Based in São Paulo, Brazil since May 2010, we see how he documents a boxing academy in the city
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Military guards shoot weapons into air, loot shops and steal cars in Ouagadougou in protest over unpaid allowances Soldiers have shot into the air, stolen cars and looted shops in the western part of Burkina Faso’s capital as protests by military guards against unpaid housing allowances spread, witnesses said. The presidential compound in Ouagadougou was calm on Friday after gunfire erupted there overnight. President Blaise Compaoré was apparently not in the presidential compound at the time, a source there said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the press. Unrest that started from two presidential guard barracks spread to camp Lamizana in western Ouagadougou. Scattered looting had begun overnight in the capital of one of the world’s poorest countries and soldiers looted and burned the homes of Compaoré aides. A presidential security source, who spoke on condition on anonymity for security reasons, told the Associated Press that the soldiers were expressing their discontent after promises to pay their housing allowances were not kept. Colonel Moussa Cissé, spokesman for the army, said that so far there were no casualties and negotiations were under way with the soldiers. About two hours after the shooting began at 10pm on Thursday, gunfire was heard near the state radio station in Ouagadougou. Employees at the station said no one was hurt but some were hiding in the building. No official statement has been made. Compaoré, who seized power in a bloody coup 23 years ago, was re-elected by a landslide in a November vote rejected by the opposition as being rigged. The former army captain took power in 1987 after the former leader was shot dead in his office. Burkina Faso has been hit by unrest recently. On 8 April people took to the streets of Ouagadougou to protest against the soaring prices of basic foods. In March, students torched government buildings in several cities to protest against a young man’s death in custody. The government said he had meningitis, but accusations of mistreatment have fuelled protests, resulting in the deaths of at least six others. Burkina Faso is near the bottom of the United Nations’ human development index, which measures general wellbeing, ranked 161 out of 169 nations. It has high rates of unemployment and illiteracy, and most people get by on subsistence agriculture. Burkina Faso Protest guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …New York City’s Times Square is a lot safer than it used be, Bill Clinton says, but he’s still a little nostalgic for the pre-Rudy Giuliani seediness. “I still have vivid memories of it. Romantic, fascinating,” Clinton said, recalling a visit when he was a wide-eyed 18-year-old. “I saw a…
Continue reading …Smartphone Photos Improved with New Invention – Get Your Face In No Matter Where You Are
April 15, 2011 No Comment
BUFFALO, N.Y., April 15 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Whether one is mountain climbing in Spain, paragliding in Switzerland or at a family gathering the Quik Pod Mobile, developed by Fromm Works, allows the photographer to be included and properly centered in photos and videos taken on an iPhone or other smartphones. Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Send2Press Newswire Discovery Date : 15/04/2011 10:58 Number of articles : 5
Continue reading …Smartphone Photos Improved with New Invention – Get Your Face In No Matter Where You Are
April 15, 2011 No Comment
BUFFALO, N.Y., April 15 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Whether one is mountain climbing in Spain, paragliding in Switzerland or at a family gathering the Quik Pod Mobile, developed by Fromm Works, allows the photographer to be included and properly centered in photos and videos taken on an iPhone or other smartphones. Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Send2Press Newswire Discovery Date : 15/04/2011 10:58 Number of articles : 5
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Aisha Gaddafi tells a roaring crowd her father will not step down – 25 years after US forces bombed his Tripoli compound They gather nightly, ready to die for the Brother Leader. Wrapped in loyalist green, waving flags, chanting slogans, holding aloft portraits of their “Guide”, singing, dancing and praying, they are Muammar Gaddafi’s human shields against Nato air strikes. In the early hours of Friday morning, exactly 25 years after US forces bombed Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound in central Tripoli, thousands gathered in defiance of the new international coalition against the Libyan regime’s brutal efforts to suppress the uprising from the east. Whipped up by loyalist chants led from loudspeakers and patriotic songs, they were already in a state of fervour when Aisha Gaddafi, the Libyan leader’s daughter, appeared high in the skeleton of a bombed-out building. Against a backdrop of the shattered facade and draped in a flowing headscarf of green and gold, Aisha pumped her fists at the crowd as they roared and ululated their approval. Just a few hours earlier, Nato warplanes had flown sorties over