Lifestyle is about the parts of our lives that are maybe a little more personal than everything else. It's how we make our homes, relate to our loved ones, raise our ...
Phnom Penh: The party has been under criticism due to the unprecedented flexibility of the party for the party after the so-called culture of dialogue.
When examining this party are cautious about its position and sometimes Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha seems there are two contrasting voices by inducing fear about the future of the National Salvation Party. Mam Sonando, director of Beehive Radio has expressed frustration ready to party and hinted about the creation of a new party.
Sam Rainsy now has a good relationship with the Prime Minister Hun Sen said. His presence at the tasting investigation in Siem Reap, and his smile when walking with Hun Sen at the time, was a clear signal about his position to strengthen what he called a culture of dialogue. He also said he would be responsible with Hun Sen Cultural if talks failed.
He is the chairman of the party so his position is the position of the party. But, however, Kem Sokha, deputy party not present at the tasting investigation. In addition, his stance against Sam Rainsy's position. He still strengthen the party as an opposition party.
"I would like to remind the national party leaders at all levels do not forget that the National Salvation Party, the party is not a party partners of the ruling party in government . On the other hand, the National Salvation Party Election partnership The success of the party in the future. So, do not damage the image rescue party " . This is the speech of Mr. Kem Sokha said in "Ceremony validity vice president and party Pursat team" at the national party headquarters Pursat pm Monday, 20 April 2015.
Kem Sokha said this in the presence of the Sam Rainsy Party.
On the contrary, if we follow the activities of the SRP, he has a soft stance Kem Sokha. He wants to create and maintain a culture with Samdech Hun Sen and the CPP in the spirit of the agreement of both parties.
So it is a concern for the future of the party when leaders of the two contrasting two tone. A party must have a voice and a clear stance. R / N
Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) chief Om Yentieng on Wednesday denied that ousted Phnom Penh Municipal Court director Ang Mealaktei had been arrested following two days of questioning over serious graft claims, despite two well-placed officials indicating otherwise.
Mr. Mealaktei was removed in February, just hours after Prime Minister Hun Sen made a speech suggesting that the court accepted a multimillion-dollar bribe to release from prison the parents of fugitive general Thong Sarath, who is charged with orchestrating the November murder of businessman Ung Meng Chue.
Mr. Yentieng said Wednesday that Mr. Mealaktei was questioned at the ACU headquarters on Tuesday and Wednesday—after the Justice Ministry completed its investigation into him Monday—but had not been arrested.
“The ACU summoned Ang Mealaktei for questioning yesterday and today but the ACU now understands that two days of questioning and explaining are not enough,” Mr. Yentieng said via text message. “The ACU needs to meet and listen to the explanations of Mr. Ang Mealaktei many more times.”
Asked if Mr. Mealaktei had been arrested, Mr. Yentieng answered: “Not true.”
Earlier in the day, a senior official at the ACU, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, said that Mr. Yentieng and his assistant, Heng Sokheang, had been friendly with
Mr. Mealaktei over the past two days, questioning him in the mornings before sitting down together for lunch.
“Mr. Ang Mealaktei was summoned for questioning yesterday and also today, but he was not detained,” the source said. “Mr. Ang Mealaktei returned home after eating lunch with the two officials.”
Later in the day, however, the ACU official said that Mr. Mealaktei had in fact not returned home Wednesday, but had remained at the ACU headquarters and would be sent to court in the afternoon.
“I have received information that two court officials are preparing to receive Mr. Mealaktei,” the source said. “But I do not understand how the ACU could send Mr. Mealaktei to court because he is close friends with my boss [Mr. Yentieng].”
Brigadier General Kheng Tito, spokesman for the National Military Police, also said Wednesday afternoon that he had received word of Mr. Mealaktei’s arrest.
“I have received information that the Anti-Corruption Unit arrested Mr. Ang Mealaktei, but I cannot give comment about the arrest because they are working on this case,” he said.
However, minutes later, Brig. Gen. Tito called back and said: “I request that you remove my quote because it would kill me.”
Asked about the validity of the quote in question, he said: “It is not true.”
Contacted last night, Meas Chanpiseth, a deputy prosecutor at the municipal court, said that his former boss had not been brought to the court Wednesday.
“Today, there was no questioning, and there is no need to question him,” he said, before hanging up on a reporter.
Last night, however, BTV—-a television station controlled by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s daughter Hun Mana—posted a news report to its Facebook page stating that Mr. Mealaktei would be questioned at the court today.
The report says the former court director was being questioned by the ACU over the release of Maj. Gen. Sarath’s parents and also of Thav Thavy, a suspected drug dealer who was released on bail by the court and whose confiscated SUV was allegedly gifted to Mr. Mealaktei’s son.
“According to BTV reporters, the questioning of [Mr. Mealaktei] was stopped today and will continue tomorrow, when he will be sent to the court for further questioning,” the report says.
