Interior designer accepts £60,000 plus costs from News Group Newspapers, as Ashley Cole joins list of compensation test cases The interior designer Kelly Hoppen settled her phone-hacking claim against the publisher of the News of the World on Friday after it agreed to pay her compensation of £60,000 plus costs. Hoppen sued News Group Newspapers, former News of the World journalist Dan Evans and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire for misuse of private information and breach of confidence. She alleged they intercepted messages left on her mobile phone from 2004 to 2006. It emerged in the high court on Friday that NGN had admitted this in April this year. Hoppen originally brought the action against News Group and Evans alleging that there had been an attempt to access her voicemail messages in 2009, a claim the defendants denied. She was told by police earlier this year that her phone had been targeted five years ago and it was those charges that News Group admitted. News Group accepted no liability for the alleged 2009 incident. Michael Silverleaf QC apologised in court on behalf of the company. Several hacking victims have now settled with News Group, including Andy Gray, who received £20,000 compensation. Sienna Miller accepted £100,000 plus legal fees. Milly Dowler’s family were offered £3m by News Group’s parent company, News Corp after a meeting with its chairman and founder Rupert Murdoch. Separately, Ashley Cole, who is also suing NGN, will have his case heard at trial as one of several test cases designed to set the level of compensation the publisher will have to pay to victims if they win their cases. The high court also heard that Greg Hurst, a former intelligence officer, is suing News Group and Alex Marunchak, who was a senior journalist at the NoW for 15 years until 2006. Hurst alleges Marunchak instructed another defendant, the private investigator Jonathan Rees, to hack into his emails. Hurst’s lawyer, Jeremy Reed QC, told the court Rees was instructed by Marunchak to send a trojan email to Hurst so that his messages could be accessed. The allegations were originally aired on BBC1′s Panorama in March. Rees denied acting illegally. Phone hacking Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers News of the World News Corporation Media business James Robinson guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Some have called Paul Broun (R-GA) the stupidest man in Congress. And while I think that’s unfair to many others, including Louie Gohmert and Steve King, this segment on ABC today does add some more weight to that argument, if any more were needed at this point. via ABC News : On ABC’s “Top Line” today, Rep. Paul Broun, a tea party Republican from Georgia, said the protests amount to an “attack upon freedom” — one that he said is now being hijacked by labor unions in attempt to reelect President Obama. “They don’t know why they’re there. They’re just mad,” Broun told us. “This attack upon business, attack upon industry, attack upon freedom – and I think that’s what this is all about.” Labor unions, he said, are now joining the protest to “subvert that anger into a political power.” Their aim is to reelect a president whose “policies are just ignorant and incompetent” about the economy, he said. “This president and his administration have policies that are taking our freedom away,” Broun said. “They’re killing our economy, they’re killing jobs, they’re running them over offshore. We need to change all that. If we don’t, this economy is going to have a bigger crash than we did in the Great Depression.”
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Sceptics say move to group cannabis containing more than 15% THC with cocaine and ecstasy will be hard to enforce The Dutch government has said it will move to classify high-potency cannabis alongside hard drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy, the latest step in the country’s ongoing reversal of its liberal policies. The decision means most of the cannabis now sold in Dutch coffee shops would have to be replaced by milder variants. But sceptics said the move would be difficult to enforce, and that it could simply lead many users to smoke more of the less potent weed. Possession of cannabis is technically illegal in the Netherlands, but police do not prosecute people for possession of small amounts, and it is sold openly in designated cafes. Growers are routinely prosecuted if caught. Maxime Verhagen, the economic affairs minister, said cannabis containing more than 15% of its main active chemical, THC, is so much stronger than what was common a generation ago that it should be considered a different drug entirely. The high potency cannabis has “played a role in increasing public health damage”, he said at a press conference in The Hague. The cabinet has not said when it will begin enforcing the rule. Jeffrey Parsons, a psychologist at Hunter College in New York, who studies addiction, said the policy may