Bonjour Planet Earth

Friday, June 24, 2016

Britain votes to leave EU, unleashing global turmoil...

Britain has voted to leave the European Union, results from Thursday's referendum showed, a stunning repudiation of the nation's elites that deals the biggest blow to the European project of greater unity since World War Two.

World financial markets plunged as complete results showed a near 52-48 percent split for leaving. The vote created the biggest global financial shock since the 2008 economic crisis, this time with interest rates around the world already at or near zero, stripping policymakers of the means to fight it.

The pound suffered its biggest one-day fall in history, plunging more than 10 percent against the dollar to hit levels last seen in 1985. The chief ratings officer for Standard & Poor's told the Financial Times Britain's AAA credit rating was no longer tenable.

Futures trading predicted massive opening losses on share markets across Europe. Britain's FTSE futures and Germany's Dax futures fell about 9 percent. The euro zone's Euro Stoxx 50 futures sank more than 11 percent. Full story...

EU referendum: Brexit sparks calls for other EU votes...

The UK's vote to leave the EU has sparked demands from far-right parties for referendums in other member states.

France's National Front leader Marine Le Pen tweeted "Victory for freedom" and said the French must now also have the right to choose.

Dutch anti-immigration politician, Geert Wilders, said the Netherlands now deserved a "Nexit" vote.

The UK on Thursday voted by 52% to 48% to leave the European Union after 43 years, in a historic referendum.

Analysts say EU politicians will fear a domino effect that could threaten the whole body. Full story...

Cops already acting on Philippine president-elect’s death-to-thugs vow...

As expected, the shooting has already begun in the Philippines, eight days before Rodrigo Duterte is sworn as President on a public promise to support police who take out criminals in gunfights instead of allowing them due process. Alleged drug dealers are turning up dead with signs written by vigilantes stuck to their chests.

According to several reports in the Philippine press, as many as 40 “drug dealers” have been killed “resisting arrest” in Manila, Laguna, Bulacan, Rizal and Cebu, with bloodthirsty local mayors and other officials sanctioning police to open fire well before Duterte arrives on the scene.

“We think it’s just begun,” said an intelligence official with a major country risk firm. “There’s going to be a lot of this before it’s over.”

Duterte swept to a decisive victory in the May 9 presidential poll, winning 39.02 percent of the vote to 23.45 percent for President Benigno S. Aquino’s chosen successor Manuel A. Roxas and 21.39 percent for Grace Poe. He was the favorite of a Filipino population tired of street crime and corruption, although the Philippines doesn’t rank much above most of the other ASEAN nations in terms of street crime, and in fact is well behind several. Full story...

Led Zep didn't steal epic 'Stairway to Heaven' guitar riff: US jury...

Rock fans around the world can heave a sigh of relief. .
.
Led Zeppelin didn't plagiarize the epic guitar to their classic rock anthem 'Stairway to Heaven', a US jury found on Thursday..
.
The verdict in Los Angeles settles a point that music fans have debated for decades but didn't find its way to court until two years ago, when the trustee for the late Randy Craig Wolfe filed a copyright lawsuit..
.
The trust claimed that Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page lifted a passage that Wolfe, better known as Randy California, wrote for ``Taurus,'' a short work he recorded with his band Spirit in 1968..
.
Page and singer Robert Plant, who wrote the ``Stairway'' lyrics, said their creation was an original. In several hours of often-animated and amusing testimony, they described the craft behind one of rock's best-known songs, all the while denying knowledge of one of the genre's least-known tunes. Full story...

Related posts:

Are Led Zeppelin rip-off artists?

My problem with Led Zeppelin...

Aussie band Men at Work accused of melody theft...

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Turmeric latte: the ‘golden milk’ with a cult following...

It is a drink fit for Midas, with an ochre colour so vivid it doesn’t need an Instagram filter. It’s not made of gold, but it might as well be, given its cult following. “Golden milk” or turmeric latte – an unlikely combination of nut milk and juiced turmeric root – is 2016’s drink of choice. In a new report on food trends in the US, Google singled out turmeric’s ascent after searches for the spice increased by 56% from November 2015 to January 2016. And fuelling that rise is its use in lattes: “golden milk” is among the top online searches associated with the spice. Turmeric lattes are now being sold at cafes from Sydney to San Francisco, and the drink is gaining fans in the UK.

