Modernization and globalization are buffeting French food traditions, giving rise to American-style snacking and— quelle horreur —American-style obesity, reports NPR . Over the past decade, adult obesity rates have climbed to 14% from 8%—still just half of the United States, but enough that the French government is taking action, removing…
Continue reading …
Paul Williams, 60, spied on three couples through holes he drilled in room doors at Scarborough guesthouse A bed and breakfast owner who spied on his guests through secret peepholes and made audio recordings of their intimate moments has been jailed for 18 weeks. Paul Williams watched three couple from holes he had drilled in the doors of rooms at his Sandsea B&B in Scarborough, north Yorkshire. The 60-year-old was discovered when one of his victims, a 16-year-old student, saw movement underneath a poster on the door. Her boyfriend investigated and found a hole that provided a view directly on to the bed. He then heard movement in the corridor outside, and discovered Williams. Williams pleaded guilty to charges of voyeurism and was sentenced at Scarborough magistrates court on Monday. Magistrate Kate Warnock-Smith said the offences were so serious that only a custodial sentence could be justified, adding that the aggravating factors were his breach of trust as a hotelier and the young age of some of the victims. She told the court the victims – who had friends and relatives in the court’s public gallery – had been left distressed by their ordeal. An earlier hearing was told the three couples were friends and, when the others were told, they found similar hidden peepholes in their rooms. As the guests had been drinking and could not drive home, they stayed at the guesthouse but moved in to one room. The following morning, they obtained a refund and called police. Audio recording equipment was then also discovered at the guesthouse. Guests were “sickened and horrified” when they discovered what had happened, the court heard. Williams said he had made the peepholes because some guests had left without paying. Crime guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Rhino horns stolen from museums fetch twice the value of gold for the criminal gang supplying the Chinese medicine market Rosie the rhinocerous took her last breath somewhere on the Indian subcontinent early last century. She was shot, skinned, stuffed and shipped to London. Then, in 1907, she was acquired by Ipswich Museum , which had swapped her with the Natural History Museum for a pig. For more than a century, in Ipswich, she has suffered the pats of generations of school children, her horn curling to the ceiling. Last month, however, Rosie suffered the second violation of her ignominious afterlife, almost as cruel as the first. At 12.27am on Thursday 28 July, two men forced their way through a fire escape at the rear of the museum and made straight for the rhinoceros , where they swiftly wrenched off her 18-inch (45-centimetre) horn. They paused only to collect the skull of a second black rhino, displayed on a ledge above its stuffed cousin, before fleeing in a silver saloon car. Nothing else was stolen. One might think that only a foolish criminal would bypass the lavish gold burial masks of Titos Flavios Demetrios upstairs in the Egyptian gallery, or even the priceless Hawaiian cape made from feathers of the ‘o’o bird , in favour of some century-old rhino remains. In fact, police believe these were very canny criminals indeed. The Ipswich rhinocerous-horn theft is merely the latest from museums and auction houses across Britain and Europe, driven by soaring prices for horn in the far east. According to Europol , many of them are conducted by an Irish crime gang more accustomed to trafficking in drug, laundering money, and smuggling. In February, the stuffed and mounted head of a black rhino was taken from Sworders Fine Art Auctioneers in Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex. On 27 May, a similar head was taken from the Educational museum at Haslemere, Surrey , which has one of the largest natural history collections in the UK. Last month it was the turn of a museum in Liege, Belgium; three weeks later the Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences , in Brussels, suffered a similar heist, in which the head of a black rhino, dating from 1827, was stolen. According to the Metropolitan police, 20 thefts have taken place across Europe in the past six months – in Portugal, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Belgium and Sweden as well as the UK. Scotland Yard and Europol are now advising galleries and collectors to consider locking up their rhino horn collections, keeping them away from public view. Several institutions, including the Natural History Museum and the Horniman Museum in south London, have removed their displays or replaced horns with replicas. Behind the crime wave is a surge in demand from the far east and European Asian communities for powdered rhino horn, which is used in traditional Chinese medicines, valued as a remedy for everything from fevers and headaches to cancer, and