International News - Audio and Video

noirua said:

At least 18 people reported shot near Chicago at the Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, Illinois: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/02/14/university.shooting/index.html

***Link updating as further news comes in.

Northern Illinois University: http://www.niu.edu/index.shtml

Click to expand...

NOTHING seemed very remarkable about the short, bearded man who mingled with other guests on Tuesday evening at a reception in Damascus, the Syrian capital, to mark the 29th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iranian revolution.

Yet before the night was over he was dead in the twisted wreckage of his car and the inevitable assumption was that Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, had killed him with an ingeniously planted bomb.

The news spread rapidly that the dead man was Imad Mughniyeh, an elusive figure known as “the Fox” who had been one of the world’s most feared terrorist masterminds.

Click to expand...

noirua said:

The U.K. Mortgage Bank, Northern Rock, is to be nationalised by the British Government. The Bank owes the Bank of England about AUS$80 billion.

Mortgage Banks, Bradford & Bingley and Alliance & Leicester, have similar problems due to the sub-prime loan packaging they have been involved in.

Click to expand...

Documents may shed new light on JFK assassination
Posted Mon Feb 18, 2008 9:01am AEDT
A batch of old documents linked to the slaying of US President John F Kennedy has reportedly been unearthed, the Dallas Morning News said.
The documents are said to include a highly suspect transcript of a conversation between assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald's killer Jack Ruby.

The newspaper said the Dallas County district attorney's office, which uncovered the documents, would display its discovery at a news conference tomorrow.

The Morning News said the items found in an old safe in a Dallas courthouse included personal letters from former district attorney Henry Wade, the prosecutor in the Ruby trial. Ruby shot Oswald two days after the president's death.
....
But one potentially controversial item is a transcript of an exchange between Oswald and Ruby in which they discuss killing Kennedy to halt the mafia-busting agenda of his brother, attorney-general Robert Kennedy.
.....
The documents may be a Presidents' Day gift to conspiracy theorists who have long questioned the official US Government version that Oswald acted alone when he shot Mr Kennedy on November 22, 1963, as the president's motorcade swept past the Texas School Book Depository in downtown Dallas.

Nightclub owner Ruby subsequently shot Oswald dead at point-blank range as police were escorting their prime suspect. Ruby died a few years later from cancer. Reuters

Click to expand...

Jack Ruby (Oswald's assassin) makes a statement to reporters after he has been permitted a new trial. He says :

Everything pertaining to what's happening has never come to the surface. The world will never know the true facts, of what occurred, my motives. The people had , that had so much to gain and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I'm in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world.

Reporter : Are these people in very high positions Jack ??
Jack : Yes.

Why has nobody seen this footage at the time it was shot? Because certain people with enough power didn't want you to see it. Just like they didn't want you to see the Zapruder film. Imagine what would have happened if the american public was shown just both of these films.

Click to expand...

Other quotes of Jack Ruby that are on film:
"Gentlemen, I want to tell the truth, but I cannot tell it here. If you want a fair shake out of me, you have to take me to Washington"

"When I mentioned about Adlai Stevenson, if he was vice president there would never have been an assassination of our beloved President Kennedy " Asked if he would explain it again Ruby continued "Well the answer is the man in office now" - that man was Lyndon Johnson.

Ruby fearing for his life, and the life of his family told the Warren commission...."Well, you won't see me again. I tell you that a whole new form of government is going to take over the country, and I know I won't live to see you another time"

Click to expand...

Further on in this letter Ruby writes: ... isn't it strange that Oswald who hasn't worked a lick most of his life, should be fortunate enough to get a job at the Book Building two weeks before the president himself didn't know as to when he was to visit Dallas, now where would a jerk like Oswald get the information that the president was coming to Dallas? Only one person could have had that information, and that man was Johnson who knew weeks in advance as to what was going to happen, because he is the one who was going to arrange the trip for the president, this had been planned long before the president himself knew about, so you can figure that one out. The only one who gained by the shooting of the president was Johnson, and he was in a car in the rear and safe when the shooting took place. What would the Russians, Castro or anyone else have to gain by eliminating the president? If Johnson was so heartbroken over Kennedy, why didn't he do something for Robert Kennedy? All he did was snub him.

This letter and Ruby's remarks to the press, suggest that Ruby became only later convinced that Johnson was a power behind the scenes. During his Warren testimony he shows no inkling of this conviction.

Click to expand...

Fragment of Jack Ruby's testimony for the Warren Commisssion:

Representative FORD: Are there any questions that ought to be asked to help clarify the situation that you described?

Mr. RUBY: There is only one thing. If you don't take me back to Washington tonight to give me a chance to prove to the President that I am not guilty, then you will see the most tragic thing that will ever happen.

RUBY: Maybe something can be saved, something can be done.

What have you got to answer to that, Chief Justice Warren?

Chief Justice WARREN: Well, I don't know what can be done, Mr. Ruby, because I don't know what you anticipate we will encounter.

Mr. RUBY: All I know is maybe something can be saved. Because right now, I want to tell you this, I am used as a scapegoat, and there is no greater weapon that you can use to create some falsehood about some of the Jewish faith, especially at the terrible heinous crime such as the killing of President Kennedy.

