#1
The case relates to slush funds that Siemens managers set up to pay bribes in a bid to win foreign contracts.
It's doubtful that any of these penalties will find their way to the honest competitors who were cheated by Siemen's corruption. Too bad there's not some avenue for additional legal action intended to recover financial losses imposed upon the other bidders.
The Democratic Republic of Congo's transport minister has been sacked in the wake of a plane crash that killed at least 51 people in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital.
A spokesman for Joseph Kabila, the country's president, said Remy Henry Kuseyo was dismissed "due to his inability to reform the aviation sector". Friday's decision was approved by the cabinet a day after the cargo plane, which had a Russian crew, ploughed into a crowded Kinshasa suburb. The aeroplane, an Antonov AN-26 car belonging to the Congolese airline Africa One, crashed shortly after take-off.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/06/2007 00:00 ||
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Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz, Saudi Arabia's king, has announced an overhaul of the country's judicial system, fulfilling a pledge he made several months ago to reform the current heavily-criticised administration. The move includes the establishment of a supreme court as well as commercial, personal status and labour tribunals.
Justice in Saudi Arabia is currently administered by a system of religious courts according to the kingdom's strict interpretation of Sharia law. Judges have considerable discretion in issuing rulings, with defendants, who often have no legal representation, unable to appeal rulings.
'Qualitative change'
Abdullah Al-Asheikh, the Saudi justice minister, said: "The new Judiciary Law and Court of Grievances Law were prepared with utmost care and will bring about qualitative change in the kingdom's judicial system."
Two supreme courts, a general court and an administrative court, will replace the supreme judiciary council, which has been the country's highest tribunal until now. A royal decree issued on Tuesday said the Saudi king had allocated a budget of $1.8 bn "for the King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz project to revamp the judicial sector, which aims at upgrading the judiciary and developing it in a comprehensive and integrated manner."
At the moment, judges, who are appointed by the king on the recommendation of the supreme judicial council, have complete discretion to set sentences, except in cases where Sharia outlines a punishment, such as capital crimes.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/06/2007 00:00 ||
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Bangladeshs last elected prime minister Khaleda Zia has been questioned by corruption investigators after she declared assets worth around 500,000 dollars, a report said Friday. Zia, who led the country until last October, has been in custody for more than a month facing graft allegations. She was detained as part of a massive corruption crackdown by the military-backed government. The inquiry team talked to Zia for about half an hour, the commissions deputy director Golam Shahriyar Chowdhury was quoted as saying by the state-run BSS news agency. We wanted to know whether she has anything more to say about her wealth statement submitted to the Anti-Corruption Commission, he said, adding that the commission would now make its own assessment of Zias wealth. The commission has ordered hundreds of high-profile figures to make wealth statements accounting for their assets since the government launched an anti-graft drive in February. More than a dozen former ministers, lawmakers and their family members have subsequently been sentenced to between three and 20 years in jail by special fast-track courts.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/06/2007 00:00 ||
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SHENYANG, China(AP) - (Kyodo)Eight anti-nuclear activists, most of them Japanese, departed for Pyongyang via Shenyang in China on Saturday to study the current situations facing North Korean survivors of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The eight people include Takashi Mukai, deputy chief of the Japan Congress Against A- and H-Bombs, known as Gensuikin, Shingou Fukuyama, an executive officer of the association, and Li Sil Gun, head of a Japan-based organization that helps Korean atomic bomb survivors. They plan to return to Japan on Wednesday.
They will meet with members of a North Korean group of atomic bomb survivors to grasp their current situation and explain the Japanese government's support for victims of the bombings living abroad, with the aim of improving support for those living in North Korea.
According to the North Korean group, about 900 North Korean atomic bomb survivors remain alive.
#4
For the Anti-nuke crowd I would ask: "Would it have been better for the U.S. to invade Japan and kill half the population than to drop two bombs and save millions?" Dead is dead, nukes are just better at it. Review the battles of Tarawa, Saipan, and Okinawa and you will understand why Truman went with the Nuclear option.
#5
Could be a win-win situation, see if they survive.
