Discussion about World News and Happenings. http://www.dreamteammoney.com/index.php Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:14:19 -0500 1440 http://www.dreamteammoney.com/index.php?showtopic=94175 Myanmar lets Suu Kyi's party reoto reopen regional branch offices that have been closed since May 2003, a party spokesman said on Thursday.



"So far as we have heard, about 100 branch offices have been reopened across the country, effective Wednesday," said Nyan Win, a spokesman for the National League for Democracy .

The government closed down NLD branch offices after an attack on Suu Kyi's convoy by pro-regime elements on May 30, 2003. Scores of NLD followers were killed, according to her supporters.

Nyan Win gave a guarded welcome to the government's move.

"Yes, it's a positive step," he said. "I think they want us to take part in the election, but we still haven't made up our mind about this. We still need to talk it over among the top leaders, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi."

The junta plans elections at an unspecified date this year, although the poll has been widely derided in advance as a sham to make the country appear democratic, with the military retaining control over key ministries and institutions.

This week it began publishing a series of election laws in state media.

The second, published on Wednesday, obliges the NLD and some other parties to re-register within 60 days with a new election commission. Failure to do so means they will have to fold.

In order to register, they have to exclude party members who are serving prison terms.

That would include Suu Kyi, who has spent 15 of the past 21 years in detention and is now serving 18 months in house detention for breaching security laws.

Many other senior NLD members are among more than 2,000 political prisoners in Myanmar, according to rights activists. All would effectively be barred from taking part in the election.

Nyan Win described some of the provisions of the new law as "completely unacceptable."

Parties wanting to register also have to give a written commitment to uphold the constitution passed in 2008, which the NLD rejects and campaigned against. "It's completely impossible for us," Nyan Win said on Wednesday.pen regional offices]]> Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:06:56 -0500 94175 http://www.dreamteammoney.com/index.php?showtopic=93605
It just makes some people lazy...I am not generalizing though as some people do look for jobs. But I would say that out of 10 unemployed people, only 4 are really looking for a job. The others, I don't know.

Violent comments, reactions are very much appreciated! ]]> Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:14:55 -0500 93605 http://www.dreamteammoney.com/index.php?showtopic=93505
But in the long-awaited self-portrait delivered yesterday from the dock of a war crimes tribunal, Radovan Karadzic painted himself as a misunderstood and much-maligned anti-communist dissident.

The bombastic warlord associated more than anyone else with the Bosnian bloodbath and the pogroms of "ethnic cleansing", it transpires, was all along the Vaclav Havel of the Balkans.

It is almost 15 years since the end of the war in Bosnia that left 100,000 people dead, two-thirds of them Muslims mostly killed by Serbs. Karadzic was the Bosnian Serb political leader and military commander-in-chief. Cheated of justice, the victims' families have waited a long time to see Karadzic in the dock.

And yesterday, in a four-hour soliloquy behind bulletproof glass at the international criminal tribunal for former Yugoslavia in The Hague, the 64-year-old for the first time laid out his version of what happened in the 1992-95 conflict.

Predictably, he rubbished the charges against him.

"They're trying to convict us for something we never did," he said. "There should have been no indictment against me in the first place … There is no Serb responsibility."

The record strongly suggests otherwise. Dozens of books have been written about the bloodshed in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Millions of pages of testimony have accumulated through years of war crimes trials, laying out in exhaustive detail how a ruthless political mafia led a collapsing country into an orgy of sadistic butchery.

Srebrenica

A solid body of case law has been established, creating juridical facts such as that what happened in Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia in July 1995 was an act of genocide by Bosnian Serbs seeking to eliminate Bosnian Muslims.

But Karadzic was having none of it. He insisted he bent over backwards repeatedly to save a country he is widely seen as having destroyed.

"The Serbs tried to defend themselves by making endless concessions," he declared. "We had five conferences and five peace plans. I, the accused, agreed to four of them … There were 12 ceasefires in Sarajevo, 11 of them were breached by the army of the Muslim party."

In the autobiography presented yesterday, Karadzic was a reluctant politician with no ambition to be a leader, purely a "servant" of his people. He tried self-deprecation, but occasionally slipped up: "I don't want to defend myself by saying that I was not important."