At Modern Baker in Summertown, Oxford, sales of turmeric lattes – listed on the menu as “Golden mylk” (the “y” is health-speak for non-cow milk) now outnumber that of regular lattes. Turmeric lattes routinely feature in reviews for the York outpost of the Filmore & Union restaurant chain. Nama, a vegan restaurant in Notting Hill, west London, has noticed a surge in the turmeric latte’s popularity recently, even though it has sold the drink for nearly two years. A prescient former employee used to whip them up for the staff, and they went down so well that the latte ended up on the menu.

“Nobody was really serving them,” Nama co-founder Irene Arango recalls. “We used to do little tastings at Nama and people got hooked.” It is also, as Arango puts it, a pleasant way for health-conscious diners to get a fix of turmeric juice.

At first, it seems an odd concept. Turmeric is mostly known as a curry ingredient that leaves indelible yellow stains on appliances and fingernails. And, save for the aeration and the artistic lashes of cinnamon, the turmeric latte bears little similarity to its caffeinated namesake. But this is one of those trends whose provenance isn’t just Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop website. Full story...

Related posts:

Dutch tourist in Qatar jailed for 3 months, fined $845 after reporting she was raped...

The nightclub was hopping when Laura stepped away from her drink to dance. The 22-year-old Dutch tourist had come to Qatar on vacation with a friend. Now she was partying at one of the few places to drink alcohol in the country: the Crystal Lounge at the W Doha Hotel.

As she danced between a mirrored floor and swirling disco balls, however, Laura suddenly began to feel sick and blacked out, according to her attorney.

When she regained consciousness, she was in a stranger’s apartment building. Her clothes were torn.

“Laura realizes from that moment that she was drugged and raped,” Brian Lokollo, her attorney, told the Telegraaf. “She suspects that someone in an unguarded moment threw something into her drink.” Full story...

Related posts:

Hillary Clinton: A career criminal...

Related posts:

Clintons are connected to numerous people named in the Panama Papers...

Hillary Clinton 2016: a recipe for endless war...

Hillary Clinton under fire after Boeing gave her foundation $900,000 weeks...

It's not just the plot to let in 1.5 million Turks... DANIEL HANNAN outlines ten bombshells the EU's keeping secret until after you've voted...

Embarrassing leaks have revealed that British Government officials colluded in Brussels to keep contentious issues about plans for making the EU into more of a superstate off the political agenda until after next week’s referendum.

One of the most shocking of these secret proposals involves allowing 1.5 million Turks visa-free access to Britain.

Here, DANIEL HANNAN outlines ten more controversial policies EU leaders are planning — by stealth — if we vote to Remain... Full story...

Related posts:

Britain is third worst country in EU for nanny state regulation...

How a secretive elite created the EU to build a world government...

The EU is our own Hotel California: We can check out, but we'll never leave...

EU referendum: Time to vote for real change, says Boris Johnson...

Say no to the scaremongers: Already the referendum doom merchants are

Media refusing to cover numerous witness accounts of multiple shooters in Orlando massacre...

As mainstream media headlines begin to solidify around the narrative a single shooter was responsible for the carnage at Pulse nightclub in Orlando on Sunday, details calling the now-official story into question must be addressed.

While no doubts can be raised Omar Mateen, indeed, played a role in the attack, eyewitness accounts — while varied and certainly subjective, considering the chaos unfolding at the time — don’t unanimously agree he acted alone.

“I mean, I’m pretty sure it was more than one person,” witness Janiel Gonzalez told a bevy of reporters. “Like I said, I heard two guns going off at the same time,” he continued, gesturing back and forth with his fingers indicating the gunfire emanated from separate directions.

Further, he explained, panicked clubgoers had difficulty locating exits during the shooting, which he estimated lasting eight minutes — plenty of time for the shooter(s) to reload multiple times. When Gonzalez and others finally found a door hidden behind a curtain, Full story...

Related posts:

Boston bombing; what you aren't being told...

Why is Boston 'terrorism' but not Aurora, Sandy Hook, Tucson and Columbine?

Every mass shooting over last 20 years has one thing in common... and it's not guns...

Monday, June 13, 2016

The cat guardians of Singapore...

By day, they are fed and watered by a small army of dedicated volunteer feeders - office workers heading home, hipsters heading out, ageing "aunties and uncles".

But at night, a hardcore of cat-lovers take to the streets.

"This cat is very special," says a slight man in a loose T-shirt and flip-flops, crouching down by a tower block in northern Yishun district.