Tripoli. Explosions and responding gunfire and anti-aircraft fire echoed around the capital, destroying at least one military site and causing blast damage to a nearby university cafeteria. Aisha’s message was one of uncompromising defiance. Referring to the strike in 1986, she said: “They rained down on us their missiles and bombs, they tried to kill me and they killed dozens of children in Libya. Now a quarter of a century later the same missiles and bombs are raining down on the heads of my and your children.” Below her was a statue of a giant golden fist crushing a western war plane in its grip. The throbbing crowd – mainly men, but including hundreds of women separated to one side – appeared intoxicated on love and loyalty. “Talk about Gaddafi stepping down is an insult to all Libyans because Gaddafi is not in Libya, but in the hearts of all Libyans,” Aisha told them. “Gaddafi said if the Libyan people don’t want me I don’t deserve to live. The Libyan people responded, ‘He who doesn’t want you does not deserve life’.” Half a dozen of Gaddafi’s fabled female protection guards stood to the side as Aisha spoke, some with their faces covered, amid an atmosphere akin to a hyped-up football crowd crossed with a rock concert. The cult of Gaddafi is evident across the capital. Huge portraits of him – saluting with a stern expression, beaming with his hands clasped, silhouetted against the rays of a rising sun – hang from buildings. Many in the crowd on Friday night wore miniature laminated versions on green ribbons around their necks. “I love him more than my husband,” said Randa Mohamed, 28, her voice hoarse from shouting and chanting. “We will never leave him. I will do anything to protect him.” This overt display of loyalty fractures when rare opportunities for rushed conversations out of earshot of the ubiquitous regime minders and informants arise. “He must go for the sake of Libya,” is a view expressed in whispers. These few glimpses beneath the surface are always accompanied by visible fear at the possibility of being overheard and punished. But in the Bab al-Aziziya compound, there was only one message: devotion to Gaddafi and hatred of Nato and Libya’s rebel opposition. “We will never give up. Victorious or we die,” ran one chant. As the foreign media were escorted from the compound at the end of Aisha’s speech, the “Zenga Zenga” song blared from speakers. The words are taken from a speech by Saif al-Islam, Aisha’s brother and Gaddafi’s son, early in the conflict, in which he pledged to hunt down the rebels. “House to house, room to room, alley to alley, person to person we will disinfect the whole country from filth,” it goes. “Zenga Zenga” – alley to alley – has now become part of loyalist Libya’s lexicon, a chilling term of approval among people in Gaddafi’s grip. Muammar Gaddafi Libya Middle East Harriet Sherwood guardian.co.uk
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Aisha Gaddafi tells a roaring crowd her father will not step down – 25 years after US forces bombed his Tripoli compound They gather nightly, ready to die for the Brother Leader. Wrapped in loyalist green, waving flags, chanting slogans, holding aloft portraits of their “Guide”, singing, dancing and praying, they are Muammar Gaddafi’s human shields against Nato air strikes. In the early hours of Friday morning, exactly 25 years after US forces bombed Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound in central Tripoli, thousands gathered in defiance of the new international coalition against the Libyan regime’s brutal efforts to suppress the uprising from the east. Whipped up by loyalist chants led from loudspeakers and patriotic songs, they were already in a state of fervour when Aisha Gaddafi, the Libyan leader’s daughter, appeared high in the skeleton of a bombed-out building. Against a backdrop of the shattered facade and draped in a flowing headscarf of green and gold, Aisha pumped her fists at the crowd as they roared and ululated their approval. Just a few hours earlier, Nato warplanes had flown sorties over Tripoli. Explosions and responding gunfire and anti-aircraft fire echoed around the capital, destroying at least one military site and causing blast damage to a nearby university cafeteria. Aisha’s message was one of uncompromising defiance. Referring to the strike in 1986, she said: “They rained down on us their missiles and bombs, they tried to kill me and they killed dozens of children in Libya. Now a quarter of a century later the same missiles and bombs are raining down on the heads of my and your children.” Below her was a statue of a giant golden fist crushing a western war plane in its grip. The throbbing crowd – mainly men, but including hundreds of women separated to one side – appeared intoxicated on love and loyalty. “Talk about Gaddafi stepping down is an insult to all Libyans because Gaddafi is not in Libya, but in the hearts of all Libyans,” Aisha told them. “Gaddafi said if the Libyan people don’t want me I don’t deserve to live. The Libyan people responded, ‘He who doesn’t want you does not deserve life’.” Half a dozen of Gaddafi’s fabled female protection guards stood to the side as Aisha spoke, some with their faces covered, amid an atmosphere akin to a hyped-up