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2 US Embassy workers in Paris undergo medical tests after opening suspicious letter. Two men who work for the U.S. Embassy in Paris underwent medical tests after handling a suspicious letter Friday, but the embassy said preliminary analysis suggested it was not harmful. “There is no indication that the envelope contained something dangerous or poisoned,” Embassy spokesman Paul Patin said. “There is no indication that anyone is in danger or hurt.” A Paris police official said the employees were “unwell” after the incident. The official, who was not authorized to be publicly named because an investigation was under way, did not elaborate on the workers’ condition. Mailroom employees identified a suspicious letter and the embassy alerted the French authorities, Patin said. Story continues below… “The letter is being examined by chemical experts. The two people who handled the letter are being examined by medical authorities” at the Paris hospital Hotel Dieu, Patin told The Associated Press. The embassy could not immediately provide further information about where the letter came from or what was suspicious about it, or the nationalities of the employees. The mailroom is in the main building of the embassy, located just off the Champs-Elysees and not far from the French presidential palace. The embassy, which is always surrounded by layers of security, remained open after the incident, and employees were entering and exiting the building as usual Friday afternoon. ___ Associated Press writer Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report. Source: AP News Two men who work for the U.S. Embassy in Paris underwent medical tests after handling a suspicious letter Friday, but the embassy said preliminary analysis suggested it was not harmful. “There is no indication that the envelope contained something dangerous or poisoned,” Embassy spokesman Paul Patin said. “There is no indication that anyone is in danger or hurt.” A Paris police official said the employees were “unwell” after the incident. The official, who was not authorized to be publicly named because an investigation was under way, did not elaborate on the workers’ condition. Mailroom employees identified a suspicious letter and the embassy alerted the French authorities, Patin said. “The letter is being examined by chemical experts. The two people who handled the letter are being examined by medical authorities” at the Paris hospital Hotel Dieu, Patin told The Associated Press. The embassy could not immediately provide further information about where the letter came from or what was suspicious about it, or the nationalities of the employees. The mailroom is in the main building of the embassy, located just off the Champs-Elysees and not far from the French presidential palace. The embassy, which is always surrounded by layers of security, remained open after the incident, and employees were entering and exiting the building as usual Friday afternoon. ___ Associated Press writer Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report. Source: AP News Two men who work for the U.S. Embassy in Paris underwent medical tests after handling a suspicious letter Friday, but the embassy said preliminary analysis suggested it was not harmful. “There is no indication that the envelope contained something dangerous or poisoned,” Embassy spokesman Paul Patin said. “There is no indication that anyone is in danger or hurt.” A Paris police official said the employees were “unwell” after the incident. The official, who was not authorized to be publicly named because an investigation was under way, did not elaborate on the workers’ condition. Mailroom employees identified a suspicious letter and the embassy alerted the French authorities, Patin said. “The letter is being examined by chemical experts. The two people who handled the letter are being examined by medical authorities” at the Paris hospital Hotel Dieu, Patin told The Associated Press. The embassy could not immediately provide further information about where the letter came from or what was suspicious about it, or the nationalities of the employees. The mailroom is in the main building of the embassy, located just off the Champs-Elysees and not far from the French presidential palace. The embassy, which is always surrounded by layers of security, remained open after the incident, and employees were entering and exiting the building as usual Friday afternoon. ___ Associated Press writer Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report. Source: AP News Powered by Mochila