not have the benefits the government is hoping for. “If it encourages smoking an increased amount of low-concentration THC weed, it is likely to actually cause more harm than good,” he said, citing the potential lung damage and cancer-causing effects of extra inhalation. The Dutch justice ministry said it was up to cafes to regulate their own products and police will seize random samples for testing. But Gerrit-Jan ten Bloomendal, spokesman for the Platform of Cannabis Businesses in the Netherlands, said implementing the plan would be difficult “if not impossible”. “How are we going to know whether a given batch exceeds 15% THC? For that matter, how would health inspectors know?” he said. He predicted a black market will develop for highly potent cannabis. The ongoing Dutch crackdown on cannabis is part of a decade-long rethink of liberalism in general that has seen a third of the windows in Amsterdam’s red light district closed and led the Netherlands to adopt some of the toughest immigration rules in Europe. The number of licensed coffee houses has been reduced, and earlier this year the government announced plans to ban tourists from buying cannabis. That has been resisted by the city of Amsterdam, where the cafes selling cannabis are a major tourist draw. Netherlands Drugs Europe guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Chilean girls stage ‘occupation’ of their own school in education rights protest
October 7, 2011 No Comment
For five months, girls demanding free university education for all have defied police to occupy their state school Sleeping on a tiled classroom floor, sharing cigarettes and always on the lookout for police raids, the students of Carmela Carvajal primary and secondary school are living a revolution. It began early one morning in May, when dozens of teenage girls emerged from the predawn darkness and scaled the spiked iron fence around Chile’s most prestigious girl’s school. They used classroom chairs to barricade themselves inside and settled in. Five months later, the occupation shows no signs of dying and the students are still fighting for their goal: free university education for all. A tour of the school is a trip into the wired reality of a generation that boasts the communication tools that feisty young rebels of history never dreamed of. When police forces move closer, the students use restricted Facebook chat sessions to mobilise. Within minutes, they are able to rally support groups from other public schools in the neighbourhood. “Our lawyer lives over there,” said Angelica Alvarez, 14, as she pointed to a cluster of nearby homes. “If
Continue reading …The media said there was “good” but “not great” news on the unemployment front in September with 103,000 jobs added, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate remained 9.1 percent. But even with that growth, Obama's jobs promises have fallen far short . His economic policies were supposed to create 4 million jobs by the end of 2010. Now, ten months later the economy is still dealing with net job losses of 2,229,000 since February 2009. Adding to that the 4 million promised jobs and Obama's administration is 10 months late and 6,229,000 jobs shy of meeting its job creation claims. With slightly over a year left in his term, America would have to average about 390,000 new jobs every month for Obama to see that many jobs created. Tom Blumer of BizzyBlog noticed that even with the uptick in job growth in September, when seasonally adjusted, jobs are trending downward . Unemployment is a huge concern for Americans right now. In September, Gallup found that it overtook “the economy” as “the most important problem facing this country today.” The president has been campaigning to spend another $447 billion to fix the jobs problem, after his first $787 billion stimulus failed to solve the unemployment crisis. In September, the 9.1 percent unemployment rate was rarely mentioned in 'jobs' stories on the network news. The Business & Media Institute analyzed 79 stories on the broadcast evening news programs that mentioned “job” or “jobs” between Sept. 1 and Sept. 26 and found only 18 ( 23 percent ) of them actually mentioned the 9.1 percent rate or said that unemployment was above 9 percent. Stories about “job” approval, people doing their “job” and other non-economic references were not counted. Just as the networks have downplayed the high unemployment and looked for hopeful signs on jobs during much of the Obama presidency, reporters continued to find “good news” about unemployment to talk about last month. CBS “Evening News” anchor Scott Pelley shared ” a little bit of good news on jobs ” on Sept. 7, 2011. He led into a report about Obama's proposed jobs plan by optimistically reporting that in July there were 3.2 million job openings posted by employers. “That's the most in nearly three years,” Pelley said without noting the huge shortfall between available jobs and the roughly 14 million who were unemployed in August.