"She will let me know she is here, but whenever I go to her she will run away. Then when I appear to be going away, she will chase me."

True to form the cat - called Orange because she is - runs after us as we walk away into the night. Full story...

Related posts:

The epic journey of a refugee cat to find its family...

India’s ‘Birdman’ feeds 4,000 parakeets a day...

Watch more cat videos on internet to be happy ...

What it's like to work with cats...

The evil of the outdoor cat...

Thai junta to crack down harder on internet users...

The Thai junta, which already administers one of the world’s toughest measures against supposed misuse of computers, appears on the verge going to frantic lengths to stiffen the law even more with, among other things, an amendment that could give the government the ability to force internet users to decrypt their transmissions.

The military has been steadily tightening the screws on freedom of expression since 2006, when a coup brought down the government of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Interrupted only by Thaksin surrogate governments that were elected democratically, the military has continued to shut off avenues of free speech. The most draconian of the laws is the lèse majesté provision against insulting members of the royal family, which has extended all the way to threats of arrest for making fun of King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s dog.

In addition to the lèse majesté law, in 2007 following the coup, the junta pushed through the Computer Crimes Act, which prescribed three to 15 years in prison for uploading or publishing anything that is “likely to damage computer data or a computer system related to the country’s security, public security and economic security or public services.” Another section punishes any computer-related act that causes “damage the country’s security or causes a public panic” if it is “related with an offense against the Kingdom’s security under the Criminal Code,’’ with the potential for five years in prison. Authorities have used the act and the lèse majesté act to go after almost anyone who makes any kind of statement the military deems harmful. Full story...

Related posts:

Thailand expats rattled by new visa form...

Lights going out for free press in Southeast Asia...

Thai factory worker faces jail for insulting the king's dog online...

Thai junta detains student activists amid deepening corruption scandal...

Thailand's junta shuts public's ears to bad news...

Sunday, June 12, 2016

'We are scared' _ Africans in India say racism is constant...

Fear and anger. Those are the emotions that shadow Odole Emmanuel Opeyemi every time the Nigerian man steps out of his New Delhi apartment.

Every encounter with Indians is fraught with those feelings, whether he's taking an autorickshaw or the Metro, buying vegetables or trying to find a spot to park his car.

"When I sit down in the Metro, people sit away from me. Even old men and women will stand up as if any contact with me will give them a disease," he said, describing the mixture of fear and revulsion with which most Indians treat Africans.

Opeyemi is among hundreds of thousands of Africans in India, drawn by better education and work opportunities. For them rampant racism is a daily battle in a country where their dark skin places them at the lower end of a series of strictly observed social hierarchies. Indians routinely perceive Africans as either prostitutes or drug dealers. Full story...

Related posts:

Dutch woman held in Qatar after making rape complaint...

A 22-YEAR-OLD DUTCH woman is being held in Qatar on suspicion of adultery after she said she was raped while on holiday, her lawyer says.

The woman says she was drugged in a hotel and realised she had been raped when she woke up in an unfamiliar apartment.

“She was arrested in March on suspicion of adultery, which means having sex outside marriage,” lawyer Brian Lokollo told Dutch radio NOS-Radio1 today.

A Dutch foreign ministry spokeswoman confirmed the arrest but said the young woman, whom she named as Laura, has not been charged.

Daphne Kerremans added that “the enquiry is ongoing” and that Dutch authorities are in regular contact with Laura. Full story...

Related posts:

Friday, June 10, 2016

Why I left Facebook...

Related posts:

Only two countries do this appalling thing—and the U.S. is one of them...

Nearly every country in the world bases its tax system on residency rather than citizenship. If you’re an Italian citizen, and you leave Italy to live and work in Dubai, you don’t have to pay taxes on the income you earn abroad to the Italian government.

But Eritrea levies a 2% flat tax on its citizens who live abroad. If you’re an Eritrean citizen, you have to pay taxes to the Eritrean government, no matter where you live and work.

The media has condemned this as “extortion” and a “repressive” measure by an “authoritarian” government.

The UN has even weighed in. In Resolution 2023, the UN Security Council condemned Eritrea for “using extortion, threats of violence, fraud and other illicit means to collect taxes outside of Eritrea from its nationals.”

You might be wondering, “What’s the controversy? Eritrea is getting criticized, and rightly so.”

That brings us to the only other country on the planet with a similar tax system… the United States. Full story...

Related posts:

U.S. citizens ditch passports in record numbers...