where demand is so intense it has pushed the value of horn to £60,000 per kilogram – twice the value of gold. Sworders had valued their rhino head, as an artefact, at £50,000; in the medicinal market, however, it could be worth £200,000. “It is a new crime phenomenon targeting people who may not have ordinarily been victims of crime and who are vulnerable victims,” said Patric Byrne, Europol’s head of unit for organised crime networks. “And we are not dealing with petty criminals.” The gang “of Irish ethnic origin”, which the agency has identified as being responsible for many of the attacks, has a background in violence, drug trafficking and intimidation, he said. “There is a strange and very lucrative market in Chinese medicine. They have found that this product attracts a particular premium in some Asian communities.” DC Ian Lawson, from the Metropolitan police’s Art and Antiques unit , said that the gang uses a variety of methods to steal the objects, from carefully planned burglaries to “smash and grab” raids, and police have also been alerted to “hostile reconnaissance” from gang members. Even more worrying is an associated growth in the poaching of live rhinos , according to conservation experts. “In the last three years, 800 African rhinos have been killed and experts agree that we are facing the worst rhino-poaching crisis in decades,” said Lucy Boddam-Whetham, the acting director of Save the Rhino International . Nearly 200 rhinos were killed in South Africa in the first six months of this year , compared with 125 in the same period last year. The organisation says the museum thefts are stimulating the live-rhino poaching, making their situation even more perilous. There are only 20,000 white rhinos and fewer than 5,000 black rhinos in the wild. Police tape has been removed from around Rosie at Ipswich museum, replaced by an apologetic laminated note explaining the missing horn. “People love this museum, it’s just so sad,” said Bryony Rudkin, the councillor who holds the portfolio for museums and culture at Ipswich Borough Council. “On the morning after it happened, we had a family come in – a grandmother, mother and child – and the grandmother said, ‘I remember coming when I was a child, it’s really sad, because everyone in Ipswich knows who she is.’” “It’s a bit selfish to just take the horn,” said Miriam Kendall, 10, from Dennington, visiting with her father and younger brother. Tristan, six, thought the thieves were “stupid”. At least there is some good news for Rosie. As a result of the robbery, she is to be the focus of a panel on a new civic mural to be mounted on the town’s waterfront, where she will appear not in her mutilated state but with her dignity, and horn, restored. The museum is, meanwhile, making her a replica horn, which will be screwed, very firmly, into the nose of the long-dead beast. Endangered species Crime Museums Wildlife Conservation Animals Alternative medicine Esther Addley guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Had Andy Warhol survived gallbladder surgery, he would have turned 83 on Saturday—a very, very old 83. At least that’s how artist Edgar Askelovic imagines him: with bloated legs, lots of wrinkles, and toothless, but still with a shock of white hair. Askelovic, 23, used silicone and clay to…
Continue reading …Not so fast, John McCain. Insults linking the Tea Party to hobbits are making some middle earth experts as irritable as Saruman. McCain might have derided unrealistic demands by “Tea Party hobbits” during the debt-ceiling debate , but he was exposing his lack of knowledge about the height-challenged creatures. For one…
Continue reading …A 64-year-old man died yesterday during the swimming portion of a triathlon in New York City, after suffering a heart attack, reports the Wall Street Journal . It was the second ever fatality for the Nautica New York City Triathlon, and the first since 2008. A 40-year-old woman was also taken…
Continue reading …
Months after its brief exposure to the Arab spring, Bahrain’s cat-and-mouse routine of protest and repression continues • Bahrain’s prospects for democracy look bleak Hassan Ali Salman is a stocky, fit-looking young man. But he flailed in vain as the police officers grabbed him, one forcing his T-shirt up over his head as three or four others laid in with their batons, dragging and pushing him to a line of waiting Land Cruisers and more helmeted cops. Behind him, on a breezeblock wall, crudely drawn nooses encircle the names Hamad and Khalifa – the king of Bahrain and his uncle the prime minister – alongside graffiti demanding their execution and the overthrow of the regime. The recent scene in Sitra, a short drive from central Manama, the capital, provided an ugly glimpse into the cat-and-mouse routine of protests and repression in this Gulf island state. Filmed secretly, posted on YouTube and distributed on Twitter, it exposes what Bahrain’s western-backed government prefers foreigners not to see. In the nearby cemetery lies the grave of Zainab al-Juma, a disabled woman who died in July after inhaling tear gas from a police grenade. The black