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SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (AFP) – Guests leapt desperately to their deaths from upper-floor windows as a fire tore through a hotel in northern Iraq killing 30 people, 14 of them foreigners, police and medics said on Friday. Citizens of Australia, Britain, Canada and several Asian and South American countries were among those killed in Thursday night’s blaze in Sulaimaniyah, which raged for seven hours before being brought under control, officials said. A preliminary report prepared by the city’s hospital said people from 12 countries had died. Visiting telecommunications engineers from Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Cambodia, were among the victims, according to hospital officials and the chairman of the telecoms company. “The number killed is 30, among whom there are 14 foreigners,” said Rikot Hama Rasheed, the director of Sulaimaniyah hospital, following the fire, which rose rapidly from the second floor of the six-storey Soma hotel. Story continues below… “The regional government will contact the embassies of the foreigners who were killed,” said Rasheed, listing Iraq, Ecuador, Venezuela, Lebanon, South Africa and Bangladesh as among the victims’ nationalities. Witnesses told AFP at least three of those who died did so after leaping from the hotel’s windows in a desperate bid to save themselves as flames and smoke engulfed their rooms. Mirwan Saeed, 30, broke both his legs after making his way to the hotel roof and jumping towards a lower building near the hotel to save his life. “We were in the hotel when the smoke started coming in,” he told AFP from his hospital bed. “I had no choice but to jump.” Colonel Araz Bakr, chief of Sulaimaniyah rescue services, confirmed the death toll and said 42 people were injured, including seven firefighters. He said most of those who died were suffocated by smoke. A city council official said an electrical fault caused the blaze, which also damaged several adjacent buildings. “Women and children are among the victims of the incident which happened in the Soma Hotel,” said the official, Razgar Ahmed. Sulaimaniyah is the capital of one of three northern provinces that make up Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region. The region is popular with tourists and business has flourished in recent years as it is peaceful, unlike much of Iraq which remains wracked by violence seven years after the US-led invasion toppled now executed dictator Saddam Hussein. An official from the city’s mortuary said in an earlier report that four Americans were among the dead in the fire but there was no confirmation from the hospital. A US embassy spokesman said consular officials were checking whether American citizens were among the dead or injured. The victims from the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Cambodia worked for telecoms operator Asiacell, one of three mobile communications companies in Iraq. “We lost four engineers from our company, one of them a lady from the Philippines, and three of them men from Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Iraq,” said Faruk Mula Mustafa, chairman of Asiacell. Two other Iraqi employees were injured in the fire, he said.

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TEHRAN (AFP) – An Iranian scientist who spent 14 months in the United States in mysterious circumstances denied on his arrival in Tehran on Thursday that he had spilled Iran’s nuclear secrets to US agents. Repeating his claims he had been abducted by US spies, Shahram Amiri told reporters at Tehran airport that not only did he have nothing to do with Iran’s controversial nuclear programme, he had also resisted US pressure to tell the media that he was a well-informed atomic scientist. He said his captors wanted him to tell the US media that he had “defected on his own and was carrying important documents and a laptop which contained classified secrets of Iran’s military nuclear programme.” “But with God’s will, I resisted,” Amiri said, soon after being welcomed at Tehran airport by his tearful son and overjoyed wife. Amiri, who vanished from Saudi Arabia in June 2009 while on a pilgrimage, surfaced in Iran’s Interests Section in Washington two days ago. Story continues below… He jetted out of Washington on Wednesday after US officials insisted he had arrived in the United States on his own free will and that there was nothing stopping him from leaving. He insisted on his arrival in Tehran that he was a “simple researcher” and not involved in Iran’s nuclear programme, which world powers believe masks an atomic weapons drive despite continued Iranian denials. “I had nothing to do with the Natanz and Fordo sites,” Amiri said, referring to Iran’s two uranium enrichment plants. “It was a tool the US government brought up for political pressure,” he said, referring to reports he was a nuclear scientist. “I have done no research on nuclear. I am a simple researcher who works in a university which is open to all and there is no secret work happening there.” His denials come even as The Washington Post reported Thursday that Amiri was paid more than five million dollars by the CIA to provide intelligence on Iran’s nuclear programme. Amiri “is not obligated to return the money but might be unable to access it after breaking off what US officials described as significant cooperation with the CIA and abruptly returning to Iran,” the Post report said. It cited unnamed officials as saying he may have left the United States “out of concern that the Tehran government would harm his family.” Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told a media conference in Tehran on Thursday that Amiri’s return was the “result of two years of efforts made by (Iran) through different channels,” adding the “details of his abduction will be clarified after an investigation.” Amiri’s return home is the latest twist to a bizarre saga which has baffled the world media for months and which began with his mysterious disappearance, followed by conflicting videos posted on the Internet of a man claiming to be Amiri and talking of being abducted. He on Thursday repeated claims he made in Washington earlier in the week that he was “kidnapped by American and Saudi intelligence agents” in front of his hotel in the city of Medina. He added he was later injected with anaesthesia and taken to the US on board a military plane. “In the initial two months of captivity, I was put through harshest mental torture,” Amiri told reporters at a press conference at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport. Amiri said that during his interrogations, “there were interrogators from Israel present in some sessions and it was evident that they had planned to move me to Israel”. Israel is Iran’s key regional foe and has not ruled out a military strike against Tehran to stop its galloping nuclear programme. Amiri dismissed US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s comments that he had freely come to the United States and was free to go whenever he wanted. “I am really amazed by the US foreign minister who says I was free there and went there freely. I was not free there and I was under the control of armed people of the intelligence service,” he said. Amiri said US officials had even offered to pay him “50 million dollars” if he changed his mind and decided to stay in the United States. They also assured him they would get his family out of Iran, he said, but added that during his captivity there were “threats issued against my family.”

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NEW YORK — Former American football star Lawrence Taylor was indicted Wednesday on rape and prostitution charges in a case involving sex with a 16-year-old girl. The district attorney for Rockland County in New York state announced the six charges against the retired American football star in a statement. Taylor, 51, allegedly had sex “with a 16-year-old female at the Holiday Inn hotel” in the Village of Montebello, in the town of Ramapo, in New York state, on May 6 in exchange for 300 dollars, according to the statement. The victim “later told investigators that she had been verbally threatened, physically assaulted and brought to the hotel room by another individual, who was arrested by the New York City Police Department,” the statement read. In this case Taylor “is the end-user in the criminal chain known as sex trafficking. Any effort to successfully combat this epidemic must confront not only the supply of vulnerable young women, but the demand which perpetuates this unsavory and illegal activity,” said Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe. Story continues below… “We are going to hold those who create the demand accountable,” he said. Taylor was indicted on one count of third-degree rape, one count of a criminal sexual act, two counts of sexual abuse, one count of endangering the welfare of a child, and one count of patronizing a prostitute. Taylor faces a maximum of four years in state prison if convicted on all charges, the statement read. In papers filed in federal court in Manhattan in early May, federal prosecutors say Taylor, identified as “Client-1″ told investigating officers that he paid the girl 300 dollars after “engaging in sex acts” with her. He was arrested after police responded to a call of a possible rape at a Ramapo hotel on May 6. Rasheed Davis, a 36-year-old parolee and the man charged in the federal complaint as the girl’s pimp, had told Taylor she was 19. Taylor was one of the top defensive players in the National Football League. After earning All-America honors at the University of North Carolina, he played from 1981-1993 for the New York Giants and was named to the NFL’s Hall of Fame in 1999. Taylor was named the league’s Most Valuable Player in 1986 and the NFL Defensive Player of the Year in 1981, 1982 and 1986. He had 132 career sacks and helped the Giants to Super Bowl triumphs in 1987 and 1991. Off the gridiron, Taylor gained notoriety for drug addiction and personal problems. His autobiography was called “LT: Over the Edge.” He appeared on the US television program “Dancing With the Stars” in 2009. The weight-loss firm NutriSystem Incorporated said it had dropped Taylor as a spokesman because of the arrest.

