More of the same

The governor of Baghdad was assassinated earlier this week by… More of the same

The governor of Baghdad was assassinated earlier this week by militants hoping to disrupt the scheduled Jan. 30 elections in the most high-profile killing in several months.

Ali al-Haidri, the governor of Baghdad province, survived an assassination attempt last year. He was ambushed Tuesday, according to The Guardian, while being driven through the al-Hurriya suburb of northern Baghdad. Ten of al-Haidri’s bodyguards were also killed in the attack.

Al-Qaida in Iraq, a group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi of Jordan, claimed responsibility for the attack. They released a statement saying they had killed a “tyrant and American agent”.

Violence is still routine in Iraq, with daily attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces. By the afternoon of Jan. 6, the number of U.S. troops killed had reached 1,342, and another 10,252 had been wounded in action.

Over the limit

Think you overdid it with the drink over the holidays?

Nothing could compare to what Bulgarian doctors discovered when they performed five blood tests on a 67-year-old man in the southern city of Plovdiv last month. They confirmed he had a blood-alcohol content of 0.914, well above the level that is considered life-threatening.

Police and doctors said Tuesday that the man was hospitalized Dec. 20 after a car knocked him over on a street. The Associated Press reported that the breath test displayed a high blood-alcohol level, but officers on the scene suspected the result was inaccurate because the man was conscious and spoke with them.

Doctors took the five blood tests the same day, and were astounded by the results. The 0.914 blood-alcohol content is almost double the 0.55 level that is considered life-threatening. Dr. Svetlan Dermendzhiev of Plovdiv’s university hospital said he had never seen such a high level.

The man was reported to be in stable condition after treatment for head injuries.

Former dictator under house arrest

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was placed under house arrest Wednesday, after the country’s top court ruled murder and kidnapping charges standing against him could proceed.

The Santiago Times reported that the arrest order was delivered to Pinochet’s country estate after Chile’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision rejecting a defense motion that the former dictator was unfit to be charged because he suffered dementia.

Charges against the former dictator relate to the deaths and disappearances of 10 leftist dissidents in the 1970s. More than 3,000 people died and 27,000 were tortured during Pinochet’s 17-year rule, which ended in 1990.

Pinochet received substantial support and aid from the United States and Great Britain during his reign because of his zero tolerance for left-wing groups and organizations. At present, the United States criticizes human rights abuses by allies and enemies alike in its country-by-country review, an annual practice that began in 1976 because of congressional anger over America’s supportive policy toward Chile during Richard M. Nixon’s presidency.

The decision carried Pinochet one step closer to being brought to his first major trial. Various military officers who served under him during his time in power have already been convicted.

Contraband cheese sandwiches

In Colorado Springs, Colo., a man serving a life sentence for murder was sentenced to three additional years in prison. The offence? Passing out cheese sandwiches to other prisoners.

The Associated Press reported that Douglas Eugene Wilson, 45, pleaded guilty Monday to possession of the contraband, and was sentenced by the district judge. Prosecutors told the court that Wilson had the sandwiches while in jail awaiting trial for the murder charge, and that he tried to give them to other inmates, which violated jail rules.

After being warned not to pass out the food, Wilson reportedly charged a deputy, and was subsequently tackled and handcuffed. Second-degree assault and attempted second-degree assault charges were dropped after Wilson entered a guilty plea for the contraband.

“Why are the taxpayers paying the judiciary to hold this hearing on some contraband sandwiches?” Wilson said in a telephone interview with the Gazette of Colorado Springs.

“Taxpayers want to know where their money is going. There it is.”

The slammer

Sticking with the overzealous court theme, a Berlin court handed out an additional fine after a man, angered by the court’s decision about his involvement in a property usage dispute with neighbors, slammed the courtroom door.

“Apparently the panes shook, he slammed it so hard. That displeased the judge,” said Wolfgang Ohler, spokesman for the court of appeals in the southwestern town of Zweibruecken.

The Reuters news network reported that the man appealed the extra fine of $265 on the grounds that “the door slipped out of his hand as he left the courtroom,” but the fine was upheld.

Mars rover birthday celebrates scientific discovery, inextinguishable candles

NASA celebrated the first anniversary of the two rovers’ exploration of Mars last week. The robotic explorers were supposed to last only three months, but they are still roaming the alien landscape and sending back packets of important information.

The rovers have so far transmitted 62,000 images, as well as 86 billion bits of additional data.

MSNBC reported that NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe was invited to blow out the candles on the rovers’ birthday cake, but the candles were a party gag engineered to relight when extinguished.

“The rovers absolutely refuse to go away, so we are going to have the candle lit for the whole year,” said Charles Elachi, the director of NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory.

The rovers, one entitled Spirit and the other Opportunity, have made historic discoveries during the past year, including sending back images and data that suggest Mars could have once been hospitable to life. The mission discovered rocks altered by ancient water activity, suggesting sites that once held rivers.

Churchill singled out in attack

South African president Thabo Mbeki made a disdainful attack on Winston Churchill and other historic British figures earlier this week in an address to an assembly of regional leaders in Khartum, Sudan. The Guardian reported that Mbeki branded them “racists who ravaged Africa and blighted its post-colonial development.”

Mbeki said British imperialists of the 19th and 20th centuries treated Africans as savages and left behind a “terrible legacy” of countries divided by race, color, culture and religion.

He singled out Churchill, Britain’s prime minister during WWII and the British Empire’s colonial secretary before that, as a proponent of “vicious prejudice” who justified British atrocities by depicting Africans as inferiors who needed to be subdued.

Mbeki quoted to the assembly a passage from “The River War,” Churchill’s account of Lord Kitchener’s military campaign in Sudan, which detailed his perceived shortcomings of Islam.

“Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.”

Mbeki said this attitude conditioned the behavior of British policy in South Africa, including the complete destruction of the Zulu people and the introduction of concentration camps to the world during of the Anglo-Boer war at the turn of the 20th century.