service, will be in keeping with the broad range of ideas normally considered by our cadets."
Boykin backed out of the event on his own volition, according to a report from Fox News.
The retired lieutenant general has been on CAIR's radar for casting Islam in a poor light, specifically in speeches in which he analogizing the War on Terror to a war against Satan.
CAIR and the group VoteVets.org pushed hard for a retraction of Boykin's invitation to the event due to his "Islamophobic" views.
CAIR and People For the American Way failed to stop a speech Boykin gave in Ocean City, Md., last week. This week it seems they have been successful.
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.
...Second President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits he is the current Prime Minister of Russia. His sock puppet, Dmitry Medvedev, was installed in the 2008 presidential elections. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law. During his eight years in office Russia's economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase, poverty decrease and average monthly salaries increase. During his presidency Putin passed into law a series of fundamental reforms, including a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile...
[Iran Press TV] Recent reports indicate that the US is on track for a fourth consecutive year with a budget deficit topping one trillion dollars.
