Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Monday 3 August 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 02 Aug 2015 01:41 PM PDT

A female Australian artist was arrested and jailed in Abu Dhabi for “writing bad words on social media,” after reportedly posting a picture of a car parked across two disabled parking spots on Facebook.
Jodi Magi, 39, was arrested by United Arab Emirates police and put into prison, after being found guilty of “writing bad words on social media about a person,” ABC reported.
“No one is talking to me, no one is telling me what’s going on,” Magi said. “And they were about to put me in male lock-up and then they turned me away – no one knows what to do with me. I’m pretty scared.”
Magi reportedly took a picture of a car parked across two parking spots for the disabled, but with no permit stickers visible. When posting the image to Facebook, she blackened out the license plate number and did not mention any names.
After being detained, Magi said she was driven around in a car for around four hours. She was also forced to sign several documents in Arabic without any translation. It is not yet known how for long she will be imprisoned.
Magi has been living in Abu Dhabi since 2012, teaching design and working on her art projects, which include political satire.
She said that the Australian embassy has failed to provide any real help, aside from advising her to get a lawyer.
“I’m not sure if it was me being naive. I was under the impression that embassies were in countries to help their citizens in times of difficulty,” she said. “But from my experience it seems that their job here seems to be to generate business and they have no interest in anything other than that.”
In a statement to ABC, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) said that it “continues to provide consular assistance to an Australian woman detained in Abu Dhabi and that for privacy reasons they cannot provide any more information.”
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Posted: 02 Aug 2015 01:20 PM PDT

Milos Zeman is sure the West is to blame for illigal migration crisis in the EU.
The current migrant crisis in Europe is the result of the Western interference in the regional countries’ internal affairs, Czech President Milos Zeman said Sunday.
In recent months, Europe has faced the biggest wave of undocumented immigration in years, with thousands of people risking a sea jorney to Europe to flee violence in North Africa and the Middle East.
“The current wave of migration [to Europe] is rooted in the crazy [US] idea to invade Iraq, which allegedly had weapons of mass destruction, but nothing was found,” Zeman said in an interview with the Czech Blesk newspaper.
In March 2003, a US-led coalition which initially included Britain, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq, accusing its leader Saddam Hussein of supporting terrorism and having weapons of mass destruction.
The international community’s desire to “restore order” in Libya and Syria resulted in the escalation of conflicts in both countries, leading to people leaving their homes, Zeman added.
“It is not only the United States who is to blame for this, because some EU member states coordinated the operations against Libya,” Zeman said.
The president added he was planning to speak at the regular session of the UN General Assembly later this year and wanted to suggest the United Nations to create military formations to destroy terrorist training camps.
In 2011, as civil war in Libya began, a multi-state coalition, which mostly included NATO member states, began a military intervention in the country aiming to establish an immediate ceasefire. The intervention ended with a decisive NATO victory, escalation of the conflict in the country and the subsequent murder of the country’s long-standing leader Muammar Gaddafi.
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Posted: 02 Aug 2015 01:04 PM PDT


A federal judge late Friday granted a temporary restraining order against the release of recordings made at an annual meeting of abortion providers. The injunction is against the Center for Medical Progress, the group that has unveiled Planned Parenthood’s participation in the sale of organs harvested from aborted children.
Judge William H. Orrick, III, granted the injunction just hours after the order was requested by the National Abortion Federation.
Orrick was nominated to his position by hardline abortion supporter President Barack Obama. He was also a major donor to and bundler for President Obama’s presidential campaign. Heraised at least $200,000 for Obama and donated $30,800 to committees supporting him, according to Public Citizen.
Even though the National Abortion Federation filed its claim only hours before, Orrick quickly decided in their favor that the abortionists they represent would, ironically, be “likely to suffer irreparable injury, absent an ex parte temporary restraining order, in the form of harassment, intimidation, violence, invasion of privacy, and injury to reputation, and the requested relief is in the public interest.”
Thus far the videos have featured born-alive humans discussing the killing of what abortion providers themselves call “babies,” the “crushing” of their bodies and harvesting of their organs for sale to for-profit companies.
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Posted: 02 Aug 2015 12:56 PM PDT