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Nigel Farage recounted deportation tale, almost word for word, to rail enthusiasts back in July, recording suggests The home secretary Theresa May’s claim that a Bolivian student was saved from deportation by the existence of a pet cat appears to have been lifted almost word for word from the leader of the UK Independence party. In her speech to the Tory conference May said the courts, citing the Human Rights Act, had declared the man should not be deported because he would be separated from his cat. Her remarks led to a spat with the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, who accused her of giving a “laughable, childlike” example to criticise the act. Behind the row is a deeper political dispute over whether Britain should ditch the act. In July, Ukip’s leader, Nigel Farage, told a 200-strong audience at the Eastleigh Railway Institute in Hampshire how a court had decided that the man “should not be deported because – and I really am not making this up – he had a pet cat”. A tape recording of his remarks is on the website of the Eastleigh News. In Manchester this week May matched Farage not just in her phrasing but in her timing when talking about the same immigrant, who she said “cannot be deported because – and I am not making this up – he had a pet cat”. Farage told the Guardian: “I have become increasingly used to the Tory party mimicking our policies and phrases in a desperate effort to pretend to their members they are still Eurosceptic. They don’t mean it. We are one of those parties that still believe in holding public meetings, and asking questions from the public. The SWP [Socialist Workers party] turn up, so obviously does Theresa May’s speech writers. “Maybe this will be the beginning of a trend? Flat taxes, cutting foreign aid, a referendum on Europe, grammar schools. Who knows?” One government member said: “Not only has Ms May been caught out making up stories about the Human Rights Act for cheap laughs, she has been plagiarising her clap lines from the UK Independence party.” The immigrant had avoided deportation after it was ruled that it would breach his right to a family life. In Eastleigh, Farage claimed the incident had occurred a few weeks ago and that the man in question was Peruvian – when he was in fact Bolivian. He also claimed inaccurately that the man had a conviction for manslaughter. Apart from overstaying his visa, he was a law-abiding citizen. Both politicians inaccurately claimed the man had been granted leave to stay under the Human Rights Act when it was because the tribunal had previously failed to treat his partner as a spouse, which would accord a right of residence. David Cameron in 2006 earned the ire of Ukip by describing them as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly”. Farage may not have spotted his role as May’s speech writer since he has been obsessing about the state of the euro, and the way in which George Osborne, the “British chancellor is telling the rest of Europe it must abandon democracy. It’s appalling.” Theresa May UK Independence party (Ukip) Conservative conference 2011 Conservative conference Conservatives Immigration and asylum Human Rights Act Human rights Nigel Farage Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Did you know that Erin Burnett has her own show on CNN? I saw Digby’s post about it and I got nauseous. I do remember Matthews has a creepy crush on the ex-CNBCer and her telling us that we should be happy China puts lead in their toys and poisons the food we eat back in 2007: CNBC’s Erin Burnett: We Need China’s Toxic Food And Lead Coated Toys To Keep Economy Strong Burnett: A lot of people like to say, uh, scaremonger about China, right? A lot of politicians, and I know you talk about that issue all the time. I think people should be careful what they wish for on China. Ya know, if China were to revalue it’s currency or China is to start making say, toys that don’t have lead in them or food that isn’t poisonous, their costs of production are going to go up and that means prices at Wal-Mart here in the United States are going to go up too. So, I would say China is our greatest friend right now, they’re keeping prices low and they’re keeping the prices for mortgages low, too.” Yes, she worked for CNBC, the network that Jon Stewart chewed up and spit out for their negligent reporting of the financial markets leading up to the great collapse. He made Jim Cramer cry a few days later. (Click the links to see the videos) Well here comes Erin Burnett. She wants to see what all the fuss if so she goes down to Occupy Wall Street to get to the bottom of this new populist uprising in her shiny new show on CNN. She loves Wall Street since it’s been her beat for a long time and by the way, guess who her new hubby is going to be ? Anyway, she thinks she’s entertaining by taking a glib, mocking approach to the protesters because she doesn’t see the point in it. Hey, monies got paid back to TARP, shouldn’t you be protesting GM? She asks a protester. Yea, people are really happy that they are out of work in a horrible economy, with good educations since she was interviewing an out of work software designer while the bankers hoard their profits and Wall Street pays out record bonuses to themselves after collapsing the global economy without having to pay a penalty for their crimes. Don’t worry, she’s keeping track of the numbers. CNN just added another smug mouthed pundit, who lives a gainfully employed life