Journalists freed in the UAE

DUBAI: A decree by the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates has saved two journalists from jail, the official WAM news agency reported on Thursday.

The journalists from English-language daily Khaleej Times were acquitted by an appeal court after being sentenced to two months in jail for libel.

The court ruling followed a decree by Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed al-Maktoum that journalists should not be jailed for their work.

"The Dubai Court of Appeal ruled innocent the journalists Mohsen Rashed and Shimba Kassiril from the Khaleej Times newspaper," WAM said. Sheikh Mohammed said in the decree that measures other than jail sentences could be taken against journalists who had committed a particular violation, WAM said.

Rashed and Kassiril were sentenced by a court in the emirate of Dubai on September 23, the day before the decree was issued. WAM said the two men were accused of defaming a woman in a June 2006 article written by Rashed and cleared for publication by Kassiril, then editor of the paper.

Kassiril and Rashed were convicted of libelling an Iranian-born Dubai woman by reporting on June 28 last year that she had sued her husband, who had then been imprisoned.

In 2004, a Dubai court handed down jail sentences of six months and three months respectively against a Kuwaiti editor and a Saudi editor, also for defamation.

The Japanese are topping themselves at record levels

CARL FREIRE, TOKYO: Employers and local authorities need to work with the Japanese government to help tackle the country's alarmingly high suicide rate after 32,155 people killed themselves in 2006, the government said Friday.

While the figure was down by 397 people from the previous year, Japan's suicide rate remains the ninth highest among all countries, the Cabinet Office report said, citing World Health Organization data. Lithuania had the highest rate, followed by Belarus and Russia, while the US ranked number 43 in the world, according to the data.

Top government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura said economic bad times and difficulties in the workplace appeared to remain among the leading factors behind the high suicide rate.

“This is a problem that needs to be dealt with comprehensively by society,” Machimura told reporters at a regular news conference. “Suicide can be thought of as an illness of the soul, and we need to find ways to treat it.”

Abu Dhabi's new rag

Now as any journalist who has ever worked in the Gulf will know, it’s hardly a bastion of good newspapers. Sure, you have the safe giant, that is Gulf News, and the surprisingly well-liked Khaleej Times (the reason for this is beyond my limited intellect), but on the whole it’s as close to a Fourth Estate Wasteland as you can get.

Now get this. The UAE capital, Abu Dhabi is all set to launch its national newspaper in the first quarter of 2008. And it’s not just any paper, let me give you a sample of the roll call:

• Editor, Martin Newland (former editor of The Daily Telegraph) as editor

• Sue Ryan (former managing editor, The Daily Telegraph), as editorial consultant

• Hamida Ghafour (author of the Sleeping Budda) as news reporter

• Jonathan Shainin (former editor of New Yorker), as Review editor.

• Hassan Fattah (former Middle East correspondent of the New York Times) as deputy editor.

• Colin Randall (former Daily Telegraph news editor and Paris correspondent) as the project's executive news editor.

• Bill Spindle (former Wall Street Journal corporate finance editor) as business editor.

• Bob Cowan (former Sunday Telegraph comment editor) as — and this is priceless — comment editor

• James Langton (former Sunday Telegraph) as news features editor.

• Alan Philps (former Daily Telegraph foreign editor) as associate editor

• Anna Seaman (writer on the Daily Mail's Femail section) as writer.

Now this is a formidable list indeed, some of these are pretty decent journalists, which forces me to ask...why on earth are they all heading to Abu Dhabi? The little voice in my head, immediately slaps my cerebellum and says..."It’s the money you idiot!”

Well, if that’s the sole reason then so be it, because the fact that the government’s sponsoring the project means the newspaper will have deep pockets indeed. But what of the freedom of the Press? To be sure, Mr Newland in all his experience and wisdom realises that he will have to toe a rather fine line. His comment page will be closely monitored and the newspaper’s policy will be, in effect, that of the government’s.

If Mr Newland knows this, then has he informed his journalists? There are two scenarios for the new Abu Dhabi newspaper in 2008.

One is that Mr Newland and his staff come into the paper with their eyes open and their hands on their bulging wallets, and toss ethics and freedom out the window (this is a good scenario for the paper, commercially at least. And one the proprietors will be hoping for).

Second is that the staff of the daily are caught unawares by the proprietorial interference and flee en masse, within six months of the paper’s launch (this is by far the most realistic scenarios). This will prompt the owners to staff the paper with a hundred journalists from Kerala, India who will work for a tenth of the salary paid to Mr Newland’s staff and never rock the proverbial boat.

I see Abu Dhabi’s newspaper closely resembling all the other Middle East titles (in staffing and content) before 2008 is out.

Needless to say Dubai and Bahrain’s journalists will probably be having the most cynical, and probably the heartiest, last laugh.

