First in line to succeed King Abdullah had colon cancer and was being treated abroad when he died The heir to the Saudi throne, Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz, has died abroad after illness, state TV said. He was 85 years old. The death of the crown prince – who was the half brother of the ailing Saudi King Abdullah and had colon cancer – opens questions about the succession in the oil-rich kingdom. Sultan was the kingdom’s deputy prime minister and the minister of defence and aviation. He underwent surgery in New York in February 2009 for an undisclosed illness and spent nearly a year abroad recuperating in the United States and at a palace in Agadir, Morocco. The report did not say where outside the kingdom he died or elaborate on Sultan’s illness. The most likely candidate for the throne after Sultan is Prince Nayef, the powerful interior minister in charge of internal security forces. After Sultan fell ill the king gave Nayef an implicit nod in 2009 by naming him second deputy prime minister, traditionally the post of the third in line. Anyone who rises to the throne is likely to maintain the kingdom’s close alliance with the United States. But there could be internal differences. Abdullah has been seen as a reformer, making incremental changes to improve the position of women, for example, and to modernise the kingdom despite some backlash from the ultra-conservative Wahhabi clerics who give the royal family the religious legitimacy needed to rule. Nayef is often seen as closer to the clerics. Sultan was a central figure in the world’s top oil exporter who dominated defence policy and was long seen as a future king. A defence minister for almost half a century before becoming crown prince to Abdullah in 2005, Sultan built a powerbase in his control of the regular armed forces and his status as one of seven full brothers born to the kingdom’s founder, King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, by his favourite wife. He oversaw a defence spending spree that made the kingdom one of the world’s biggest arms buyers. Sultan’s death may put in motion for the first time an “allegiance council” consisting of sons and grandsons of the kingdom’s founder. The council was set up by his half-brother, Abdullah, to vote on future kings and their heirs. Sultan, who was born in the mid-1920s, had an intestinal cyst removed in 2005 and spent months abroad for treatment and recreation. While Saudi Arabia insisted he was fully cured, diplomats in Riyadh said he gradually retreated from participating in decision-making and often worked only for one or two hours a day. Many of his duties had been informally shifted to other princes, most notably to his son Khaled who led Saudi and Arab forces during the 1991 war to remove Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army from Kuwait. Prince Khaled, who is assistant defence minister, is the owner of influential pan-Arab daily newspaper al-Hayat. Saudi Arabia Middle East guardian.co.uk
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Alliance decides to maintain air patrols for nine more days, while Russia pushes UN to dismantle resolution authorising force Nato will officially end its seven-month operation in Libya on 31 October, its governing North Atlantic Council has said. Russia meanwhile, is pushing for the UN security council to lift the no-fly zone over Libya soon. Moscow has previously accused Nato of abusing the UN resolution authorising military actions by seeking to bring about regime change rather than just protecting civilians. The Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said on Friday: “It’s time to wrap it up, including the no-fly-zone.” The Nato secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said late on Friday that the 31 October end would be confirmed formally next week. Diplomats said Nato air patrols would continue over Libya for the next nine days as a precautionary measure to ensure the stability of the new regime – gradually reducing assuming there were no further outbreaks of violence. The council took into account the wishes of Libya’s new government and of the United Nations, under whose mandate Nato carried out its operations. Victory in Libya represents a major boost for the alliance, which is bogged down in the 10-year war in Afghanistan, the 12-year mission in Kosovo and anti-piracy operations off Somalia. Rasmussen hailed the success of the operation, which started on 19 March with a series of US-led attacks designed to suppress Muamar Gaddafi’s formidable air defences, which included missile and radar networks. Fighters loyal to Libya’s National Transitional Council killed Gaddafi on Thursday. “It shows that freedom is the biggest force in the world,” Fogh Rasmussen said, adding that Nato had no intention of leaving any residual force in or near Libya. “We expect to close down the operation.” He said it was up to the new government to decide whether to launch an investigation into the hazy circumstances of Gaddafi’s death. “With regards to Gaddafi I would expect the new authorities in Libya to live up fully to the basic principles of rule of law and human rights, including full transparency.” Nato has said its commanders were not