Obama pick: Taxpayers must fund abortions
Nominee takes position that ‘contradicts’ Constitution

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, is no economist, judging by her comments made to ABC’s George Stephanopoulus, in asserting population growth in the US would be a drag on economic growth.  Population growth usually is an economic stimulant, especially in developed countries.

By TOM WELLS

HOSPITAL managers have called in an exorcist after shaken workers complained they are being terrified by a GHOST.

Spooked staff at Derby’s new Royal Hospital claimed a black-clad figure wearing a cloak was stalking wards and corridors.

Now chiefs at the £334million NHS site are to summon a local priest to see off the “spirit”.

Terror … ‘haunted’ hospital

Petrified staff were briefed on the spooky goings-on in an email from bosses.

Senior manager Debbie Butler wrote: “I’m not sure how many of you are aware that some members of staff have reported seeing a ghost.

“I’m taking it seriously as the last thing I want is staff feeling uneasy at work.”

Ms Butler sent the message after workers at the new £334million Royal Derby Hospital claimed they had seen a cloaked figure dressed in black roaming wards and corridors.

Imposing … original City General Hospital building

She added: “I don’t want to scare anyone any more than necessary, but felt it was best I made you all aware of the situation and what we are doing about it.

“I’ve spoken to the Trust’s chaplain and she is going to arrange for someone from the cathedral to exorcise the department.”

Sources at the Royal – built on the site of the Derby City General Hospital – said the exorcism was expected within days.

History … developers built over road despite demos

One said: “There have been dozens of sightings over recent weeks and people are scared witless.

“Several have seen a male figure cloaked from head to toe in black darting between rooms and through walls – especially in departments near the morgue.

“It’s affected morale so much that bosses decided they had to act.” Exorcisms in England must be pre-approved by a bishop.

A spokesman for the Bishop of Derby said: “Any case such as this is put to the Bishop.

“He would seek proper advice before taking action.”

Experts said the spirit could be the ghost of a Roman soldier killed on the spot where the original hospital was built in the 1920s. Developers ignored protests and covered over part of one of Ancient Britain’s main Roman roads.

Ian Wilce, of the Ghost-finder Paranormal Society, said: “There are lots of sightings on such sites.”

The hospital, still known as the City General, will be officially renamed as the Royal in coming months.

A spokeswoman for Derby Hospitals NHS Trust said: “We take information from staff seriously and are working with the hospital chaplaincy to put people’s minds at ease.”

Wednesday January 28, 2009

Homosexual Men Given Custody of Children Rather than Own Grandparents

By Tim Waggoner

EDINBURGH, Scotland, January 28, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – After a two-year-long custody battle with an Edinburgh court, two young children have been placed into the hands of two homosexual men rather than with the children’s own grandparents.

According to the Daily Mail, the court found the grandparents, who are 46 and 59, to be too old to adequately raise the children. The grandparents could not afford to continue the expensive legal process, and therefore resolved to give the children up for adoption provided the new adoptive parents would be a loving mother and father.

Soon after the ruling, however, the couple was informed that their five year old grandson and four year old granddaughter, who had been living in a foster home during the custody battle because their mom was a heroine addict, were being put into the care of a homosexual couple.

“It breaks my heart to think that our grandchildren are being forced to grow up in an environment without a mother figure. We are not prejudiced, but I defy anyone to explain to us how this can be in their best interests,” said the grandfather.

“The ideal for any child is to have a loving father and a loving mother in their lives.  But in our society the mother is generally the cornerstone of the family and the most important person for a young child.”

But the grandfather was forced to cease his protests, being told by social workers that, “You can either accept it, and there’s a chance you’ll see the children twice a year, or you can take that stance and never see them again.”

The social workers said that they would “certainly look” into allowing the grandparents to see their grandchildren “when you are able to come back with an open mind on the issues.”

“If you couldn’t support the children [in the homosexual adoption], if you were having contact and couldn’t support the children, and were showing negative feelings, it wouldn’t be in their best interests for contact to take place,” added the social worker.

The social workers confessed that several heterosexual couples had been approved to take custody of the children, and it was well documented in a social work report that the four year old girl “has tended to be more wary of males in general.”

The grandparents have not seen their grandchildren since the decision was made to place the children with the homosexual couple.

“Granny, I’m not going to see you for a very long time,” said the five-year-old boy at their last meeting. ‘Maybe when I’m in Primary Seven I’ll be able to see you.’

‘We’ll try our very hardest to see you soon,’ said his visibly emotional grandmother, according to the Mail.

The boy told his grandfather that, “If you want to see me you will have to pick me up because I will be a very long way away. We are getting a new mummy and daddy.”