Finland school gunman was bullied

Helsinki, Finland: The teenager who killed eight people in a high school shooting in Finland was a social outcast who was bullied in school, a senior police official said Thursday.

“You can say that the motive is still open,” detective superintendent Tero Haapala told The Associated Press.

“But the explanation can be found mainly in his Web writings and his social behaviour.” Police named the killer as Pekka Eric Auvinen

No leg to stand on

(If you are one of those politically-correct people, then I would advise you to skip the following entry)

LONDON: One-legged nutter, Heather Mills McCartney has said that she is feeling better after venting her rage against estranged husband Paul McCartney and the media in a series of television interviews last week.

The Captain Ahab of the ‘former spouse’ world embarrassed herself on live TV after she spewed forth a completely incoherent tirade against the media.

Heather is planning on a campaign to get European legislation to curb news media. Her peg-leg, however, quite likes the media spotlight.

Some cracking jokes about Heather

A South African miner loses a leg in an accident.
He cries 'Oh no! Who's going to want a one legged gold digger now?'
To which Paul McCartney shouts 'Me!'

A journalist asks Paul McCartney if he'll ever go down on one knee again.
Paul replies, “I'd prefer if you called her Heather.”

Paul McCartney has decided to bury the hatchet and bought his wife Heather an X’Mas present. He has bought her a pure gold prosthetic leg. However, it is not going to be her main X’Mas present. It is only meant to be a stocking filler.

Paul was upset with his wife Heather Mills because her favorite music was Hip Hop.

Paul McCartney's divorce could cost him billions and he won't have a leg to stand…er, I mean she won't have a leg to…. Divorce can be so complicated.

Eye on Entertainment

The Crystal Ship tells you who and what to watch in the coming week, and in the not too distant future....

Upcoming movie you just shouldn't miss
Title: No Country for Old Men
Director: Ethan and Joel Coen
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Woody Harrelson
Plot: Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon some dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash near the Rio Grande.

Beautiful face of the future...
Name: Bahar Soomekh
Where's she from: Tehran, Iran
How old is she? 32
What has she done to deserve our affection? Frankly, fuck all! But hey she's gorgeous and she's got the blood of Xyrus in her veins. Oh and yeah, she's starring in the pointless Saw IV

The world's worst school shootings

• Charles Joseph Whitman was a student at the University of Texas at Austin who shot and killed 14 people (including those who later died as a result of their injuries) and wounded 31 others from the observation deck of the University's Main Building of The University of Texas at Austin on August 1, 1966. He did this shortly after murdering his wife and mother. He was eventually shot and killed by Austin police.

• The California State University, Fullerton massacre was an incident that occurred on the morning of July 12, 1976, when Edward Charles Allaway, a custodian at the Cal State Fullerton library, shot nine people in the basement and first floor of the library with a .22-caliber rifle. Seven of the nine wounded victims died. He was later found guilty of six counts of first degree murder and one count of second degree murder. However, a second phase of the trial determined that he was not sane. Five different mental health professionals diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. He presented a history of mental illness. He was committed to the California state mental hospital system, where he remains at Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino, as of 2007.

• The Columbine High School massacre occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in unincorporated Jefferson County, Colorado near Denver and Littleton. Two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a shooting rampage, killing 12 students and a teacher, as well as wounding 23 others, before committing suicide.

• The Virginia Tech massacre was a school shooting comprising two separate attacks about two hours apart on April 16, 2007, on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. The perpetrator, Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 people and wounded many more,^[4] before committing suicide, making it the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

• The École Polytechnique Massacre, also known as the Montreal Massacre, occurred on December 6, 1989 at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Twenty-five year-old Marc Lépine, armed with a legally obtained semi-automatic rifle and a hunting knife, shot twenty-eight people, killing fourteen (all of them women) and injuring the other fourteen before killing himself.

• The Avivim school bus massacre was a terrorist attack that took place in Israel on May 8, 1970 near Moshav Avivim on the border with Lebanon. Palestinian gunmen from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) attacked the town's school bus, killing twelve people, mostly children.

• The Ma'alot massacre was an attack, carried out in Ma'alot, Israel by members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, that occurred on May 15, 1974, the 26th anniversary of Israeli independence. In this incident members of the DLFP murdered 22 religious high school students from the city of Safed.

• The Dunblane massacre was a multiple murder-suicide which occurred at Dunblane Primary School in the Scottish town of Dunblane on 13 March 1996. Sixteen children and one adult were killed, as well as the attacker who committed suicide. It remains the deadliest attack on children in United Kingdom history.

• The Erfurt massacre was a school shooting that occurred on April 26, 2002 at the Johann Gutenberg Gymnasium in Erfurt, Germany. Sixteen people were killed before the perpetrator committed suicide.