On the fourth day of office, Obama gave to me....

1640 EST Obama lifts abortion funding ban

Max Deveson

Max Deveson: In a much-trailed, but significant move, President Obama has signed an executive order overturning the so-called "Mexico City Rule" - the ban on federal funding for NGOs that perform abortions or offer abortion counselling.

The order - which comes the day after the 36th anniversary of the landmark Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision which legalised abortion in America - is likely to be seized on by anti-abortion activists as evidence that President Obama intends to push a radical pro-choice agenda.

In fact, Mr Obama's move takes America back to the status quo that existed eight years ago. The ban was originally put in place by Ronald Reagan, but was lifted by Bill Clinton. George W Bush reinstated it in 2001.

Both Mr Obama and the Secretary of State who will implement the policy - Hillary Clinton - pledged during the election campaign that they would repeal the ban.

Would this be an eight year victory streak for the so-called Pro-Choicers?

via: Obama diary: Days 1-10

我會唔會俾人炒架…

有人響公司share Dilbert 俾人炒咗！

Man Fired for Posting 'Dilbert' Becomes Subject of Comic Strip

我個位都有兩條dilbert 噃…

Euro at historic high

From AFP:

Euro storms above 1.37 dollars for first time

LONDON (AFP) - The euro hit a record high of 1.3740 dollars on Tuesday as investors bought the single currency on prospects of higher eurozone interest rates and concerns about the health of the US economy.

The British pound also hit a 26-year high of 2.0275 dollars ahead of a crucial speech by US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, while on Monday the euro had reached a record peak of 168.51 yen.

"In America no-one is above law"

In the US, George Bush has invoked "executive privilege" against a subpoena on the fired judges case, issued by Congress for Sara Taylor.
On this issue, Democrat Patrick Leahy said, "increasingly, the president and vice president feel they are above the law - in America no-one is above law"

In France, Nicolas Sarkozy refused to mass pardon prisoners. "Since when has the right to a pardon been used as a way of managing prisons?" is what he said.

讀醫不是救人嗎？

關於早前的炸彈事件，英政府拘捕八人。八人全是受僱NHS的醫生、醫學生及醫生家人。

如果醫生會竟想『投考』成為恐怖分子，那是誰的錯？
買單程機票走佬確是可疑，但…英政府會否攪錯了？

恐怖的是恐怖分子還是反恐法？那麼多恐怖分子，有多少是依宗教、種族入罪的反恐法造出來的？

來自：Yahoo! News / AP British terror probe focuses on doctors

相關資料：
AFP: Doctors rounded up over British bombs plot
BBC: Who are the car bomb suspects?

自備廁紙：這是甚麼頭條？

美聯的top headlines有點搞笑…公廁不供應廁紙也有

Visitors Told: Bring Own Toilet Paper

WALKERSVILLE, Md. (AP) -- Bring your own toilet paper if you're visiting a park in Walkersville. Last week, vandals set some paper on fire in a men's bathroom at the Walkersville Community Park.

On Monday, Town Manager Gloria Long Rollins announced that all paper products have been removed from bathrooms at the town's four parks.

Hand dryers will replace paper towels and visitors will have to bring their own TP, Rollins said.

The measure is part of an effort to combat vandalism, graffiti and drug use in the parks, she said.

薩拉熱窩的羅密歐與茱麗葉與孤兒

薩拉熱窩孤兒院大火，美聯新聞說最少三男兩女死亡，最少十七嬰兒受傷，另有一護士救人時面及手被燒傷。

via:
AP: 5 Babies Die in Bosnian Orphanage Fire
BBC: Deadly fire in Bosnia orphanage

以下是鄭秀文的超舊歌以及相關舊聞：

The evil empire expands...

Nestle to buy Gerber for $5.5 billion

Nestle SA, the world's biggest food and drink company, said Thursday it will buy Gerber Products Co. from pharmaceutical maker Novartis SA for $5.5 billion, giving it the largest share of the global baby food market.

