French police dismantle Nigerian prostitution ring

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PARIS (AFP) – French police have arrested seven people suspected of procuring Nigerian prostitutes who worked across France, judicial sources said Friday.

The five men, including the suspected ringleader, and two women raked in some 90,000 euros ($120,000) a month from the illicit business, the sources said.

An investigation begun in October 2011 established that the ringleader’s companion, one of the two women arrested, recruited the women in Nigeria.

Among the five others arrested was the sister of the suspected ringleader and her husband.

The seven, who face charges of human trafficking and “aggravated” procuring of prostitutes, appeared before an investigating magistrate on Friday.

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Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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Assange to run for Australian senate: WikiLeaks

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will run for a seat in the Australian Senate during this year’s elections, his organisation announced Wednesday, with his mother saying he would be “awesome” in the role.

WikiLeaks unveiled the plan with a tweet that read “Australia: Julian Assange has confirmed he will run in the 2013 national election for the Australian Senate”, just hours after Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the nation would go to the polls on September 14.

The 41-year-old’s mother, Christine Assange, was delighted. “He will be awesome. In the House of Representatives we get to choose between US lackey party number one and US lackey party number two — between the major parties.

“So it will be great to ‘Assange’ the Senate for some Aussie oversight,” she was quoted as saying by the Australian Associated Press.

Assange, who announced his intention to stand for Senate last year, has been holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London since June, after claiming asylum in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces allegations of sex crimes.

Britain has refused to grant him safe passage out of the country.

The former computer hacker fears Sweden will allow him to be extradited to the United States to be questioned over the WikiLeaks release of thousands of US diplomatic cables.

A later WikiLeaks tweet said Queensland-born Assange would “run on WikiLeaks party ticket”.

Assange said last year that he was planning to register a WikiLeaks party with the Australian Electoral Commission, The Age newspaper reported at the time.

To do so he would require the support of 500 eligible voters, the paper said, adding that if he were elected while still out of the country a nominee would occupy the Senate seat.

It was unclear whether being elected a senator would have any bearing on his status in Britain and whether London would allow him to leave the country of his own accord.

Despite the allegations against him Assange remains a popular figure in Australia.

WikiLeaks enraged the United States in 2010 by publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a huge cache of US diplomatic cables that embarrassed governments worldwide.

Last week Assange hit out at a Hollywood film about the whistleblowing website, branding it a “massive propaganda attack”.

He told Oxford University by videolink that he had acquired a copy of the script for “The Fifth Estate”, currently being filmed, blasting it as “lie after lie”.

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Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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Mother sentenced to life in jail for killing her twins

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A Swiss court sentenced a mother to life in jail on Tuesday after she confessed to smothering her seven-year-old twins with a pillow and killing a third child — after denying the crimes for years.

The Horgen court, in the canton of Zurich, found the 39-year-old Swiss citizen of Austrian origin guilty of murdering the twins, a boy and a girl, and of manslaughter for the death of the other child, a baby boy, court spokeswoman Bea Rosenberger told AFP.

The woman was handed a life term, which in Switzerland usually amounts to around 15 years behind bars, and ordered to undergo psychiatric therapy while in prison.

The woman, identified only as Bianca B. by Swiss media, had for years insisted she was not responsible for the twins’ deaths in late 2007, but suddenly changed her story in a tearful confession during her trial last month.

She told the court she had murdered them both and also admitted to smothering her first child, a seven-month-old boy believed until then to have died from sudden infant death syndrome in 1999.

“I wanted him to be quiet for a while,” she was quoted as saying by the ATS news agency.

Despite maintaining her innocence for a long time, Bianca B. was sentenced to life in prison for the twins’ deaths in an earlier trial in March 2010, but she was granted a retrial after the court determined her defence had been flawed.

She has been in jail since the end of 2007 awaiting a final verdict, and the five years already spent behind bars will be deducted from her sentence, Rosenberger said.

At the opening of her new trial on December 12, Bianca B. described in detail how on the evening of December 23, 2007, she had gone into her son’s room after placing the children’s Christmas gifts under the tree and had suddenly, without thinking, picked up a pillow and pressed it against his face “until he stopped moving.”

She had then gone into her daughter’s room and done the same to her, before realising what she had done.

“I didn’t want this,” she told the court, in tears.

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Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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Aide to Egyptian President Morsi claims Holocaust a U.S. hoax

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Read Time:4 Minute, 52 Second

A key figure in Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi's government called the Holocaust a hoax cooked up by U.S. intelligence operatives and claimed the 6 million Jews who were killed by Nazis simply moved to the U.S.

