The whole country would crash and burn. Do you know how many jobs in Michigan alone are auto related

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Mother Sets Fire to her Daughter's Gloating Rapist

By Peter Upton in Alicante
Last Updated: 11:48PM BST 25 Jun 2005

A Spanish mother has taken revenge on the man who raped her 13-year-old daughter at knifepoint by dousing him in petrol and setting him alight. He died of his injuries in hospital on Friday.

Antonio Cosme Velasco Soriano, 69, had been sent to jail for nine years in 1998, but was let out on a three-day pass and returned to his home town of Benej�zar, 30 miles south of Alicante, on the Costa Blanca.

While there, he passed his victim's mother in the street and allegedly taunted her about the attack. He is said to have called out "How's your daughter?", before heading into a crowded bar.

Shortly after, the woman walked into the bar, poured a bottle of petrol over Soriano and lit a match. She watched as the flames engulfed him, before walking out.

The woman fled to Alicante, where she was arrested the same evening. When she appeared in court the next day in the town of Orihuela, she was cheered and clapped by a crowd, who shouted "Bravo!" and "Well done!"

A judge ordered her to be held in prison and undergo psychiatric tests, provoking anger from friends and neighbours, who have set up a petition calling for her release.

Soriano suffered 60 per cent burns in the attack on June 13 and was airlifted to a specialist unit. He survived for 11 days before succumbing to his injuries.

It is understood that the woman, who cannot be named because of laws safeguarding the identity of rape victims, claims to have no recollection of the attack which took place in the Bar Mary, just 300 yards from the family home.

As decorators painted over the blackened walls of his bar last week, Antonio Ferrendez Lopez told how Soriano had walked in at lunchtime.

"The place was packed with people eating. I was sitting at a table and Soriano was standing at the bar very close to me when the woman walked in," he said. "She didn't acknowledge anyone but walked up to Soriano, who was drinking a coffee, put her hand on his shoulder and turned him round to face her.

"Then she pulled the bottle she was carrying from under her arm and began to tip it over him. At first I didn't realise what was happening, but then I smelt the petrol. I jumped up and tried to grab her, but when she struck a match I got clear.

"The petrol was in a pool around Soriano, and she threw the match into it. It ignited with a whoosh, and he screamed and staggered about covered in flames. As people rushed outside to escape the flames, she just looked at him, then turned and walked away."

Customers helped Mr Lopez put out the fire with extinguishers and doused Soriano with water until paramedics arrived.

Soriano's attack on the woman's teenage daughter took place in 1998. The girl was going to buy a loaf of bread when Soriano snatched her from the street, threatened her with a knife and raped her. Her mother is said to have suffered mental illness ever since.

Soriano was convicted of the rape and ordered to serve 13 years in jail. The sentence was later reduced to nine years on appeal.

The woman's lawyer, Joaqu�n Galant, told The Sunday Telegraph last night: "The family has suffered a double tragedy. First the attack on their daughter and now this. Both the father and his daughter would like to express their sadness at the death of Soriano."

Earlier, Mr Galant said that the woman did not deserve to be kept in prison. "For seven years she has been deeply affected by what was done to her daughter," he said. "This man, fresh from prison and asking how her daughter was, might be considered to have provoked her."

Investors are not fools. It's only left-wingers who get it to up tick for a day or so, that's all. The rest of America ain't buying Obama's sudden "positive" attitude. They know it is a calculated and phony positive. Fools rush in, you know. Ain't nothing more foolish than a left-winger Obama worshiper.

...*Curious George* wants to know who's visiting porn sites. Hmmmmmm... thought spying was only supposed to be used to catch *terrorists*....

The Bush administration will renew its effort to find out what people have been looking for on Google Inc.'s Internet-leading search engine, continuing a legal showdown over how much of the Web's vast databases should be shared with the government.

Lawyers for the Justice Department and Google are expected to elaborate on their opposing views in a San Jose hearing scheduled Tuesday before U.S. District Court Judge James Ware.

It will mark the first time the Justice Department and Google have sparred in court since the government subpoenaed the Mountain-View, Calif.-based company last summer in an effort to obtain a long list of search requests and Web site addresses.

The government believes the requested information will help bolster its arguments in another case in Pennsylvania, where the Bush administration hopes to revive a law designed to make it more difficult for children to see online pornography.

Google has refused to cooperate, maintaining that the government's demand threatens its users' privacy as well as its own closely guarded trade secrets.

The Justice Department has downplayed Google's concerns, arguing it doesn't want any personal information nor any data that would undermine the company's thriving business.

The case has focused attention on just how much personal information is stored by popular Web sites like Google � and the potential for that data to attract the interest of the government and other parties.

Although the Justice Department says it doesn't want any personal information now, a victory over Google in the case would likely encourage far more invasive requests in the future, said University of Connecticut law professor Paul Schiff Berman, who specializes in Internet law.

The erosion of privacy tends to happen incrementally, Berman said. While no one intrusion may seem that big, over the course of the next decade or two, you might end up in a place as a society where you never thought you would be.

