Monday, March 31, 2014

Sri Lanka: Displaced in north long for home...

"Would you like to go home?" The men chorus "Yes!" as my question is translated into Tamil. "We're waiting for that date. There's enough land. We'll farm it. We'll fish."

They cannot do that here in the Konapalam camp, the cramped home to 240 displaced families where children play in the dust.

There are 31,524 people still in camps around Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka because their land is held by the military.

Saharayani Thangarajah, a 42-year-old mother of two, wants to return to her birthplace at Kankesanthurai on the northernmost coast. "Some officials have told us we'll be resettled by mid-April," she says. "Is that true, do you know?"

She longs for normality because she has been through trauma - forced from her home in 1990 and then losing her father, brother and sister in the war that ended in 2009 with the final defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels. Full story...

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Brunei brings in system of Islamic law with punishments that include the dismemberment of limbs and stoning to death...

The Sultan of Brunei, one of the world’s wealthiest rulers and a close ally of Britain, will this week oversee his country’s transition to a system of Islamic law with punishments that include flogging, the dismemberment of limbs and stoning to death.

The 67-year-old absolute monarch declared last year that he wanted to introduce a full sharia system in his oil-rich nation and warned critics who took to social media sites to complain that they could be prosecuted using the new laws.

The decision to introduce sharia and reintroduce the death penalty has been condemned by NGOs and legal rights campaigners, who say the new rules will breach international laws. It has also triggered alarm among some of Brunei’s non-Muslim communities, who will also be subject to some of the rulings.

The development could put pressure on Britain to rethink its close relationship with Brunei, a former colony. A British regiment based in the country – the last surviving UK regiment stationed in East Asia – is paid for entirely by the Sultan.

In a letter to Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) said it deplored the new rules, adding that, if implemented, they would lead to serious human rights violations. “Brunei has not implemented the death penalty for years, so it came as quite a surprise that the new law has reintroduced it,” said the ICJ’s Emerlynne Gil. Full story...

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Sunday, March 30, 2014

Headmaster in Zimbabwe accused of owning goblins, ordered to leave school...

VILLAGERS in Dongamuzi area under Chief Gumede in Lupane are demanding the transfer of Ekuphakameni Secondary School headmaster Mr Peter Moyo, whom they accuse of owning goblins that have been terrorising pupils and teaching staff at the school.

Last term lessons at the school were disrupted for almost two weeks after teachers abandoned the school following several nights of sexual abuse by the alleged goblins.

Female teachers at the school claimed that during the night they would dream making love to someone and woke up the next morning with signs that they would have actually had sex during the night.

Some male teachers also claimed that they woke up every morning wearing female panties whose origin they did not know.

Villagers have called for the transfer of the school head whom they say was fingered during a recent cleansing ceremony held at the school. Full story...

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India: Shock dowry deaths increase revealed...

A woman dies every hour in India due to the demands placed upon her family as a result of the dowry system, according to figures from the country's National Crime Records Bureau.

This is an age old custom where the wife's family has to hand over endless amounts in cash and gifts at the wedding and beyond to secure her wellbeing.

It is illegal and the punishments are severe, but the number of cases is on the rise in a country that continues to grapple with the issue of violence against women.

Most of the victims of the dowry system die in the most painful way - burnt by their husband’s family.

Neha, a 29-year-old mother-of-two, was treated in the intensive burns unit of a hospital in Delhi after suffering deep burns over almost half of her body.

 She said her in-laws threw gasoline on her and set her alight. Doctors said it will take another six months before the bandages can be removed from her body. Full story...

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Obama ignores Saudi human rights record in meeting with King Abdullah...

Despite mounting concern over human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, the subject was not introduced in a meeting between US President Barack Obama and Saudi King Abdullah on Friday, according to a US official.

In a meeting at the 89-year-old king’s lavish residence at Rawdat Khuraim, northeast of the capital, Riyadh, Obama and Abdullah met for more than two hours. Much of the conversation focused on Iran and Syria, leaving no time to raise human rights issues, Reuters quoted an official as saying.

"Today, given the extent of time they spent on Iran and Syria, they didn't get to a number of issues, and it wasn't just human rights," the official said.