The outrageous claims, by Fathi Shihab-Eddim, a senior figure close to President Morsi who is now responsible for appointing the editors of all state-run Egyptian newspapers, came as the world marked Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, and also as the U.S. continues to assess its relationship with the increasingly radical Arab state.

“The myth of the Holocaust is an industry that America invented,” Shihab-Eddim said, leaving no room for doubt that the Egyptian government — like Iran's — has at the very least significant elements that deny humanity’s greatest crime of all.

"The sad truth is that these views are relatively common in the Arab world and are the result of ignorance on one hand and of government-sponsored Holocaust denial on the other hand.” – Efraim Zuroff, Simon Weisenthal Center

 

“U.S. intelligence agencies in cooperation with their counterparts in allied nations during World War II created it [the Holocaust] to destroy the image of their opponents in Germany, and to justify war and massive destruction against military and civilian facilities of the Axis powers, and especially to hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the atomic bomb,” Shihab-Eddim said.

The ludicrous claims were especially worrisome to Israeli experts who have been watching since the Muslim Brotherhood Morsi administration took over the Egyptian government in elections last summer, following the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, who maintained good relations with Israel. Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center in New York, said Shihab-Eddin's comments were as troubling as they were ridiculous.

“Fathi goes on to claim that the 6 million Jews all really moved to the United States during the war (and oddly no one noticed) and that the number of Jews killed in the war was about the number who died in traffic accidents,” Greenfield wrote in Frontpagemag.com.

Efraim Zuroff, Israel Director of the Jerusalem-based Simon Weisenthal Center, whose mission is to defend against anti-Semitism and teach the lessons of the Holocaust to future generations, told FoxNews.com the remarks show a dangerous, but common, mindset.

“Obviously, if a person in that position makes that ridiculous claim it is of concern," Zuroff said. "The sad truth is that these views are relatively common in the Arab world and are the result of ignorance on one hand and of government-sponsored Holocaust denial on the other hand.”

The latest Holocaust denial from a senior Egyptian figure comes hot on the heels of the much-publicized comments made by President Morsi in 2010, that Jews are “the descendants of apes and pigs,” remarks that Morsi insists were taken out of context. Despite Morsi's claims, archivists subsequently said the Egyptian leader made similar statements repeatedly before he rose to power.

Mohammed el-Baradei, a leading figure in Egypt’s secular opposition and formerly the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, spoke out against Morsi’s remarks and his assertion that his comments had been misinterpreted.

 “We are all aware that those statements were not taken out of context and that this discourse is very common among a large number of clerics and members of Islamist groups, El-Baradei said. "Apart from the remarks themselves, I am calling upon the person who made them to courageously admit either the real stance he and the Muslim Brotherhood and their followers adopt, or how mistaken they had been for all those years.”

Anti-Semitic statements and denial of the Holocaust are seemingly part and parcel of the Muslim Brotherhood doctrine. Among many examples of the vitriol espoused by senior figures from the parent organization of the terrorist group Hamas, one of their spiritual leaders and a popular Islamic television figure, Youssef Al-Qaradawi said, “I’d like to say that the only thing I hope for is that as my life approaches its end, Allah will give me an opportunity to go to the land of Jihad [Israel] and resistance, even if in a wheelchair. I will shoot Allah’s enemies, the Jews, and they will throw a bomb at me, and thus, I will seal my life with martyrdom.”

Al-Qaradawi further stated in a 2009 broadcast about the Holocaust, “He [Hitler] managed to put them [the Jews] in their place. This [the Holocaust] was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.”

With Morsi facing significant resistance to his rapid imposition of more stifling legislation in Egypt, fears are rising that Holocaust denial, anti-Semitism, and anti-Israeli rhetoric will increase in a country that continues to receive significant financial and logistical support from the U.S. The Obama administration recently began shipping a foreign aid package to Egypt that includes 20 F-16 fighter jets and 200 Abrams tanks.

Zuroff said the sinister statements by a top Morsi aide should give other nations pause for thought in evaluating their relationships with the new government in Cairo.

“Government-sponsored Holocaust denial is the most dangerous…as opposed to attempts by individuals to convince people that the Holocaust did not take place," Zuroff said. "When it comes with a strict Islamic interpretation and one which is basically anti-Semitic, then it becomes much more dangerous.”