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A conservative talk radio station in Ohio is offering an unusual contest that some might find offensive, a poster at the website Contexts notes . “Win a trip to Phoenix, Arizona! Make sure to bring your green card! 610 WTVN would like to send you where Americans are proud and illegals are scared, sunny Phoenix, Arizona,” a link at the radio station states . You’ll spend a weekend chasing aliens and spending cash in the desert, just make sure you’ve got your green card! Win round trip airfare to Phoenix, hotel accomodations, and a few pesos in spending cash — just register below! Contest ends Thursday, May 27th at 5 p.m. John Corby will announce a winner on 5.27 at 5:10 p.m. 14 day advance on the airline tix, flying via Southwest/ 2 night hotel stay/ Hotel TBD/ $100 in Visa gift card. Story continues below… “This campaign is a response to Columbus mayor Michael Coleman who boycotted AZ by banning all city-funded travel after SB1070, and the mayor is depicted as a holder of a green card [that's him shown on the ID card],” the Context article’s source notes. A press release issued by immigrant rights advocates states, “Central Ohio Community Leaders call on Clear Channel’s WTVN 610 to apologize for the ‘Trip to Phoenix , AZ’ promotion.” A coalition of Columbus community members will join together in rejecting the insensitive promotion and advertisement of ClearChannel’s WTVN 610 Radio Station depicting Mayor Coleman on a Green Card in a trip giveaway promotion to Phoenix, Arizona, where the winner is invited to ‘spend the weekend chasing aliens and spend a few pesos in the desert’”. Community members will stand in solidarity and support the immigrant community and tell Columbus and Central Ohio to stand up to racial profiling and the racist remarks inferred by the WTVN 610 promotion. “This is clearly the chilling effect of what is happening in Arizona with SB 1070”, we believe that our community must respect and protect all people”, commented Leonardo Ramos, President of Colombianos en Ohio . Community members will also be turning in letters to Brian Dytko, General Manager of Clear Channel in Columbus , Ohio . The promotion is insensitive and offensive to all Central Ohio communities. Instead of supporting more diversity in the city and better inter-ethnic relations, they are singling out one ethnic group in a degrading fashion. We are declaring that we are a diverse and inclusive community and are proud to be a part of this great City. Who: Immigrant Right Advocates and Members of the Columbus Community LULAC Ohio LULAC – Columbus Councils Reform Immigration Reform for America Empleos y Employment Ohio Hispanic Coalition Casa de la Cultura Hispana Colombianos en Ohio The Horn of Africa Rescue Committee (Somali Community) Victoria Motors University Area Enrichment Association DJVU Latin Fusion Jewish Family Services of Columbus Latino LeaderShift Initiative A posting at Feministing complains, “The references are aggressive and reminiscent of the vigilante tradition of anti-immigration right-wing groups.” WTVN’s page for John Corby notes : “Corby”, as most people seem to refer to John, was Ohio born and bred. Hailing from the hills of Hocking County, and ending up in the great Capital City by way of the Ohio State University. Corby is what many would refer to as a “regular guy”. He does “regular guy” things,(i.e. watches LOTS of television) drives a “regular guy” vehicle (Dodge Durango in case you wondered) and likes “regular guy” food. (Chili dogs are one of the staples of his diet) John is able to maintain this normalcy despite being listened to regularly by tens of thousands of people who depend of his daily guidance in order to conduct their lives. From simply nudging people in the right direction when it comes to election day, or saving them from making relationship mistakes, John conducts his daily dose of regularity, with, well, regularity. “See how respectful the Illegals are to the great state of Arizona,” Corby wrote last Friday , linking to a picture allegedly showing ” backpacks and trash left by illegals .”

