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Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Mali loses control of north, as sanctions imposed
BAMAKO, Mali (AP) ? Just 12 days after they stormed the presidential palace, the young officers that seized control of Mali in a coup were slapped Monday with harsh financial sanctions that could cause the country to run out of gasoline.
The body representing nations in West Africa announced Monday that starting immediately they are closing the land borders with Mali. The landlocked nation of over 15 million imports nearly all its petroleum products from neighboring Ivory Coast, and economists say gas stations could run dry within weeks. The country's account at the regional central bank has also been frozen, meaning that the junta will struggle to pay the salaries of government employees, including the very soldiers whose loyalty they need to retain power.
"All of the measures are applicable starting today and until the constitutional order is restored," said Alassane Ouattara, the president of Ivory Coast who is the chair of the Economic Community of West African States, after an emergency summit in Senegal. "The measures taken by the junta are in the right direction, but are not sufficient," he said.
The regional body representing 15 nations in West Africa had issued a 72-hour ultimatum to the soldiers that grabbed power, which expired Monday. In an effort to stave off the sanctions, the captain who led the coup held a press conference Sunday to say he was reinstating the constitution and planning to hold elections.
Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo refused to give a timeline on when the elections would be held, however, and dodged questions on whether he would continue to be president during the period leading to the election.
Meanwhile, the government on Monday also lost control of the northern half of the nation, as rebel flags were hoisted over the last three major towns still under government control. In just three days, the Tuareg rebels swept across the north, taking the regional capital of Kidal on Friday, the largest city of Gao on Saturday and the fabled desert outpost of Timbuktu on Sunday.
Commentators on television are already talking about the possible partition of Mali, which has weathered numerous rebellions by the lighter-skinned Tuaregs who have long felt marginalized by the darker-skinned Bambaras, who dominate the south where the seat of government is located.
At no time in the past did either of the three towns fall, indicating how much ground the rebels have been able to cover in the wake of a 12-day-old coup in the distant capital, which has left both the military and the government in disarray.
"The north is 1,000 percent in the hands of the rebels. There's no resistance, there's nothing. ... They have taken all the strategic points. In all the towns," said an official in the mayor's office in Kidal, who requested anonymity because he feared for his safety. "There is no Malian state left."
Even before the coup, the government struggled to control the distant north, both due to the country's enormous geography and because of the age-old discord with the Tuaregs. In recent years, the lack of government in the north has created a sanctuary for drug traffickers and al-Qaida terrorists, who have set up bases in the forlorn dunes.
With the government in post-coup disarray, even the garrison towns like Gao and Kidal proved no match for the rebels. Soldiers were seen dumping their uniforms and running. A resident of a town on the road leaving Gao saw a convoy of 14 military trucks speeding away, beating a panicked retreat.
Unlike in previous years, the rebels are no longer a unified movement fighting for an independent Tuareg homeland, called Azawad in the Tamashek language. The National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad, or NMLA, is fighting for an independent Tuareg homeland, known as the Azawad. In addition, an Islamist group called Ansar Dine is fighting to impose sharia law in northern Mali.
Residents of Timbuktu on Monday awoke to find the ominous black flag of the Islamist faction flying over their ancient city, a worrying development in a city that used to rely on tourism for the bulk of its economy.
Irina Bokova, head of the U.N. cultural agency, urged Malian authorities and the warring factions to safeguard's Timbuktu's historic earthen mosques and other sites which are on UNESCO's World Heritage List.
Contacted by telephone, Timbuktu Mayor Ousmane Halle said that he had received phone calls from three imams of local mosques, worried because they had been contacted by Ansar Dine. The rebel group is asking to see all the imams of the city, and Halle says they are worried that the group wants to apply sharia, a form of Islamic law that does not jive with the moderate interpretation of the religion practiced by most of Timbuktu's mosques.
"They called us to this meeting," said the imam of the Grand Mosque of Timbuktu, Abderrahmane Ben Essayouti. "We will see what the future brings. We practice a tolerant Islam. For them, it's sharia that we should be practicing."
The mayor of Timbuktu said that it's unclear which of the rebel movements has the upper hand. He said that he has requested a meeting with the spiritual head of Ansar Dine in order to complain about the proliferation of weapons.
"The rebels completely control the city. But there are several movements among them," said Halle. "What worries me is the weapons. The army has deserted the military camps. And the rebels, as well as others have raided their munitions. You now see 13-, 14- and 15-year-old boys with machine guns in the streets. If I told you I wasn't scared, I'd be lying. What I reproach is that these people have occupied a territory. But they should at least secure it. I've asked to see them, but they have not yet responded."
