Author: Admin

Monday, May 22, 2006

Bushra Khalil, one of the defense lawyers for former Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, was thrown out of court by Chief Judge Raouf Abdel after speaking out of turn.

“The right of defence is sacred. We have never seen in our whole career a lawyer ordered out of the court room like this. We should not be treated like this, we are defending those men who defended the honour of the nation, yes they are the honour of the nation,” said an Egyptian lawyer, in court for Hussein’s defense.

Khalil was attempting to make a speech when Judge Abdel told her to stop talking. When Khalil continued to speak out of turn, Judge Abdel ordered court guards to remove her from the courtroom. Khalil then threw her lawyer’s robe onto the floor and walked out of the courtroom.

“You have to stick to the rules, you are a lawyer, you should behave by the rules,” said Judge Abdel to Khalil while she left the courtroom.

Hussein objected to the judge’s orders and protested saying, “I am Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq. I am above all.”

“You were president, now you are the defendant,” replied Judge Abdel.

This is the second time that Khalil was thrown out of the courtroom. Back in April, Judge Abdel had Khalil removed for the same reasons. This is also her first appearance in court since April’s incident.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Linus Gerdemann of Germany took a large lead up the Col de la Colombière and has won stage 7 of the 2007 Tour de France.

Gerdemann won by 3:38 over the chasing peleton and took over the yellow jersey from Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland. As a young rider, Gerdemann also gets the white jersey. Iñigo Landaluze was the only one close to Gerdemann and took second.

All the big names, thought to have a chance of winning the Tour, appeared to be in the peloton. This includes injured teammates Alexandre Vinokourov and Andreas Klöden.

Óscar Freire of Spain withdrew ahead of today’s stage with back problems.

Stage 7 results

1. Linus Gerdemann (Ger / TMO) 4 hrs 53 mins 13 secs
2. Inigo Landaluze (Spa / EUS) +40″
3. David De la Fuente (Spa / SDV) +1:39″
4. Mauricio Soler (Col / BAR) +2:14″
5. Laurent Lefevre (Fra / BGT) +2:21″
6. Fabian Wegmann (Ger / GER) +3:32″
7. Juan Manuel Garate (Spa / QSI ) +3:38″
8. Xavier Florencio (Spa / BGT) s.t.
9. Christophe Moreau (Fra / AG2R ) s.t.
10. Alejandro Valverde (Spa / CDE ) s.t.

Overall standings

1. Linus Gerdemann (Ger / TMO) 34 hrs 43 min 40 sec”
2. Inigo Landaluze (Spa / EUS) +1:24″
3. David De la Fuente (Spa / SDV) +2:45″
4. Laurent Lefevre (Fra / BGT) +2:55″
5. Mauricio Soler (Col / BAR) +3:05″
6. Andreas Kloeden (Ger / AST) +3:39″
7. Vladimir Gusev (Rus / DSC) +3:51″
8. Vladimir Karpets (Rus / CDE) +3:52″
9. Mikel Astarloza (Spa / EUS) +3:55″
10. Thomas Dekker (Ned / RAB) +3:57″

Friday, June 26, 2015

Annabel Goldie, Scottish Conservative Party leader from 2005 to 2011, has announced she will stand down as an MSP at the next elections in 2016. Goldie, who has been an MSP for the West Scotland (previously West of Scotland) electoral region since the Scottish Parliament’s formation in 1999, said she intends to focus on her role in the House of Lords, where she has been a peer since 2013.File:Annabel Goldie.jpg

In a statement today, Goldie said leading the party was an “enormous honour” for her. She also said: “It has afforded me both satisfaction and pleasure to serve my constituents and to serve the parliament and I will look back with great happiness at my time as an MSP. I am grateful to friends and colleagues from all parties for their support. Sometimes we found common ground, sometimes we disagreed but never I hope with rancour nor disrespect. Politics is a rough trade but we have built a strong parliament in Scotland of which we can all be rightly proud.” She said because of Ruth Davidson, her successor as Scottish Conservative leader, the party is now “in fine fettle and stands a great chance of making real progress in the years ahead,” concluding by saying: “I look forward to continuing to work as part of that effort in the House of Lords in the years to come.”

Davidson responded to the news by calling Goldie an “unstoppable force”, adding: “She has been an inspiration to a whole generation of Scottish Conservatives, and she has been a tremendous mentor, support and friend to me. In Holyrood, she has fostered both affection and respect from all members – regardless of their political affiliation – and her retirement from the Scottish Parliament will leave an Annabel-sized hole which won’t ever quite be filled. She is unique.” Meanwhile, David Cameron, UK Conservative leader and UK Prime Minister, said: “Annabel is one of those rare breeds in Scottish politics, somebody known by her first name alone. When she was Scottish Conservative leader, I valued her sage advice. She has been a towering strength to our party in Scotland, a doughty debater in the TV studios and Scottish Parliament and has one of the sharpest wits around. I wish her a long and happy retirement after 17 years unstinting service at Holyrood – but look forward to seeing her on the red benches of the Lords for years to come.”