(Additional reporting by Sek Odom and Ben Sokhean)
CNRP Vice President Kem Sokha walked free from the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday afternoon after being questioned by a prosecutor for seven hours over his connections to a plethora of protests that broke out in Phnom Penh following the disputed 2013 national election.
Less than a month after Prime Minister Hun Sen alleged that Mr. Sokha confessed to having tried to “topple” his government through the CNRP’s postelection protests in 2013, Mr. Sokha arrived at the court at 8:30 a.m., honoring a summons issued last week.
CNRP Vice President Kem Sokha emerges from the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday afternoon after a prosecutor questioned him for seven hours over protests following the 2013 national election. (Siv Channa/The Cambodia Daily)
About 300 people turned out in front of the court to support Mr. Sokha, remaining calm throughout most of the day with jeering breaking out only when trucks full of notoriously violent black-helmeted district security guards slowly rolled past to force the crowd from the road onto the curbside.
Mr. Sokha emerged from the court shortly after 3:30 p.m., telling gathered reporters and his supporters that the extended questioning was tedious.
“The court prosecutor questioned me for seven hours, and asked for too many details by asking about every single word I have said at the demonstrations, in America and at all incidents,” he said.
“They asked me things that did not need to be asked,” Mr. Sokha said. “They asked me for the definition of ‘revolution’ and asked me why [union leader] Vorn Pao came to greet me at the airport when I arrived from the U.S.”
On Sunday, the government aired a 30-minute film on national television building a case that Mr. Sokha and Mr. Pao worked together in an effort to overthrow the government following the 2013 election.
Mr. Sokha said the prosecutor repeatedly asked him the same questions.
“They did not press any charges, they only questioned me,” Mr. Sokha said, before leaving in an SUV.
Meng Sopheary, one of Mr. Sokha’s lawyers, said deputy prosecutor Ly Sophana first focused his questioning on a case file concerning protest events on January 3 last year.
On that day, military police put down a garment factory protest, shooting dead five workers and beginning a wave of violent repression of a nationwide strike by garment workers that had dovetailed with CNRP protests.
“[Mr. Sophana] just repeatedly asked the same questions about the matters that occurred in the past,” Ms. Sopheary said. “Whatever he said, they would just pick a single word…and ask him for his interpretation of [the word].”
“They asked about the demonstrations, the words he said in the U.S., and he was also questioned about the matter of [housing rights activist] Tep Vanny blocking the road, the issue of garment workers staging a protest in front of the Ministry of Labor to make demands about wages,” she said.
Ms. Sopheary said the list of protests Mr. Sokha was asked about ran so long that she was not sure exactly how many were raised during the seven hours.
“We requested that the court prosecutor stop summoning him for questioning like this,” Ms. Sopheary said.
Mr. Sophana could not be reached Wednesday.
The court last questioned Mr. Sokha on July 25, 10 days after a violent street brawl broke out during a CNRP-led protest near Freedom Park. But the legal cases against him went dormant after he gained immunity by swearing into parliament with 54 other opposition lawmakers in August.
However, Mr. Hun Sen last month seized on a speech that Mr. Sokha delivered in the U.S. apologizing to supporters there that the CNRP did not remove the CPP during the postelection demonstrations in the second half of 2013.
“I apologize to brothers and sisters that I could not lead change 100 percent,” Mr. Sokha told supporters on March 13.
Within a week, the prime minister said the apology amounted to a confession that the opposition leader had intended to illegally overthrow his government.
“There’s a person coming to confess that they tried to topple the government and the CPP but that they failed, and are now apologizing to people in the U.S.,” Mr. Hun Sen said on March 18.
“If the robber and robber chief confess, what legal action should we take?” he asked.
Officials from the Cambodian Embassy in Jakarta arrived in the Indonesian city of Tual on Wednesday to begin processing 58 Cambodians who were among more than 300 enslaved fishermen rescued from a remote island last week, according to the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
The fishermen, the majority of whom are Burmese, were rescued from Benjina island in Maluku province by the Indonesian government and sent to Tual following a yearlong investigation by The Associated Press (AP).
The AP revealed that the majority of the fishermen were trafficked through Thailand and forced to work on Thai-captained boats trawling Indonesian waters. They were dumped on Benjina for refusing to work and in response to a moratorium on foreign fishing issued by the Indonesian government.
Koy Kuong, spokesman for Cambodia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, said Wednesday that Cambodian officials were working to identify the 58 Cambodians among the 319 freed from Benjina.
“Officials from our Cambodian Embassy have gone there to check and verify the information,” he said. “If they are Cambodian, Cambodian authorities will work to repatriate them.”
The International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental body, is assisting the Indonesian government in caring for all 319 rescued fishermen on Tual.
“[The] IOM deputy chief of mission for Indonesia arrived [in Tual] today with Cambodia, Myanmar and Lao embassy representatives,” Joe Lowry, IOM’s regional spokesman, said Wednesday.
