Pegah Ahangarani, a supporter of the country’s opposition, was due to go to Germany to participate in TV coverage A popular Iranian actor and outspoken supporter of the country’s opposition movement has been arrested in Tehran after attempting to travel to Germany to take part in coverage of the women’s World Cup. Pegah Ahangarani, 27, was scheduled to go to Germany to participate in TV programmes about the Fifa tournament, but was picked up from her home in the capital by security officials on Sunday. Ahangarani fell foul of the Islamic regime when she publicly campaigned for opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in Iran’s 2009 presidential elections, but escaped arrest until recently because of her widespread popularity. She is the second woman to have been arrested in recent weeks in connection with the women’s World Cup in Germany. Maryam Majd , a prominent Iranian photographer and activist who had campaigned for women to be allowed to enter stadiums to watch football matches in Iran, was arrested in late June before going to Germany, where she wanted to work on a book about women and sport. Within days of Ahangarani going missing, Deutsche Welle – Germany’s international broadcasting service, which had invited her to Berlin – confirmed she had been arrested. “The Farsi-language service of Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international broadcasting service, has learned from people close to the actress that Ahangarani has been arrested,” the German news organisation said. “Deutsche Welle had set up a blog for Ahangarani, who enjoys broad popularity in Iran, to report on the women’s World Cup soccer championships currently being held in Germany.” At least four other women rights activists have been arrested in recent weeks, including Mahnaz Mohammadi , an acclaimed documentary filmmaker, Zahra Yazdani, a journalist, and campaigners Maryam Bahrman and Mansoureh Behkish. Ahangarani, the daughter of acclaimed Iranian filmmakers Jamshid Ahangarani and Manijeh Hekmat, has repeatedly pushed boundaries in her career as a young actor playing roles in a country where women are obliged to cover themselves from head to toe. At 15, Ahangarani featured in a controversial film, The Girl in the Sneakers, which touched the then taboo issue of a rebellious girl who wanted to have a boyfriend in an Islamic society. Girls in Iran are not allowed to have boyfriends, although the majority of young people rebel against it in today’s Iran. According to Deutsche Welle, officials in Tehran have confirmed that Ahangarani is currently being held by the security agents of the Revolutionary Guards. Ahangarani has contacted her family once since her arrest, when she told them she was unaware of her whereabouts or the charges against her. No information was available on where she was being held or whether she had access to legal representation. The London-based human rights organisation ARTICLE 19 has called on Iran to release Ahangarani and Mohammadi. “ARTICLE 19 calls on the Iranian government to immediately release Mohammadi and Ahangarani, and other artists and activists unjustly detained,” Agnes Callamard, the executive director, said. “The authorities must clarify the reasons for their arrests and ensure that the women have access to legal representation.” In recent years, several filmmakers and actors have been arrested or sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Director Jafar Panahi received a six-year prison term and 20-year ban on filmmaking last year, along with Mohammad Rasoulof, who was also sentenced to six years in jail. Ramin Parchami, a prominent actor, remains in custody after he was arrested in protests staged in February in solidarity with the uprisings in the Arab world. Iran Middle East Women’s World Cup 2011 Saeed Kamali Dehghan guardian.co.uk
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President says failure to increase borrowing would put up interest rates, in effect raising everyone’s taxes Barack Obama has warned that the US is “running out of time” to raise the limit on US government borrowing and that failure to do so will lead in effect to a tax increase for all Americans, because a downgrade of the country’s credit rating would cause an interest rate rise. The president’s warning was reinforced by a threat from the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s to strip the US of its AAA standing if no long-term political deal is reached to tackle government spending and debt. As Obama and Republican leaders in Congress continued to wrangle over the terms for approving an increase in the US’s $14.3 trillion (£8.9tn) debt ceiling by the 2 August deadline – with Republicans rejecting Obama’s demand that tax increases for the wealthy accompany sharp budget cuts – the president warned ordinary Americans of the seriousness of the situation. “This is not some abstract issue. These are obligations that the United States has taken on in the past. The Congress has run up the credit card and we now have an obligation to pay our bills. If we do not it could have a whole set of adverse consequences. We could end up with a situation, for example, where interest rates rise for everybody all throughout the country, effectively a tax increase on everybody,” he said. But Obama also told a White House press conference that while the situation was serious, it could be resolved. “We don’t have to do anything radical to solve this problem. Contrary to what some folks say, we’re not Greece, we’re not Portugal. “It turns out that our problem is we cut taxes without paying for them over the last decade … We fought two wars. We didn’t pay for them. We had a bad recession that required a recovery act and stimulus spending.” S&P, which follows Moody’s in warning of a possible downgrading of the US’s top credit rating, put America on negative watch on Thursday and said there was “at least a one-in-two likelihood” that it could downgrade its debt “by one or more notches … if we conclude that Congress and the administration have not achieved a credible solution to the rising US government debt burden and are not likely to achieve one in the foreseeable future”. Obama said that political leaders “should not even be this close to a deadline on this issue”, but he stood firm in his opposition to Republican plans for $2.4tn in immediate spending cuts. The president said to achieve that level of savings without added tax revenues would require the “gutting” of social programmes that he could not support. He said that when ordinary Americans are asked to contribute more to retirement and healthcare programmes, then “millionaires and billionaires can afford to do a bit more”. Republican leaders in the US Senate appeared to be edging closer to an emergency deal with Democrats that would permit the president to raise the debt ceiling unilaterally, but there was continued opposition from fiscal conservatives in the House of Representatives who view such an arrangement as a victory for the White House. Obama said that the Republicans had “boxed themselves in” with election commitments. The Republican leadership in the House of Representatives said it won control of the lower house of Congress in last November’s election with a mandate to sharply cut government spending without any increase in taxes. The Tea Party movement and fiscal conservatives intend to hold newly elected House members to that commitment, and warn that any deal with the president that does not include deep cuts or permits tax increases will be viewed as a betrayal. Obama described any temporary solution that did not tackle long-term spending problems as the least attractive option. “We have a unique opportunity to do something big. We have a chance to stabilise America’s finances for a decade, for 15 years or 20 years, if we’re willing to seize the moment,” he said. John Chambers, chairman of S&P’s sovereign ratings committee, also warned that an interim solution of the kind under discussion in the Senate would not be good enough and that Washington must tackle the long-term debt issue. “If you get a small agreement, that will lead to a downgrade,” he told Reuters. US economy Economics Financial crisis Banking US domestic policy United States Chris McGreal guardian.co.uk