aware Gaddafi was in a convoy that Nato bombed as it fled Sirte. In a statement on Friday the alliance said an initial Thursday morning strike was aimed at a convoy of approximately 75 armed vehicles leaving Sirte, the Libyan city defended by Gaddafi loyalists. One vehicle was destroyed, which resulted in the convoy’s dispersal. Another jet then fired at about 20 vehicles that were driving at great speed toward the south, destroying or damaging about 10 of them. “We later learned from open sources and allied intelligence that Gaddafi was in the convoy and that the strike likely contributed to his capture,” the statement said. Intelligence from surveillance flights around Sirte on Thursday had indicated that a “command and control group, including senior military leaders” was trying to flee, said Steve Field, spokesman for the British prime minister, David Cameron. “There was a strike, there was damage to the convoy, the Free Libya Fighters then moved in as to what happened next that is not entirely clear,” Field said. Nato warplanes have flown about 26,000 sorties, including more than 9,600 strike missions. They destroyed about 5,900 military targets, including Libya’s air defences and more than 1,000 tanks, vehicles and guns, as well as Gaddafi’s command and control networks. The air strikes broke the stalemate that developed after Gaddafi’s initial attempts failed to crush the rebellion that broke out in February. In August the rebels began advancing on Tripoli, with the Nato warplanes providing close air support and destroying any loyalist defences in their way. Nato was sharply criticized by Russia, China, South Africa and other nations for overstepping the limited UN security council resolution that allowed it to protect civilians and using it as a pretext to pursue regime change in Libya. Churkin on Friday said the UN security council had accepted Russia’s draft resolution to lift the no-fly zone, but Britain and France stressed it was important to coordinate with Libya’s ruling the National Transitional Council. The Russians “admitted that they hadn’t actually consulted the Libyan authorities at all, and every member state said of course the Libyan authorities need to be consulted”, British ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said. Senior NTC officials had “made clear they didn’t want a premature ending of the military authorisations, so we want to proceed in a slightly more measured way”, he said. Both Grant and the French ambassador Gerard Araud said they expected a resolution would be negotiated, with talks beginning in the middle of next week. Araud said: “We all share the view that now we are in the phasing out of the operation of resolution 1973 … [but] we have to do it properly. “For instance, the no-fly-zone, the problem is the airspace. For the moment the airspace is controlled by Nato, so you have to transfer the control of the airspace to the Libyan authorities.” Libya Middle East Nato Africa guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …‘Happy Are The Hands That Feed’ – Jon Bon Jovi’s Soul Kitchen Feeds The Hungry
October 21, 2011 No CommentI try to find good news whenever I can, and this story about a new restaurant supported by Jon Bon Jovi really gave me a lift . I hope it does for you, too: RED BANK, N.J. (AP) — In three decades as one of the world’s biggest rock stars, Jon Bon Jovi has eaten in some of the world’s best restaurants, savoring the best food the planet has to offer. Yet there’s no place he’d rather have dinner than The Soul Kitchen, a “pay-what-you-can” restaurant he and his wife Dorothea established in a former auto body shop near the Red Bank train station in central New Jersey. The restaurant provides gourmet-quality meals to the hungry while enabling them to volunteer on community projects in return without the stigma of visiting a soup kitchen. Paying customers are encouraged to leave whatever they want in the envelopes on each table, where the menus never list a price. The restaurant is the latest undertaking by the New Jersey rocker’s Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, which has built 260 homes for low-income residents in recent years. “With the economic downturn, one of the things I noticed was that disposable income was one of the first things that went,” Bon Jovi told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday before the restaurant’s grand opening ceremony. “Dining out, the family going out to a restaurant, mom not having to cook, dad not having to clean up – a lot of memories were made around restaurant tables. “When I learned that one in six people in this country goes to bed hungry, I thought this was the next phase of the Foundation’s work,” he said. It started several years ago when Dorothea Bongiovi (she uses the legal spelling of her husband’s name) and Jon started helping out at a food pantry at nearby St. Anthony’s Roman Catholic Church. They later moved their focus to the Lunch Break program, which feeds 80 to 120 people a day, dubbing it “The Soul Kitchen.” They brought that name with them to a former auto body shop down the street from the Count Basie Theater, where Jon and his self-titled band have played many fundraising shows for local charities.
