British soldier killed by bomb while on patrol in Afghanistan

A British soldier was killed by a bomb blast in southern Afghanistan while on a foot patrol, the Ministry of Defence said today.

The serviceman, from The 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, died yesterday morning in Sangin, in northern Helmand province. Next of kin have been informed.

His death takes to 186 the total number of British military personnel to be killed since the conflict began in 2001.

It is the latest in a surge of casualties over the past month, many as a result of Operation Panchai Palang — Panther's Claw — a major assault against the Taleban ahead of August elections. The soldier who died yesterday was not taking part in this operation.

A military spokesman for Task Force Helmand said: "We grieve for his loss and join with his family and friends to mourn his passing."

The soldier’s death comes amid a growing debate over the provision of helicopters to British troops in Afghanistan to limit the amount of time they need to spend travelling by road — a mode of transport that makes them an easy target for roadside bombs, the biggest killer of coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Lord Mandelson delivered a barely coded rebuke yesterday to John Hutton after the former Defence Secretary said that the desire on the frontline for more help was unequivocal and that it was “going to take more resources to properly execute” Britain’s military strategy.

Lord Mandelson responded by saying that British troops were “well supported ... stemming from decisions taken by John Hutton as Defence Secretary”. He said that future provision would be kept under review and that General Stanley McChrystal, the US and allied commander in Afghanistan, would assess what was needed.

Bring our men back from there! Let those muslims kill each other..it's better to all of us!

Obama's population drops below 50% in Ohio

Fox News reports: “Patience may be wearing thin for President Obama’s economic initiatives to produce results — at least in Ohio — as a new poll shows the president’s popularity plunging in that critical swing state. The president’s approval ratings from Ohio voters dropped from 62 percent in May to 49 percent this month in a new Quinnipiac University poll, making it the first state in which Obama’s job approval has dipped below 50 percent… Unemployment in Ohio, at 10.8 percent, is well above the national average, and that appears to be having an impact on Buckeye residents.”

Ohio, you may remember, is one of the so-called “battleground states” –one of a few states that in our anachronistic electoral college system actually determine who gets elected President.

Ohio is also a state where ACORN-related vote fraud was rampant during the 2008 election, with state registrars challenging hundreds of thousands of winos, homeless transients, convicted felons, babies and dead or never-existent “new voters” registered for the Democrats by ACORN. These challenges came after the election and have been quietly swept under the carpet, as they have been deep-sixed in Pennsylvania and all the other states where ACORN was so active in rigging the election for the Democrats.

Causes have effects. Our economy is headed for a cliff and Obama is stepping on the accelerator instead of the brake. There have been trillions of dollars in bail outs and stimulus spending, which have made no discernible difference whatsoever. Ordinary Americans are getting pink slips and having their homes foreclosed with increasing frequency. Obama’s vice president Joe Biden recently said that we need to spend more money to avoid going bankrupt.

Ohio is the state where the Marshall family of Akron was attacked by a mob of about fifty negro “youth” and brutally beaten on the Fourth of July weekend, while their black racist attackers screamed “It’s a black world!” and “It’s all ours now!”

How do you like your “change” now, Ohio?

Alarming Africa male gay HIV rate!

HIV rates among gay men in some African countries are 10 times higher than among the general male population, says research in medical journal the Lancet.

The report said prejudice towards gay people was leading to isolation and harassment, which in turn led to risky sexual practices among gay communities.

But the risks are not limited to gay men, as many of the infected also have female sexual partners.

The report called for greater education and resources in the fight against HIV.

The Oxford University researchers found that the prevalence of HIV/Aids among gay men in sub-Saharan African has been "driven by cultural, religious and political unwillingness to accept [gay men] as equal members of society".

Lead researcher Adrian Smith told the BBC there was "profound stigma and social hostility at every level of society concerning either same-sex behaviours amongst men, or homosexuality".

"This has the consequence that this group becomes extremely hard to reach," he said.

Mr Smith said that gay male sex had always been acknowledged as being particularly dangerous in terms of contracting HIV/Aids.

But gay men were also more likely to be involved in other high-risk behaviours, including sex work, having multiple partners and being in contact with intravenous drug use, he said.

