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Discuss Latest News/Events / Ahmadinejad's old Peugeot sees million dollar bid

« on: January 01, 2011, 07:50:35 AM »

TEHRAN - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 1977 Peugeot 504 has received a one million dollar bid after the car was put on an international auction Saturday, state media reported.

Iran's official IRNA news agency quoted Ahmad Esfandiari, the head of Iran's Welfare Organisation, as saying the bid had come from an Arab country. He did not offer details.

Ahmadinejad on Saturday launched a website (www.ahmadinejad-car.com) to invite international bids for his car, with the proceeds to fund a project to build 60,000 homes for the disabled and to needy women who are providing for their families.

The website will accept bids for a period of one month, the report said.

Ahmadinejad has always cultivated an image as a "people's president" and friend of the poor.

After his election to his first term as president in 2005, he was required by law to make an asset declaration and he listed a then 40-year-old 175-square-metre (1,900-square-foot) house in a lower-middle class part of east Tehran, the contents of two bank accounts and the ageing white Peugeot.

Following his controversial re-election last year, he vowed to put "housing, employment and economic reform" at the top of his agenda after house prices soared during his first term of office.

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Discuss Latest News/Events / Ahmadinejad slapped by top Revolutionary Guard: WikiLeaks

« on: December 30, 2010, 01:58:07 PM »

The chief of the Revolutionary Guard angrily slapped Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in early 2010, as Tehran was still dealing with the fallout from last year's election, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable.

The cable, written in February, said Revolutionary Guard Chief of Staff Mohammed Ali Jafari blamed Ahmadinejad for the post-election "mess" in 2009, which saw the country roundly criticized by the West amid allegations of fraud and tough crackdowns on large-scale protests in Tehran.

The guard was founded after the Islamic revolution in 1979 to prevent dissident activity and is a strong internal force within the country, with economic and military wings.

Jafari is seen as close to the most conservative Iranian elements, but Ahmedinejad himself is also deemed a stalwart hawk.

The cable, titled "He who got slapped," quotes an Iran watcher in Baku, Azerbaijan, who related that Ahmedinejad felt that in the aftermath of the post-election street protests, which turned violent, "people feel suffocated."

In a meeting with his national security council, the president "mused that to defuse the situation it may be necessary to allow more personal and social freedoms, including more freedom of the press," according to the source.

This provoked an angry retort from Jafari, according to the cable:

"You are wrong! (In fact) it is YOU who created this mess! And now you say give more freedom to the press?!"

The top guard then slapped the president in the face "causing an uproar and an immediate call for a break in the meeting" which did not resume for another two weeks, the cable said.

It took the intervention of Ayatollah Ahmad Janati, a senior member of the top oversight body, the Guardian Council, to get Jafari and Ahmedinejad back to the table, according to the cable.

The source cited in the cable released by WikiLeaks "predicted that events are trending towards major developments and a new phases" during 2010.
 
 

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Discuss Latest News/Events / Senior Arab officials have links with CIA, Assange claims

« on: December 30, 2010, 01:50:52 PM »

Manama: Senior officials in several Arab countries have close links with the CIA and many people keep visiting US embassies in their countries to establish links with the US intelligence agency, Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks whistle-blowing website, said.

“These officials are spies for the US in their countries,” Assange told pan-Arab Al Jazeera channel in an interview on Wednesday evening.

The interviewer, Ahmad Mansour, said during the second part of the interview, that Assange had shown him the files that contained the names of some top Arab officials with alleged links with the CIA, Qatari daily The Peninsula reported on Thursday.

However, neither Assange nor Mansour however divulged the names of these officials.

According to the WikiLeaks founder, US embassies around the world are very anxious about Israel, Iran, labour unions, arms dealings, mainly selling of American arms, and spying through high-tech devices.

Assange said he feared he could be killed, but added that there were 2,000 websites that were ready to publish the remaining files that are in possession of WikiLeaks after “he has been done away with."

