Knox appeal for sex-murder case

By M.K. Lim,

Knox, a 23-year-old from Seattle who was jailed for 26 years for the murder, gripped the edges of the sleeves of her blue cardigan and nodded while talking with her lawyers in the courtroom during the hearing.
"We feel as though we have a very good case," her step-father, Chris Mellas, told AFP ahead of the hearing.
"She's going to go home," said Mellas, who has been living in Perugia since September to help Knox prepare for her appeal.

Mellas said the wait for the appeal had been "difficult" for Knox, who was a student in the city at the time of the killing.

Wednesday's hearing lasted only a few minutes and the appeal court judge scheduled the next hearings for December 11, December 18 and January 15.

The result of the trial is expected some time next year.

"The conviction is wrong. We're starting again from scratch," Knox's lawyer, Luciano Ghirga, told reporters after the hearing.

Ghirga said the defence would focus on DNA evidence linking Knox to the crime scene that he said had been questioned by three scientific opinions.

The lawyer said Knox's mother and father would be at the hearing on December 11 and said he expected the trial to conclude in February or March.

Asked about her health, he said: "She looks terrible. She's very thin."

Knox was sentenced last year for killing Leeds University student Meredith Kercher in the cottage they shared in Perugia as part of what prosecutors described as a drug-fuelled sexual assault.

Prosecutors have said they will seek a longer sentence for Knox -- of up to 30 years in prison -- if the conviction is upheld by the court. Chronology: Main dates in Amanda Knox case

Knox's boyfriend at the time of the murder, Raffaele Sollecito, who was sentenced to 25 years for the murder, is appealing at the same time.

Sollecito, wearing a red jacket and a cream-coloured polo neck jumper, flashed a smile at the cameras as he entered the courtroom for the hearing.

The appeal trial is being held for Sollecito and Knox jointly as the two were tried and sentenced together in 2009 and have both appealed.
An Ivorian man, Rudy Guede, who fled Perugia soon after the killing and was arrested in Germany, has also been jailed for the murder.
Kercher's father, Johan, meanwhile sent a letter to the mayor of Perugia through his lawyers to thank local authorities for setting up a scholarship in her name at the university where she was on an exchange programme.
"Meredith loved Perugia and had made a lot of friends there," Johan Kercher wrote, adding that the family was "moved" by the scholarship decision.
Kercher was found on November 2, 2007, half-naked in a pool of blood with stab wounds to the neck in her room in the cottage she shared with Knox.

Knox has repeatedly protested her innocence and her girl-next-door image has continued to attract large-scale media attention, particularly in the United States where many people are convinced of her innocence.

Earlier this month she was indicted on additional charges of slander for claiming that police beat her during questioning soon after the murder. She said then that she had been in the house at the time of the killing.
Knox faces a separate trial on the slander charges from May 17 next year.

She has spoken in detail of her imprisonment in a book of interviews released last month. She is quoted as saying that she longs to live a normal life and hopes to one day become a mother and start a writing career.
"I want to live... I'm thinking about when I will be out of here," Knox is quoted as saying in one of the interviews in her cell in Perugia.

"Living here is like being in limbo," she said.

The book says Knox has also been reading numerous classic works of world literature, including works by Dostoyevsky, Hemingway, Kafka and Tolstoy.

The case is serving as the basis for a television film currently being shot in Italy called "The Amanda Knox Story," starring US actress Hayden Panettiere as Knox. It is expected to screen in the United States next year.

Virus Hoax on Facebook

By M.K. Lim,


There’s a new message spreading quickly on Facebook users’ walls, warning people about an application called “Christmas Tree.” The message is fake to our knowledge: No internet security firm has issued a threat warning about such an application.

The message comes in several different forms, claiming the Christmas Tree Facebook app will either crash your computer or steal your personal data.

A typical message looks like this: WARNING!!!!!!…..DONOT USE THE Christmas Tree application on Facebook.Please be advised it will crash your computer. Geek squad says it’s oneof the WORST trojan-viruses there is and it is spreading quickly. Re-post and let your friends know ( from a friend )


Besides the fact that Geek Squad, a company that does IT service and computer repairs, is not a reliable source for info on new malware, Sophos claims it’s not aware of any malicious Facebook app using the Christmas Tree name.

