Sunday, 25 April 2010 08:08 'Charity youth workers have been criticised after offering free condoms to children as young as eight who were playing in a park. Angry mother Samantha Fuller says her 13-year-old daughter was given the contraceptives - but she also claims her eight-year-old nephew was asked if he wanted some. Mrs Fuller, who found the condoms in her daughter's bedroom, says Hull-based charity Cornerhouse is effectively encouraging under-age sex and undermining her role as a parent. The taxpayer-funded organisation has confirmed workers give contraceptives to children, but only to those over 13.' Read more: Mother's Fury as Children as Young as EIGHT are Being Offered Free Condoms Sunday, 25 April 2010 07:54 'Households have been told to separate cardboard from paper, and plastic bottles from glass, tins and aerosols. The regulations have prompted fierce criticism, with people complaining that the scheme is too confusing and their homes do not have space for the various different bins and bags.' Read more: Nine-Bin Recycling System Introduced Sunday, 25 April 2010 07:42 'You may think LaWanda and her 43,000 blue-gloved colleagues at airport checkpoints couldn’t sink any lower than humiliating a little boy wearing braces on his legs. Or forcing a woman to stand on her sprained ankle, thereby fracturing it. Or yanking the crutches from a passenger crippled by polio and threatening to charge her with assault for reflexively grabbing at them – after ordering her to drop her trousers (not to worry: they promised to shield her privacy with a sheet, sorta like the whole-body scanners that blur our faces while strip-searching us). Ah, but you underestimate LaWanda et al. These brutes boast a limitless reservoir of cruelty – as Nadine Hays, her elderly mother, and a friend who was helping to care for the aged lady discovered at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, CA, last April. Before our public servants finished with them, Mrs. Hays would be in jail, her mother in emotional and physical distress, and her friend in tears at the savagery visited on them.' Sunday, 25 April 2010 07:26 'The first town in Britain to scrap fixed speed cameras has seen no increase in accidents, it was revealed yesterday. But the number of motorists prosecuted for speeding there dropped by more than 40 per cent. Swindon switched off its cameras over claims they were a ' blatant tax on the motorist' which did nothing to improve safety. Yesterday, supporters of the move hailed the figures as proof they were right. Now the Conservative-run council has urged other authorities to follow suit, saying the money can be better spent on other measures to cut casualties.' Read more: Town That Scrapped 'Motorist Tax' Speed Cameras Sees No Increase in Accidents Sunday, 25 April 2010 07:23 'Have you driven a Ford lately? That might be a good idea, as it seems that GM's claims to have repaid its TARP loans in full and ahead of schedule are, well, bullshit. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner pointing out that GM has apparently paid back its TARP money with...more TARP money. Here's some of Grassley's query: During his testimony [Inspector General for TARP Neil] Barofsky addressed GM’s recent debt repayment activity, and stated that the funds GM is using to repay its TARP debt are not coming from GM earnings. Instead, GM seems to be using TARP funds from an escrow account at Treasury to make the debt repayments. The most recent quarterly report from the Office of the Special Inspector General for TARP says "The source of funds for these quarterly [debt] payments will be other TARP funds currently held in an escrow account."...' Sunday, 25 April 2010 06:44 'Tangentially, Pachauri was asked about the Stern Review, a report written by economists employed by the British government. Pachauri told Bloomberg the IPCC was aware of the 700-page report but that his organization's ability to make use of it was limited because it was not peer-reviewed. Imagine my surprise therefore, when an audit of IPCC references I organized recently revealed that the IPCC had cited the Stern Review all over the place. I mean not once or twice. And not in a chapter or two. I'm talking at least 25 times across 12 chapters.' Read more: The Stern Review Scandal Sunday, 25 April 2010 06:37 'The Wall Street Journal reported last week that "Executives and other highly compensated employees now receive more than one-third of all pay in the US... Highly paid employees received nearly $2.1 trillion of the $6.4 trillion in total US pay in 2007, the latest figures available." One of the questions often asked when the subject of CEO pay comes up is, "What could a person such as William McGuire or Lee Raymond (the former CEOs of UnitedHealth and ExxonMobil, respectively) possibly do to justify a $1.7 billion paycheck or a $400 million retirement bonus?" ' Sunday, 25 April 2010 06:06 'The problem came in 1979 when, with just 185 tanks delivered to Tehran, the Iranian Revolution deposed Shah Pahlavi and installed an Islamic Republic with a somewhat less warm stance towards the United Kingdom. The massive deal, fully sanctioned by the Ministry of Defence, foundered and the Iranians, perhaps understandably, asked for their money back. London refused and - after flogging a number of its suddenly surplus tanks to Iran’s most bitter enemy in the shape of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq - the British government has for 30 years fought a little-noticed but bitter legal wrangle in an obscure international trade court based in the Netherlands to hold onto what remains of the Shah’s money.' Read more: The MoD, the Arms Deal and a 30-year-old Bill for £400m Sunday, 25 April 2010 06:03 Sunday, 25 April 2010 05:55 'While on a speaking engagement in Malaysia organized by "Success Resources Company", former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was the object of an articulate protest movement demanding his indictment for war crimes. This was no ordinary protest. Tony Blair has been accused of war crimes in a legal initiative led by the country's former Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. A War Crimes Tribunal as well as a War Crimes Commission were set up integrated by renowned jurists. Documentary evidence of war crimes committed by Blair and Bush has been carefully compiled and collected since 2006. The prosecution is led by several of Malaysia's most prominent lawyers.' Read more: Tony Blair, Very Close to Being Indicted for War Crimes Sunday, 25 April 2010 05:42 'It was fitting that the Mar. 31 "International Donors Conference Towards a New Future for Haiti" was held in the Trusteeship Council at the United Nations headquarters in New York. At the event, Haitian President René Préval in effect turned over the keys to Haiti to a consortium of foreign banks and governments, which will decide how (to use the conference's principal slogan) to "build back better" the country devastated by the Jan. 12 earthquake. This "better" Haiti envisions some 25,000 farmers providing Coca-Cola with mangos for a new Odwalla brand drink, 100,000 workers assembling clothing and electronics for the U.S. market in sweatshops under HOPE II legislation, and thousands more finding jobs as guides, waiters, cleaners and drivers when Haiti becomes a new tourist destination.' Read more: For $10 Billion of 'Promises' Haiti Surrenders its Sovereignty
Sunday, 25 April 2010
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