"important implications for implementation of malaria control"

People used to import "natural" predators for pest control. Now American scientists are going one huge step forward. They want to introduce artificial pests for disease control. Just how will they deal with the super-mosquitoes after malaria become history? Will they introduce genetically modified, mosquito-resistant human?

US scientists create mosquito resistant to malaria

US researchers have created genetically-modified mosquitoes resistant to a malaria parasite, raising the possibility of one day stopping the spread of the disease, a new study says.

The genetically-engineered mosquitoes outbred natural mosquitoes when fed malaria-infected blood from mice, according to the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Source: AFP / Yahoo! News

"one single master"

On the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy, Putin was quoted saying: "What is a unipolar world? No matter how we beautify this term it means one single center of power, one single center of force and one single master."

"[The U.S.] are permanently teaching Russia about democracy. But those who teach us, for some reason don't really want to study it themselves."

Reuters: Putin accuses U.S. of bid to force will on world
AFP: Putin hits out at US global dominance

"We're in jail, dude"

Joy at direct hit turns to horror

World's champion exporter

According to AFP, China will be the world's biggest exporter by 2008. At 300 billion US dollars a year, China is already the number one exporter of electronics goods.

China set to become world's champion exporter in 2008: trade body

如果你吃素…

你會吃經改造的雞造出來的藥嗎?

Engineered chickens make cancer drugs

A team at the institute that cloned Dolly the sheep have made a genetically engineered chicken that produces cancer drugs in its eggs. [...] Many human therapeutic proteins are produced in industrial bioreactors, but setting up such systems is both time-consuming and expensive. [...] Scientists have been trying to find good ways to turn animals into factories instead. [...] The researchers have now bred several hundred chickens that can produce the desired proteins.

Murder. Deplorable. Investigation. Arrest. Murders.

Tuesday, 2nd January

Deplorable
"Frankly, to get this kind of recorded messages coming out is totally unacceptable and I think whoever is involved and responsible for it should be ashamed of themselves.", John Prescott, Deputy prime minister, said on BBC Radio regarding the mobile video.

Investigation
Iraq’s Shiite-led government said Tuesday that it had ordered an investigation into the abusive behavior at the execution of Saddam Hussein.

Wednesday, 3rd January

Arrest
The person believed to have recorded Saddam Hussein's raucous execution on a cell phone camera was arrested.
"Yes, we would have [done things differently]. But that's not our decision," said Major General William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman.

Thursday, 4th January

More Murders
Two of Saddam Hussein's comrades, Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, will be hanged later today.


Yelling "Go to hell" is acceptable. Spreading the footage of it is abusive and deplorable. It's like the French Revolution without a Guillotine. The Iraqi government scored 5 points taking Saddam's head. Who will win in this game?

* photo from German edition of Guillotine (Wizards of the Coast, 1998). Taken without permission.

"This whole execution is about justice"

Hiwa Osman, an adviser for the Iraqi president, told the BBC after a second mobile video was in wide circulation. Is it justice, or an abuse of justice?

You can read more about Saddam Hussein's last moments on BBC.

Saddam Hussein

... is dead.

Angela Merkel indirectly criticizes the execution: We respect the judgment, but it is well-known that the federal government is against capital punishment. I wish the Iraqi people a path in peace without violence.

A Mr Ronald Balter on NYT's comment section: Saddam was convicted of executing people who tried to violently overthrow his government. I believe the penalty under American Law for violently trying to overthrow the government is also death. So Saddam was basically executed for doing what the American government would do in a similar circumstance, because he denied the revolutionaries Due Process.

David Elliot of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty called the execution pictures "ghoulish" and said in a phone interview that they are "more determined than ever to abolish the death penalty. It's not a question of whether it will happen, it's a question of when."

Amnesty International called the trail a fundamentally flawed process: Political interference undermined the independence and impartiality of the court, causing the first presiding judge to resign and blocking the appointment of another, and the court failed to take adequate measures to ensure the protection of witnesses and defence lawyers.

