Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Italy approves draft law to ban burqa


An Italian parliamentary commission has approved a draft law banning women from wearing veils that cover their faces in public.
The draft, which was passed by the constitutional affairs commission on Tuesday, would prohibit women from going in public wearing a burqa, niqab or any other garment that covers the face. It would expand a decades-old law that for security reasons prohibits people from wearing face-covering items such as masks in public places.
Women who violate the ban would face fines, while third parties who forced women to cover their faces in public would be fined and face up to 12 months in jail.
Italy is the latest European country to act against the burqa. France and Belgium have banned the wearing of burqa-style Islamic dress in public, as has a city in Spain. The Belgian law cited security concerns.
The Italian law was sponsored by Souad Sbai, a Moroccan-born member of Silvio Berlusconi's conservative Freedom People party who said she wanted to help Islamic women integrate more into Italian society.
"Five years ago no one wore the burqa [in Italy]. Today there is always more. We have to help women get out of this segregation ... to get out of this submission," Sbai said in a telephone interview. "I want to speak for those who don't have a voice, who don't have the strength to yell and say: 'I am not doing well.'"
The spokesman of an Islamic group said banning the Islamic veil "is unjust and touches individual liberty".
"This topic continues to be a sort of criminalisation and media dramatisation. In Italy there aren't even 100 women who wear the niqab and not even one who wears the burqa," Roberto Hamza Piccard, spokesman for the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy, was quoted by the news agency Ansa as saying. He said such a ban would isolate devout Muslim women, who would not be able to leave their homes.
Ansa said the main opposition party voted against the law. The draft will be forwarded after the summer recess to parliament, where Berlusconi's governing coalition has a narrow majority.
The preliminary approval was welcomed by lawmaker Barbara Saltamartini, vice-president of the Freedom People party caucus in the lower house.
"Final approval will put an end to the suffering of many women who are often forced to wear the burqa or niqab, which annihilates their dignity and gets in the way of integration," Saltamartini said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/03/italy-draft-law-burqa

http://www.FrontlineMobility.com
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Police are trying to defuse a bomb that has been strapped to a teenage girl in Sydney's exclusive Mosman

Assistant police commissioner Mark Murdoch did not confirm whether the 18-year-old girl was a victim of an extortion attempt - instead he said police were still unsure what they were dealing with.

"We don't know what we are dealing with...we are working very hard to find out exactly what it is, and equally important, what it isn't," Mr Murdoch said.

He said the girl was extremely calm despite the ordeal, with specialist officers with her.

Assistant police commissioner Mark Murdoch described the situation as a "very serious and sensitive matter".

"We are still treating the suspicious package as live," he said.

"I can't confirm whether it is strapped to the woman involved but she is still in the vicinity of the device."


When asked whether the girl could move away from the bomb, Mr Murdoch said: "No, she can't get away from it."

Mr Murdoch said police had to "hasten slowly" in a situation as delicate as this.
The drama unfolded at 2.40pm Wednesday afternoon when an 18-year-old girl called police to the mansion in Burrawong Avenue, Mosman  'following discovery of a suspicious device'.
It was not clear how the device came to be strapped to the girl but it is understood she did not place it there herself.
A senior police police officer described the device as an unusual 'collar bomb'  which has never been seen before in Australia.
He said they believed it was an extortion attempt and that the initial details of the situation were being conveyed to police via the girl's father.
The girl, who is part of one of Sydney's wealthiest families is understood to be 'absolutely petrified'.
Police believe the ransom note is attached to her neck but bomb experts have been unable at this point to read its contents.
The street is home to racing identity Gai Waterhouse, ex-Wallaby Phil Kearns and John Eales.
Do you know more about this story. Contact us at news@dailytelegraph.com.au or 9288 2618
Police cordoned off the house and a command post has been set-up on the corner of Burrawong Ave and David Street.
Police Bomb Squad officers are currently examining the device, while other emergency services are in support at the scene with the teen's parents.
A third police rescue vehicle has entered the crime scene, as well as a number of detectives.
The girl is only in Year 12 and is believed to be studying her HSC this year. She celebrated her 18th birthday three weeks ago.
Her parents are outside the home comforting each other.

