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TED expends 1,684 words on fisking a pro-forma to-be-sure clause in a WSJ blog entry. I love blogs.
Never mind if your hotel’s on fire, how clean is it?
Flying into LHR, I looked down and saw a 13-acre park in prime central-London real estate. I had no idea what it was.
Never mind losing $17.3 billion on the stock. At least you made $350 million on the rights issue!
The escalating campaign of ethnic cleansing by Myanmar's military in Rakhine State is threatening to undermine the country’s ongoing democratic transition – and to tarnish irrevocably the reputation of the country’s de facto leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. But she still wields enough moral authority to act.
DHAKA – Myanmar is in crisis. The Rohingya – a Muslim ethnic minority group in a predominantly Buddhist country – are under attack by the military, with many fleeing for their lives. This escalating conflict is threatening to undermine Myanmar’s ongoing democratic transition – and to tarnish irrevocably the reputation of the country’s de facto leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
For decades, Myanmar’s government has refused to recognize the Rohingya – who comprise around 2% of the country’s population of over 50 million – as a legitimate ethnic minority, denying them citizenship and even the most basic rights as inhabitants. But it was just last month that systematic discrimination escalated into ethnic cleansing, with security forces responding to attacks on police posts and an army camp by Rohingya militants by launching an assault on all Rohingya people.
So far, Myanmar has confirmed 400 deaths, though United Nations officials put the toll closer to 1,000. Moreover, upwards of 300,000 Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh. Several thousand more Rohingya are waiting at the border, awaiting permission to enter the country.
Syed Munir Khasru is Chairman of the Institute for Policy, Advocacy, and Governance (IPAG), an international think tank.
Really the condition is terrific. International organization should come forward to resolve this crisis and should reach at harmonious decision against Myanmar army.
I don't know whether BHL is right on the details, but I totally agree with the essence of his opinion.
It's a pity that BHL is such a hypocrite when it comes to Israel and the Nakba, which should be denounced as much as what happens to the Rohingya.
It would be better for international community to understand if you mentioned the history of rohingyas existence in Aracan ,their contribution to independence movement for free Burma from British colony ,even their voting right in 2010 national election.International communities should know they elected as MPs and became minister of different ministries .After several hundreds of years they are being killed ,raped ,scorched alive ,slaughtered for not being the legal citizens .The world leaders will have to understand what is going on Myanmar is the worst kind of genocide and the gravest example of ethnic cleansing .People fleeing from the hell of torture are living under open sky without shelters ,foods and the vulnerabilities of parent-less ( killed in military action) children is not possible to narrate in words.For the sake of humanity an all out efforts is badly needed to end the crimes against humanity without any delay.
Sadly, Democracy is perfectly compatible with ethnic cleansing. Furthermore, in a Democracy, the leader's international reputation doesn't matter at all. All that matters is that the leader takes sensible steps which appeal to the majority of voters.
Burma has a long history of getting rid of 'Indians'- Hindu or Muslim, Tamil or Bengali- some of whom arrived even before the British. Bangladesh too has a history of getting rid of non-Indo Aryan language speakers who follow Buddhism.
Buddhist nationalism offers a way forward for Buddhist Karens (who are the majority) and thus is not wholly divisive. It has the potential of uniting peoples with similar languages and histories.
Aung San Suu Kyi has to deliver what the voters want- jobs, public services, security vis a vis the jack boot of the State- because her only source of power is popular support. She is acting sensibly thus making it more likely that the country will stick with 'democratic transition'. What we think of her is irrelevant. We didn't vote her into power.
“Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best” Otto von Bismarck. It may be that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has made such a close, sensitive and tragic calculation, easily sacrificing her reputation in the interest of the least open of the SE Asian states, within a region where tyranny and corruption lurk everywhere, just under the surface.
The unpleasant reality appears to be if you want Suu Kyi to remain an advocate and in residence there is a limit to her influence.
It is suspected that Islamic terrorist organizations from Pakistan & elsewhere have been radicalizing the Rohingias. These radicalized terrorists among the refugees make the problem complex for Aung San Suu Kyi. Very unfortunate for the innocent majority of Rohingias, who are victims of the reaction of Buddhist hardliners to Islamic fanaticism.
The number of people fleeing comes from different sources and appears credible. There is the challenge to organize and deliver humanitarian relief quickly. The causes for the mass exodus appear less clear cut. It appears that there were, and still are, islamist terrorists fighting against the government forces. It is also plausible that the military's pursuit of the terrorists has an unacceptable high 'collateral damage', not entirely dissimilar to high collateral damage of military actions against terrorists and their actual or perceived supporters elsewhere. Furthermore, it is not clear that all refugees flee due to direct violent threats, but also due to fake news and propaganda.
