Iran Cancels Plan to Send “Aid” Ship to Gaza

Good.

The Iranian ship called “Infants of Gaza” had been expected to sail Sunday for Gaza carrying 1,100 tons of relief supplies and 10 pro-Palestinian activists but plans were canceled “due to restrictions imposed by the occupying Zionist regime,” Bighash said.

Iran made the announcement Tuesday prompting Israel to warn its archenemy to drop the plan.

Israel considers Iran a threat because of its suspect nuclear program, its long-range missiles and its support for Lebanese and Gaza militants.

Israeli security officials said the prospect of an Iranian boat headed for Gaza had Israel deeply worried, and that naval commandos were training for the possibility of taking on a vessel with a suicide bomber on board.

Puppy Thrown Under Full Moon

Um… yeah… huh?

A German student “mooned” a group of Hell’s Angels and hurled a puppy at them before escaping on a stolen bulldozer, police have said.

The man drove up to a Hell’s Angels clubhouse near Munich, wearing only a pair of shorts and carrying a puppy.

He dropped his shorts and threw the dog, escaping on a bulldozer from a nearby building site.

How Do You Say ‘Gaffe’ in British?

I kinda get the feeling that beer summit between Joe Biden and the BP CEO would be fairly entertaining. When it’s over, their conversation would make no sense except to each other.

How do these people get this kind of power with their feet so stuck in their mouths?

Forcible Castration Law Comes Into Effect In Poland

Good idea?

A Polish law that can force some rapists and paedophiles to undergo chemical castration has come into effect.

The legislation, passed by Polish MPs last September, applies to men who rape children or immediate family members.

The procedure has been tried elsewhere, but usually on a voluntary basis.

Israeli Blockade

Krauthammer, as usual, nails it.

In World War II, with full international legality, the United States blockaded Germany and Japan. And during the October 1962 missile crisis, we blockaded (“quarantined”) Cuba. Arms-bearing Russian ships headed to Cuba turned back because the Soviets knew that the U.S. Navy would either board them or sink them. Yet Israel is accused of international criminality for doing precisely what John Kennedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from acquiring lethal weaponry.

Anti-semite

What a horrible, horrible woman. 

WHO Exaggerated H1N1 Threat for Profit?

Perhaps. 

European criticism of the World Health Organization’s handling of the H1N1 pandemic intensified Friday with the release of two reports that accused the agency of exaggerating the threat posed by the virus and failing to disclose possible influence by the pharmaceutical industry on its recommendations for how countries should respond.

The WHO’s response caused widespread, unnecessary fear and prompted countries around the world to waste millions of dollars, according to one report. At the same time, the Geneva-based arm of the United Nations relied on advice from experts with ties to drug makers in developing the guidelines it used to encourage countries to stockpile millions of doses of antiviral medications, according to the second report.

The reports outlined the drumbeat of criticism that has arisen, primarily in Europe, of how the world’s leading health organization responded to the first influenza pandemic in more than four decades.

Woman Jailed for Attack

Ouch.

The court heard that Mr Jones had ended his long-term but “open relationship” with Monti towards the end of May last year.

The pair remained on good terms and on 30 May she picked him up from a party in Crosby and went back for drinks with friends at Mr Jones’s house.

An argument ensued and Mr Jones said there was a struggle between them.

In his statement, Mr Jones said she grabbed his genitals and “pulled hard”.

He added: “That caused my underpants to come off and I found I was completely naked and in excruciating pain.”

The court heard that a friend saw Monti put Mr Jones’s testicle into her mouth and try to swallow it.

She choked and spat it back into her hand before the friend grabbed it and gave it back to Mr Jones. Doctors were unable to re-attach the organ.

In a letter to the court, Monti said she was sorry for what she had done.

She said: “It was never my intention to cause harm to Geoff and the fact that I have caused him injury will live with me forever. I am in no way a violent person.”

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Mr. Jones may disagree with Monti’s statement.

Soaring Costs

It’s like looking into the future.

Other problems include trying to control independently set salaries for top hospital executives and doctors and rein in spiraling costs for new medical technologies and drugs.

Ontario says healthcare could eat up 70 percent of its budget in 12 years, if all these costs are left unchecked.

“Our objective is to preserve the quality healthcare system we have and indeed to enhance it. But there are difficult decisions ahead and we will continue to make them,” Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan told Reuters.

The province has introduced legislation that ties hospital chief executive pay with the quality of patient care and says it wants to put more physicians on salary to save money.

Death on the High Seas

Argh.