because she’s shilled for Wall Street her entire career and has the audacity to use a cheery smile on camera to try to make fools of the pain America feels. She then mocks Michael Moore because he found her segment childish. How does she mock him? By putting on some weird glasses trying to imitate some protesters who were wearing costumes in occupy New York and asks Moore to not be so serious, I think. Here’s the transcript. I have more video afterwards. MICHAEL MOORE, FILMMAKER: I just don’t understand that piece, you know, that new show. These companies, these banks, Goldman Sachs up here, they took billions and billions of dollars of citizens’ money, and they ask us to pay for their crime and we’re supposed to be OK because some of them have paid some of it back with interest. I mean, it just boggles the mind. (END VIDEO CLIP) BURNETT: So, Moore was upset, specifically because of this exchange between me and software developer, Dan, who when I asked him why he was there, said because taxpayers lost money on the bank bailout called TARP. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BURNETT: What do you do for a living? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I’m a software developer. BURNETT: Software developer? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. BURNETT: Currently employed or unemployed? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Unemployed, we like to call it. BURNETT: Unemployed. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It’s called “Occupy Wall Street.” BURNETT: So, do you know taxpayers actually made money on the Wall Street bailout? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was unaware of that. BURNETT: Not on G.M. But they did on the Wall Street part of bailout. Does that make you feel any differently? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I would have to do more research about it. BURNETT: If I were right, it might? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, sure. (END VIDEO CLIP) BURNETT: OK. Sure, that was sort of funny. But as I said last night, Dan was an earnest person and he wanted facts. And the best we can do all is have accurate information and then have serious conversations, like right now maybe you take me seriously, but now, not so much. So, Michael Moore, come on, please, come OUTFRONT. Let’s have some fun.. What the hell is she talking about? This isn’t a game. People are suffering. Not her or her fiance or her bankster friends of course. If they don’t understand the markets like Burnnett says she does, that’s not the point. Wall Street had their debts wiped clean after bilking the public with their corrupt mortgage scandal, which included all sectors including the rating agencies while millions of Americans houses were foreclosed on and forced out of work.
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Health Protection Agency investigates cluster of legionnaires’ cases among people who have been to the Greek island A cluster of cases of legionnaires’ disease in people who have been to Corfu is being investigated by the Health Protection Agency (HPA). The organisation said it was aware of nine cases of the disease in people between the ages of 39 and 79 who had travelled to different areas of the Greek island since August. The HPA is working with colleagues in the UK, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), and Greek public health authorities to try to find the possible source or sources. They said although cases all had a history of recent travel to Corfu, a UK source of infection could not be ruled out. As a precaution, it will investigate possible UK sources, as well as working with Greek authorities to look at possible sources in Corfu. The HPA is advising people going on holiday to the island to be aware of signs and symptoms of legionnaires’. The disease, caused by the Legionella bacterium, can lead to severe pneumonia. It can survive in water, and may be spread through exposure to water droplets from cooling systems, shower heads and taps, but cannot be spread from person to person. Symptoms can start between two and 14 days after exposure to a source, often with an initial flu-like illness leading to pneumonia. Legionnaires’ disease is uncommon in the UK, but can lead to complications and can be fatal, the HPA said. Early antibiotic treatment is important. Prof Nick Phin, head of the HPA’s legionnaires’ department, said: “We are concerned that UK residents travelling to Corfu should be aware of this potential risk. However, we are not suggesting that people change their holiday plans. “Legionnaires’ disease is very rare and cannot be spread from person to person so the risk is low. “We are continuing our investigations so that we can provide the best advice for travellers and minimise the risk of further cases. “We will also assist the Greek public health authorities in their investigations into a possible source or sources within Corfu. “Sometimes a source for the infection is never found, because the bacteria can live in a very wide variety of types of water supply.” The HPA is also briefing GPs asking them to be alert to people returning from Corfu suffering relevant symptoms. The organisation is also working with the Foreign Office and the Federation of Tour Operators to make sure travel agencies are aware of the potential risk. Health Greece Infectious diseases Europe guardian.co.uk