flag that marks her “martyrdom” hangs limp in the hot, still air. Another local victim was Ahmed Farhan, shot in March, his brains spilling out of his shattered head live on camera as horrified screams sounded all around. Bahrain is far quieter now than during its brief exposure to the winds of the Arab spring in February and March, but unrest continues. Every night cries of “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) echo through the villages of a Shia underclass that has chafed under the Sunni Al Khalifa dynasty since independence from Britain in 1971. “We go up on to the roofs and shout and then try to march to the entrance of our village,” said Abu Ali, a thirtysomething accountant and former prisoner from Karzakan who supports al-Wifaq, the Islamist movement demanding democracy and equal rights for all. “The repression is getting worse.” Haydar, from nearby Diraz, described a savage beating, curses and threats of rape as he was forced to kiss the boots of the police officers who tormented him on 26 June. “They pulled my shirt over my head and every hundred metres they hit me in the face and kicked me,” he said. Captain Ahmed of Manama’s police special forces unit insists his job is simply to “protect citizens” and that he and his men are reluctant to make arrests or use force. “If we catch someone they are in trouble,” he said. “They can lose their job or be thrown out of their studies and that will be on their files for good. Of course we take action if they try to harm us.” The night the Guardian joined his four-vehicle patrol the radio network reported small crowds gathering but there were no beatings or shootings. Young men waiting in the shadows in Sanabis, part of a Shia “triangle of steadfastness”, ran off when the Land Cruisers roared up, blue lights flashing as the police officers scrambled out, helmet visors down, to demolish the makeshift roadblocks, their gas grenade launchers at the ready. “It’s not just kids,” a police lieutenant said. “They are organised quite professionally with co-ordinated actions in different places at the same time.” Still, this is basically a public order problem, not a war or – despite the brave rhetoric – a Palestinian-style intifada. Ahmed hopes Bahraini municipalities will respond to police requests to remove the wheels from rubbish bins to stop them being used to barricade roads. Central Manama is calm. Pearl Roundabout in the commercial heart of the city has been wiped off the map , its famous statue has been destroyed and the only clue to its status as Manama’s “Tahrir Square” are two or three armoured cars and a refuse cart emblazoned with the name of a radical Shia leader, Hassan Mushayma, a bogeyman for the regime and for Sunnis. Yet the underlying tensions remain. Pearl has been renamed Farouq junction, an epithet attached to the seventh-century Sunni Caliph Omar and bitter rival of Ali, the founder of Shia Islam. It’s one of the signifiers of dominance and prejudice that are part of the sectarian fabric of Bahraini life. Another is that state TV broadcasts only the Sunni call to prayer. Sheikh Ali Salman, al-Wifaq’s leader, prefers to talk of universal rights. “What Bahrainis want is the same as people elsewhere in the Arab world,” he said. “The government succeeded to some extent in portraying what happened here as a Shia-Sunni clash, though it was less successful in convincing anyone that there was Iranian involvement. It also tried to show that the opposition were terrorists. But there is one basic conflict – between those who support democracy and those who want to maintain the current dictatorship.” Al-Wifaq withdrew its 18 members from the 40-seat parliament in protest at the first killings of demonstrators in February, but remains committed to peaceful change. Enemies dismiss its moderate image and claim it is no different from Shia hardliners such as Mushayma, who called for a republic to replace the Al Khalifa dynasty, launched a campaign of civil disobedience and destroyed a dialogue between the opposition and the reformist Crown Prince Salman that might – just – have defused the crisis. The crackdown began in earnest on 15 March when most foreign journalists had been thrown out or diverted to Libya. “It was an anti-Shia pogrom,” said Hala, an activist who helped plan the Pearl Roundabout protests. “Arrests began at two or three in the morning. People were dragged out of bed by armed men in ski masks and their houses smashed up. The Mukhabarat [secret police] set up a Twitter account and named people as traitors so that when they tried to leave the country they were picked up.” Hundreds remain in prison. Dismissals of some 2,000 people who stayed away from work during the unrest began at the same time. The destruction of around 30 Shia mosques has sharpened the sense of sectarian polarisation. Under pressure from the US, trials have been moved from military to civilian courts and two al-Wifaq MPs and a lawyer were freed at the weekend amid signs that more detainees would be released. But doctors and nurses from the Salmaniya hospital still face charges of occupying the building, hiding