I suspect that the entire situation is much more complex than we fully know.
Ususret to Croatia Moto Expo Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandić, with associates, received the representatives of the Karavan Association for life _ bajkeri on the road: President Mladen Stjepan Vitković and coordinator of the organization Krešimir Antolić.
The organizers of the fair will be held under the patronage of the City in the space of the Zagreb Fair of 1. to 7. May 2017. they received the full support of the mayor, who stressed that the city is always happy to support quality events, especially with events of international significance that attract a large audience from home and abroad. The Croatia Moto Expo, the organizers expect, to the joy of motorcycle enthusiasts, will gather 140 exhibitors from many countries around the world with Japan's partnership as host country.
In addition to the mayor of Milan Bandic, the meeting was attended by the Director of the Tourist Board of the City of Zagreb Martina Bienenfeld and the member of the Management Board of ZG Holding Daniela Franić with the head of Zagreb Fair Dino Tomšić and representatives of relevant city offices and services.
Shock rocker's T-shirts banned in a New Hampshire town as politicians point to his music as factor in massacre.
in the wake of the ambush at a Colorado high school by two young suspects reported to have been fans of hard-rock acts Marilyn Manson, KMFDM and Rammstein.
Manson, no stranger to controversy and the most high-profile artist in the bunch, is emerging as the primary target of that criticism.
Appearing as guests on NBC's Meet The Press this weekend, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and conservative philosopher William Bennett pointed to Manson's music and to violent forms of entertainment as contributing factors in the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., that claimed 15 lives. Among the dead were suspected gunmen Eric Harris, who was 18, and Dylan Klebold, who was 17.
In Portsmouth, N.H., Schools Superintendent Suzzanne Schrader has reacted to the incident by banning Manson T-shirts and goth fashion from school. "When kids come back from vacation, they better not even think about wearing Marilyn Manson (T-shirts)," Schrader was quoted as saying in Saturday's edition of the Portsmouth Herald. "Parents are welcome to challenge me in court."
The ban in Portsmouth follows the voluntary cancellation last Thursday of a radio station-sponsored Manson concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colo. The show was scheduled for Friday.
campus of the University of Nevada at Reno, does not usually book shows based on their content, and its management decided not to make an exception this time.
Dan Gerstein, Lieberman's press secretary, said the senator believes the macabre, often profane nature of some rock lyrics and the content of other media, including video games, influence children's behavior. "He's concerned that the combination of things that kids see has an effect and it helps to wear down values."
practice of stickering albums with explicit material is ineffective.
weed out the stuff that is problematic," Gerstein said.
Hilary Rosen, president and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, refuted Lieberman's view, saying association surveys have shown that parents generally understand what material is most harmful.
She called the connection between music and the murders a "low-level virus" that comes from people's desire for easy answers.
Harris and Klebold, two young men who, according to the Associated Press, planned their assault with guns and pipe bombs to coincide with the birthday of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. "They didn't need Manson. They had a hero already," Rosen said.
No stranger to these controversies, Howie Klein, CEO of Reprise Records, also rejected the link between music and the attack, seemingly placing the blame instead on the lack of gun control.
"I remember when I saw Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan show and everyone thought it was the end of the world for white parents, but millions of kids listened to him and didn't shoot people," Klein said. "It just seems to me that there's no need for automatic weapons. I understand the Constitution and I understand about hunting weapons, but I don't understand why a 17-year-old needs automatic weapons."
Klein -- who also was outspoken during the controversy surrounding "Cop Killer," a 1992 song by Body Count, rapper Ice T's hard-rock group -- pointed the finger at Republican critics in particular, including Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and NRA President Charlton Heston.
Wednesday about the upcoming Manson show.
referred to Harris and Klebold as "disciples of Manson" on Wednesday.
Manson looks like, much less speak to the content of his music, said the final decision on whether to hold the concert should come from the community, not the government or venue.
"For me as an elected official to determine what people do is not appropriate," Griffin said. "If people do not agree with Manson or his message, they should not patronize the show or let their kids patronize him."
Manson (born Brian Warner), in a brief statement through Interscope Records last week, expressed sympathy for the people of Littleton and called the shootings "tragic and disgusting."
"Disassociative" (RealAudio excerpt) and "Irresponsible Hate Anthem" (RealAudio excerpt) continue to ignite protests on his namesake band's current U.S. tour.
