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Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Denunciations of corruption, bribe, collection of bribes from refugees [1] and of sexual scandal involving the peacekeepers [2], [3] threaten the Organization of the United Nations (UN).

The gravest denunciations involve the aid project to Iraq, called Oil-for-Food. Grave denunciations of bribe exist, superfluous accounting and collaboration with the ex-dictator Saddam Hussein, against staff of the UN, companies and politicians of several countries. Even the secretary of the UN, Kofi Annan was suspicious of participation in the plan of corruption. And also grave doubts still hover about his son, Kojo Annan.

The gravity of the denunciations threatens not only the credibility of the UN, but its existence.

Secretary Kofi Annan said that he is going to promote reforms in the organization. [4]

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

On Monday, Mark Meechan of Scotland was fined GBP800 for a joke video he posted on YouTube. He was found guilty of being “grossly offensive” in violation of the Communications Act of 2003 on March 20. Meechan, whose YouTube persona is “Count Dankula”, posted a video on the social media site in which he trained a pug, a small companion dog, to respond to spoken words such as “Sieg Heil” and “Gas the Jews”. Meechan had been facing possible time in prison for the offense.

Dozens of free speech advocates protested the conviction outside of the courthouse as Meechan’s punishment was delivered. After the sentencing, Meechan insisted he had only been exercising his right to free speech and he intends to appeal. Simultaneously, in London hundreds of protesters marched to Downing Street in support of Meechan.

In April of 2016, Meechan uploaded a video titled “M8 Yer Dugs A Nazi” to YouTube in which he trained the dog to respond to certain spoken commands. The dog, which belongs to his girlfriend Suzanne Kelly, learned to raise its front paw when the “Sieg Hitler” command was given, and react when the words “Gas the Jews” were spoken. The video has been viewed over three million times. Currently it is on ‘restricted mode’ on YouTube. In the video, which runs 2 minutes 23 seconds, Meechan states that he is not a racist.

Meechan’s defense, by attorney Ross Brown, maintained the video was a joke. Meechan claimed he meant to annoy Kelly.

Director of the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities Ephraim Borowski testified for the prosecution. “In many ways, the bit I found most offensive was the repetition of ‘gas the Jews’ rather than the dog itself,” said Borowski. “Material of this kind goes to normalize the antisemitic views that frankly we thought we had seen the last of[…] The Holocaust is not a subject for jocular content.”

The sheriff court with Derek O’Carroll presiding in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire found that Meechan was guilty because the video was “anti-Semitic and racist in nature”. O’Carroll elaborated: “This court has taken the freedom of expression into consideration, but the right to freedom of expression also comes with responsibility.”

O’Carroll further said, “The accused is quite obviously an intelligent and articulate man. The accused knew that the material was offensive and knew why it was offensive. Despite that the accused made a video containing anti-Semitic content and he would have known it was grossly offensive to many Jewish people.”

After the conviction, some British comedians voiced their support for Meechan. Ricky Gervais tweeted: “If you don’t believe in a person’s right to say things that you might find ‘grossly offensive’, then you don’t believe in Freedom of Speech.” David Baddiel also tweeted, saying “an actual Nazi would not be teaching his *pug* to Hitler salute.”

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Several thousand people marched earlier today in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, to protest corruption in the country.

Most of them were students protesting the latest corruption scandal in the country. It involves allegations that a US$600 million government bailout was given to Century Bank on condition that some of the money be used to fund the president’s re-election campaign.

“Today’s aim is not to attack politically any party. We just want to send a message to our fellow countrymen […] that justice cannot be served while corruption is still rampant in our country,” said the organiser of the demonstration, Usman Hamid, as quoted by the Al Jazeera news agency.

The legislature is investigating the bailout and the possible roles played by Vice President Boediono and Finance Minister Sri Mulyani in orchestrating a deal. The government, however, denies the charges.

Thousands more demonstrated in other cities and towns across the country. Most rallies were without incident, but in the town of Makassar, located in South Sulawesi, students armed with rocks and wooden planks clashed with anti-riot police.