If not, everybody wins.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
10/06/2007 14:12 Comments ||
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#6
Procopius2k, I haven;t been able to watch Ken Burns' "The War" so I'm not familiar with the hokum you're referencing (could you drop me an email to enlighten me, please?), but I have seen the wildly varying figures for Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
Just like the figures for civilian casualties in Iraq - you'd think nuking Iraq would have been better casualty-wise.
#7
If you want a complete history of the last days of the Japanese empire, read Downfall by Richard B. Frank. It gives, in detail, the description of the bombing raids on Tokyo and other cities. It explains the American expectation of casualties, both military and civilian, in case the US invaded. It also explains that the next step in the bombing campaign would have taken out the rail network, preventing rice from reaching the cities. If we had done that, it would have led to mass starvation in Japan. Yes, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused horrific casualties. However, if the US had continued to bomb Japan, and then invaded, there would have been many, many more casualties.
#8
Also read any of the declassified reports on the Japanese Home Island defense plans : the Imperial Japanese were HOPING for 5-7 million civilian casualties to turn the US public against the war. They also had turned all their K-12 schools into suicide factories by running drills with 20 pound book packs on children that had a string hanging out. The children would run over to and crawl under a Sherman tank mock-up and pull the string - candy or some other goodie was their reward for doing that. If the US had invaded, those backpacks would have been 20 pound satchel charges and the string would have activated an instantaneous fuse, destroying the tank and splattering the child.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
10/06/2007 21:10 Comments ||
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#10
Most Americans don't know that a B-29 fire raid in July over Tokyo burned out 31 square miles of that city, and killed over 2 million people. The death toll for both Heroshima and Nagasaki was less than 10% of that (200,000). LeMay had plans to burn out every major city in Japan before the invasion. The casualties would indeed have been in the 5-10 MILLION under those circumstances. The Japanese survivors of these atomic attacks are just angry because they were the first from the new weapons. If Iran and Soddy aRabida don't mend their ways, they won't be the last. I will stand up and applaud the use of nukes on the streets of my city, if it happens.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
10/06/2007 23:29 Comments ||
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#11
Word, OP. The nuclear bombs SAVED Japanese and American lives alike.
Crucial elections to decide Nepal's future were postponed indefinitely on Friday after the government and Maoists failed to agree on the fate of the monarchy and the election system, officials said. The Times of India, on its website, quoted Peace and Reconstruction Minister Ram Chanda Poudel as saying, "The seven party leaders (of the coalition government) have agreed to postpone the constituent assembly elections for an indefinite period." The polls scheduled for November 22 were a key element of a peace deal sealed last year that ended a civil war launched by the Maoists in 1996. Voters were to elect a body to rewrite Nepal's constitution and decide the fate of the Himalayan country's embattled monarchy.
(AKI) The wife of war time Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, indicted for genocide by the United Nations' Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, has appealed to her husband to surrender because her family was going through hell due to his hiding.
Ljiljana Zelen-Karadzic said in an interview with Sarajevo weekly Slobodna Bosna she had no knowledge whether her husband was alive or where he may be hiding. But she added the family was under constant pressure from CIA agents and international officials who she claimed had threatened it would be starved and suffer serious consequences because Radovan hasnt surrendered."
Posted by: Fred ||
10/06/2007 00:00 ||
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Sindh Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim said that the ruling party and its allies have enough votes in Sindh to re-elect President General Musharraf. Talking to the media at an Iftar dinner after presiding over a provincial parliamentary party meeting on Friday, he said that they have 103 votes. He said that the forthcoming elections would be held in an impartial and independent manner.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/06/2007 00:00 ||
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The highest religious authority in Saudi Arabia, where a strict version of sharia, or Islamic law, is applied, has launched an official website for fatwas, or religious edicts. The site (www.alifta.com) aims at providing "quick access to fatwas on an official website," says a committee for research and edicts affiliated with the Council of Senior Ulema (Muslim scholars), which operates the site.