A spokesperson for the Catholic Church in Scotland, Peter Kearney, commented on the issue, saying, “This is a devastating decision which will have a serious impact on the welfare of the children involved.

“There is an overwhelming body of evidence showing that same-sex relationships are inherently unstable and reduce the life expectancy of those involved.

“With this in mind, the social work department has deliberately ignored evidence which undermines their decision and opted for politically correct posturing rather than providing stability and protection.”

Homosexual adoption was approved in Scotland in 2006 despite the fact that an official consultation process showed that 90 percent of people opposed it.

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Scotland Parliament Plans to Go Ahead with Gay Adoption Despite 89% Opposition

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/may/06051807.html

Iran has hanged four men convicted of rape and two convicted of murder in prisons in the northeastern city of Mashhad and the central city of Isfahan, local media reported on Wednesday.

The four convicted rapists were sent to gallows on Tuesday in a prison in Mashhad, Khorasan newspaper said. The report did not provide any other information except that the men were aged between 18 and 20 years.

The Fars news agency later reported that two men were executed for murder on Wednesday in a prison in the central city of Isfahan.

Ahmad A. was hanged for murdering Najmeh R. around two years ago, while Reza A. stabbed to death Hossein Yazdani, 21, around the same time, it said.

The latest hangings bring to at least 38 the number of executions in Iran so far this year. Iran executed at least 246 people last year, according to an AFP count.

Since last year, the Islamic republic has stepped up its use of the death penalty in what it says is a bid to improve security in the society.

Amnesty International says Iran carried out more death sentences in 2007 than any other country apart from China which executed 317 people.

Capital offences in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, drug trafficking and adultery.

The CIA’s station chief at its sensitive post in Algeria is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly raping at least two Muslim women who claim he laced their drinks with a knock-out drug, U.S. law enforcement sources tell ABC News.

(AP/ABC News)

Officials say the 41-year old CIA officer, a convert to Islam, was ordered home by the U.S. Ambassador, David Pearce, in October after the women came forward with their rape allegations in September.

Watch “World News with Charles Gibson” TONIGHT at 6:30 p.m. ET for the full report.

The discovery of more than a dozen videotapes showing the CIA officer engaged in sex acts with other women has led the Justice Department to broaden its investigation to include at least one other Arab country, Egypt, where the CIA officer had been posted earlier in his career, according to law enforcement officials.

The U.S. State Department referred questions to the Department of Justice, which declined to comment

“It has the potential to be quite explosive if it’s not handled well by the United States government,” said Isobel Coleman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who specializes in women’s issues in the Middle East.

“This isn’t the type of thing that’s going to be easily pushed under the carpet,” she said.

The CIA refused to acknowledge the investigation or provide the name of the Algiers station chief, but the CIA Director of Public Affairs, Mark Mansfield, said, “I can assure you that the Agency would take seriously, and follow up on, any allegations of impropriety.”

It can be a crime for government officials to reveal the identity of a current covert intelligence officer, and CIA officials would not comment the status of the person under investigation.

One of the alleged victims reportedly said she met the CIA officer at a bar in the U.S. embassy and then was taken to his official station chief residence where she said the sexual assault took place.

The second alleged victim reportedly told U.S. prosecutors that, in a separate incident, she also was drugged at the American’s official residence before being sexually assaulted.

Both women have reportedly given sworn statements to federal prosecutors sent from Washington to prepare a possible criminal case against the CIA officer.

Following the initial complaints, U.S. officials say they obtained a warrant from a federal judge in Washington, D.C. in October to search the station chief’s CIA-provided residence in Algiers and turned up the videos that appear to have been secretly recorded and show, they say, the CIA officer engaged in sexual acts.

Officials say one of the alleged victims is seen on tape, in a “semi-conscious state.”

The time-stamped date on other tapes led prosecutors to broaden the investigation to Egypt because the date matched a time when CIA officer was in Cairo, officials said.

Pills found in the CIA residence were sent to the FBI crime laboratory for testing, according to officials involved in the case.

“Drugs commonly referred to as date rape drugs are difficult to detect because the body rapidly metabolizes them,” said former FBI agent Brad Garrett, an ABC News consultant. “Many times women are not aware they were even assaulted until the next day,” he said.

A third woman, a friend of one of the alleged victims, reportedly provided a cell phone video that showed her friend having a drink and dancing inside the CIA station chief’s residence in Algiers, which officials told ABC News provided corroboration the CIA officer had indeed brought the woman to his residence.

The officer in charge of the CIA station in Algiers plays an important role in working with the Algerian intelligence services to combat an active al Qaeda wing responsible for a wave of bombings in Algeria.