The news media report that police fired tear gas to break up the crowd after protesters tried to storm the provincial governor’s office. There was no immediate report of injuries or arrests among the 2,000 protesters.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

A British serial killer has yesterday entered guilty pleas to all three counts of murder he faced. Stephen Griffiths, 40, who attracted tabloid attention by calling himself the “Crossbow Cannibal”, killed the prostitutes in his flat in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England and will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Griffiths, a former van driver with a degree in psychology and studying for a PhD in criminology, was caught when police were alerted to a murder caught on CCTV. A caretaker, reviewing footage from the building where Griffiths’s flat is, saw Suzanne Blamires, 36, and Griffiths enter the flat. Two minutes later, she ran out and he followed, beating her to the ground and shooting her in the head with a crossbow. He raised his crossbow above his head for the CCTV, then dragged the body away. Returning with a drink, he raised the can and one finger to the camera.

Over the course of a weekend, he was seen several times with bin bags and a rucksack. After Griffiths was arrested by armed police on May 24, her dismembered remains were found floating the the River Ayre near Shipley; her head was in a rucksack and it was yesterday revealed a crossbow bolt and broken knife were embedded in it. Robert Smith QC, prosecuting, said she was in 81 pieces.

Smith added that Griffiths confessed to killing her and cutting her up by hand; he had previously used power tools on his victims. Shelley Armitage, 31, had been missing since April when police charged Griffiths; a piece of spine in the River Ayre was later identified as hers. Also found by the river was a suitcase containing knives and saws.

It was yesterday revealed her murder was also on video. Griffiths recorded the act on his mobile, which he then lost on a train. Its finder sold it on twice before police retrieved it, but the footage remained. Armitage is seen hogtied on cushions, the words “My Sex Slave” spray-painted in black on her back. She is also seen dead and naked in his bathtub. “I am Ven Pariah, I am the Bloodbath Artist,” Griffiths said as part of a commentary to the video. “Here’s a model who is assisting me.”

The third murder – that of Susan Rushworth, 43 – dates back to June last year, when she vanished. Although police believe she was killed with a hammer and Griffiths has spoken of the death, no remains were ever found and the only physical evidence was one bloodstain in her killer’s flat. Police found evidence he tried to clean up, with bathroom tiles removed and carpets lifted.

“It was just a slaughterhouse in the bathtub,” he told police at interview. He later confessed to police that “I, or part of me, is responsible for killing Susan Rushworth, Shelley Armitage and Suzanne Blamires, who I know as Amber.” Two crossbows, crossbow bolts, and serial killer literature were seized from his flat.

The day before the final murder, Griffiths wrote on MySpace, using the Ven Pariah pseudonym, he had “finally emerged into the world.” He continued: “What will this pseudo-human do, one wonders. Poor Stephen, pretended to be me, but he was only the wrapping. He knew towards the end, that I supplied the inner core of iron. Hatred Bound Tightly In Flesh. At very long last, the time has come to act out.” He would later tell officers he was having a mental “civil war”.

He told the magistrates’ court on his first appearance his name was “The Crossbow Cannibal.” Yesterday, he was asked at Leeds Crown Court merely to confirm his name, answering “yes”. Each murder charge was read to him, and he answered “guilty” to each. Five security guards flanked him. He has also called himself the SF killer. Although he claimed to have boiled and eaten flesh from the first two victims and eaten the third raw, police could not verify this. The Telegraph says the suspect he invented it to increase his fame, but News Limited quotes Sky News as claiming police believed his cannibalistic claims.

Mr Justice Openshaw, the judge, yesterday called Griffiths “wicked and monstrous.” He told the court the killer’s mental health had been investigated and there is “no question that he [i]s fit to plead.” He gave Griffiths the whole life tariff, meaning he will never be released.

Griffiths has attempted suicide while in prison awaiting trial, and police have not yet established if he killed three more women, as he told officers his count stood at six.

At the time Griffiths was charged, Nicky Blamires, 54, has told the press her daughter Suzanne was a “much-loved” family member even though she “went down the wrong path and did not have the life she was meant to have.” “Nobody deserves this,” she said. “All these girls were human beings and people’s daughters.”

Griffiths was known as “the lizard man” in his block of flats owing to his habit of walking his two pet monitor lizards in the area. One neighbour is reported to have quoted him as saying he was studying for “a PhD in murder and Jack the Ripper,” and he has spent time in a high-security psychiatric hospital.

