Thursday, Nov 27th
Last update10:07:22 AM GMT
Joan Higgins, a pet shop owner, was caught selling the fish to the teenager in a 'sting' operation by council officials. She was then prosecuted in an eight month court process estimated to have cost the taxpayer more than £20,000.
Under new animal welfare laws, passed in 2006, it is it illegal to sell goldfish to under 16s. Offenders can be punished with up to 12 months in prison.
TVNL Comment: This is one example of why authority must be checked; law makers and police included.
Long the world’s largest producer of opium, the raw ingredient of heroin, Afghanistan has now become the top supplier of cannabis, with large-scale cultivation in half of its provinces, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
Between 10,000 and 24,000 hectares of cannabis are grown every year in Afghanistan, with major cultivation in 17 out 34 provinces, the UN drug agency (UNODC) said in its first report on cannabis production in Afghanistan.
While some countries grow cannabis on more land, Afghanistan’s robust crop yields - 145 kg of resin per hectare compared to around 40 kg per hectare in Morocco—make it the world’s largest producer, estimated at 1,500-3,500 tonnes a year.
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The Pentagon is pouring millions of dollars into equipment and training for its smaller partner nations in the Afghanistan war, a new effort that could encourage some countries not to abandon the increasingly unpopular conflict.
The money comes from a $350 million Pentagon program designed to improve the counterterrorism operations of U.S. allies.
While the funding cannot be openly used as an enticement for NATO nations to either send troops to Afghanistan or keep them in the country, the budding initiative sends the message that those who commit to the counterinsurgency fight could be rewarded.
The U.S. is committing more troops to Afghanistan to beat back a stubborn Taliban-led insurgency — and watching in dismay as allies, including Canada and the Netherlands, look to pull troops out of the 8-year-old war or remove them from combat duties. Roughly 87,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan now, and about 100,000 are expected to be in place by late summer.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that defendants are entitled to know that the potential consequences of a guilty plea include deportation for noncitizens, a decision that could have broader significance for the more than 12.8 million legal immigrants who live in the U.S.
The case, Padilla v. Kentucky, focused on Jose Padilla, a Honduran-born immigrant who faces deportation after pleading guilty to felony marijuana trafficking. He isn't the U.S. citizen of the same name who was convicted in 2007 of conspiring to aid terrorists.
"It is our responsibility under the Constitution to ensure that no criminal defendant — whether a citizen or not — is left to the 'mercies of incompetent counsel,' " Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the majority opinion. "To satisfy this responsibility, we now hold that counsel must inform her client whether his plea carries a risk of deportation."
The head of a Roman Catholic order that specialized in the treatment of pedophile priests visited with the then-pope nearly 50 years ago and followed up with a letter recommending the removal of pedophile priests from ministry, according to a copy of the letter released Wednesday.
Common toads appear to be able to sense an impending earthquake and will flee their colony days before the seismic activity strikes. The evidence comes from a population of toads which left their breeding colony three days before an earthquake that struck L'Aquila in Italy in 2009.
Women working in the life sciences at academic medical centers make less money than equally qualified men, according to a new survey published today that also finds that men and women take on different roles during their professional careers.
In 2008 Catherine DesRoches and colleagues from the Mongan Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital mailed surveys to more than 3,000 life sciences faculty members at the top 50 universities receiving federal funding for research at their medical schools.
The more than 2,100 professors who responded reported how much research they had published and where; how many hours a week they worked in patient care, teaching, administration, or other professional activities such as editing journals; and how much money they made.
Switzerland will not reopen a money-laundering case against the Pakistani president as long as he enjoys legal immunity — a welcome answer Wednesday for the U.S-allied leader after the Supreme Court forced his government to request the case resume.
The Swiss decision marked the latest development in a monthslong struggle between the government and the court since the latter revoked an amnesty that protected President Asif Ali Zardari and thousands of other politicians, bureaucrats and party workers from corruption charges.
Washington has watched the dispute with concern that it could distract Pakistan from its fight against Taliban and al-Qaida militants, some of whom stage cross-border attacks against U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
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TVNL Comment: Another example of US support for corrupt leaders who play the game our way.
The first of several British investigations into the e-mails leaked from one of the world's leading climate research centers has largely vindicated the scientists involved.
The House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee said they had seen no evidence to support charges that the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit or its director, Phil Jones, had tampered with data or perverted the peer review process to exaggerate the threat of global warming — two of the most serious criticisms levied against the climatologist and his colleagues.
In their report released Wednesday, the committee said that, as far as it was able to ascertain, "the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact," adding that nothing in the more than 1,000 stolen e-mails, or the controversy kicked up by their publication, challenged scientific consensus that "global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity."
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