President Trump’s surrogates seemed to take a certain kind of glee in shaming those accused Tuesday of participating in a college admissions scandal.
Fifty people — including two television stars — were charged with scheming and bribing to get their children into elite universities. Numerous schools were involved, including Georgetown, Yale, Stanford, the University of Texas, the University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles.
Parents were accused of paying off university officials, helping children cheat on entrance exams and lying about extracurricular accomplishments. U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling called it the largest college admissions scam prosecuted by the Justice Department.
In the hours after the announcement, a handful of Trump’s top surrogates took to Twitter to attack and mock the most high-profile parents, including TV stars Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, ensnared in the FBI’s Operation Varsity Blues.
.@LoriLoughlin & @FelicityHuffman indicted for lying and buying spots in college.
But Trump Jr.’s attacks ignore his own family’s history related to higher education.
Although the president and his extended family have not been accused of the kind of fraud that Loughlin and Huffman are alleged to have been part of, news reports and investigations suggest the Trumps used money and connections to ease their access to top schools.
The president’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, was allegedly admitted to Harvard only after his father donated millions.
Of course, using connections and donations to gain an admissions advantage is not unique to Trump or Kushner. As Slate put it, “The children of influential and wealthy power brokers like former vice president Al Gore or New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner often appear to receive preferential treatment from prestigious schools because of a combination of their families’ influence and sizeable donations.” What’s more notable is the way Trump Jr. and his father have effectively sold themselves as outsiders even as they’ve repeatedly benefited from privilege.
A student whose Leaving Certificate marks were wrongly totted up by an examiner has described the error, which has cost her a place in veterinary medicine at UCD, as a ‘disgrace’. File photograph: Bryan O’Brien/The Irish Times.
An 18-year-old student whose Leaving Certificate marks were wrongly totted up by an examiner has described the error, which has cost her a place in veterinary medicine at UCD, as an “absolute and utter disgrace”.
Rebecca Carter has brought High Court proceedings against the State Examination Commission (SEC) over its decision not to re-check her results before mid-October, effectively costing her a place at UCD. The college decides its student allocation by the end of September.
Carter, of Castlebridge, Co Wexford, is also seeking an injunction against UCD restraining the college from refusing her a place on the course.
The SEC and UCD have opposed the action, which opened before Mr Justice Richard Humphreys on Tuesday, and deny any wrongdoing.
Previously, the court heard UCD had agreed not to allocate Rebecca’s potential placing until September 30th, allowing the court to deal with her judicial review of decisions to date relating to her exam results.
Opening the case on Tuesday Micheal P O’Higgins SC, for Ms Carter, said Rebecca repeated her Leaving Certificate exams in May 2018 and was just six points short of the required number in the first round of offers for veterinary medicine in UCD.
She had been told the Commission could not correct the error until mid-October. If the mistake was not corrected by the start of October she would have to wait until 2019 to commence her chosen course.
Counsel said this was not the case and the SEC and UCD appeared to be blaming each other over the matter, leaving Ms Carter falling between two stools.
Mr O’Higgins said it also appeared that the SEC’s policy is that if the totting up error had appeared on the front cover of the exam script, it could have been rectified outside the normal appeals process.
However, this was not possible because the adding up error was inside the paper.
Counsel said Ms Carter has been left without a place on this year’s course and her future career has been put on hold because of “somebody else’s mistake”.
The State Examination Commission denies it has acted improperly or irrationally.
It says any alleged error can only be corrected through the formal appeals process, and the error cannot be dealt with through the rectification process.
The SEC also denies that it has failed to have sufficient regard for Ms Carter’s rights and adds that the system it operates to deal with errors such as that alleged by her protects the interests of all examination candidates.
The case continues on Wednesday.
U.S. officials say the White House is exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam and pressuring the intelligence community to "cook the books."
On Monday, President Bush took to the airwaves to try to convince Americans that Saddam Hussein poses an imminent threat to the United States. He gave a long list of reasons, emphasizing Saddam's ties to al-Qaida and the likelihood that he would acquire nuclear weapons soon. But according to the director of the CIA and numerous intelligence and diplomatic sources within Bush's administration, many of the president's arguments are exaggerated or distorted.
You won't hear U.S. officials say that publicly, though, because intelligence sources say they are being leaned on by higher-ups to support the get-Saddam program -- never mind the facts. In a damning article by Knight Ridder reporters Warren P. Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott that appeared Tuesday, one U.S. official is quoted as saying, "Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books."