“If I am killed or detained for a long time, there are 2,000 websites ready to publish the remaining files. We have protected these websites through very safe passwords,” Assange told the Doha-based network.

Currently, the whistle-blowing website is exposing files in a ‘responsible’ manner, he said.

"But if I am forced, we could go to the extreme and expose each and every file that we have access to," he said. "We must protect our sources at whatever cost. This is our sincere concern."

"WikiLeaks is receiving sensitive files from Afghanistan, Kenya, Russia and China, among other countries. For nine years the US and Nato forces have failed to silence people in Afghanistan because the people there are loyal and truthful. The US marines fighting in Afghanistan are not happy being there and don’t really know why they are there and fighting for what," said Assange.

The US is trying to use latest technology to disrupt his website but in vain. “Washington is also projecting me as a terrorist and wants to convince the world that I am another Osama bin Laden,” he said.

Assange said that he would be put on a trial for his various exposes from January 11 in a special court that deals with terror-related cases.

“If the UK, where I am based right now, decides to hand me over to Sweden for alleged cases of sexual abuse, Stockholm will hand me over to the US,” he said.

The Australian national said he feared that the US might slap laws declaring him as a spy who had been acting against Washington. The Pentagon has set up a ‘war room’ manned by 120 officials and their job is just to disrupt and destroy WikiLeaks, he said.

“We have more files dealing with defense issues of Central Europe, but I or my staff didn’t have the time to go through all of them. What is being published by the five media partners of WikiLeaks are only those details which they think are interesting for their readers," he said, quoted by the Qatari daily.

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Discuss Latest News/Events / Housewife saves husband from wolf

« on: December 25, 2010, 12:25:07 PM »

DUBAI - A housewife has saved her husband from the clutches of a wolf in rural Saudi Arabia, local daily Arab News reported on Saturday.

The woman went out to look for her husband after he did not return from tending their goats to find him being attacked by the wolf, according to the newspaper.

The woman ran back to their house and returned with a kitchen knife and stabbed the animal to death, Arab News reported.

The husband, in his 70s, had been fending off the wolf for more than an hour before his wife turned up, according to the newspaper. The report did not give wife's age.

The family have hung the wolf’s body from a tree in front of the house to scare off other wolves, a custom in rural areas, Arab News reported.
Women power

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Discuss Latest News/Events / Muslims can take part in non-Muslim festivals

« on: December 23, 2010, 10:37:34 AM »

DUBAI - Muslims can take part in religious festivals of other faiths if the purpose of their attendance is to attract non-Muslims to Islam, a senior Saudi scholar said in remarks published on Thursday in the run-up to Christmas.

Dr Ghaith bin Muhammad al-Sheikh al-Mubarak, member of the Council of Senior Ulema (scholars), said by attending festivals of other faiths Muslims could help to “pacify their souls”, according to local daily the Saudi Gazette.

The scholar said when a Muslim rejects an invitation to attend such a festival it could alienate non-Muslims and divert them from the right path, the newspaper reported.

Saudi King Abdullah earlier this year issued a decree stating that only members of the Council of Senior Ulema were allowed to issue fatwas.

The limitation was imposed following a number of fatwas by individual clerics that caused disputes and dissent among Muslims, decree said.

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Discuss Latest News/Events / Western media reluctant to publish WikiLeaks cables about Israel

« on: December 23, 2010, 06:41:11 AM »

Manama: Western papers have been reluctant to publish diplomatic cables containing information about Israel, WikiLeaks site founder has said.

“There are 3,700 files related to Israel and the source of 2,700 files is Israel,” Julian Assange told Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV.

“The Guardian, El-Pais and Le Monde have published only two percent of the files related to Israel due to the sensitive relations between Germany, France and Israel. Even New York Times could not publish more due to the sensitivities related to the Jewish community in the US,” Assange said in the interview telecast live from the UK on Wednesday evening.

http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/qatar/western-media-reluctant-to-publish-wikileaks-cables-about-israel-1.734817

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Discuss Latest News/Events / Saudi girls' schools probed over sports meet: report

« on: December 21, 2010, 07:55:54 AM »

RIYADH - Private Saudi girls' high schools are being investigated by the education ministry for holding an "illegal" sports tournament, the Arab News reported Tuesday.