Paul Alster is an Israel-based journalist who blogs at www.paulalster.com and can be followed on Twitter @paulalster

 

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Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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Finland Backs EU Commission on Carbon Permit Backloading Plan

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Finland supports a European Commission proposal to temporarily withhold supply of carbon permits to fix a glut in the market, while stopping short of backing a permanent withdrawal of allowances.
Finland backs the commission’s proposal to prop up prices, Magnus Cederloef, senior technical adviser at the Environment Ministry in Helsinki, said by phone today.

“However, Finland opposes permanent withdrawal of permits, which some EU countries have discussed, although no such proposal has been made,” he said.
Carbon permits for December traded at 4.09 euros ($5.50) a metric ton as of 7:41 a.m. after dropping as much as 2.4 percent to 4.08 euros, according to data from the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London.
At stake are prices in the world’s largest cap-and-trade program, which fell to a record 2.81 euros a metric ton on Jan. 24. The price of carbon permits peaked at 36.43 euros on July 1 2008, and has plunged after the financial crisis hurt industrial production and cut demand from industry for emission permits. That boosted the surplus of allowances to almost half of average annual pollution limit in the system.
To alleviate the glut, the commission has proposed to delay the sale of 900 million metric tons of permits from 2013 through 2015, releasing the allowances back to the market in 2019 and 2020. The proposal has caused rifts among governments, industries and lawmakers.

Mixed Views
To be enacted, the EU plan to delay sales of some permits needs qualified majority support from national governments in a ballot system that favors larger countries. Spain, Italy, France and Belgium signaled last year they support the so-called backloading plan. Lithuania said last month that in principle it has nothing against the plan. The Dutch parliament called on the nation’s government to support the commission’s proposal.
The U.K. set some conditions for its support while signaling flexibility, three EU officials with knowledge of the matter said last week. Germany, which according to analysts including Trevor Sikorski at Barclays, holds the key to backloading, remains undecided. Poland is leading efforts to block the measure.
The last meeting of representatives of member states in Brussels on Jan. 25 failed to bring a breakthrough on the issue, the officials said. Many of the EU’s 27 nations did not have official positions to present, they said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Torsten Fagerholm in Helsinki at tfagerholm@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lars Paulsson at lpaulsson@bloomberg.net

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Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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Finland: Danske Bank plans new Java-free online bank

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Formerly known as Sampo Bank in Finland, Danske Bank has announced plans to overhaul its online banking service. The bank will give up using the Java programming language when the new service comes online.

The Denmark-based Danske Bank plans to revamp its web-based banking service. At the same time the company will abandon the use of the Java programming language because of incompatibility issues with different browsers. These issues have prevented some customers from logging into their bank accounts online.

The new service will be launched during the summer and will feature SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and other security solutions, without any Java components.

Kenneth Kaarnimo, head of private customer operations said the bank was dissatisfied with recent difficulties updating Java-based software as well as the inconvenience experienced by online banking customers.

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Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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Dutch: Queen to step down to make way for son

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Dutch Queen Beatrix announced Monday that she will abdicate on April 30 after 33 years as head of state, clearing the way for her eldest son, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, 45, to become the nation's first king in more than a century. The announcement, in a televised speech just days before she turned 75, signalled an end to the reign of one of Europe's longest-serving monarchs.

The widely expected abdication comes at a time of debate over the future of the largely ceremonial Dutch monarchy. But it also comes as calm has descended upon the Netherlands after a decade of turmoil in which Beatrix was the glue that held together an increasingly divided society.

 

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Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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Multiculturalism lags behind Finland’s changing demographics

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Read Time:3 Minute, 18 Second

Statistics Finland reported recently that a record number of immigrants have helped to increase the Finnish population. Does the changing face of Finland also mean the society is becoming more multicultural?

Finland’s statistical agency Statistics Finland registered a record number of immigrants entering the country in 2012, helping to push the population up to 5.4 million. The numbers show capital Helsinki is the undisputed mecca of diversity in Finland, but other large cities are also seeing a change in the makeup of their local communities.

More of those cities are building multicultural programmes, says Katja Tuominen. She is a founding member of the non-governmental organisation Freedom of Movement network, which helps immigrants and refugees to interact with local officials.

Tuominen pointed out, however, that such programmes tend to have a one-dimensional perspective. “There usually isn’t any input from immigrants. Finnish NGOs don’t work with immigrants to design these programmes so they are built entirely from one point of view,” she explained.

She recounted the recent experience of one Cameroonian immigrant who was turned to her organisation for assistance because no one at the local social services office could provide service in English.

If the request to meet is made by the public official, then the interviewee has the right to an interpreter,” Tuominen pointed out.!

She added that based on her own work with immigrants there did not seem to be a very structured or sustained effort to develop multicultural programmes in schools or workplaces. “People do integrate eventually, but usually this happens in spite of and not because of official programmes,” she declared.

