BB FANS

Iraqi oil law will not settle oilfield dispute www.ft.com

17-year-old girl stoned to death for loving boy of wrong religion

A 17-year-old girl has been stoned to death in Iraq because she loved a teenage boy of the wrong religion.

As a horrifying video of the stoning went out on the Internet, the British arm of Amnesty International condemned the death of Du’a Khalil Aswad as "an abhorrent murder" and demanded that her killers be brought to justice.

Reports from Iraq said a local security force witnessed the incident, but did nothing to try to stop it. Now her boyfriend is in hiding in fear for his life.

DailyMail

03/05/2007

Wife 'sentenced to death' by mother-in-law

A grey-haired grandmother sentenced her daughter-in-law to death after finding out she was having an affair, a court was told yesterday.

Bachan Athwal, 70, arranged for 27-year-old Surjit Athwal to "disappear off the surface of the earth".

Michael Worsley QC, prosecuting, said there had been no sign of Surjit since December 1998 when she went to India believing she would attend weddings with Bachan.

She is believed to have been strangled and her body has never been found.

Bachan and her son, Surjit's husband Sukdave Athwal, 43, both of Hayes, west London, deny murder and conspiring with others to commit murder.

Telegraph

NATO urges Russia to stop threatening Estonian embassy staff


Nato today called on Russia to stop threats against Estonian embassy staff in Moscow and to resolve its dispute with the Baltic state stemming from the removal of a Soviet war memorial.

“Nato is deeply concerned by threats to the physical safety of Estonian diplomatic staff, including the Ambassador, in Moscow,” the alliance said in a statement issued in Brussels.

“These actions are unacceptable, and must be stopped immediately.”

The alliance called on Moscow to defuse tension over the Soviet war memorial and graves in Estonia “diplomatically”.

Yesterday pro-Kremlin youth activists in Moscow staged an aggressive protest against Estonia’s ambassador over the removal of the Second World War memorial from central Tallinn, the Estonian capital.

The dispute comes at a time of already testy relations between Russia and its West European neighbours.

Russians regard the Talinn memorial a tribute to Soviet sacrifices in fighting Nazi Germany. For many Estonians it is a bitter reminder of decades of post-war Soviet occupation.

Serious rioting, mostly by Estonia’s ethnic Russian minority, broke out last week over removal of the statue from a square in the centre of the capital to a military cemetery. breakingnews

Wednesday, 02 May 2007

Big brother watches MySpace at US University and gets sued

Be careful of what you post on MySpace or anywhere else on the Internet because Big Brother is watching and will punish you. That's the message made loud and clear by two educational institutions in the US state of Pennsylvania, one of which is being sued by their victim a former student teacher.

IT Wire

The Elephant in the Room
George W. Bush has the lowest presidential approval rating in a generation, and the leading Dems beat every major ’08 Republican. Coincidence? msnbc

The Last Argument of Fools - How America Has Changed Iraq counterpunch

All the president's men?


The New York Times's decision to snub an official dinner may not quell fears that the US press are too close to the White House


Last month's White House Correspondents' dinner - the annual occasion for the president, reporters and celebrities to share a meal and a self-deprecating laugh - was pretty much a disaster. President Bush declined to do his usual comedy routine, citing the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech. Karl Rove and Sheryl Crow got into a spat over global warming. And the hired comic, impressionist Rich Little, just wasn't funny: his dusty jokes were so bad that the writer Christopher Hitchens left early and, according to the New York Times, called the event "so lame and mediocre that it is beyond parody".

But the Times' own displeasure with the dinner didn't become apparent until a week later, when columnist Frank Rich tore into the function as another symptom of the all-too-cosy relationship between the White House and the Washington press corps, and wrote: "After last weekend's correspondents' dinner," he wrote, "the Times decided to end its participation in such events."

Executive editor Bill Keller confirms the decision, and while he doesn't doubt his employees' ability to be both social and sceptical with the same officials, he concedes that closeness isn't always a good thing: "These events create a false perception that reporters and their sources are pals, and that perception clouds our credibility. It's not worth it."

Keller is not the only American editor struggling with such perceptions. US news organisations have recently taken some hard hits: a series of documentaries, essays and books have taken the media to task for failures in the run-up to the Iraq war, and many point towards a common culprit: journalists who are too close to those in power to ask tough questions.

"Much of the self-imposed limitation in the US results from this desire that so many journalists have to be insiders, to be invited to the right kind of parties and onto the right news shows," says Steven Livingston, a media professor at George Washington University. "The consequence of this is that they end up being a little too close to their sources."