Google seized on the case to underscore its commitment to privacy rights and differentiate itself from the Internet's other major search engines � Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Time Warner Inc.'s America Online. All three say they complied with the Justice Department's request without revealing their users' personal information.

Cooperating with the government is a slippery slope and it's a path we shouldn't go down, Google co-founder Sergey Brin told industry analysts earlier this month.

Even as it defies the Bush administration, Google recently bowed to the demands of China's Communist government by agreeing to censor its search results in that country so it would have better access to the world's fastest growing Internet market. Google's China capitulation has been harshly criticized by some of the same people cheering the company's resistance to the Justice Department subpoena.

The Justice Department initially demanded a month of search requests from Google, but subsequently decided a week's worth of requests would be enough. In its legal briefs, the Justice Department has indicated it might be willing to narrow its request even further.

Ultimately, the government plans to select a random sample of 1,000 search requests previously made at Google and re-enter them in the search engine, according to a sworn declaration by Philip Stark, a statistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley who is helping the Justice Department in the case.

The government believes the test will show how easily it is to get around the filtering software that's supposed to prevent children from seeing sexually explicit material on the Web.

Is that his nick name for McCain supporters? Hey how about McCain sell a few of those houses and give it to the financial companies???? How about the rich do something for a change???? How about that????

This makes me sick, all of it! We need to be addressed by these candidates and not set aside until oil companies and rich folks figure out what happened!!!! We are looking at who is going to be our next President and all Bush cares about are his pockets being lined? Poor thing; did he invest in the wrong stock???

I must be really whacked, but I feel this candidacy is waaaaay more important than IGA, IGM, Wash Mut, Bank of America, Lehman, Looman, Dooman, or dooofus, whatever!!!!! These lenders loaned the money to people who they knew couldn't pay it back and now it has come back to bite them and now its the rest of us having to bail them out. No sympathy here! I stayed within my budget; so sorry others did not!!!!!!!! These candidates are going to run this country. I think Obama is right; let's get it on with the debates.... JMO...

I keep hearing about HC wanting to push on getting Florida and Michigan votes to count, delegates to be seated, etc. While I understand about every vote should count and they should, I also understand that Fla & Mich agreed on this so that they could vote early (i.e. they broke the rules and were punished) and both sides (Obama & Clinton) agreed to it. I guess at that time she thought that the whole US was just going to vote for her and nobody would vote for Obama and now that she is seeing otherwise she wants to change the rules/laws.

Now I don't even understand why there is a meeting going on. Doesn't anyone just tell them...No! You agreed to this. You were told of the consequences and you agreed and now that your losing you want to change the laws to be put in your favor. Every time they don't win they want to change the rules, and I dont understand why they are not just being told "No". If they are so concerned about all the votes counting why didn't they just wait until when they were supposed to vote and not push it earlier. I can tell you - because they thought they would be winning more states and they didn't care enough about Fla or Mich to wait.

Now I understand that she is going to go to the meeting and push that even with FL and MI she doesn't have enough votes, but she's now going to push for them to just dismiss Obama (even though he has more delagates and votes, and states won), that they should just dump him and make her the nominee because she believes she can win over McCain. She really needs to wake up. She's just like her husband - a legend in their own minds. If she steals this from Obama and becomes the nominee (which I doubt very very much) but if she was to be able to finagle that so much dirt would come out going all the way back to Whitewater, Rose Law Firm, etc, etc,

Maybe what they should be doing is taking responsibility and telling the citizens of FL & MI the real reason why their votes are not being counted - because of her and her decisions she made and if they blame anyone they should blame her for not following the laws.

And on another side cannot anyone tell me why in the world Obama's name was not on the ticket in MI. I have not for the life of me figured out that one. Only her name was on the ticket? Helloooo....the last time I looked there were two candidates. Now they are trying to say Obama removed his name from the ticket. Yeah, right, tell me another one. I hear that and I think, what country do we live in where the person who wants to be president has only their name on the ballot. That's what I hear happens in Cuba, Russia and all those other communist countries.

have a father that retired from General Motors and have a lot of friends that have either retired from there or currently work there, it is a big combination of blame. I blame the union, General Motors and the employees for letting a lot of this happen. GM paid the "fat cats" (that is what they are called around here) big money for skilled trades for them to sit around and do nothing, literally nothing. It is a big joke around here that some go and clock in and turn around and go straight to a bar and then go back to clock out. If they are needed, someone will call their cell and let them know they are needed.

It has been common for years to allow employees to work 70/80 hour weeks, massive overtime and my father was one of them. He was making over $130k a year, if not more when he retired. I know it was hard physically on him to do it, but he said that he mostly read on the job and exercised. A friend's husband goes to work to sleep.

I am not saying that everyone does this, but a majority of them do and it is a real shame. I know the ones on the lines cannot do it, but the skilled trades can and do. If the salaried employees complain, then the union gets involved and they still get to keep their jobs no matter how many times they are written up. It takes a lot to get an employee fired.