Education crucial

George Kanuma, a gay rights activist in Burundi, told the BBC many men "hide their sexual orientation" to get married and have children, but continue to have sex with men.

"Most of them know that you can contract HIV/Aids or any infection when you are making sex with women, but not when you are having sex with another man," he said.

Mr Smith said there was "a desperate need for delivering a basic package of prevention for HIV", including ensuring supplies of condoms.

"There is also a need to sensitise, educate and train those involved in HIV, the interface with men who have sex with men, to educate those involved in care and prevention activities," he said.

The United Nations Aids agency estimates that 33 million people in the world have HIV, of whom two-thirds live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Big amounts of illegal immigrants are comeing from sub-Saharan Africa. See this as a big warning to Europe!they carry deseases from theyr country to ours.

Oldest WWI veteran dies aged 113

Henry Allingham, the world's oldest man and one of the last surviving World War I servicemen, has died at the age of 113, his care home has said.

Mr Allingham served with the Royal Naval Air Service in WWI, later transferring to the Royal Air Force at the time of its creation.

Last month, Mr Allingham, born in 1896, became the world's oldest man.

The Queen said he was "one of the generation who sacrificed so much for us all".

A spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace said the Queen's "thoughts are with his family during this time".

Bosses at his Brighton care home said everybody was "saddened by Henry's loss and our sympathy goes to his family".

His funeral will take place later this month at St Nicholas' Church in Brighton.

Mr Allingham, whose life has spanned three centuries and six monarchs, has five grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren, 14 great-great grandchildren and one great-great-great grandchild.

His wife Dorothy, who he was married to for more than half a century, died in 1970.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown paid tribute to the war hero, calling him a "tremendous character".

"I had the privilege of meeting Henry many times. He was a tremendous character, one of the last representatives of a generation of tremendous characters," he said.

He added: "My thoughts are with his family as they mourn his passing but celebrate his life."

And Prince Charles described Mr Allingham as "belonging to that incredible generation who did so much for their country".

A Clarence House spokesman said: "The Prince of Wales was sad to hear of the death of Henry Allingham this morning.

"We owe him a huge debt of gratitude for all he has done."

A minute's silence was held at Lord's to mark his passing before play got under way on the third day of the second Ashes test.

'War memories'

Mr Allingham joined the Royal Navy Air Service in September 1915 and served in Ypres before transferring to the RAF in April 1918.

In November last year, he took part in ceremonies to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of WWI.

May his soul rest in peace.

News from BBC

Germany opens "Nazi" gnome case

A garden gnome giving the Nazi salute has landed a German artist in trouble with the authorities in Nuremberg.

Prosecutors are investigating whether the gnome, which went on show in one of the city's galleries, breaks the strict law banning Nazi symbols and gestures.

The Bavarian city is particularly sensitive about the Nazi era because Adolf Hitler used it for big rallies and leading Nazis went on trial there.

The artist, Ottmar Hoerl, says his gnomes poke fun at the Nazis.

"I'm astonished that a single garden gnome, in what is for me an obscure gallery in Nuremberg, has unleashed such a public discussion because of an anonymous denunciation by someone," Mr Hoerl said.

The 59-year-old artist has been president of Nuremberg's Academy of Fine Arts since 2005.

"I didn't put it in the art gallery. Someone must have bought it and put it there. But I don't know what all the fuss is about.

"With my gnomes I'm highlighting the danger of political opportunism and right-wing ideology. I get the feeling that this gnome has reopened an old wound," he said.

The results of the investigation are expected in a few days, the BBC's Berlin correspondent Steve Rosenberg reports, adding that the 40cm (15.7-inch) figure still reminds Germans of a terrifying past.

Last year hundreds of Mr Hoerl's "Nazi" gnomes went on show in the Belgian city of Gent, in an exhibition called "Dance with the Devil".

He said that Belgians had well understood the political meaning "when one portrays the master race as a garden gnome".

"In 1942 I would have been murdered by the Nazis for this work," he said.

A spokesman for the Nuremberg public prosecutor's office, Wolfgang Traeg, said "we're checking to see if garden gnomes fall into the same clear category as posters that show the swastika crossed out".

