Police give chase to boy in pyjamas who reached 50mph in car taken from his mother’s house A barefoot seven-year-old boy wearing pyjamas hit speeds of 50mph while driving a car for 20 miles before Michigan police eventually forced him to stop. The boy was stopped in a 55mph zone in Caseville Township only after two police cars gave chase and forced him to slow down. He had set off from his mother’s house in the Pontiac Sunfire with the intention of driving to his father’s house 15 miles away. “He was crying and just kept saying he wanted to go to his dad’s,” said the Caseville police chief, Jamie Learman. Police began looking for the car at 10.15am on Monday after receiving a call from someone who had spotted an underage driver. The boy was staying with his mother in Huron County’s Sheridan Township, 110 miles north of Detroit. She had worked a night shift and was unaware her son and the car were gone. The boy had hoped to drive to his father’s home in Filion, also in northern Michigan. Police pulled him over about 15 miles to the west. Learman told the Detroit Free Press he feared the boy would crash as the car veered to the right on a rural road and skidded wildly. “When that happened, he seemed to be increasing his speeds,” Learman said. He sped ahead and tried to box in the car with the help of a Huron County sheriff’s deputy, who was behind in another vehicle. “I slowed down, he slowed down and eventually stopped,” Learman said. Huron County sheriff, Kelly Hanson, said the prosecutor’s office and child welfare officials were reviewing the matter. The prosecutor “is going to want to know things like … where did he learn how to drive?” Hanson said. “I’m just glad he didn’t get hurt, and no one else got hurt,” Learman said. “I can just imagine the stop signs and other things he didn’t stop for. I’m just assuming a seven-year-old didn’t follow the traffic laws.” Michigan United States guardian.co.uk
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Dmitry Medvedev’s support for democracy rings hollow as his justice ministry refuses to register People’s Freedom party for this year’s polls President Dmitry Medvedev’s attempts to portray Russia as a flourishing democracy were dealt another blow when a liberal opposition party was barred from taking part in forthcoming elections. Medvedev has promised to increase political competition but the justice ministry announced in a statement that it was refusing to register the People’s Freedom party (PFP), a coalition whose leaders include the former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, and activist Boris Nemtsov. The ministry said that the party could not be registered because some listed members were under-age, some were “dead souls” – already deceased at the time of the party’s founding conference in December – and some did not live at the addresses provided in documents filed by the party. It also identified other alleged violations. Kasyanov accused the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, of engineering the refusal because the PFP posed “serious risks” for him. “It’s clear that Putin has taken the decision not to allow our party to take part in the elections,” Kasyanov said, adding that as a result the parliamentary poll this December “cannot be considered fair”. Vladimir Ryzhkov, another leader of the party, said that launching an appeal would be pointless. “To apply to the courts now would mean going in a vicious circle and like a sheep running again and again into the same gate,” he said. The polls are expectedto be a pallid affair. Last month, Putin created the All-Russia People’s Front to boost the flagging fortunes of his United Russia party, which dominates the duma and should preserve a large swath of seats. Also last month, the billionaire metals tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov agreed to head Right Cause, a small party that appears to support Medvedev’s modernising agenda. The Communist party, the misleadingly named Liberal Democratic party headed by ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovksy, and the Fair Russia party will also compete as nominal opponents to United Russia. Critics say the Kremlin has consistently quelled sharply oppositionist parties in recent years by refusing registration and imposing other legal obstacles to participation in elections. In April, the European court of human rights ruled that the dissolution of Ryzhkov’s Republican party in 2007 was unjustified. Russia Dmitry Medvedev Vladimir Putin Tom Parfitt guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Afghanistan withdrawal: Obama warned over ‘snatching defeat from jaws of victory’
June 22, 2011 No Comment
US military fears cutting troop numbers in Afghanistan too quickly could jeopardise entire mission Unless Barack Obama has a sudden change of heart, his address to the nation will privately disappoint many of the senior commanders in Isaf – the International Security and Assistance Force – and provide them with immediate logistical problems. The military had been expecting an initial withdrawal of between 3,000 and 5,000 troops. That can be achieved relatively easily by reducing the number of back-up staff in Afghanistan. The ratio of fighters to support personnel is out of kilter at the moment, so this would help to rationalise the “teeth to tail” numbers. A further 5,000 soldiers out by the end of the year is more of a problem. In military circles this target is described as “challenging”. That means it is going to be a real headache, potentially