Continue reading …‘Happy Are The Hands That Feed’ – Jon Bon Jovi’s Soul Kitchen Feeds The Hungry
October 21, 2011 No CommentI try to find good news whenever I can, and this story about a new restaurant supported by Jon Bon Jovi really gave me a lift . I hope it does for you, too: RED BANK, N.J. (AP) — In three decades as one of the world’s biggest rock stars, Jon Bon Jovi has eaten in some of the world’s best restaurants, savoring the best food the planet has to offer. Yet there’s no place he’d rather have dinner than The Soul Kitchen, a “pay-what-you-can” restaurant he and his wife Dorothea established in a former auto body shop near the Red Bank train station in central New Jersey. The restaurant provides gourmet-quality meals to the hungry while enabling them to volunteer on community projects in return without the stigma of visiting a soup kitchen. Paying customers are encouraged to leave whatever they want in the envelopes on each table, where the menus never list a price. The restaurant is the latest undertaking by the New Jersey rocker’s Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, which has built 260 homes for low-income residents in recent years. “With the economic downturn, one of the things I noticed was that disposable income was one of the first things that went,” Bon Jovi told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday before the restaurant’s grand opening ceremony. “Dining out, the family going out to a restaurant, mom not having to cook, dad not having to clean up – a lot of memories were made around restaurant tables. “When I learned that one in six people in this country goes to bed hungry, I thought this was the next phase of the Foundation’s work,” he said. It started several years ago when Dorothea Bongiovi (she uses the legal spelling of her husband’s name) and Jon started helping out at a food pantry at nearby St. Anthony’s Roman Catholic Church. They later moved their focus to the Lunch Break program, which feeds 80 to 120 people a day, dubbing it “The Soul Kitchen.” They brought that name with them to a former auto body shop down the street from the Count Basie Theater, where Jon and his self-titled band have played many fundraising shows for local charities.
Continue reading …Stephen Colbert Defends ‘Patriot’ Papa-Bear O’Reilly After Soldiers Burn His Book in Afghanistan
October 21, 2011 No Comment
Somebody had to stand up for poor old Bill O’Reilly after the news got out that copies of his book, Patriots and Pinheads that he sent to soldiers in Afghanistan ended up being burned instead of read. That someone ended up being Stephen Colbert on this Thursday’s edition of The Colbert Report : COLBERT: Nation, with the war in Afghanistan stretching into its eleventh year, it can be easy to forget to thank the people working so hard to protect our country. I’m talking of course about Bill O’Reilly. For years Papa-bear has been supporting our troops, by sending them what they most desperately need on the battlefield… his book. […] I don’t know why they would. It is a perfect gift for these warriors. I know reading his book always makes me want to kill somebody. Here’s more from The HuffPo — Bill O’Reilly Book Burned By Soldiers In Afghanistan (PHOTOS) : A group of soldiers recently burned a box of Bill O’Reilly’s books that had been sent to them in Afghanistan. An anonymous soldier going by the name of Everqueer posted pictures of the burning on their Tumblr page. The book in question was “Pinheads and Patriots,” which O’Reilly has sent to Afghanistan through a charity group. “Some jerk sent us two boxes of this awful book (SPOILER ALERT: George Washington – Patriot; George Soros – Pinhead) instead of anything soldiers at a remote outpost in Afghanistan might need, like, say, food or soap,” the soldier said. “Just burned the whole lot of them on my Commander’s orders.” Later, after some of readers had objected to the burning, Everqueer wrote a followup post clarifying why it had happened: The motivation behind the order to burn them was not political…as mentioned in the original post, we are in an extraordinarily remote location. We don’t have a post office here, so sending them back wasn’t an option. Extra space is scarce and alternatives that a few mentioned, like recycling, are nonexistent…I’m aware of the historical implications of book-burning. I won’t say I didn’t take pleasure in removing a few copies of this bigoted twerp’s writings from circulation, but the reason for doing so was military necessity. Click here to view this media Here is something from our archives. Bill O’Reilly in Iraq in December 2006, handing out copies of his book personally. Shameless.
Continue reading …Stephen Colbert Defends ‘Patriot’ Papa-Bear O’Reilly After Soldiers Burn His Book in Afghanistan
October 21, 2011 No Comment
Somebody had to stand up for poor old Bill O’Reilly after the news got out that copies of his book, Patriots and Pinheads that he sent to soldiers in Afghanistan ended up being burned instead of read. That someone ended up being Stephen Colbert on this Thursday’s edition of The Colbert Report : COLBERT: Nation, with the war in Afghanistan stretching into its eleventh year, it can be easy to forget to thank the people working so hard to protect our country. I’m talking of course about Bill O’Reilly. For years Papa-bear has been supporting our troops, by sending them what they most desperately need on the battlefield… his book. […] I don’t know why they would. It is a perfect gift for these warriors. I know reading his book always makes me want to kill somebody. Here’s more from The HuffPo — Bill O’Reilly Book Burned By Soldiers In Afghanistan (PHOTOS) : A group of soldiers recently burned a box of Bill O’Reilly’s books that had been sent to them in Afghanistan. An anonymous soldier going by the name of Everqueer posted pictures of the burning on their Tumblr page. The book in question was “Pinheads and Patriots,” which O’Reilly has sent to Afghanistan through a charity group. “Some jerk sent us two boxes of this awful book (SPOILER ALERT: George Washington – Patriot; George Soros – Pinhead) instead of anything soldiers at a remote outpost in Afghanistan might need, like, say, food or soap,” the soldier said. “Just burned the whole lot of them on my Commander’s orders.” Later, after some of readers had objected to the burning, Everqueer wrote a followup post clarifying why it had happened: The motivation behind the order to burn them was not political…as mentioned in the original post, we are in an extraordinarily remote location. We don’t have a post office here, so sending them back wasn’t an option. Extra space is scarce and alternatives that a few mentioned, like recycling, are nonexistent…I’m aware of the historical implications of book-burning. I won’t say I didn’t take pleasure in removing a few copies of this bigoted twerp’s writings from circulation, but the reason for doing so was military necessity. Click here to view this media Here is something from our archives. Bill O’Reilly in Iraq in December 2006, handing out copies of his book personally. Shameless.