Indian bride ‘burnt alive by husband’s family because her skin was too dark’

An Indian woman was allegedly set on fire and killed by her husband’s family because she was too dark-skinned and they wanted him to remarry a fairer bride.

According to a report in the Calcutta-based newspaper The Telegraph, Somera Bibi’s in-laws had insisted on a large payment of 100,000 rupees (£1,000) and farmland when the pair first wed to “compensate” for her dark skin colour.

They had since been extorting more money from Mrs Bibi’s family to continue with the marriage ever since, the victim’s family alleged.

On her deathbed, Mrs Bibi, 22, reportedly told police in West Bengal she had been attacked for finally protesting against the treatment of her family, who had been forced to cough up a further 250,000 rupees since the wedding and were now broke. Full story...

Related posts:

India’s skin-whitening creams highlight a complex over darker complexions...

Sir Tim Berners-Lee: Internet has become 'world’s largest surveillance network'

WORLD WIDE WEB CREATOR Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said that the internet has fallen into the hands of large corporations and governments and become the "world’s largest surveillance network".

Berners-Lee explained in an interview with The New York Times that his invention has steadily come under the control of powerful interests.

"It controls what people see. It creates mechanisms for how people interact. It's been great, but spying, blocking sites, repurposing people's content, taking you to the wrong websites completely undermines the spirit of helping people create," he said.

"The problem is the dominance of one search engine, one big social network, one Twitter for microblogging."

Berners-Lee met a group of internet activists this week, including Brewster Kahle, head of the Internet Archive, and fellow internet pioneer Vint Cerf, in San Francisco at the Decentralized Web Summit to discuss ways of "re-decentralising" the internet, giving more control to individuals and ensuring more privacy and security. Full story...

Related posts:

Thursday, June 09, 2016

Pakistani mother burns daughter to death in latest shocking 'honour killing' case...

A Pakistani mother has been arrested on suspicion of burning her 16-year-old daughter alive for marrying without family consent in the latest so-called "honour killing" to shock the country.

Perveen Bibi, tied her daughter, Zeenat, to a bed, doused her with fuel and then set fire to her in Lahore, police said.

Family members stopped neighbours from entering the house as the girl screamed for help, said Nighat Bibi, who lives nearby.

As her daughter burned, Perveen Bibi ran into the street shouting that she had killed the teen for bringing shame on her family.

The police eventually arrived and found the charred body near a staircase.

Zeenat married a man named Hasan Khan on May 29, police said. Khan's ethnicity - he is an ethnic Pashtun, while Zeenat was a Punjabi - was the main cause of the family's disapproval, according to the woman's family. Full story...

Related posts:

Sairat: Why a doomed love story has become India's sleeper hit...

India Dalit man hacked to death in 'honour killing' in Tamil Nadu...

Oscar nominated film forces Pakistan to confront 'honour killings’

The Kohistan story: Killing for honour...

Husband in Pakistan sets wife on fire for leaving house without permission.

Singapore to cut internet access for government workers...

So that's the end of Googling from the office.

By next May, none of Singapore's public servants will have access to the internet while at work.

The city-state, which prides itself on strong law and order, is cutting off online access for government workers from about 100,000 computers, according to the Straits Times.

A memo is being sent to all government agencies, outlining the new policy, which has been introduced to increase security, according to a statement from the Infocomm Development Authority.

"The Singapore Government regularly reviews our IT measures to make our network more secure," the statement said.

"We have started to separate internet access from the work stations of a selected group of public service officers, and will do so for the rest of the public service officers progressively over a one-year period."

The Straits Times reports that workers will be able to access the internet on their private devices. Full story...

Related posts:

Singapore is taking the ‘Smart City’ to a whole new level...

Singapore film ban creates free speech issue...

Singapore grapples with smartphone addiction...

Singapore: Escalating restrictions on Internet expression...

Simon's cat: muddy paws...

Related posts:

Child sex abuse whistleblower resigns from UN over the organisation’s failure to hold senior officials to account...

A United Nations whistleblower who was suspended for exposing the sexual abuse of children by peacekeepers has resigned over the organisation’s failure to hold senior officials to account.

Anders Kompass, director of field operations at the UN human rights office in Geneva, announced his resignation on Tuesday. Kompass – whose suspension last year for exposing the sexual abuse of children in Central African Republic was revealed by the Guardian – said he could no longer work for an organisation with no accountability.