In Kidal and Gao, shopkeepers reported that the Islamist rebels went from business to business telling merchants to take down pictures of unveiled women, including a hairdresser's posters showing photographs of different hairstyles.
In Gao, the largest city in the north which fell on Saturday, residents said that they no longer know who is in charge.
"It's chaos. We don't even know who controls the city, and who is doing what," said student Ahmed Ould Fneiny. "We see Ansar Dine with their flag. We see the MNLA. ... There are people in military uniforms who have stolen all the cars. We can't leave the city. One liter of gasoline is now 1,000 francs ($2) whereas it was 650 francs ($1.3) yesterday."
The rebellion began in January, after Tuareg fighters who had been on the payroll of ex-Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi returned to Mali, bristling with arms. For the first two months, the insurgency advanced into the remote north, taking a dozen small towns, though failing to capture any of the major population centers.
___
Associated Press writers Baba Ahmed in Bamako, Mali and Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal contributed to this report.
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Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Humongous and Deadly "Giant Pencil Launcher" Proves Grade School Fantasies Will Kill Us All [Video]
![Click here to read Humongous and Deadly "Giant Pencil Launcher" Proves Grade School Fantasies Will Kill Us All](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vZb7dlIm9EEyUE6W4SknvkmR3N9mefTGub8g_yLaooXVcuOBAwr3ViGd_ncBJNTZsmOwu0ADIippNABQINMbFsS3Ha_xG2qMIuwXBBSlyLcNKuBUkBw9bkJ-NmjwnOAA=s0-d "Click here to read Humongous and Deadly "Giant Pencil Launcher" Proves Grade School Fantasies Will Kill Us All")
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Free Watch Full Mad Men Season 5 Episode 3 Online [Video ...
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Monday, April 2, 2012
Best Android phone under 30K
Thanks for really quick reply 
Decided to reject note because of the size. I dont think I want to use that big phone.
Yes Xperia S is 31000 officially available now (pre book) But have to wait for the review.
One X is great phone but I think it will be out of my budget 
Galaxy Nexus is just 23K which is steal thats why its in my list. For me 5 MP is enough can live with it. And lots of custom rom support for it.
Can wait for SIII but I am sure it will be above 35K anyways lets hope for price cut will save me few thousand rupees.
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Sunday, April 1, 2012
Bus inspections get lax oversight despite crashes
HOUSTON?? Months after their state-certified vehicle inspection station was cited by federal authorities for failing to notice defects in a bus that crashed in North Texas, killing 17 passengers, brothers Alam and Cesar Hernandez shuttered their firm. But that didn't mean they were out of the vehicle inspection business.
Instead, they opened another station in the same Houston neighborhood and continued to inspect buses like the one involved in the accident. And they did it with the approval of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The Hernandez brothers' story underlines a phenomenon that highway safety advocates say has long existed with deadly consequences ? the lack of oversight for the businesses that perform state inspections of buses and other large commercial vehicles.
Records examined by The Associated Press show that three of the deadliest bus crashes in recent years raised questions about the commercial vehicle inspection programs in Texas, Illinois and Mississippi and prompted calls from the National Transportation Safety Board for better oversight. Forty people died in those wrecks, yet the agency to which the recommendations were directed, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, has refused to act.
Anne Ferro, the FMCSA's administrator, declined through a spokeswoman to comment. The agency has previously termed additional scrutiny of state programs unnecessary.
The inaction has rankled safety advocates, who believe government regulators aren't attentive to the needs of bus travelers.
"If you can't afford to take a plane and have to take a bus, you are going to be subject to second-class safety standards, both in terms of equipment and oversight by the federal government," said Jacqueline Gillan, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety.
Federal regulations require that commercial vehicles be inspected annually. Those inspections can be conducted by state personnel, private garages or even the companies operating the vehicles. Passing a roadside inspection also can meet the requirement as long as it occurs within the previous year.
More than half the states have no prescribed inspection requirements, leaving it open to the motor carriers themselves. And even those with approved private garages are not required to subject those companies to oversight or quality assurance.
Safety legislation approved in the Senate on March 14 as part of the highway funding bill would force the federal government to evaluate state inspection programs, but the legislation has stalled in the House.
Former FMCSA head John Hill said the agency doesn't have the resources to monitor state commercial vehicle inspections. States typically employ people to do that, he said.
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"If the person chairing the NTSB were the head of the FMCSA, I guarantee he or she would talk differently," said Hill, now a trucking industry consultant.