Human rights groups had urged Obama to mention a controversial new anti-terror law in the Saudi kingdom that any act that undermines the security of the state may be treated as an act of terrorism. The legislation comes as Saudi leaders look to increase their grip on power following the “Arab Spring” that swept away many autocratic regimes in 2011.

“The new law is draconian in spirit and letter, and there is every reason to fear that the authorities will easily and eagerly use it against peaceful dissidents,” said Adam Coogle, a researcher at Human Rights Watch. Full story...

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Parents blackmailed by doctor: Consent to vaccine or we take your newborn...

(...)

Just a few hours later, their world imploded. Their “choice” was to submit to something that both generations were opposed to on religious and philosophical grounds, or have their newest member of the family be taken in a doctor-sanctioned kidnapping. They saw it as nothing less than vaccine blackmail.

Upon admission to the hospital, Bidwell told the staff that she did not want the newborn vaccines. No one present indicated any problem with her request. Legally, parents can refuse vaccines in Alabama on religious or medical grounds. But that didn’t stop Dr. Bierd from lying to the family, telling them that it was law that the baby receive the hepatitis B vaccine. She later back-pedaled and told them it wasn’t law, after the family had contacted an off-duty judge friend, who asked what statute that was. (It wasn’t.) But she didn’t back down on her blackmail threats.

Dr. Bierd claimed that “doctor’s discretion” gave her the right to override the parents’ decision and force the vaccine, or take the baby away and give it anyway. She based this on the fact that Aliea did not have existing bloodwork prior to admission demonstrating that she did not have hepatitis B. In other words, unlike the American system of justice, the assumption of this doctor is that mothers are “guilty until proven innocent by bloodwork.”

Hepatitis B is relatively uncommon, and it is transmitted either sexually or through re-use of needles. The groups at risk are sexually promiscuous adults, males who have had sex with males, and IV drug users. Full story...

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The ghosts of Guantanamo: Prisoners declared innocent... but never let out...

It’s 8am and the Star Spangled Banner blares out from a speaker next to McDonald’s. Around me, young men and women in uniform put down their Egg McMuffins and leap to attention to salute the American flag fluttering gently in the Caribbean breeze.

A few miles away, Shaker Aamer, the last British prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, starts his day in an 80sq ft cell where he has been locked up for the past 12 years. The 45-year-old married father of four – who has been cleared for release since 2007 – faces what he calls the ‘living hell’ of being held without charge inside the world’s most notorious prison.

Last week The Mail on Sunday travelled to the remote US naval base on the tip of Cuba where 154 prisoners from 21 countries remain trapped in legal limbo and where lizards have more rights than humans.

And we discovered a surreal world where both guards and prisoners are cracking up in a hellhole President Obama vowed to close when he was first elected in 2008.

Driving around the 45-square-mile base with a US Army public relations sergeant who constantly repeats the official mantra that our visit ‘shows the transparency of what we do here’ we pass ‘Iguana Crossing’ signs near dozens of the creatures dozing in the 90F heat. Soldiers are forced to stop when an iguana wishes to cross the road. Violating this order is punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 (£6,000). Full story...

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Indian student jumps into tiger enclosure and survives...



An engineering student jumped into an enclosure of two white tigers for a fight, but he ended up scaring them.

It took nearly an hour for the local police and zoo keepers to rescue the student.

The incident took place at Gwalior's Gandhi Zoo in Madhya Pradesh around 5 pm on Monday.

Yashonandan Kaushik, a resident of Anand Nagar in Gwalior, scaled the boundary wall and jumped inside the enclosure and challenged the tigers' for a fight.

Stunned visitors witnessed how he made "exaggerated movements" for one hour to tempt the white tigers'. Full story...

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The hornets' nest of vaccine information...

Right off, and at the very beginning, I say this article will cause rumblings and a stir amongst many, if not all, on both sides of the vaccine safety issue, especially with vaccine apologists. My reason for saying that is because what I discuss is strictly my evaluation of the interactive data map showing communicable infectious diseases globally, as prepared by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which points out some grave problems regarding vaccine statistics, in my opinion.

Please study the map before reading on. The only request I make is that every reader consider the information with an open mind, not one influenced or prejudiced by pseudo-science. One statistic that the data show is this: the most vaccinated population countries have the most outbreaks of those same diseases for which vaccines are pushed on populations supposedly to engender what’s called “herd immunity.”