In the most serious incident, 48 people were killed in a bombing in August, 2008 in Algiers, blamed on the al Qaeda group.

The Algerian ambassador to the United Nations, Mourad Benmehid, said his government had not been notified by the U.S. of the rape allegations or the criminal investigation.

No charges have been filed but officials said a grand jury was likely to consider an indictment on sexual assault charges as early as next month.

“This will be seen as the typical ugly American,” said former CIA officer Bob Baer, reacting to the ABC News report. “My question is how the CIA would not have picked up on this in their own regular reviews of CIA officers overseas,” Baer said.

“From a national security standpoint,” said Baer, the alleged rapes would be “not only wrong but could open him up to potential blackmail and that’s something the CIA should have picked up on,” said Baer. “This is indicative of personnel problems of all sorts that run through the agency,” he said.

“Rape is ugly in any context,” said Coleman who praised the bravery of the alleged Algerian victims in going to authorities. “Rape is viewed as very shameful to women, and I think this is an opportunity for the US to show how seriously it takes the issue of rape,” she said.

Repeated messages left for the CIA officer with his parents and his sister were not retur

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Defiant: Sacked French Justice Minister Rachida Dati stepped out in brilliant red at a Ministers’ Council

She famously rushed back to work just five days after a Caesarian section, but just two weeks later, Sarkozy ‘bullied’ the designer-clad minister into quitting her job to stand as an MEP, a satirical newspaper has claimed.

She is said to have collapsed in tears as he told her: ‘If you want to remain my friend then you have no choice.

‘Either you leave with nothing, or you leave to become an MEP. It’s up to you.’

Dati – who has famously refused to name the father of her daughter Zohra, fuelling speculation he may be a high-profile figure – is said to have replied bitterly: ‘If I understand you properly, I don’t have any choice.’

The young mother was said to have collapsed into tears when Sarkozy fired her

The details of the moment Dati was sacked were revealed in France’s satirical Canard Enchaine newspaper today.

It said Sarkozy called the minister into his office last week and told her:  ‘Trust me, I’ve treated you well. Do what I say and in one year you’ll be come back to the government through main entrance.’

Dati complained that if she became an MEP, she would suffer massive child-care problems by being away from Paris for four days a week.

But the president – who turned 54 years old today  – is said to have blithely reassured her that she could carry on using government creche facilities at the nation’s parliament, the Canard Enchaine said.

It added: ‘The whole conversation reduced Miss Dati to a flood of tears. She was very upset by entire incident.’

Dati became the centre of a media frenzy when she fell pregnant last year and refused to reveal the identity of the child’s father.

Feminists then branded her a ‘traitor to women’ for refusing to take maternity leave and rushing back to work five days after giving birth.

Dati was the first politician from a north African background to reach a senior position in the French cabinet, and became a symbol of Sarkozy’s desire to inject diversity into French politics.

Her against the odds success story, as the second of 12 children born to a Moroccan labourer and illiterate Algerian mother, turned her into an icon for France’s immigrant population.

But her reputation has suffered when critics began accusing her of developing a taste of expensive designer clothes and jewellery.

Sarkozy is said to have become unhappy with her erratic performance since taking office in 2007. She is said to be ‘heavyhanded’ with magistrates, prison guards and her staff.

Political sources said Dati would represent Mr Sarkozy’s centre-right UMP party at June’s European elections and would leave the government just ahead of the vote.

An Egyptian-born woman whose father died as a martyr for jihad says the West continues to remain ignorant of the threat that Islamic “sharia” law poses to Americans’ religious and political freedoms.

Author Nonie Darwish claims she was a virtual slave to Islamic law for the first 30 years of her life. In her latest book Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law, she continues her personal mission to warn the West, by exposing efforts to force and enforce sharia law on unsuspecting nations around the globe.

There is a reason, says Darwish, why the title of her book is Cruel and Usual Punishment. “Unfortunately Islamic law is usual [practice] in the Middle East, in the Muslim world,” she explains. “I’m familiar with how it can brainwash people. It can be devastating for the healthy growth of society.”

Darwish says now that she is in the West, she has noticed many Muslims who are demanding that Islamic sharia law be given to them as a religious right. But according to Darwish, shaira has nothing to do with religion.

“This is a very elaborate legal system that can [order you be put] to death if you leave Islam,” the author points out.

Darwish says no one can afford to be ignorant about the threat of sharia law.

Sabo/News

Sources say Eddy Curry’s 3-year-old son witnessed his mother and baby-sister’s murders in their Chicago apartment Saturday.

Knicks center Eddy Curry’s 3-year-old son witnessed his mother and baby-sister’s murders in their Chicago apartment Saturday, according to a source close to Curry.