Documents recently obtained by the AP shed new light on the crash in the North Texas city of Sherman, one of the worst in U.S. history.
NTSB investigators determined that a blown tire caused the bus carrying members of Houston's Vietnamese Catholic community to a retreat in Missouri in August 2008 to careen off the highway. But they also found evidence calling into question the inspection conducted by the Hernandez brothers' business, 5 Minute Inspections, eight days earlier.
The NTSB report cited evidence indicating the bus had passed inspection despite defects that included a retread tire illegally affixed to the front axle and grease contamination in one of the brakes.
The NTSB investigation followed concerns expressed by a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper, who requested an audit of both 5 Minute Inspections and the inspector, Cesar Hernandez.
"In light of all the circumstances, I seriously feel this 'inspection' was 'pencil-whipped,'" the trooper wrote in a memo after the accident.
Despite those issues, the DPS granted the Hernandez brothers approval for their new business in May 2010, and it remains in good standing, records show.
Yen-Chi Le, a Houston medical researcher whose mother died in the crash, expressed outrage when she learned that the brothers were still able to inspect buses.
"We thought there was no way they'd stay in business," she said. "This makes my stomach turn."
A DPS spokesman said the agency didn't find the issues raised by the NTSB or the trooper "sufficient to justify action" against the station. However, further inquiries have led the department to seek Cesar Hernandez's suspension for bogus inspections of passenger vehicles, the spokesman said.
The DPS employs more than 200 officers and auditors to support its vehicle inspection program, and it improved its investigative process under a reorganization plan instituted two years ago, the spokesman said.
Messages left for the brothers were not returned. An attorney for Cesar Hernandez said his client did not want to discuss the matter.
Another accident points to similar problems with a bus that passed inspection in Illinois.
The NTSB's investigation of the 2004 crash in Arkansas determined an inspection conducted by a state-approved garage in Chicago two months earlier failed to notice cracks in the rail supporting the engine. The defect wasn't the cause of the wreck, which killed 15 members of a tour group, but it should have kept the bus off the road, according to the NTSB.
The garage was conducting inspections at the time even though three months earlier it had pleaded guilty to failing to notice a hole in a school bus' muffler, according to Illinois Department of Transportation records.
An IDOT spokesman said the garage wasn't under any restrictions when it inspected the bus because the school bus case had yet to be heard by a judge. The firm later received a one-month suspension because of the school bus infraction, and it then stopped inspecting vehicles altogether, the spokesman said.
Questions about the effectiveness of allowing motor carriers to inspect their own vehicles emerged after a church bus from Texas crashed in Louisiana in 2003, killing eight passengers.
The bus hit a tractor trailer from Mississippi that was parked on the shoulder because its brakes were smoking. The NTSB blamed the crash on the bus driver, but it also found that the tractor trailer was being operated in a "serious state of disrepair" despite passing an inspection conducted by the president of the company six months earlier.
Mississippi Lt. Donald McCain said his state believes roadside inspections conducted by law enforcement are adequate for making sure commercial vehicles are being properly maintained.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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BASIS SOFTEXPO-2011 ( Bangladesh In top 30 IT Outsourcing ...
BASIS SOFTEXPO-2011 Time: February 3 , 2011 Venue: Bangabandhu International Conference Centre (BICC), Dhaka. SOFTEXPO is the biggest ICT exposition in Bangladesh that goes on for 5 days displaying software products, IT Enabled Services and ICT system solutions and takes place only once a year.More than hundred exhibitors to take part, Separate exhibition zones, Business match-making between local and foreign software/IT Enabled Services companies and clients. Talent Search Programs titled ?Abiskarer Khoje? to award innovative IT projects developed by young talents (students/professionals). Programming contest titled ?Code Warriors? Challenge?. IT Job Fair where IT companies will be able to interview the candidates for recruitment. A number of seminars and business sessions. Special Award programs to honor important personalities, professionals, young entrepreneurs, freelancers, community contributions, academic institutions and IT faculties.
Eric Ries is an entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller ?The Lean Startup? and the popular entrepreneurship blog Startup Lessons Learned. He co-founded and served as CTO of IMVU, his third startup. In 2007, BusinessWeek named him one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech. In 2009, he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has consulted to new and established companies as well as venture capital firms. He is currently serving as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School and a Fellow for IDEO, the design consulting firm. His Lean Startup methodology has been written about in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, the Huffington Post, and many blogs. He lives in San Francisco.
Short URL: http://www.youngbusinessowner.com/?p=1902
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