Frequently he shifted into a third person narrative as if talking about someone else. "Karadzic had been a dissident since 1968," he said.

In a dark suit and white shirt, playing professorially with his spectacles and constantly rummaging through his shock of silver hair, Karadzic was confident and combative.

Unlike many of his Serb co-defendants, he was also courteous. There was no sneering, no theatrics, no attempt to disrupt the proceedings.

But for many of those watching and listening to the Karadzic narrative, the former Bosnian Serb leader was from another planet.

While dismissing the charges against him, he failed to address any of the specific 11 counts, ranging from the mass murder at Srebrenica to the 43-month siege of Sarajevo carried out by forces under his command, from the hostage-taking of more than 200 UN soldiers to the mini-gulag of camps his subordinates erected in the summer of 1992 where thousands of Bosnian Muslims died.

The latter brought a brazen denial. The Muslim and Croat inmates of Trnopolje camp in the summer of 1992 near the purged town of Prijedor were "free people" who were managing their own "collection centre" after having run away from the war and finding themselves stranded.

He went on to specifically attack ITN and the Guardian, which broke the story of these camps in the summer of 1992, reporting on scenes of emaciated men imprisoned behind barbed wire. Karadzic said the journalists, Penny Marshall and Ed Vulliamy, had abused his hospitality. He had flown them from London to north-west Bosnia to inspect the camps and they had wilfully distorted what they found there. He alleged that the reporters had entered a storage area secured behind barbed wire and filmed "three people" on the other side, making it look as if they were incarcerated. "I don't know how Penny Marshall can sleep," he said.

The four-hour performance – Karadzic is defending himself with the help of legal assistants – was a long history lecture dwelling on the perennial victimhood of the Serbs, with the villains ubiquitous and formidable – Bosnian Muslim jihadists; Croatian fascists; the Turks reassembling an Ottoman empire; the Germans victoriously completing in 1991 what they started in 1941 with the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia; Nato; the Americans; the Vatican.

"I stand here before you not to defend the mere mortal that I am but to defend the greatness of a small nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina … I will defend that nation of ours and their cause, which is just and holy," Karadzic declaimed.

That may play well with the television audience back home in a Bosnia now more entrenched in its ethnic division than when Karadzic was in his prime. But the tour of 500 years of Balkan history did little to mitigate the 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity that Karadzic faces.

Paranoia

What Karadzic and his cohorts were stopping was the "Green Transversal" – the alleged Bosnian Muslim role helping to establish an Islamist caliphate from "the Great Wall of China to the Adriatic".

For veteran Balkan-watchers, it was a blast from the past, a rerun of the paranoia and propaganda that was the nightly staple diet on Serbian state television throughout the 1990s.

Karadzic was on the run for 13 years until apprehended on a Belgrade bus under a fake identity and unrecognisable as a Serbian new-age quack in the summer of 2008.

He boycotted the opening of the trial last year and has repeatedly delayed the proceedings, rejecting defence lawyers and maintaining he needs more time to prepare and wade through the mountains of evidence.

But yesterday he was methodical and well-prepared, peppering his arguments with PowerPoint projections of TV clips and documentary footage.

When the trial opened in October with a Karadzic boycott, the court heard a tape with the defendant predicting that the forces then under his control would turn the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, into "a black cauldron where 300,000 Muslims will die. They will disappear. That people will disappear from the face of the Earth."

Yesterday he averred that "the Serbs wanted to live with the Muslims, but not under the Muslims … They wanted Islamic fundamentalism from 1991-95 … That's what they wanted then. That's what they want now."

He, by contrast, wanted to turn Bosnia into a Balkan Scandinavia or Switzerland. Besides, many of Bosnia's Muslims were not really Muslims at all, but apostate Serbs, he said.

Karadzic has another four hours to morrow to complete his opening statement, and perhaps he will try to refute the charge sheet after yesterday's history lecture.

Then on Wednesday it is the turn of the victims, with Bosnian camp survivors filing into court to tell their stories. It remains to be seen whether Karadzic, representing himself, will turn up to question them.

from:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/02/radovan-karadzic-defends-bosnian-war]]> Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:26:11 -0500 93505 http://www.dreamteammoney.com/index.php?showtopic=93504
Though the countries have no diplomatic ties, Israeli dual nationals, mostly business people, have entered the United Arab Emirates relatively unhindered under second passports.

