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America - Jul 22, 2008 19:33 - 0 Comments

Government strikes out on COPA—ruled unconstitutional again

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080722-government-strikes-out-on-copa-ruled-unconstitutional-again

By Jacqui Cheng | Published: July 22, 2008 - 04:31PM CT

The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit today upheld a ban on the enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), ruling once again that it was unconstitutional, overbroad, and vague. The American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged COPA on behalf of a coalition of writers, artists and health educators, hailed the ruling as a victory for free speech.

“For years the government has been trying to thwart freedom of speech on the Internet, and for years the courts have been finding the attempts unconstitutional,” said Chris Hansen, senior staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group. “The government has no more right to censor the Internet than it does books and magazines.”

COPA was originally passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in 1998 and was meant to protect children from “harmful” content on the Internet. Unfortunately for proponents of the law, its wording was very broad and would have required website operators to implement a number of measures to enforce “contemporary community standards.” Continue…

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United Nations - May 2, 2008 7:21 - 0 Comments

Damning UN Reports at Center of Guns for Gold Leaked

On March 11,2008, chief UN investigator Inga-Britt Alenius, was pressed by reporters, for answers over copies of a report on her agency, the Office of Internal Oversight Services, and its embattled Investigative Division.

In a statement Alenius replied “It’s my document, for my perusal,”.

The UN’s Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions noted that “the Committee did not have the benefit of access to the review itself, as OIOS declined to provide it.”

These reports were at the center of a BBC report which claimed that the UN covered up that its troops in DR of Congo gave arms to militias and smuggled gold and ivory. The allegations were based on confidential UN sources, involve Pakistani and Indian troops working as peace keepers. It further stated that the UN investigated some of the claims in 2007, but said it could not substantiate claims of arms dealing, but UN insiders told the BBC, they had been prevented from pursuing their inquiries for political reasons. Story reported here Continue…

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Europe - Mar 30, 2008 12:38 - 0 Comments

No Matches Were Found for ‘Andrei Lugovoy’

We had a post on March 29, 2008, ” Alexander Litvinenko: a wife’s plea”.

This post was a copy of a letter written by the widow of the ex KGB operative who was allegedly murdered on November 1, 2006. by another KGB operative, Andrei Lugovoy, using radioactive polonium-210.

Marina Litvinenko stated in part: “I do this against the wishes of the Scotland Yard and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who both told me that making the evidence public would prejudice a criminal trial of the chief suspect, Andrei Lugovoy, whom the UK is trying to extradite from Russia. But after waiting for 15 months I have come to the conclusion that Mr Lugovoy, a former KGB agent, will never be extradited. So I respectfully reject their argument. I cannot wait for another ten years for a slim chance that their approach would bear fruit.”

While preparing a follow up post that would include a wanted poster, the unexpected happened. To ensure the accuracy of our information, we did a search on Interpol, entering “Andrei Lugovoy” as the search term. We got an interesting return on our search queries!

No documents matching your query were found.

Continuing, others data banks were searched:

FBI: Your search - Andrei Lugovoy - did not match any documents.
No pages were found containing “Andrei Lugovoy”.

Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard): web search: no matches were found for ‘Andrei Lugovoy’

Home Office: Your search - Andrei Lugovoy - did not match any documents.
No pages were found containing “Andrei Lugovoy”.

The Crown Prosecution Service: Search results for “Andrei Lugovoi”
Sorry, no results found

We did actually get a hit using the US State department web site. There is a mention in the 2007 country report on Britain stating:
On May 28, British authorities requested the extradition from Russia of Andrei Lugovoy in connection with the 2006 death by radioactive poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Alekasandr Litvenenko. Litvenenko had been highly critical of the Russian political leadership, and many observers believed the killing was politically motivated. Russian authorities rejected the extradition request.

Marina Litvinenko indeed may be a long time waiting for “justice”!

EDIT: At the request of a contributor, we ran the same checks using the Russian spelling, “Andrei Lugovoi” and actually added more checks. Same results.

Your search - Andrei Lugovoi - did not match any documents.
No pages were found containing “Andrei Lugovoi”.

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