Nova Henry, 24, a former girlfriend of Curry’s, and her 9-month-old daughter, Ava, were found shot dead by Henry’s mother around 6 p.m. Saturday, authorities said.

Curry’s son was found unharmed inside the South Side apartment, but his father was still described as “despondent” Saturday night.

The killer is a “known acquaintance,” said Chicago Police Officer Amina Greer.

Henry had a boyfriend and had filed a restraining order against him, according to team sources.

Greer did not say whether the suspect was being questioned last night, just that the case is still “under investigation.”

A Knicks source close to Curry described him as “distraught” upon learning of the woman’s death and what his son witnessed.

Curry was told of the murders after the team’s loss to Philadelphia last night and cried upon hearing the news, said the source.

Henry had claimed the murdered 9-month-old infant was Curry’s child, but the player has adamantly denied it.

Autopsies were set to be performed Sunday.

Curry flew back to New York from Philadelphia with the team last night, and the source was not sure if he was staying in the city or going to Chicago.

Curry is married and has four children with his wife, Patrice – Eddy III, Reign, Reigan and Reiganna, according to the Knicks media guide.

In 2007, Curry and his wife were bound and robbed at gunpoint in the family’s suburban Chicago mansion by three gun-wielding thugs.

Saturday’s tragic incident comes during an especially tumultuous period for Curry.

Two weeks ago, the Knicks star was sued by his former driver who accused him of making sexual advances, forcing him to perform demeaning tasks and twice pointing a gun at him.

Ex-driver David Kuchinsky also claimed that Curry bombarded him with racial and religious epithets.

Curry has played in just one game this season after missing the first 35 games with a right knee injury.

He arrived for preseason training out of shape and was set back further by a bacterial infection that forced him to miss the first six days of training camp.

Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni has repeatedly insisted Curry needs to improve his conditioning and drop some weight before he can become an effective player again.

• All Sections

Antonia Novello, former surgeon general, rocked by scandal

BY KENNETH LOVETT
DAILY NEWS ALBANY BUREAU CHIEF

Tuesday, January 27th 2009, 8:06 PM

Williams/News

Former U.S. Surgeon General and state Health Commissioner Antonia Novello may face criminal charges.

ALBANY – The state’s former top doc acted like a diva, abusing staffers, ordering them to take her shopping and pick up her dry cleaning, according to a report due out Tuesday.

The latest scandal to rock Albany involves Antonia Novello, who was U.S. surgeon general under President George H.W. Bush and later was Gov. George Pataki’s longtime state health commissioner. Novello is accused by the state inspector general of costing the taxpayers $48,000 in overtime by making her workers carry out personal chores for her, according to the Albany County district attorney.

The inspector general referred the case to the district attorney, David Soares, who could bring criminal charges, Soares spokeswoman Heather Orth said.

The inspector general’s report accused Novello, now 64 and working at Disney Children’s Hospital in Orlando, of ordering her employees to buy groceries, take her on shopping trips to Manhattan and even help her move a large Buddha she bought during one shopping trip, Orth confirmed.

The report even accuses Novello of using a Medicaid fraud investigator to drive her to Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and says she ordered other workers to water her plants, Orth said.

The personal work was said to result in 2,500 hours of overtime, costing the state $48,000.

The case is eerily similar to one that took down state Controller Alan Hevesi in 2006. In that case, Hevesi pleaded guilty to a felony for using state employees to chauffeur his wife around.

Hevesi did not serve any jail time, but resigned his office shortly after winning a second term.

“We were briefed and will review what their findings were,” Orth said of the inspector general’s report. “At this point, [Novello] enjoys the presumption of innocence and we will review the findings.”

Novello did not appear before the inspector general.

Her lawyer, Stewart Jones, said he was unaware of the findings of the report, but said no wrongdoing had occurred.

“I’m denying she’s done anything that was in any way improper, unethical and inconsistent with the responsibilities and obligations of her job,” Jones said.

He said that while living in New York City, Novello had a state car, but not a personal one.

“The primary purpose was always business-related,” he said. “Incidental [personal] use may have occurred, but I don’t think it was inappropriate.”

Pataki spokesman David Catalfamo was unfamiliar with the report and had no comment.

Novello, a native of Puerto Rico and the first woman and Hispanic to serve as state health commissioner, was known as a loose cannon within the Pataki administration.

“It’s unconscionable to be using taxpayer dollars to be subsidizing your lifestyle, and if it’s true, obviously she should be punished,” said Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group.

The report also comes out at a time when the state is reeling from a multitude of scandals, including last week’s indictment on federal corruption charges of former Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno. Gov. Eliot Spitzer last year resigned after he was involved in a prostitution scandal. While he admitted publicly to hiring hookers, he was never charged.