 First, let’s see how many vaccinations were mandated for children in several countries of the western meme according to data available in 2009. Sweden and Japan had 11 vaccines, Finland 12, Norway 13, Switzerland 16, Australia 27, Canada 28, and USA 36. It is safe to say that, if anything, more vaccines have been added to those schedules since 2009, especially the HPV vaccine for both girls and boys. But, for the sake of ‘argument’ and graphics available, I will use the chart below as a reference alongside the CFR’s map. Full story...

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From Merkel to Tymoshenko: NSA spied on 122 world leaders, Snowden docs reveal...

The NSA’s data base contains information obtained during the surveillance of over a hundred world leaders, new leaks by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed.

Der Spiegel has looked through a top secret presentation by NSA's Center for Content Extraction, which is responsible for automated analysis of all types of text data.

According to the document, the leaders of 122 states were among the high-ranked targets of the US intelligence.

However, only 12 names were revealed by the German journalists in the publication as an example.

 With the heads of state arranged alphabetically by first name, the list begins with ‘A’ as in Abdullah Badawi, the former Malaysian prime minister. Full story...

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Saturday, March 29, 2014

Serial texter suffers first case of 'WhatsAppitis'

Spanish people are Europe's heaviest users of services like WhatsApp but the thumb-numbing habit could have unanticipated health consequences.

Inés M. Fernandez-Guerrero recorded the case in the March 22 edition of The Lancet.

"A 34-year-old emergency medicine physician, 27 weeks pregnant, presented with bilateral wrist pain with sudden onset upon waking up one morning. She had no history of trauma and had not engaged in any excessive physical activity in the previous days," she wrote.

Fernandez-Guerrero, of General University Hospital in Granada went on to note, "The patient ... responded to messages that had been sent to her on her smartphone via WhatsApp instant messaging service. She held her mobile phone, that weighed 130g, for at least 6h. During this time she made continuous movements with both thumbs to send messages."

 She added: "The diagnosis for the bilateral wrist pain was WhatsAppitis. The treatment consisted of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and complete abstinence from using the phone to send messages." Full story...

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Facebook plans to spread web access with ‘drones, satellites and lasers’

Facebook has announced an ambitious plan to use drone, satellite and laser technology “to deliver the internet to everyone” via the preeminent social media site’s Connectivity Lab project.

Facebook Inc’s Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday that the effort – dubbed Internet.org – to offer web access throughout the world will be led by aerospace and communications experts from the likes of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and its Ames Research Center.

“Our goal with Internet.org is to make affordable access to basic internet services available to every person in the world,” Zuckerberg said in statement.

“We've made good progress so far. Over the past year, our work in the Philippines and Paraguay alone has doubled the number of people using mobile data with the operators we've partnered with, helping 3 million new people access the internet.”

 Zuckerberg said Facebook has hired “key members” of Ascenta to help with the effort’s “connectivity aircraft.” UK company Ascenta is responsible for developing Zephyr, the longest flying solar-powered drone in the world. Full story...

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Dark side of Bollywood: Racism exists in Hindi film industry...

Calling Nawazuddin Siddiqui an average actor, Rishi Kapoor recently had said, “You (Siddiqui) haven’t done it (running around trees) in your life; neither will you get a chance to do it. And you aren’t capable of doing it either. You don’t have the image; you don’t have the talent.” Clearly, Kapoor was alluding to Siddiqui’s unconventional looks.

In a country obsessed with fair skin, it is perhaps no wonder that Bollywood has still not managed to steer away from racism. Time and again, dusky actresses — and actors too — in Bollywood have faced the brunt of this racism, even though internationally, dark-skinned celebrities have done well for themselves. Be it comments, lyrics of songs or dialogues in films, racism has raised its ugly head in Bollywood on several occasions and it continues to do so.

One instance would be when Kareena Kapoor apparently described Bipasha Basu as a ‘kali billi’ (black cat), referring to Basu’s dusky complexion. The comment raked up a controversy with Basu refusing to make any comments on the same.

In the past too, there have been many cases where racism was evident. The late Smita Patil, touted as one of the finest actresses in the industry, faced it too. Full story...

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Friday, March 28, 2014

This man went to prison for collecting rainwater...

Cheering for the Pakistan cricket team is dangerous in democratic India...