weapons, refusing to treat Sunni patients and inciting protests. Sunnis talk of boycotting Shia shops and Shia night workers complain of being stopped by police on their way home. “Even among lawyers there are tensions,” said a Sunni who defends Shia clients. “I am very pessimistic,” sighed Jassim, a Shia taxi driver whose startling cockney accent is a souvenir of years of work at the RAF base on Muharraq. “Things are much worse then before.” Shia journalists are smeared as traitors and fear harassment or worse if they cover Sunni events. “It’s been a big setback for all of us in Bahrain,” concluded Munira Fakhro, a Sunni member of the secular opposition Wa’ad party, whose leader Ibrahim Sharif is also behind bars. “We will either come out safe despite our wounds or the situation will deteriorate further.” Another middle-class professional woman reflected gloomily: “We sank very low. If we go any further people will start to leave. We were tearing ourselves apart.” Two things seem certain: repression without reform will not solve Bahrain’s problems and its citizen journalists will keep the story alive. “They are doing our job for us,” said a local photographer who works for international news agencies. “They set up webcams in the villages where there are clashes. It’s hard to get in and if you do you risk being arrested or hit by a tear gas grenade or worse. If the police catch you they make you erase your pictures. It happened to me once. After all, they are the ones with the guns.” Some names in this report have been changed Bahrain Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Ian Black guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Months after its brief exposure to the Arab spring, Bahrain’s cat-and-mouse routine of protest and repression continues • Bahrain’s prospects for democracy look bleak Hassan Ali Salman is a stocky, fit-looking young man. But he flailed in vain as the police officers grabbed him, one forcing his T-shirt up over his head as three or four others laid in with their batons, dragging and pushing him to a line of waiting Land Cruisers and more helmeted cops. Behind him, on a breezeblock wall, crudely drawn nooses encircle the names Hamad and Khalifa – the king of Bahrain and his uncle the prime minister – alongside graffiti demanding their execution and the overthrow of the regime. The recent scene in Sitra, a short drive from central Manama, the capital, provided an ugly glimpse into the cat-and-mouse routine of protests and repression in this Gulf island state. Filmed secretly, posted on YouTube and distributed on Twitter, it exposes what Bahrain’s western-backed government prefers foreigners not to see. In the nearby cemetery lies the grave of Zainab al-Juma, a disabled woman who died in July after inhaling tear gas from a police grenade. The black flag that marks her “martyrdom” hangs limp in the hot, still air. Another local victim was Ahmed Farhan, shot in March, his brains spilling out of his shattered head live on camera as horrified screams sounded all around. Bahrain is far quieter now than during its brief exposure to the winds of the Arab spring in February and March, but unrest continues. Every night cries of “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) echo through the villages of a Shia underclass that has chafed under the Sunni Al Khalifa dynasty since independence from Britain in 1971. “We go up on to the roofs and shout and then try to march to the entrance of our village,” said Abu Ali, a thirtysomething accountant and former prisoner from Karzakan who supports al-Wifaq, the Islamist movement demanding democracy and equal rights for all. “The repression is getting worse.” Haydar, from nearby Diraz, described a savage beating, curses and threats of rape as he was forced to kiss the boots of the police officers who tormented him on 26 June. “They pulled my shirt over my head and every hundred metres they hit me in the face and kicked me,” he said. Captain Ahmed of Manama’s police special forces unit insists his job is simply to “protect citizens” and that he and his men are reluctant to make arrests or use force. “If we catch someone they are in trouble,” he said. “They can lose their job or be thrown out of their studies and that will be on their files for good. Of course we take action if they try to harm us.” The night the Guardian joined his four-vehicle patrol the radio network reported small crowds gathering but there were no beatings or shootings. Young men waiting in the shadows in Sanabis, part of a Shia “triangle of steadfastness”, ran off when the Land Cruisers roared up, blue lights flashing as the police officers scrambled out, helmet visors down, to demolish the makeshift roadblocks, their gas grenade launchers at the ready. “It’s not just kids,” a police lieutenant said. “They are organised quite professionally with co-ordinated actions in different places at the same time.” Still, this is basically a public order problem, not a war or – despite the brave rhetoric – a Palestinian-style intifada. Ahmed hopes Bahraini municipalities will respond to police requests to remove