Several lawmakers and other state officials, meanwhile, are either in prison, going to prison or awaiting trial.

Horner called on Gov. Paterson and legislative leaders to order a widespread ethics review of all of state government.

“It’s just unbelievable,” Horner said. “It’s almost like everywhere you press, the place oozes with controversy.”

Novello before leaving the state employ had a publicly funded health agency spend $15,000 on an oil portrait of her to hang in the department’s office.

She received a doctorate from the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine in 1970 and a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University.

Her ex-husband, Dr. Joseph Novello, a child psychiatrist, is the brother of comic actor Don N

Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) — George Mitchell, President Barack Obama’s special Middle East troubleshooter, was chairman of a law firm that was paid about $8 million representing Dubai’s ruler in connection with a child-trafficking lawsuit.

The DLA Piper law firm did legal and lobbying work on the case, which alleged that Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al- Maktoum and another official used children kidnapped from other countries to ride as jockeys in camel races. The firm lobbied federal agencies, members of the U.S. House and about two dozen Senate offices, including those of Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2006 and 2007, according to Justice Department foreign-agent disclosures.

Mitchell, 75, who isn’t a registered lobbyist, didn’t lobby either on this issue or for Dubai generally. DLA Piper partner Bill Minor said in an e-mail that Mitchell, a former Democratic senator from Maine, mainly focused on growth and management at the firm of almost 4,000 attorneys and 65 offices worldwide, and high-profile projects such as an investigation of steroid use in Major League Baseball.

Mitchell’s firm had extensive lobbying clients and offices in the Middle East ranging from the leader of Dubai to a Kuwait construction firm contracting in Iraq. The firm also has offices in Egypt, Oman, Qatar and Abu Dhabi and has an affiliation with a law firm in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Mitchell traveled to Dubai and spoke to the press there about the issue.

Suit Thrown Out

The camel-jockey suit was thrown out after the U.S. Justice Department notified a Miami federal judge that it planned to intervene and argue that al-Maktoum was immune from the suit as a foreign leader.

“That he was such a key figure in the firm himself certainly gives the appearance that probably any of the clients that solicited help from the firm may have had a business relationship with him as well,” said Craig Holman, who lobbies for tougher governmental ethics rules for Public Citizen, a Washington-based advocacy group.

In a Jan. 24 telephone interview, Mitchell said he “was generally aware of the case but I had no involvement in it.”

“I visited Dubai. I did not discuss the case with the Sheikh. I had nothing to do with bringing it in,” Mitchell said. “I was merely chairman when it occurred.”

Mitchell’s name heads a list on DLA Piper’s Web site of a team advising clients “on opportunities and risks associated with doing business in Iraq and the Middle East generally.” In addition to legal work, the Web site says DLA Piper has “experience working with relevant decision makers in the United States and the region.”

Dubai Billing

Altogether, DLA Piper billed Dubai-related entities about $9.5 million on this and other issues while Mitchell was chairman from 2005 through the end of 2008.

Other lobbying clients located or primarily interested in the Middle East — and one focused on Iran — paid DLA Piper an additional $2.29 million.

Mitchell, who is traveling in the Middle East this week, may need a waiver from Obama’s new policy on ethics and lobbying, which says government officials must wait two years before working on matters “directly and substantially” related to pre-government employers or clients even if they weren’t registered lobbyists, said Stefan Passantino, head of the Washington-based political law group for McKenna Long & Aldridge.

‘Perception Dynamic’

“It is a perception dynamic that has to be managed very carefully,” said Passantino, who helped represent former House Speaker Newt Gingrich during a congressional ethics case.

Asked if he’s going to have to recuse himself from anything at the State Department, Mitchell said, “I haven’t made any judgment on that.”

“I have to wait and see,” Mitchell said. “I will be resigning from the firm and terminating all private business activities.”

White House spokesman Bill Burton referred questions to the State Department, where spokesman Gordon Duguid declined comment and referred questions to Mitchell’s office. A voicemail left at the U.A.E. embassy in Washington wasn’t returned.

Habib Al-Mulla, a Dubai-based lawyer for Sheikh Mohammad, also said Mitchell “played no role in the litigation or efforts that led to the quashing of the lawsuit.” Al-Mulla said the sheikh was satisfied with the outcome of the case.

Mitchell, a former U.S. Senate majority leader and onetime federal judge, was quoted by the Emirates News Agency in January 2007 defending the United Arab Emirates’ efforts to rescue “underage camel jockeys.”