Shapoorjee Sorabjee, the first historian of cricket in India, had cautioned more than a century ago in 1897- “… to expect all political difference to disappear or all available self-interests to be foregone on the institution of cricket relations is to live in a fool’s paradise.” Sorabjee’s words echo loudly in the persecution of 67 Kashmiri Muslim students in the city of Meerut on March 6. Historian Ramachandra Guha’s statement- “post-independence, cricket was equated with patriotic virtue”, echoes louder.

These local college students had cheered the Pakistan cricket team which trounced India in a cricket tournament. In normal circumstances, cheering a team would not have been considered perfidious or criminal. Unless of course one is thrown back to 1945, when Orwell acerbically noted that there’s nothing like certain spectator sports to add to the fund of ill-will between nations and their populations. Or, more recently, to the times of Norman Tebbit and David Blunkett for whom a cricket match was the perfect crucible to test one’s loyalty to his country.

But Indo-Pak cricket matches are anything but “normal”. On the Indian side of the border, they are nothing but battles to be won, and once victory has been achieved, to be celebrated by humiliating, vilifying and demonising “the other”, that is, Muslims. And when there are Kashmiri Muslims, the viciousness is increased manifold.

So it happened that these students were charged with sedition, which under Indian criminal law, is equivalent to treason, and carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which in its present incarnation can give the British National Party and United Kingdom Independence Party lessons in jingoism and xenophobia, quickly bared its fangs, and raised a din about bringing these “terrorist” students to justice. Full story...

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Singapore: Small state, big arms purchases...

Singapore's determination to remain independent has fuelled a military expansionism - but in a fast-changing global security environment, the militarised city-state may be forced to take sides.

"Our immediate part of the world is changing dramatically," said Singaporean Defence Minister Dr Ng Eng Hen during a recent unveiling of Singapore's defence plans.

In his opening remarks, the defence minister of this city-state of five million people alluded to the difficult balancing act Singapore has had to master since its independence. "In the latter half of the 20th century, US dominance in both security and economic spheres was unchallenged, and it provided the security umbrella for this region. In the 21st century, China's rise as an economic and military power is redefining the power dynamics in the Asia-Pacific," he said.

Singapore's foreign policy has long been based on economic partnerships, yet it has refused to enter into any military alliances to preserve these economic interests. Instead, it has devoted a large share of its budget to defence spending, transforming this once-small British outpost into a force to be reckoned with. Between 2008 and 2012, Singapore accounted for four percent of all global weapons imports, making it the fifth-largest importer of military hardware, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

The country now spends 25 percent of its annual budget on defence. Its military spending has skyrocketed from $600m annually at the start of the 1980s to $12bn in 2013. By comparison, neighbouring Malaysia - whose population is more than five times bigger than that of Singapore - spent just $5bn last year. Full story...

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UN launches investigation into war crimes in Sri Lanka...

David Cameron hailed a “victory for the people of Sri Lanka” on Thursday when the United Nations launched an inquiry into atrocities carried out during the country’s civil war.

The UN Human Rights Council passed a British-sponsored resolution providing for an international investigation by 23 votes to 12.

Navi Pillay, the UN high comissioner for human rights, will now be able to start an inquiry into the deaths of tens of thousands of people during the final months of the civil war in Sri Lanka in 2009, when refugees from the Tamil minority were trapped and bombarded alongside rebels on a narrow stretch of beach on the north-eastern coast.

The decision came four months after the Prime Minister controversially agreed to attend a Commonwealth Summit in the country in November. At the time, he promised to urge an international inquiry into atrocities and disappearances if President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s own government failed to act.

 Sri Lanka had vociferously opposed the measure, with the backing of China and Russia. The country said the resolution would violate its sovereignty and undermine its own efforts to heal the wounds caused by war. Full story...

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Hindu group wants Sunny Leone banned from India...

The Hindu Janjagruti Samiti (HJS) wants Indo-Canadian adult star-turned-Bollywood actress Sunny Leone deported from India and her latest film Ragini MMS 2 banned.

In a memorandum to the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), the Samiti says the film Ragini MMS 2 is an “an assault on Bharatiya culture, dignity and Hindu deities.’’

Since the film begins with the chanting of `Shree Hanuman Chalisa,’’ the Samiti says, “By making use of Shri Hanuman, a deity known to have control over his organs and whose character was ideal, religious sentiments of Hindus have been hurt to a great extent. “Therefore, HJS has demanded that the movie should be immediately banned and porn star Sunny Leone, who is leading the young generation of Bharat to carnal desires, should be deported from Bharat.’’

