Osama bin Laden’s youngest wife, who was injured last week in the raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader, was a “very good overall person,” from a large, respected Yemeni family, a relative tells CNN . “The family had no extremist views, even though they came from a conservative background.” The marriage…
Continue reading …Disney has released a special extended clip of the Cliff Jumping scene from Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. This looks to be quite a bit into the movie, so be warned, here be spoilers: Ian McShane was born … Continue reading → Download unlimited songs to your iPhone or Android. Choose from over 10 million songs. Try MOG free! Extended Cliff Jumping Clip from Pirates 4: On Stranger Tides… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Disney Blog Discovery Date : 08/05/2011 08:45 Number of articles : 3
Continue reading …The title is Manchester United’s in all but name. A further point against Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park or Blackpool at home will make them champions of England for the 19th time, so eclipsing Liverpool’s record. It is, however, Chelsea who are the contemporary rivals and it will gladden Old Trafford that Carlo Ancelotti’s team is to be trophy-less after taking the Double last season. Chelsea awakened some interest when trimming United’s 2-0 lead, but there was no concerted challenge against a much superior side. The opposition had harmed them immediately. With 37 seconds gone, Park Ji-sung sent Javier Hernández through for the opener. The visitors’ durability had vanished and United struck again after 23 minutes. Ryan Giggs took a short corner, had the ball returned to him and sent in a deep cross that was headed in by a loosely marked Nemanja Vidic. The acrimony associated with this fixture came later, with the referee Howard Webb showing tolerance when, for instance, declining to show a yellow card to the Chelsea centre-half David Luiz, who was substituted at the interval after looking vulnerable under pressure. It was a raw sort of day, with Wayne Rooney alleged to have gesticulated at visiting fans, but Chelsea felt the sting of this occasion most of all. The pursuit of United had been in vain. Any question about the outcome virtually ended with the Vidic goal, although Frank Lampard did score after Branislav Ivanovic had knocked a cross by the substitute Ramires into his path with 68 minutes gone. Sir Alex Ferguson’s side can now begin to focus on a Champions League final against Barcelona. While that will be a challenge of a higher order, United are entitled to pause and relish their work on the domestic scene. Their points total will be 82 at most, but United have exercised as much control as circumstances demanded. Edwin van der Sar did make good saves, but it never looked likely that Chelsea would completely repair the grave damage done at the outset. The form of Ancelotti’s squad had been outstanding of late, but that was still a prolonged and unavailing effort to compensate for previous lapses. Ultimately, the superiority of United has been demonstrated. The lead could well have been greater, but an unmarked Hernández headed high from Antonio Valencia’s cross in the 86th minute. Premier League Manchester United Chelsea Kevin McCarra guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Chretien rescued after seven weeks surviving on trail mix and creek water – but search for her husband, Albert, continues A Canadian woman whose van got stuck in canyon territory in Nevada has been found alive after surviving for seven weeks on water and tiny amounts of trail mix. Rita Chretien, 56, is being treated in hospital in Twin Falls, Idaho after she was discovered by hunters taking advantage of the first good weather in Nevada following an extreme winter. She had lost 30 pounds in weight but is likely to make a full recovery. The search now turns to her husband, Albert, 59, who she last saw on 22 March. After their vehicle got stuck in the mud, he set off on his own on foot armed with only a GPS unit in an attempt to find help, and has not been seen since. The couple set off from their home in Penticton, British Columbia, close to the US border, on 19 March and drove south en route to a trade fair in Las Vegas. Their son, Raymond, who has spoken to his mother, told the Oregonian newspaper that they decided to take a scenic route along back roads. But their 2000 Chevrolet Astro van got stuck in mud on a logging road in north-east Nevada. The remote area has no mobile phone coverage. “I don’t believe they were prepared for winter weather. They don’t go camping,” Raymond said. Left on her own in the van, Rita survived on water from a nearby creek, and trail mix which she ate sparingly over the 49 days before she was discovered. She was severely malnourished when she was found by hunters on all-terrain vehicles and was unable to keep down the food they gave her. When she first talked to her son she said she was sorry for the worry she had put the family through. “She felt extremely bad for us all. She was extremely