Sankofa – 21

Somali pirates drown with ransom

January 10, 2009 · Leave a Comment







Somali pirates drown with ransom

 A $3m ransom is believed to have been parachuted onto the tanker [GALLO/GETTY]
 

Six members of a group of Somali pirates who hijacked and later released a Saudi-owned oil tanker are reported to have drowned along with their share of a $3m ransom.

The pirates were among eight men whose boat overturned off the coast of Kenya in a storm as they left the Sirius Star following a two-month standoff that ended on Friday, a pirate and a relative of one of the dead men said.

“Six of our boys perished at the sea while coming from the  released Saudi supertanker,” Mohamed Said told the AFP news agency.

“The small boat that was carrying those killed and eight who survived was overloaded and at high speed, we have been told by the survivors.


“They were afraid of a chase from outsiders [foreign naval forces] who invaded Somalia waters,” he said.


The group’s $300,000 share of the ransom was also lost, he said.


Three pirates reached shore after swimming for several hours, pirate Daud Nure said on Saturday.


“There has been human and monetary loss but what makes us feel sad is that we don’t still have the dead bodies of our relatives. Four are still missing and one washed up on the shore,” Abukar Haji, the uncle of one of the dead men, said.


Piracy increasing


The Sirius Star, owned by the shipping arm of oil giant Aramco, was carrying crude oil valued at $100m when it was hijacked on November 15.


Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali Naimi said on Saturday that the crew was safe and returning to the Gulf coast city of Dammam.


An Iranian-chartered cargo ship was also released by pirates, Iran’s state television reported.


It said the ship Delight was carrying 36 tons of wheat when it was attacked in the Gulf of Aden on November 18 and seized by pirates.


All 25 crew are in good health and the vessel is sailing toward Iran, the TV report said.


The US Navy announced this week that it will head a new anti-piracy task force after more than 100 ships were attacked last year.


Other countries, including Russia and India, have sent naval ships to patrol waters around the Horn of Africa as acts of piracy increasingly threaten the safe passage of maritime cargo through the Gulf Aden towards the Suez Canal.


Somali pirates are holding 17 ships and more than 250 crew members hostage, and have carried out more than 100 attacks in the last year.







 Source: Agencies











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Categories: GENERAL

Ride on Dunkin’

January 10, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Ride on Dunkin’

Date: Mondays through Feb. 2nd
Time: 6:30pm – 9:30pm
Location: Various, See below
Cost: Free

Over the next month, Dunkin’ Donuts is making the morning commute a little brighter for New Yorkers by providing free subway rides at four of Manhattan’s busiest subway stations. Pop by the station of the day (listed below) between 6:30 and 9:30 to get your free metro card.

· Monday, January 12th- Lexington Ave/ 53rd Street
· Tuesday, January 20th- 14th Street/ Union Square Station
· Monday, January 26th- Grand Central Station
· Monday, February 2nd- Times Square/42nd Street

Categories: GENERAL

Soukous Music Videos and Rize

January 10, 2009 · 1 Comment

Soukous Music Videos and Rize

FreeNYC Event Flyer

Date: Wednesday, January 14th
Time: 8:30pm
Location: Freddy’s Bar and Backroom (485 Dean St., Ft. Greene)
Cost: Free

“Has your booty fallen asleep to the refrain of the winter blues? Join King’s County Cinema Society for a night of ass-shaking cinema and music videos. We’re going to start the night off with a hot compilation of fast-paced and heart pumping soukous music videos, a fitting appetizer for Rize (2005, David LaChappelle), a documentary tracing the rise of a hyperkinetic dance known as krumping in East L.A with origins in a clown who shakes his sh!# in full clown regalia. The film splices scenes of African ceremonial dance with krumping as the similarities in syncopated arm flailing, hip rotating, and pelvic thrusting is inevitable.” Click here for more info. 21+ (via NonsenseNYC.com)

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Categories: EVENTS · GENERAL

Tours at Two

January 10, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Tours at Two

Date: Saturdays
Time: 2:00pm
Location: The Hispanic Society of America (613 West 155th St)
Cost: Free

The Hispanic Society offers free 45-minute tours of the building and collections given by Museum Curators or the Education Department every Saturday at 2:00pm. “The collections of the Hispanic Society are unparalleled in their scope and quality outside the Iberian Peninsula, addressing nearly every aspect of culture in Spain, as well as a large part of Portugal and Latin America. The Society offers a comprehensive survey of Spanish painting and drawing from the Middle Ages to the present, with particular strengths in the Spanish Golden Age (1550-1700), the nineteenth century, and the early twentieth century. Works by Velazquez, El Greco and Goya are amongst the Society’s priced possessions.” All Ages.