The Emirates will seek to identify Israelis by "physical features and the way they speak.'' said Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim.

A spokesman for the Israeli prime minister's office declined to comment on the announcement.

Shunned throughout most of the Arab world, Israel prizes even the most minimal trapping of normalization with any country the Middle East.
"This is a harsh step,'' said Yoav Stern, an expert on the Arab world at the Peres Center for Peace in Tel Aviv.

Israeli officials have either denied or withheld comment on allegations that the Mossad intelligence agency played a role in the killing of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhoub in a Dubai hotel room.

Gen. Tamim has said there is a "99%" chance that Israel was behind the killing.

As details of the case trickled out of Dubai, some commentators in Israel and abroad, assuming Mossad involvement, criticized the agency for underestimating the ability of Dubai police to piece together the hit. Dubai authorities identified a team of 26 suspects on closed-circuit TV—some of them disguised in wigs and beards, or carrying tennis rackets.

But many Israelis rallied around Mossad, and during the Jewish festival of Purim, which ended Monday, some Israelis mimicked the suspects' disguises.

Purim is a holiday of public merriment, marking the foiling of a plot by an ancient Persian minister to annihilate the Jewish people. It is customary to dress up in costumes at parties, at readings of the biblical book of Esther, and on the streets.

Rami Patimer, owner of a Tel Aviv costume store, said customers were showing up in groups with newspaper clippings and suspects' photos. Popular items: Wigs, fake mustaches and tennis socks, like those worn by the Dubai suspects on video. "Everyone wants to be a hero," he said. "It's Israeli pride."

Israeli officials have expressed satisfaction that Mr. Mabhouh is dead. He had been sought by Israel for planning the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1987, an allegation Hamas hasn't contested. After news of the killing, Israeli security officials said they believed Mr. Mabhouh was also involved in weapons smuggling between Iran and the Hamas- controlled Gaza Strip.

Last week, Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni called the assassination "good news." On Sunday, the country's trade minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, told Army Radio that he had no idea who killed Mr. Mabhouh, but he also appeared to use the killing to put Hamas on notice: "None of their people are untouchable," he said. "They can all be reached."

The killing, and Israel's fascination with it, have also become fodder for Israeli comedy shows on radio and TV.

In a mock news interview on the weekly television satire, "Eretz Nehederet," Mossad assassins bicker with one another about their cover names and the room-service bill in Dubai.

"I don't know about you, but I can't wait for our next assassination," says a mock Israeli news analyst on the show.

"Everyone always revered the Mossad, and now when you see it in real life like a James Bond movie everyone is fascinated," said Israeli pollster Mitchell Barak. "It looks very glamorous when it's live TV."

The prime minister's office, which has direct authority over Mossad, didn't respond to requests to comment.

Officials from Australia and European nations—whose passports Dubai has linked to the killing—haven't blamed Israel, but have demanded Israeli help in determining how their passports were used in the case. U.K. investigators were at work in Israel on Monday.

In Europe, the case created a diplomatic furor after Dubai police released passport information for 26 European and Australian citizens viewed as suspects. Most of those identified quickly surfaced, and the issuing governments said it appeared identities were stolen to produce fraudulent passports.

form:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703429304575095124162751164.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular]]> Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:22:21 -0500 93504 http://www.dreamteammoney.com/index.php?showtopic=93503
The death toll from the magnitude 8.8 quake is above 700, with coastal Concepcion one of the worst hit.

The city of 700,000 people was closest to the epicentre of the quake and the damage has been extensive, with electricity and water still out and several shops on fire.

Looters are stealing food, water and clothing from nearby stores despite a dusk-to-dawn curfew and the presence of thousands of troops.

Concepcion mayor Jacqueline Van Ryselberghe voiced the frustration many are feeling.

"We need the military on the streets, we need them," she said.

"The general population just doesn't know what to do. Business owners are starting to defend themselves, they are starting to arm themselves."

Rescue workers are still picking through the debris to reach survivors and in one apartment block they could hear knocking from inside the collapsed walls.

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton is expected to arrive tomorrow in Santiago on a previously planned trip to Latin America, with the city still experiencing aftershocks from the quake.