Mitchell led efforts in Northern Ireland that resulted in the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement. In 2000 and 2001, he was chairman of a fact-finding panel examining the crisis in the Middle East.

9/11 Commission

In 2002, congressional Democrats tapped Mitchell as vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission. Mitchell and Henry Kissinger, then-President George W. Bush’s pick as chairman, quit the commission’s top posts after Congress required members to disclose financial information and suggested Mitchell may have to sever ties to his law firm.

The camel jockey lawsuit in September 2006, a class-action lawsuit filed by Mount Pleasant, South Carolina-based Motley Rice LLC by the children’s parents, accused al-Maktoum and others of enslaving boys from Africa and South Asia who were brought to Dubai as jockeys for camel racing, a popular sport in some parts of the Arab world.

DLA Piper picked up the case two weeks after the lawsuit was filed in the U.S. on behalf of underage camel jockeys. It set up meetings with Biden’s Senate staff on Nov. 29, 2006, followed by a Dec. 15 meeting with Obama’s staff. On Jan. 4, 2007, the firm arranged a meeting with Clinton and other senators and their aides, according to Justice Department Foreign Agent Registration Act filings.

‘Serious Problem’

A February 2005 report on the U.S. State Department Web site says that in the United Arab Emirates, which includes Dubai, “trafficking of young, noncitizen boys employed as camel jockeys continued to be a serious problem, although the Government has pledged to eliminate this practice for boys under the age of 15.” The report cited an estimate by the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust International, a Pakistan-based civil rights group, that 5,000 boys were working as camel jockeys.

The U.A.E. introduced the use of robots as riders on the camels and two years ago set up an $8 million fund to compensate former child jockeys. Human rights organizations have condemned the use of children as camel jockeys, saying the boys, mostly from Pakistan and Bangladesh and some as young as 4 years old, are abducted, sexually abused and underfed.

‘Remarkable Partnership’

Mitchell was quoted by the state-owned Emirates News Agency in January 2007 as praising the United Arab Emirates and Dubai for a “remarkable partnership with UNICEF to locate, care for and repatriate underage camel jockeys. This program has been justly praised by the international community as a model solution to a serious problem.”

DLA Piper billed the Dubai government about $8 million, according to Justice Department filings. This included almost $2.5 million between Aug. 6, 2006, and Feb. 28, 2007. Over the next six months, the firm billed Dubai over $1.2 million, as it held more than 70 meetings with senior officials at the White House, the State and Justice departments, and Congress, seeking a “statement of interest” by the U.S. government for their client.

The Justice Department on July 26, 2007, informed U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga it would file a motion seeking “head of state immunity” for al-Maktoum. The judge dismissed the case days later, citing other jurisdictional issues.

A similar case was filed in Kentucky, omitting Dubai’s ruler as a defendant, and was also dismissed in November. John Eubanks, one of the lawyers who filed the cases, said the matter appears to be closed as far as U.S. courts are concerned.

To contact the reporter on this story: Timothy J. Burger in Washington at Tburger2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: January 27, 2009 12:08 EST

ko Narushima
January 28, 2009

Tania Zaetta … considering a return to Afghanistan.
Photo: Janie Barrett

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THE Bollywood actress Tania Zaetta has received an undisclosed sum and a formal apology from the Chief of Defence after his department leaked false allegations she had sex with troops in Afghanistan during a concert tour.

Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston met Ms Zaetta yesterday to personally apologise for any distress suffered by the former Who Dares Wins host.

“Ms Zaetta gave her time and her talent to entertain our forces serving in Afghanistan and she deserves our praise and our thanks,” Air Chief Marshal Houston said.

He also invited the former Baywatch actress to entertain the troops again. “She is welcome to again join a Forces Entertainment Tour in the near future,” he said.

The Defence Department reached a compensation agreement late last year for an “unacceptable breach of privacy” after rumours surfaced about Ms Zaetta’s conduct during an entertainment tour in April 2008.

Ms Zaetta was named in a confidential briefing paper to the Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, as having slept with soldiers at a military base in Tarin Kowt, the capital of Oruzgan province.

The document said the allegations had been made by the singer Angry Anderson, a claim the rocker has denied.

Yesterday Ms Zaetta thanked her family and friends for standing by her through a difficult time. She also thanked the “thousands of beautiful people from all over the world” who emailed her website.

“I read every single email, many of them with tears in my eyes,” the host of a series of fitness and boxing videos said.

As for the invitation to go back for round two, the actress was considering it.

“I’m very pleased this is all over now and I look forward to the next opportunity to visit our Australian troops overseas,” she said. “My trip to the Middle East with the Australian Defence Force touched my heart in many ways and will stay with me forever.”