British media was quick to compare the case to Peter Sutcliffe, dubbed the “Yorkshire Ripper”. Sutcliffe was a Bradford killer responsible for thirteen murders and seven attempted murders, including several prostitutes. Since his 1981 conviction he has spent most of the last three decades in Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital near London.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Police in the West Midlands in England today said nearly 200 kilograms worth of drugs with value possibly as great as £30 million (about US$49 million or €36 million) has been seized from a unit in the town of Brownhills. In what an officer described as “one of the largest [seizures] in the force’s 39 year history”, West Midlands Police reported recovering six big cellophane-wrapped cardboard boxes containing cannabis, cocaine, and MDMA (“ecstasy”) in a police raid operation on the Maybrook Industrial Estate in the town on Wednesday.

The seized boxes, which had been loaded onto five freight pallets, contained 120 one-kilogram bags of cannabis, 50 one-kilogram bags of MDMA, and five one-kilogram bricks of cocaine. In a press release, West Midlands Police described what happened after officers found the drugs as they were being unloaded in the operation. “When officers opened the boxes they discovered a deep layer of protective foam chips beneath which the drugs were carefully layered”, the force said. “All the drugs were wrapped in thick plastic bags taped closed with the cannabis vacuum packed to prevent its distinctive pungent aroma from drawing unwanted attention.” Police moved the drugs via forklift truck to a flatbed lorry to remove them.

Detective Sergeant Carl Russell of West Midlands Police’s Force CID said the seizure was the largest he had ever made in the 24 years he has been in West Midlands Police and one of the biggest seizures the force has made since its formation in 1974. “The impact this seizure will have on drug dealing in the region and the UK as a whole cannot be underestimated”, he said. “The drugs had almost certainly been packed to order ready for shipping within Britain but possibly even further afield. Our operation will have a national effect and we are working closely with a range of law enforcement agencies to identify those involved in this crime at whatever level.”

Expert testing on the drugs is ongoing. Estimates described as “conservative” suggest the value of the drugs amounts to £10 million (about US$16.4 million or €12 million), although they could be worth as much as £30 million, subject to purity tests, police said.

Police arrested three men at the unit on suspicion of supplying a controlled drug. The men, a 50-year-old from Brownhills, a 51-year-old from the Norton area of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, and one aged 53 from Brownhills, have been released on bail as police investigations to “hunt those responsible” continue. West Midlands Police told Wikinews no person has yet been charged in connection with the seizure. Supplying a controlled drug is an imprisonable offence in England, although length of jail sentences vary according to the class and quantity of drugs and the significance of offenders’ roles in committing the crime.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Starting today, it is illegal to manufacture or import 75W incandescent light bulbs in the European Union. The phaseout started last year when 100W light bulbs were outlawed. Bulbs of 60W will be phased out next year, and incandescent lighting of all types will be phased out in 2012.

The phase-out of incandescent light bulbs is part of the EU’s strategy to cut greenhouse gases by 20% by 2020. Replacing the old lamps with more efficient models is expected to reduce energy consumption for lighting by 60% in the EU, equivalent to saving 30 million tons of CO₂ pollution every year.

Although energy-saving bulbs were available since 1998, their relatively high purchase price has inhibited take-up. When the decision for the ban was taken in 2008, it was estimated that around 2,000 to 3,000 jobs would become redundant in the light bulb industry, in particular affecting Hungary and Poland. However, the European Commission also assumed that halogen production and savings of 5-10 billion euro from energy bills could be injected back into the economy to create new jobs.

In its editorial yesterday, the conservative The Washington Times harshly criticized the ban, labelling it a result of “bureaucratic irritation” and a “war on Edison’s greatest invention”. General criticism of such bans includes panic buying prior to phase-out, environmental impacts of the mercury which is contained in small amounts in all fluorescent lamps, and increased upfront costs for the consumer.

Brazil and Venezuela started to phase out incandescent light bulbs in 2005, Switzerland in 2009, while Russia and Canada are planning it for 2012. The United States is scheduled to begin a phaseout similar to the European one from 2012.