apologetic,” Raymond said. When the couple first went missing, a search was launched in Oregon with the help of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but it was hampered by heavy snow and the rugged terrain, and was called off two weeks ago. Raymond said the family was amazed to hear of his mother’s survival. “We’re stunned. We haven’t fully digested it. This is a miracle.” Rescue efforts are being stepped up for Albert, for whom hope is slim. Raymond said his mother was not optimistic about finding her husband: “He didn’t have shelter. It’s her belief that he didn’t make it.” Canada Nevada United States Ed Pilkington guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …For better or worse, Rebecca Black scored a huge internet hit when her song “Friday” hit YouTube. And the folks over at “Glee” have decided to record their own take on the kinda-cheesy kinda-cool single. Kevin McHale, Mark Salling, and Chord Overstreet teamed up to add their own flavor to the track, and it seems to work quite nicely. Still, Ms. Black’s auto-tuned-to-the-max vocals will never be replaced… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Celebrity-gossip.net Discovery Date : 06/05/2011 20:39 Number of articles : 3
Continue reading …Practice used to ‘check marital status’ of Asian migrants more widely administered than first thought, Home Office files show Ministers are facing demands for an official apology to at least 80 Asian women who were subjected to “virginity tests” by immigration staff when they tried to come to Britain in the late 1970s. The demands follow the disclosure of confidential Home Office files that show that intimate examinations – used to “check the marital status” of Indian and Pakistani women coming to Britain to marry – were on a far wider scale than was previously known. The practice was banned in February 1979 after the Guardian exclusively reported that a 35-year-old Indian woman teacher was examined by a male doctor when she arrived at Heathrow to test whether she was a genuine wife-to-be who had not borne children and was still a virgin. The Home Office initially denied that any internal examination had taken place. The woman told the Guardian’s then social services correspondent, Melanie Phillips, that she only signed a form consenting to a “gynaecological examination, that may be vaginal if necessary” because she was frightened she would otherwise be sent back to India. “A man doctor came in. I asked to be seen by a lady doctor but they said ‘no’,” she told Phillips. “He was wearing rubber gloves and took some medicine out of a tube and put it on some cotton and inserted it into me. He said he was deciding whether I was pregnant now or had been pregnant before. I said that he could see that without doing anything to me, but he said there was no need to get shy. “I have been feeling very bad mentally ever since. I was very embarrassed and upset. I had never had a gynaecological examination before.” The recently released Home Office files report the doctor’s version of the examination: “Penetration of about half an inch made it apparent that she had an intact hymen and no other internal examination was made … The only time she was bare chested was for the X-ray examination… The doctor told the immigration officer verbally that the lady had not had children and she was then given conditional leave to enter for three months as a fiancee.” But the file also reveals that after the incident became public the Home Office offered the woman £500 to ensure she did not sue. The payment, offered through her solicitors, was to be “in recognition of the distress she had been caused” but she also had to agree “not to initiate any proceedings against the Home Office”. It was stressed that the payment was not “compensation”, which would have implied that immigration staff had acted improperly, and the then home secretary, Merlyn Rees, while expressing his “deep regret” carefully, did not make an official apology to her. In the face of an immediate storm of protest from the Indian government and elsewhere over such a “humiliating and obscene” practice, the then Labour government confirmed that the incident had taken place but insisted there had only been two other cases in the previous seven years. But the internal Home Office files dug out of the National Archives in London by two Australian legal academics and seen by the Guardian, show that the practice was far more widespread, especially at British high commission offices in India and Pakistan. Despite denials by ministers, including in a personal message from James Callaghan to the then Indian prime minister, the papers show that British entry clearance officers in what was then called Bombay, New Delhi and Islamabad all “sought medical opinion on the marital status of some female applicants”. In private, senior Foreign Office officials reported 73 cases in New Delhi and a further nine in Bombay over the previous three years. The Australian academics, Marinella Marmo and Evan Smith of Flinders University law school, Adelaide, said the use of