Daily Rotten Archives February 9, 2004 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 British dykehawk fingerbangs 12-year-old This Is London | Submitted by: Sketch "A lesbian paedophile who posed as a teenage boy to begin a relationship with a 12-year-old girl she had met on school playing fields was today convicted of indecently assaulting the child. Kelly Trueman, 23, reinvented herself as 16-year-old Jake and concocted a string of lies about her former life to befriend a group of youngsters in Ripley, Derbyshire... Jurors were told the pair regularly kissed and that Trueman later touched the girl's breasts and put her hands down the child's trousers." Read article... America had England spy on UN delegates London Observer | Submitted by: A. P. Palled "Britain helped America to conduct a secret and potentially illegal spying operation at the United Nations in the run-up to the Iraq war... Translators and analysts at the Government's top-secret surveillance centre GCHQ were ordered to co-operate with an American espionage 'surge' on Security Council delegations after a request from the US National Security Agency at the end of January 2003. This was designed to help smooth the way for a second UN resolution authorising war in Iraq. The information was intended for US Secretary of State Colin Powell before his presentation on weapons of mass destruction to the Security Council on 5 February... Details of the operation were first revealed in The Observer on the eve of war last year, after the leaking of a top-secret memo from the NSA requesting British help. But until today it was not known whether British spy chiefs had agreed to participate." Read article... Electronic voting systems still not ready for prime time Wired | Submitted by: Reid Fleming "Six electronic voting machines used in two North Carolina counties lost 436 absentee ballot votes in the 2002 general election because of a software problem, raising increasing doubts about the accuracy and integrity of voting equipment in a presidential election year. Election Systems & Software said problems with the firmware of its iVotronic touch-screen machines, used in a trial run, lost ballots in two North Carolina precincts during the state's early voting in 2002. ES&S, the largest U.S. maker of election equipment, is also the focus of attention into lost votes last month in Florida during a special election." Read article... Bad shit going down in Haiti CNN | Submitted by: Dustin Prewitt "At least 18 people have been killed since armed opponents of Aristide began their assault Thursday, setting police stations on fire and driving officers from the northwestern city of Gonaives... In the bloodiest fights of recent days, 150 police tried to retake control of Gonaives on Saturday but left hours later after meeting fierce resistance, witnesses said. At least nine people were killed, seven of them police, in gunbattles with rebels hiding on side streets and crouched in doorways. Crowds mutilated and beat the corpses of three police officers. One body was dragged through the street as a man swung at it with a machete, and a woman cut off the officer's ear. Another policeman was lynched and stripped to his shorts, and residents dropped large rocks on his body." Read article... Osama music video goes wide nineMSN | Submitted by: Cubes "A music video glorifying Osama bin Laden and containing images of the September 11 attacks in New York has become a big hit with young Muslims, the Observer newspaper said on Sunday. The song 'Dirty Kuffar' (non-believer) by a young British rapper who calls himself Sheikh Terra rails against Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W Bush, calling on believers to 'throw them on the fire.' ... The song starts with images of US marines in Iraq cheering as one of them shoots a wounded Iraqi lying on the floor and finishes with images of the hijacked planes flying into the World Trade Center towers in New York with sounds of the rappers laughing." Read article... American policy aids German terrorist's legal defense Christian Science Monitor | Submitted by: luurker "As Germany tries to figure out whom to blame for a Hamburg court's acquittal last week of a Moroccan man accused of helping the Sept. 11 hijackers carry out their deadly plot, an unlikely culprit comes up: the United States. Pointing to a bitter irony in the global war against terrorism, many commentators and legal experts say it is the decision by US authorities to withhold key evidence from the Hamburg trial of Abdelghani Mzoudi that left the court no choice but to acquit... 'We are more focused on prosecuting terrorists, while the United States is mainly concerned with preventing terrorism,' says a senior German intelligence source." Read article... Al Qaeda working to destabilize Iraq, apparently New York Times | Submitted by: agentX "American officials here have obtained a detailed proposal that they conclude was written by an operative in Iraq to senior leaders of Al Qaeda, asking for help to wage a 'sectarian war' in Iraq in the next months... The memo says extremists are failing to enlist support inside the country, and have been unable to scare the Americans into leaving. It even laments Iraq's lack of mountains in which to take refuge. Yet mounting an attack on Iraq's Shiite majority could rescue the movement, according to the document. The aim, the document contends, is to prompt a counterattack against the Arab Sunni minority. Such a 'sectarian war' will rally the Sunni Arabs to the religious extremists, the document argues. It says a war against the Shiites must start soon - at 'zero hour' - before the Americans hand over sovereignty to the Iraqis. That is scheduled for the end of June." Read article... Christian pilot evangelizes aboard commuter flight BBC | Submitted by: Phatlor "An American Airlines pilot terrified passengers when he... asked Christians on Friday's flight to raise their hands. He then suggested non-Christians talk to the Christians about their faith. He went on to say that 'everyone who doesn't have their hand raised is crazy,' passenger Amanda Nelligan told CBS news. 