“IOM already started assisting embassies with documentation for verification of citizenship to eventually issue travel documents and will begin the process of screening victims of trafficking.”
Mr. Lowry said conditions at the government facility where the fishermen are being cared for were likely “spartan,” but far better than what they endured on Benjina, where some were kept in cages belonging to Pusaka Benjina Resources, the only registered fishing company on the island.
“Local hospital staff come every day for a daily clinic lasting a few hours,” he said.
Number of fatal incidents involving large passenger jets is at record low but nature of disasters has been a wake-up call
Search and rescue teams coordinate the search area for flight QZ8501. Photograph: Oscar Siagian/Getty Images
Despite the fact that flying remains, as the aviation industry likes
to stress, statistically the safest form of transport, the likely loss
of a third airliner in the space of 10 months appears to have made 2014
the deadliest year for passengers in almost a decade.
The still unexplained disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight
MH370 in March and the shooting down of the same airline’s flight MH17
over war-torn eastern Ukraine four months later cost 239 and 298 lives
respectively.
Now it appears probable that another 162 fatalities will be added to
the year’s toll. Although it remains unclear exactly what happened to
AirAsia flight QZ8501, authorities are relatively certain they will find
tragic confirmation at the bottom of the Java Sea.
Until this week’s loss, the safety record of major airlines had been
on a fairly constant upward trajectory since 2005 on most counts.
According to the Flight Safety Foundation, there has been a steady fall
in the number of airline crashes, and the number of fatal incidents
involving large passenger jets this year was 19, a record low in modern
aviation (their count excludes the shooting down of MH17 as a military
action).
But the Bureau of Aircraft Accident Archives, which includes smaller
planes and military transport planes, puts the total number of
fatalities for 2014 at 1,320, assuming no survivors from QZ8501 – the
worst annual toll since 2005.
The fact that three incidents have accounted for the majority of
fatalities could, on one level, bolster the industry message of
increased safety. The big European short-haul carriers such as Ryanair
and easyJet can still boast an accident-free history. But in an era when
the trend appeared to point to a zero-casualty future, the nature of
this year’s catastrophes has been a nasty wake-up call.
The International Air Transport Association, Iata, which represents
most large airlines worldwide, as recently as 2012 boasted of an zero
annual crash record – or zero “western-built jet hull losses” – among
its members. Safety and security remained an ongoing concern, and no one
at Iata betrayed any sense of complacency. In some parts of the world,
such as Africa, incident rates were far higher, if falling. There was
work to do on limiting “runway excursions”, which accounted for the
majority of accidents.
But the message was fairly clear: if you flew on a on a new plane
with a major airline that had signed up to the safety standards, you
could more or less relax. Now, two Boeing 777 airliners flown by a major
scheduled carrier, Malaysia Airlines – British Airways’ partner in
OneWorld – from major hubs have met their end. The Airbus A320 lost by
AirAsia is a plane that dots the skies from Heathrow to Honolulu.
The industry response to the new categories of disaster thrown up by
MH370 and MH17 has been to assemble taskforces to report to the
International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), a UN oversight body,
with recommendations for possible future action on flight tracking and
on sharing information about overflying conflict zones.
The plethora of chilling scenarios conjured up by the disappearance
of MH370 should keep driving the search for its wreckage. It seems there
are few parallels with QZ8501, but should there be any sizeable
duration before the latest lost plane is found, the industry’s ponderous
moves on aircraft tracking could look like unpardonable foot-dragging.
While the priority given to safety is a knee-jerk mantra recited by
all airline executives, an acceptable level of risk versus cost has to
infuse all industry thinking, especially in a business whose profit
margins in recent years have been slim. The calculations run from how
tired your pilots can be to how little you can pay your crew, to whether
you really need that state-of-the-art tracking system. How many
airlines really need to invest in the all-frills package touted by
Inmarsat? What chance of any plane escaping detection given the various
tracking systems in place? But then the unthinkable happened.
The upbeat assessment is that air crashes are ever rarer, and so we
simply perceive them more closely. Tracking websites show every plane’s
path, the global 24-hour news cycle provides footage of grieving
relatives, while transport ministers and celebrity airline executives
tweet their movements in real time. Should pilot error in a freakishly
bad storm have sent flight QZ8501 to the bottom of the Java Sea, it will
be recorded as another unhappy episode in Indonesia’s troubled aviation
history. The real nightmare scenario for the industry is that once
again the reason remains unknown – with at least one expert warning that
the technology in planes or traffic control systems could prove
susceptible to a cyber threat.
Applause for the crew of Virgin flight to Las Vegas follows ‘non-standard landing procedure’ after landing gear fails
A detailed view
of the undercarriage of the Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 as it passed
overhead at Gatwick airport, before landing safely. Photograph: Jordan
Mansfield/Getty Images
A Virgin Atlantic plane carrying 447 passengers was forced to
make an emergency landing at Gatwick after landing gear problems hit a
US-bound flight.