Of course, with the message spreading as quickly as it is, it wouldn’t surprise us if someone actually created a malicious app bearing that or a similar name. That’s the problem with fake warnings: They create confusion and after a while it gets hard to distinguish the fake threats from the real ones.

Please, don’t repost the Christmas Tree virus warning, or any similar threat unless you’re sure it comes from a credible source.

Potter's Owl Supplier Got Sued

London : The couple who supplied owls for a Harry Potter flick have landed in a legal trouble.
Veronica Mepham, 70, and husband Reinhard, 64, who run an animal sanctuary, have appeared in court on 36 cruelty charges.

     They are accused of causing unnecessary suffering to 18 animals including guinea pigs, a goat, a rabbit and a hen.

    They supplied a tawny owl called Cuddles for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
     The couple, who run Rescuers Wildlife Sanctuary in Benfleet, Essex, face 18 charges each, including failing to put sick animals down.

     The couple did not enter pleas. Southend magistrates heard that negotiations were taking place and the RSPCA was prepared to drop the case if the couple retired and re-homed the animals.

     "We love animals, we would never be cruel to them," the Daily Express quoted Mepham as saying.

Pope says condoms sometimes permissible to stop AIDS

By K.M. LEW

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Using condoms may sometimes be justified to stop the spread of AIDS, Pope Benedict says in a new book, in surprise comments that relax one of the Vatican's most controversial positions.

Pope Benedict XVI waves at the end of the Consistory ceremony in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican November 20, 2010.

     In excerpts published in the Vatican newspaper on Saturday, the pope cites the example of the use of condoms by prostitutes as "a first step towards moralisation", even though condoms are "not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection".
     While some Roman Catholic leaders have spoken about the limited use of condoms to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS as the lesser of two evils, this is the first time the pope has mentioned the possibility in public.
     The Vatican newspaper unexpectedly published significant excerpts from the book on Saturday night, days before extracts were initially due to be made public. The book, called Light of the World, is to be published on Tuesday.
     Benedict made clear the comments were not intended to weaken the Church's fundamental opposition to artificial birth control, a source of grievance to many practising Catholics.

NO FORMAL STANCE

     The majority of Church leaders have been saying for decades that condoms are not even part of the solution to fighting AIDS, even though no formal position on this existed in a Vatican document.
The late cardinal John O'Connor of New York famously branded the use of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS as "The Big Lie".
     Last year, the pope caused an international uproar when he told journalists accompanying him to Africa that condoms should not be used because they could worsen the spread of AIDS.
The Vatican's opposition to artificial birth control has been highly contested, even by many Catholics, since it was formalised in the late Pope Paul's encyclical Humanae Vitae (On Human Life) in 1968.
     Benedict says that "the basic lines of Humanae Vitae are still correct", indicating that his comments about condoms are not intended to apply to birth control, only to AIDS prevention.
     He says that the "sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalisation of sexuality" where sexuality is no longer an expression of love "but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves".
     The 219-page book is made up of Benedict's responses to questions by German Catholic journalist Peter Seewald over a month of meetings at the papal summer residence.
     After the pope first mentions that the use of condoms could be justified in certain limited cases, such as by prostitutes, Seewald asks: "Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?"
     The pope answers: "She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality."

