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UN confirms inquiry of sexual abuse cases in Ivory Coast 23/07/2007 18:05 ABIDJAN, July 23 (AFP) The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast confirmed it was investigating cases of sexual abuse of Ivorian women, including young girls, by some Moroccan soldiers. "There was an internal investigation which proved the facts, but we are waiting the results of the full investigation led by our internal affairs services, which will confirm the facts," UN spokeswoman Margarita Amodeo told AFP. "There are minors among the victims concerned," she said. The United Nations at the weekend suspended a Moroccan peacekeeping unit based in...

“Gang Rapists” Given Eight Months Exile By Paul Roberts in London July 19, 2007 Four men who had sex with a twelve year old girl after breaking into her home in January have been cleared of rape. A judge found the girl from Kurendhoo, Lhaviyani atoll, had consented to have sex with the men after they smashed her bedroom window with an axe. The judge sentenced the four men to eight months exile from Kurendhoo for sex outside marriage. The sentence apparently contradicts a government commitment in May that child sex offenders would be imprisoned rather than banished. On January...

PETA'S GOT BETTER FRIENDS THAN MICHAEL VICK Even if Vick wins his legal battle, here's a hint that the PR war will be a bloodbath. In a show of its political clout, PETA sent a letter in conjunction with longtime allies Russell Simmons and Al Sharpton to Falcons owner Arthur Blank, NFL commish Roger Goodell and Vick's corporate sponsors condemning dogfighting. At every turn, people around Vick have anonymously thrown him under the bus. Coincidentally, PETA's friends use their names for the very same reason. Oh yeah, Vick's in bad shape. Really, is there a worse pair of enemies for...

Two-hour rape and torture of honour killing girl murdered by her family Last updated at 22:25pm on 19th July 2007 Horrific details have been revealed of the last hours of the young Kurdish woman murdered by her family for falling in love with the wrong man. Banaz Mahmod, 20, was brutally raped and stamped on during a two-hour ordeal before being garotted. One of her killers, the Old Bailey was told, was 30-year-old Mohamad Hama, who had been recruited by Banaz's father Mahmod Mahmod, 52, and his brother Ari, 51. Both were found guilty of murder last month. The shocking...

Veiled protest as race-hate Muslims are jailed by CHARLOTTE GILL - More by this author » Last updated at 00:57am on 19th July 2007 Dozens of veiled women gathered outside the Old Bailey to protest against the jail sentences given to four Muslim men for encouraging terrorism. Mizanur Rahman, 24, Umran Javed, 27, and Abdul Muhid, 25, were each jailed for six years for inciting murder and racial hatred during a demonstration against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. A fourth man, 32-year-old Abdul Saleem, was cleared of soliciting murder but convicted of inciting racial hatred. He was jailed for four...

Lesbian Muslim Terror Suspects in Texas Arrested; Explosives at House Detonated, Terrorized Neighbors, Tested Police Response July 17, 2007 By Debbie Schlussel How many chances do two Muslim women get to violate the law with terrorist threats and test the system? Many chances, apparently, if they're "Kimberly" Asma Al-Homsi and Aisha Abdul-Rahman Hamad of Arlington, Texas. Remember them? As I told you in April, Al-Homsi, a Syrian with dual citizenship, was friends with Wadih El-Hage, Osama Bin Laden's personal secretary, convicted of the two 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa. "Kimberly" Asma Al-Homsi & Aisha Abdul-Rahman Hamad: Lesbian Muslim...

Three college leaders lose jobs over cover-up of rape-slaying School officials told family there was no foul play By Jeff Karoub ASSOCIATED PRESS July 17, 2007 YPSILANTI, Mich. – Three Eastern Michigan University administrators, including the president, have been forced out, months after top school officials were accused of covering up the rape and slaying of a student by publicly ruling out foul play. President John Fallon was fired, and Vice President of Student Affairs Jim Vick and Public Safety Director Cindy Hall lost their jobs at the 23,500-student public university, the chairman of the school's governing board said yesterday....

Che Guevara: PC Icon by Larry Pratt July 12, 2007 02:00 PM EST Che Guevara's image graces many a T-shirt worn in the US. Wearing one of these seems to be intended as a statement that it is good to be free of the crushing norms of a civilization tricked up by dead white men. The T-shirt image depicts a long-haired 1960’s hippy gazing steadfastly into the future. The truth is, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the one-time number three in Fidel Castro's thugocracy, would have had a guy looking like Guevara's resemblance arrested and sent to a concentration camp known by...

Meet the British Mrs Bin Laden Last updated at 08:16am on 12th July 2007 High heels and head scarf: Jane Felix-Browne She's a surgically enhanced "Lady" from Cheshire whose toyboy sixth husband is the son of the world's most wanted man. She drives a white Jaguar with exotic plates, sports a face and body which owe their lingering youth to the plastic surgeon's knife, affects an aristocratic title and has been married as many times as Henry VIII. So far, so very Cheshire Set, you might say. But what indisputably distinguishes "Lady" Jane Felix-Browne from the other haute coutured and...