Hundreds of holidaymakers applauded in relief after their pilot
returned the Boeing 747 to base safely following an unconventional
journey that included dumping fuel at sea and flying low over the
Gatwick control tower twice so that air traffic controllers could
scrutinise the main undercarriage with binoculars.
A spokesman for Gatwick airport said that all the passengers had
disembarked from the plane – originally headed to Las Vegas – and that
“some minor injuries” had been reported.
The runway at Britain’s second largest airport was closed for several
hours, with incoming flights diverted to alternative airports and
departing aircraft delayed as the drama affected the travel plans of
thousands of passengers.
Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin Atlantic president, praised the crew
of flight VS43. In a Twitter posting, he said: “Well done
VirginAtlantic pilots & team for safe & skillful landing of
VS43. Thoughts with passengers & crew, thanks for support &
patience.”
Emergency services had been on standby as the giant aircraft came into land.
Eyewitnesses reported that the jet was flying at a relatively low
altitude, as the pilot appeared to be trying to shake the landing gear
down.
Describing the mood on the plane, Dan Crane, 24, from Bromsgrove,
Worcestershire, said it was “anxious, a lot were worried, some crying.
The mood was quiet and [we were] just waiting for the captain’s next
announcement.” A close up of
the landing gear of a Virgin Atlantic jumbo jet landing at Gatwick
airport after the plane developed a landing-gear fault.Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
Fellow passenger Holly Jackson said the crew tried to “deliberately
bounce” the plane to get the faulty landing gear back into position.
She told Sky News: “They said this was a precautionary procedure, or
something like that. But it didn’t work and we were told we would have
to get into the brace position for a landing and it was then that
everybody did start to get scared.”
The passengers’ ordeal began four hours previously, when Flight VS43
left for Las Vegas at 11.44am with 447 passengers and 15 crew on board.
However, it hit problems before it reached the edge of UK airspace. The
pilot had identified a problem with the landing gear, a technical issue
that meant one of the five wheel sets would not descend. Instead of
completing its transatlantic journey, the plane would, the captain
announced, be turning back. The flight crew are helped to disembark the Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 at Gatwick airport.Photograph: Jordan Mansfield/Getty Images
The vagaries of landing one of the world’s biggest passenger jets
meant that fuel had to be dumped en route, to bring it down to the
target weight for a safe return. But the pilot was also attempting
another part of what Virgin Atlantic termed a “non-standard landing
procedure” – hoping the movement of the plane could shake down the
landing gear where automation had failed. So began hours of circling
around Gatwick and the South Downs, tracing a dense, bright green circle
on flight tracking websites and alerting a small army of planespotters.
At the airport there came the relatively routine statement that
emergency services were on standby “purely as a precaution”. But
passengers reported that the mood on the aircraft had changed when the
announcement came that there would, after all, be an emergency landing,
and that they would have to adopt the brace position. Crane said some
passengers had cried.
Passenger Mike Kaufman, speaking to Sky News from his seat on the
plane back at Gatwick, said: “This was one of the greatest emergency
landings in history. It was very smooth.” Emergency vehicles attend to the Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 at Gatwick airport.Photograph: Jordan Mansfield/Getty Images
He praised the pilots and the cabin crew, saying the landing at just
before 4pm had been “textbook”. But, he admitted: “We didn’t realise
there would be such a fuss, because it had been such a calm experience.
It was probably less dramatic than watching it on the TV.”
He said: “The fact everything went so well shows just how
professional the flight crew were. The crew were calm. We had a safety
briefing two hours before we landed and when we were told we would have
to go into the brace position for landings a sigh went around the
plane.”
He added: “We were talking about going on a rollercoaster ride when we got to Las Vegas. That is off the menu now.”
A spokesman for the British pilots’ trade union, Balpa, said: “Pilots
train hard for exactly this kind of situation. It goes to show that
well-trained pilots are vital.”
Chief Superintendent Martin Walker of Sussex police said: “Our
co-ordinated partnership response is part of a well-rehearsed emergency
procedure. We are delighted that the plane has landed safely and we will
continue to support the operation where we’re needed.”
Return fraud is an increasing trend during the holidays but it’s not
individual shoppers. Organized crime groups are taking advantage of
stores’ return policies
Most consumers
who return gifts want money back, but that’s not what worries retailers.
More than 78% of US retailers were targeted by crime rings in 2014, up
from 60.3% in 2013.Photograph: Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters
Got a “meh” gift this holiday? Forget re-gifting. Return it.
That seems to be the thinking for an increasing number of
Americans. This year, US retailers expect that about $64.67bn in gifts
will be returned. More than one fifth of all returns take place over the
holidays, according to the National Retail Federation 2014 survey.
Yet it’s not the return of the unwanted gifts that troubles
retailers. It’s the return fraud – return of stolen merchandise – that
costs them $10.9bn a year. This holiday season alone, US retailers are
set to lose $3.58bn on such fraudulent returns.
