Bonjour Planet Earth

Thursday, February 07, 2013

Catholic Church enslaved 30,000 Irish women as forced unpaid labor in Magdalene Laundries until 1996...

What a horrific story. The Irish Prime Minister gave a partial apology today for the government’s role in a 74-year scandal in which, a new official government report says, over 10,000 women were forced to work without pay at commercial laundries called Magdalene Laundries, operated by the Catholic Church for “crimes” as small as not paying a train ticket.

Wikipedia notes that the estimate of the number of women who were used as forced slave labor by the Catholic Church in Ireland alone goes as high as 30,000 over the entire time the Magdalene laundries were in operation.

The last Magdalene laundry closed in 1996.

The women were locked in and not permitted to leave. And if they tried to get away, the cops would catch them and bring them back. They were quite literally Catholic slave labor working for the government and even Guinness, which would pay the laundries for the women’s slave labor.

Half of the girls enslaved in these Catholic Church prisons were under the age of 23. The youngest entrant was 9 years old. Full story...

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Wednesday, February 06, 2013

The drone ranger...

A recent Pew Survey found that 73 percent of surveyed Americans don’t have faith that lawmakers, particularly Congress, will, or are capable of doing the right thing. Should this be a surprise to anyone except our corporate controlled criminal government? With the exploits of key government officials and their scandals out in the open, are these results any surprise? On the whole, recent developments on the high-tech weapons front concretely justify America’s mistrust of their elected officials.

When Obama campaigned for his present job in 2008, he promised to stop the torture of prisoners as well as the unsanctioned murders. He also promised to close Guantanamo. He roundly chastised the criminality of the Bush administration for participating in the aforementioned crimes. A little over four years later, the torturing of prisoners continues, Guantanamo is still open and murders of nonmilitary targets have exponentially increased through the use of drones.

Since 2009, Obama’s minions, through aerial assaults also have killed three U.S. citizens as well as countless of innocent civilians in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Obama’s actions begs the question as to whether the president has the right to order the death of Americans without due process of law. Full story...

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Money-losing UBS under fire for lavish bonuses...

Switzerland’s largest bank is facing criticism for handing out 2.5 billion francs in bonuses to its top managers after posting a net loss for around the same amount in 2012.

UBS on Tuesday reported the massive loss, much of it attributable to fines from the Libor rate fixing fraud and to restructuring costs relating to job cuts.

But the bank also announced major bonuses and recommended a 50 percent increase in its dividend to 15 cents a share.

“Good work is rewarded, poor work is penalized — that’s one of the rules dictated by our capitalism,” articles published online by French-language 20 Minutes and the German-language 20 Minuten, highlighting the plum bonuses, say.

“But the reality is different.” Full story...

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Sri Lanka: Chief justice sacked amid fresh repression...

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The sacking of the chief justice is yet another indication of the dictatorial nature of the Rajapaksa government. Repressive laws such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act enable detention without trial. Journalists and others critical of the government have been murdered or disappeared.

The most severe repression continues to be suffered by Tamils in the north and east of the island of Sri Lanka. But the repressive practices developed for use against the Tamils are increasingly being applied in the predominantly Sinhalese south.

Vickramabahu Karunaratne, the general secretary of the New Socialist Party (NSSP), said: “This regime is based on Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism and its real form was tempered in Tamil areas.

“It is in the north that the regime experimented with its fascist-styled repressive apparatus. Now it is ready to give a taste of it to the plebeian masses in the south as well.” Full story...

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The relentless march of the US police state...

Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University, wrote recently:

An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will. . . . Since 9/11, we have created the very government the framers feared: a government with sweeping and largely unchecked powers resting on the hope that they will be used wisely.

Turley does not say much in this article about the other rail of the Police State Railway that Americans are riding to hell: the drug war, with its massive arrests, prosecution, and imprisonment of people charged only with victimless crimes and its militarization of the state and local police all over the country. (On the militarization of the police, see especially this research paper, a revised version of which will appear in the spring issue of The Independent Review.) This massive bloating of police power and legalized oppression and the corresponding suppression of individual rights have brought down to the lowest level the threats to life, liberty, and happiness that the war on terrorism has created in what most people view as a more remote and less threatening venue—”out there” somewhere, in drone-istan.

Each day, the U.S. police state grows larger, more powerful, more pervasive, and more menacing. When will the majority awaken to the realization that this threat has nothing to do with party politics, that it makes no difference whether a Republican or a Democrat occupies the presidency while our freedoms are demolished? Full story...

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Huge victory against fluoride in Australia...

Nearly 200,000 Australians have been released from the medical slavery that is artificial water fluoridation thanks to a major governmental policy change. The Liberal National Party (LNP) government of the Australian state of Queensland has not only cut $14 million of funding that had previously been used for fluoridation, but has also decided to allow local councils to decide for themselves whether or not to fluoridate, a move that has already prompted the northern city of Cairns to end its water fluoridation program.

As reported by The Australian, former "One Nation" member of parliament (MP) Rosa Lee Long, who is now mayor of the north Queensland Tablelands Regional Council, successfully lobbied LNP to end a longstanding policy that compelled local communities to fluoridate without approval from local residents. The government of Queensland last year also ended a policy that required larger communities to fluoridate their water, which is similar to existing fluoridation mandates in California and elsewhere.

So by the middle of March, Cairns' more than 150,000 area residents will no longer be exposed to fluoride chemicals in the water, making it the seventh community in Queensland to end water fluoridation so far this year. Murgon, Wondai, Kingaroy, Nanango, Blackbutt, and South Burnett have all ended their water fluoridation programs since January which, combined with the area population of Cairns, represents nearly 200,000 people who will no longer be forcibly medicated with an unapproved drug. Full story...

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Nowhere to hide: New Facebook app to track offline users...

Those concerned about Facebook’s controversial privacy policies may have yet another reason to worry. The social network is reportedly developing a smartphone application which will track the location of its users – even when the app isn't running.

The app is scheduled to be released in mid-March, two anonymous sources told Bloomberg.

It’s allegedly designed to help users find nearby friends by revealing those friends’ locations. But unlike Facebook’s current mobile app, which allows users to let others know where they are by “checking in” at a location, the new app would continuously follow the user once the program is activated.

The app would track user whereabouts in the “background” of Apple’s mobile operating system – even when the app isn’t open on the phone, one of the sources said. It remains unclear whether the app will run on other platforms.

It’s a technique that would likely require the social networking site to ask permission from users. But there’s a loophole – Facebook may have already gotten consent from its users to run the feature. Full story...

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Tuesday, February 05, 2013

'Racism in their DNA': Israeli fan fury as football team signs Muslims...

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Sexual encounters allegedly an "everyday thing" among students at California pre-school...

Sexual encounters between 4- and 5-year-old students were allegedly an "everyday thing" at a private California preschool that is closing its doors after coming under attack for a lack of supervision, the mother of a 5-year-old former student said.

"It's unfathomable on so many levels. For one, that it actually happened. For two, where it happened. For three, how often something happened," the mother of the girltold ABC-owned station in Los Angeles KABC-TV in an exclusive interview.

Some students in the preschool class at the First Lutheran Church of Carson School in Carson, Calif., would engage in oral sex during nap time, in the tunnel slide on the playground and in an outside bathroom, attorney Greg Owen told ABCNews.com.

Owen had planned to file a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of four students today, but he said he had decided to put that plan on hold as new students come forward. Full story...

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All eyes on Singapore's betting underworld...

Revelations that a Singapore-based crime syndicate has been heavily involved in fixing football matches around the world has put extra pressure on authorities in the Southeast Asian city-state to take action against the alleged ringleader.

The Singaporean businessman known as Dan Tan has been placed on Italy's wanted list and has been implicated in various investigations into football corruption, including Monday's revelations in The Hague by the European police agency Europol. He has avoided arrest in his homeland.

The Singapore Police Force said over the weekend it was assisting the Italian authorities through Interpol and has given information requested by the National Central Bureau in Rome, but had not charged Tan.

The Football Association of Singapore on Tuesday said it is continuing 'to work closely with the relevant authorities, both at the domestic and international levels.' Full story...

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54 countries helped CIA to kidnap, detain and torture...

At least 54 countries including Syria, Iran, Sweden, Iceland, and UK offered CIA “covert support” to detain, transport, interrogate and torture suspects in the years following the 9/11 attacks, according to a new report.

The 213-page report released by the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), a New York-based human rights organization, documents wide-ranging international involvement in the American campaign against Al-Qaeda.

The report, titled Globalizing Torture, provides a detailed account of other countries covertly helping the US to run secret prisons, also known as ‘black sites’ on their territory and allowing the CIA to use national airports for refueling while transporting prisoners.

Countries listed in the report include many from the Middle East and Europe.

(...)

In Egypt, Pakistan, Libya, Jordan, Afghanistan, Malawi and Morocco the existence of secret prisons and the use of torture are documented.

The report describes Egypt as “the country to which the greatest numbers of rendered suspects have been sent [by the US].” Many suspects held in Egypt described having been tortured. Full story...

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STAND up for your health: The scary truth about sitting ...

In today's workplace, the majority of people sit for eight or more hours per day. Think your desk job isn't affecting your health? Think again. A sedentary lifestyle, at home or work negatively impacts your health in multiple ways. Smoking, alcohol, lack of exercise and junk food are all detrimental to our health... we need to add sitting to that list as well. "Sitting diseases" are quickly lowering our lifespans and increasing our healthcare costs.

Sitting requires little to no energy expenditure, "calorie burning drops to one per minute," greatly reduces activation of low back muscles, "electrical activity in the legs shut off, enzymes that help break down fat drop by 90 percent." After two hours, good cholesterol levels drop by 20 percent and after 24, insulin effectiveness drops by 24 percent; your risk of developing diabetes rises. "People with sitting jobs have twice the rate of cardiovascular disease as people with standing jobs. Sitting six-plus hours per day makes you up to 40 percent likelier to die within 15 years than someone who sits fewer than three, even if you exercise" (MedicalCoding&Billing.org). Some of us even spend more time sitting than sleeping.

Sitting affects our internal body systems negatively and our spinal musculature and strength. Remaining seated for prolonged periods of time causes our low back muscles to "take a back seat." If the muscles aren't working properly, other structures, ligaments and intervertebral discs must work overtime (Morl, 2012). Our trunk muscles become deconditioned and lazy. The increase in our sitting times and low back pain are related. The hip flexor muscle (iliopsoas) becomes short and tight with sitting and plays a major role in lower back pain. Lower back pain patients have "atrophy of lumbar muscles," especially the longissimus and multifidi; inactivity and inactivation of such muscles is to blame, sitting being the main culprit (Morl, 2012). The study also found that "lumbar muscle activation does not differ when seated on an exercise ball, different dynamic office chairs or on a reference chair." Full story...

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Singing is un-Islamic, says Grand Mufti to Kashmir girls rock band...

Freedom of speech has come under threat once again in India. This time a all-girls rock band of Kashmir has been bullied and threatened by Muslim organisations to stop singing.

Praagaash - the Valley's first all-women rock band, initially faced threats and abuses online, now, Muslim groups have said singing is "un-Islamic".

Grandmufti of Jammu and Kashmir Bashiruddin Ahmad on Sunday, Feb 3 termed singing as "un-Islamic" and asked them to abandon it.

The Grandmufti issued a decree, terming singing as un-Islamic.

"I have said that singing is not in accordance with Islamic teachings," Ahmad said.

The cleric said he has advised the members of the rock band to "abandon" singing as it is against Islamic teachings and will not help them in playing any constructive role in the society.

"Society cannot be built or developed by doing un-Islamic acts like singing. I have advised these girls, and other Muslims as well, to stay within the limits of modesty as prescribed for them," he added. Full society...

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Farmer suicides in India...

On January 14, during Makar Sankranti, a major festival, when India's farming community traditionally conducts elaborate rituals to celebrate a bountiful harvest, two young farmers committed suicide in the Vidarbha region of southern Maharashtra.

Caught in the complex interplay of spiraling debt, failed crops and governmental apathy, cotton farmers Ramu Shende, 37, and Sanjay Mahurle, 36, killed themselves by drinking pesticide.

The two deaths also set in motion the farm suicide spiral with which Vidarbha grapples every year. In the first month of this year alone, for instance, mounting debt and distress due to crop losses have claimed the lives of 10 farmers, which led the region's farm widows and bereaved families to mark Republic Day (January 26) as `Black Day'.

Not for nothing is Vidarbha dubbed India's `farmer suicide capital'. However, over the past few years the area has been reeling under its worst agrarian crisis ever. leading to an escalation in the number of suicides. In 2006, 1044 farmers killed themselves in the impoverished region while last year, 1,000 suicides were recorded. Full story...

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Monday, February 04, 2013

The other side of French airstrikes on Mali: ‘They ruined everything I had'

French President Francois Hollande is triumphant about his operation in Mali, but stories are emerging which show a different side of the war. Journalist Gonzalo Wancho tells RT that for every two rebels killed in airstrikes, a dozen civilians died.

“We’re learning what happened in battle day by day. In the town of Konna, we heard stories from the fog of war. [Rebels] fled to the north when French troops showed up. It’s reported that the cost of that victory was high. While French planes killed only two rebels, the number of civilian casualties were an estimated 14,” journalist Gonzalo Wancha told RT.

It comes just days after French President Francois Hollande declared “victory” in northern Malian cities. But the victory also had its price:

“I wasn’t home when the bombing began. I started praying when I learned my house was under attack. They ruined everything I had – my family and my livelihood. [My children were 11, 10, and 6]. They all died,” Idrís Meiga, a farmer from Konna, told RT. Full story...

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Hacker blackmailed 350 women into stripping on their webcams, FBI says...

The FBI has arrested a 27-year-old man, who they claim hacked the accounts of Facebook users, and coerced hundreds of women into stripping while he watched via Skype.

Karen "Gary" Kazaryan, of Glendale, California, was arrested yesterday on federal computer hacking charges.

According to a Department of Justice press release, Kazaryan is alleged to have broken into victims' email and Facebook accounts, changed their passwords, and searched for naked and semi-naked photographs.

Additionally, Kazaryan is said to have scooped up other information about his victims, including their passwords, names of their friends, and other personal details.

Posing as a woman, Kazaryan would allegedly trick other potential victims into believing they were talking to one of their female friends, and persuade them to remove their clothing in front of their webcam. Full story...

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Top European football matches 'fixed' (Video)

The European Union police agency has found evidence of match-fixing of some top international football games.

Europol head Rob Wainwright said it had carried out the biggest-ever investigation into match-fixing in Europe and described the findings as a "big problem for the integrity of European football".

Attempts to fix around 380 professional matches were identified, involving up to 425 match and club officials, players and criminals from more than 15 countries.

These included qualification matches for the World Cup and the European championships, plus two Uefa Champions League matches, one played in England.

Europol said the match-fixing generated £6.9m of betting profits in Germany alone - and there were corrupt payments of at least £1.73m to those involved. Watch video...

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Timbuktu: the women singled out for persecution...

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Perhaps inevitably, the women of Timbuktu were singled out for special persecution. Miss Maiga committed two offences in Islamist eyes: she sometimes failed to cover her face when venturing out. Most heinously of all, she carried pictures of Western pop stars, notably Celine Dion, on her mobile phone.

The latter crime was discovered by four Islamist gunmen who stopped her in the street last November. When they saw the offending images, they beat her with a whip made from camel skin.

"I did not count how many times they hit me," she said.

From then on, they kept track of her movements and watched the home that she shares with her parents and siblings.

In late November, she ventured outside to hang some laundry – and a gunman noticed she was apparently unveiled. Full story...

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Valerie Trierweiler to be treated as 'honorary wife' on Hollande's Indian state visit...

Valerie Trierweiler, the partner of Francois Hollande, will be treated as his "honorary wife" on a state visit to India to avoid protocol problems.

Hardline religious leaders had demanded that the French president travel alone to India on the trip later this month because of his unmarried status.

The Indian government however has now agreed to relax their diplomatic rules and treat the 47-year-old divorcee as his legal wife according to the Asian Age newspaper.

The decision to welcome Ms Trierweiler as the president's wife on February 14 is a marked difference from five years ago, when Carla Bruni did not even travel to India with her then boyfriend Nicolas Sarkozy.

Julia Gillard, the Australian prime minister, faced similar problems in Australia, when her partner Tim Mathieson elected not to come. Full story...

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Paris women allowed to wear trousers after two centuries!!!

A 200-year-old law forbidding women to wear trousers in Paris has finally been revoked.

On January 31, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, France's minister of women's rights, made it officially impossible to arrest a woman for wearing trousers in the French capital.

The law required women to ask police for special permission to "dress as men" in Paris, or risk being taken into custody.

In 1892 and 1909 the rule was amended to allow women to wear trousers, "if the woman is holding a bicycle handlebar or the reins of a horse." Full story...

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Village in Saudi Arabia fights off baboon invasion!

A minor war has broken out south of Qunfudah in the village of Kiad where large groups of hungry baboons from nearby valleys are attacking residences in search of food and drink. Residents have employed a variety of methods to combat the primates but it is still a daily battle from sunrise to sunset.

Hussein Al-Barakati, a resident of Kiad, said that he feared for his mother’s safety as she lives alone near the valley. Baboons raid her home from time to time in search of water. Weather conditions have left the valley parched and prompted the baboons to forage among the humans.

Hussain said that he did not find it inconceivable that a major disaster would strike the village because of baboons invading people’s homes, noting that some of the animals are quite large.
Adel Medini, from the town of Helli, has his own take on the recent scourge of baboons: “It’s a daily game of hide and seek. The baboons are targeting empty houses and are well aware of what they are doing. Full story...

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India: 68,000 cases of rape in 2009-11 but only 16,000 convicted...

Nearly 68,000 rape cases were registered across the country during 2009-11 but only 16,000 rapists were sentenced to prison, presenting a dismal picture of conviction of sexual offenders.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, 24,206 rape cases were registered in India in 2011 but only 5,724 people were convicted for the crime.

Similarly, in 2010, 22,172 rape cases were registered while the number of convicted persons for the crime was 5,632.

A total of 21,397 rape cases were registered in 2009 but only 5,316 persons could be convicted.

(...)

"The poor rate of conviction is primarily due to prosecution's inability to gather enough evidence against the accused following inadequate police investigation," a Home Ministry official said.

The NCRB data shows there were 1,22,292 cases of molestation during 2009-11 but only 27,408 people could be convicted for the offence during the said period. Full story...

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30,000 Golden Dawn supporters march in Athens under neo-nazi banners...

Tens of thousands of black-clad neo-Nazis have rallied in Athens in support of Greece's far-right Golden Dawn party, in the movement's biggest show of support since it emerged from obscurity to win 7 percent of the vote in last June's general election.

Billed as a remembrance rally, the event in central Athens on 2 February attracted a crowd of 30,000 to honour three "fallen heroes" of the party. Men dressed in military fatigues, baseball caps and swastikas lit torches and fired flares, chanting anti-immigration slogans.

"We are winning the hearts and minds of the people, because we say it as it is," Golden Dawn spokesman Ilias Kassidiaris told supporters.

(...)

"They calls us fascists, thugs and criminals," says Vassilis, a 23-year-old recruit who joined the party because of his disenchantment with the country's political elite.

"We're nationalists. We're patriots. And if these guys who ruled the country for decades had a fibre of the nationalism we're running on, they would have never brought the country to its current predicament." Full story...

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Sunday, February 03, 2013

Meet the unlikely group that saved Timbuktu’s manuscripts...

The saving of Timbuktu’s priceless manuscripts owes everything to the bravery of an unlikely group — librarians.

The coalition of Tuareg separatists and Islamic militants who overran the city last April were just the latest in a series of foreign invaders to sweep into the fabled desert city, so the owners of Timbuktu’s manuscripts did what they have always done — they hid them.

An ancient city squeezed between the Niger River and the Sahara Desert, Timbuktu was a center of Islamic scholarship and trans-African trade in its Medieval heyday but has gradually declined in the centuries that followed. The city's manuscripts are a unique treasure trove of scholarly information. Handwritten and many hundreds of years old, they are irreplaceable.

Each time foreign invaders threaten Timbuktu — whether a Moroccan army in the 16th century, European explorers in the 18th, French colonialists in the 19th or Al Qaeda militants in the 21st — the manuscripts disappear beneath mud floors, into cupboards, boxes, sacks and secret rooms, into caves in the desert or upriver to the safety of Mopti or Bamako, Mali’s capital. Full story...

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Flu 'epidemic' numbers don't add up: Vaccine scare tactics strike again...

The federal government has a nasty habit of hyping up the severity of the flu every year in order to scare as many people as possible into getting annual flu shots; and this year is no exception. Even though available scientific data fails to show that flu shots even work as promised, authorities are continuing to push them on the public anyway, citing shaky figures about alleged infection rates that leave more questions than answers as to whether or not this year's flu "epidemic" is really as severe as we are all being told.

The mainstream media is currently reporting, for instance, that 9.8 percent of the deaths tabulated in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s 122 Cities Mortality Reporting System for the week of January 13-19 were caused by pneumonia and influenza, and that people should get their flu shots immediately to avoid this worsening epidemic. The official epidemic threshold for the flu is considered to be 7.3 percent of deaths, which based on the 9.8 percent rate translates into a 34 percent surplus in apparent flu deaths above and beyond this threshold.

But in the very same breath, the CDC also admits that only about 26 percent of people who have visited their doctors or local emergency rooms with flu-like symptoms actually ended up having the flu. This implies that about three-quarters of all the earlier-reported cases of the flu from months back, when authorities were aggressively hounding people to get their flu shots to avoid the coming "epidemic," were not actually the flu at all. Does this also mean that only a small fraction of the CDC's reported 9.8 percent of flu deaths were actually caused by the flu? Full story...

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"Goblin attack" closes Zimbabwe clinic, nurses refuse to return to work...

Nurses at Irisvale Clinic in Umzingwane, Matabeleland South, reported attacks by suspected goblins and refuse to go back to work.

Villagers said the four nurses stationed at the health institution fled in Noevember following the mysterious attacks.

“The goblins have been a problem since last year,” said Mhelethi Moyo, a local villager.

“It is now closed and nurses have vowed not to come back. Last year we had to contribute some money to bring a traditionalist from Lower Gweru to cleanse the place, but the goblins are still there.”

The goblins are alleged to have sexually abused female nurses at night. Some of the nurses are reported to have sought refuge at Esigodini and Umzingwane clinics, according to Newsday. Full story...

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Lies, damned lies, and newspaper reporting…

(...)

But worse was to come. The next day The Guardian newspaper, which historically fell out with Wikileaks, published a myopic hit-piece about the event. No mention of all the whistleblowers who attended and what they said, no mention of the award to Dr Fingar, no mention of the fact that his work saved the Iranian people from needless war.

Oh no, the entire piece focused on the tawdry allegations emanating from Sweden about Julian Assange’s extradition case. Discounting the 450 students who applauded all the speeches, discounting all the serious points raised by Julian Assange during his presentation, and discounting the speeches of all the other internationally renowned whistleblowers present that evening, The Guardian’s reporter, Amelia Hill, focused on the small demo outside the event and the only three attendees she could apparently find to criticise the fact that a platform, any platform, had been given to Assange from his political asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy.

So this is where we arrive at the deep, really deep, hypocrisy of the evening. Amelia Hill is, I’m assuming, the same Guardian journalist who was threatened in 2011 with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. She had allegedly been receiving leaks from the Metropolitan Police about the on-going investigation into the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. Full story...

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As self-immolations near 100, Tibetans question the effect...

A crowd of Tibetans came here to India’s capital last week, bearing flags and political banners and a bittersweet mixture of hope and despair. A grim countdown was under way: The number of Tibetans who have set themselves on fire to protest Chinese rule in Tibet had reached 99, one short of an anguished milestone.

Yet as that milestone hung over the estimated 5,000 Tibetans who gathered in a small stadium, so did an uncertainty about whether the rest of the world was paying attention at all. In speeches, Tibetan leaders described the self-immolations as the desperate acts of a people left with no other way to draw global attention to Chinese policies in Tibet.

“What is forcing these self-immolations?” Lobsang Sangay, prime minister of the Tibetan government in exile, asked in an interview. “There is no freedom of speech. There is no form of political protest allowed in Tibet.”

Billed as the Tibetan People’s Solidarity Campaign, the four-day gathering featured protests, marches, Buddhist prayer sessions and political speeches in an attempt to push Tibet back onto a crowded international agenda. If the Arab Spring has inspired hope among some Tibetans that political change is always possible, it has also offered a sobering reminder that no two situations are the same, nor will the international community respond in the same fashion. Full story...

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Saudi preacher gets off light for raping, killing daughter...

A Saudi preacher who raped his five-year-old daughter and tortured her to death has been sentenced to pay "blood money" to the mother after having served a short jail term, activists said on Saturday.

Lamia al-Ghamdi was admitted to hospital on December 25, 2011 with multiple injuries, including a crushed skull, broken ribs and left arm, extensive bruising and burns, the activists said. She died last October 22.

Fayhan al-Ghamdi, an Islamic preacher and regular guest on Muslim television networks, confessed to having used cables and a cane to inflict the injuries, the activists from the group "Women to Drive" said in a statement.

They said the father had doubted Lama's virginity and had her checked up by a medic.

Randa al-Kaleeb, a social worker from the hospital where Lama was admitted, said the girl's back was broken and that she had been raped "everywhere", according to the group. Full story...

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Saturday, February 02, 2013

Harvard asks dozens of students to leave for cheating...

Harvard University has imposed academic sanctions on dozens of students for cheating in a final exam, a dean said in an email to students.

"More than half" of 125 students under investigation were asked to leave for a period of time; others face probation.

An inquiry began when a tutor noticed identical answers to a take-home exam for an undergraduate politics course.

The review expanded to include nearly half the 279 students enrolled in the course, the Harvard Crimson said.

Correspondents say there have been complaints that exam rules for the Introduction to Congress class were unclear, and over the university's handling of the investigation. Full story...

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Man (50) bashed by schoolchildren after being caught raping girl (12)

A Pumula South man who was on Monday assaulted by schoolchildren after being caught red handed raping a 12-year-old girl has appeared in court.

Ndabezinhle Smith Nyathi (50), of 20353 Pumula South is now facing two counts of rape after another 12-year-old girl positively identified him at a police identification parade on Thursday as the man who also raped her.

Nyathi allegedly raped the girl two years ago at a bush between Pumula South and Pumula East.

He would allegedly ambush school children on their way back from school and drag them into a bush between Pumula East and Pumula South where he would allegedly rape them.

It is alleged that he would threaten to kill them if they screamed or told anyone about the matter before letting them go. Full story...

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A smartphone so tempting that even its thief was robbed!!!

Stealing someone’s iPhone or iPad has become known as “Apple picking,” and New York City is quite the bountiful orchard.

Apples are picked on crowded subways, in quiet parks, on busy street corners, in loud bars. Apples are picked while people are talking on the phone, the picker dashing past and doing the deed in midstride.

It has gotten so bad, the police have said, that if it weren’t for Apple picking, crime would have been down last year, when there were almost 16,000 thefts, accounting for 14 percent of all crimes.

But even jaded police officers who have seen more than their fair share of iPhone and iPad thefts were shaking their heads over one stunning robbery that unfolded recently in Brooklyn.

This particular Apple was not just picked, it was picked twice, a white blur as it flew from hand to hand to hand on the same afternoon. And one of those hands seemingly belonged to that timeless character from countless police stories: the dumb criminal. Full story...

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Spying on computer use illegal, top court says in Switzerland...

Employers cannot use spy software to collect information about the computer activities of employees, Switzerland’s supreme court has ruled.

The ruling, released on Thursday, struck down a decision, earlier approved by the Ticino cantonal government, on the firing of a civil servant found to be spending too much time pursuing unprofessional activities on the internet.

The municipality of Bellinzona used “spyware” to monitor the computer use of a manager working for the local civil protection service for a period of more than three months.

The software revealed that the the employee spent more than 20 percent of his time on computer activities unrelated to his job, such as private banking, social media and watching videos, some of which were of a pornographic nature, the ATS news agency reported. Full story...

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Giant python babysits 13-year-old boy!!!

A DAD has found the perfect nanny for his son - a giant PYTHON.

Chan Liu leaves 13-year-old Azhe home alone with the 220lb snake in Dongguan, southern China.

And instead of keeping her in a cage, Azhe amazes locals by kissing and cuddling the 15ft predator.

He said: "She's very careful with me and never squeezes too hard."

Azhe was born six years after his dad brought home a python egg and hatched it out. Full story...

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Suicide among US veterans 22 per day, 3 times national rate...

A new official US study says that nearly 22 war veterans of the country commit suicide per day, an estimate that is almost 20 percent higher than the 2007 rate suggested by government’s Department of Veteran Affairs (VA).

The two-year study, performed by a VA researcher, further suggests that two-thirds of the veterans who kill themselves are 50 year old or older, indicating that the surge in the suicide rate among US veterans is not chiefly shaped by soldiers that recently fought in the US-led war in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Washington Post reports on Friday.

“The rate is going up in the country, and veterans are a part of it,” said VA epidemiologist Robert Bossarte, who conducted the study, further showing that the overall number of suicides in the United States climbed by about 11 percent between 2007 and 2010. Full story...

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The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery?

Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million – mostly Black and Hispanic – are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don’t have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.” The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population, but only 5% of the world’s people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.

What has happened over the last 10 years? Why are there so many prisoners? Full story...

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