Antonio-Maria Costa, the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime is seen here avoiding answering a question about the cannabis policy in Holland. (A youtube video - broadband only)

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Bestuursvoorzitter Jean-Paul Votron van de Belgisch-Nederlandse bankverzekeraar Fortis heeft een bonus van 2,5 miljoen euro gekregen voor de overname van ABN Amro. Dat blijkt uit het maandag gepubliceerde jaarverslag van Fortis.

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Uit het jaarverslag is verder af te leiden dat het basissalaris van Votron flink omhoog gaat van 750.000 euro vorig jaar naar 1,3 miljoen euro dit jaar.

Je gaat je afvragen of het belang daat Voltron had bij een overname wel in lijn lag met het belang van het gefuseerde bedrijf…

Karl Rove tells us how to win the Dem convention

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Attorney General Michael Mukasey was supposed to end the cynical politicization of the Justice Department. But the sudden disbanding of the United States attorney’s public corruption office in Los Angeles looks like business as usual.

There were a number of sensitive inquiries under way at the high-profile office, including an investigation of Representative Jerry Lewis, the powerful California Republican who directed hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks to favored government contractors while chairman of the appropriations committee.

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Het aantal bonnen voor snelheidsovertredingen is in 2007 met 10 procent gestegen naar ruim 9,7 miljoen. Met een totaal aantal van 12.640.881 boetes, goed voor 550 miljoen euro, werd een record gevestigd.

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Vanaf morgen worden boetes 20 procent hoger.

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A Cuneiform clay tablet which for over 150 years defied attempts at interpretation has now been revealed to describe an asteroid impact which in 3123 BC hit Köfels, Austria, leaving in its wake a trail of destruction which may acccount for the biblical tale of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Planisphere clay tablet. Pic: Bristol UniversityThe “Planisphere” tablet - inscribed around 700 BC - was unearthed by Henry Layard in the remains of the library of the Assyrian royal palace at Nineveh, close to modern-day Mosul, Iraq. It’s a copy of the night diary of a Sumerian astronomer containing drawings of constellations and “known constellation names”, but it required modern computer tech to finally unravel its exact meaning.

Alan Bond, Managing Director of Reaction Engines Ltd and Mark Hempsell, Senior Lecturer in Astronautics at Bristol University, subjected the Planisphere to a programme which “can simulate trajectories and reconstruct the night sky thousands of years ago”. They discovered that it described “events in the sky before dawn on the 29 June 3123 BC”, with half of it noting “planet positions and cloud cover, the same as any other night”.

The other half, however, records an object “large enough for its shape to be noted even though it is still in space” and tracks its trajectory relative to the stars, which “to an error better than one degree is consistent with an impact at Köfels”.

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The woman in charge of security at Heathrow - Britain’s biggest single terrorist target - was a store detective at the airport’s duty-free shops just six years ago.

What an inspiring career story, isn’t it? Well, no, not really:

Donna Boote, 37, is now not only in charge of thousands of security staff, but also shares a £1.2million home with Heathrow’s managing director Mark Bullock

It is telling that a candidate is forced to publicly vow to stay in the race:

Yesterday: Clinton Vows To Stay in Race To Convention

Feb 5: Romney Vows to Stay in GOP Race (dropped out on Feb 7)

Feb 4: Huckabee vows to stay in race (dropped out on March 4)

Jan 24: Giuliani Vows to Stay in the Race (dropped out on Jan 30)

Jan 6: Edwards vows to stay in race to convention (dropped out on Jan 30)

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Two widely prescribed cholesterol-lowering drugs, Vytorin and Zetia, may not work and should be used only as a last resort, The New England Journal of Medicine said in an editorial published on Sunday.

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Merck and Schering-Plough, the companies that make Vytorin and Zetia, said on Sunday that despite the results of the trial, they would continue to promote their medicines as first-line treatments for high cholesterol.

The medicines are among the top-selling drugs in the world, with total sales of about $5 billion last year. About four million Americans take them.

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An 80-year-old church deacon was removed from the Smith Haven Mall yesterday in a wheelchair and arrested by police for refusing to remove a T-shirt protesting the Iraq War.

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We know that 96 percent of the Americans killed in Iraq have died since Bush boasted that our mission was accomplished and we know with sickening assurance that we have hit the hideous milestone of 4,000 of our own dead in the Bush administration’s war of choice.

We arrived at that number on Sunday and we’ve seen it replayed in all its sterility throughout the media this entire week.

And to be sure the numbers of dead and wounded while astounding in generalities have sadly begun over the last five years to lose their specificity, to render us unable to grasp the individual stories of lives lost for no reason and so many families left with interminable grief.

But I want to tell you about number 4,000, because he has a name and he had a wonderful life to come.

His name is Christopher M. Hake. He was a U.S. Army Staff Sargent. More importantly, he was a husband to wife Kelli and a father to 1-year-old son, Gage.

He was from Enid, Oklahoma — and he was 26 years old.

We can’t say for sure that Hake was number 4,000 of our Iraq dead because Pvt. George Delgado, 21, of Palmdale, Calif., Pfc. Andrew J. Habsieger, 22, of Festus, Mo. and Spc. Jose A. Rubio Hernandez, 24, of Mission, Texas all died in a horrible blast earlier this week when, according to the Defense Department, “their vehicle encountered an improvised explosive” in Baghdad.

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When Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill endorsed Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, she said she’d found a candidate who “gives us a reason to believe again.”

Obama believed in her, too, donating $10,000 from his political action committee to McCaskill’s 2006 campaign. She received nothing from the PAC of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.

And when California Rep. Doris Matsui endorsed Clinton, she said the former first lady had been “a consistent champion and friend” of Asian Americans. Clinton’s PAC had also befriended Matsui, giving $5,000 to her campaign. Matsui received nothing from Obama’s PAC.

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King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia — head of one of the most oppressive regimes in the world — has said that atheism is a “frightening phenomenon that must be vanquished”. He made the threat during a speech in which he called for dialogue between all monotheistic religions.

“I ask representatives of all the monotheistic religions to meet with their brothers in faith,” Abdullah told delegates to a seminar on “Dialogue Among Civilizations between Japan and the Islamic World,” according to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA). “If God wills it, we will then meet with our brothers from other religions, including those of the Torah and the Gospel… to come up with ways to safeguard humanity,” he added.

So it doesn’t really matter what Invisible Sky Wizard you worship, as long as there is exactly one?

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The controversial chief executive who led Northern Rock to the brink of collapse has received a £760,000 payoff.

Adam Applegarth’s bonanza, which will be revealed when the bank publishes its annual accounts tomorrow, comes despite the fact the newly-nationalised bank still owes taxpayers £25billion.

Applegarth, 46, is also entitled to draw on a £2.5million pension pot once he reaches the age of 55 – which could give him retirement benefits of up to £200,000 a year.