Month: December 2004

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    Mexican City Bans Indoor Nudity


    MEXICO CITY – Alarmed by glimpses of sweaty citizens in the buff, the city council in the southeastern city of Villahermosa has adopted a law banning indoor nudity, officials confirmed Wednesday.






     

    The regulation, which takes effect on Jan. 1, calls for as much as 36 hours in jail or a fine of 1,356 pesos ($121) for offenders in the Tabasco state capital, 410 miles east of Mexico City.


    “We are talking about zero tolerance … for a lack of morality,” said city councilwoman Blanca Estela Pulido of the Revolutionary Institutional Party, which governs the state and city.


    “The majority of houses have a lot of ventilation, and we give ourselves the luxury of going naked,” Pulido said. “Because we walk past the windows, you see a lot of things.”


     

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    Bra fitting course for students


    School leavers are being offered the chance to study how to fit a bra.


    Britain’s largest exam board, Edexcel, is running a course for high street stores.


    It will result in students getting a certificate of excellence.


    Shops asked for the course because they are worried many shoppers do not know how to buy the right bra and often staff do not know how to help them.


    Michelle Wallace, head of development at Debenhams, said: “We want our staff to have a more rounded knowledge of the subject.”


     

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    A Leicester City supporter bares his chest during the English First Division soccer match against Nottingham Forest at the City ground, Nottingham, England , on Friday.


     

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    Researchers find why people collect strange things


     

    By Cindy Hadish


        UI researchers have pinpointed an area of the brain that appears to control collecting behavior. Findings have shed light on what drives people to collect and may lead to treatment for compulsive collectors.   


    Patients with abnormal collecting behavior showed damage to a part of the right prefrontal lobes of the cortex.When that part of the brain is injured, Dr. Steven Anderson said, the collecting urge loses its guidance.


    He noted primitive collecting behavior occurs in squirrels and other animals, including humans. While most animals collect food to survive, humans might collect art or other valuables.


    Unlike stamps or other typical collections, patients with abnormal collecting behavior fill their homes with vast quantities of useless items such as junk mail, and they resist discarding the collections.


       Not all people who accumulate unusual collections have suffered brain damage. For example, Anderson said a difference exists between those patients and the Depressionera generation who collect aluminum foil or other items they think they might need. The collection itself or act of collecting interferes with compulsive collectors’ daily lives.


       ‘‘They’ve lost that modulator for their collecting,’’ he said. ‘‘The ability to place a value on something — that’s what’s lost in these people.’’


       Anderson said the findings may have implications for understanding neurological conditions such as obsessivecompulsive disorder and schizophrenia, in which abnormal collecting behavior occurs but the patient has no detectable brain defect.

     

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    Draft talk may resurface



    General warns recruiting lull could revive talk of a draft

    By Richard Whittle

    The Dallas Morning News


    WASHINGTON – Army Reserve recruiting is in a “precipitous decline” that could provoke new debate over a draft if not slowed, the Reserve’s top general said Monday.


    Lt. Gen. James R. “Ron” Helmly – who said he opposes reinstituting a draft – blamed the bureaucracy for dragging its feet implementing new bonuses for recruits and re-enlistments.


    If the trend continues, said Helmly, his arm of the Army could fall more than 5,000 soldiers short of its mandated end-strength.


     

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    Take the LEVITRA Challenge

     



    ” Men who experience an erection for more than four hours should seek immediate medical attention.”


    http://www.levitra.com/


     

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    December 21, 2004

    You are an ethics expert: is it right to use someone else’s credit card to pay for sex?


    From Adam Sage in Paris


    A prominent French magistrate could face disciplinary action after he allegedly stole a German colleague’s credit card to pay for a prostitute, having earlier delivered an hour-long speech on ethics.


    Pierre Hontang, the state prosecutor in Bayonne, southwest France, will be suspended by the French Justice Ministry after suggestions of improper conduct during a conference in Germany this year.


     

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    <br /> Click for Large Photo 


    Pentagon Interrogators ‘Impersonated’ FBI- E-Mails

     






    Mon Dec 20, 8:18 PM ET

    By Will Dunham

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An FBI e-mail said that President Bush had issued an executive order authorizing a series of harsh methods for interrogations.



    FBI e-mails dating from December 2003 and January 2004 complained of “DOD (Department of Defense) interrogators impersonating Supervisory Special Agents of the FBI” at Guantanamo.


    A Dec. 5, 2003, e-mail said that “these tactics have produced no intelligence of a threat neutralization nature” and that the “techniques have destroyed any chance of prosecuting this detainee.”


    “If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done (by) the ‘FBI’ interrogators. The FBI will (be) left holding the bag before the public,” the e-mail said.


    The impersonation “was approved by the Dep Sec Def,” a Jan. 21, 2004, e-mail stated, referring to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon ‘s No. 2 official.


    A May 22, 2004, e-mail, sent by an FBI agent in Iraq to senior FBI officials, referred repeatedly to what it said was an executive order signed by Bush, listing some of the methods the order authorized.


    These included sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation by forcing detainees to wear hoods, the use of military dogs and stress positions such as forced squatting for an extended period, the e-mail stated.


    A heavily redacted June 25 FBI memo titled “URGENT REPORT” to the FBI director, provided details from someone “who observed serious physical abuses of civilian detainees” in Iraq.

    “He described that such abuses included strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings, and unauthorized interrogations,” the document stated. The memo also mentioned “cover-up of these abuses.”


     

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    Merriam-Webster’s Words of the Year 2004

    Based on your online lookups, the #1 Word of the Year for 2004 was


    Blog noun [short for Weblog] (1999) : a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer

    Click on each of the other words in the Top Ten List for their definitions in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:


     2. incumbent
     3. electoral
     4. insurgent
     5. hurricane
     6. cicada
     7. peloton : noun (1951) : the main body of riders in a bicycle race
     8. partisan
     9. sovereignty
    10. defenestration

     

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    Police Shooter No-Billed By Grand Jury


    12/10/04
    http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/366 /nojusticetml.shtml


    A Muscogee County, Georgia, grand jury refused November 23 to indict former Deputy David Glisson in the December 10, 2003, killing of 39-year-old black man Kenneth Walker. Walker was killed by two shots to the head after being pulled out of a vehicle drug agents mistakenly thought was that of a Florida drug dealer. He was unarmed. There were no drugs 

    The grand jury deliberated for 41 minutes after hearing from seven witnesses — five of them police officers — and watching a videotape of the shooting captured from by a police vehicle camera. According to accounts of those who have seen the videotape, the video shows no struggle, just the startling sound of two shots, with surprised officers milling around. It also shows Walker lying on the ground unattended for two minutes before officers began first aid attempts.

    The grand jury’s decision means there is no chance former Deputy Glisson will face state criminal charges. But the US Department of Justice could seek to file a criminal or civil case against Glisson for civil rights violations.