Goodys Race Ends With No Winner
 
 
 

A McMinn County woman won't get the chance to be mayor of Goody's Country. Elizabeth Robinson from Athens was one of 50 candidates in the contest. The young woman was one of the leading vote getters in the contest sponsored by the makers of the popular headache powder.

The winner was supposed to get an all-expenses paid trip to a NASCAR race and their face would be painted on the Goodys race car Number 8 driven by Tony Stewart. Voting ended on September 24th but no winner was declared because of the Goodys website called voting irregularities.

Here's what was posted on the Goodys website:

"We have been monitoring the program closely and have recently uncovered voting irregularities. Given these irregularities, and consistent with the official rules and regulations, we have decided to terminate the contest and suspend voting immediately.

We apologize for this unexpected turn of events and are very disappointed that no one individual will be awarded the "Mayor of Goody's Country" title. Because all 50 candidates have worked hard on the campaign trail, we wanted to honor all of them by naming them "deputy mayors." Each of the 50 finalists will receive a very special Goody's gift package for their well-deserved efforts, including two tickets to a NASCAR race. We will also create a personalized, autographed photo of each of the finalists on the hood of Tony Stewart's car."

Pentagon Turns Guantanamo Prisoners into Tourists AIN25 de Septiembre de 2006By Angel Rodriguez Alvarez

After reading a report by ANSA News Agency signed by Cristiano del Riccio, on the situation of the prisoners detained at the illegal US Naval Base in Guantanamo nobody can doubt that in an Olympics of cynicism and lies, Washington would walk away with all the Gold medals.

The note comments that a Pentagon report which says that many of the so called "enemy combatants" maintained in the concentration camp for years in a legal limbo and submitted to cruel interrogations, are happy there and do not wish to abandon the prison.

It is not a joke, the report says it textually and it's the forced conclusion of the asseverations contained in the document. Let us quote: "Some of the terrorist suspects detained in the US Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba, could have abandoned the prison already, but have not done so because they prefer to continue enjoying the excellent food, slippers and free medical assistance."

The Pentagon goes on by saying how, despite the fact that among the prisoners there are even militants that are considered to be personal body guards of Osama bin Laden, it spends more money in preparing the food for the prisoners than those that guard them.  "There are dishes that add up to 4,000 calories each day".

And in their attempt to make fun of the reader's intelligence, the report goes on by saying that as a consequence of the exquisite quality and amount of food; some prisoners have gained up to 10 kilograms in weight.

The pleasant panorama presented by the Pentagon includes ophthalmologic and dental treatment. Among other privileges only found in a five star hotel, the prisoners allegedly mentions the careful attention offered to their spiritual needs which includes the availability of texts of the Koran and are even warned through sirens of the five moments of the day dedicated to pray.

The treatment, according to the report, is so refined that they have had to take into consideration the most minimum details to the point that they "have placed signs indicating the geographic location of the Mecca".

For those ungrateful prisoners - there is no other way to call them - that despite all this, are abandoning the installation, "they are given a package as a gift with a copy of the Koran, pants and jean jacket, a white shirt, shaving material, a blanket and a pillow for their long trip back home".

Evidently the Pentagon believes in the bad memory of international public opinion, which for months was informed of the denunciations of the US authorities' denial of legal and humanitarian assistance for the detainees and whose names are still unknown.

This is the only way to explain the publication of the report to the world, which is horrified at listening or having to read the testimonies of the victims who have narrated the tortures and humiliations to which they were submitted during the interrogations.

There is also the other story which was revealed by the press where the sacred Koran was stepped on by the guards and placed in the bathrooms to be used as toilet paper.

The Pentagon also forgets that the world was notified about the prolonged hunger strikes, the suicides and the dozens of attempts which the prisoners used as a last resort to escape from such punishment.

But this is not just about old stories.  Last Thursday, ANSA news agency in Washington DC, reported that 37 year old "Saudi Shaker Aamer, has been detained for a year in an isolation cell in the US military jail in Guantanamo with his mental health seriously deteriorated as a consequence of the solitude and mistreatment", said his lawyers.

"His state is such that the man," according to the denunciation, "is convinced that he talks to the ants and they respond".

"According to his lawyers", adds ANSA, "the guards have carried out physical and psychological torture and beaten him, on various occasions almost strangling him".

Will the Pentagon's next report affirm that everything said about what has happened in the illegal US Naval Base in Guantanamo was propaganda by the enemies of the White House?

The issue of the almost five hundred prisoners in Guantanmo is too tragic and revealing of the fascist methods used by the current US administration to consider the report what it really deserves to be: a script for a good comedy.

This is valuable alchemy by the Pentagon, being able to turn the mistreated "combatant enemies", into five star tourists.

720 state-owned firms go bankrupt in 2003-2005 period 
 
    As China accelerates the pace of rejuvenating state-owned firms, some companies fall by the wayside. In the past two years, 722 state-owned corporations have gone bankrupt, said a senior official at an international seminar here.

    Song Xiaowu, deputy director with the northeast industrial base revitalization office under the Chinese State Council said that a total of 122 state-owned companies went bankrupt between 2003 and 2005, 16.9 percent of the country's total bankruptcies for the period in the northeast China region, the cradle of China's state-owned industrial production,

    The closedown of state-owned businesses in the northeast China region left bad debts worth about 22.4 billion yuan (2.77 billion U.S. dollars) and destroyed 327,000 jobs, respectively accounting for 17.2 percent and 24.5 percent of the country's total, Song told participants to the international seminar on optimizing the investment environment to rejuvenate the northeast industrial base.