The groundbreaking December 8 event involving 200 females from six Jeddah private high schools broke ministry rules against girls' sports in schools, a ministry official told the newspaper.

"We don't have any regulations that say that it's okay for girls' schools to hold sports classes or training," said Ahmed Al-Zahrani, director of girls' education in Jeddah.

"This tournament was held by these schools, something that has now led us to know about their illegal activities," he said.

Women's access to sports overall is tightly constricted in Saudi Arabia, which is governed according to an ultra-strict version of Islam. Women cannot participate in the Saudi Olympics team, and are not allowed to attend public football matches.

While a few women-only private clubs and private women's universities offer sporting possibilities, sports are prohibited at primary and secondary schools for girls.

The tournament was hosted by the private Effat University and included basketball, badminton, swimming and athletics.

"I was surprised to receive a letter from the Ministry of Education questioning me about the competition and the reason why it was held in the first place," Farida Farsi, chairwoman of Al-Hamra Schools, told Arab News.

"I also received a huge number of letters and telephone calls from conservative Saudi men and sheikhs who said that I should've known better and advised me not to hold such competitions in the future because it’s not lady-like," she said

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Discuss Latest News/Events / Former soldier talks about slaying of Iraqi family

« on: December 20, 2010, 07:01:34 AM »

http://gulfnews.com/news/region/iraq/former-soldier-talks-about-slaying-of-iraqi-family-1.733025

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Discuss Latest News/Events / WikiLeaks founder Assange arrested in UK

« on: December 07, 2010, 06:59:26 AM »

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange surrendered to London police Tuesday as part of a Swedish sex-crimes investigation, the latest blow to an organization that faces legal, financial and technological challenges after releasing hundreds of secret U.S. diplomatic cables.

Assange was due at Westminster Magistrate’s Court later Tuesday. If he challenges his extradition to Sweden, he will likely be remanded into U.K. custody or released on bail until another judge rules on whether to extradite him, a spokeswoman for the extradition department said on customary condition of anonymity.

Since beginning to release the diplomatic cables last week, WikiLeaks has seen its bank accounts canceled and its web sites attacked. The U.S. government has launched a criminal investigation, saying the group has jeopardized U.S. national security and diplomatic efforts around the world.

The legal troubles for Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, stem from allegations leveled against him by two women he met in Sweden over the summer.

Assange is accused of rape and sexual molestation in one case and of sexual molestation and unlawful coercion in another.

Assange denies the allegations, which his British attorney Mark Stephens says stem from a “dispute over consensual but unprotected sex.”

Assange and Stephens have suggested the prosecution is being manipulated for political reasons — a claim that Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny has rejected. Ny was not commenting on the Assange arrest until later Tuesday.

A spokesman for WikiLeaks called Assange’s arrest an attack on media freedom and said it won’t prevent the organization from releasing more secret documents.

“This will not change our operation,” Kristinn Hrafnsson said.

But Hrafnsson also said the group had no plans at the moment to release the key to a heavily encrypted version of some of its most important documents — an “insurance” file that has been distributed to supporters in case of an emergency.

Hrafnsson said that will only come into play if “grave matters” involving Wikileaks staff occur — but did not elaborate on what those would be.
Beginning in July, WikiLeaks angered the U.S. government by releasing tens of thousands of secret U.S. military documents.

That was followed by the ongoing release of what WikiLeaks says will eventually be a quarter-million cables from U.S. diplomatic posts around the world. The group provided those documents to five major newspapers, which have been working with WikiLeaks to edit the cables for publication.

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Discuss Latest News/Events / How crooks fake an ATM and steal your money

« on: December 05, 2010, 09:17:30 AM »

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40496218/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/gt1=43001