More than 10 people have been killed after Israeli commandos stormed a convoy of ships carrying aid to the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army says.

Armed forces boarded the largest vessel overnight, clashing with some of the 500 people on board.

It happened about 40 miles (64 km) out to sea, in international waters.

Israel says its soldiers were shot at and attacked with weapons; the activists say Israeli troops came on board shooting.

The activists were attempting to defy a blockade imposed by Israel after the Islamist movement Hamas took power in Gaza in 2007.

There has been widespread condemnation of the violence, with several countries summoning the Israeli ambassadors serving there.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said he was “shocked by reports of killings and injuries” and called for a “full investigation” into what happened.

Let’s be clear about what happened here.  Israel began blockading Gaza when a terrorist organization took legal control of it in 2007.  The reason is simple… Hamas likes to kill Jews and Israel wants to make sure they aren’t receiving weapons in those shipments.  They are allowing through humanitarian aid. 

This flotilla is intentionally trying to provoke an incident and they succeeded.  International antisemites will wail and condemn, but let’s be real.  What would you do?  If Al Qaeda was running Nova Scotia, regularly sent rockets into Maine, and America had blockaded them, what would we do if a bunch of yahoos sailed in to break the blockade?  I would hope we’d do the same thing and enforce our blockade in the interests of our national security. 

Perhaps the best comment I’ve seen on this came from Melissa Clouthier on Twitter, who said, “If the Israelis wanted to avoid an outcry over the #flotilla, they should have had the North Koreans torpedo it.” 

Indeed. 

Then there’s this:

The incident comes a day before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to meet US President Barack Obama in Washington after one of the most strained periods in US-Israeli relations in years.

Will our president back our long-term ally that is acting in the interests of its security or the terrorist Hamas and their bigoted provocateurs? 

Lost In Translation

Oops.

When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed.

Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated”.

So that was what went up under the English version which barred lorries from a road near a supermarket.

French Strike Over Plan to Raise Retirement Age

Coming soon to a country near you. 

Strikes across France delayed flights, closed schools and frustrated commuters Thursday as workers protested government plans to raise the retirement age past 60 — one of the lowest even in Europe.

President Nicolas Sarkozy says retiring so young is now untenable given growing life spans, but unions see his planned reforms to France’s over-stretched pension system as yet another blow to Europe’s cherished social model.

His government wants to raise the retirement age to 61 or 62 — reforms that have been under discussion since well before the current European debt crisis. Sarkozy has called them his main priority this year.

Generators Finally Getting Into Place

Great for these solid Wisconsin companies.  It’s a shame that bureaucratic incompetence has delayed their generosity from benefiting the people of Haiti. 

Wednesday, Briggs & Stratton Co., Wauwatosa, said it donated 240 portable generators to Haitian churches, schools, medical clinics and other public facilities lacking a reliable source of electricity.

The generators have languished in a Haitian warehouse for several months but are scheduled to be released soon.

“Patience has been the key. We have been very diligent in letting the (Haitian government) know that we are not abandoning these generators,” said Briggs spokeswoman Laura Timm.

[...]

Problems at customs, including a box of donated shoes that wasn’t properly labeled, kept the Briggs generators stuck in a warehouse.

South Korea Freezes Trade with North

Some movement. 

South Korea has suspended trade with the North and demanded an apology, after a report blamed Pyongyang for sinking a Southern warship.

President Lee Myung-bak said those who carried out the attack, which killed 46 sailors, must be punished.

North Korea’s main newspaper called the investigation an “intolerable, grave provocation”.

The White House endorsed the South’s move, and pledged its co-operation “to deter future aggression”.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged China to co-operate with the US on North Korea.

Mrs Clinton told a US-China summit in Beijing that Pyongyang must be held to account for the attack on the Cheonan.

“We ask North Korea to stop its provocative behaviour… and comply with international law,” she added.

China is North Korea’s closest trading partner and has in the past been reluctant to take tough measures against the communist state.

The North depends on South Korea and China for up to 80% of its external trade and 35% of its GDP. In 2009, inter-Korean trade stood at $1.68bn (£1.11bn) - 13% of the North’s GDP.

Welfare State Crashing

We don’t need a crystal ball to see into the future. 

Now the welfare state — cherished by many Europeans as an alternative to what they see as dog-eat-dog American capitalism — is coming under its most serious threat in decades: Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.

Deep budget cuts are under way across Europe. Although the first round is focused mostly on government payrolls — the least politically explosive target — welfare benefits are looking increasingly vulnerable.

