<title>April 2009

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

'Slumdog Millionaire' star Rubina Ali's father to become a millionaire by selling her

Rubina - the child star of oscar winner movie,Slumdog Millionaire has been put up for sale by Rubina's muslim father. Rafiq Qureshi, who lives in a Mumbai slum along with his star daughter, offered to sell Ali for nearly $300,000 to undercover reporters. That was an astonishing four-fold increase on his opening demand. But Rafiq’s equally demanding brother Mohiuddin insisted: “The child is special now. This is not an ordinary child. This is an Oscar child!” The undercover reporters travelled to Mumbai to expose the illegal sale after a tip-off from a concerned close family friend and former neighbour. The father of adorable "Slumdog Millionaire" star Rubina Ali however denies he tried to sell his his 9-year-old daughter. News of the World confirms with a published a photo of their journalists meeting with the family while disguised as a wealthy couple from Dubai. Uncle Rajan More said on behalf of his father that they are only interested in securing their girl's future through her adoption. Rafiq Qureshi said he is keen to find a rich family to bring up Rubina but only if they are willing to help the whole family to get out of the slums. Shockingly, this sort of transaction is far from unusual in an impoverished nation where human life comes cheap and children are often treated as a commodity.

Slumdog has been a roaring success, raking in a staggering £185 million at box offices around the world. Rubina's family are furious that despite the film doing so well and their pretty daughter becoming so famous, they are still living in such rough conditions. Rafiq, 36, complained that the film producers haven't looked after them. That they gave them around 150,000 rupees (£2,040) at the start but nothing afterwards.Also added that they've been talking about giving them a house amounted to nothing but just talk.

The fact is that Danny Boyle and producer Christian Colson have set up a trust to ensure Rubina gets a proper education, is well housed and receives support dealing with media attention. In early April 2009 Rubina and fellow child actor Azharuddin Ismail were each given a £12,000 luxury apartment by Slumdog sound engineer Rasul Pookutty. The property in Kerala, south India, was awarded to Rasul - who himself escaped poverty - by the local council in honour of his Oscar achievement.

Rafiq shrugged it off saying he had no intention of moving to Kerala, even when the apartment is complete in a year time.
Picture: Rafiq Qureshi and her daughter, Rubina
Qureshi now acknowledges he received an offer to adopt Ali but says he pretended to be interested in an effort to be polite.

'Slumdog Millionaire' fame Rubina Ali's mother Khushi Sunday,20/4/2009 afternoon lodged a complaint with police following media reports that her estranged husband allegedly attempted to 'sell' their daughter. Khushi expressed shock over reports that her ex-husband was planning to sell Rubina for 200,000 pounds (over Rs.14 million). Khushi is concerned that her daughter to be well taken care of in pursuing her studies and acting career simultaneously by which Qureshi must account for the money the child earned from the movie.
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Related Article: Slumdog Millionaire hit the $200m (£140m) mark

Friday, April 17, 2009

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Filthiest fast-food joints

These pictures in video were taken in the dining area at 3am last Sunday by Adelaide law student Jeremy Brown while on a night out with friends. McDonald's employees had told Mr. Brown that the filthy area was a regular occurrence.

Mcdonald's Hindley Street‎
44 Hindley St
Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia
(08) 8212 5200‎
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McDonald's Hindley Street in Adelaide, Australia, is seen with countless discarded brown paper bags and burger wrappers lay strewn across the floor, piled up in trampled heaps around the tables and chairs. Diners sit eating amidst abandoned soft drinks, squashed chips and other rubbish cover the table tops.

McDonald's SA market manager Josie Mangini said the store's management had been "counselled" over the mess. The store manager, Sandra, confirmed a complaint had been made last Saturday April 4, 2009 night but said she was unable to comment further. When the Sunday Mail visited the restaurant in the early hours of Friday April 10, 2009 morning, staff members were clearing tables every 10 minutes. One teenage diner, said the restaurant appeared cleaner than normal and it is the numbers of people who come in and out of here that make such a mess. Mr Brown earlier remarked that the blame is not on the staffs, who appeared to be working "flat out" but thought that it was short-staffed when there were big queues to get food.