The self-proclaimed guardian of Indian culture says, “Presently, morality in (Indian) society has reached its nadir. Offences such as rapes, atrocities on women and molestation of women are on the increase every day. In such a situation, it is unfortunate to observe that films being produced (are) leading society towards lecherousness and immorality…’’ Full story...

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10 tigers slaughtered in show of social stature for Chinese businessmen...

More than 10 tigers have been killed as "visual feasts" in China to entertain officials and rich business people, state media reported.

Police in the port city of Zhanjiang, in the southern province of Guangdong, seized a freshly slaughtered tiger and multiple tiger products in a raid this month, said the Nanfang Daily, the mouthpiece of the provincial Communist Party.

Local officials and prominent businesspeople gathered to watch the tigers being killed as "eye-openers" to show off their social stature, it said. Video footage of a killing two years ago showed the tiger, kept in an iron cage, having an electrified iron mass prodded into its mouth with a wooden stick and passing out after being electrocuted for more than 10 seconds, the paper said.

An experienced cattle or pig slaughterer is normally hired to butcher the carcass, it said, adding that tiger bones sold for an average of 14,000 yuan (£1,360) a kilo while the meat fetched 1,000 yuan a kilo.

Police said a butcher – who jumped to his death while trying to escape arrest in a raid – had killed more than 10 animals, the report on Wednesday added. "The tigers were probably anaesthetised for transport. But buyers would check them to make sure that they were alive before the killing," it quoted an unnamed source as saying. Full story...

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A day in Dhaka, Bangladesh...

Malaysia now admits keeping 'SEALED EVIDENCE' from MH370 next of kin...

Relatives of the 239 people aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 expressed their frustration about yet another satellite discovery that has not been backed up by the recovery of any debris.

“Until something is picked up and analysed to make sure it’s from MH370 we can’t believe it, but without anything found it’s just clues,’’ Steve Wang, whose 57-year-old mother was aboard the flight, said in Beijing.

“Without that, it’s useless.”

The families’ anger has not diminished this week; the Straits Times reported that Malaysian authorities infuriated passengers’ loved ones by telling them at a briefing this week that there was “sealed evidence that cannot be made public” in relation to the missing flight.

“The sealed evidence included air traffic control radio transcript, radar data and airport security recordings,” the paper reported.

The remarks by Malaysian authorities — made at the Metropark Lido Hotel in Beijing — have not been reported by other major newspapers, despite being widely shared on social media. Full story...

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UN slams US for torture, NSA spying...

A wide-ranging United Nations report released Thursday strongly criticizes the United States for a host of human rights concerns — from jailing the homeless and sentencing juveniles to life sentences, to drone warfare and spying by the National Security Agency.

While the U.N. praised some steps the U.S. government has taken, like curbing human trafficking and a 2009 ban on Central Intelligence Agency torture and secret detention, the report’s authors found the U.S. wanting on 25 human rights issues.

"The U.S. is adept at demanding human rights change from other governments, while failing to meet international standards itself," said Jose Luis Diaz, Amnesty International representative at the United Nations.

Diaz welcomed the U.N.'s recommendations on torture transparency and calls for ending the death penalty nationwide, as well as limiting the use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons.

"It must implement the recommendations of the Human Rights Committee without delay," said Diaz. Full story...

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Thursday, March 27, 2014

Ron Paul: US 'Democracy Promotion' destroys democracy overseas...

(...)

This is the same State Department official who was caught on tape just recently planning in detail the overthrow of the Ukrainian government.

That five billion dollars appears to have bought a revolution in Ukraine. But what do the US taxpayers get, who were forced to pay for this interventionism? Nothing good. Ukraine is a bankrupt country that will need tens of billions of dollars to survive the year. Already the US-selected prime minister has made a trip to Washington to ask for more money.

And what will the Ukrainians get? Their democracy has been undermined by the US-backed coup in Kiev. In democracies, power is transferred peacefully through elections, not seized by rebels in the streets. At least it used to be.

