Dubai Rape Case Update (Two)
In another tiny little article, but high up on page 3 of the Kuwait Times is:
UAE Court Upholds Verdict in Rape Case
Dubai: An appeals court in the United Arab Emirates yesterday upheld 15 year jail terms handed down against two Emiratis convicted of raping a French-Swiss teenager, and AFP journalist said. The judge in Dubai took just a few seconds to announce his ruling after proceedings opened. The defense wanted the sentences pronounced on December 12 to be quashed, and a lawyer for the two men told AFP after Sunday’s ruling that a further appeal would be lodged with the supreme court. Prosecutors had demanded the maximum punishment, which could have meant the death penalty. A third defendant is being tried in a juvenile court. One of the men who raped the European teenager was HIV-positive, but has since been found to be clear of the sexually transmittable disease. The boy’s mother, Veronique Robert, launched a media campaign to publicize the case and gather support for her demand that the UAE recognize homosexual rape in its legal system and set up institutions to treat AIDs sufferers. She protested against the original verdict, saying that “15 years is nothing for someone who knew he had AIDs.”
Comment: Did you read this sentence?:
One of the men who raped the European teenager was HIV-positive, but has since been found to be clear of the sexually transmittable disease.
Can you tell me who has been found to be clear of the disease? One of the men? The teenager?
Comment 2: Bravo, UAE judges!
Not So Fast!
The other day, I was taking breakfast to a friend. For me, I love Gulf breakfasts, I love fried Haloumi, I love felafel, I love hummous and even beans. I love hot fragrant flat bread, fresh out of the oven.
But I knew my friend needed some protein, so I went to a nearby MickyD’s.
It was not fast food. It was very very very very slow food. And even worse – when I got to my friends house, and gave her the BIG value breakfast, she opened the box and – it was pancakes. They were not just slow, they also gave me the WRONG order!
I have to tell you, I was astonished to see so many people there. People like me, women, families, sitting and visiting and eating at McDonalds as they would at a much nicer place, Pain Quotidien or Paul’s or some coffee place. And the McDonalds actually looked nicer than the run-of-the-mill McDonalds, it was clean and even had some relatively nice furniture. But it was NOT fast food!
Struggling Sunrise 17 Feb 08
This morning, the sun had a real fight going just to break through the thick haze on the horizon. WeatherUnderground: Kuwait calls it a “light haze.” The temperature, at 0700 is one degree Fahrenheit LESS than Seattle at 8:00 at night. It feels COLD again!
43 °F / 6 °C
Light Haze
Date Night Sparks
This is the #1 most e-mailed article from the New York Times, and you can read the entire article by clicking HERE:
Reinventing Date Night for Long-Married Couples
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Published: February 12, 2008
Long-married couples often schedule a weekly “date night” — a regular evening out with friends or at a favorite restaurant to strengthen their marital bond.
But brain and behavior researchers say many couples are going about date night all wrong. Simply spending quality time together is probably not enough to prevent a relationship from getting stale.
Using laboratory studies, real-world experiments and even brain-scan data, scientists can now offer long-married couples a simple prescription for rekindling the romantic love that brought them together in the first place. The solution? Reinventing date night.
Rather than visiting the same familiar haunts and dining with the same old friends, couples need to tailor their date nights around new and different activities that they both enjoy, says Arthur Aron, a professor of social psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The goal is to find ways to keep injecting novelty into the relationship. The activity can be as simple as trying a new restaurant or something a little more unusual or thrilling — like taking an art class or going to an amusement park.
The theory is based on brain science. New experiences activate the brain’s reward system, flooding it with dopamine and norepinephrine. These are the same brain circuits that are ignited in early romantic love, a time of exhilaration and obsessive thoughts about a new partner. (They are also the brain chemicals involved in drug addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder.)
Most studies of love and marriage show that the decline of romantic love over time is inevitable. The butterflies of early romance quickly flutter away and are replaced by familiar, predictable feelings of long-term attachment.
But several experiments show that novelty — simply doing new things together as a couple — may help bring the butterflies back, recreating the chemical surges of early courtship.
Slight Haze
The weather forecast for Kuwait today is “slight haze.” You’ve seen what normal sunrises look like. This is “slight haze.”
For Mom
I wanted you to see how the Amaryllis are doing. I planted them back in January, and they are just now showing signs of life. The red one that is blooming has another bloom you can see which will also flower. The white Amaryllis is just now sending out a shoot. I kept them outside, out of the direct light, and they are doing great!