River's abundance of corpses ruins Iraqis' appetite for carp REUTERS July 11, 2007 BAGHDAD – River fish are off the menu in Baghdad. Dead bodies frequently pulled from the River Tigris have dulled the Iraqi capital's appetite for masqouf, its popular dish of grilled carp, after it was reported that clerics had warned that the fish dined on rotting corpses. “They spread rumors about the fish, that they eat the bodies of drowned people, but this is just a rumor,” said fisherman Hussein Ahmed, 62, after setting his nets within sight of the heavily fortified Green Zone compound on the...

Islamic militants in Pak. set afire offices of aid agencies Karachi, July 10 (PTI): Enraged Islamic militants set on fire offices of two international aid agencies working in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province today in retaliation to the military action against militants in the Lal Masjid. Local residents said that around 100 people, some of them armed, had come down from villages in the mountains surrounding Batgram town near Mansehra and attacked the offices of 'Care International' and the 'French Red Cross' and set the big tents on fire. The aid agencies were working in the area for the survivors...

Afghan girls traded, sold to settle debt By ALISA TANG, Associated Press Writer Mon Jul 9, 4:19 PM ET Unable to scrounge together the $165 he needed to repay a loan to buy sheep, Nazir Ahmad made good on his debt by selling his 16-year-old daughter to marry the lender's son. "He gave me nine sheep," Ahmad said, describing his family's woes since taking the loan. "Because of nine sheep, I gave away my daughter." Seated beside him in the cramped compound, his daughter Malia's eyes filled with tears. She used a black scarf to wipe them away. Despite advances...

Business execs arrested for refusing to cut prices By Angus Shaw ASSOCIATED PRESS July 9, 2007 HARARE, Zimbabwe – Police arrested 16 more business leaders in a crackdown on those suspected of violating the government's order to slash prices by 50 percent, the official media reported yesterday. The mandated price cuts ordered more than two weeks ago are a desperate attempt to confront inflation that has spun out of control during Zimbabwe's economic crisis. The falling prices have caused stampedes, panic buying and near-riots. Among those arrested in the latest sweep were the directors of Edgars, a leading clothing and...

Chinese officials break "one-child" policy Jul 8 11:56 AM US/Eastern Nearly 2,000 officials in central China have violated the nation's "one child" family planning policy, further revealing difficulties in implementing population controls. Family planning departments have exposed 1,968 officials in populous Hunan province who have breached the law, Xinhua news agency said Sunday. One "national" level official surnamed Li even went so far as to sire four children with his four different mistresses, the report said. The local family planning commission caught 21 national and local legislators, 24 political advisers and 112 businessmen violating the birth control policies in the...

Saudi fatwa against liberals raises fears of violence Sun Jul 8, 2007 5:56 PM IST By Andrew Hammond RIYADH (Reuters) - A religious edict by a prominent Saudi cleric suggesting liberals are not real Muslims has enflamed debate over reforms in the conservative Islamic state, with self-professed liberals fearing they will be attacked. Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries that rules by strict application of Islamic law, giving clerics a powerful position in society, but Islamists fear that liberal reformers are gaining ground under the rule of King Abdullah. Responding to an online request for a religious edict,...

Singer held over dressing Friday July 6, 2007 IPOH: The Perak Religious Department (JAIP) has ordered a singer to appear before the Syariah Court for “exposing her body” during a performance and “encouraging immoral activities”. However, an indignant Siti Noor Idayu Abd Moin, 22, said she was wearing a sleeveless top and long pants when JAIP officers raided an entertainment outlet in Sunway City where she was performing on Tuesday. "Our band had just finished and it was a little past midnight when they came in and rounded up all the Muslims. “They asked to see our MyKad but one...

Program sets al-Qaeda convicts free on their honor By Kathy Gannon ASSOCIATED PRESS July 5, 2007 SAN'A, Yemen – Yemen is pioneering a novel approach for dealing with convicted al-Qaeda operatives: Let them roam free as long as they promise to be law-abiding. For example, Ali Mohammed al-Kurdi says he sent two suicide bombers to Iraq and trained others. He was sentenced to death for his part in a hotel bombing in Yemen's port city of Aden, escaped and was rearrested. Fawzi al-Wajeh, a bodyguard of Osama bin Laden's, was convicted in the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker...

Ahmadinejad rejects film offer from Oliver Stone Jul. 3, 2007 1:22 By ASSOCIATED PRESS President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has rejected a proposal by American Oscar winning movie director Oliver Stone to make a film about him because Stone is part the "Great Satan" cultural establishment, a semiofficial news agency reported. "I sent a negative answer by Ahmadinejad to Oliver Stone," the Fars agency quoted Mehdi Kalhor, media adviser to the president, as saying Sunday. "It is right that this person is considered part of the opposition in the US, but opposition in the US is a part of the Great Satan."...