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Over in America, Domino’s Pizza faced an even bigger PR crisis after footage emerged of employee ‘Michael’ apparently putting nasal mucus on the sandwiches,and stuffing cheese up his nose when two Domino’s Pizza employees filmed a prank in the restaurant’s kitchen, they decided to post it online. In the most popular video of the franchise location in Conover, North Carolina, a woman who identifies herself as Kristy films a co-worker, Michael, preparing the unsanitary sandwiches. By Wednesday April 15, 2009 afternoon, the video had been viewed more than a million times on YouTube. According to Domino’s, the employees told executives that they had never actually delivered the tainted food. Still, Domino’s fired the two employees on Tuesday, (identified by Domino’s as Kristy Hammonds, 31 and Michael Setzer, 32) and they were in the custody of the Conover police department on Wednesday evening, facing felony charges. On Thursday April 16, 2009 they were charged with contaminating food distributed to the public, the same charge that covers people who taint Halloween candy. Hammonds, 31, has a criminal history that includes a conviction for sexual battery last on June 24 2008 (Has a probation period of 24 months. ) and convictions for possession of stolen property and breaking into a vending machine. If convicted, the Hammonds and Setzer could be sentenced to four months to one year in jail. Conover residents said they are thinking twice about eating at Domino’s now. The restaurant has taken steps to rectify the situation. It reopened for business Wednesday after spending one day closed so workers could sanitize everything inside the restaurant and throwing out all food and paper products that were not still sealed directly from the manufacturer.

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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

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Transportation in Vietnam

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Thaksin inciting street battles with an arrest warrant

Picture: Abhisit Vejjajiva formally endorsed by King Bhumibol Adulyadej as Prime Minister on 17 December 2008
In Monday's violence troops used tear gas and fired automatic weapons to clear demonstrators who sent buses hurtling towards lines of soldiers and torched a government ministry with petrol bombs. As night fell the army corralled about 2,500 remaining protesters behind barricades in an area around Abhisit's offices at Government House. Two men on a motorcycle opened fire at a military check point near Mahboonkrong shopping centre at 11.30pm on Monday, criticially wounding one soldier. About 2.45am Tuesday a group of men in a pickup fired at soldiers at Thukchai intersection. There were no injuries.
Picture: Thaksin supporters, in their trademark red shirts when Samak Sundaravej was in Office.
Thailand has been through weeks of chaos as Thaksin supporters, in their trademark red shirts, took to the streets to demand the resignation of Abhisit,
whom they say is in office because Thaksin allies were illegally pushed out. Thailand issued an arrest warrant Tuesday 14 April, 2009 for fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra for inciting street battles between anti-government protesters and troops that left two dead and 123 hurt. Thaksin was ousted in a coup in 2006 and is living in an unknown country to avoid a jail term for corruption, but he gave a string of video and telephone speeches to the rally calling for "revolution" over the past three weeks. Thaksin would not say when he might return. Earlier, he had asked his supporters to "come out for a revolution," saying he would lead them in a march to the capital if necessary. Thaksin spoke to CNN as clashes between protesters and police intensified Monday, the beginning of the Thai New Year. Being accused of inciting people to break the law and cause unrest he faces a charge punishable by seven years in prison.

Two red-shirt core leaders, Veera Musikhapong and Suporn Uttawong, surrendered to police on Tuesday after they told their protesting supporters to disperse and were picked up at the Misakawan intersection, near Government House where the red-shirts have been camping since March 26. The peaceful end to the protests appeared to have strengthened Abhisit, whose four-month-old government had appeared on the verge of collapse after the protesters also managed to derail a weekend Asian summit. But analysts warned that the violence had merely widened the rift between largely poor supporters of Thaksin and the government backed by the army and the Bangkok elite.

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Related Posts:
Thai government hot on Thaksin heels
Thai Government under siege by protesters
Former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra 's wife convicted
thaksin-goes-on-trial-for-corruption
Ex-PM Thaksin faces new Thailand graft charges
Thaksin returns to face charges today

Sunday, April 12, 2009

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Court secretly sentences Pervez Kambaksh for downloading a report from the internet

Worldwide outrage over Pervez Kambaksh's death sentence was sparked after The Independent reported his plight in January 2008. The Government raised the matter directly with Afghanistan after more than 100,000 Independent readers signed the petition and in October 2008 a Kabul appeals court lifted the death sentence.

A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country's rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after "liberation" and under the democratic rule of the West's ally Hamid Karzai.