“The complete impunity for those who have been found to have, in various degrees, abused their authority, together with the unwillingness of the hierarchy to express any regrets for the way they acted towards me sadly confirms that lack of accountability is entrenched in the United Nations. This makes it impossible for me to continue working there,” he told the IRIN news agency.

Kompass announced his resignation five months after a report commissioned by Ban Ki-moon into the scandal completely exonerated him for sharing confidential documents that revealed children as young as eight and nine were being raped by peacekeepers in the Central African Republic. Full story...

Related posts:

UN removes Saudi Arabia from Human Rights blacklist after just one week, faces intense backlash...

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon removed Saudi Arabia from a U.N.-blacklist of violators of children’s human rights, after initially placing their Yemen coalition on the list last Thursday. The decision resulted in a massive outcry from rights groups who lambasted Ki-moon’s “flip-flopping.”

Saudi Arabia criticized the U.N. for a recent report that said the coalition it is leading in Yemen was resulting in over 60 percent of child deaths there. “Last week’s U.N. report said the Saudi-led coalition was responsible for 60 percent of child deaths and injuries in Yemen in 2015, killing 510 and wounding 667,” Reuters reported. “It also said the coalition carried out half the attacks on schools and hospitals.

The decision to remove Saudi Arabia from the blacklist has been met with criticism from many human rights organizations.

“Political power and diplomatic clout have been allowed to trump the UN’s duty to expose those responsible for the killing and maiming of more than 1,000 of Yemen’s children,” Sajjad Mohamed Sajid, Oxfam’s country director in Yemen, told the Guardian. “The killing of children in their homes, at schools and in hospitals should not be swept under the carpet. When the UN identifies crimes such as these it needs to act, regardless of who the perpetrators are.” Full story...

Related posts:

Saudi Arabia used U.S. cluster bombs on civilians...

United Nations panel finds evidence that Saudi-led coalition has conducted...

Saudi Arabia arrests Samar Badawi, human rights advocate...

Thousands behind bars in Saudi Arabia, activist says...

Fury after Saudi Arabia 'chosen to head key UN human rights panel'

Saudi Arabia sinks UN war crimes probe in Yemen, Washington stays silent...

Wednesday, June 08, 2016

Singapore shocks its neighbor to the north...

There is more than meets the eye in the Singapore investigation into 1MDB and the subsequent forced closure by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) of the local operations of Swiss private bank BSI.

This was the first time in decades that the MAS has resorted to such actions. BSI has also been heavily fined and its former executives are under criminal investigation. Established in 1873, BSI was previously known as Banca della Szizzera Italiana.

In the first place, the 1MDB investigation must have come as a personal shock, even stab in the back, to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. After all, it has been known for decades that Singapore has happily harbored and laundered the ill-gotten gains of politicians, generals and crooked businessmen from around the region, notably Indonesia and Myanmar as well as Malaysia.

It must have been doubly wounding for Najib who in the past has made efforts to improve relations with Singapore, cooperating in a way unheard of under Mahathir Mohamed and being viewed as undemanding and cooperative by his Singapore counterparts. Full story...

Related posts:

Goldman Sachs banker embroiled in massive overseas money scandal...

Swiss freeze assets of Malaysian state fund...

Embattled Malaysian PM Najib drops speech to global anti-corruption gathering...

Malaysian chief minister's money laundering case ensnares UBS...

Sairat: Why a doomed love story has become India's sleeper hit...

In movie-mad India, stories of young love struggling to find happiness despite harsh social rules are still box office gold.

This is because couples are breaking what writer Arundhati Roy, in her Booker prize-winning novel, The God of Small Things, described as "Love Laws" that "lay down who should be loved … And how … And how much".

Now a low-budget Marathi-language regional film Sairat (Wild) on the often cruel - and unsettling - consequences of falling in love in India has become the biggest sleeper hit of the year.

Sairat is avowedly anti-Bollywood: it is made by a Dalit (formerly untouchable) filmmaker, on a shoe-string budget of $597,460 (£414,940) and has a cast of newcomers, including two unknown amateur debutants, in the lead.

The film also upends popular Bollywood stereotypes of love and gender: in Sairat, an upper-caste girl falls in love with a lower-caste boy; and the assertive girl takes the lead in the relationship and there is no happy ending. Full story...

Related posts:

Sankar and Kowsalya's story shows the horrors of inter-caste marriage in Tamil Nadu...

Honour killing: 8-month pregnant teenager murdered in India...

India: An attack on love...