Gift returns: where cash is king
Few Americans actually admit to returning their gifts. Thirty-two percent of shoppers say they have returned a holiday gift, according to a survey by RetailMeNot.
When they do, 40% of them prefer to swap them out for cash. Just 16%
want to swap out their unwanted gifts for gift cards, 13% for other
items and 11% for store credit.
Returns aren’t all bad for the industry – especially if they
take place inside the actual store. As people are in the store, those
who are there to return gifts might end up splurging on themselves.
Eight in 10 shoppers were planning to take advantage of the
year-end-sales and more than half of them were planning to spend about
$160 on themselves, RetailMeNot found.
Grinch, the retail edition
Talk about stealing presents. The National Retail Federation
estimates that about $3.58bn of holiday returns are fraudulent – items
that were either stolen from the store and then returned, or were paid
for with fake or stolen credit cards and then returned.
Individual shoppers are usually not the culprit when it
comes to such scams. An increasing number of these returns are carried
out by organized crime groups, says Bob Moraca, the National Retail
Federation vice president of loss prevention.
“Return fraud has become an unfortunate trend in retail
thanks to thieves taking advantage of retailers’ return policies to
benefit from the cash or store credit they don’t deserve,” Moraca said.
“Many of these return fraud instances are a direct result of a larger,
more experienced crime rings that continue to pose serious threats to
retailers’ operations and their bottom lines.”
More than 78% of US retailers were targeted by these crime
rings in 2014, up from 60.3% in 2013, according the federation’s survey.
Despite the fraudulent returns, 70% of the retailers do not plan to change their return policy this year.
Falling oil prices, sanctions and collapsing rouble take toll, with GDP in November 0.5% lower than in same month year ago
A board with
exchange rates on a street in Moscow on Monday. Russia’s rouble slumped
against the dollar in early trading. Photograph: Sergei
Karpukhin/Reuters
The Russian economy has contracted for the first time in five years
after falling oil prices and sanctions imposed by western governments
began to take their toll.
The prospects for the country’s economy are expected to remain weak
after President Vladimir Putin’s government revealed that GDP in
November was 0.5% lower than in the same month a year ago.
It is the first time since October 2009 that the Russian economy has
shrunk and comes at a time when the rouble has been collapsing on
foreign exchange markets after a near halving of the oil price since
June.
Manufacturing, construction, agriculture and service sectors all
contracted in November, although energy, mining and the retail trade
showed continued growth.
Economists are warning that Russia – one of the world’s biggest
energy exporters – could be facing its first recession in five years.
The central bank fears the economy could shrink by up to 4.8% next year
if oil prices fail to recover from five-year lows.
The repercussions are starting to be felt. A week ago
Russia’s central bank threw a £340m lifeline to Trust Bank – a Moscow
bank that uses the Hollywood star Bruce Willis to advertise its credit
cards – and the government has agreed to a 1tn-rouble recapitalisation
of the nation’s banks.
The guarantee on bank account deposits has also been raised to try to quell people’s concerns about the safety of their savings.
The fail in the oil price comes at a time when western sanctions
imposed over Russia’s backing for separatists in Ukraine are making it
tough for the country’s banks to raise finance in the international
money markets, leading to billions of dollars being withdrawn from the
country.
The GDP data was said to be the first signal that further contraction
in the economy is likely. “This is the beginning of a recession,”
Ruslan Grinberg, director of the Institute of Economics at the Russian
Academy of Sciences, told the AFP news agency.
Dmitry Polevoy, the chief economist for Russia and the Commonwealth
of Independent States at ING Bank in Moscow, told Reuters that things
would get worse with oil prices at their current levels.
“There is no cause for optimism,” Polevoy said. “This is linked to
sanctions first of all, oil and the panic we saw on the market in
December.
“The damage to the banking system and consumer sentiment will take a long time to repair.”
Oil prices have fallen after the oil producing cartel Opec refused to
cut production to shore up the price, which has slipped below $60 a
barrel from its recent high of $115. Oil and gas account for 70% of
Russia’s exports and Moscow needs an oil price in the region of $100 a
barrel to balance its budget.
This dependency on oil has led to a rout of the rouble on the foreign
exchange markets, prompting an emergency rise in interest rates to 17%
from 12.5% earlier this month. As a result, the currency has recouped
some of the ground lost against the dollar - where it was trading at
historic lows earlier this month – although it slipped back yesterday
after the data was released.
Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, has said that the
failing oil price should help fuel economic growth – the price of petrol
has been falling at pumps and inflation in the UK is running at its
lowest level for 12 years. But he has given a warning too about the
risks caused by rising geopolitical tensions.
The Bank of England has also said that failing oil prices could have
repercussions for shale oil developers in the US making payments on
their debts.
“A sustained lower oil price also has the potential to reinforce certain geopolitical risks,” the Bank of England said earlier this month.