Aid is coming in from around the world, including Australia, which has offered $1 million initially in emergency assistance and another $4 million for reconstruction.

Authorities in Chile have set up shuttle flights between the capital, Santiago and Concepcion and are expecting to deliver more than 100 tonnes of food aid in the next few hours.

Terrifying aftershocks

There are about 400 Australians in Chile, with many working for local companies. Most of them live near Santiago - 400 kilometres from the epicentre - but even there the experience has been frightening.

Eye witness Amy Yacoub's husband Simon works for engineering company SKM, and she was asleep on the 13th floor of her building when the quake struck.

"The buildings are all structured and designed to separate and move apart in an earthquake, so we did watch a wall open up in front of us and that was a bit terrifying," she said.

"Then, with the aftershocks that have been rolling through, they are quite nerve-wracking and fortunately we have had nothing like we had.

"I think they reported it was about an 8.0 in Santiago, so we are still having aftershocks that can be up to 6.0.

"Generally we can hear more plaster coming off our walls and then for us, because we are a little bit higher, we get the swaying motion ... our building sways.

"People are very concerned and still trying to get in contact with a lot of family members and friends in Concepcion, because telephone lines aren't working or communication isn't open everywhere.

"Even in Santiago some people are still without power and communication."

Ms Yacoub's friend Kate Lewin lives above her on the 20th floor, and described the experience as "terrifying".

"It happened so quickly that you actually don't have time to be scared, but I just flew into protective mode," she said.

"We have got three-year-old twin girls and I just raced to their room, got them together in one bed and put pillows over our head and just thought this is it - whatever it may be. I just thought this was it."

form:http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/02/2834565.htm?section=justin]]> Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:19:43 -0500 93503 http://www.dreamteammoney.com/index.php?showtopic=93415 If you’re looking to pitch in to the relief effort for Chile after this morning’s massive earthquake, we’ve gathered some of the web’s best channels for humanitarian aid and reconstruction efforts.

While the death toll is not expected to grow anywhere near the numbers of the Haiti quake, Chile will still require support for the many who are now homeless, and funds for the rebuilding of infrastructure.

If you have the means, we encourage you to donate through one of the channels below.

If you want to donate a larger amount directly to a non-profit of choice, consider these organizations that have active relief efforts underway.

Direct Donations Online

1. American Red Cross – the American Red Cross International Response Fund helps victims of crises such as the Chile and Haiti earthquakes. If you wish to designate your funds to a specific crisis, you’ll need to mail in your donation.

2. Americares – funds go exclusively to the Chilean earthquake (and tsunami relief, should further tragedies occur)

3. Google Crisis Response, with channels benefiting UNICEF and DirectRelief International
– use your Google Checkout account to donate instantly to these charities

4. World Vision Disaster Response Fund - your money goes towards relief efforts for global disasters worldwide (not Chile specifically)]]> Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:21:18 -0500 93415 http://www.dreamteammoney.com/index.php?showtopic=93351
The magnitude-8.8 quake was felt as far away as Sao Paulo in Brazil — 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) to the east. The full extent of damage remained unclear as dozens of aftershocks — one nearly as powerful as Haiti's devastating Jan. 12 earthquake — shuddered across the disaster-prone Andean nation.

President Michelle Bachelet declared a "state of catastrophe" in central Chile but said the government had not asked for assistance from other countries. If it does, President Barack Obama said, the United States "will be there." Around the world, leaders echoed his sentiment.

In Chile, newly built apartment buildings slumped and fell. Flames devoured a prison. Millions of people fled into streets darkened by the failure of power lines. The collapse of bridges tossed and crushed cars and trucks, and complicated efforts to reach quake-damaged areas by road.

At least 214 people were killed and 15 were missing as of Saturday evening, Bachelet said in a national address on television. While that remained the official estimate, Carmen Fernandez, head of the National Emergency Agency, said later: "We think the real figure tops 300. And we believe this will continue to grow."

Bachelet also said 1.5 million people had been affected by the quake, and officials in her administration said 500,000 homes were severely damaged.

In Talca, just 65 miles (105 kilometers) from the epicenter, people sleeping in bed suddenly felt like they were flying through major airplane turbulence as their belongings cascaded around them from the shuddering walls at 3:34 a.m. (1:34 a.m. EST, 0634 GMT).