Goldie, the Scottish Conservatives’ first ever female leader, was elected unopposed. She took up the role in the aftermath of David McLetchie’s resignation from the role in an expenses usage controversy and subsequent resignation of Brian Monteith from his Conservative whip role in the Scottish Parliament for briefing the media against him. Meanwhile, as Scottish Conservatives won 18 seats in the Scottish Parliament in 1999 and 2003, the party had been less successful in UK general elections in Scotland; Conservatives went up from zero out of a possible 72 UK MPs in Scotland in 1997 to one in 2001. This led to Goldie remarking in her inaugural speech in 2005 that: “The wheels are back on the wagon – and I’m the nag hitched up to tow it.” She also said: “The party is still way ahead of where it was in 1997. And my first task is to take it forward to 2007.” However, under Goldie’s leadership, the number of seats the Scottish Conservatives won in the Scottish Parliament slightly decreased from 18 in 2003 to 17 in 2007 and to 15 in 2011. At the same time, the number of Conservative MPs stood at one out of a possible 59 after the 2010 UK general election.

In the aforementioned 2005 speech, she also said the party could be trusted with devolution in Scotland, adding: “making devolution work better means real devolution: not the lumbering and cripplingly expensive array of government departments, government advisers, consultants, quangos, quasi-quangos and agencies with all their expensive appendages, but devolving down to people and their communities, their right to make their own decisions about their lives, how for example they procure healthcare and how they educate their children.” Goldie would go on to sit on the advisory board for the Smith Commission, which was set up to examine which further political powers should be devolved to Scotland following the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. More recently, Goldie supported a reduction in the voting age for Scottish Parliament elections from 18 to 16 in a vote earlier this month, commenting: “I think it is an opportunity for them to continue their high level of engagement in topical affairs that we saw with the independence referendum.”

Goldie, a member of the Salvation Army’s West of Scotland Advisory Board and a Church of Scotland elder, is not the only Scottish Conservative MSP intending to stand down in 2016. Mary Scanlon, Gavin Brown, Alex Fergusson and Nanette Milne all reportedly intend to leave the Scottish Parliament next year.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

The United Nations is reportedly beginning an investigation into claims that Pfc. Bradley Manning is being “tortured.” Manning was arrested in May, after allegedly leaking over 250,000 classified diplomatic cables to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

Last week, it was announced that supporters for Manning lodged a complaint with the Office of The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, saying that the conditions of his cell and the treatment he is receiving, amount to “torture.” According to Salon, Manning is not allowed to exercise, is denied bed sheets and pillows, and has been held in solitary confinement for 23 hours of every day since his arrest. According to Manning’s attorney, David Coombs, a former United States Army major, and veteran of the Iraq War, Manning is only allowed to walk in a small room for exercise.

“[Manning is] taken to an empty room and only allowed to walk, normally just walks figure eights in the room. If he indicates that he no long feels like walking, he is immediately returned to his cell,” stated Coombs to Salon.

The Pentagon denies that Manning is being tortured, saying he is being treated “fairly. We’ve been reviewed … No concerns have been voiced from a (Department of Defense) perspective.”

Friday, February 18, 2022

Findings published Monday by a team composed mostly of University of Washington Center for Forensic Science researchers in Nature Human Behaviour report using a form of DNA analysis techniques originally designed for human teeth to track ivory poached from African elephants.

The scientists, in collaboration with the United States Department of Homeland Security, identified the criminal networks that killed the endangered animals and smuggled their valuable tusks across national borders.

The scientists took DNA samples from 4,320 tusks taken from both African bush (Loxodonta africana) and African forest (Loxodonta cyclotis) elephants that were confiscated from 49 separate ivory smuggling events in twelve countries from 2002 to 2019. The scientists found that teeth from the closely related elephants, or even two tusks from the same individual, often surfaced in different shipments that transited through the same ports. The data also showed when criminal networks shifted their operations from between port cities. They inferred poachers were making kills, then separating the tusks at some point along the smuggling route.

The team had been studying DNA analysis on poached tusks for years: in 2018, they found two tusks from different shipments had come from the same animal, which indicated both shipments were from the same kill and transited by the same criminal network. This is the first report of DNA identification tusks that came from elephants in the same families.

Lead author Dr Samuel Wasser said: “Identifying close relatives indicates that poachers are likely going back to the same populations repeatedly — year after year — and tusks are then acquired and smuggled out of Africa on container ships by the same criminal network.” He added: “This criminal strategy makes it much harder for authorities to track and seize these shipments because of the immense pressure they are under to move large volumes of containers quickly through ports.”

Wasser said similar studies will provide law enforcement groups access to a greater range of evidence with which to prosecute poachers and their criminal partners by providing verifiable links between different caches of captured ivory. The researchers concluded in their paper that law enforcement could use their information to discern the ways in which poachers are collaborating.

Humans have used the ivory from elephant tusks to make art, decorations, and tools since prehistory. Many countries have since outlawed the sale of ivory, but poachers continue to kill tens of thousands of elephants each year.

The paper’s authors were from the University of Washington, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenyan-based organisation SeeJ-Africa, the Kenya Wildlife Service, and Singapore’s National Parks Board.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Two Santa Clara, Utah teenagers were critically injured today after being struck by lightning. Two seventeen-year-old boys were hit at about 3 p.m. when they were caught outside of the Snow Canyon High School during a sudden lightning storm. They were standing beneath a tree in view of other students at the time.

School employees took the boys inside and began administering CPR straight away; an ambulance carried them to the Dixie Regional Medical Center. According to the St. Georgia police, a helicopter forwarded them to the University Medical Center in Las Vegas, where they have been admitted to the burns unit.

The Washington County School District has identified the teens as Alex Lambsen and Christopher Dane Zdunich. According to Zdunich’s mother Leslie, doctors have observed signs of both boys improving. The boys’s classmates and friends turned out yesterday to support the pair. Fellow debate team member Madi Leavitt described the boys as intelligent and humorous.