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Health Protection Agency investigates cluster of legionnaires’ cases among people who have been to the Greek island A cluster of cases of legionnaires’ disease in people who have been to Corfu is being investigated by the Health Protection Agency (HPA). The organisation said it was aware of nine cases of the disease in people between the ages of 39 and 79 who had travelled to different areas of the Greek island since August. The HPA is working with colleagues in the UK, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), and Greek public health authorities to try to find the possible source or sources. They said although cases all had a history of recent travel to Corfu, a UK source of infection could not be ruled out. As a precaution, it will investigate possible UK sources, as well as working with Greek authorities to look at possible sources in Corfu. The HPA is advising people going on holiday to the island to be aware of signs and symptoms of legionnaires’. The disease, caused by the Legionella bacterium, can lead to severe pneumonia. It can survive in water, and may be spread through exposure to water droplets from cooling systems, shower heads and taps, but cannot be spread from person to person. Symptoms can start between two and 14 days after exposure to a source, often with an initial flu-like illness leading to pneumonia. Legionnaires’ disease is uncommon in the UK, but can lead to complications and can be fatal, the HPA said. Early antibiotic treatment is important. Prof Nick Phin, head of the HPA’s legionnaires’ department, said: “We are concerned that UK residents travelling to Corfu should be aware of this potential risk. However, we are not suggesting that people change their holiday plans. “Legionnaires’ disease is very rare and cannot be spread from person to person so the risk is low. “We are continuing our investigations so that we can provide the best advice for travellers and minimise the risk of further cases. “We will also assist the Greek public health authorities in their investigations into a possible source or sources within Corfu. “Sometimes a source for the infection is never found, because the bacteria can live in a very wide variety of types of water supply.” The HPA is also briefing GPs asking them to be alert to people returning from Corfu suffering relevant symptoms. The organisation is also working with the Foreign Office and the Federation of Tour Operators to make sure travel agencies are aware of the potential risk. Health Greece Infectious diseases Europe guardian.co.uk
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enlarge Take that pitchfork down to Wall Street, man! Good news, my fellow Americans: You don’t have enjoy drum circles or want to free Mumia to support Occupy Wall Street! And there’s a simple reason for this: Our political and economic elites have screwed all of us, not just out-of-work twenty-somethings. How have they done this, you ask? Let us count the ways: First, our political and business leaders have cheered on the decimation of America’s manufacturing industries through trade pacts that open up American workers to competition from countries where workers have no rights and are paid something like negative-five billion cents per year. This has not only led to the destruction of millions of middle-class jobs but has given America an absurd current-account deficit where we basically import cheap crap from China and don’t make much of anything ourselves anymore. See this graph: enlarge At the same time our politicians and business leaders pursued policies that benefited the super rich at the expense of everyone else. Think income tax cuts, capital gains tax cuts, the repeal of Glass-Stegall , the deregulation of derivatives and the creation of a billion-zillion-katrillion loopholes in the tax code that let the super rich get away with paying fewer and fewer taxes. The result has, quite predictably, been a rise in income inequality See this graph: enlarge To cover up the stink of good jobs disappearing and real wages stagnating, our politicians and business leaders assured us not to worry since we had access to all kinds of cheap crap and, even better, we could exponentially expand our credit through the miracles of modern finance! So even if you go deeper and deeper into debt to maintain your lifestyles and to pay for college and medical expenses, don’t sweat it! You can always take out a home equity line of credit to pay the bills since home prices always, always, always go upupup and you can just sell your house for a higher price if all else fails! See this graph: enlarge Except… ooops. Housing prices are plummeting… enlarge …and now you’re stuck with a paying a mortgage on a house that is worth far, far less than it was just last year. (Note to my conservative friends: This isn’t just a subprime problem for shifty inner-city layabouts. One-third of all prime mortgage loan borrowers are underwater as well.) And this, then, is more or less the face of America in 2011: We’re basically a nation of former factory workers who now work as Walmart greeters. As if that weren’t bad enough, we are getting tossed out of our homes and are living in fear of coming down with any sort of illness because our crappy part-time job doesn’t provide us with health insurance. And the reason we got ourselves into this mess in the first place is because we followed the advice of our best and brightest business and political leaders. I mean, if you can’t get pissed off about that you can’t get pissed off about anything.
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