The actress is now working on a feature film to be shot in Geelong and starting a charity, Peace for the Children, for children in conflict zones.

In a Daily Beast exclusive, Lucinda Franks says key investigators now believe Ruth Madoff played a larger role than previously assumed in her husband’s Ponzi scheme, and that the fraud began far earlier than other reports have indicated. Plus, she reports, 20 million Madoff documents have been unearthed in a Queens warehouse.

Since the Bernard Madoff scandal broke in December, two overarching questions have been raised. What if anything did other family members know about the Ponzi scheme? And when did it begin—was he a legitimate investor who ran into trouble or was it all a ruse from the beginning? Now, key players I spoke to in the multipronged investigation into the Madoff scheme say they are beginning to piece together answers to those questions.

While she has not been charged with any wrongdoing, authorities now believe Ruth Madoff, Bernard’s wife of almost half a century, played a larger role than previously thought. Until now, the assumption has been—as Madoff himself told FBI agents—that his investment-advisory business was separate from other, legitimate Madoff businesses; it was housed on a different floor and operated, he has said, without knowledge of others in his family.

But investigators have discovered, according to a person close to the case, that the funds from the advisory business were in fact comingled with Madoff’s personal funds and with a market-making fund in which he, as a broker-dealer, executed orders for customers. It was Ruth Madoff who oversaw the books on all three of these accounts, and it was the comingling of money from them—contrary to regulations that require such accounts to be kept separate—that enabled the elaborate shell game. It also meant that some investors’ money was not invested for their own benefit but went into Madoff’s personal assets.

This is why investigators are increasingly focused on Ruth Madoff’s role. While the businesses were operated separately, the money generated by them was mixed under Ruth Madoff’s watch, investigators now believe. What isn’t clear yet is whether she knew the full extent of what she was doing.

But, says one highly placed person involved in the inquiries: “If Ruth Madoff had an office there for 37 years and kept the books of this account, wouldn’t she have had some inkling that something was wrong? She’s there all the time and her husband just blows it by her? They are a really tight couple, did he really keep this secret from her every day of their marriage?” Ira Sorkin, the lawyer for both Madoffs, said he had no comment.

Others involved in the case point to the fact that Mrs. Madoff has not hired her own lawyer as an indication that she knows more than she has previously revealed. A close business associate of Madoff’s shares that skepticism: “If she knew nothing, wouldn’t her husband, who was so protective of his family, insist she have a different lawyer?”

Questions remain about whether still others may have played a role in the scheme. Investigators are exploring whether the statements Madoff investors received were false —indeed whether there were any trades at all. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has reported that there is no record of Mr. Madoff’s investment-advisory firm placing any trades. “What did all those people do on the secretive 17th floor if they weren’t executing trades?” a source close to the investigation told The Daily Beast, “What did they think they were doing?”

In another key development, a person close to the case says Madoff has admitted to law-enforcement officials that the Ponzi scheme began more than 40 years ago—much earlier than previously believed. Another law-enforcement official says authorities speculate that Madoff’s role as a pioneer of electronic trading, early in his career, may have aided the scheme. It revolutionized the way stocks were traded, and also removed a physical paper trail. Order slips were no longer issued to “runners” who would take them to the floor. Now with the push of a button, a broker could confirm a transaction—or at least give the appearance that he had. Investigators say this could have easily led to a game of electronic hide and seek.

Madoff himself has told authorities that he acted alone, and while no hard evidence has emerged to refute that, many members of his extended family are targets of irate victims whose savings have evaporated. Some of those family members have gone to authorities and are talking to them about letters they have received that threaten their lives.

Another indication that bolsters federal investigators’ certainty that Mr. Madoff did not conduct this massive fraud alone is the recent discovery of as many as 20 million documents from the firm that are stored in a warehouse in Queens, many of which shed light on the scheme. No one could create that amount of paper without considerable help. “It gives you a sense of the enormity of the problem in solving and settling this case,” a source close to the investigation says. “This will go on for decades.”

Lucinda Franks is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author who was on the staff of The New York Times and has written for several publications including The New Yorker and The New York Times Book Review and Magazine. Her latest book is My Father’s Secret War, about her father, who was a spy for the OSS during World War II.

Jan. 27, 2009 | A Wall Street retiree wearing a red latex bodysuit and a black hood is strapped to a table while electric shocks surge into his penis. Talking to Daniel Bergner in his new book, “The Other Side of Desire,” the man compares his masochistic ecstasy to having onion skins stripped off his psyche.

“Is this a weird way to deal with life?” he asks Bergner at one point. “Consider the man who bought Mark McGwire’s seventieth home-run ball for three million dollars. Who’s weirder?”