Unfortunately for Bush, that pressure apparently does not extend to CIA Director George Tenet, who told Congress in a letter that Iraq "for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or chemical or biological weapons against the United States." Flying even more directly in the face of Bush's war plans was Tenet's statement that if Saddam became convinced a U.S. attack was inevitable, "he would probably become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions. Such terrorism might involve conventional means, as with Iraq's unsuccessful attempt at a terrorist offensive in 1991, or chemical or biological weapons."
Gen. Wesley Clark, the former NATO supreme European commander, made the same point in testimony before Congress on Sept. 23. By approaching Saddam the same way we approach al-Qaida, Clark said, "it is also possible we will have incentivized Saddam Hussein now as a last-ditch defense to do what he wouldn't have done before, which is, well, find me the nearest members of al-Qaida, here take this sack and do something with it."
Then there is the awkward matter of the CIA report on Iraq released last week, which concluded that U.N. inspections actually worked before they were halted in 1998, leaving Saddam's military and his chemical-weapons program weaker than they were in the 1980s.
In other words, the head of American intelligence and a top military man don't think Saddam is planning terrorist attacks against the U.S. now, but might if he was convinced we were coming in after his head. And the CIA says that Saddam's military machine poses less of a threat to the U.S. than it did a decade ago.
But the White House is not interested in putting all of the facts before the American people. It wants to whip up war fever. And if doing that requires making irresponsible claims, so be it.
Bush's most dubious claims are his inflammatory charges that Iraq has ties to al-Qaida. "We know that Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network share a common enemy -- the United States of America," Bush said. "We know that Iraq and al-Qaida have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al-Qaida leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al-Qaida leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We have learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb making, poisons, and deadly gases. And we know that after Sept. 11, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliances with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, working from the same script, said on Sept. 26 that U.S. intelligence had "bulletproof" evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida were linked and that there was "solid evidence" that al-Qaida members were in Iraq.
To hear Bush and Rumsfeld talk, you'd think that al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein were the closest of allies, united by their hatred of the Great Satan, and that Saddam is just waiting for the right moment to unleash terror attacks on the U.S. What they fail to mention is that al-Qaida is a radical Islamist group that hates Saddam's secular Ba'ath regime, and that Saddam detests Islamist mullahs, who threaten his regime, and has brutally murdered many of them. According to former CIA analyst Pollack, members of Iraq's intelligence service, the Mukhabbarat, and al-Qaida members have occasionally made contact, but "none of the Western agencies has found any evidence of sustained contact or cooperation. Instead, whenever information has been available, it has demonstrated that neither side wanted to have too much to do with the other and they mostly went their separate ways." This makes sense: Why would Saddam give members of a group that detests him the means to strike at him?
As for Rumsfeld's "bulletproof" evidence of an al-Qaida-Iraq link, it might be more like spitball-proof. According to U.S. officials interviewed in the Knight Ridder article, "Rumsfeld's statement was based in part on intercepted phone calls, in which an al-Qaida member who apparently was passing through Baghdad was overheard calling friends or relatives ... The intercepts provide no evidence that the suspected terrorist was working with the Iraqi regime or that he was working on a terrorist operation while he was in Iraq, they said." Other sources for the administration's allegations of an Iraq/al-Qaida link may be equally dubious. In an interview on NPR, reporter Jonathan Landay noted that U.S. officials said some of these claims probably come from an al-Qaida prisoner who wants to push the U.S. into war with Saddam in the hope there will be more terror recruits as a result.
Bush and Rumsfeld's claim that al-Qaida members are in Iraq is misleading. Yes, Iraq may have supported a radical Iraqi Islamist Kurdish group tied to al-Qaida in their battle against other Iraqi Kurds, but this doesn't mean Iraq supports al-Qaida's global terror campaign: having the Kurds all kill each other is very much in Saddam's interest. In any case, the radical group, Ansar al-Islam, was operating out of the Kurdish security zone, which is under U.S. protection.
Finally, there is Bush's scary claim that Saddam could give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists to use against the U.S., thus leaving no fingerprints. But biological or chemical weapons do leave fingerprints. In any case, Saddam knows that he is likely to be held responsible for any mysterious terrorist attack against the U.S. Implicitly painting Saddam as an anti-American psychopath, Bush and his fellow war hawks want to make us think that the Iraqi leader is so irrational that such arguments don't apply. But the evidence suggests that Saddam is not an insane zealot, but a Stalin-like brute whose desire to remain alive and remain in power trumps everything else.