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Props from Denis Leary’s post-9/11 drama ‘Rescue Me’ will soon be on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, DC (July 15)
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More than 30 nations, including the United States, on Friday formally recognised Libya’s main opposition group as the country’s legitimate government until a new interim authority is created. (July 15)
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We hope you’re ready for a heaping helping of Apple speculation, because Reuters is serving up a nice big slice of rumor pie today. According to the ever-present “source with knowledge of the matter,” Taiwanese chipmaker, TSMC is gearing up to supply Apple with its next generation mobile processors. According to the apparently credible anonymous source, TSMC has already begun trial manufacturing on the chips and “has got all the authorization and details ready.” As you may already know, Apple’s current supplier of its A5 CPU is Samsung, and relations between the two have been rocky (at least in court ). This round of speculation also comes just one year after TSMC began construction on its new $9.3 billion foundry, and teamed up with ARM — the brains behind the A5. Of course all parties have declined to comment, which lands this report squarely in the grapevine for now, but we’ll keep you posted if it winds its way into reality. Apple considering TSMC mobile chips? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jul 2011 13:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Scientists have asked the American and Australian navies to help them deploy robots in a vast area of the Indian Ocean that pirates have made too dangerous for ordinary vessels. Deep-ocean robotic buoys play a vital role in climate change studies and weather forecasts, but researchers say pirate activity has…
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Round 2 Baby Shower Fight Mani’s baby shower Our Crazy Families Baby Shower Food Fight lilaitch says: Uggh! Last assignment coming up, first aid refresher to be completed, baby shower to assist with. Tweet time = zero :S
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WikiLeaks founder’s biological father, attending extradition hearing, tells of son’s ‘immense desire for justice in the world’ Julian Assange’s biological father has described his son as a “great dissident” in what he said would be his first and probably only media interview. John Shipton, who has been attending the Assange extradition hearing in London, spoke to the Spanish newspaper el País and confirmed that his son did not get to know him until his mid-20s. “I have kept my mouth closed so as not to hinder things,” said Shipton, whose name Assange used to register the Wikileaks.org domain name in 2006. Shipton met Assange’s mother, Christine, then aged 17, at an antiques shop on his way to a Vietnam war demonstration – which she joined. Little is known about the relationship, except that it had ended by the time of their son’s first birthday – if not earlier. Christine then married theatre director Brett Assange. Shipton told el País that he first got to know his son after Christine rang his Sydney home in 1996. Assange was 25 at the time. “It was extraordinary,” Shipton said. “Certain of his thought processes made it seem like I was staring into a mirror. I could barely believe it. He had the same logic, the same intense curiosity, the same obtuse way of constructing sentences … that never end.” That meeting coincided with, or came soon after, Assange’s 1996 trial for computer hacking – where his lawyer talked of a “really quite tragic” nomadic childhood that saw him attend at least a dozen schools. His mother became pregnant in her early 20s after she “effectively ran away from home” to Sydney, according to court documents used by Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding in their book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War On Secrecy. The documents state that Shipton “never took up residence or if he did only took up residence for a very short time” and “had no contact with [Assange]“. Assange nevertheless later felt confident enough to use his father’s name to register WikiLeaks’ internet domain name, re-registering Shipton’s nominal address in 2008 as Nairobi in Kenya. Shipton had worried that his son was a modern Don Quixote. “At that time it seemed as though Julian loved tilting at windmills, but it turned out not to be like that.” He warned Assange that he was setting himself tough, idealistic targets. “When someone tells you they want to turn the world upside down, you reply: ‘OK, try it. But it’s not that easy!’” Shipton, who is believed to work as a freelance architect in Sydney, said Assange had inherited Christine’s fighting spirit. “He is a great dissident, well-prepared for a new era in which direct action is practised via the internet.” He said his son’s style of dissidence followed in the tradition of people like Che Guevara, Apollinaire or south American hero Simón Bolívar. Shipton is convinced Assange is the victim of a conspiracy. “I think all this has been organised,” he said, while adding that he did not want to hurt Assange’s alleged Swedish victims with his words. “The intelligence agencies got involved in this business from the very start.” Assange’s father apparently sees the US government behind the decision by Mastercard and Visa to prevent WikiLeaks accepting donations from their credit cards. “There is no separation between governments and finance,” he said. “There are many intelligent people in the world, but most seem to be wicked, while Julian seems to have the moral courage and ability to carry his vision through. He seems to have an immense desire for justice in the world.” Julian Assange WikiLeaks Giles Tremlett guardian.co.uk
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The phone hacking scandal roiling Great Britain has cast a new light on billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his outsize influence on political life in that country and around the world. (July 15)
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