吃狗有甚麼問題？

難道因為『狗會…對人搖尾乞憐』所以就不應該吃嗎？因禽流感而死的雞鴨就沒有心靈？

試想想以下兩種情況

1. 在工廠中，在動物出生後被困在細小的空間無法轉身。為求保証產量，餵食不明來歷的死屍和特別飼料使其快速生長或不停生蛋、產奶。被運到屠場的路上可能沒有食物食水。
2. 動物在人類的住家中每天自由生活。食物是"human grade"的肉類和菜。就地屠宰。
   

前者是味美多汁的美國牛扒、肉雞。後者是『散養』家禽及案中黃狗。

一邊切牛扒，一邊說吃狗是錯事，明顯是雙重標準。

我明白很多人家中有狗所以不喜聽見狗被吃掉，但沒有道德據的主觀情感，應被立成法律嗎？將動物浸死可能不人道，但跟動物是狗是牛是羊並沒有關連。將謂語放到標題並過份放大就跟在英國大肆報道的妓女殺手一樣，是將重點放到錯誤的地方。


相關新聞：
狗吃首判監 4人重囚30日 活活浸死狗兒 官斥終極虐待
Twins嫌判監1個月過輕 怒罵吃狗肉者挑戰法律

也可以看miumiu的吃狗的人

"The Human Rights Act is a vital part of the fight against terrorism"

As reported by BBC, Lord Phillips, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales gave a lecture titled "Terrorism and Human Rights" at the University of Hertfordshire recently. He believes that human rights is a crucial weapon in fighting terrorism because it "is the ideology in which we believe." The same lecture was also given in Singapore a few months ago and the transcript is available online. To quote what he said:

"Terrorism is not readily defined, and whether activities amount to terrorism can depend upon your point of view. One man’s terrorist can be another man’s freedom fighter."

(Quoting Lord Hoffmann, another senior judge, regarding Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001) "Terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community. The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve"

(Quoting the European Commisioner for Human Rights, regarding Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005) "Substituting 'obligation' for 'penalty' and 'controlled person' for 'suspect' only thinly disguises the fact that control orders are intended to substitute the ordinary criminal justice system with a parallel system run by the executive."

"Respect for human rights must, I suggest, be a key weapon in the ideological battle. [...] The Human Rights Act is not merely their safeguard, it is a vital part of the foundation of our fight against terrorism."


Lord Phillips also believes in punishment other than imprisonment. To prove his point he even went so far to pose as a drunk driver and participated in the Community Payback project for one full day and his feelings with the press later.

"That's like saying you don't want to kiss your lover's lips because everyone has lips."

I love the analogy.

Apple's Jobs doesn't see threats to iPod: report

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc. doesn't expect the iPod media player to be hurt by Microsoft Corp.'s Zune, Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in a magazine interview.

Microsoft has touted Zune, a portable media player due to be launched in the United States in time for the holiday shopping season, as a potential threat to the dominant iPod because of its ability to share music wirelessly.

"It takes forever," Jobs told Newsweek in an interview posted on the magazine's Web site on Sunday. "By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left."

Jobs was equally unconcerned about the prospect of the iPod losing its cool factor as it becomes increasingly ubiquitous.

"That's like saying you don't want to kiss your lover's lips because everyone has lips. It doesn't make any sense," said Jobs.

誰是恐怖份子？

看晚間新聞得知有十六名回教徒被英政府依反恐法拘捕。據路透社報道，有數千名英國回教徒被長期監視。到昨日近六十名武裝警員衝進一間伊朗人開設的中國餐館，對食客問話近兩小時後將其中十二人帶走。

Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005容許部長級官員對可能與恐怖活動有關的人仕頒發限管制條例，其中可包括對工作或商業活動、出入境自由、甚至與其他人仕溝通的限制。如果條例經法院同意甚至可違反歐洲人權公約。而恐怖活動是甚麼？可看Terrorism Act 2000。依這裡的定義，美軍的斷頭行動及以色列攻打黎巴嫩其實也是恐怖活動。

那，你說，到底誰是恐怖份子？

相關文章：
UK: Human rights under sustained attack in the ‘war on terror’
UK: Human rights: a broken promise