Thursday June 28, 2007 BANGLADESH: CHRISTIANS BEATEN; MOB THREATENS TO BURN HOMES Muslim neighbors strike converts from Islam with bricks, clubs; extremists say they will kill two. DUBLIN, June 28 (Compass Direct News) – Muslim villagers armed with bricks and wooden clubs savagely beat 10 Christian converts in Nilphamari district, Bangladesh, on Tuesday (June 26) and threatened to burn down their homes if they did not leave by today. The mob gave the Christians an ultimatum on Wednesday (June 27) to leave the village within 24 hours, threatening more beatings along with home burnings; that deadline expired today without incident....

THE OFFICIAL APOLOGY FROM DENMARK TO THE MUSLIM WORLD,SIMPLY CALLED "WE´RE SORRY!" "This landmark official Danish apology is reprinted from the Danish Web site, http://www.danishmuhammedcartoons.com/:  We´re sorry we gave you shelter when war drove you from your home country.... We´re sorry we took you in when others rejected you..... We´re sorry we gave you the opportunity to get a good education..... We´re sorry we gave you food and a home when you had none..... We´re sorry we let you re-unite with your family when your homeland was no longer safe... We´re sorry we never forced you to work while...

The Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime Sign the call now!Your government, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights. Your government is openly torturing people, and justifying it. Your government puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night. Your government is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.Your government suppresses the science that doesn't fit its...

WENATCHEE, Wash. - The judge hearing a challenge to Washington state's 2004 gubernatorial election agreed Tuesday to let Republicans introduce evidence that Democratic-leaning King County recorded several hundred more votes than it could account for. Republicans allege errors and possible fraud in the county, which includes Seattle, helped Democrats steal the election for Christine Gregoire, who beat Republican Dino Rossi by 129 votes out of 2.9 million cast. "The evidence is overwhelming that there was unbelievable neglect in King County and, we believe, outright fraud by high-ranking King County officials," GOP attorney Dale Foreman said Monday. Democrats had tried to...

9/11 Victims' Kin Angered by Bush Ads 12 minutes ago Add Top Stories - AP to My Yahoo! By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and a firefighters union said Thursday they're angry that President Bush (news - web sites)'s new campaign ads include images of the destroyed World Trade Center and firefighters carrying a flag-draped stretcher through the rubble. They say the ads are in poor taste and accuse Bush of exploiting the attacks. Bush's campaign defended the commercials as appropriate for an election about public policy and...

Ladies and gentlemen, it is breaking hard right before our eyes. Sean Hannity is talking now about the phony outrage story regarding the President Bush ads. We are going to find that the RATS contacted family members who are anti-war, anti-Bush and who lost relatives on 9-11. We will find they were given the phone numbers of newsrooms. We will find they were given talking points. Although some who called got out of hand, we got the NY TIMES to take notice of the story. They were deluged with phone calls. I understand Neal Boortz was on the story as...

MIDI - THE LETTER Every day they keep on lying...what they've done's getting so tryingWe all know the reason...this stuff borders treasonRAT b*st*rds have written a memo Losing again they are fearing...our president they are smearingWe all know the reason...this stuff borders treasonRAT b*st*rds have written a memo Well, they don't give a damn that our great nation's at war...they just couldn't care lessThey are busy plotting, but don't hold your breath...to that they never will confess...no, not ever On their face you see a glower...that's because they have lost powerWe all know the reason...this stuff borders treasonRAT b*st*rds...

Just for posterity and as a way to keep score, please put on this thread stupid comments made by the RATS about RECALL. Jesse Jackson has made them. Global Crossing Terry has made them. Other RATS have made them. Thanks for your contributions. This could be a fun thread. Please try to link a source.

John and Ken are making good use of the 50,000 watts they are given from Mon-Fri on KFI in Los Angeles. Gloria Allred and her client Rhonda Miller have been outed for the second consecutive day. We heard the story yesterday that Miller, the woman who accused the next California governor of lifting up her shirt and snapping a picture of her boobs during filming of a movie, actually has been shown to be a liar about the event. Two witnesses came forward yesterday, one of whom actually took the picture of the willing Miller. Arnold was not even in...

MIDI - END OF THE WORLD We are the RAT underground gang Our hopes cannot be renewed It feels like it's the end of our world By dumb, drunk, frat boy we've been screwed We thought we really could nail 'em We still fought Florida's feud It feels like it's the end of our world By dumb, drunk, frat boy we've been screwed We're told "Your head is in the seventh planet" And we'll blow up the next time we sneeze We can't understand…no, we can't understand Our only friend's Tarik Aziz We have been rooting for Saddam We...

America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every...

MIDI - YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE Please vote at least twice…McAuliffe cried One absentee and…one where you reside Please vote at least twice…or I am done Then where will I go…I'm under the gun If you have a friend…who's recently dead Take him to the polls...and prop up his head Please vote at least twice…get on the bus You are, after all, dependent on us Please vote at least twice…and then report If we do not win, we'll take it to court (That is how RATS always do it…that is how RATS always do it That is how RATS...