the management of Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport are concerned that the large number of additional private charter flights expected in Bali during the UN Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) December 3-15, 2007, will exceed the carrying capacity of apron areas.
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Nicholas Gaubert has diabetes and lives in the United Kingdom. A bad combination as he had to learn in July 2005 when he fall into a diabetic coma on a public bus. Of course nobody noted and so he rode the bus until it drove back into the depot and the driver noticed him. A few days before a couple of Islamic terrorists had blown themselves up in buses and subways. So the tension was very high. The driver just saw a gay sitting there with a backpack (which the terrorists used to carry their bombs). He ran off to call the police. The police arrived at the scene and even they did not consider it could be a medical emergency despite the fact that Mr Gaubert was wearing a medical bracelet.
So the cops did the only thing cops seem to be good at: Taking their Tasers and tasered him while holding a gun to his head. After that they arrested him and put him into a police van. Inside the van they remembered that not everybody who sits on a bus with a backpack is a terrorist and realized he was in a bad medical condition.
Afterwards they claimed he looked Egyptian. So being Egyptian on Public Transportation in Britain is probably a bad idea, too. Wonders me that the Police Officers did not claimed they simply used their Tasers as Defibrillator.
[Source]
Twelve provinces in Afghanistan were declared opium poppy free this year. Afghanistan is known for its large production of opium. In the 1990s the Taliban regime banned the production of opium. But after the US invasion and the following chaos the opium production grow to a new level even for Afghan Standards. The idea of NATO soldiers protecting poppy fields against Islamic fundamentalists, was not very pleasing for western governments. So they tried to find a way to get rid of the poppies without upsetting the Afghan farmers. One way they came up with was to promise millions in developing aid to the regions.
Bribing people to do something is usually a bad idea. The only motivation Money can provide is the motivation to get this Money. So you end up with people doing smart moves to get the money but without paying respect to your intentions or goals. And this happened of course in Afghanistan. When the farmers tried to decide what to grow in the new season they simply switched from opium to cannabis. You have to understand that most of the Afghan soil is pretty poor and cannabis and opium poppies grow good even on poor soil. Especially Cannabis (there really is a reason why this stuff is called weed). Potheads might say that Cannabis is far more harmless than Opium. But sponsoring Cannabis production is probably not what the UN and western governments intended.
The biggest dam in Iraq is about to collapse. Because they build the dam on gypsum. Yes GYPSUM! The stuff you use to fix your drywall or chalk is made off. This stuff is highly water soluble. It doesn’t take a genius to know what is going to happen…
If the dam collapses there could be up to half a million deaths. This is a big number even for Iraq. The US tried to repair the dam. But due to corruption and mismanagement nothing did happen.
New Scientist is running a story about How does it feel to die?. Including some bitter facts. I don’t want to keep them from you:
In the UK, where the water is generally cold, 55 per cent of open-water drownings occur within 3 metres of safety. Two-thirds of victims are good swimmers, suggesting that people can get into difficulties within seconds, says Mike Tipton, a physiologist and expert in marine survival at the University of Portsmouth in the UK.
Typically, when a victim realises that they cannot keep their head above water they tend to panic, leading to the classic “surface struggle”. They gasp for air at the surface and hold their breath as they bob beneath, says Tipton. Struggling to breathe, they can’t call for help. Their bodies are upright, arms weakly grasping, as if trying to climb a non-existent ladder from the sea. Studies with New York lifeguards in the 1950s and 1960s found that this stage lasts just 20 to 60 seconds.
If you end up losing your head, but aren’t lucky enough to fall under the guillotine, or even a very sharp, well-wielded blade, the time of conscious awareness of pain may be much longer. It took the axeman three attempts to sever the head of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587. He had to finish the job with a knife.
Decades earlier in 1541, Margaret Pole, the Countess of Salisbury, was executed at the Tower of London. She was dragged to the block, but refused to lay her head down. The inexperienced axe man made a gash in her shoulder rather than her neck. According to some reports, she leapt from the block and was chased by the executioner, who struck 11 times before she died.
Bitter Irony at its best!
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After US senate passed a law to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization the Iranian parliament did the same with the CIA and US Army.
While the Iranian proposal is probably nothing more than an act of political revenge and propaganda the US proposal is far more problematic. Declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization allows the US president to use military force against the Iran.
It’s time for some good news:
The PirateBay is a world famous Bittorrent Tracker stationed in Sweden. Several Media Companies tried to take it down and they had limited success in doing so after the Swedish police illegally sized The PirateBay’s severs in 2006. But The PirateBay was up again a day later and the illegal raid only caused a lot of media attention and thus made The PirateBay even popular than before.
The Media Companies were of course really pissed off and tried several other ways to stop The PirateBay. Including some probably illegal techniques to sabotage The PirateBay’s infrastructure. But The PirateBay could not prove it until internal e-mails of a company called MediaDefender leaked which are proving those claims according to The PirateBay.
So the PirateBay team went to the local police station and filled charges against several media companies.
The tables are turned for once. Kind of ironic for a media company to be sued by The PirateBay.
Pretty ironic to cast several votes to pass a law that should assure that regular guys can really only cast one vote.