India’s Love Commandos – and the runaway couples they protect...

Software engineer murdered in India by parents after marrying lower caste man...

If no-one helps you after a car crash in India, this is why...

Kanhaiya Lal desperately cries for help but motorists swerve straight past him. His young son and the splayed bodies of his wife and infant daughter lie next to the mangled motorbike on which they had all been travelling seconds earlier.

The widely broadcast CCTV footage of this scene - showing the suffering of a family of hit-and-run victims in northern India in 2013 and the apparent indifference of passers-by - troubled many Indians.

Some motorcyclists and police eventually came to the family's aid but it was too late for Lal's wife and daughter. Their deaths sparked a nationwide debate over the role of bystanders - the media hailed it as a "new low in public apathy" and worse, "the day humanity died".

But what safety campaigner Piyush Tewari saw wasn't a lack of compassion but an entire system stacked against helping road victims. Full story...

Related posts:

The world's deadliest roads...

Rape in the US military...

Related posts:

Hindu priest shot, hacked to death in Bangladesh...

Unidentified bike-riding assailants shot and hacked a Hindu priest to death Tuesday in southwestern Bangladesh amid a spate of similar attacks allegedly by radical Islamist groups since last year.

Local police chief Hasan Hafizur Rahman said three men intercepted 70-year-old Anando Gopal Ganguly while riding his bicycle to a temple in Jhenaidah district. Rahman said the three men on a motorbike first shot Ganguly and then slashed him with sharp weapons before they fled the scene.

Police had no immediate clues about who was behind the latest killing but they suspected that Islamist militant groups could be behind as the pattern of the attack was similar to previous ones. No group has claimed responsibility.

The killing of Ganguly took place two days after suspected Islamist militants killed the wife of a police superintendent who led drives against militant groups and drug cartels in southeastern city of Chittagong. Full story...

Related posts:

Wednesday, May 04, 2016

Indian maid who lost arm in Saudi Arabia becomes face of human trafficking...

When Kasthuri Munirathinam crawled out of the window of a second floor apartment in Riyadh, she was scared for her life.

The 55-year-old Indian housemaid from the southern state of Tamil Nadu was determined to escape from her employer's apartment where she worked as a domestic help.

She had been in Saudi Arabia for just two months, one of thousands of Indians heading to the Gulf states every year for work, but was terrified she would never see her family again.

"I thought they would kill me. I had to escape. I wasn't given enough to eat. They had my wages, my passport, my phone," Munirathinam told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview in her home in Vellore, 150 km (90 miles) from Chennai.

Munirathinam's desperate bid to escape last September hit international headlines after the housemaid said her employer had chopped her hand off in the affray, with the injury resulting in an operation to amputate her arm. Full story...

Related posts:

Employer chops off hand of Tamil Nadu woman for trying to escape torture...

India moves to stop flow of housemaids to Saudi Arabia after hand-chopping...

Video of weeping Indian goes viral, Saudi government jails him...

1,000 Indian workers dead. The grim reality of Qatar's FIFA World Cup dream...

Indian migrants return home with horror tales from UAE...

It's not a crime if hungry poor steal food, Italy says...

Italy's highest court has acquitted a homeless man of stealing cheese and sausages, ruling that the theft of small amounts of food by the hungry poor is not a crime.

Ukranian Roman Ostriakov was caught in 2011 pocketing €4.07 ($4.72) worth of food in a supermarket in Genoa, after a customer spotted him and reported him to a member of staff, Italian media reported on Tuesday.

He was sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to pay a €100 fine.

But the verdict was appealed on grounds that Ostriakov had been stopped before he had actually left the supermarket, and at a second appeal, Italy's court of cassation acquitted him.

It was clear the defendant "could not live without feeding himself, so acted out of necessity," the court said.

The Corriere della Sera daily was quick to point out the irony of a legal system in Italy which saw the theft of goods worth fewer than €5 go through three costly rounds of justice - first instance, appeal and cassation - before being thrown out. Source...

Related posts:

Idaho woman fired for giving free lunch to hungry child...

Leicester City: Thailand celebrates karma-driven triumph of ‘Siamese Foxes’

Pirom Methaveerapong went to sleep in Bangkok a confident man, but still set his alarm for 4am this morning so that he would be among the first in Thailand to hear the news.

Mr Pirom duly checked the result of the Tottenham-Chelsea game online, grinned broadly and went back to sleep for a few hours.