For Kambaksh the four-minute hearing has led to four months of incarceration, sharing a 10 by 12 metre cell with 34 others and having the threat of execution constantly hanging over him. His fate appeared sealed when the Afghan senate passed a motion, proposed by Sibghatullkah Mojeddeid, a key ally of the President Hamid Karzai, confirming the death sentence, although this was later withdrawn after domestic and international protests.

The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.

Mr Kambaksh, 23, distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on the matter. But a complaint was made against him and he was arrested, tried by religious judges without – say his friends and family – being allowed legal representation and sentenced to death.

On 27 October, 2007 he was arrested at the offices of Jahan-e-Naw, a newspaper for which he had carried out reporting assignments. On 6 December, 2007 he was brought before a court in Mazar where the charges against him, accusing him of blasphemy and breaching other tenets of Islamic law, were read out. But then the proceedings concluded without any evidence being presented before the court.

The next hearing, on 12 January, 2008 was cancelled after Mr Kambaksh became ill. He arrived at the court at the next session, on 22 January, 2008 expecting a date to be set for the trial, only to hear numbing news that he has been found guilty and the sentence was death.

In February, 2009 the Supreme Court Judge Bahauddin Baha vowed the appeal would be held in "a very open court" but that promise has proved hollow.

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Craigslist the world's biggest bordello!!

Catherine is a 35-year-old sex worker in San Francisco says Craigslist is important to helping her avoid violence, a way to filter out that kind of person...and with Craigslist there is no need for pimps. She see Craigslist as vital in her trade. Catherine, who has lived in the United States for 10 years, who is originally from Europe argued in contrary to Sheriff Tom Dart that Craigslist provided a safety net for her and other sex workers who use the service to screen out prospective clients who may be violent. Craigslist and the Internet give her a chance to communicate with a client to weed out those she senses may not be acceptable.
The same reason Chicago Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart on Thursday March 5, 2009 sued the popular Internet classified service, accusing Craigslist of being one of the largest sources of prostitution in the country. Dart said that the kind of sex services being advertised on Craigslist frequently involves minors as well as people forced into prostitution against their will.

Over the years, police have found that Craigslist's erotic services ads can actually be useful when pursuing criminal investigations. Police have been posting ads on Craigslist that offered the "freshest, youngest girls to lure sex offenders. There is a case of Timothy McDarrah, the 43-year-old former "Hot Stuff" editor at US Weekly magazine who responded to chat online with an undercover FBI agent posing as 13-year-old "Julie," and was eventually arrested, convicted of using a computer to entice a minor into having sex, and sentenced to 6 years in prison. Police have also used Craigslist to identify--and arrest--sex workers. Craigslist has pledged to implement new measures designed to discourage people from using the site's erotic services section for prostitution by requiring anyone who posted an ad in the exotic services section to provide a valid credit card and phone number.

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Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities, featuring free online classified advertisements – with jobs, internships, housing, personals, erotic services, for sale/barter/wanted, services, community, gigs, résumés, and pets categories – and forums on various topics.

Craigslist Inc.
Type: Private
Founded: 1995 (incorporated 1999)
Founder: Craig Newmark
Headquarters: San Francisco Bay Area, USA[1]
Area served: 570 cities in 50 countries
Key people: Jim Buckmaster (CEO)
Revenue: Not published
Owner: Craig Newmark
Employees: 28
Website: craigslist.org
Type of site: Classifieds, forums
Advertising: None
Registration: Optional
Available in: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portugese
Launched: 1995
Current status: Active

Thursday, April 9, 2009

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The Demise of the Dollar

China has rapidly accelerated its monetary situation. Asia as a whole holds the foreign reserves ransom while the Euro, not even a decade old, continues to strengthen. Critical analysis now illustrates a number of fatal cracks in the tax cut plan: the tax cuts were too long-term to effect an immediate and necessary economic and dollar push; national debt continued to escalate out of control; and Social Security and Medicare costs increased. The war has contributed unheard-of debt. The only reason, according to many economists, that the U.S. has any global monetary power is the fact that so much of the foreign reserves are still heavy with U.S. greenbacks; in this lies dollar value.

The GW Bush trade deficit is driven by an imbalance of cheap imports to expensive exports, in which the current administration prefers to blame on Asia’s undervalued currencies, specifically the Japanese yen (JPY) and the Chinese Yuan. The Yuan, the unit of Chinese currency, has affected American workers, whether they know it or not.
China holds one of the biggest chunks of dollar denominated currency second only to Japan.