A deafening roar rose from the convulsing earth as buildings groaned and clattered. The sound of screams was confused with the crash of plates and windows.

Then the earth stilled, silence returned and a smell of damp dust rose in the streets, where stunned survivors took refuge.

A journalist emerging into the darkened street scattered with downed power lines saw a man, some of his own bones apparently broken, weeping and caressing the hand of a woman who had died in the collapse of a cafe. Two other victims lay dead a few feet (meters) away.

Also near the epicenter was Concepcion, one of the country's largest cities, where a 15-story building collapsed, leaving a few floors intact.

"I was on the 8th floor and all of a sudden I was down here," said Fernando Abarzua, marveling that he escaped with no major injuries. He said a relative was still trapped in the rubble six hours after the quake, "but he keeps shouting, saying he's OK."

Chilean state television reported that 209 inmates escaped from prison in the city of Chillan, near the epicenter, after a fire broke out.

In the capital of Santiago, 200 miles (325 kilometers) to the northeast, the national Fine Arts Museum was badly damaged and an apartment building's two-story parking lot pancaked, smashing about 50 cars whose alarms rang incessantly.

A car dangled from a collapsed overpass while overturned vehicles lay scattered below. "I can now say in all surety that seat belts save lives in automobiles," said Cristian Alcaino, who survived the fall in his car.

While most modern buildings survived, a bell tower collapsed on the Nuestra Senora de la Providencia church and several hospitals were evacuated due to damage.

Santiago's airport was closed, with smashed windows, partially collapsed ceilings and destroyed pedestrian walkways in the passenger terminals. The capital's subway was shut as well, and transportation was further limited because hundreds of buses were stuck behind a damaged bridge.

Chile's main seaport, in Valparaiso about 75 miles (120 kilometers) from Santiago, was ordered closed while damage was assessed. Two oil refineries shut down, and lines of cars snaked out of service stations across the country as nervous drivers rushed to fill up.

The state-run Codelco, the world's largest copper producer, halted work at two of its mines, although it said it expected them to resume operations quickly, the newspaper La Tercera reported.

President-elect Sebastian Pinera angrily reported seeing some looting while flying over damaged areas. He vowed "to fight with maximum energy looting attempts that I saw with my own eyes."

The jolt set off a tsunami that swamped San Juan Bautista village on Robinson Crusoe Island off Chile, killing at least five people and leaving 11 missing, said Guillermo de la Masa, head of the government emergency bureau for the Valparaiso region. He said the huge waves also damaged several government buildings on the island.

Pedro Forteza, a pilot who frequently flies to the island, said, "The village was destroyed by the waves, including the historic cemetery. I would say that 20 or 30 percent has disappeared."

On the mainland, several huge waves inundated part of the major port city of Talcahuano, near the hard-hit city of Concepcion. A large boat was swept more than a block inland. Pinera flew over the area and said an unspecified number of people had died in Talacahuano.

Waves also flooded hundreds of houses in the town of Vichato, in the BioBio region.

The surge of water raced across the Pacific, setting off alarm sirens in Hawaii, Polynesia and Tonga and prompting warnings across all 53 nations ringing the vast ocean.

Tsunami waves washed across Hawaii, where little damage was reported. The U.S. Navy moved a half-dozen vessels out of Pearl Harbor as a precaution, Navy spokesman Lt. Myers Vasquez said. Shore-side Hilo International Airport was closed. In California, officials said a 3-foot (1-meter) surge in Ventura Harbor pulled loose several navigational buoys.

The first tsunami waves hit Japan's outlying islands early Sunday, but while the initial waves were small and most of the Pacific islands already in its path had been spared damage, officials warned a bigger surge could follow.

Japan's Meteorological Agency said the first waves were recorded in the Ogasawara islands. It was just 4 inches (10 centimeters) high. Another, measuring about 12 inches (30 centimeters), was observed in Hokkaido, to the north. There were no reports of damage.

About 13 million people live in the area where shaking from the quake was strong to severe, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. USGS geophysicist Robert Williams said the Chilean quake was hundreds of times more powerful than Haiti's magnitude-7 quake, though it was deeper and cost far fewer lives.

More than 50 aftershocks topped magnitude 5, including one of magnitude 6.9.