The IMF will descend on Ukraine to implement yet another of its failed rescue plans, which enrich the well-connected and international bankers at the expense of the local population. The IMF adds debt, organizes sweetheart deals for foreign corporations, and demands that the local population accept “austerity” in exchange for “reform” that never seems to produce the promised results.

The groundwork for this disaster has been laid by NED, USAID, and the army of NGOs they have funded over the years in Ukraine. Full story...

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First of its kind research reveals powerful social media mood virus – don’t get sucked in...

Can bad moods go viral and negatively affect people across the globe? Yes, research reveals that yes, they can and do just that.

Imagine a negative social media update that - within hours or minutes - sucks millions of people into a vortex of angst that adversely affects their real interactions with friends, colleagues and family members. Is there a better way to depress a population quickly?

A recent study conducted by researchers from the University of California, Yale, and Facebook has found that moods can be spread as wildly as that funny cat video everyone's been watching.

Social researchers have known for years that emotions spread through face-to-face interaction, but this is the first large-scale study on how this phenomenon carries over into online interactions.

In gathering data for this study, researchers (some of whom were employed by Facebook at the time) examined billions of status updates posted between January 2009 and March 2012. They specifically examined how updates changed on rainy days. Then they looked at posts of people who were Facebook friends with those impacted by rain, but who lived in areas where the weather was not as bad. The study found that every emotionally negative post as a result of the rain generated an extra 1.29 more negative posts than usual. Full story...

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Saudi Arabia: ‘No ambulance service for woman living by herself’

A Saudi woman was allegedly refused an ambulance service because she did not have a male guardian present with her in the house.

Salma Al-Shuhab had woken up in the middle of the night with severe headache and called the Saudi Red Crescent, only to have her request rejected when the call center learned that she lived alone.

“I couldn’t just go out onto the street looking for a taxi at 4 a.m., so I called the ambulance because I couldn’t bear the pain until dawn,” she said. “The employee asked me routine questions, including my age, my address and other details.

It was only when he learned that I live alone that he said he could not send me an ambulance. He then left the phone for a few minutes and came back to tell me the same thing.”

“I asked him if I should be left to die,” she said. “I had to look through my phonebook for 15 minutes until I found the number of a driver. Is this humane?” Full story...

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Do it for Denmark!!!

Why chocolate really is the secret to happiness...

Money may not buy happiness or grow on trees but when it comes to chocolate, it seems you can have both. Chocolate really does grow on trees and the chemical feel-good factor comes from the world’s most widely consumed psychoactive drug.

The Theobroma cacao is an evergreen that is native to tropical regions of the American continent and its seeds or beans are the source of the 4m metric tonnes of chocolate produced each year, and much of it from countries like the Ivory Coast and Indonesia.

Chocolate consumption goes back at least 4,000 years, to the peoples of present day Mexico: the Mayans, Aztecs and their predecessors, the Olmec. Just as today, they roasted the fermented seeds from cocoa pods, grinding the roast to a powder which they used to make a chocolate beverage, a cold, foaming drink that was very different to the substance we consume today. Sometimes they added honey to sweeten it and the Aztecs also added chili-pepper to give the phrase “hot chocolate” a whole new meaning.

Two thousand years ago the Mayan people, of what is now known as Guatemala, even came up with the original “chocolate teapot”, a ceramic vessel used to pour the foaming drink and archaeologists have found evidence that chocolate drinks were served up at the celebrations after the interment of sacrificial victims (though I’m not sure that the condemned would have been made any happier with a bar of chocolate). Full story...

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Social media: Weapon of PsyWar and you’re the target...

For centuries the most powerful intelligence gathering service on the planet was the Catholic rite of ‘confession’, where millions of people told vital info to the Pope on guilty acts which could then be used to blackmail them and their co-sinners.

But you’d be wrong if you thought that was mostly over with Luther and the reformation. Priest-spooks of the new church at Google and Facebook took over where the confession box left off.

“Facebook have my life and I worry, ‘what will they do with it?’” a friend admitted to me this week. It’s a fair concern and one the software and social media giants have skirted round, paying their PR and legal departments to keep public debate to a minimum. Without a cast iron assurance that our data really is private we have to assume they hand everything to the NSA.

By shilly-shallying with our privacy, Zuckerberg and his Facebook board, by omission, are making it clear they are more afraid of ‘them’ than ‘us’, and they're bending over for the spooks.