ABC PRINCIPLE

     In the section of the book on condoms and HIV/AIDS, the pope goes as far as mentioning the "ABC principle" (Abstinence-Be faithful-Condom) on preventing the spread of AIDS.
     While he says ABC was developed in "the secular realm", he uses the example himself to introduce his own comments on condoms being sometimes justified as a last resort.
     Strangely, in the English, French and German versions of the book, the pope uses the example of the possible justification when "a male prostitute" uses condoms. This would distinguish it from use as a means of birth control, which the church bans.
     But the Italian excerpts in the Vatican newspaper quote him as saying "una prostituta", meaning a female prostitute. It was not possible to clarify the discrepancy in the translations.
     Critics have said it took many years for the Church to realise that AIDS was not just a disease of the homosexual community and that many heterosexual women, particularly in Africa, were being killed.
     In other sections of the book, Benedict says the wartime Pope Pius XII, whom critics accuse of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust, was "one of the great righteous men (who) saved more Jews than anyone else". Jews are bound to contest this.
     He also said scandals of sexual abuse of minors by priests were "an unprecedented shock", even though he had followed the issue for years, and says he can understand why people might quit the Church in protest.
     He indicates he would be ready to resign instead of reigning for life if he were "no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office", something no pope has done in 700 years.

The Future of Construction

By Y.C.LIM

Time lapse of Construction on Ark Hotel. Building 15 stories in 2 days.

A 15-story building built in two days, sound impossible? The Chinese Ark Hotel just proved that it is possible by erecting the entire building in 48 hours.

Level 9 Earthquake Resistance: diagonal bracing structure, light weight, steel construction, passed level 9 earthquake resistance testing.

6x Less Material: even though the construction materials are much lighter(250kg/m2) than the traditional materials(over 1500kg/m2), the floors and walls are solid with surefootedness, airtight and sound-proofing.

5x Energy Efficient: 150mm thermal insulation for walls and roofs, triple glazed plastic windows, external solar shading, heat insulation, fresh air heat recovery, LED lighting, yearly HAVC A/C energy consumption equivalent to 7 liters oil.

20x Purification: after 3 levels of purification, the purification efficiency for fresh air reaches 95%-99.9%; air exchanged 1-2.5 times per hour, and indoor air is 20x cleaner than out door air.

1% Construction Waste: all components are factory made, construction waste, mainly package materials, result from on site set-up only and amount to 1% of the total weight of the building.

This can truly be called a sustainable building, as it comprises all the necessary environmental friendly elements, without compromising comfort and security. Topping off everything with a stunning erection time of only 2 days.

More information [link]

Who is the victim?

By M.K. Lim,

A young hairdresser in Kaluga, Central Russia, locked a robber who tried to steal her money in the basement of the beauty salon. After that, she has brutally raped her hostage for three days. A court in Kaluga has filed criminal charges against both of them, the Russian website Newsru.com reports.


The robber, who has not been named, burst into the salon armed with shotgun at about 17.00 on March 14. He demanded money. There were two hairdressers and one client in the salon at the time. One of hairdressers, who was studying judo and taekwondo, disabled the robber with a smashing body blow. Then she carried the unlucky robber to the basement and bound him with a hairdryer cord.

The hairdresser told her scared colleague and the client that she would call the police. But she did not. After work, instead of calling the police, she made her hostage undress. The perverted hairdresser forced the hostage to take several Viagra tablets. She chained the unfortunate robber with pink furry wristbands and painfully raped him for the next three days.  

After his release, the exhausted robber filed charges against the perverted woman. The frenulum of his penis was torn as a consequence of rape session.

“That’s ridiculous. We had sex just a couple times. I brought him brand new jeans. I fed him every day and gave him one thousand rubles ($25) before his release,” the hairdresser said.

In response, she filed charges against the robber.

The robber admitted that the hairdresser really did feed him royally.   

“I actually don’t know what will happen to them. But it’s a pity that they could not meet in the cell. They would be a great couple,” one of the police officers said.  

Black Widow behind bars

By M.K. Lim,

Black Widow that resembles Valeria's personality

     A young Russian woman, a devoted collector of horror films and spiders, is on trial for sedating and raping ten men.

     The police were shocked that 32-year-old Valeria K., a quiet good-looking woman from the city of Tambov, was the mysterious rapist who abused ten local men after poisoning them with clonidine.

     Valeria, who has already been nicknamed the Black Widow for her love of spiders, would get acquainted with men and invite them to her place.

     She gave them drinks with clonidine, which almost immediately sent them to sleep for almost 24 hours.

     After that, she undressed her victims and raped them, tightening a rope on their male organs to keep them erect.