A tremor also hit northern Argentina, causing a wall to collapse in Salta, killing an 8-year-old boy and injuring two of his friends, police said. The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude-6.3 quake was unrelated to Chile's disaster.

The largest earthquake ever recorded struck the same area of Chile on May 22, 1960. The magnitude-9.5 quake killed 1,655 people and left 2 million homeless. It caused a tsunami that killed people in Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines and caused damage along the west coast of the United States.

Saturday's quake matched a 1906 temblor off the Ecuadorean coast as the seventh-strongest ever recorded in the world.

Associated Press writer Roberto Candia reported this story from Talca and Eva Vergara from Santiago. AP writers Eduardo Gallardo in Santiago and Sandy Kozel in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/articl...JDhW8QD9E503D80]]> Sun, 28 Feb 2010 02:04:04 -0500 93351 http://www.dreamteammoney.com/index.php?showtopic=93015 Filipino group helps women find life outside of trafficking

Angeles City, Philippines (CNN) -- Sitting in the backyard garden of a women's outreach center, a woman recounts a life that seems to belie her young age of 20 and her name, Joy.
"I started working as a prostitute in Fields Avenue when I was 15," said Joy, a native of this city in the northern Philippines.
"I needed the money to support my baby, as I was already so poor. But after awhile the bar's "mamasan" (the name given to a woman who oversees work in businesses such as brothels and bars) said I should go to Malaysia to work, where I could make a lot more money."
After her mamasan organized the contract, Joy found herself working in Sandakan in eastern Malaysia, but the promise of good money and working conditions quickly evaporated.
"First I was made to take drugs. Then I was made to service as many as 20 men a day. If I refused they threatened to put me in jail without food," she said.
World's Untold Stories: Undercover to combat child sex slavery
The traffickers refused to let her go home, and she was only able to make her way back after her grandmother's continual pleading with Philippine government officials. Six weeks later, Joy returned to Angeles without having received a cent.
Broken financially and in spirit and determined to leave Angeles' sex industry, Joy was able to make contact with a non-government organization called the Renew Foundation, established in Angeles in 2005 in order to help eradicate trafficking and empower victims of prostitution.
Funded by individual donations, as well as grants from UNAIDS and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Renew offers shelter-based programs, housing, food, legal representation and education courses, all of which aim to help women return to their families or reintegrate into the community.

Renew also has a keen interest in helping child victims of the sex trade; an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 children in the Philippines are involved in prostitution rings, according to Minette Rimando, a spokeswoman for the U.N.'S International Labour Organization's Manila office.
"Most child prostitutes are recruited from rural areas to work in urban areas or even abroad," she said. "They are exposed to hazards that include contraction of STDs, physical violence and harmful psychological effects."
Cities such as Angeles can present all of these hazards for girls and women.
A two-hour drive north of Manila, Angeles (pronounced "angle-ease") sits opposite what used to be the massive Clark U.S. Air base.
In 1991 the cataclysmic volcanic eruption of nearby Mount Pinatubo helped prematurely close the base, culminating in some lean years for Angeles' well-established prostitution trade, experts said.
But the city's sex industry has since come back, fueled by sex tourists who travel here from all over the world. Many are older men, looking for their version of fun with some help from so-called "viagr*" pills -- sold on street corners like candy, chemical makeup unknown.
The city appears grimy and soulless. There are no pristine beaches or tropical forests, the traffic snarls and the poverty is endemic. But there is sex for sale, it's cheap, and there's a lot of it.
"Mate," an overweight, chain-smoking Australian growls in between gulps of a San Miguel beer as he teeters on a bar stool. "This place is heaven -- the girls are young, the beer's cheap, and it's never cold. What's there not to like?"
Along Angeles' main road of Fields Avenue where Joy once worked, the bars are filled with inebriated men leering at young women walking by. Most of the women are dressed in skimpy outfits and walking shakily as they plod along in poorly made high-heels.
The road is lined by countless bars where sex is readily available from dancers for about 1,200 pesos ($26).