“The current welfare state is unaffordable,” said Uri Dadush, director of the Carnegie Endowment’s International Economics Program. “The crisis has made the day of reckoning closer by several years in virtually all the industrial countries.”

Kim Jong-il Likely Authorized Attack on South Korean Warship

This is huge.  It’s not surprising, since very few things of this magnitude happen in a totalitarian nation without approval from the top, but it still kicks it up a few notches. 

A new American intelligence analysis of a deadly torpedo attack on a South Korean warship concludes that Kim Jong-il, the ailing leader of North Korea, must have authorized the torpedo assault, according to senior American officials who cautioned that the assessment was based on their sense of the political dynamics there rather than hard evidence.

The officials said they were increasingly convinced that Mr. Kim ordered the sinking of the ship, the Cheonan, to help secure the succession of his youngest son.

“We can’t say it is established fact,” said one senior American official who was involved in the highly classified assessment, based on information collected by many of the country’s 16 intelligence agencies. “But there is very little doubt, based on what we know about the current state of the North Korean leadership and the military.”

Clinton Says North Korea Must Face Consequences

Like what?

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that North Korea must faces consequences after a report that it fired a torpedo that sank a South Korean warship in March.

“I think it’s important to send a clear message to North Korea that provocative actions have consequences,” she said amid heightened tensions and a diplomatic war of words between Seoul and Pyongyang over the incident. “We cannot allow the attack on South Korea to go unanswered by the international community.”

Clinton was speaking in Tokyo, Japan, for the first leg of her week-long tour in Asia. She said she was consulting with international allies to find the appropriate reaction.

North Korea threatened to back out of a nonaggression pact between the nations, while the South Korean president accused its northern neighbor of engaging in military provocation, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported on Friday.

“Firstly, from now on (North Korea) will regard the present situation as the phase of a war…”, the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said Friday, according to Yonhap.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, meanwhile, said that North Korea’s alleged torpedo attack on a South Korean warship was tantamount to a military provocation and that it violates the armistice agreement between the nations, Yonhap reported.

The reality is that there is very little anyone is willing to do.  More sanctions don’t mean anything to a nation like North Korea.  Nobody is willing to attack them and risk all out war - particularly a possible nuclear one.  There aren’t any good options here, so I can’t fault Clinton for being rather wishy-washy here. 

Calderon Blames Failed Internal Policies on America

Tell you what, Mr. President…

Calderon said the increase in violence in Mexico had coincided with the 2004 lifting of a U.S. assault weapons ban.

The 10-year ban on the sale of assault weapons to civilians expired without being extended by Congress. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said the administration favors reinstituting the ban, though guns rights groups oppose it.

Calderon said he respects Americans’ Second Amendment right to bear arms but said many of the guns are getting into the hands of criminals.

...you put a smidge of effort into stopping your citizens from illegally entering the U.S. - many of them bringing drugs with them, committing crimes, and living off the largess of American taxpayers - and we’ll take a look at our gun control policies, mmmmkay?  Oh, and it would help if you’d knock off your sanctimonious lecturing of America on our immigration policy when Mexico’s policy is infinitely more stringent on those entering Mexico and utterly lackadaisical toward those leaving it. 

Ninjas vs. Muggers

I’d put money on the ninjas almost every time. 

Three muggers in Australia got the fright of their lives when their attack was interrupted by five black-clad ninja warriors.

The thieves were assaulting a German medical exchange student in Sydney, but the alleyway where they struck was next to a school for ninja warriors.

One of the pupils raised the alarm after noticing the attack.

Police say they have arrested two men and charged them with robbery, and are still looking for a third suspect.

“We just ran outside and started running at them, yelling and everything,” said ninja master Kaylan Soto who instructed his students to take action.

“These guys have turned around and seen five ninjas in black ninja uniforms running towards them. They just bolted.”

Britain Gets New PM

It will be interesting to see how he governs.

Conservative leader David Cameron became Britain’s youngest prime minister in almost 200 years Tuesday after Gordon Brown stepped down and ended 13 years of Labour government.

Cameron said he aims to form a full coalition government with the third-place Liberal Democrats after his Conservative Party won the most seats but did not get a majority in Britain national election last week.

The 43-year-old leader said it would be “hard and difficult work” to govern as a coalition but added that Britain had serious economic issues to tackle. Cameron visited Buckingham Palace and was asked to form a government by Queen Elizabeth II less than an hour after Brown tendered his resignation to the monarch.