football crowd crossed with a rock concert. The cult of Gaddafi is evident across the capital. Huge portraits of him – saluting with a stern expression, beaming with his hands clasped, silhouetted against the rays of a rising sun – hang from buildings. Many in the crowd on Friday night wore miniature laminated versions on green ribbons around their necks. “I love him more than my husband,” said Randa Mohamed, 28, her voice hoarse from shouting and chanting. “We will never leave him. I will do anything to protect him.” This overt display of loyalty fractures when rare opportunities for rushed conversations out of earshot of the ubiquitous regime minders and informants arise. “He must go for the sake of Libya,” is a view expressed in whispers. These few glimpses beneath the surface are always accompanied by visible fear at the possibility of being overheard and punished. But in the Bab al-Aziziya compound, there was only one message: devotion to Gaddafi and hatred of Nato and Libya’s rebel opposition. “We will never give up. Victorious or we die,” ran one chant. As the foreign media were escorted from the compound at the end of Aisha’s speech, the “Zenga Zenga” song blared from speakers. The words are taken from a speech by Saif al-Islam, Aisha’s brother and Gaddafi’s son, early in the conflict, in which he pledged to hunt down the rebels. “House to house, room to room, alley to alley, person to person we will disinfect the whole country from filth,” it goes. “Zenga Zenga” – alley to alley – has now become part of loyalist Libya’s lexicon, a chilling term of approval among people in Gaddafi’s grip. Muammar Gaddafi Libya Middle East Harriet Sherwood guardian.co.uk
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Scotland Yard detectives tell high court hearing that number of victims may be bigger than previously thought Scotland Yard’s renewed investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World has identified that the number of victims is in excess of 91 people – far higher than previously estimated by detectives, the high court heard today. The publisher of the newspaper has also offered Sienna Miller £100,000 in compensation and offered to pay the actor her costs – an offer she has neither accepted nor rejected. Detectives are trawling through 9,200 pages of material seized from a private investigator used by Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid to hack into voicemails, a case management hearing to decide how best to handle the flood of lawsuits against the paper heard. At the hearing in the high court, Jason Beer QC, representing the Metropolitan police, gave an idea of the scale of the scandal. Beer said that the number of potential victims is “substantially” higher than 91 people. The figure of 91 is significant. Previously police had said they had recorded a total of 91 pin numbers – necessary to access a mobile phone’s voicemail – in the possession of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator employed by the News of the World. The police counsel told the hearing: “It is wrong to say that 91 is the answer, that that is the maximum [number of victims], it may be on a bigger scale.” The court hearing also heard of the offer to Miller, which was designed to reflect the number of times her phone had been targeted. Her case is one of the most advanced of the phone-hacking lawsuits, and arguably the highest profile because of her celebrity. Mulcaire was convicted of intercepting voicemail messages in January 2007, along with the News of the World journalist Colin Goodman. During the course of the original investigation, police seized paperwork and records from Mulcaire, who was employed by the tabloid. Subsequently, John Yates, the Met’s acting deputy assistant commissioner, who handled a previous phone-hacking investigation, said that the police had only identified 10 to 12 victims. That figure is far lower than the level identified by the fresh investigation team, which is under the leadership of deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers. Yates said earlier this month that he had quoted the figure on at least four occasions because prosecutors had told police they needed to prove not only that voicemail had been intercepted but also that this had been done before the messages had been heard by the intended recipient. So far, 24 public figures who believe their voicemail messages were intercepted by journalists at the tabloid are suing News International, the UK newspaper arm of News Corp. Many more are expected to come forward after News International apologised to eight victims last week and said it would set up a compensation scheme. Law firm Mishcon de Reya, which is acting for several of the claimants, says it has received an unprecedented number of inquiries since News International published its statement, and estimates there could be more than 6,000 potential claimants. Judge Justice Vos said that four test cases – those of Sky Andrew, Kelly Hoppen, Sienna Miller and Andy Gray – could be heard as early as December, but no later than February 2012. •