Focusing on those bars and brothels in Angeles City, Renew uses outreach workers to identify women who have been trafficked or abused, said director Paulo Fuller.
"If someone needs help escaping from the industry," he said, "our outreach workers liaise with police and authorities to help initiate a rescue. We also have cards with contact numbers that are distributed throughout the area, and flyers."
Most of those helped fall into four categories: Girls and women subjected to sex trafficking; girls exploited in the commercial sex industry; and girls who are at risk of being prostituted and/or trafficked.
Renew director Fuller claims a high success rate. "Just over 80 percent of the women who come into our program don't return to prostitution," Fuller said. "After providing them with the support they need, like housing, education courses and employment, that's the figure that don't return back to the bars."
Joy has been living at Renew's shelter now for just over two months. She says she's not sure when she'll leave, but wants to try and finish her studies first. "After I leave I hope to get work to support my son and work as a hairdresser or in a beauty salon," she said enthusiastically.
Back at the bar, the chain-smoking Aussie is informed of Joy's harrowing experience in Angeles. He shrugs his shoulders half heartedly, weighing his reply as a bunch of Harleys driven by riders adorned in Swedish flags rumble past.
"I don't know, I mean it's just all a bit of fun. Those girls have a free will, right?" he asks. "Live and let live, I say."
And with that, he walks off down Fields Avenue through the stifling heat, dodging the tumult, lighting up another cigarette.]]> Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:30:48 -0500 93015 http://www.dreamteammoney.com/index.php?showtopic=92972
After losing a short but bloody war over the south Atlantic islands with Britain in 1982, Argentina is furious that the British are about to begin oil drilling operations in the potentially rich seabed around the archipelago.

Argentina escalated the row last week by ordering all ships heading to the Falklands through its waters to first seek permission from Buenos Aires before appealing to other regional powers to follow suit.

On Sunday, Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana took the Argentine case to the Rio Group of Latin American and Caribbean nations, gathering for a two-day meeting in Cancun.

Taiana hopes the group will issue a statement condemning British drilling operations around the islands, which it calls Islas Malvinas.

'Argentina has made significant diplomatic advances among the 33 foreign ministers of Latin America and the Caribbean that strengthen our country' in the dispute, Taiana said in a statement on Sunday.

In Caracas, Chavez, speaking on his radio and television show Alo Presidente, called on queen Elizabeth II to hand over the Falklands to Argentina.

'Look, England, how long are you going to be in Las Malvinas? Queen of England, I'm talking to you... the time for empires are over, haven't you noticed? Return the Malvinas to the Argentine people,' he said.

'The English are still threatening Argentina. Things have changed...

'We are no longer in 1982. If conflict breaks out be sure Argentina will not be alone like it was back then.'

British control of the archipelago is 'anti-historic and irrational,' said Chavez, asking 'why the English speak of democracy but still have a queen?'

Argentina has ramped up the pressure on Britain over the Falkland Islands in recent weeks, warning it will take unspecified measures to stop British oil exploration even if it isn't prepared to go to war again over the islands.

A tug boat hauling a Scottish exploration rig has arrived in the contested waters and is expected to start oil prospecting any day.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Friday he was 'confident' diplomacy could resolve the standoff, while islanders voiced disappointment at tensions over the drilling.

Argentina says Britain, a UN Security Council member, is skirting UN resolutions calling for dialogue on the dispute.

It says UN resolutions recognise the territorial dispute and urge dialogue to settle it.

Taiana will meet UN chief Ban-Ki Moon to encourage talks, Argentina's UN envoy Jorge Arguello has said.

Britain in January rejected Argentina's latest claim to the islands, which it has held and occupied since 1833.

The two countries' rival claims of ownership over the Falklands exploded into war in 1982 after Argentine military rulers seized the islands, only to be defeated and expelled by a British naval force.

The conflict lasted 74 days and cost the lives of 649 Argentine soldiers and 255 from Britain.

The Falkland Islands, known as Las Malvinas in the Spanish-speaking world, lie 450 kilometres (280 miles) off Argentina's southern coast.

Argentina says its territorial waters extend well beyond the archipelago, to the edge of the underwater continental shelf more than 2,000 kilometres away.