gynaecological examinations on migrant women from the Indian subcontinent in the 1970s was one of the gravest abuses of discretionary powers in British immigration history: “A proper apology that acknowledged ‘virginity testing’ was not an isolated incident was never issued,” they said. The demand for an apology was backed by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, which was involved in the original 1979 case. Hina Majid, the JCWI’s legal policy director, said: “This represents yet another shameful chapter in the ignominious history of British immigration control. “It is deeply regrettable that no apology has ever been rendered to those women who underwent this degrading and discriminatory practice. “Whilst this is a practice of the past, it is demonstrative of a wider, and indeed ongoing tendency to sideline women in immigration policy making. Whilst in 2011 we may no longer be virginity testing South Asian brides, the sad reality is that many migrant women continue to be denied equal treatment, and the full enjoyment of their human rights,” she said. A UK Border Agency spokesman said: “These practices occurred 30 years ago and were clearly wrong. This government’s immigration policies reflect the UK’s legal responsibilities and respect immigrants’ human rights.” Immigration and asylum Newspapers India Pakistan Guardian Media Group Newspapers & magazines Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Barack Obama raises pressure on Pakistan to investigate whether its people were involved in helping Bin Laden hide Barack Obama has ratcheted up the pressure on Pakistan, demanding that the Pakistani government investigates whether its own people were involved in a network to support Osama bin Laden in his Abbottabad hideout. The US president’s comments are his most direct yet on the subject of Pakistan’s possible complicity with terrorism. He told the CBS show 60 Minutes that Bin Laden must have had “some sort of support network” inside the country. “We don’t know whether there might have been some people inside of government, outside of government, and that’s something we have to investigate, and more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate,” he said. Obama’s words add to a sustained verbal attack by the US administration on the Pakistani government in the wake of the raid on the al-Qaida leader’s lair in the middle of a busy garrison town that is home to three regiments, a military academy and thousands of soldiers. Last week the CIA director, Leon Panetta, told Congress that Pakistan had been “either involved or incompetent”. Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, said on ABC’s This Week that there was no evidence Pakistan had foreknowledge of Bin Laden’s presence. But he said the al-Qaida chief “was living, and we now know operating, in a town 35 miles away from Islamabad, a military town. So questions are being raised quite aggressively in Pakistan.” Donilon said the US would remain “cool and calm”. But he added: “They need to do an investigation.” One objective of the intensifying pressure on Pakistan is to ensure its co-operation with the CIA and other US investigators into the treasure trove of documents found inside Bin Laden’s compound. Most of the materials – amounting to the single largest cache of information ever taken from a senior terrorist, equivalent in size to a small college library, officials say – were taken away by the US navy seals and are now being pored over by federal anti-terrorism investigators. But a substantial number of documents were left behind and are now held by Pakistani officials, who are also holding in custody the non-combatants found in the compound, including Bin Laden’s three wives and several children. The US now wants access to the wives to be able to question them. The mounting pressure from Washington puts the Pakistani government in an awkward position. On the one hand, the fact Bin Laden was holed up for so long in the middle of the country is a huge embarrassment, but so too is the unannounced US raid inside its sovereign territory. That conflict is reflected in the position of the army chief, General Ashfaz Kayani, who has announced he is leading an investigation into what happened. He has warned the US not to try another stealth mission inside the country. Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, Hussain Haqqani, promised “heads would roll” once the Kayani investigation was completed. “If someone is complicit, there will be zero tolerance for that,” he told This Week. “If any member of the Pakistan government, military or intelligence service knew were Osama bin Laden was we would have taken action. Osama bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan was not to Pakistan’s advantage.” Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, is due to make a statement to parliament tomorrow, his first formal comments on the Bin Laden issue. Senior opposition figures have called for his resignation over the affair. Until now most western criticism has been directed at Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies. Some US officials have insinuated that the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) helped to harbour Bin Laden. Now the ISI is hitting back with judicious media leaks. In a move bound to infuriate the US, several Pakistani television stations on Friday named the CIA station chief in Islamabad as Mark Carlton. The stations said he had been given a verbal roasting by the ISI chief, General Shuja Pasha. The naming is sensitive because the previous CIA chief in Islamabad quit his position in December over security worries after being named in a court case and in the national media. Some US officials blamed the ISI for the leak. The Pakistani government has introduced curbs on international media in Abbottabad, ordering television stations to cease broadcasting and some reporters to leave town. On Saturday night the television regulator, Pemra, ordered nine international channels – including the BBC, CNN and Fox – to stop “illegal” broadcasts. It suggested the channels could not broadcast from Abbottabad or anywhere in Pakistan without obtaining a licence, a previously unknown requirement. Officials contacted several British, Australian and American journalists, instructing them to leave Abbottabad because their visas did not permit them to stay. The government also took measures to stop more journalists entering Pakistan. At diplomatic missions in London and New Delhi, Pakistani officials said there was a temporary hold on media visas. The measures appear to be part of a concerted government effort to stem a tide of critical media coverage over Bin Laden. Osama bin Laden al-Qaida Pakistan US foreign policy Obama administration United States Ed Pilkington Declan Walsh Saeed Shah guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Click here to view this media Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that President Barack Obama should put waterboarding back on the table. Intelligence derived from the Bush-era enhanced interrogation program “probably” contributed to the death of Osama bin Laden, Cheney told Fox News’ Chris Wallace. “Which raises the question, if we were to now capture another new high value target, which is certainly more likely given this apparent trove of information that they recovered in bin Laden’s compound, should the president reinstate enhanced interrogation including waterboarding?” Wallace asked. “Well, I certainly would advocate it,” Cheney replied. “I’d be a strong supporter of it.” “We went to a lot of trouble to find out what we could do, how far we could go, what was legal and so forth. Out of that emerged what we called enhanced interrogation. It worked. It provided some absolutely vital pieces of intelligence.” “It was a good program,” he continued. “It was a legal program. It was not torture. I would strongly recommend we continue it.” CIA Director Leon Panetta has said waterboarding is torture but the former Vice President disagreed. “Waterboarding and all of the other techniques that were used are techniques that we use training our own people. This is stuff that we’ve done for years with own military personnel. To suggest that it’s torture, I just think is wrong.” The former vice president called the Obama’s administration’s investigation of CIA interrogators that may have abused detainees an “outrage.” “These men, all devoted, capable officials shouldn’t have to look over their shoulder and worry if they follow the orders of this president to carry out this interrogation program at some point down the road when there is a change in policy, they can expect to be prosecuted,” he said.
Continue reading …Fortune’s latest cover story dives behind the scenes at Apple’s Cupertino campus for a look at Steve Jobs’s hands-on managerial style and details the CEO’s anger over failed products. For example, writes Fortune, Jobs was livid after the 2008 debut of cloud-based storage service MobileMe, which was poorly received due to its buggy performance. After scathing reviews from the likes of the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, who called the service “far too flawed to be reliable,” Jobs reportedly rebuked the executive team responsible for MobileMe and told them their dud product was “tarnishing Apple’s reputation.” “You should hate each other for having let each other down,” Jobs said, according to Fortune. When the MobileMe team explained to Jobs what the service was designed to do for the customer, Jobs reportedly demanded, “So why the f*** doesn’t it do that?” He then dismissed the executives in charge and appointed new MobileMe leaders. Apple is rumored to be revamping MobileMe in time for a possible relaunch this summer. To read more about Steve Jobs on the job, download the Fortune iPad app ($4.99). You can also read a lengthy (free) summary at MacStories.
Continue reading …LolaMiSweetLove YouTube Sky rpattzkstewtwilightaddict theirishtwilightsisters Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Twilightish Discovery Date : 07/05/2011 15:13 Number of articles : 3
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