Continue reading …How Does Cain’s Book Get On The Bestseller Lists? He Buys Thousands Of Them
October 21, 2011 No CommentYup, they’re selling like hotcakes…to himself : Federal Election Commission records show that the former Godfather’s Pizza executive paid more than $64,000 of his presidential campaign funds to his motivational speaking company, T.H.E. New Voice Inc., for copies of his own books, and for lodging, airfare, and resources, Bloomberg News reports. Cain’s third-quarter filing reported his campaign as having spent $4 million through Sept. 30. Previous rulings by the FEC have allowed candidates to use their campaign funds to buy their own books, as long as the purchase is at market value and the money goes to charity rather than to personal profit. But Bill Allison, editorial director at the Washington, D.C.-based Sunlight Foundation, told Bloomberg that Cain’s case should raise some eyebrows. “All candidates publish books and they offer them as a premiums to donors, but most candidates aren’t buying them from their own companies,” Allison said. “It raises the question of his campaign contributions ending up in his own pocket.” Shady financing, money going from one pocket to another for personal benefit AND cheating the system to climb up the bestsellers’ chart? Yup, that’s our leading Republican candidate for you.
Continue reading …How Does Cain’s Book Get On The Bestseller Lists? He Buys Thousands Of Them
October 21, 2011 No CommentYup, they’re selling like hotcakes…to himself : Federal Election Commission records show that the former Godfather’s Pizza executive paid more than $64,000 of his presidential campaign funds to his motivational speaking company, T.H.E. New Voice Inc., for copies of his own books, and for lodging, airfare, and resources, Bloomberg News reports. Cain’s third-quarter filing reported his campaign as having spent $4 million through Sept. 30. Previous rulings by the FEC have allowed candidates to use their campaign funds to buy their own books, as long as the purchase is at market value and the money goes to charity rather than to personal profit. But Bill Allison, editorial director at the Washington, D.C.-based Sunlight Foundation, told Bloomberg that Cain’s case should raise some eyebrows. “All candidates publish books and they offer them as a premiums to donors, but most candidates aren’t buying them from their own companies,” Allison said. “It raises the question of his campaign contributions ending up in his own pocket.” Shady financing, money going from one pocket to another for personal benefit AND cheating the system to climb up the bestsellers’ chart? Yup, that’s our leading Republican candidate for you.
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Paul McCartney is the latest celebrity to issue a wedding portrait. Jess Cartner-Morley looks back at other officially sanctioned snapshots and wonders what they all mean Jess Cartner-Morley Paddy Allen Giulio Frigieri
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Click here to view this media Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is deadly serious about stopping gays from getting married. Earlier this week, the former Pennsylvania senator told Caffeinated Thoughts that he would be willing to “die” in the fight against marriage equality. “The battle we’re engaged in right now is same sex marriage, ultimately that is the very foundation of our country, the family, what the family structure is going to look like,” Santorum explained. “I’ll die on that hill.” The candidate later went on to explain that sex between a man and a woman is “special,” and even birth control is “not OK.” “We’ll repeal Obamacare and get rid any idea that you have to have abortion coverage or contraceptive coverage,” he said. “One of the things that I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the sexual liberty idea and many in the Christian faith have said, you know contraception is OK. It’s not OK because it’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” Santorum continued: “They’re supposed to be within marriage. They are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal but also procreative, and that’s the perfect way a sexual union should happen. When we take any part of that out, we diminish the act. If we take one part out, it’s not for the purposes of procreation, it’s not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women. So, why can’t you take other parts of that out? And then all of the sudden it becomes deconstructed to the point where it’s simply pleasure, and that’s certainly a part of it, and it’s an important part, don’t get me wrong. But there is a lot of things we do for pleasure and this is special and it needs to be seen as special.” “I know most presidents don’t talk about those things, and maybe people don’t want us to talk about those things. But I think it’s important that you are who you are.”
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