]]> Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:02:09 -0500 92972 http://www.dreamteammoney.com/index.php?showtopic=92095 Coroner releases new details about Michael Jackson's death



Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- With Dr. Conrad Murray officially charged in Michael Jackson's death, the Los Angeles coroner has released the autopsy report that said it was a homicide.
The 51-page report gives vivid detail supporting last August's conclusion that Jackson died from "acute propofol intoxication."
Murray told investigators he gave Jackson propofol, a powerful anesthetic, to help him sleep.
An anesthesiology consultant hired by the coroner to review the findings of the investigation said that "there are NO reports of its use for insomnia relief, to my knowledge," according to the report.
"The only reports of its use in homes are cases of fatal abuse (first reported in 1992), suicide, murder and accident," Dr. Selma Calmes wrote.
"The standard of care for administering propofol was not met," she wrote.
Autopsy report lists details of Jackson's death (PDF)
Murray, who was with Jackson when he died, is charged with involuntary manslaughter by acting "without malice" but also "without due caution and circumspection."

Jackson, who hired Murray as his physician while he prepared for what was to have been a series of comeback concerts, called the doctor to his rented Holmby Hills mansion last June 25 at about 1 a.m., the report said.
"The decedent complained of being dehydrated and not being able to sleep," it said.
A police affidavit previously made public said that the doctor told investigators he gave Jackson three anti-anxiety drugs to help him sleep that morning.
Murray told them he had been treating Jackson for insomnia for six weeks at the time of the singer's death. He had given Jackson 50 milligrams of the sedative propofol diluted with the local anesthetic lidocaine every night via an intravenous drip.
The doctor told police he was worried that Jackson was becoming addicted to the drug and was trying to wean him off it.
During the two nights before Jackson's death, Murray said, he put together combinations of other drugs that succeeded in helping Jackson sleep.
Coroner investigators first examined Jackson's body at UCLA Medical Center less than three hours after he was pronounced dead. They used the picture on his California driver's license to confirm it was the singer.
"The decedent's head hair is sparse and is connected to a wig. The decedent's overall skin has patches of light and dark pigmented areas," an investigator wrote.
Jackson suffered permanent hair loss when his scalp caught fire while he was taping a Pepsi commercial in 1984. He was known to wear wigs in public after the mishap.
Jackson's dermatologist, Dr. Arnold Klein, told CNN last year that he had treated Jackson for vitiligo, a skin condition that causes irregular patches of white skin.
Jackson weighed 136 pounds and was 69 inches tall, according to measurements taken during the autopsy the morning after his death.
The front of Jackson's scalp, from his hairline, was tattooed with dark ink over "frontal balding." His eyebrows and the border of his eyelids were also tattooed.
"There is a pink tattoo in the region of the lips," the report said.
The autopsy report noted several broken ribs, apparently suffered during the efforts to revive him.
The autopsy also said that Jackson's left lung was affected by "widespread respiratory bronchiolitis and chronic lung inflammation" that could have had an "adverse health effect." But it was not "considered to be a direct or contributing cause of death," a pathologist hired as a consultant concluded.
Calmes, the consultant, concluded that propofol was administered without the recommended equipment being present, including a "continuous pulse oxymeter, EKG and blood pressure cuff."
Use of the anesthesia requires "full patient monitoring by a person trained in anesthesia," she wrote. Murray is a cardiologist.
"There was no evidence of an infusion pump for control of an IV infusion. No monitors were found at the scene; a blood pressure cuff and portable pulse oxymeter were recovered from a closet in the next room," Calmes wrote.
The consultant said supplemental oxygen "should always be delivered" when propofol is being administered.
An oxygen tank was found near where Jackson slept, but it was empty when the coroner investigator checked it two weeks after Jackson died, Calmes said.
"Multiple opened bottles of propofol were found with small amounts of remaining drug," Calmes said. "A used bottle should be discarded six hours after opening, to avoid possible bacterial growth."
"The levels of propofol found on toxicology exam are similar to those found during general anesthesia for major surgery," Calmes said.
During such surgery, any patient would be "intubated and ventilated by an anesthesiologist," she said.
The consultant's report said the level of lorazepam, a powerful anti-anxiety agent found in Jackson's body, "would have accentuated the respiratory and cardiovascular depression from propofol."
An involuntary manslaughter charge against a physician is a "very unusual thing to see," according to Dr. Bruce Cranner, a New Orleans defense lawyer in medical cases.
Cranner said prosecutors may have a "pretty good case" against Murray if they can show he did not take proper precautions when giving Jackson the propofol.]]> Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:16:29 -0500 92095