    Northeast China has three provinces, namely Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang. In 2003, China embarked on a regional revitalization strategy for the heavily burdened state-owned sector there.

    In addition to applying for bankruptcy or seeking mergers, in the past two years many state-owned companies had ditched traditional social functions by offloading schools, kindergartens and such like in order to focus on efficient manufacturing, said Song.

    Li Yong, vice minister of finance, said at the seminar that, in the past two years, about 8 billion U.S dollars of loans from international financial organizations such as the World Bank and IMF, as well as foreign government loans, had been used to sponsor major projects in energy, transportation, agriculture and social development in northeast China.

    In the next three-year phase, another 1.5 billion U.S. dollars of foreign loans will be used to revitalize state-owned business, said Li.

    He said the region should consider international loans as a leading financing channel and underscored the importance of technology upgrades and management cooperation with foreign countries.
 

Man stabs 9 at Moscow synagogue 
 
A young man wounded nine people with a knife on Wednesday in a synagogue in downtown Moscow, police said.

    The man rushed into the synagogue during an evening prayer service and started stabbing people at random with a knife, the synagogue's rabbi Iskhak Kogan was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying. The rabbi and his son subdued the attacker, who was later taken into police custody.

    Nine people were wounded in the attack and all of them have been taken to hospitals, police said.

    The attacker said "I've come here to kill" when he was asked by people at the synagogue why he had come, according to the rabbi.

    The rabbi also said tensions around the synagogue have increased recently. "I cannot describe this as threats, but we have appealed to the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service to help us and beef up security," he was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

    The Moscow city prosecutor's office identified the attacker as 20-year-old Moscow resident Alexander Koptsev but gave no further details about him.

US urges Palestinian candidates to renounce violence 
   U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday called on the candidates for the Jan. 25 Palestinian legislative elections to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.

    "It remains the view of the United States that there should be no place in the political process for groups or individuals who refuse to renounce terror and violence, recognize Israel's right to exist, and disarm," Rice said in a statement.

    "As (Palestinian) President (Mahmoud) Abbas has said, democratic elections can be preclude to laws and policies embracing peace, excluding advocates of terror and violence and implementing Roadmap obligations to dismantle the infrastructure of terror," she said.

    Abbas has announced that the legislative elections would be held on Jan. 25 as scheduled after Israel allowed Palestinians in Jerusalem to vote in the upcoming polls.

    The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) is widely expected to do well in the elections, causing great concerns of Israel.
 

Shanghai second-hand home prices down 0.9%  
 
    BEIJING, Dec. 13 - Shanghai's benchmark index for second-hand housing prices declined by 0.9 percent from October to 1,661 points last month, recording the biggest drop in a downward trend that has spanned the past six months, the Shanghai Existing Property Index Off ice reported yesterday.

    The index, which tracks the price and transaction volume of Shanghai's preowned housing market, lost 16 points in November, a month shadowed by rumors of possible higher taxes on second-house transactions.

    Media reports in late October quoted an unnamed official at the Shanghai Land Resources Bureau as saying the city government was considering a 20 percent personal income tax on property sales. These reports caused a panic among speculators who rushed to put houses onto the market for sale.

    "But buyers are still sitting on the fence as the (fall in) prices has not been to their expectation," said Wang Hao, an analyst at Century 21 Real Estate Service Co.

    Form June, Shanghai began to impose a higher tax to rein in speculation in the real estate market resulting in a continuous decline in price and transaction.

    Among the city's 11 districts that were surveyed, Putuo led the price slide with a 2.25 percent drop last month, followed by Changning's 1.74 percent and Hongkou's 1.6 percent. Other districts saw a drop below 1.5 percent.

    The average price in the Putuo district's Yichuan area declined by 3.3 percent to 8,245 yuan (US$1,025) per square meter last month, the biggest decline among all the areas tracked.

    It is worth noting that half of the 16 areas in the 11 districts that were surveyed which posted the biggest decline last month were near the outer ring road, the report said.

    The percentage of Shanghai residents who want to buy homes within the next three months remained low in the fourth quarter, according to a survey done by the People's Bank of China. The central bank didn't provide the exact percentage in Shanghai in the survey report released yesterday.

    It said in seven major cities including Shanghai, only 19.2 percent of the respondents plan to purchase homes in the coming three months. The percentage was 19.6 percent in the third quarter.

    (Source: Shanghai Daily)
 
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   MACAO, Dec. 13 (Xinhuanet) -- The Hong Kong-based Galaxy Entertain Group Ltd. has pledged to create 7,000 job opportunities in Macao, jointly with its two partner hotels, local media reported Tuesday.

    Some 3,300 of the new jobs will be created by Galaxy's casinos in the two hotels Rio and Grand Waldo, being slated to start operation in January and March respectively, according to Macao Post Daily, a local English newspaper.

    The vacancies cover jobs in areas of gaming tables and slot machines, human resources, accounting and information technology, it reported.

    A string of "career talks" and employment exhibitions is to be held in town "to give potential employees better understanding of their job prospects," sources from the Galaxy were quoted as saying.

    Casino gaming is the top industry of Macao, a region with a population of merely 480,000, and Galaxy holds one of Macao's three gaming concessions.

    Macao has a total workforce of 253,000 till October, among which are 10,000 jobless residents, according to official statistics.
 

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