Flash floods, triggered by monsoon rainfall, have killed more than 100 people across Pakistan over the past weeks.
Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority announced on Sunday that 109 people have died and some 700,000 others have been affected due to heavy flooding.
It added that military engineers had been deployed to the affected areas in the mountainous north to repair roads and bridges and help rescuers reach people who remain stranded for weeks now.
Pakistani officials have warned of more deaths and destructive consequences should heavy downpour continue.
Around 350,000 people have been evacuated from the banks of the Indus River in the past two days.
River Indus, which flows down from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea, is flooded at several points in southern Sindh province, meteorological department chief Ghulam Rasool said.
Rasool warned that more rain was expected to pour in coming weeks, worsening the situation.
Summer rain monsoon starts in Pakistan from around mid-July and lasts until about the end of August.
Last year’s monsoon left nearly 400 people dead and destroyed thousands of acres of farmland.
Indus River
The Indus river, also called the Sindhu, begins from a mountain spring way in the Himalyas and is fed with glaciers and rivers from the same mountain range.
It is a key water source for Pakistan, especially in the Punjab province, which accounts for a notable share of the country’s agricultural production.
The word Punjab means “five rivers”, and the five rivers in Punjab are Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, all of which finally flow into the Indus.
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Posted: 02 Aug 2015 12:48 PM PDT

Four people, including the pilot, were killed when a light aircraft crashed at a car auction in Blackbushe Airport, Hampshire. Media reports suggest the plane was registered to a Saudi company owned by the Bin Laden family.
There were no survivors in the crash, as the pilot and three passengers died in the incident, Inspector Olga Venner from the Hampshire Constabulary told reporters at the scene. She confirmed that no one on the ground was injured. An investigation into the crash has been launched.
Meanwhile, reports published by UK media outlets, including the Daily Mail and Mirror, have alleged that the jet – an $11 million Embraer Phenom 300 – was owned by Jeddah-based Salem Aviation, a company named after Osama bin Laden’s elder cousin, who himself was an amateur pilot and died in a plane crash.
The jet’s registration number, HZ-IBN, was used by Osama bin Laden’s father, Mohammed. Mohammed, also a victim of an aircraft accident, used the same ID when he crashed in a small Beechcraft plane in 1967. However, the family is believed to have retained the number.
The Phenom was reportedly returning from Milan and was attempting to land when it crashed.
Blackbushe Airport issued a statement that the plane had crashed at the end of the runway while landing.
Footage from the crash has been released on social media showing the aircraft ablaze, as black smoke rises from the wreckage. The witness described the scene as “very sad.”
Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service said they were called to the scene at 3.10pm.
The aircraft is said to have missed the runway and crashed into a British Car Auctions site.
The South East Coast Ambulance service sent out a tweet confirming they had received reports of four casualties after the incident.
The Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation tweeted that it “regrets to inform of an accident of a Saudi registered-private aircraft today in the UK.”
Saudi and British media reported that the stepmother and sister of Osama bin Laden are believed to have been among the victims of the plane crash.
The Al Qaeda leader was killed by US special forces in Pakistan’s Abbottabad in 2011.
In a message posted on the Saudi Embassy’s official Twitter account, Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf Al Saud offered condolences to the Bin Laden family.
“His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdul Aziz, the ambassador of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques to the United Kingdom, offered his condolences to the sons of the late Mohammed bin Laden and their relations for the grave incident of the crash of the plane carrying members of the family at Blackbushe airport.”
Eyewitness Joe Ramos told Eagle 964 Radio there was a “loud bang” and his son came into the auction hall saying “a plane had gone down.”
The aircraft “missed the runway” and crashed into the auctions site located at the airport, the spokesperson said.
Daphne Knowles, 70, told local reporters he was in a field with cattle when he heard an aircraft “coming very, very fast from behind me.”
“Two people said they thought it had to swerve to miss another aircraft as it went in, but I didn’t see that myself and can’t confirm, then there was a huge black cloud of smoke which went up.”
Knowles said it appeared the aircraft “tried to land at Blackbushe having travelled northwards.”
A spokesman for the Air Accidents Investigation Branch said: “The AAIB are aware and have deployed a team.”
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 17:27