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‘Blood-stained dagger’ found at site of alleged suicide Seven employees of a thriving tech firm based in southern China have fallen to their deaths so far this year. Foxconn’s long client list includes Apple and Sony Ericsson, and the welfare of its employees has begun drawing international attention as stories of reported suicides continue emerging. The latest incident involved a 21-year old Foxconn employee with the surname Liang who died Friday night. According to the government-run Xinhua news agency , a blood-stained dagger was found with Liang and his body sustained several knife cuts. Police are investigating the so-called suicide, though it is common practice for thorough investigations to be closed up in government secrecy after they are completed. At least two others survived recent falls from Foxconn buildings, and are reportedly still being hospitalized. Foxconn runs huge factories in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, where an estimated 300,000 workers make computer and phone products in round-the-clock shifts. Reuters calls them “the world’s top contract maker of cellphones.” The company reported consolidated net profits of US$568.73 million during the first quarter of 2010. Story continues below… According to China Radio International, also state-run, Foxconn is known for a “rigid, semi-military corporate culture.” All alleged suicides have involved workers born in the 1980s who were second-generation migrant workers. Discrimination and inequality toward this group have led to a rural-urban divide that Chinese sociologists warn not only hurts work performance, but also damages relations between coworkers. As Engadget blogger Thomas Ricker writes, suicide is not funny . But Foxconn Group chairman Terry Guo has caused many following this story to smirk with the decision to seek the aid of an exorcist. Then again, as very little has been reported in English thus far, Guo could have simply meant he was bringing in a particular monk, in a role similar to a US army chaplain. Apple has plenty of worries in Asia already as their iPhone components manufacturer Wintek is facing poisoning lawsuits from workers and new iPhone models have been getting leaked. According to Wired , the company said earlier this year it is working to ensure its partners around the world comply with responsible business practices. In a supplier responsibility report (.pdf), Apple said it audited 102 facilities in 2009. Labor violations committed at supply chains all over Asia were detailed last year in a report by Global Post . Based on six months of interviews with workers and activists, it found that sweatshop-like conditions are not uncommon. Some pointed to hourly wages below a dollar and firings with no notice. One week ago, industry website Digital East Asia wrote about what was then the newest Foxconn death. Lu Xin jumped from a hotel balcony on May 6 after claiming he was being followed. Chinese media are reporting (link in Chinese) that Mr. Lu had been exhibiting abnormal behavior prior to his death.  On April 30 he had told his friend, Mr. Zeng Hongling that he was being followed and there were people trying to kill him.  Mr. Zeng reported the situation to his supervisor; the supervisor asked Mr. Zeng and another close friend of Mr. Lu to accompany Mr. Lu.  In the following days, Mr. Lu had stated he wanted to go back home to Hunan province, but when his friends offered to buy him a train ticket he changed his mind. At the suggestion of a counsel, Foxconn contacted Mr. Lu’s parents and asked them to travel to Shenzhen to visit him. However, due to the May 1 National holiday, his parents could only get tickets for May 5.  They were scheduled to arrive in Shenzhen at 9am on the 6th. Mr. Lu knew his parents were coming.  Foxconn arranged to have him and his two friends stay at the hotel.  They went to sleep at around 1:30am.  At around 4:30am, Mr. Lu got up and claimed that the room was too stuffy and wanted fresh air. He got onto the balcony and jumped.  His two friends had tried to stop him but failed.  Mr. Lu was immediately taken to a hospital, but died around noon on May 6. “I believe this is a serious labor scandal waiting to blow up in the face of Apple, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Amazon, Nokia, Motorola, Nintendo, Microsoft, Dell, Cisco and any other brands that Foxconn manufactures for,” Nan Duan wrote.

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The masked gang burst into the Grand Hyatt hotel in central Berlin, where the tournament was taking place, threatening security staff and prompting a brief panic, police spokeswoman Heidi Vogt told AFP. Berlin’s Tageszeitung newspaper reported on its website that six raiders armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and grenades made off with 800,000 euros ($1,200,000). Gawker has video of the harrowing scene, as it was broadcast on television. “Several masked, armed individuals entered the Grand Hyatt and fled with a haul of money,” the police said. A number of the tournament’s players were injured in the incident, though none were seriously hurt. Story continues below… Four of the attackers entered the hotel from Potsdamer Platz, one of the German capital’s most important and popular squares, while two others kept watch, the Tageszeitung reported. A security guard briefly stopped one of the robbers, who hit him over the head with a weapon and fled, the newspaper said. Nearly 1,000 players are to take part in the five-day poker tournament.

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