‘North Korea has executed 22 fishermen who strayed out of the country’s waters by mistake, it was claimed yesterday.
The group were apparently gunned down once they returned to the Stalinist state.
Having drifted into South Korean territory, they had the opportunity to seek asylum, but insisted they never had any intention of doing so.
They told South Korean officials they had strayed accidentally while fishing for clams and oysters, so were sent back to North Korea – and to their deaths.
A South Korean newspaper reported yesterday that all the drifters were immediately shot dead in a secret location by agents of North Korea’s national security agency.
It was another alleged incident supporting claims that North Korea has a “no tolerance” policy against anyone suspected of trying to leave the country – even in error.’
‘For law enforcement, fear and the politics of fear have entwined to create a radical new paradigm. Even the term “law enforcement” has been rendered quaint by the Bush administration. These days, the term of art is “lawfare” — the confluence of police work and military tactics. With Joint Terrorism Task Forces set up across the country to coordinate the work of federal agencies and local cops, the FBI now devotes nearly two-thirds of its resources — some $4 billion — to waging war on terrorism. The approach today is not the traditional police work of investigating actual crimes but the far more slippery goal of preventing terrorist attacks before they occur.
To hear the Bush administration tell it, the JTTFs have been an unqualified success. [..]
But a closer inspection of the cases brought by JTTFs reveals that most of the prosecutions had one thing in common: The defendants posed little if any demonstrable threat to anyone or anything. According to a study by the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law, only ten percent of the 619 “terrorist” cases brought by the federal government have resulted in convictions on “terrorism-related” charges — a category so broad as to be meaningless. In the past year, none of the convictions involved jihadist terror plots targeting America. “The government releases selective figures,” says Karen Greenberg, director of the center. “They have never even defined ‘terrorism.’ They keep us in the dark over statistics.”‘
‘A baker who put abortion tablets into his wife’s breakfast to try to make her lose their baby has been jailed.
Gil Magira, 36, crushed the tablets into his 38-year-old wife Anat Abraham’s sandwich, a bowl of cereal and a yoghurt, the Old Bailey was told.
Mrs Abraham suffered pain and bleeding but the child survived unharmed.
Magira, of Holmebrook Drive, Hendon, north London, admitted “using an instrument to procure a miscarriage” – the first such charge in 30 years. [..]
His wife said she feared for her life – and that of the child – when she realised what he had done.
“What made it worse was how desperate and determined he was to try to kill the baby that I already felt moving inside me,” she said.’
‘A man has admitted trying to have sex with a goat – but believed he wouldn’t get caught because “animals couldn’t talk”.
New Zealand’s Rangiora District Court was told the pensioner, who managed to protect his identity, took the goat round the back of his farm and tried to commit a sex act with it.
The court was told that there were complications – and according to reports, “he did up his trousers, patted the goat and walked off”.
A police spokeswoman said: “He was contrite, but said he was unable to stop the behaviour.”‘
People seem to insist on doing obviously stupid things. It’s grand. 🙂
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‘Eat a whale and save the planet, a Norwegian pro-whaling lobby said on Monday of a study showing that harpooning the giant mammals is less damaging to the climate than farming livestock.
Environmental group Greenpeace dismissed the survey, saying almost every kind of food was more climate friendly than meat.
The survey, focused on whale boats’ fuel use, showed that a kilo (2.2 lbs) of whale meat represented just 1.9 kilo (4.2 lbs) of greenhouse gases against 15.8 for beef, 6.4 for pork and 4.6 for chicken.
“Basically it turns out that the best thing you can do for the planet is to eat whale meat compared to other types of meat,” said Rune Froevik of the High North Alliance, which represents the interests of coastal communities in the Arctic.’
Garage doors do not aid balance.
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‘A Polish worker has come up with an unusual excuse after being caught in the act with a vacuum cleaner.
The building contractor claimed he was cleaning his underpants with Henry Hoover when he was found naked and on his knees in a hospital’s staff canteen.
A stunned security guard stumbled onto the man in the middle of a compromising act with the cleaner, which has a large smiley face painted on its front and a hose protruding from its “nose”. [..]
The security guard, suitably horrified, told the man to “clean himself and the hoover” before asking him to leave and informing his bosses.
When later questioned by his employers, the man said he was vacuuming his underpants, which was “a common practice in Poland”. He has since been fired.’
‘Two German air force officers have been suspended from service for making and eating blutwurst, or blood sausage, from their own blood.
One of the soldiers, based in the southern German city of FĂĽrstenfeldbruck near Munich, posted photos of the meal on a popular website.
Disciplinary action against the soldiers is underway, a military official told German weekly magazine Focus on Saturday. The case may also be passed on to state authorities.
