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The state police can now bank on a forensic tool to achieve speedy convictions. For the first time in Maharashtra, life sentences were meted out to the accused based on the findings of Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature (BEOS) profiling. Reports of these tests, conducted at the state forensic lab in Kalina, were held admissible in sessions courts in two brutal cases of murder.

Last month, MBA students Aditi Sharma and her lover Pravin Khandelwal were pronounced guilty by a Pune sessions court for conspiring to murder a fellow student. The deceased, Udit Bharati, was Aditi’s ex-boyfriend and was poisoned with ‘ prasad ‘ laced with arsenic. In January, a supari shop employee Amin Bhoi was convicted by the Sewri sessions court for hammering his colleague to death and robbing the shop.

Both Aditi and Amin underwent BEOS tests and the findings clearly indicated their involvement in the murders. Both convictions were announced within 14 months of the arrests. During BEOS profiling, an accused is asked not to give answers verbally; experiential knowledge is retrieved from his brain. Experiential knowledge is acquired only through participation in an event, leading the person to have an experience of that activity. The technique detects and differentiates whether the accused was actually involved in committing a crime or only learnt of it. It helps in the reconstruction of events.

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The pictured stingray was caught in the Maeklong River by U.S. biologist Zeb Hogan, 34, who is on a worldwide quest for the largest freshwater fish.

Mr Hogan is being guided by Rick Humphreys, a Briton who runs a fishing company in Cambodia.

Mr Humphreys has long dreamt of finding an enormous ray and said of this one: ‘It’s a start. There are a lot bigger ones than that.’

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If Europeans really want to help Barack Obama next week they should repress their enthusiasm for him – and stay home. Ensure those crowds are thin and lethargic; maybe even offer the odd heckle, perhaps while brandishing a hostile placard. Let the travelling US press report that Obama is not so popular with foreigners after all: nothing will endear him more to the American public.

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The trouble with rocket-powered roller skates is that you can’t steer.

To remain on land as long as possible, we suggest you start in northern Siberia (99°1′30E 76°13′6N) and point yourself due south. That’ll take you through 4,717 miles of Russia, Mongolia, China, Burma, and Thailand before you splash into the South China Sea.

Or start at 48°24′53N 4°47′44W in northern France and head east. An unswerving course will take you through Europe, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, and Russia, covering 6,665 miles before you hit the Sea of Okhotsk. Good luck.

If you want to be really, really alone, head for 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W in the South Pacific Ocean. That’s “Point Nemo,” the point in the ocean farthest from any land. You’ll be in the middle of 22,405,411 square kilometers of ocean, an area larger than the entire former Soviet Union.

The point on land farthest from any ocean is at 46°16.8′N 86°40.2′E, outside the Chinese city of Urumqi, in the Dzoosotoyn Elisen Desert. It’s 1,645 miles from the nearest coastline.

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British government officials say they are considering doing away with laws banning people labeled “idiots” and “lunatics” from running for Parliament.

Justice Minister Bridget Prentice plans to hold a meeting to discuss throwing out the laws after they prompted negative feedback from members of Parliament and mental health organizations, The Times of London reported Sunday.

The rules consider idiots as people “incapable of gaining reason” and lunatics as those “capable of periods of lucidity.”

The laws prevent lunatics from standing for Parliament in “their non-lucid intervals.” People listed under the Mental Health Act are not allowed to seek election, regardless of whether they recover.

Looking at the current batch in parliament, I’d have guessed this law was repealed long ago…

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“Could I mention the presence of my friend, Congressman Steve Pearce, who I believe will be joining me in the United States Senate?”

– Sen. John McCain, quoted by Politico, apparently planning to still be in the Senate next year.

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On the eve of Senator Barack Obama’s visit to Iraq, its prime minister tried to step back Sunday from comments in an interview in which he appeared to support Mr. Obama’s plan for troop withdrawal.

The interview with the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, was published Saturday in the online version of Der Spiegel, a German magazine. It was widely picked up by American newspapers because it appeared to give an unexpected boost to Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who has called for an expedited withdrawal.

The White House is leaning on Maliki:

Mr. Maliki’s interview prompted immediate concern from the Bush administration, which called to seek clarification from Mr. Maliki’s office, American officials said.

[..]

The statement, which was distributed to media organizations by the American military early on Sunday, said Mr. Maliki’s words had been “misunderstood and mistranslated,” but it failed to cite specifics.

“Unfortunately, Der Spiegel was not accurate,” Mr. Dabbagh said Sunday by telephone. “I have the recording of the voice of Mr. Maliki. We even listened to the translation.”

But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki’s office, not the magazine. And in an audio recording of Mr. Maliki’s interview that Der Spiegel provided to The New York Times, Mr. Maliki seemed to state a clear affinity for Mr. Obama’s position, bringing it up on his own in an answer to a general question on troop presence.

The following is a direct translation from the Arabic of Mr. Maliki’s comments by The Times: “Obama’s remarks that — if he takes office — in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq.”

He continued: “Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.”

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The march of the Big Brother state under Labour was highlighted last night as it was revealed that there are now 1,043 laws that give the authorities the power to enter a home or business.

Nearly half have been introduced since Labour came to power 11 years ago. They include the right to:

• Invade your home to see if your pot plants have pests or do not have a ‘plant passport’ (Plant Health England Order 2005).

• Survey your home and garden to see if your hedge is too high (Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003).

• Check that accommodation given to asylum seekers is not being lived in by non-asylum seekers (Immigration and Asylum Act 1999).

• Raid a house to check if unlicensed gambling is taking place (Gambling Act 2005 Inspection Regulations 2007).

• Seize fridges without the correct energy rating (Energy Information Household Refrigerators and Freezers Regulations 2004).

The rise in clipboard-wielding state inspectors flies in the face of repeated pledges by Ministers to curb the power of bureaucrats.

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Struggling mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac have been allowed to issue mortgages of up to $700,000.

This despite the fact that they guarantee $5 trillion in mortgages but only have a paltry $80 billion in capital. Or to put it another way: their total assets are only 1.6 percent of their total liabilities.

Nevertheless, says The Mogambo Guru, Dow Jones Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight director James Lockhart says Fannie and Freddie are both “adequately capitalized, and that Fannie Mae can “ride out the storm” in the housing market over “coming months.”

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A Nigerian couple who immigrated to Austin a decade ago thought they had finally made it in America. On May 7, they closed on their first home in the States, buying a $283,000 Cedar Park house that had been headed for foreclosure.

It seemed like a good deal to Bobo and Joy Dickson. They did everything right, they thought. They got a mortgage lender, signed the papers, had the title put in their name .

But on May 14, they came home from work at their janitorial services company to find that all their furniture, family heirlooms, personal photos, clothes, even their daughter’s piggybank, had disappeared.

After filing a theft report with the Cedar Park Police Department, the Dicksons were given the news. In a mix-up over whether the home was still facing foreclosure, Field Asset Services was hired to drill open the doors and seize the belongings.

[..]

Cedar Park police officials said Field Asset Services told them that it carried out orders from a mortgage firm and that the Dicksons’ belongings had been donated to area thrift shops. But a search of such shops turned up nothing.

On Friday, after hiring a lawyer and getting no apology or acknowledgment of responsibility for weeks, the Dicksons finally had a breakthrough.

EMC Mortgage Corp., the Lewisville bank that the Dicksons’ lawyer said held the first and second mortgages on the house, issued a statement saying: “There was a mix up, and we apologize to the family because they were, indeed, caught in the middle. We will make it right with the family by reimbursing them for their losses.” The statement came from Debbie Krznarich, senior vice president of communications for EMC.

The family has since filed a law-suit. More troubling is that law enforcement refuses to do something, claiming there was no “criminal intent”. Texas Penal Code Section 31.03 (theft) does not require “criminal intent” but simply “intent to deprive the owner of property.” Further, TPC Section 28.04 (reckless damage or destruction) doesn’t even include an element of intent. Management of EMC Mortgage and Field Asset Services Inc should be in jail right now.

But hey, it’s a big company, and that’s it, then.

Ze konden het niet laten. KLPD-ers op de fiets die een koe in de sloot signaleerden en de brandweer waarschuwden om het beest uit haar benarde postitie te bevrijden.

Na het telefoontje via Driebergen, was de brandweer snel ter plaatse.
De koe zou het niet lang meer uithouden en verdrinken. Vanuit de brandweerauto gezien bleek dat het zelfs om twee koeien ging, waarvan één met twee kikkers op haar rug.
Met vereende krachten zijn de koeien op het droge getrokken en liepen ze even later weer vrolijk in de wei.

Very useful.

Vanmorgen was het niet bepaald gezellig op de A27, toen een 64-jarige vrachtwagenchauffeur uit het Belgische Maarkedaal achterop een personenauto met caravan reed.

De vrachtwagenchauffeur is vermoedelijk zonder te remmen achter in de staart van de file gereden en kwam vervolgens in de berm tot stilstand. Het gezin uit Friesland (Leeuwarderadeel), op weg naar hun vakantiebestemming, kwam met de schrik vrij. De vrachtwagenchauffeur werd ter plaatse aan zijn gewonde hand behandeld.

Er vielen gelukkig verder geen gewonden bij het ongeval, maar er ontstond wel een file als gevolg van de rijbaanafsluiting. In die file probeerde een 47-jarige inwoner uit Diemen met zijn personenauto ruim voor het rode kruis in te voegen. Daarbij blokkeerde een 51-jarige vrachtwagenchauffeur hem de weg. Beiden stapten uit en bedreigden elkaar.

De vrachtwagenchauffeur pakte hierbij een ijzeren staaf van ongeveer een meter lang. De 12-jarige inzittende van de personenauto kwam zijn vader te hulp en dreigde de vrachtwagenchauffeur te steken met een autosleutel. Een particuliere beveiliger, die ook in de file stond, greep in deze escalerende situatie in en pakte het wapen af.

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We’ve just had an email from a shaken Stephen Strang who this morning took delivery of a very, very large box from HP:

Click the link to see what was in the box..