Tuominen said it’s important to remember that Russians and Estonians are the largest immigrant groups in Finland. However by and large, they are not offered services in their own language. “Except of course, if you are a Russian tourist and you have a lot of money to spend,” she quipped.

Once an immigrant, always an immigrant?

Fred Dervin is a professor of multicultural education at the University of Helsinki. He specialises in intercultural education and communication and multiculturalism. Dervin and colleague Heidi Layne recently reviewed a booklet published by the Tampere University of Technology, and designed to help international students integrate during their time in Finland. The somewhat tongue-in-cheek publication is titled OH BEHAVE!

An online introduction to the booklet states, “Sometimes foreign students are amazed that even teachers and professors from the same faculty may expect different levels of formality from students. Especially Chinese students may find this challenging, because they are used to it that all faculty members expect similar treatment.”

“The tone is very patronising,” Dervin concluded. “We are teaching stereotypes and the idea that we are better than others,” he added.

Dervin noted that Finland is not alone in confronting the issues of increasing diversity and multiculturalism. However, “We can try to avoid recreating the mistakes of other European countries,” he cautioned.

For instance, he said, Finns need to give up calling people immigrants when they have been born in Finland. “It is dangerous because we create (a sense of) inequality, since not everyone is given the same treatment or opportunities,” he explained.

He called on Finns to “change the conversations, and change the terms we use because now these terms include a judgment of others.”

But the teacher educator noted that the conversations about race, immigration and multiculturalism are gradually changing. “New researchers and teachers are taking this issue seriously.”

“Many current programmes are one-off. We need long-term embedded programmes to make a difference,” he concluded.

Like Tuominen, Dervin sees multiculturalism as a bridge where different cultures can meet on an equal footing, not the current one-way street where Finnish culture has undisputed right of way.

Sources: Yle News/Denise Wall

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Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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Finland: Integration programmes bypass Thai women

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Non-governmental organizations are calling for more long-term projects aimed at promoting the integration of Thai women. Several years ago NGOs proposed new methods for supporting the adjustment of Thai women to their new homeland. However some ventures have been plagued by sporadic funding.

According to Statistics Finland some 5,500 Thai women live in Finland, the vast majority of them married to Finnish men.

About five years ago the Interior Ministry funded a project "Myanyuban/Kotona" (Home) run by the Lahti University of Applied Sciences. Its aim was to determine how Thai women are faring in Finland.

The resulting report proposed a slew of measures for supporting Thai women in Finland. Because they are married to Finns, many Thai women are often overlooked by integration programmes.

“Since then the whole matter has been buried. And then we also got a report and its proposals, but no money to implement the measures and do this kind of work,” said Minna Huovinen, head of the Helsinki branch of Pro Centre Finland (Pro-tukipiste, a non-governmental organization that protects the rights of sex trade workers in Finland.

Help begins with a place to meet

Along with the Multicultural Women's Association (Monika-Naiset), another government-funded NGO devoted to supporting immigrant women, Pro Centre Finland agrees that long-term programmes are needed to support Thai women.

“Everyone recognizes that Thai women are a special group that should receive integration support services, and that short-term schemes don’t produce any results. It requires long-term work,” Huovinen said.

One short-term project is the Multicultural Women's Centre (MoniNaisten Talo), a meeting point for immigrant women run by the Multicultural Women's Association. The project has financing until the end of 2013.

Deputy head of Monika-Naiset Jenni Tuominen said that helping Thai women – or any group of immigrant women – should not depend solely on funding.

“We just need a place where these women can go. Some accessible location, so they don’t have to stay home alone,” Tuominen explained.

Finland’s Interior and Economic Affairs Ministries have assumed responsibility for immigrant integration into Finnish society. The Economic Affairs Ministry has admitted that integration programmes may appear to be fragmented. Last autumn government sought to combine these fragments into a comprehensive integration programme.

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Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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Helsinki: Kamppi water damage disrupts bus services

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Water damage following a fire that took place at Helsinki’s Kamppi shopping centre has damaged business places and disrupted public transportation.

Emergency officials speculated that water from the centre’s sprinkler system spread over an area of about 500 square metres.

The sprinkler system broke down following a grease fire in a restaurant.

Some bus connections from Kamppi were suspended as a result of the water damage, however metro services resumed after a brief delay.

Helsinki regional transportation has advised that bus services to Espoo have been diverted to Ruoholahti, while local bus lines 14 and 18 have been diverted to Runeberginkatu.

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Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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