The U.S. has challenged the Chinese government’s strategy which seeks to keep its own currency undervalued, a benefit to their growth. And up until 2005, the Chinese Yuan was pegged, or fixed, to the U.S. dollar, a design that both former and current Treasury Secretaries Hank Snow and Henry Paulson, respectively, vigorously railed against. An undervalued Yuan is stronger internationally than the strong dollar. China as a key attribute in the dollar’s tumble is pure speculation. Financial power and international leverage may best describe the Chinese foreign reserves, then and now.

As of the close of 2006, most financial reports were identifying the total value in circulation of the euro to be rapidly gaining, if not overtaking, the dollar denominations. The economics of England run similar to the U.S.’s in war and general national debt, the trade deficit is substantial, consumers are in personal debt up to their eyeballs, and the housing market went bust well before the U.S.’s. Economically this all adds up to a weak currency.

China & Japan has vigorously stockpiled dollar denominated currencies in its foreign reserve since the Asian financial crisis of the 90s as their best defense to any further economic tremors was to fatten federal reserves full to the rim with U.S. dollars. Regardless of the size of Asian reserves, the yen poses little challenge to the value of the U.S. dollar.

Whether in response to direct U.S. government maneuvers or as a result of inevitable economic maturation, the dollar has been shaken by financial globalization. Excerpts from Forex Blog

Johnny 'Silver Bear' comments that the Federal Reserve has kept the printing presses rolling too liberally for too long and he continues: "The Fed has lost control of the dollar. Their mindless creation of credit has insured a mind-boggling meltdown of the entire financial system. This is not a good thing for anyone, anywhere. The dollar is the world's reserve currency. Seventy-five percent of all dollars in existence are in foreign hands. Whatever their value was when those foreigners got them, that value is evaporating right before their eyes. It's like buying ice by the pound and watching it melt away before you have time to use it."

We are rather concerned about the U.S. dollar as it has been in the interest of other countries to have a strong dollar to export to U.S. consumers. The dollar nearly halved between October 2000 and the spring of 2007 versus the euro; it has since rebounded a bit, but make no mistake about it: the U.S. dollar has been in a long-term downward trend. We all rely on cash for liquidity, but are concerned about purchasing power. While we are told that equities outperform in the long run, the deflationary forces in the equity markets, and the threat of a depression, has many looking for ways to avoid systemic risk affecting equity markets. While there are deflationary forces, there is also the threat of inflation because of the governments' efforts to restart the economy; as a result, investors do not want interest and credit risk, either. Is physical gold the only answer? Possibly, but even the staunchest gold bugs rarely ever invest all their net worth in gold, if for no other reason than it is impractical. The principal motivation to invest in other currencies is to diversify based on concerns that the U.S. dollar's purchasing power may not hold up and that - on a relative basis - it may hold up better in other currencies. We have long promoted baskets of currencies to mitigate the risks associated with the policies of any one country's monetary policies. The Euro - Are There Any Hard Currencies Left?

Japan's finance minister said Thursday Feb 26, 2009 that a stable dollar was in the interests of Asia's largest economy but downplayed the chances of Tokyo intervening to prop up the currency. "The US dollar is in fact the world's base currency now and there's nothing to replace it," Kaoru Yosano said in parliament. The dollar dipped against the euro on Thursday as investors fretted once more over the plight of the troubled U.S. banking sector, analysts said.The euro also gained ground despite consumer and business confidence slump in the European Commission's economic sentiment indicator for the 16 countries sharing the euro fell to 65.4 points in February, a drop of 1.8 points from January's figures, the lowest level since the survey began in January 1985. Dollar dips against euro on US bank concerns

The Demise of the Dollar...and Why It's Great For Your Investments by Wiggin, Addison

"The good news is that hidden investment opportunities are waiting behind the weakening dollar. In The Demise of the Dollar ... and Why It's Great for Your Investments Wiggin offers advice to readers looking to capitalize on this reality; specifically, he encourages investing in precious metals, tangible resources, and some select foreign markets." Link1 --- Link2

The Demise of the Dollar...
By Addison Wiggin, Chuck (FRW) Butler Preview Link

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