Just Bad English
I am adding a new catagory today called Just Bad English.
No, I am not going to troll your blogs looking for grammar mistakes or misspellings or unusual use of English. I have noticed that I am blogging in English, and that many of the Kuwaiti bloggers are blogging in their second language – that is tough enough without the Language Police lurking in the background, and that’s not my point, nor my interest.
If, however, you are writing for a newspaper, you are held to a higher standard, even if English is not your native tongue.
So tell me, in this article from the Arab Times Kuwait Crime News, how many people were arrested? What were they arrested for?
Meanwhile, a team of securitymen has launched a surprise inspection campaign in Ahmadi resulting in the arrest of two Kuwaitis wanted by law for various criminal charges and 105 jobless expatriates. The arrested individuals were referred to the concerned authorities.
I have another complaint. In the Kuwait Times, we often read of the police “suspecting” a car and pulling it over, or
“suspecting” some individuals and chasing them.
We don’t use “suspecting” that way.
There is suspicious behavior. People are suspected OF something – you can’t just look at a car and “suspect” it, you have to suspect it OF something – erratic driving? What made the police suspicious?
examples of good usage:
Police suspected him of being under the influence of drugs, and pulled him over.
He looked nervous, and police suspected him of being an illegal resident, so they asked to see his papers.
Police received a tip that a brothel was operating in Farwaniya, and based on that suspicion, raided the apartment, breaking down two iron doors in the process which gave the occupants enough time to escape through a hidden hatch in the back of the apartment.
A sharp eyes policeman spotted the car, which appeared to be one stolen a few nights previously. Suspicious that the driver was not the legal owner, they stopped him and interrogated him, and demanded to see his registration and residency papers.
(I made up all the above. Any resemblance to a case you may know is purely coincidental.)
I have also noticed that almost every suspect gives up his drug accomplices, pimp, fellow thieves, smugglers and drug stash after interrogation. I suspect Kuwait police have some extensive experience in encouraging these confessions. Most of these confessions seem to result in other valid arrests. Sometimes, I can believe, these confessions are made by people who are very very afraid. On the other hand, sometimes a confession elicited by fear of a lot of pain might be totally false.
How do you know the difference? What if someone experiences a lot of pain and confesses to a crime they did NOT commit? This means that an innocent man suffers and the one who committed the crime skates. This happens in every country in the world. (That is just a rant, not a language criticism, just a general question in my mind; how do we protect the innocent?)
15 Feb2008 Sunrise
I bet you were sound asleep!
This is what it looked like:
The high expected for today is 68°F/20°C – Beautiful! Wish I could send some of this sunshine to the Pacific Northwest!
Parking Hall of Shame
Just four spots away was a legitimate spot, but no! This guy has to leave his rear end half out into the driving lane so that he could be right by the door. I am guessing he only parked there because all the handicapped spots were already taken (by able bodied people.)
The other day I heard a woman say that it is OK to park in a handicapped spot if no one else has taken it because it means that no handicapped person needs it.
What ignorance!
What happens when someone with a leg injury comes looking for that spot? Someone with asthma? Someone old, with joint problems? People who park in a handicapped spot have NO HEART!
Diet Soda and Metabolic Syndrome
Bad news about a recent study on Diet Soda from The New York Times. You can read more up-to-date health news by clicking on the blue type.
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: February 5, 2008
Researchers have found a correlation between drinking diet soda and metabolic syndrome — the collection of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes that include abdominal obesity, high cholesterol and blood glucose levels, and elevated blood pressure.
The scientists gathered dietary information on more than 9,500 men and women ages 45 to 64 and tracked their health for nine years.
Over all, a Western dietary pattern — high intakes of refined grains, fried foods and red meat — was associated with an 18 percent increased risk for metabolic syndrome, while a “prudent” diet dominated by fruits, vegetables, fish and poultry correlated with neither an increased nor a decreased risk.
But the one-third who ate the most fried food increased their risk by 25 percent compared with the one-third who ate the least, and surprisingly, the risk of developing metabolic syndrome was 34 percent higher among those who drank one can of diet soda a day compared with those who drank none.
“This is interesting,” said Lyn M. Steffen, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota and a co-author of the paper, which was posted online in the journal Circulation on Jan. 22. “Why is it happening? Is it some kind of chemical in the diet soda, or something about the behavior of diet soda drinkers?”
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