Now maybe something can be saved. It may not be too late, whatever happens, if our President, Lyndon Johnson, knew the truth from me.

But if I am eliminated, there won't be any way of knowing.

Right now, when I leave your presence now, I am the only one that can bring out the truth to our President, who believes in righteousness and justice.

But he has been told, I am certain, that I was part of a plot to assassinate the President.

I know your hands are tied; you are helpless.

Chief Justice WARREN: The President will know everything that you have said, everything that you have said.

Mr. RUBY: But I won't be around, Chief Justice. I won't be around to verify these things you are going to tell the President.

Mr. TONAHILL: Who do you think is going to eliminate you, Jack?

Mr. RUBY: I have been used for a purpose, and there will be a certain tragic occurrence happening if you don't take my testimony and somehow vindicate me so my people don't suffer because of what I have done.

Chief Justice WARREN: But we have taken your testimony. We have it here. It will be in permanent form for the President of the United States and for the Congress of the United States, and for the courts of the United States, and for the people of the entire world.

It is there. It will be recorded for all to see. That is the purpose of our coming here today. We feel that you are entitled to have your story told.

Mr. RUBY: You have lost me though. You have lost me, Chief Justice Warren.

Chief Justice WARREN: Lost you in what sense?

Mr. RUBY: I won't be around for you to come and question me again.

Chief Justice WARREN: Well, it is very hard for me to believe that. I am sure that everybody would want to protect you to the very limit.

Mr. RUBY: All I want is a lie detector test, and you refuse to give it to me.

Because as it stands now--and the truth serum, and any other--Pentothal--how do you pronounce it, whatever it is. And they will not give it to me, because I want to tell the truth.

And then I want to leave this world. But I don't want my people to be blamed for something that is untrue, that they claim has happened.

Chief Justice WARREN: Mr. Ruby, I promise you that you will be able to take such a test

Click to expand...

A lunch meeting between Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) and Dean Andrews (John Candy) is expanded to include the comment by Andrews, “Jack Ruby gets a new trial and dies of cancer a few days later. That’s some kind of cancer. I’d say that’s a going out of business kind of cancer.” When this conversation took place Ruby would still have been alive.

Click to expand...

Conscious Ramos-Horta 'asked about East Timorese'
Posted 1 hour 33 minutes ago
Updated 1 hour 26 minutes ago
The Deputy Prime Minister of East Timor says as President Jose Ramos-Horta regained consciousness after an induced coma, one of his first questions to his family was to ask about the people of East Timor.

Mr Ramos-Horta has undergone five operations since being shot twice in a failed assassination attempt 10 days ago.

The President is aware the rebel leader Alfredo Reinado died in the assassination attempt.

East Timor's deputy Prime Minister, Jose Luis Guterres, has flown to Darwin to see the President's condition first hand.

"In that condition he still remembers the main task and the main purpose for all his entire life - that was fight for the freedom, the democracy and the independence of East Timor," he said.

Mr Ramos-Horta's niece, Melissa Ramos-Horta, spoke to the President this morning.

"I think today he is doing much better - everything is sinking in today," she said.

"But he is happy and just asking for his family and the people of Timor and for us - he just wants the reassurance that everyone is well.

"He is the one lying in bed and he's asking to make sure everyone is well."

Mr Guterres says his country is thankful for the help given by the Australian Government and says he is pleased with the protection offered to Mr Ramos-Horta.

"We are happy that all the measures have been taken by the authorities in Australia - the federal authorities as well as the Northern Territory, so we are very, very happy," he said.


Recovery

Doctors at the Royal Darwin Hospital say Mr Ramos-Horta is recovering well. Dr Paul Goldrick says the President is in pain but making progress.

"Doctors - myself and surgeons here at the hospital - are very pleased with his steady progress," Dr Goldrick said.

"We expect him to make a full recovery but we think this may take up to several months. "He is going to remain in an intensive care unit for a period longer - we don't know how long; this may be several weeks."

Meanwhile, the President's guard who was also shot, Lieutenant Sellistino Gomez, has been taken out of intensive care and is now in a general ward.

Click to expand...

noirua said:

Murderer, Mark Dixie, sentenced to a minimum of 34 years, may have killed in Australia in the 1990's: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/feb/22/ukcrime3

Click to expand...

Raul Castro named Cuba's new president
Posted 6 hours 1 minute ago

Cuba's Parliament has named Raul Castro as President, to replace his ailing brother Fidel, prompting a guarded response from countries looking for signs of reform on the Communist-ruled island.

After years in Fidel's charismatic shadow as Cuba's number two and Defence Minister, Raul Castro faces massive challenges, including preparing the transition of power to a newer generation and reforming the economy.

"Fidel is irreplaceable; the people will continue his work when he is no longer with us physically, though his ideas always will be here," Raul Castro, 76, told lawmakers in his acceptance speech.

Click to expand...

People in the street voiced hopes that the new President would usher in long-sought economic reforms to improve their daily lives.

"This is the best that could have happened to Cuba," Carlos Muguercia, a 78-year-old craftsman said. "Raul already knows the situation. He knows how to solve problems, in any case the most serious ones."

Others were less enthusiastic at the dynastic succession.

"Raul is Fidel without a beard," argued one young man enjoying a beer at a bar in Havana's historic centre. etc

Click to expand...