Categories: GENERAL

Free Beer in the afternoon

January 10, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Free Beer in the afternoon

Date: Sunday, January 18th
Time: 3:00pm – 4:00pm
Location: Ellis Bar (627 5th Avenue btw. 17th & 18th, South Park Slope)
Cost: Free
Open Bar: Brooklyn Lager, 3-4

If you happen to be walking by Ellis Bar after your Slopeside brunch this afternoon, pop in for free Brooklyn Lagers from 3-4. Nothing says procrastinating on a Sunday like an afternoon open bar. 21+

Categories: GENERAL

Supreme Court considers challenge to Voting Rights Act

January 10, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Supreme Court considers challenge to Voting Rights Act
 
By Joan Biskupic, USA TODAY
 
WASHINGTON — The question of whether America needs the Voting Rights Act now that a black man has won the presidency looms over a major appeal the Supreme Court is scheduled to consider in its private conference Friday.

The justices could say as early as Friday if they will hear a challenge to the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act renewed by Congress in 2006. Their decision could impact federal power to oversee state election practices and to ensure racial minorities have as much of a chance as whites to elect candidates of their choice.

The law in dispute was overwhelmingly approved by Congress and signed by President Bush in 2006. Yet the Supreme Court in recent years has found some U.S regulation of the states too intrusive.

“If the court takes the case, it has the potential to be the most important election case since Bush v. Gore,” says Richard Hasen, an election-law expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, of the 2000 decision that ensured Bush the presidency. He notes the court has earlier upheld the disputed provision. “The question is whether the role of race in American politics has so changed … that remedies that were once constitutional are now impingements on state sovereignty,” he says.

A Texas utility district says the provision known as Section 5, which gives the U.S. government authority to oversee state electoral-law changes, is no longer needed. “The America that has elected Barack Obama as its first African-American president is far different than when Section 5 was first enacted in 1965,” say lawyers for the utility district.

Section 5 covers nine mostly Southern states and several counties and municipalities where, as Justice Department lawyers note, race discrimination “has been most flagrant.” Texas utility district lawyer Gregory Coleman says the continued use of that section attaches a “badge of shame … based on old data” and should be lifted.

Civil rights advocates, backing the Justice Department’s defense of the renewed Voting Rights Act, stress that parts of the nation still vote along racial lines and argue the law that opened the door to widespread black voting four decades ago is needed. The act ended literacy tests and other state measures that had kept blacks from the polls.

“Obama’s election reflects an enormous advancement in race relations in the United States,” says Laughlin McDonald of the American Civil Liberties Union. “But voting, particularly in the South, remains significantly polarized.”

Exit polls from the Nov. 4 presidential election showed whites in many Southern states heavily favored John McCain to Obama. In Texas, 73% of whites favored McCain, in Georgia, 76%, and in Alabama, 88%. Nationally, the percentage of whites for McCain was 55%, exit poll data show.

The utility district’s appeal of a special three-judge court’s decision upholding the law requires a resolution. Unlike the vast majority of petitions that come before the justices and can be turned away without ruling on the merits, this appeal must either be affirmed or overturned.

The justices could affirm the lower court’s decision without a hearing, as the Department of Justice has urged. That might be the most cautious route in a case that, in Hasen’s view, offers a “powder keg” of divisive issues. Yet the complex question might warrant a full briefing, as might a majority’s uncertainty about the lower court decision. The court is split on questions of racial policies.

In a unanimous ruling last May, the lower court said Congress had documented extensive evidence of “contemporary racial discrimination” and had grounds to renew the law for 25 years.

States covered by Section 5 cannot alter electoral laws without approval from the Justice Department or a U.S. court in Washington. The provision is designed to bar laws that dilute minority votes.

 
 

Categories: GENERAL · LAW