     Waking up in hospital with clonidine poisoning and penis trauma, all the victims could remember was a friendly brunette who gave them drinks.

     Finally, local police identified the offender and arrested her.

     At present, the police know about ten of Valeria’s victims, although one of them refused to file a complaint against her.

     “It was great,” the unnamed man said.

     “I like hot women. I only wish she hadn't use the clonidine on me.”

The Whistleblower

By Y. C. LIM

Julian Assange - the founder of Wikileaks - has remained shrouded in mystery since the launch of his site in 2006.
This fascinating expose reveals the man behind the leaks.
Assange spent the majority of his youth travelling from place to place, attending 37 different schools and being charged with numerous hacking offences.
While he continues to move, he does so to maintain his extensive network of Wikileaks contacts and to avoid the unwanted attention of governments.
Despite frequently hitting the front pages of newspapers around the world, Assange has somehow managed to retain a low profile.
This is now changing as he finally steps into the spotlight to defend Wikileaks and to address what he feels is a false perception the media is portraying of him. "The true nature of this world is being revealed. It's not being interpreted for you. There it is, face to face from the inside". Now, with Wikileaks, he is finally offering it to the world.

Obama admits losing sight of leadership role

By K.M. LEW

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama admitted in an interview aired on Friday that he focused on policies but failed to rally people behind those initiatives, leading to Republicans' big gains in congressional elections this week.
     "We were so busy and so focused on getting a bunch of stuff done that we stopped paying attention to the fact that leadership isn't just legislation," Obama said in an excerpt from a CBS "60 Minutes" interview to be broadcast on Sunday.

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at DAR Constitutional Hall in Washington September 30, 2010. U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at DAR Constitutional Hall in Washington September 30, 2010.

     Republicans describe their Tuesday midterm elections win, in which they took control of the House of Representatives and gained seats in the Senate, as a repudiation of the healthcare reform law and economic stimulus programs that dominated Obama's first two years in office.
     But the president told CBS he would seek to mend his ways in the run-up to his own re-election campaign in 2012.
     "It's a matter of persuading people, and giving them confidence, and bringing them together, and setting a tone and making an argument that people can understand," Obama said.
     "We haven't always been successful at that and I take personal responsibility for that. And it's something that I've got to examine carefully as I go forward."
     Obama said he didn't do a good enough job explaining the need for government spending on bank and auto bailouts and the economic stimulus package.
     "People looked at that and they said, "Boy, this feels as if there's a huge expansion of government," Obama said.
     "What I didn't effectively, I think, drive home, because we were in such a rush to get this stuff done, is that we were ... taking these steps not because of some theory that we wanted to expand government. It was because we had an emergency situation and we wanted to make sure the economy didn't go off a cliff."
Obama at a news conference on Wednesday said he had lost touch with voters who delivered a "shellacking" to him and his Democrats.

Engine problems hit second Qantas aircraft

By K.M. LEW

Engineers inspect the outermost port engine of a Qantas Boeing 747, flight QF6, at Singapore's Changi airport November 6, 2010. A Qantas Boeing 747 aircraft which left Singapore for Sydney on Friday evening has returned to the city-state, a Changi Airport official said on Friday.

SINGAPORE/SYDNEY (Reuters) - Engine trouble forced a Qantas Airways Ltd jet to make an emergency landing in Singapore on Friday, less than 48 hours after another of the Australian carrier's aircraft had to land prematurely because its engine blew up.

     The Sydney-bound Boeing 747-400 aircraft, with 412 people on board, returned to the airport 20 minutes after takeoff due to "an issue with one of its engines," Qantas Airways Ltd said in a statement.

     That came a day after a Qantas Airbus A380 jet was forced to make an emergency landing after one of its four Rolls-Royce Plc engines appeared to break apart in flight, scattering debris over an Indonesian island.

     "Around 20 minutes into the flight we heard a loud bang," Ranjan Sivagnanasundaram, an Australian citizen in his early 50s who was on Friday's flight, told Reuters. "It was a very big shock to us, especially after what happened yesterday."