The crew of a Scottish trawler boat have become unexpected YouTube stars, after uploading a series of hilarious music parodies, all filmed aboard their boat, the Caledonia.
In the videos, fishermen Frank Ronald, 36, and Bill MacFarlane,43, are among the crew seen stripping to their underpants, despite treacherous conditions, before busting out a series of seriously impressive dance moves to songs such as Pharrell Williams’ ‘Happy’, and Kesha’s ‘Timber’.
The boat, which sails from Loch Fyne, is a prawn trawler, owned by skipper Kenny Brown, who also appears in the video.
Frank Donald, who is responsible for editing the videos, told the Aberdeen Press and Journal that the videos were ‘a bit of fun while on deck’, during a quiet period of the year for fishing.
He added: ‘Safety always comes first and we are careful not to do anything too silly that might result in the Coastguard having to call the lifeboat out.’
The Abominable snowman isn’t a polar bear after all (Picture: Wikicommons)
Claims by an Oxford University professor that the mythical yeti is in fact a rare polar bear have been challenged.
In 2013, Professor Bryan Sykes revealed that DNA tests on hair strands from a creature purported to be the Abominable Snowman matched that of an ancient polar bear.
However, two scientists who re-analysed the same DNA have now claimed that the hairs originate from the Himalayan bear, a sub-species of the brown bear.
The new research, undertaken by Ceiridwen Edwards and Ross Barnett, was featured in the Royal Society journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The original research, undertaken by Professor Sykes, along with other genetics experts, saw DNA tests being undertaken on unidentified animals from Ladakh, Northern India, and Bhutan.
However, his processes in making the discovery have been disputed by Edwards and Barnett, who believe that the creature is in fact a Himalayan bear, questioning the validity of Sykes’ methods.
They said: ‘The Himalayan bear is a sub-species of the brown bear that lives in the higher reaches of the Himalayas, in remote, mountainous areas of Pakistan, Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan and India.’
‘Its populations are small and isolated, and it is extremely rare in many parts of its range.’
Professor Sykes has since acknowledged the error, and said: ‘Importantly, for the thrust of the paper as a whole, the conclusion that these Himalayan Yeti samples were certainly not from a hitherto unknown primate is unaffected.’
Is it possible he could have changed his own settings? (Picture: Sony Playstation 4)
A man fiercely protective of the settings on his games console made a contribution to the long list of reasons not to call the police when he dialled emergency services claiming someone had broken into his house and changed the settings on his PlayStation 4.
According to the Alexandria Echo Press, a local resident dialled 911 on 6 December after discovering the change, presumably having considered the situation at length and concluding that it couldn’t have been him and it was more likely that a person, despite having almost nothing obvious to gain from the act, had broken into his house, turned on the PlayStation, changed the settings, and left.
It’s not always like the movies (Picture: YouTube)
The movies would have you believe every police chase is high-octane and adrenaline-inducing.
But the sad truth is, officers will – on occasion – deal with some pretty lame pursuits.
Check these out for example:
1. The runaway tortoise
Clark, you cheeky thang (Picture: PA)
When a pet tortoise decided to make a bid for freedom, officers from
Alhambra Police Department found themselves involved in a 1mph chase.
The hardened criminal, Clark, was spotted wandering the streets by concerned neighbours who contacted the police.
Two officers took the pet into custody and he was reunited with his owners the following day.
2. Three men one tractor
The damage suffered by a tractor which was taken on a joy ride (Picture: SWNS)
Without a combine harvester in sight, three adrenaline junkies stole a tractor from a farm in Gloucestershire.
A boring 20mph police chase ensued.
The tractor was reduced to walking pace when officer blew its front
tyres – and the boys’ joy ride was over (although they had made it to
the outskirts of Cheltenham).
3. Donkey dash
Little donkey, on that dusty road (Picture: Oregon Police Facebook)
What do you mean tractors aren’t exhilarating? Okay then, hows about a donkey?
He managed to persuade his horse friend to escape from their home in Oregon, US.
Their owner called 911 when she spotted them plotting their way out –
but they gave officers the slip and sent them on an incredibly dull
chase before they were captured.
4. Giving zero Fs
Pensioner on motorway (Picture: YouTube)
This old rascal is holding up a big middle finger up to Johnny Law.
The pensioner caused chaos on the M1 in South Yorkshire by driving the wrong way down the hard shoulder on his mobility scooter.
Shocked motorists spotted the man heading south and called police.
5. Swanning around
Whaaa? (Picture: PA)
In a photo that sums up Britishness perfectly, an officer was snapped
cordoning off the area around a swan which was sat in the middle of the
road in Bath.
Police were called to the tense incident after members of the public became concerned for the swan’s welfare.
Heroes.
A host of text phrases have become part of the 1,000 new words in an online dictionary
Duckface: Katie Price and Rihanna
Duckface, an exaggerated pout for a selfie, is among 1,000 new words in an online dictionary.
It is joined by al desko for eating at your desk, man crush for non-sexual bonding between two men and jel, short for jealous.