disrupting plans for this summer’s fighting season, and the strategy for the autumn. Speaking ahead of the speech, Professor Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services Institute thinktank, warned the US needed to keep “as many combat units intact for as long as possible” or risk “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory”. But the likelihood now is that the US will have to start withdrawing one of its brigades in the autumn, to meet the first end of year deadline, and then synchronise the withdrawal of others through 2012 to get all 33,000 surge troops out of Afghanistan within the White House timetable. There will not be a second fighting season at full strength, which is what commanders wanted. All talk of a “conditions-based withdrawal”, the phrase used by Downing Street and the White House to provide reassurance to the generals, appears to have been abandoned. The conditions driving this process now are political ones. In early 2013, the US will still have more
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Watching Jon Stewart’s appearance on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, it would be unlikely that one would walk away doubting that he is a comedian first and a political commentator second or that the comedian/pundit/macramé enthusiast was in any way disingenuous about his show’s portrayals of Fox’s many detestable attributes (although when he said he’d voted for G.H.W. Bush, visions of a spindly, younger Stewart being shoved into a voting booth by a cigar butt-chewing construction worker wearing an “America: Love It Or Leave It” sticker on his helmet mitigated the wholly improbable admission). After all, his show airs on Comedy Central, and a more truthful and less misleading advertisement — other than, say, The Food Network — would be hard to find. It would be equally unlikely (a pairing of words that Tom Brokaw would have pulled a muscle trying to pronounce) that anyone who wasn’t a devotee of Chris Wallace (whose fan base must consist of those left disenfranchised after the death of Lawrence Welk) wouldn’t wonder what Stewart was doing spending his morning defending himself. Did you understand all that? I’m not sure I did. Wallace has the bearing and the regally smug heft of an old style heavyweight network anchor, amid trappings which suggest to the Fox viewer that “it’s Sunday — God’s day — so we’re gonna tone down the garishness — until tomorrow”, but with a touch of Ted Baxter thrown in; the smirk is printed into his puss as if it had been kicked there. And as Wallace rolled clip after clip in an effort to debunk Stewart’s description of the network as being anything but fair and balanced, he, being an archetypal Fox bully-boy, inadvertently proved Stewart’s point. No one but an organization with an enormous chip on its shoulder engages in schoolyard “see-I-told-you-so” antics, especially an organization which continually bullies people into believing it isn’t a bully. But Stewart, unfazed by the snarky posturing, mostly took it all in stride. But the telling moment when Stewart said to Wallace “You’re insane!”, to which the veteran newsman responded with a rather weak “I am?” seemed to boil the dynamics of the so-called culture war down to the small. The moment and the interview overall was redolent of the exchanges between King Lear and his Fool, the jester’s barbed truths vexing the exalted bully, now deposed and dithering. It’s not like Fox and the rest of the right-wing media hasn’t got the talent to get its messages across, though their casting is a bit labored, consisting mainly of square-jawed daddy-warriors and comely mommy-pinups. It is, rather, the message itself that fails to convince the audience outside the one it’s aimed at (the one that prefers victory rather than veracity) that it is in any way fair or balanced. An organization which has to resort to fear mongering, intimidation and flat-out bullshit kinda loses its journalistic credibility. It’s almost as if Jon Stewart was giving Chris Wallace and Fox yet another chance to come clean and stop with all the nonsense about their not being possibly the most successful propaganda arm of a political ideology that there’s ever been. Of course, those with an opposing political bent might say the same about Stewart. But they’d be wrong (See what I did there???). The artfulness with which Fox can deliver its product is a wonder to behold, but owes more to the reach technology has within our media-addicted culture than the actual validity of what’s being broadcast. That, and the relentless repetition of suggestions both superficial and subliminal, has an impact not unlike the hammer has upon a nail. But when the hammer is wielded by Fox News, the truth — and Jon Stewart — prove to be rather slippery nails.
Continue reading …NBC Thinks Real-Life Noah’s Ark Could Be Needed in Global Warming Apocalypse
June 22, 2011 No Comment
During a fluffy human interest story on Wednesday's NBC Today about a man in Holland who built a full-size replica of the biblical Noah's Ark, correspondent Janet Shamlian turned serious for a moment, wondering: “But how realistic is this Dutchman's dream of doom? Because of global warming, the concept of a flood happening here is not unheard of.” Shamlian touted how “Al Gore predicted as much in the movie, 'An Inconvenient Truth,'” followed by a clip of Gore lecturing in the film: “If Greenland broke up and melted, this is what would happen to the sea level in the Netherlands, absolutely devastating.”