 Why worry if we have done nothing wrong? The chilling character of Gestapo torture chief Sturmbahnfuhrer Kessler summed it up precisely in the BBCs 1978 drama series on the French resistance ‘Secret Army’. In the episode ‘Trapped’ he explains: “Information. That’s the most important weapon we have. Information. My job is obtaining it. Every government fighting terrorism faces this problem and always will, I expect.” Full story...

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Malaysia plane: 10 questions that are still unresolved...

As the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 continues in the southern Indian Ocean, some key questions remain unanswered.

Here are 10 questions about what happened to the Boeing 777 that disappeared after leaving Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing on 8 March, with 239 people on board.

1. Why did the plane make a sharp left turn?

Military radar logs show flight MH370 turned unexpectedly west when it diverted from its planned flight path, by which time the plane's transponder had already been switched off, and its last ACARS datalink transmission sent.

Sudden turns like this are "extremely rare", according to Dr Guy Gratton of Brunel University's Flight Safety Lab. He says the only real reason pilots are likely to make such a manoeuvre is if there's a serious problem on the plane which makes them decide to divert to a different destination, to get the aircraft on the ground.

That could be a fire or sudden decompression, according to David Barry, an expert on flight data monitoring at Cranfield University. Full story...

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Burma’s Muslims are facing incredibly harsh curbs on marriage, childbirth and religion...

Last March, sectarian riots roiled Central Burma and at least 48 people, mainly Muslims, were slaughtered by machete-wielding thugs. Buddhist monks spurred on frenzied mobs in an orgy of bloodshed that will be forever indelible in the minds of the Southeast Asian nation’s Muslim minority. The violence spread to a further 11 townships.

One year on, thousands remain homeless and animosity is entrenched. “It is not stable and conditions are still very dangerous,” says Aung Thein, a 51-year-old Muslim lawyer in Meiktila, a central Burmese town of 100,000 people, where at least five mosques and more than 800 homes were razed to the ground.

Adding to this already fraught picture, new legislation threatens to isolate the Muslims further. Proposed regulations will restrict religious conversions, make it illegal for Buddhist women to marry Muslim men, place limits on the number of children Muslims can have, and outlaw polygamy, which is permitted in Islam.

More than 1.3 million signatures have reportedly been gathered in support of this plan, which is spearheaded by a group of extremist Buddhist monks and their lay supporters. The proposals were forwarded by reformist President Thein Sein to Lower House Speaker Shwe Mann late last month, and have now been submitted to relevant ministries to be drafted as bills. They have been dubbed an “intolerance package” by Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, who says they would be a “recipe for disaster for a multicultural, multi-religious country like Burma.” Full story...

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Russian officials dump iPads over spy fears...

Russian government officials have swapped their iPads for Samsung tablets to ensure tighter security, the telecoms minister told news agencies on Wednesday.

Journalists spotted that ministers at a cabinet meeting were no longer using Apple tablets, and minister Nikolai Nikiforov confirmed the changeover "took place not so long ago."

He said the ministers' new Samsungs were "specially protected devices that can be used to work with confidential information."

"Some of the information at government meetings is confidential in nature and these devices fully meet these demands and have gone through the strictest system of certification."

Nikiforov denied that Russia was clamping down on US technology in response to Western sanctions imposed over its takeover of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula. Full story...

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Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Obama: Well that's embarrassing, no one clapped...

Bill Gates loves Common Core for your kids, BUT NOT HIS...

Billionaire software tycoon Bill Gates has poured millions of dollars into efforts to develop and promote the Common Core State Standards Initiative, a set of K-12 math and language arts curriculum benchmarks and high-stakes standardized tests now being implemented in 46 states.

Strangely enough, though, Common Core isn’t quite good enough for Gates and his wife, Melinda, when it comes to the education of their own three children.

Diane Ravitch, a self-styled education policy iconoclast who tends to oppose Common Core (and charter schools, and much else), noted this irony on her blog earlier this week.

The children of Bill and Melinda Gates – Jennifer, Rory and Phoebe – have attended Lakeside School, Seattle’s most elite, fancypants private school.

The hallowed halls of Lakeside School are a sweet place to attend classes if you have the means.

According to a Seattle education blog, the student-teacher ratio is 9 to 1. The average class size is 16. Some two dozen varsity sports are available and the opulent athletic facilities include “hydrotherapy spas.” Full story...