Police said they could not elaborate except to say a 'delicate operation' was in progress.
Assistant Commissioner Mark Murdoch described the operation as a "very painstaking" one.
"The device we are examining is proving a tough nut to crack and we are trying to determine what it is and what it isn't," he said.
Four police officers, including specialist negotiators, were with the girl all afternoon.
Not even the panic-stricken parents have been able to talk to their daughter.
"The officers with her are doing their utmost to keep her calm," Mr Murdoch said.
"It is extremely tough for her but she's holding up very well.
"The parents are doing it even tougher than she is...they are certainly parents who care a great deal about their daughter."
The street remained in lockdown late last night, with many confused residents and friends of the family still at the scene at midnight.
More than half the street was evacuated and residents told to go to the community hall at Rawson Park for shelter and supplies while police dealt with the situation.
Mr Murdoch said it would have been foolish not to evacuate nearby houses.
"It would be foolish to put other people at risk," he said.

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Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Despite insurance, medical bills push family to bankruptcy


The day their daughter was born should have been one of the happiest of Simon and Marsha Sutherland's lives. Both previously married, they were having their first child together, a 6-pound, 10-ounce, dark-haired girl they would name Ellie Marguerite.
The pregnancy had seemed perfectly healthy. But moments after Ellie made her entrance into the world, doctors ordered her rushed to Winnie Palmer's neonatal intensive-care unit, fearing she'd had a seizure. Marsha didn't even have a chance to hold her daughter in her arms.
Ellie's birth on Aug. 30, 2007, began a 25-day, $74,000 stay in one of the most expensive places in any hospital. More daunting, it would launch a four-year journey of fear, hope, devotion and grief — a journey made all the more difficult by financial devastation.
Ultimately, it led two middle-class parents with good jobs, two major health-insurance policies and a house in suburbia into foreclosure and bankruptcy.
"To this day," Simon said, "we still have creditors calling us, wanting to talk to Ellie. They'll say things like, 'We want to discuss how she's going to take care of this overdue bill.' I just lose it."
Ellie Sutherland died June 26. She was two months shy of her fourth birthday.
Though financial failures often have been blamed on careless consumer borrowing or the widespread layoffs of the recession, the Sutherlands' financial storyline is strikingly common.
Two years ago, researchers at Harvard and Ohio universities reported that 62 percent of all bankruptcies were related to medical debt. An American family, they said, filed for bankruptcy in the aftermath of illness every 90 seconds — and three-quarters of those families had health insurance.
Although the data used for the study is now 4 years old, most experts interviewed said the problem is likely only to have worsened, at least until this year, as out-of-pocket medical costs have continued to spiral.
In addition, widespread layoffs have contributed to the rapid rise in uninsured Americans, who now number more than 59 million. For most of them, any major medical expense threatens to overwhelm their resources, leading to further bankruptcies and driving up costs for those who can pay. According to Families USA — a nonprofit, nonpartisan consumer-advocacy group — the shifting of uncompensated care onto insured patients results in a "hidden health tax."
For an average family health-insurance policy, that means an additional $1,017 a year in deductibles, copays and other out-of-pocket expenses.
Pointing fingers
When Marsha Sutherland became pregnant with Ellie, she was a full-time reading teacher at Windy Ridge School in southwest Orange County. Husband Simon was a manager of a chain pizzeria. Together, they made about $100,000 a year. Each had insurance.
She had two children from a previous marriage; he had three. They had a nice three-bedroom home with plans for a swimming pool — plans they put on hold when they found out about the pregnancy, long before they knew Ellie would have extensive needs.
For most of their daughter's life, Marsha and Simon would have no diagnosis. Ellie was nearly deaf, couldn't sit up and was prone to dangerously high fevers. Half her face had almost no muscle tone, and in the second year, she began scratching at her eyes and cheeks and biting her lip until she bled profusely.
"I'd go to get her up, and she'd be a mess," Marsha said.
Eventually, doctors removed eight of her front teeth to protect her. But in her scratching, Ellie managed to damage one of her corneas.
There were two trips to The Johns Hopkins Hospital. There were extensive blood panels conducted to look for missing genes. And there were almost weekly visits to Central Florida specialists for Ellie's hearing, eyes, spine and gastrointestinal system.
With two insurance companies — Marsha's was the primary coverage — "we were thinking that what one didn't cover, the other would," Simon said. "Instead, they were both pointing the finger at each other, and neither wanted to pay anything. It was a royal battle."
Though Marsha tried to continue working part time, after only a few months it became clear that taking care of Ellie wasn't just full-time; it was virtually around the clock. Simon became the lone breadwinner.
Marsha tried to sign Ellie up for Social Security disability, and when that failed, for Medicaid. Even after the family was down to a single income, though, the couple made too much to qualify.
"I was very overwhelmed at first," Marsha said. "Now I know that the game is that they automatically deny you at least three times — any parent in our world knows that. But back then, I was naive, and I was exhausted trying to keep Ellie going and me going, and I just didn't have it in me at the time to keep up the fight."
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Debt ceiling cost to taxpayers: $18 million


NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The debt ceiling debacle has just cost U.S. taxpayers more than $18 million.
That's the amount of additional interest the government had to pay investors Monday to sell Treasury bills that finance its operations.
To be precise, the extra cost is $18,458,654 more in interest payments than the government would have needed to pay investors just two weeks ago, when they were willing to accept far lower rates before the debt ceiling became a crisis.
"That's real money," said IHS Chief Economist Nariman Behravesh. "Taxpayers need to wake up to the fact that these kind of shenanigans in the end cost."
As Republicans and Democrats battled over the debt ceiling, interest rates on short-term government paper have jumped.
The U.S. Treasury auctioned nearly $27 billion of one-month bills at a rate of 0.07%, up from the rock-bottom yield of 0.01% that existed on one-month bills as recently as July 18, before the debt ceiling became a crisis.
On Monday, Treasury auctioned $27 billion of three-month bills at an interest rate of 0.115% up from 0.02% two weeks ago. Treasury also auctioned $24 billion of six-month bills at a rate of 0.15%, an increase from 0.06% two weeks ago.
"The uncertainty has driven up yields," said John Canavan, credit market analyst with Stone & McCarthy Research Associates. "You increase uncertainty in the markets and the markets will demand compensation for that."

Congress OKs debt deal

As the prospect of a debt ceiling agreement brightened, Treasury bill yields eased a bit as investors became more confident that the full faith and credit of the U.S. government remains rock solid.
But, the higher cost of financing government operations from just two weeks ago will now add to the nation's deficit, further contributing to the problem that caused political gridlock in the capitol.
"It's already exacerbating the situation," said New York University Professor of Economics Lawrence White, who testified before Congress last week about the debt crisis.
While investors demanded higher interest rates at Monday and Tuesday's auctions, there was still plenty of demand. Treasury received more than 4.5 bids for every dollar's worth of T-bills it auctioned, only slightly below recent auction activity.

Deal or no deal. The economy still stinks.