Just think, something breaks on the line, so they call in the skilled trades guy who has been at the bar drinking, he comes and fixes whatever is wrong, creating a quality problem and then GM has to charge so much money to cover the expenses. And we wonder why they are over priced? And they want to be bailed out? No thank you!

The GM execs have been getting millions of dollars in bonuses for years as well and the employees get a nice check before Xmas as well for a bonus. They should have been like any other company and budgeted their money. Shame on them. If they had quality vehicles at a reasonable price, people wouldn't be buying foreign cars. I personally do drive a GM vehicle because of the discount that I get from my dad. Otherwise, I would probably be buying foreign as well, you get what you pay for.

Sorry to rant, but living in a GM town and not working there, you can get a different perspective on things than what is shown in the news/media. Forgive me if I have offended anyone.

(AP) A divorced father will fight a ruling that keeps his girlfriend away from their Michigan home when his children visit overnight, the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday.

The ACLU said it would appeal to the state Supreme Court on behalf of Christian Muller, whose ex-wife sought the court order based on an 1838 state law that makes lewd and lascivious cohabitation a crime. Michigan is one of only seven states with such a law on the books, the ACLU said.

This antiquated law allows the state to unconstitutionally interfere with a parent's relationship with his or her children, said Kary Moss, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan.

Muller shares legal custody of his two daughters, ages 5 and 7, with his former wife, Nicolette Muller.

Oakland County Judge Daniel Patrick O'Brien ordered that both parents be prohibited from having overnight visitation with their children when they have unrelated overnight guests of the opposite sex.

The latest appeal argues that the Court of Appeals decision conflicts with its prior rulings and with the Child Custody Act of 1970, and relies on an unconstitutional statute � the 1838 state law.

Elizabeth Silverman, an attorney who had represented Nicolette Muller, said Wednesday her services had not been retained for the latest appeal.

A home telephone number could not be found for Nicolette Muller, who lives in southeastern Michigan.

Police said they were treating the death in Chingford of Neil Coulbeck, who worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland until 2004, as unexplained.

Three ex-workers of RBS subsidiary NatWest are being extradited to the US on Thursday to face fraud charges.

Mr Coulbeck had worked at the Royal Bank of Scotland until 2004, most recently as head of group treasury, the bank confirmed.

Neil was highly regarded by his colleagues here in RBS and was a respected, capable and hard working member of our senior management team.

The fraud case centres on a NatWest transaction under which it sold off part of its Enron unit.

RBS said: There is no evidence that Mr Coulbeck was involved in the approval of the transaction under investigation.

RBS has co-operated fully with all the appropriate authorities and made them fully aware of all the relevant facts in our possession.

The FBI said it would not comment while the case was ongoing.

'Appalling'

One of the so-called NatWest three, David Bermingham, said he had been knocked sideways by the news of Mr Coulbeck's death.

It is awful, appalling. One day when this is all over I'm going to be coming home to my wife and children and some poor guy is not and my heart goes out to his wife and family, he said.

He described Mr Coulbeck as a superstar, a thoroughly decent, honest professional guy and a very experienced banker.

Mr Coulbeck was among NatWest staff who made witness statements about the extradition, Mr Bermingham, of Goring, Berkshire, said.

Neil's statement was no more than a page and a half saying who he was and his role, he said.

Fellow accused Giles Darby, speaking from his home in Lower Wraxall, Somerset, said he was absolutely shocked by the death.

It's an utter tragedy. I'm struggling to take it in, really.

Of course, my thoughts are now with Neil's family and friends.

In 2002, US prosecutors issued arrest warrants for the three men, accusing them of conspiring to defraud their employers and investors in energy giant Enron, which had collapsed a year earlier.

It is alleged that the three British bankers - Mr Bermingham, Gary Mulgrew and Mr Darby - advised their employer Greenwich NatWest to sell off its stake in an Enron unit at well below its market value.

MPs' protest

They then left the bank and purchased a $250,000 (�135,000) stake in the unit - which they sold on at a much higher price, making a profit of $7.3m (�3.9m).

They deny any wrongdoing.

Their extradition was debated by MPs in an emergency session of Commons on Wednesday.

After a three-hour debate they voted by a majority of 242 to adjourn the Commons early in symbolic protest at the government's extradition arrangements.

On Tuesday, peers had voted in favour of suspending extradition agreements with the US until the UK-US treated had been ratified there.

Read the following report. 8-10% of total cost doesn't seem like a huge percentage for labor costs. Maybe they can't afford the big salaries and bonuses for the top dogs? About time the wealth started being redistributed. Funny I haven't heard any outrage over the outrageous salaries the top dogs in these automobile business are paid. Just whining about how much the UAW workers are paid. It's about time the working class started standing up for the working class!!!!!

Let 'em all go bankrupt. I have no doubt the idjits in Washington are way more concerned about job losses in "developing countries" than those of American citizens.