Continue reading …The non-partisan fact-checkers at Politifact have rated his assertion that Fox News viewers are the most consistently misinformed viewers false , Jon Stewart acknowledged on the Daily Show last night. Some studies have shown Fox viewers to be the most misinformed but others have rated viewers of some specific Fox shows…
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Airline finally ends bitter conflict with Unite union that resulted in 22 days of strikes and cost it £150m British Airways and the Unite trade union have ended one of the most rancorous industrial disputes in recent decades after cabin crew at the airline accepted a peace deal. Following 22 days of walkouts and a £150m hit to BA’s balance sheet, both sides have declared an end to nearly two years of hostilities. The agreement includes the return of staff travel perks for the thousands of crew who took part in strikes last year, but not the reversal of staff cuts that triggered the initial dispute in 2009. More than 6,500 crew backed the deal, representing a 92% majority on a 72% turnout. Len McCluskey, Unite general secretary, said: “Thankfully we have reached an honourable agreement with BA. The overwhelming acceptance of this deal by cabin crew means that both parties can now move forward together on securing a bright future for the airline.” BA said: “The skills and professionalism of British Airways cabin crew are second to none, and we are delighted this dispute is behind us.” The travel plans of hundreds of thousands of BA passengers were disrupted by the dispute, while dozens of crew were disciplined by the airline, including the sacking of senior figures at the main Unite cabin crew branch, Bassa. As part of the agreement, crew disciplined during the dispute can refer their cases to binding arbitration by Acas, the conciliation service. McCluskey said: “I hope it sends a message to employers everywhere that working with your workforce is the only way to secure productive change.” Hopes of a peace deal rose when, after a torrid 2010, there was a change of leadership at Unite and BA, with McCluskey replacing Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson, while at BA chief executive Willie Walsh, who took the top job at BA’s parent International Airlines Group, was replaced by Keith Williams. Williams admitted this month that the dispute had damaged the BA brand, having become front-page news last year as the likes of Gordon Brown joined attempts to end the stand-off. “One of the things we need to do is rebuild the brand image, which inevitably suffers during a protracted dispute,” he said. BA is preparing to launch a marketing push ahead of the Olympics, where it is a headline sponsor, emphasising a multibillion-pound investment programme that includes 12 Airbus A380 superjumbos. BA added: “We have made permanent structural savings to our business, which is now ready to invest £5.5bn over the next five years for the benefit of our customers.” British Airways Airline industry Travel & leisure Willie Walsh Unite Dan Milmo guardian.co.uk
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Culture secretary set to announce approval for deal after receiving Ofcom’s report • David Cameron pays visit to Murdoch HQ The culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is expected to give the final go-ahead to News Corporation’s proposed takeover of BSkyB early next week, after receiving a report on the deal from media regulator Ofcom on Wednesday. Hunt has been waiting to receive final reports on the regulatory issues relating to News Corp’s bid to buy the 60.9% of BSkyB it does not already own from Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading. Hunt is expected to announce the deal will go through next week, although it is understood he is to put the decision out to a further seven-day consultation. He has previously indicated he is minded to approve the merger on condition that News Corporation agrees to spin off Sky News and restrict its shareholding in the channel to 39.1%. Although Ofcom has delivered its report to Hunt, the culture secretary is currently in Brazil with the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, as part of an official UK government visit. Hunt gave the deal a provisional green light in March and had been expected to announce his final decision by the end of April after putting it out to consultation. The delay in publishing a final approval for the takeover is due to make negotiations more intense on points of detail of the Sky News spin-off agreement between News Corp and Ofcom and the OFT, which have both been advising Hunt. Regulatory sources say they want to structure the legal agreement “so it cannot be got around” – an attempt to head off a perception that Rupert Murdoch has been successfully able to work around previous legal agreements he has signed designed to secure the editor’s independence at the point when the Times was acquired in 1981 and when the Wall Street Journal was bought in 2007. In both cases the agreements were designed to prevent the editor of both newspapers from easily being removed, but in practice editors at each title have come and gone largely at the behest of the owner. The long delay has frustrated Murdoch’s News Corp, which is keen to conclude the transaction at a time when BSkyB’s share price has been rising due to its strong financial performance. News Corp’s original proposal was 700p a share a year ago, but Sky’s share price was 830.5p on Wednesday. A final bid is thought likely to succeed at around 875p – costing News Corp about £1.8bn more than the original £7.5bn proposal. A string of media organisations, including the parent company of the Guardian, have opposed the proposed Murdoch merger, arguing it would stifle media plurality by bringing together the largest newspaper group, Sun and Times owner News International with a 37% share of all copies sold in the UK, and the largest broadcaster, BSkyB. Last year the fast-growing Sky had a turnover of £5.9bn, taking it comfortably ahead of the BBC. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook . BSkyB Television industry News Corporation Ofcom Rupert Murdoch Jeremy Hunt Dan Sabbagh Jason Deans guardian.co.uk
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Georgia puts probationers to work in fields after farmers complain about a new law aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration in the state. (June 22)
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In Dafniya, Libya, rebels were seen firing rocket propelled grenades and machine guns to combat the artillery fire from Gadhafi’s forces in the distance. At least two rebels were injured in a mortar attack. (June 22)
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