According to the military official, the unsavory incident came to light when the soldiers asked a fellow officer for blood this summer. The soldier reported the request to his superior officers.’
‘A man beheaded his 15-month-old nephew in front of his mother in a supermarket in Saudi Arabia apparently after a family dispute, newspapers reported.
The 25-year-old Syrian national picked up a knife from the store in the Red Sea city of Jeddah yesterday and decapitated the little boy in full view of shoppers, Arab News said.
The man apparently killed the little boy following a dispute with the man’s sister and brother-in-law, the English-language daily said.
“He chopped off the boy’s head in front of the mother to get back at her,” a police officer was quoted as saying. The mother fainted and was taken to hospital.’
‘The founders of a camp geared toward gay, lesbian and transgender nature lovers have received threats, but won’t back down from their dream.
Joanie Beasley, who along with Nancy Leedy developed the idea for the camp, said the couple had received threats since a news article was published Tuesday.
She was not specific on the threats, but said, “We will proceed and take the proper precautions. We are not going anywhere now.”
A call made to the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office was not immediately returned Wednesday.
Some residents found the name of the camp disagreeable, but Beasley said the name — Camp Lickalotta — would not change.’
Jumping from one roof to another.. What could go wrong? 🙂
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‘A Camarillo High School employee has been jailed for stealing snack money from a disabled student.
Ventura County Superior Court Judge James Cloninger sentenced Kristen Rene Santoyo on Tuesday to six months in jail, followed by three years’ probation. She was also pay $285 restitution to the student.
The student’s parents put $5 a day in her lunch box along with her food. The money was for snacks, but her parents say she came home from school hungry.
The 37-year-old Oxnard woman earlier pleaded guilty to felony petty theft and misdemeanor cruelty to a child by inflicting injury. Defense attorney James Harmon says Santoyo took the money to feed a methamphetamine habit.’
‘The death of Meredith Hunter, an 18-year-old black man who clashed with members of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang guarding a rock-concert stage while The Rolling Stones played “Under My Thumb,” spelled the end of the cultural phenomenon that was the 1960’s, according to many observers. But it also led to an assassination plot against Mick Jagger, according to a former F.B.I. agent who is featured in an upcoming BBC report.
In the aftermath of the ugly incident at the Altamont Speedway in California, which was famously captured on film by documentary filmmakers Albert and David Maysles, the Stones did not use the Hells Angels for security again, and did not support them in the finger-pointing that followed Mr. Hunter’s death. A group of the bikers were evidently outraged enough to want to kill Mr. Jagger, so they set out for his vacation home in the Hamptons, according to Mark Young, the former F.B.I. agent.
“A group of them took a boat, and were all tooled up and planned to attack him from the sea,” Tom Mangold, the host of the BBC program featuring Mr. Young, told The Sunday Telegraph. “They planned the attack from the sea so they could enter his property from the garden and avoid security at the front.”‘
‘Would Julius Caesar or John F. Kennedy have survived if they were attacked in Billings today?
Dr. Terry Housinger, a general surgeon at the Billings Clinic, tackled the topic of famous assassinations at a meeting of the History of Medicine Club, offering his audience of medical students and doctors a chance to reflect on the evolution of trauma care.
After describing the circumstances surrounding each famous assassination, Housinger offered his opinion on whether modern medicine could have saved those high-profile victims if the attack had occurred in Billings today.’
‘A Japanese pin-up model says that her big breasts have not only boosted her career — they also helped her overturn a court verdict.
The bikini model, who goes by her professional name Serena Kozakura, was cleared after a court decided she was too well-endowed to squeeze into a room through a hole, as she had been found guilty of earlier.
“I used to hate my body so much,” Kozakura, who has appeared in product commercials on television, told the private Asahi network in an interview aired Tuesday.
“But it was my breasts” that won in court, she said.’
‘A British teacher is facing up to six months in jail after being convicted of defamation for comments she made in exposing pedophiles at a children’s charity in Ethiopia 10 years ago.
Jill Campbell and her husband Gary Campbell compiled evidence in 1999 that helped convict the director of an Ethiopian orphanage run by the Swiss charity Terre Des Hommes-Lausanne. The charity acknowledged the abuse took place, but brought a successful defamation case against the Campbells for their claims that the charity’s senior staff covered up the scandal.
Jill Campbell will be sentenced Friday.
“We asked them to stop defaming us and they said no,” said Colin Tucker, child protection manager for Terre Des Hommes in Switzerland. “Then the court asked them to stop defaming us and she said no again.”
The Campbells, who have lived in Ethiopia for more than a decade, have drawn wide support in Ethiopia. A group formed to support them, Stop Institutional Pedophilia in Ethiopia, said the charity is “forcing Gary and Jill to apologize for blowing the whistle.”‘
‘man was killed Sunday when he accidentally stabbed himself while cooking.