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Scotland Yard detectives tell high court hearing that number of victims may be bigger than previously thought Scotland Yard’s renewed investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World has identified that the number of victims is in excess of 91 people – far higher than previously estimated by detectives, the high court heard today. The publisher of the newspaper has also offered Sienna Miller £100,000 in compensation and offered to pay the actor her costs – an offer she has neither accepted nor rejected. Detectives are trawling through 9,200 pages of material seized from a private investigator used by Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid to hack into voicemails, a case management hearing to decide how best to handle the flood of lawsuits against the paper heard. At the hearing in the high court, Jason Beer QC, representing the Metropolitan police, gave an idea of the scale of the scandal. Beer said that the number of potential victims is “substantially” higher than 91 people. The figure of 91 is significant. Previously police had said they had recorded a total of 91 pin numbers – necessary to access a mobile phone’s voicemail – in the possession of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator employed by the News of the World. The police counsel told the hearing: “It is wrong to say that 91 is the answer, that that is the maximum [number of victims], it may be on a bigger scale.” The court hearing also heard of the offer to Miller, which was designed to reflect the number of times her phone had been targeted. Her case is one of the most advanced of the phone-hacking lawsuits, and arguably the highest profile because of her celebrity. Mulcaire was convicted of intercepting voicemail messages in January 2007, along with the News of the World journalist Colin Goodman. During the course of the original investigation, police seized paperwork and records from Mulcaire, who was employed by the tabloid. Subsequently, John Yates, the Met’s acting deputy assistant commissioner, who handled a previous phone-hacking investigation, said that the police had only identified 10 to 12 victims. That figure is far lower than the level identified by the fresh investigation team, which is under the leadership of deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers. Yates said earlier this month that he had quoted the figure on at least four occasions because prosecutors had told police they needed to prove not only that voicemail had been intercepted but also that this had been done before the messages had been heard by the intended recipient. So far, 24 public figures who believe their voicemail messages were intercepted by journalists at the tabloid are suing News International, the UK newspaper arm of News Corp. Many more are expected to come forward after News International apologised to eight victims last week and said it would set up a compensation scheme. Law firm Mishcon de Reya, which is acting for several of the claimants, says it has received an unprecedented number of inquiries since News International published its statement, and estimates there could be more than 6,000 potential claimants. Judge Justice Vos said that four test cases – those of Sky Andrew, Kelly Hoppen, Sienna Miller and Andy Gray – could be heard as early as December, but no later than February 2012. •
Continue reading …Wisconsin Dems Demand Further Investigation Into 2006 Waukesha County Election
April 15, 2011 No CommentKathy Nickolaus says the vote numbers don’t add up because some municipalities don’t have modems to send the results. When the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel asked why the manual votes weren’t added later, she told them, “We do not change the ballots cast.” Yeah, something doesn’t add up : Wisconsin Democrats are now crying foul over election administration in heavily Republican Waukesha County — and not just in the recent Supreme Court race, in which County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus (R) announced the discovery of 14,000 untabulated votes from a whole municipality that put conservative Justice David Prosser ahead. In a letter to the state Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections, state Dem chair Mike Tate is now raising doubts about the county’s tabulated votes in the narrowly decided 2006 state attorney general race. Key quote from the letter: The Waukesha County Clerk website Tuesday said there were 118,342 votes for Van Hollen and 55,608 votes for Falk, a total of 173,950 votes. (There are an additional 97 write-in votes tabulated for a total of 174,047 votes assigned to candidates from Waukesha County.) However, at the top of the same page, the Waukesha County Clerk, under the heading “BALLOTS CAST – TOTAL,” the number of total ballots reported is 156,804. This is an under-reporting of 17,243 votes. I note with serious concern that this discrepancy is more than enough to have swung the statewide election against the Republican and for the Democrat. The Web page that Tate refers to can be found here . Tate notes in his letter that the county’s web site has been amended recently, in order to offer an explanation of how the number of “total ballots” reported is calculated, and how it can differ from the actual total number of votes.
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