And the question for Keller and others, when they book tickets for the next dinner or take a source to lunch: how close is too close? It is clear that US news organisations have a PR problem when it comes to the appearance of influence. "From a public-opinion perspective, things have got very bad," says Michael Dimock, associate research director at the Pew Center for People and the Press. Dimock cites studies showing that the number of Americans who say news organisations are "pretty independent" fell by a quarter between 1994 and 2005, while those who think they are "often influenced by powerful people and organisations" rose 10%. And less than a quarter of Americans believe "all or most" of what the major TV networks report. But it is less clear that skipping the dinner is the antidote that journalists need. "Having analysed political news since the late 80s, we've never seen a sign that a president got systemically better or worse coverage based on personal relationships with journalists," says Robert Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, which has studied the subject over three presidencies.

Others see the right symbolism but not enough sincerity. New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen points out that the paper's timing is curious: at this year's correspondents' dinner, the Times's special guest was Rove, the consummate government insider. "So why wasn't there a perception problem last year?" asks Rosen. "Or the year before?"

Keller defends the decision to invite Rove, and makes the no doubt incontestable point that a good meal is sometimes a good way to the necessary information. But he adds that the quality of coverage is not what motivated the decision: "Our problem is with these spectacle events that give the impression of the press being part of a merry collaboration with the people they cover." And the paper does seem to be taking steps to reduce the merriment. On May 4, it named Clark Hoyt, a former Knight-Ridder Washington editor who earned praise for overseeing his bureau's sceptical coverage of the Bush administration's rush to war, as its new public editor.


guardian

Afghan Media Face Threat of Controls www.nytimes.com

Turkey’s EU hopes fade with Sarkozy www.ft.com

Nicholas Sarkozy Is George Bush With 246 Kinds Of Cheese anorak

SAS 'coup' leader to be extradited to E Guinea timesonline

BBC concern at new Johnston tape BBC

Moderates in G.O.P. Warn Bush on Iraq NYT

Moore blasts Bush over film-trip probe



LOS ANGELES - Filmmaker
Michael Moore has asked the Bush administration to call off an investigation of his trip to Cuba to get treatment for ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers for a segment in his upcoming health-care expose, "Sicko."

Moore, who made the hit documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" assailing
President Bush's handling of Sept. 11, said in a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Friday that the White House may have opened the investigation for political reasons.

"For five and a half years, the Bush administration has ignored and neglected the heroes of the 9/11 community," Moore said in the letter, which he posted on the liberal Web site Daily Kos. "These heroic first responders have been left to fend for themselves, without coverage and without care.

"I understand why the Bush administration is coming after me — I have tried to help the very people they refuse to help, but until George W. Bush outlaws helping your fellow man, I have broken no laws and I have nothing to hide."

The health-care industry Moore skewers in "Sicko" was a major contributor to Bush's 2004 re-election campaign and to Republican candidates over the last four years, Moore wrote.

"I can understand why that industry's main recipient of its contributions — President Bush — would want to harass, intimidate and potentially prevent this film from having its widest possible audience," Moore wrote.

Treasury officials did not immediately respond on Friday to a request for comment on Moore's letter to Paulson.

The department's Office of Foreign Assets Control notified Moore in a letter dated May 2 that it was conducting a civil investigation for possible violations of the U.S. trade embargo restricting travel to Cuba.

Moore questioned the timing of the investigation, noting that "Sicko" premieres May 19 at the
Cannes Film Festival and debuts in U.S. theaters June 19. The Bush administration knew of his plans to travel to Cuba since last October, said Moore, who went there in March with about 10 ailing workers involved in the rescue effort at the World Trade Center ruins.

OFAC's letter to Moore noted that he had applied in October 2006 for permission as a full-time journalist to travel to Cuba, but that the agency had not made any determination on his request.

The agency gave Moore 20 business days to provide details on his Cuba trip and the names of those who accompanied him.

Moore won an Academy Award for best documentary with his 2002 gun-control film "Bowling for Columbine" and scolded Bush in his Oscar acceptance speech as the war in
Iraq was just getting under way.

The investigation has given master promoter Moore another jolt of publicity just before the release of one of his films. "Fahrenheit 9/11" premiered at Cannes in 2004 amid a public quarrel between Moore and the Walt Disney Co., which refused to let subsidiary Miramax release the film because of its political content.

Miramax bosses Harvey and Bob Weinstein ended up releasing the film on their own and later left to form the Weinstein Co., which is releasing "Sicko."

"Fahrenheit 9/11" won the top prize at Cannes and went on to become the top-grossing documentary ever with $119 million.

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