the wheels from rubbish bins to stop them being used to barricade roads. Central Manama is calm. Pearl Roundabout in the commercial heart of the city has been wiped off the map , its famous statue has been destroyed and the only clue to its status as Manama’s “Tahrir Square” are two or three armoured cars and a refuse cart emblazoned with the name of a radical Shia leader, Hassan Mushayma, a bogeyman for the regime and for Sunnis. Yet the underlying tensions remain. Pearl has been renamed Farouq junction, an epithet attached to the seventh-century Sunni Caliph Omar and bitter rival of Ali, the founder of Shia Islam. It’s one of the signifiers of dominance and prejudice that are part of the sectarian fabric of Bahraini life. Another is that state TV broadcasts only the Sunni call to prayer. Sheikh Ali Salman, al-Wifaq’s leader, prefers to talk of universal rights. “What Bahrainis want is the same as people elsewhere in the Arab world,” he said. “The government succeeded to some extent in portraying what happened here as a Shia-Sunni clash, though it was less successful in convincing anyone that there was Iranian involvement. It also tried to show that the opposition were terrorists. But there is one basic conflict – between those who support democracy and those who want to maintain the current dictatorship.” Al-Wifaq withdrew its 18 members from the 40-seat parliament in protest at the first killings of demonstrators in February, but remains committed to peaceful change. Enemies dismiss its moderate image and claim it is no different from Shia hardliners such as Mushayma, who called for a republic to replace the Al Khalifa dynasty, launched a campaign of civil disobedience and destroyed a dialogue between the opposition and the reformist Crown Prince Salman that might – just – have defused the crisis. The crackdown began in earnest on 15 March when most foreign journalists had been thrown out or diverted to Libya. “It was an anti-Shia pogrom,” said Hala, an activist who helped plan the Pearl Roundabout protests. “Arrests began at two or three in the morning. People were dragged out of bed by armed men in ski masks and their houses smashed up. The Mukhabarat [secret police] set up a Twitter account and named people as traitors so that when they tried to leave the country they were picked up.” Hundreds remain in prison. Dismissals of some 2,000 people who stayed away from work during the unrest began at the same time. The destruction of around 30 Shia mosques has sharpened the sense of sectarian polarisation. Under pressure from the US, trials have been moved from military to civilian courts and two al-Wifaq MPs and a lawyer were freed at the weekend amid signs that more detainees would be released. But doctors and nurses from the Salmaniya hospital still face charges of occupying the building, hiding weapons, refusing to treat Sunni patients and inciting protests. Sunnis talk of boycotting Shia shops and Shia night workers complain of being stopped by police on their way home. “Even among lawyers there are tensions,” said a Sunni who defends Shia clients. “I am very pessimistic,” sighed Jassim, a Shia taxi driver whose startling cockney accent is a souvenir of years of work at the RAF base on Muharraq. “Things are much worse then before.” Shia journalists are smeared as traitors and fear harassment or worse if they cover Sunni events. “It’s been a big setback for all of us in Bahrain,” concluded Munira Fakhro, a Sunni member of the secular opposition Wa’ad party, whose leader Ibrahim Sharif is also behind bars. “We will either come out safe despite our wounds or the situation will deteriorate further.” Another middle-class professional woman reflected gloomily: “We sank very low. If we go any further people will start to leave. We were tearing ourselves apart.” Two things seem certain: repression without reform will not solve Bahrain’s problems and its citizen journalists will keep the story alive. “They are doing our job for us,” said a local photographer who works for international news agencies. “They set up webcams in the villages where there are clashes. It’s hard to get in and if you do you risk being arrested or hit by a tear gas grenade or worse. If the police catch you they make you erase your pictures. It happened to me once. After all, they are the ones with the guns.” Some names in this report have been changed Bahrain Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Ian Black guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Stocks around Asia fell early today as markets responded to the historic downgrade of the US government credit rating by S&P last week, reports CBS News . Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped nearly 2.2%, as did Japan’s Nikkei 225. South Korea’s Kospi declined 3.8% to its lowest level in…
Continue reading …Raymond Johnson discovered last month that he was one of the 2,140 men who get breast cancer each year. But when he tried to use the Medicaid-funded Breast and Cervical Cancer Prevention and Treatment Act of 2000 to cover his cancer costs, he found out that he couldn’t meet…
Continue reading …