T-bill rates have been creeping higher as investors have reduced holdings of short-term government paper to avoid the risk Washington may fail to make payments on its debts in the next few weeks.
"Many investors are just not willing to take the risk, even if they believe the U.S. won't default," said Anthony Crescenzi, senior vice president and market strategist with bond investment firm PIMCO, which operates the $235 billion Pimco Total Return Fund (PTTAX).
Danger remains that the credit rating agencies may downgrade the U.S. If the country were to lose its triple-A credit rating, it likely would need to pay higher interest rates to attract investors to its bonds.
Last week, however, long-term Treasury yields declined as investors -- still confident Washington will pay its debts after the current crisis has passed -- rushed into 10-year Treasury notes and 30-Treasury bonds.
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Students to feel pinch in debt deal


WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) -- Some students will start owing more on their loans while they're in school under a last-minute debt ceiling deal to keep the country out of default and reduce deficits by at least $2.1 trillion over a decade.
As part of the savings to trim the deficits, Congress would scrap a special kind of federal loan for graduate students. So-called subsidized student loans don't charge students any interest on the principal of student loans until six months after students graduated.
Congress would also nix a special credit for all students who make 12 months of on-time loan payments.
The changes would take place July 1, 2012.
For taxpayers, the savings taken from the pockets of students will total $21.6 billion over the next ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
For graduate students who qualify for the maximum amount of subsidized loans, it could tack several thousand dollars to the cost of going to school.
The idea for the cuts originally came from the Republican-controlled House, but even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid proposed cutting the graduate school subsidized loans in budget talks last week.
The money saved by the student loan cuts would help pay to keep Pell Grants, which so far are maintained at a maximum grant of $5,500 a year for some 8 million poor students.
Of the $22 billion saved, $17 billion will go to fund Pell Grants, which only leaves that program $1.3 billion short, said student aid groups. That's why most groups can live with the cuts to graduate student loans.
The rest of the savings goes to deficit reduction.
"Full funding for Pell Grants is absolutely essential to fulfilling the president's goal of the U.S. once again having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020," said Pauline Abernathy, vice president of the Institute for College Access & Success.
The maximum a graduate student can borrow from the federal government is $20,500 a year, including $8,500 from subsidized loans where the federal government absorbs the interest rate while the student is in school. Over the course of a degree, graduate students can accrue up to $138,500 in direct federal loans, with $65,500 from subsidized loans.
A graduate student who borrows the maximum of $65,500 in subsidized loans would owe $207 a month in interest payments over the course of 10 years. But with a subsidized loan, the government pays that $207 each month the student attends school until six months after graduation.
This change would shift some $125 billion in loan volume over to unsubsidized loans and would cost students $18.1 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Graduate students would start accruing the interest rate payments while they're in school, but they wouldn't have to start making payments on the interest or the principal until after graduation. They can choose to pay the interest while they're in school.
"With the elimination of the graduate interest subsidy, it is also clear that graduate and professional school students will be hard-hit in terms of their total indebtedness," said Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. "Our members are disappointed to see the pullback in loan repayment incentives."
The other big cut that Congress is targeting is a credit that all students get on the origination fee they pay the federal government to process their loans. Students pay 1% of a Stafford loan as an origination fee, but all students get half of that back unless they miss one of their first 12 payments.
The loss of that credit would cost a student who borrows $5,000 from the federal government $25. This would cost students $3.6 billion over the next decade, according to the budget office.
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Chinese papers defy ban on negative coverage of train crash