Other terms include shabby chic for deliberately aged items, along with a slew of social media acronyms.
Judy Pearsall, of OxfordDictionaries.com, said: “In this age of the selfie, it’s no surprise that monthly usage of duckface, for instance, is 35% higher than last year.”
A
slew of social media or gaming terms and abbreviations that will leave
your mates either well jel or asking WTAF are included in the latest and
so far largest quarterly update to OxfordDictionaries.com.
Would you ever use text speak?
Jel is short for jealous and WTAF is "What the actual f***" posed as a questioning exclamation.
There
are also business terms like "crony capitalism" and food references
like the "five second rule", the apocryphal time between dropping food
on the floor and it becoming too full of bacteria to pick up and eat.
Other
new terms include fone, a misspelling of phone, tiki-taka, a style of
aesthetically pleasing football made popular by Barcelona, and shabby
chic, a piece of clothing or furniture deliberately aged for fashion
reasons.
Last month Oxford Dictionaries announced vape as its
international word of the year, reflecting the meteoric rise in
popularity - and scrutiny - of electronic cigarettes.
Do you consider yourself a reasonably worldly person?
Have you stepped on every continent, swam in every sea, and ingested a wide-array of exotic animal meat?
If the answer is yes, then you probably think you’ve seen it all.
But sit down kid, because we guarantee you’ve never witnessed a great horned owl swimming butterfly stroke.
Apparently the bird was forced into Lake Michigan by a pair of peregrine falcons.
This means it might have been horribly injured, and was simply sculling the surface as it awaited its final breath.
Either way, Michael Phelps would be proud.
Ryan Walker snapped - shouting 'die, die' during his brutal
attack - after two teenage girls said he looked like JK Rowling's boy
wizard
Victim: Emma Keeble following the attack by Ryan Walker
A teenager who stabbed a girl in the face and smashed another's head against a fence because they called him HARRY POTTER has been jailed for more than four years.
Ryan Walker wears glasses and has short black hair like the boy wizard created by JK Rowling, and played by actor Daniel Radcliffe in the hit movies.
But the 19-year-old snapped after the girls called him Harry Potter, stabbing one in the face so hard the blade of his vegetable knife broke.
Walker then smashed the other's head against a fence and shouted "die, die".
He claimed he launched the ferocious attacks in Southampton after being goaded repeatedly by the girls.
Potter taunts: Walker said he snapped after being called Harry Potter
Victims Emma Keeble, 15, and 16-year-old Leah Pearce, are still coming to terms with their injuries, which left their faces battered, cut and bruised.
Southampton Crown Court heard how Walker returned to his family flat after shopping for his mother and had to pass the girls sitting on the stairs.
One touched his shopping bag before verbally abusing him and telling him he resembled Harry Potter.
Outraged, Walker saw red and came back downstairs with a milk bottle full of water and threw it over the girls.
He then went back into the flat and re-emerged with a vegetable knife before walking to a local park - knowing the girls would follow him.
Walker then lost his temper, stabbing Leah in the face, who then started bleeding profusely.
He attacked Emma, flooring her with a series of punches and kicks, before smashing her head against a fence, shouting "die, die".
After his arrest he made a full confession, describing his actions as "monstrous".
Kicked and punched: Emma Keeble with her injuries
He pleaded guilty to wounding with intent, attempting wounding with intent and possessing a bladed article.
Walker's defence barrister Keely Harvey told the court he was bullied at school and seen as a "wimp".
She said: "He finally lost it. He flipped and attacked them in this most horrific way, not justifiable, but I hope they can now see where it came from."
Passing sentence, Judge Peter Ralls QC, said the girls may have been rude, but there was no justification for what Walker did.
He said: "It was deliberate and planned. It was a sustained attack in which you used the knife as a weapon and your foot as a weapon."
Walker was sentenced to a jail term of four and a half years.
After the sentence, Leah's mum Claire Pearce, said: "The injury has left a scar on Leah's face that will be there for years.
"I don't think the sentence was enough for what he did. He admitted he flipped and it was the final straw.
"I think he is a dangerous man given he flipped like that and attacked the girls.
"I feel sorry for the next person that calls him a name."
Hundreds of thousands of animals set to be slaughtered during two-day religious festival in Nepal
The Hindu festival is held every five years in honour of Gadhimai, the goddess of power
Festivities kicked off on Friday morning with the mass-slaughter of 5,000-6,000 buffalo in a field
The last time the festival was held, in 2009, more than 250,000 animals were killed, according to PETA
More than
250,000 animals are being lined up for slaughter as Nepal embarks on a
two-day religious festival where buffalo, birds and goats are sacrificed
to appease a Hindu goddess.
Millions
of Hindus flock to the ceremony, which is held every five years at the
temple of Gadhimai, the goddess of power, in Bariyarpur, Nepal, near the
Indian border.