In a series of four stories, Bergner grants us entree into dark worlds of extreme lust and longing: there is the foot fetishist wracked by shame, the dominatrix so turned on by inflicting pain on others that she once roasted a man on a spit, and the stepfather capsized by lust for his 12-year-old stepdaughter. There is even a love story involving amputee fetish. But what’s remarkable about Bergner’s book is not the way these tales shock or confound or titillate (though they do those things sometimes), but how sympathetic their plights and hungers become. Bergner, whose previous books include “God of the Rodeo,” about convicts in Louisiana’s Angola prison, is a keen storyteller but above all a humane one, and in his hands, these characters do not seem like freaks so much as shadows of ourselves.

A New York Times Magazine staff writer, Bergner spent four years compiling “The Other Side of Desire,” delving into vast psychiatric research and fascinating anthropological studies along the way — from a tribe in Papua New Guinea that instructs young boys to fill themselves with semen by performing blow jobs on male teens to recent eye-opening research on female desire, all of which he weaves throughout the narratives. (The latter topic was the subject of Bergner’s recent Times magazine cover story, “What Do Women Want?”) Struggling to find answers among an ocean of conflicting data and evidence, the sex therapists become as much a focus of the book as the afflicted. They remind us of the frustrating imperfection of science as we try to unlock the riddle at the core of these tales: How is our sexuality created, and why do we want what we want?

Salon spoke with Bergner on the phone from his home in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The first character we meet is a foot fetishist. Can you tell us about him?

Jacob is an Everyman in a sense: this devoted father, successful businessman. But he has, from a very young age, been powerfully attracted to women’s feet. He lives in a northern city, and when the weatherman talks about “feet of snow” it can drive him mad with desire. He’s got a great relationship with his wife, but he’s too ashamed to tell her. He doesn’t want her to be tainted by it.

And one of the questions becomes, where does this foot fetish come from? What are the theories?

The debate breaks down, to be a little simplistic, between forces of nature and forces of nurture. The doctor he seeks out, a compassionate psychiatrist named Dr. Berlin, puts the emphasis on the purely biological. At the other end of the spectrum are psychologists who put much more stress on our experience. One psychologist thought — well, Jacob had severe reading disabilities as a little boy. Being called on in the classroom, looking down at the exact moment when he felt anxiety, when he felt such an intense charge, might have resulted in the eroticization of the objects he saw. That might sound far-fetched, but I do think there’s something to the idea that experience plays a significant role in how we become who we are sexually.

And why are feet a common fetish?

There are all kinds of theories. One is that they are very rich in smell, and smell plays such a big part biologically in terms of our animal ancestry and our sexuality.

In the book you mention how some fetishes may be informed by the culture and times.

Yes, it’s very interesting — one of the sexologists I spent time with pointed out that if by looking at pornography one tries to trace the evolution of fetishes, one can see real changes, and those changes can be linked to shifts in the way we live our daily lives. Fetishizing hair is something that was much more prominent when women and mothers would sit in front of the mirror and do their hundred brushes of their locks every night. Or rubber fetishes, he pointed out, were more prominent when training pants were made of rubber.

One of the most poignant things about Jacob is how alone he feels. You would think one of the things the Internet would provide would be a brotherhood of people who feel the same way.

There were times with Jacob, especially toward the end, when I did step out of my journalistic role and say, “What would happen if you brought this up to your wife? Are you really so alone — don’t you realize there are other people out there?” And he just couldn’t hear it. The shame was so strong. That might be hard for people to understand, because foot fetishes sound so benign, even comical. But I think what has to be understood is that, for all of us, sex is this shame-prone realm. If you think about being very different in that realm it might help explain why he insists on secrecy and can’t even find solace in the fact that, yes, the Internet would suggest there are plenty of people not unlike him.

Do you see that potent shame as being something that is particularly American?

Now we have Pelosi arguing that the way to balance the budget is not by cutting expenditures, but by cutting kids.”

NEW YORK (Catholic League) – Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that it was necessary to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on family planning services in order to stimulate the economy. Pelosi maintained that “contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented as follows:

“Looks like the Democrats have abortion and contraception on the brain. Last week, President Barack Obama lifted restrictions on federal funds being used to promote and perform abortions overseas. Now we have Pelosi arguing that the way to balance the budget is not by cutting expenditures, but by cutting kids.

“Her comment matches up well with what Obama said during the presidential campaign about comprehensive sex education: speaking of his own daughters, he said that ‘if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.’ (My emphasis.)

“We have reached a new low when high-ranking public office holders in the federal government cast children as the enemy. But at least it explains their enthusiasm for abortion-on-demand.”