nomadlab writes: "Ms. Tanaka's visit to Washington DC was agreed to by the US government after strenuous efforts by the Japanese government. The objective of her trip was
to vindicate what she expressed about US foreign policies at meetings with her counterparts from other countries. She conveyed her messages of criticism
about the foreign polices of the US government to them. She must have told them faithfully what she believed.


Her address immediately caused problems in the Japanese political world.


During the conversation with her old classmates at the reception in German Town High School, The Weekly Post learned that Ms. Tanaka made a remark
about George Bush, "He is totally an asshole" in English...

There has never been a statesman in Japanese history that called a US president, 'an asshole.'

the whole report can be found here."

Louis Lingg writes: "Is the economic contraction in the tech sector expanding the ranks of the Black Bloc?

The Register (UK) is running a piece on a speech given by WTO chieftain Mike Moore in which he urged "citizen's groups" and NGOs to distance themselves from "masked stone-throwers who claim to want more transparency, anti-globalization dot.com-types who trot out slogans that are trite, shallow and superficial." Moore calls for "civilized discourse," and more transparency and accountability (on the part of "citizen's groups," and the NGOs, not the WTO).

The full text of his speech can be found here, on the WTO's site."

Louis Lingg writes: "Declan McCullagh has a piece in Wired that Robert Mueller, Bush's choice to head and revive the FBI, has extensive experience prosecuting computer crime. In 1999 Mueller created the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property unit in San Jose, CA, and prosecuted alleged hackers Benjamin Troy Breuninger ("Kon"), Jerome T. Heckenkamp ("MagicFX") and Max Ray Butler ("Max Vision"). The article can be found here."

nomadlab writes: "The BBC is reporting that Kissinger may be called to testify to the Chilean Supreme Court in the pending trial of Gen. Pinochet.

"Chilean judge Juan Guzman is seeking to question former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger over the fate of a US journalist who disappeared in Chile during the 1973 coup.""

nomadlab writes: "Police in South Africa have arrested about 70 squatters on land near Johannesburg, a day before the Pretoria High Court is to hear the government's application to evict them.

The squatters put up no resistance and there was no violence, police spokeswoman Mary Martins-Engelbrecht told the Reuters news agency.


Thousands of poor black South Africans have moved onto the land since the opposition Pan Africanist Congress began registering claims for the sum of 25 rand - about three dollars.

The government charges that the PAC is aiding an illegal land grab, while the opposition party said the land "belongs to Africans"."

Anonymous Coward writes: "Excite is reporting that Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said Monday there are "serious questions" about whether the death penalty is being fairly administered in the United States.


"If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some
innocent defendants to be executed," O'Connor said in a speech to the Minnesota Women Lawyers group.


O'Connor, who has been a swing vote on several death penalty cases, said
six death row inmates were exonerated and released last year, and that
90 inmates have been exonerated and set free since 1973.
Get the full report here"

hydrarchist writes: "This story on 2600.com may appear to address something banal, a police raid on a vendor of region coded DVDs on sale outside their zone. But the DVDs are legit.....not rip-offs, cracks or counterfeits. Their distribution in Sweden simply conflicts with the marketting timetable of the motion picture studios.


This incident comes on the heels of the Motion Picture Association's legal jihad against the distributors of the DeCSS code which allows users to adapt their DVDs to their technology.


In february Belgian police raided the homes of twelve users whose offence was to have engaged in peer to peer file sharing of MP3 files.

Anonymous Coward writes: "Nearly one year ago, it was ruled that Microsoft is a monopoly, and unfairly using that power. As a remedy, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson had said the company should be split into two pieces: One would focus on operating systems, and the other would develop applications and other products.


In Today's unanimous decision, a federal appeals court vacated that
order and sent the decision back to the lower court. In addition, the
court determined that the case should be heard by a new judge rather
than by Jackson."

Uncle Fluffy writes: "Check this out: The Defense Department sent four Black Hawk helicopters and about 35 members of the elite Army Rangers to Morocco for the filming of the movie ''Black Hawk Down,'' a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday.


In total about 100 military personnel were deployed rotationally from early April until early June to participate in the filming of the movie, which depicts the chaos in Somalia in 1993."

Zerowork writes: "Body bags stockpiled for Genoa summit

Italian authorities have ordered 200 body bags as they step up
preparations for a violent confrontation at next month's G8 summit
in Genoa, say Italian media reports.

A room at the city's hospital will also be set aside as a temporary
mortuary, said Italian news agency ANSA.

The reports come amid growing concern that the G8 summit will
witness even worse confrontation than last weekend's European
meeting in Gothenburg. Tens of thousands of protesters - from
anarchists to Basque separatists - are expected to head for Genoa.