The
last time the festival was held, in 2009, more than 250,000 animals
were killed, according to animal rights organisation PETA, who is
campaigning to put a stop to the practice.
Scroll down for video
Offer to the gods: Thousands of
buffalo lie dead in a field after being sacrificed for a religious
holiday in near the Indian border in Nepal
A butcher walks with a bloodied blade
as he looks for an animal to kill during a mass slaughter to celebrate
the start of the Gadhimai festival
Religious killing: A butcher gets
ready to kill a buffalo during a mass slaughter of the animals for the
Gadhimai festival inside a walled enclosure in the village of Bariyapur,
near the temple of Gadhimai, the goddess of power
Field of meat:
The festival is held for two days and is kicked off with a
mass-slaughter of buffalo, after which hundreds of thousands of animals
are sacrificed to the goddess
A severely injured water buffalo
awaits its slaughter as a devotee prepares to cut off the animal's head
in front of watching crowds
The
festival is 'kicked off' with the ritual slaughter of five thousand
buffalo in a field near the temple, after which two days of ritual
animal slaughter takes place.
Animal
rights activists such as PETA are campaigning to halt the mass
animal-slaughter, but despite their efforts, the organisers of the
festival has promised that this year will be the biggest yet.
About
2.5 million devotees have turned out for the festival, according to
local government official Yogendra Prasad Dulal, who said it was
'impossible to estimate' the total number of animals sacrificed so far.
A drunk driver with a dangerous driving record has been given a life
sentence for the hit and run killing of a Korean war veteran.
Josef Moscicki, 23, will serve a minimum of 21 years in prison for
driving into 83-year-old Bernard Smith, dragging the veteran the length
of two football pitches.
The most shocking element to this crime was that he returned to the scene and deliberately drove over Mr Smith as he lay dying.
Moscicki had only been given his licence back after an earlier ban for two drink-driving offences in 2011.
The court heard that he had been drinking large quantities of alcohol
in a nightclub and arguing with his girlfriend before mowing down the
pensioner in Stafford on Christmas Day, last year.
Judge John Warner at Wolverhampton Crown Court said: ‘Mr Smith was
wearing a high visibility jacket and the street lighting was good.’
‘The transit van was driven aggressively, I am satisfied this is linked to the collision of the van with Mr Smith.
‘The jury has decided you intended to cause him at least serious injury.’
Workers pack orders on the warehouse floor at the Amazon UK Fulfilment Centre in Peterborough (Picture: PA Wire)
Britain is bracing for a Cyber Monday meltdown as bargain hunters are
expected to make a record 145 million website visits in just 24 hours.
The sale madness – which previously saw shoppers brawling in aisles
to get their hands on heavily discounted goods on Black Friday –
continues online.
Half of all major retailers’ websites crashed or experienced
technical problems on Friday, but around 21 million more visits are
expected on Monday.
Online shoppers are set to spend £650 million during the country’s
busiest ever online shopping day, the online retail industry body IMRG
said.
Online retailers are preparing to meet extremely high demand (Picture: PA Wire)
The two work day sales could cost UK businesses £177 million in lost productivity, as distracted staff hunt for deals.
Darryl Adie, managing director of ecommerce consultants Ampersand,
said: ‘Black Friday dramatically caught out even the websites of the
UK’s biggest retailers by surprise.
‘IT staff are working on problems over the weekend – but Monday has
higher traffic levels predicted and there could be a greater number of
retailers whose websites struggle.’
'Fury' and 'Annie' are among the pirated titles surging in online downloads
Screener copies of at least five new Sony Pictures movies are being traded online after the studio's computers were hacked.
Annie and Fury are among the pirated Sony titles
that have seen a surge in downloads since the Monday hack by a group
calling itself Guardians of Peace, according to Torrent Freak.
The hack disabled Sony's email and additional electronic systems, with
some of the company's employees regaining use of their email accounts on
Saturday.
Following the leak, Fury, which is still in theaters after opening Oct. 17, had become the second-most downloaded film on file-sharing site Pirate Bay.
The other Sony titles being shared online include Mr. Turner and Still Alice, both set for theatrical release later this month, and To Write Love on Her Arms, slated for a March 2015 bow. Many of the pirated copies of the films appear to be awards screeners.
Someone claiming to be part of GOP sent emails to journalists on
Saturday, saying that the group had leaked the above titles to the web.
The email alleged that the group would soon leak data from the studio as
well. It was unclear whether the emails were in fact from GOP or just a
prank.
Sony is reportedly investigating a possible North Korean link to the hack. This comes after a statement released Friday by a North Korean government-controlled website threatened the filmmakers of Sony's upcoming comedy The Interview with "stern punishment." The plot of the film centers on two guys, played by Seth Rogen and James Franco, who are sent to North Korea to assassinate leader Kim Jong Un.
A Sony rep did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Tatiana Siegel contributed to this report. Email: Ryan.Gajewski@pgmedia.org
Twitter: @_RyanGajewski
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