Read also: Indiana drops Common Core education standards...

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Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart receives welfare loan from US taxpayers...

How Australia’s richest person, mining heiress Gina Rinehart, secured a $US694 million ($764 million) loan from American taxpayers is surely one of the great ironies of the capitalist system, reports The Australian Financial Review.

The case is the latest example of a flaw in the United States political economy: what some see as crony capitalism.

Rinehart’s mining group, Hancock Prospecting, last week signed off on a $US7.2 billion debt package for her highly anticipated Roy Hill iron ore project in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.

There are 19 international lenders, including Australia’s big four banks, in the syndicate. Government export credit agencies including the Ex-Im Bank in the US, as well as Japan and Korea, were crucial in helping the massive debt-funding deal over the line.

Commercial banks and bond investors were reluctant to shoulder all the risk. Full story...

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Purity ball: Why girls are 'gifting their virginity' to their daddies...

Purity balls are the family phenomenon happening across the United States and around the world. A purity ball is a special ceremony where a girl pledges to remain "pure" until her wedding day and "gifts her virginity" to her father until marriage. These symbolic acts now take place in 48 American states and in 17 countries.

The balls resemble wedding ceremonies in multiple ways. First, the girls, who are all around the age of 12 but can be as young as seven, usually wear white gowns. The fathers, who are the "protectors," then present their daughters with purity rings. These rings symbolize their daughter's commitment to virginity. And finally, the ball ends with a father-daughter dance.

According to the ceremony, purity means the daughter will have no sexual contact of any kind until after marriage. And dating and kissing aren't allowed until they are ready for marriage. One of the largest purity balls in the US has been held for 14 consecutive years at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. There, more than 60 fathers pledge "to protect their daughter's choices for purity."

Additionally, a recent documentary explores the idea behind these ceremonies. The film follows two families: the Johnsons from Indiana and the Wilsons, whose father Randy is one of the founders of purity balls. The families are very different. The Johnsons attend regular high school, whereas the Wilsons are homeschooled and mainly socialize with members of their church community. Full story...

Read also: Purity balls, in which girls 'gift their virginity' to their fathers

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Sri Lanka’s Tamils are still facing torture and sexual attacks...

A damning new report alleges that Sri Lanka’s security forces continue to persecute the country’s Tamils minority five years after the ending of the country’s bloody civil war. It claims that the policy is “approved by the highest levels of government.”

The report, produced by South African human rights lawyer and U.N. adviser Yasmin Sooka, the Bar Human Rights Committee, England and Wales, and the International Truth & Justice Project, Sri Lanka, is based on the testimony of 40 survivors who fled to the U.K. seeking refuge. Nearly half tried to commit suicide.

The authors compiled harrowing tales of severe torture and sexual abuse in custody, almost all of which took took place after the war ended, some as recently as Feb. 2014.

“The cases of torture, rape and sexual violence described in this report are just a small sample of those crimes likely to have been committed against Tamils,” said Sooka in a statement. “The international community must act now otherwise such atrocities will continue to define post-conflict Sri Lanka.”

The United Nation’s Human Rights Council will vote today on whether to launch an international probe into Sri Lanka’s alleged war crimes during the three-decades-long ethnic conflict that ended in 2009. Source...

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My Beautiful Woman...

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 now clearly a government cover-up: All evidence contradicts official story...

The "official" story of what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is now a blatant cover-up. After an endless stream of wild incompetence from the Malaysian military and government concerning the radar signature of the missing flight, we are now told by the Malaysian government that the flight "went down over the southern Indian Ocean" and that all lives are lost.

This explanation smacks of an obvious cover-up for several crucial reasons, all of which are now being utterly ignored by the conventional press:

#1) If the plane went down in the ocean, it would have broken up on impact and debris would be easily spotted

A Boeing 777 does not -- and cannot -- survive impact with the ocean and remain intact. It simply does not have the structural integrity to survive such an impact, which is a lot like hitting a cement wall at terminal velocity.

If Flight 370 hit the ocean, it would have been broken into tens of thousands of pieces, many of which obviously float on water (such as the seat cushions) and would be witnessed washing up on regional shores or easily spotted by search teams.

The lack of such debris is strong support that Flight 370 did not crash into the Indian Ocean as we are now being told. Full story...

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