     The Boeing Co aircraft also had been equipped with Rolls-Royce engines.

Officials at British engine-maker Rolls-Royce did not return calls seeking comment.

     The earlier incident saw Qantas ground its fleet of six A380s pending safety checks that will take 24 to 48 hours and led other airlines to check their own A380s.

     "We believe this is probably, most likely, a material failure or some sort of design issue," Qantas Chief Executive Alan Joyce told a news conference in Sydney. "If we don't find any adverse findings in those checks, the aircraft will resume operations."

     Separately, a European Union air safety body confirmed it told airlines in August to make checks after finding "wear, beyond engine manual limits," on the type of Rolls-Royce engines fitted to the Qantas jet and some other A380s.

The incidents could provide Rolls' rivals General Electric Co and the Pratt & Whitney unit of United Technologies Corp with a chance to grab market share from the No. 2 engine-maker.

     "Things move slowly in the engine business, but there is no question that you have a series of events that really put Rolls-Royce's reputation at risk," said Richard Aboulafia, vice president at aviation consultancy Teal Group.

     GE is the world's largest maker of jet engines, Pratt comes in third.

AIRLINES INSPECT A380S

     The A380 engine failure on Thursday was the biggest incident to date for the world's largest passenger plane, which went into service in 2007.

     Rolls-Royce and Airbus parent EADS told operators of the Rolls-equipped A380 jets to have them inspected.

     The Engine Alliance, a joint venture between GE and Pratt that makes a rival engine for the A380 told users: "The EA is not recommending engine inspections as our design is unique ... and thus has no correlation with the RR engine."

     Singapore Airlines Ltd resumed flying its 11 A380s on Friday, lifting a grounding order imposed after the first incident.

     Deutsche Lufthansa AG said it had withdrawn an A380 from a Frankfurt-Johannesburg flight because it had not had enough time to check the engines before departure.

     Passengers who had been on the first flight said a second engine on the stricken Qantas aircraft had failed to shut down once the jet was on the tarmac, sparking fears it could ignite spilling fuel.

     Passengers said after landing they had been told of the dangers of using any electronic device as fire fighters sprayed the aircraft, which was leaking fuel from a hole in the wing.

     "Obviously in the back of your mind you are concerned about a very hot engine next to leaking fuel," passenger Christopher Lee said. "Obviously, you are in a state of anxiety."

     Qantas CEO Joyce said the second engine could have been harmed by the mishap to the first engine, which caused parts to fly off.

     Aviation experts said the first plane being able to land despite the engine mishap illustrated the safety of modern aircraft.

     "The fact that it survived the damage is a credit to the design. Twenty years ago that would probably have taken the aircraft out of the sky," said John Page, senior lecturer in Aerospace Engineering at the University of New South Wales.

     Airbus sales chief John Leahy said he had not received complaints from airlines about the A380's safety.

    "We have to find out the reason for the engine failure," he told Reuters in Paris.

     Qantas said its engineers, along with those from Airbus and Rolls-Royce, were working to determine what went wrong.

     "Rolls-Royce have identified a number of potential areas," said Joyce. "This issue does not relate to maintenance."

     Rolls-Royce has maintained the engines since they were installed on the aircraft, he said. The company gets a goodly proportion of its revenues from such service contracts.

 

ROLLS SHARES SLIDE AGAIN

     European plane-maker Airbus and Rolls-Royce lost over $1.5 billion in combined market value on Thursday.

     EADS shares were flat on Friday, after Thursday's 4 percent fall, while Rolls-Royce shares fell a further 3.3 percent to 601 pence after a 5 percent slide the previous day. Boeing was up 0.7 percent at $71.37 on the New York Stock Exchange.

     Qantas shares ended down 1 percent at A$2.86 on Friday, underperforming the broader Australian market, which advanced 1.2 percent to a six-month high.

     Commonwealth Bank aviation analyst Matt Crowe said there was unlikely to be long-term damage to its reputation, as investors had tended to move on from previous safety incidents, which have never resulted in a fatal crash for Qantas.