Chief Deputy Coroner Charlie Boseman said that Michael Downing, 32, was cooking food for himself and his 8- and 10-year-old sons on Sunday afternoon while his fiance was at work.
Downing burned himself, jerked his hand away and accidentally stabbed himself with a steak knife that he was holding in his hand, Boseman said.
Downing was able to call 911 and explained what had happened. Downing’s 10-year-old son got on the phone with the dispatcher and followed instructions to try to save his father. [..]
Boseman said that the knife had pierced Downing’s heart, causing his death. He said that the knife went between Downing’s ribs, 2 to 3 inches into his chest.’
‘Eight British Commandos have been flown home in disgrace for stripping naked and engaging in appalling behaviour in a Norwegian bar during an Arctic training exercise.
The men disgusted onlookers in the town of Harstad with a drunken game of “naked bar”.
After whipping off their clothes, they urinated on each other – splashing other customers and furniture – before slurring insults and abuse.
Furious senior officers ordered the soldiers, from the Army’s 59 Independent Commando Squadron Royal Engineers, back home to face disciplinary action.
“This is taken extremely seriously,” a Ministry of Defence official said. [..]
Harstad police spokesman Gair Pedersen said: “They were drunk and there was a problem in the bar but we are quite used to dealing with British soldiers like this.”‘
‘Four hundred years after it put Galileo on trial for heresy the Vatican is to complete its rehabilitation of the great scientist by erecting a statue of him inside the Vatican walls.
The planned statue is to stand in the Vatican gardens near the apartment in which Galileo was incarcerated while awaiting trial in 1633 for advocating heliocentrism, the Copernican doctrine that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
Nicola Cabibbo, head of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and a nuclear physicist, said: “The Church wants to close the Galileo affair and reach a definitive understanding not only of his great legacy but also of the relationship between science and faith.”‘
‘You know you don’t have to do this, right?’
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‘A 40-year-old Central Florida woman is accused of sexually abusing a 16-year-old girl with yellow chili peppers.
Investigators said the woman, who works at the Carnagie Gardens Nursing Home Center in Melbourne, beat the victim with an iron and iron cord after she arrived home.
She said she was also sexually abused with the peppers while she tried to shower.
The girl then reported the attack to a teacher the next day and a nurse’s exam confirmed the abuse, police said.’
‘A primary school has been accused of being alarmist for covering up the faces of pupils on its website – apparently to protect them from paedophiles.
Bizarrely, the images have been altered with the type of smiley faces popular during the Acid House dance craze of the 1980s.
The decision was taken at Cann Hall Primary School in Clacton, Essex. [..]
Headmistress Clare Reece said yesterday: “The public nature of the internet is an issue we feel strongly about.
“Not all parents want their children’s picture on there.
“You can’t say what is going to happen with any of those pictures.”‘
This is the 10,000th post on this site. Another arbitrary milestone that amuses me for no real reason.
That is all.
‘PGA tour golfer Tripp Isenhour has been charged in Orlando with intentionally killing a protected bird with a golf shot from about 75 yards away.
The incident happened in December at Grand Cypress Golf Club while Isenhour, 39, was filming a video segment for his television show “Shoot Like A Pro.”
Prosecutors said a red-shouldered hawk was making noise, forcing a video crew to film another take.
Isenhour, who earned nearly $500,000 on the PGA tour in 2007, initially attempted to hit the bird from about 300 yards away, according to a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission report obtained by Web site The Smoking Gun.
Those attempts failed, but the hawk flew to a tree closer to Isenhour and again began chirping, prompting Isenhour to say, “I’ll get him now,” according to the report.’
A truck is on a trailer, being towed down the highway. Apparently such things wobble like maniacs if you change lanes too quickly.
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‘Rufus Terrill has had it with the drug dealers, petty thieves and vandals he says roam the streets outside his downtown Atlanta bar, O’Terrills.
But instead of calling the police or hiring private security guards, Terrill reached for his toolbox.
He mounted an old meat smoker atop a three-wheel scooter and attached a spotlight, an infrared camera, water cannon and a loudspeaker. He covered the contraption with impact-resistant rubber and painted the whole thing jet black.
And so was born what surely must be Atlanta’s first remote-controlled, robotic vigilante. [..]
He flashes the robot’s spotlight and grabs a walkie-talkie, which he uses to boom his disembodied voice over the robot’s sound system.
“I tell them they are trespassing, it’s private property, and they have to leave,” he said. “They throw bottles and cans at it. That’s when I shoot the water cannon. They just scatter like roaches.” [..]
Terrill insists he’s not a kook, that he’s serious about using his robot to fight crime.’