The site features edicts issued by a number of official religious scholars, devoting a a section to the former head of the council and mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz. Bin Baz, who died in 1999, was known for opposing the empowerment of women, who are subject to a host of restrictions in the oil-rich kingdom. In 1991, he issued a fatwa prohibiting women from driving cars.
The launch of the website is apparently a response to the issuing of fatwas by Saudi and other Muslim scholars that clash with the official line of the Saudi religious establishment led by the Council of Senior Ulema.
#1
Is there a way of reading www.alifta.com site in English?
The launch of the website is apparently a response to the issuing of fatwas by Saudi and other Muslim scholars that clash with the official line of the Saudi religious establishment led by the Council of Senior Ulema.
#2
Google has an Arabic-English translator.
http://translate.google.com/translate_t
Kinda hit and miss.
Posted by: ed ||
10/06/2007 14:06 Comments ||
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#3
They want you to use JavaScript to use their site .. good way to install malware with win and internet explorer...
"Evil, and Pure Evil.
Posted by: rhodesiafever 2007-10-06 13:07 "
#4
"The Holy Koran, the Prophet's teachings, the majority of Islamic scientists, and the actual facts all prove that the sun is running in its orbit... and that the earth is fixed and stable, spread out by God for his mankind.... Anyone who professed otherwise would utter a charge of falsehood toward God, the Koran, and the Prophet."
Sheik Abd el Aziz bin Baz, 1966, in a letter to the Saudi King asking him to suppress the "Copernican Heresy"
Posted by: john frum ||
10/06/2007 20:21 Comments ||
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#5
If the earth is rotating as they claim, the countries, the mountains, the trees, the rivers, and the oceans will have no bottom and the people will see the eastern countries move to the west and the western countries move to the east."
Evidence that the Earth is Standing Still
1974
By Sheikh Abdul Aziz Ibn Baz
Posted by: john frum ||
10/06/2007 20:25 Comments ||
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#6
"The earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is an atheist deserving of punishment."
Sheik Abdel-Aziz ibn Baaz, 1993
Posted by: john frum ||
10/06/2007 20:41 Comments ||
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#7
Not to worry, my flock. I will hack into their fatwa site and show them what a real fatwa should look like, complete with special effects.
Ibrahim Gambari, the UN's envoy to Myanmar, has warned of "serious international consequences" for the country's military rulers after its suppression of pro-democracy protests. Addressing the UN Security Council in New York on Friday, he called for the release of political prisoners and said he was concerned by reports of continuing abuses.
The speech was made as state television in Myanmar broadcast a rare image of pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, currently held under house arrest by the government. The picture, which was the first to to be shown on state media in years, showed her meeting Gambari. Gambari said on Friday: "Of great concern to the UN and the international community are the continuing and disturbing reports of abuses being committed by security and non-uniformed elements."
Posted by: Fred ||
10/06/2007 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The Democratic Republic of Congo's transport minister has been sacked in the wake of a plane crash that killed at least 51 people in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital. 
Bangladeshs last elected prime minister Khaleda Zia has been questioned by corruption investigators after she declared assets worth around 500,000 dollars, a report said Friday. Zia, who led the country until last October, has been in custody for more than a month facing graft allegations. She was detained as part of a massive corruption crackdown by the military-backed government. The inquiry team talked to Zia for about half an hour, the commissions deputy director Golam Shahriyar Chowdhury was quoted as saying by the state-run BSS news agency. We wanted to know whether she has anything more to say about her wealth statement submitted to the Anti-Corruption Commission, he said, adding that the commission would now make its own assessment of Zias wealth. The commission has ordered hundreds of high-profile figures to make wealth statements accounting for their assets since the government launched an anti-graft drive in February. More than a dozen former ministers, lawmakers and their family members have subsequently been sentenced to between three and 20 years in jail by special fast-track courts.
SHENYANG, China(AP) - (Kyodo)Eight anti-nuclear activists, most of them Japanese, departed for Pyongyang via Shenyang in China on Saturday to study the current situations facing North Korean survivors of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 
The highest religious authority in Saudi Arabia, where a strict version of sharia, or Islamic law, is applied, has launched an official website for fatwas, or religious edicts. The site (