The fact is that the Bush administration has produced no hard evidence of significant ties between Saddam's regime and al-Qaida. The famous alleged meeting between Mohammad Atta and an Iraqi intelligence official has been pretty much debunked, and we are basically asked to accept the other claims on faith. Considering that no fewer than a dozen officials from different governmental agencies who were interviewed by Knight Ridder deny that there is any significant new evidence linking al-Qaida to Iraq, and the suspicious timing of the latest revelations -- shocking new al-Qaida/Saddam links found just as the White House rolls out its big war P.R. campaign! -- it does not seem unduly cynical to question their truthfulness.
Of course, it is possible that the Bush administration's dire interpretation of the few facts we have about Saddam is correct. But nations should not rush into war based on tendentious suppositions, exaggerated claims and half-truths. At a minimum, a war debate requires a full and fair airing of what is known -- including dissent or contradictory opinions from within the U.S. government. Even those who are willing to acknowledge that Saddam poses a threat to the U.S. must be troubled by the egregious way the Bush administration is putting its finger on the scales -- as if this was a cheap political lobbying campaign, not the gravest decision a nation can make.
By pandering to Americans' 9/11 fears and drawing strained connections between Saddam and al-Qaida, Bush is arguing his case like a prosecutor hellbent on conviction, not weighing the evidence like a judge trying to get at the truth. He may feel he is justified in doing so because he is so certain that Saddam poses a threat. In fact, he is only showing contempt for the American people, whose sons and daughters will have to pay the price of an invasion. Until the Bush administration makes its case more dispassionately and objectively, it will have little credibility as it presses for war.
After failing to secure a renewal for a license to operate a private hire vehicle service in London last September, Uber — the controversial transportation startup valued at around $62 billion — has finally had a short reprieve. Today, a judge hearing the Uber appeal (appearing as Uber London Limited, or ULL) against the city’s transportation regulator, Transport for London, said that the company would provisionally get a 15 month license, so that it could continue to work on satisfying the conditions that TfL said that it had failed to meet previously, ahead of potentially applying for a regular, five-year license after it demonstrated that it was now playing nice.
“While ULL was not a fit and proper person… it is now a fit and proper person, and I grant a license,” said chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot in her ruling. She said her decision came from seeing substantial documentary evidence that Uber has modified its practices and seems committed to trying to adhere to this. She noted that TfL went into this case noting that it would not object to Uber London Limited (ULL) getting a license per se.
It will also pay £425,000 in court charges for this case.
Uber has been in London since 2012, starting with 300 drivers in that year and now ballooning to 48,000 registered drivers in 2018. Just under 3.6 million riders used it in a 12-week period, its UK general manager Tom Elvidge said in testimony this week.
But that aggressive growth came with a dark cloud, with many saying that it failed to heed to existing safety and other regulations and best practices when doing so. “The attitude of the previous managers appeared to be grow the business, come what may,” Arbuthnot noted.
TfL grants a license “where it is satisfied that the applicant is a fit and proper person.” At issue was the fact that TfL didn’t think that it was, and Uber was appealing that.
The decision comes after two days of testimony and examinations that highlighted both how Uber is currently seeking to position itself in the eyes of the public and those who regulate it, and also the many issues that the company has had and continues to have among its critics.
The UK case and its outcome — the epitome of a tussle between a lion and a unicorn, the two animals on the UK’s coat of arms (motto: “God and my right”, pretty apt when considering Uber and its predicament) — have become a touchstone for how Uber’s regulatory scuffles might play out in other markets. The company, in essence, is not just in the hotseat for its regulatory violations in the UK but for its approach to how it builds its business at the expense of rules, safety and more.
Uber might have gone into the appeal originally asking for its full five-year license, but yesterday it laid out a case asking for a provisional / probationary license of 18 months, which today turned into a 15-month request by the time its lawyer, Tom de la Mare, was laying out his closing arguments. “Bargaining,” said Arbuthnot with a raised eyebrow.
The company has spent the last two days both admitting its many shortcomings going into the appeals process. “We did some things that were pretty stupid,” De la Mare, the lawyer representing Uber, said in his closing arguments today. But he also outlined how the company is taking steps to change its procedures and practices on every point that TfL had failed them on.
With many assuming that there would be some kind of license granted today, much of TfL’s arguments in the last two days appeared to rest on demonstrating the character of Uber and whether complying with rules was a strong enough indication of a company shifting its culture.

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