'He continued to say, "Well, you have a choice: you can make this trip worthwhile, or you can sit back, read a book and watch the movie."'" Read article... Ambassador Wilson, disgruntled former Republican Seattle Post-Intelligencer | Submitted by: optional "Not long ago, [Ambassador Joseph Wilson] was contributing to Republican causes and leading the life of a circumspect public servant. Only in 2003, after traveling to Africa at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney to investigate reports that Saddam was buying uranium for nuclear weapons, did the former ambassador begin to speak out... He contributed to the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000, and the first President Bush described him as 'a true American hero.'" Read article... Florida schools caught cheating on standardized test Miami Herald | Submitted by: agentX "When students at a Fort Lauderdale charter school for Haitians took the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test in spring 2002... Myra Loo and another employee of the Charter School Institute Training Center Annex dropped in on a teacher still working in her classroom. According to a letter that Loo sent to district officials, the teacher was sitting with a stack of FCAT answer booklets, methodically erasing and penciling in new marks... So far, the charter school has not been investigated. And few if any questions have been asked at a dozen other schools in Broward and Miami-Dade counties whose FCAT results are statistically open to question, according to a Herald analysis. The state's top testing official says the questionable results could indicate that more schools are cheating than previously thought... The state's investigation arm, which enforces the integrity of the FCAT, doesn't use an anticheating 'erasure analysis' that the testing company, Iowa-based NCS Educational Services, could provide. It flags a school for an unusually high number of erased answers that were corrected. Instead, the DOE uses its own computer program to search for suspicious answer patterns. But that program missed alleged problems at the Charter School Training Institute Annex, Sunland Park and Park Ridge." Read article... Man fined $10,000 for attending Canadian church Winnipeg Sun | Submitted by: Rufferto "Richard Albert, 52, said the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection recently notified him he faces two $5,000 fines for twice crossing from Quebec into Maine on a Sunday when the local border crossing station is closed. Albert's home is 30 metres [100 feet, or one-fifth of a city block] on the Maine side of the border. But the church is on the Canadian side of the border, which means he has to cross the boundary illegally to attend church services. Albert, a U.S. citizen, said he has been crossing the U.S.-Canada border at his own discretion for more than 40 years... Albert had no trouble entering Canada because he and other U.S. residents along the border have special passes from the Canadian government that allow them to enter the country when its border stations are closed. But U.S. law forbids crossing back into the United States when the U.S. border station is closed." [Yes, sleep easy America. Rest assured: if dangerous terrorists manage to sneak in on a Sunday, they will certainly be fined $5,000.] Read article... US soccer team fails to lose crucial game San Diego Union-Tribune | Submitted by: Reid Fleming "In another twist in the sometimes bizarre world of international soccer, the U.S. men beat Honduras 4-3 yesterday in the CONCACAF region's Olympic qualifying tournament in a match that, deep down, neither wanted to win. The Americans' reward: a Tuesday night semifinal against Mexico in Mexico in a winner-take-all affair for a trip to Athens. The match will be played at Guadalajara's Estadio Jalisco, and a capacity crowd of 60,000-plus is expected... It is the one scenario that the U.S. team privately dreaded and Mexicans dreamed of – a succulent chance at revenge for the demoralizing 2002 World Cup loss to their northern rivals." Read article... Latest fad sweeping the nation: state lottery scandals Washington Times | Submitted by: Reid Fleming "State lottery scandals are spreading across the United States, the Denver Post reported Monday... Minnesota's lottery director committed suicide after a 10-hour meeting with state auditors probing possible links between the lottery and a local advertising company; Nebraska's lottery chief was put on leave during a probe of a questionable gift; Oregon's lottery director resigned after an audit highlighted nearly $800,000 wasted in administrative expenses." Read article... Uncle Sam to drop trou in Brazil Stuff NZ | Submitted by: Missy "Uncle Sam, that symbol of US patriotism, has a front seat on an extravagantly decorated float in the parade of samba schools in Rio de Janeiro's upcoming Carnival. It won't be a pretty sight though. His pants are down around his ankles, his genitals exposed for all to see, and his outstretched fingers smeared with ink... Uncle Sam is also be gagged, symbolising a perceived US clamp-down on freedoms." Read article...