IN AN unprecedented act of defiance, some leading Chinese newspapers have ignored a ban on negative coverage of the Wenzhou bullet train crash and have run explicit or carefully masked criticisms of the government’s handling of the disaster.
Newspapers were told on Friday to avoid all mention of the crash “except positive news or information released by the authorities”, but some papers were prepared to risk censure to run stark stories.
The Economic Observer , a highly respected business weekly, ran an eight-page special on the crash, featuring a bleak photograph of the wrecked bullet train overlaid with a blood-red logo of the railway ministry.
“No miracles in Wenzhou”, it said. On the bottom of the page was an editorial written in the form of a letter to Xiang Weiyi, a two-year-old girl discovered alive in the train wreckage 21 hours after the accident that killed her parents, after the search effort had officially been called off.
“Yiyi, when you grow up, will we and this country we live in be able to honestly tell you about all the love and suffering, anger and doubts around us?” ran an emotional editorial below.
The Beijing News ran a front-page story about the breakage at the Palace Museum in Beijing of a piece of pottery from the Song dynasty. Hardly earth-shattering stuff, until you start noticing the parallels between this innocuous event and the crash in Wenzhou.
The bowl broke into six pieces – six train carriages were derailed in Wenzhou – and the accident happened because data was wrongly entered. The Palace Museum was “very distressed”. The news was announced days late and the museum denies a cover-up.
The report ran above a photograph headlined “China’s Speed”, which shows Chinese swimmer Sun Yuan breaking the world record at the World Championships in Shanghai, but which can also be read as a comment on the high-speed rail obsession at government level.
China’s worst high-speed train accident on July 23rd, which killed 40 people and injured scores, dominated the front pages last week, with much of the coverage of the crash strongly critical of the government’s attempts to boost economic advance at all costs.
Even the Communist Party’s official organ, the People’s Daily , said China did not need GDP growth smeared with blood.
The ban on negative coverage came after premier Wen Jiabao visited Wenzhou to pledge transparency and openness, promising to punish those responsible.
There were similar outpourings of anger after the poisoning of infant milk formula in 2008, but this time the outrage is being vented on the popular Weibo microblog service, where the rail crash was the top trending story.
“If the media trend is to comment only on the kindness of Wenzhou people, on the bravery of soldiers rescuing people and how hardworking the rail ministry is, then it is a faceless thing, an absolute shame,” one comment said.

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Korean journalist predicts collapse of North

The head of a leading news service covering North Korea is predicting that the ruling communist regime is headed for the dustbin of history — and soon.
“North Korea will collapse, of course, but the question is how long it might take,” Park In-ho, president of the Seoul-based Daily NK, told The Washington Times. “Within five years, 70 percent chance. But within 10 years? 100 percent.”
His confidence stems from the North Korean regime’s plunging popular support, its lack of funds and its loss of diplomatic support — including from former sponsor China, he said.
Mr. Park called the coming transfer of power from Kim Jong-il to son Kim Jong-uhn a “time of danger” for the North Korean state.
His assessment echoes a growing consensus among South Korean officialdom that the regime in Pyongyang, now in its sixth decade, is living on borrowed time.
President Lee Myung-bak said in June that the collapse of the North Korean state — and the resulting reunification of the peninsula — would come like “a thief in the middle of the night.”
In February 2010, according to a WikiLeaks cable, his national security adviser, Chun Yung-woo, said that North Korea “had already collapsed economically, and would collapse politically two to three years after the death of Kim Jong Il.”
But the prediction carries special weight coming from Mr. Park, whose news service has since its 2004 founding managed to penetrate the world’s most secretive society through its extensive network of North Korean sources — a group that includes defectors, visitors to China and the few North Koreans with cellphones.
The online journal has had its fair share of scoops: In late 2009, it broke the news of North Korea’s currency reform, and in 2005, it released the first footage of a public execution.
But Mr. Park argued that Daily NK’s most valuable work is yet to come, explaining that its ability to get news out of North Korea quickly would assume new importance should the regime face a popular revolt.
“When the Libyan uprising occurred, the international community thought and pondered and fiddled while Rome burned,” he said. “If an event happens in North Korea, it’s very important to make a decision and do something as quickly as possible because there won’t be time.”
Mr. Park conceded there are “various possibilities” for North Korea’s demise: “Unfortunately, the chances of it being entirely peaceful, such as Nelson Mandela in South Africa, are zero percent. That doesn’t mean there’ll be a war, but some kind of incident will be required to make regime change happen.”
The Daily NK reports on all things North Korean, from the lives of ordinary citizens to the travels of Kim Jong-il.
“In the beginning when we made those reports, the South Korean intelligence services called us and said, ‘Is this real? How do you know?’ and so on. But now they don’t call because they just believe it,”Mr. Park said.


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