Leicester City’s remarkable underdog story has been embraced by football fans around the world.

But nowhere is this truer than in Thailand as this year’s heroics of the Thai-owned club have attracted new legions of followers in a county where loyalties have traditionally been with Liverpool and Manchester United.

“I had no doubts,” the businessman and football fan told The Telegraph after waking up for a second time. “I always expected that Leicester would be the champions because I believe in Phra Prommangkalachan.” Full story...

Related posts:

Leicester City's 'good karma': the Buddhist monks behind the Foxes' divine play...

How to play soccer on a floating village...

Manchester United to woo fans in India...

Manchester City turn to "feng shui" to boost up their results!!!

Tuesday, May 03, 2016

Catholic priest in Australia who preyed on kids gets 18 years in jail...

A depraved former priest was able to carry out a decade-long reign of abuse against three girls and nine boys because he was protected by the Catholic Church, a Sydney judge says.

Loud applause broke out in court on Monday as John Joseph Farrell was led from the dock after being sentenced to 29 years behind bars for his crimes in Moree and Tamworth, in country NSW.

Victims and their loved ones packed into the courtroom at Sydney's Downing Centre District Court to watch the 62-year-old face sentencing for dozens of historical sexual crimes committed against children between 1979 and 1988.

The disgraced ex-priest sat with his eyes closed as Judge Peter Zahra told how he preyed on his victims, grooming the children, cultivating the trust of their parents and exploiting his powerful position as a priest.

"This allowed him to offend whenever and wherever he chose," Judge Zahra said. Full story...

Related posts:

Success in Burkina Faso: a 13-year-old healer...

Related posts:

Monday, May 02, 2016

McDonald’s oldest employee is 92 and works in Singapore...

Most people would like to think they’ll be retired and off their feet by the time they reach their 90s. But not one Singaporean great-grandmother, who continues to labor over a hot fryer at one of the city state’s McDonald’s outlets — at the age of 92.

Goh Gwek Eng is the U.S.-based global burger chain’s oldest employee, the Straits Times newspaper reports. Having lived through the occupation of Singapore by Japanese forces in the 1940s, she now has 10 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren.

“Now that most of them are working or have their own families, the house is very quiet,” Goh said of her decision to keep working.

Goh has been working at the Bedok Interchange McDonald’s since 1998. And by all accounts, she is still lovin’ it. Her only complaint is that she gets a little hot standing near the oil where fries are made. “I plan to keep working for as long as I am healthy,” she told the Straits Times. Source + photo...

Related posts:

Poet Walt Whitman health tips unearthed...

A trove of journalism by the great US poet Walt Whitman is being published online after lying in obscurity more than 150 years.

The 13-part series, Manly Health and Training, was written under a pseudonym for a New York newspaper in 1858.

It contains a multitude of tips on topics such as diet, sex, and hygiene.

The 47,000-word series, which survived only in a few libraries, was discovered in a digitised newspaper database by a graduate student last year.

It is now being published by the online journal The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review.

US commentators point out that some of Whitman's health advice sounds surprisingly modern. Full story...

Related posts:

Whitman: I sit and look out...

Whitman: Resist much, obey little...

Leicester City's 'good karma': the Buddhist monks behind the Foxes' divine play...

From supremely gifted players on the pitch to the tactical vision of the manager and coaching staff and the passionate support of the fans, it takes many people to win English football’s ultimate prize.

But if Leicester City beat Manchester United at Old Trafford to complete their fairy tale story conquest of the Premiership there will be one other, rather more unusual group of supporters to thank – a collection of Buddhist monks from Thailand.

The blessings of the monks, from the Wat Traimit Withayaram Woraviharn (Golden Buddha) Temple, in Bangkok, are being credited with adding a divine element to the team’s play.

About 10 monks from the temple are flown to Britain for most home games by the club’s Thai owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha to bless the players before the kick-off, before spending the match deep in meditation in a specially designated room at Leicester City’s King Power stadium. Full story...

Related posts:

The case against TTIP...

It was the sentence, we were assured, that torpedoed the referendum debate. Asked about Britain’s chances of securing a unilateral trade deal with the United States after leaving the EU, Barack Obama declared: “The UK is going to be in the back of the queue.”

The comment was catnip to the Remain side: the Brexiters have long conjured up the image of a newly divorced Britain taking her rightful place in the “Anglosphere” without the rest of the EU dragging us down. Instead, the US president was telling us, we would be left out in the cold.

