Nineteen year old Nassim Hassanpour is the only Iranian woman athlete in the 2004 Olympics. She is a markswoman in the 10 metre air pistol competition, one of the very few sports that allows women to compete while still wearing the headscarf and long coat that is compulsory for women in Iran.
Another sad and ridiculous result of stupid rules from old men still stuck in a medieval mindset.
Guys, posting fake fan messages on a blog is just very, very uncool. Not to mention stupid, since the blog owner can see IP addresses.
This is a good article, btw. NYT not only publishes an article about the blog phenomenon as such (which gets old), but actually discusses issues where blogs just happen to be involved. Not that I have any clue if the story is correct, or what kind of band Secret Machines is.
In April, a gang of professional robbers hit Nokas in Stavanger, killing one unarmed police officer and getting away with a record amount of money. Since then, the police has been rounding up suspects and increasing surveillance of the brutal gangs, and when two heavily armed bank robbers launched an attempted robbery at a DnB bank outside Oslo this morning, armed police were waiting. Both the robbers were shot inside the bank, one of them was seriously wounded with bullets in both thights.
Norwegian police needs special permission to be armed. As far as I know, only two other countries have unarmed police as the general rule: Iceland and Great Britain.
Norwegian police officers overwhelmingly support the arrangement, and as long as they do, I see that as a good sign that it works. There is always the possibility to arm for special situations, like today.
The official story, reported by the BBC, is that Chavez won the referendum comfortably:
Officials from the National Electoral Council said that, with 94% of ballots counted, Mr Chavez had 58% of the vote.
However, a bit earlier exit polls showed him losing by a landslide [update: see note below].
The mid-morning results showed that the opposition, already boasting an enormous 1,758,000 votes to Chavez's 798,000, is well on its way to reaching the target of 3.76 million votes it needs to oust the authoritarian, left-wing President.
Considering all the tricks Chavez has pulled in the past, electoral fraud could not be put past him. Obviously, this referendum will not be the end of the tragic story.
The CNE says the No won 58% to 41% with 94% of the results in. If OAS and Carter says this is true, then that's it we lost. But I think this will drag on. Supposedly nither Smartmatic, nor carter nor OAS back the results so far. This is the worst possible scenario in terms of peace for Venezuela.
Indeed.
Another Marxist experiment is not exactly what any country needs now, but I fear another generation has to find that out for themselves.
Update: Still waiting for the OAS and Carter Center to give a verdict on the election process.
And, the Independent has simply yanked the article about exit poll results. I hate when news sources do that without at least replacing it with an explanation.
Those pesky Icelanders are not accepting the herring quotas we have set for the economic zone around Svalbard, and supports its fishing vessels doing essentially what they want. Iceland refuses to accept that Norway has the right to make the rules in this area.
Norway has dispatched several coast guard vessels to the area, and Iceland threatens to "react" if we interfere with their vessels.
So how will this play out? Iceland tends to win all the fisheries conflicts, because the country is very dependent on fisheries and are protecting its "rights" vigurously. In Norway, most people couldn't care less, even if the herring stocks are depleted.
I don't even like herring, and Icelandic people are just too darned difficult to hate.