He said the aim was to establish whether the artist and the gallery owner had intended the gnome as an endorsement of the Third Reich or as a rejection of Nazi ideology.

Mr Traeg referred to a previous case: a swastika which had been graffitied onto a wall. No prosecution was brought because the picture featured a fist smashing the Nazi symbol.

The gallery owner who put the gnome in the window maintains he has done nothing wrong.

"I think it's quite harmless," Erwin Weigl told the BBC.

"It was sitting in the window for two weeks and no one complained. It's a comical figure. All kinds of people have made that gesture. Julius Caesar did it. Even Barack Obama does it now. To me, it looks a bit like when you gesture to a dachshund to jump up to your hand.

Muslim Sex Grooming Trial Jury ‘Quizzed if they belonged to BNP’

A shocking miscarriage of justice occurred during the recent sex grooming trial of seven Muslims in Yorkshire when the jury was quizzed on whether or not they were members of the British National Party — and the judge forbade the media to report this fact.

The shocking intrusion — based purely on political grounds — was made before the trial started when the jury was asked if they had any connections to the BNP.

To make matters worse, Judge Peter Benson then made a court order forbidding the media to even report that the questioning took place — evidence by itself that he knew it was completely out of line.

The trial of the seven Muslims, who are unrepresentative of their community, resulted in three of them (pictured): Mohammed Zackriya, 21; Mohammed Taj, 37; and Mohammed Shabir (Snr), a 36-year-old, father-of-five, all of Yorkshire, being found guilty of 28 sexual offences against an underage white girl. They were sentenced to a total of 18 years in jail.

One of the other accused, Shafaq Hussain, 21, pleaded guilty and will be sentenced at a later date. The case against one, Shahid Iqbal, 25, was dismissed in court, while the remaining two, Abid Ali, 27, and Raj Mohammed Shabir, 32, were found not guilty.

Shabir Snr was given an additional six months in jail for contempt after swearing at and insulting a witness who gave evidence against him.

The victim, now 18, gave evidence in court how she was targeted by the seven Muslims when she was 14 years old and how they carried out a series of sexual offences.

Speaking to a local newspaper after the trial, the unnamed girl said that the trial had allowed her to “start smiling again now. They have taken away my teenage years but they can’t take away the rest of my life. Being in court was a horrible experience — it was like being raped and abused all over again but ten times worse.

“I was being called a liar hour after hour; it was the worst thing I have ever had to go through — it was a nightmare and I can’t believe I did it.

“But I was determined to see justice done. I had an inner strength, somehow — though there were times when I wanted to walk away.

“I think they deserve everything they got — when I was told the verdicts I was crying tears of joy. I really didn’t want Maz (Mohammed Zackriya) and Shabby (Shabir) to get away with what they did to me.

“I still have nightmares about what happened to me — my parents have heard me screaming in my sleep as I shouted: ‘Get off me’.”

Muslim targeting of young white girls for sex is an ever increasing problem in Britain today as the mass Third World immigration invasion increases year upon year. The most usual tactic employed is to identify young impressionable girls. They are then befriended and supplied with drugs before being passed around by large groups of Muslim men for sex.

It is on record that despite the increasing incidents of the crime, the authorities are unwilling to act because of fears of being labelled racist. Ann Cryer, a Labour member of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, has even raised the issue in Parliament. After a particularly nasty incident which came to trial in 2007, Ms Cryer tried to explain away the Muslim grooming phenomenon by saying that it was because “young Asian men were caught between two cultures having been brought up in a Western society in families while retaining the cultural values of the Asian subcontinent.”

She was also quoted as saying: “The family and cultural norms of their community means they are expected to marry a first cousin or other relative back in a village in Mirapur or wherever the family comes from. Therefore, until that marriage is arranged they look out for sex.

“At the point in their lives when they are ready for this sort of activity, Asians cannot go to Asian girls because it would be a terrible breach of the honour of the community and their family to have sex with an Asian girl before marriage.” She said that the reason Asian men targeted very young white girls was because older white girls knew that a relationship with an Asian youth was unlikely to last as the community would seek an arranged marriage with someone from the Asian subcontinent.

* It remains to be seen if any future juries will be asked if they have links to the Labour Party, or if that miscarriage of justice is directed solely at the BNP.