But here’s a question for you: what’s so great about a US trade deal, anyway? For the past three years, the acronym “TTIP” has been floating across my vision. I’ve always had the sense it was a Bad Thing, without ever really understanding why. So what is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and should we be against it?

My first port of call is my nerdiest friend. “The first rule of TTIP is, anyone who thinks TTIP matters is a douche,” he tells me briskly. It’s safe to say that’s very much not the opinion of Mark Dearn, a senior trade campaigner at War on Want, who gives me a quick run-through of why the agreement has attracted such widespread protests, including a march by 150,000 people in Berlin last October. Full story...

Related posts:

Why some countries are poor and others rich...

Related posts:

The millionaires building bunkers in their mansions and buying land outside...

‘Affluenza’ in Thailand...

Budget 2016: Wealth of super rich soars as the worst-off lose out, report says...

62 world’s richest people own same wealth as half the world...

Sunday, May 01, 2016

What are the facts behind 'sell by' dates?

Every year, people in the U.K. throw away more than 93 million gallons of milk, 733,000 tons of potatoes and 473,000 tons of bread, according to U.K. supermarket chain Sainsbury’s.1 Similarly, the average U.S. family of four wastes more than 2 million calories, which equates to $1,500 worth of food, every year.2

Wilted or spoiled produce, moldy bread, or leftovers that sit too long in the fridge are common contributors to such food waste, but so are potentially good foods that get thrown away solely based on their “sell by” dates.

Labels like “use by” and “sell by” on foods aren’t actually an indicator of food safety, as many believe them to be.

A report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Harvard even found that more than 90 percent of Americans are throwing out food prematurely because of misunderstandings of what such dates actually mean.3

The researchers concluded that food dates generally lead to good food getting thrown away and may at the same time prompt you to eat a food that’s actually spoiled because of “undue faith in date labels.” Full story...

Related posts:

'Use by' dates contribute to unnecessary food waste...

Remember the Golan Heights?

During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Syrian forces had surprised Israel and were fast approaching the edge of the steep Golan Heights, captured by Israel during the 1967 war. It seemed as if Syrian armor and infantry would retake Golan, then pour down into Israeli Galilee.

Soviet recon satellites observed Israel moving its nuclear-armed, 500km-range Jericho missiles out of protective caves and onto their launch pads. At the same time, Israel was seen loading nuclear bombs on their US-supplied F-4 fighter-bombers at Tel Nof airbase.

Believing Israel was about to use nuclear weapons against Syria and Egypt, Moscow put huge pressure on both to rein in their advancing forces. Damascus, already in range of Israeli artillery on Golan, ordered its armored forces on Golan to halt, allowing Israel to mount powerful counter-attacks and retake the strategic heights.

In 1981, Israel formally annexed the 580 sq. mile portion of Golan that it occupied. This illegal annexation was condemned by the United Nations, the United States and Europe’ powers. But Israel held on to Golan and implanted 50,000 there in some 41 subsidized settlements. Full story...

Related posts:

Israel grabs 400 hectares of West Bank land...

Almost 430 kids killed in Israeli raids on Gaza...

Israel demolishes Bedouin village for 68th time...

Why this Indian woman is using 'blackface' as solidarity...

A young woman in southern India is painting her body black to protest against what she calls the growing intolerance in the country against the low-caste Dalit community, writes Ashraf Padanna in Kerala.

One could run into 26-year-old Jaya PS anywhere in the southern port city of Cochin - be it in a supermarket, public transport or at an art exhibition.

Ms Jaya, who holds a masters degree in art, paints her body with collyrium, a type of dark eye shadow, whenever she steps out of her home studio.

"I decided to paint my body black while appearing in public after Rohith Vemula died," she told the BBC. More + photos...

Related posts:

Ken Livingstone stands by Hitler comments...

Ken Livingstone has stood by his recent comments about Hitler, saying he was "not sorry for telling the truth".

He said he "regretted" the disruption his comments had caused but "I believe what I said is true".

The former London mayor was suspended from the Labour party on Thursday after saying Hitler had supported Zionism in the 1930s.

He made the comments while defending Labour MP Naz Shah over accusations she was anti-Semitic.

During an interview on LBC, Mr Livingstone repeatedly refused to apologise for making the comments, saying he was sorry if his views had upset Jewish people but he had simply made a "statement of fact" that had also been made by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Full story...

Related posts:

Will we be fooled again? Stop the TPP!

Related posts: