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.