Perhaps there's hope for America after all...


https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/35018...lden-shoes

"Donald Trump was booed during a surprise appearance to unveil a new line of $399 (NZ$651) shoes on Saturday – a day after he was fined $355 million for fraud.
The crowd at the Sneaker Con in Philadelphia jeered the former president as he launched his “Never Surrender high-tops”, using the platform as another campaign stop between court and primary elections.
Holding his golden sneakers, Trump said “wow, there’s a lot of emotion” as he responded to the crowd, some of whom were also cheering.
The shoes, with an American flag detail on the back, are being sold for US$399 on a new website that also sells other Trump-branded shoes and “Victory47” cologne and perfume for US$99 a bottle.



A standard style trainer is also offered in either “T-Red” or “POTUS” white, both with a golden “45”, representing Mr Trump’s time as the 45th president, on the side. These shoes sell for US$199.
Mr Trump revealed his new trainer line just a day after a New York judge ruled he must pay $354.9 million in penalties for fraudulently overstating his net worth to dupe lenders. Judge Arthur Engoron also banned him from serving as a company director or taking out loans from banks in New York for three years.
The judge said of Mr Trump and his co-defendants: “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.”

From her new book, this story is straight to the heart...


https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/02/17/short-...90hjrOCme8

https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/3501831...ell-are-ya

Must be exceptionally bad when  Labour's main cheer leader calls them out for poor performance.  Especially unhappy with Hipkins.

Meanwhile 2 polls have National and Act inceasing their election position, including Labour's own polling.   Yet a number here would try to have people believe that support for the coalition is poor - certainly the media attempted to make it that way.  Long may it last that Hipkins continues to struggle.  Fingers crossed Labour will wander in the wasteland with the Greens and TPM for the next 8 plus years.

Hi guys, 

For the last week or so, I've been unable to access the Countdown/Woolworths site thru Chrome. I'll either get a message like "400 BAD REQUEST Request header or Cookie too large' or something equally daft, or just a white page with the Woolworths 'W' logo in the middle, and nothing happening. 

If I use Edge, it'll get me further in but when I try to log in I get "Error: Proxy timeout" with a webpage code to quote to someone or something ...

Google has been no help. I've tried deleting cookies but I've run out of ideas. The only thing that has changed recently is their new loyalty card, but I can't see what this has to be with me not accessing their site.

I've even clicked on links in emails recvd from them, but that doesn't help either.

Any ideas? This is doing my head in.

What a coincidence...again...





https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/35018...tin-critic

"Alexei Navalny: The final weeks and death of Russia’s leading Putin critic



The Russian opposition leader died at a prison inside the Arctic Circle where he was serving a 19-year sentence.


The facility, often called the “Polar Wolf” jail, is officially known as the IK-3 penal colony and is located at Kharp in the Yamal-Nenets region, about 1900km northeast of Moscow.
His death was announced by Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service, which said the 47-year-old lost consciousness on Friday after taking a walk in the prison where he was moved last December, and when for several weeks his friends did not know where he was.

After his collapse – just one day after he appeared in court and was making jokes – an ambulance crew tried to resuscitate him for more than half an hour, officials at Labytnang City Hospital told Russian state-run media RIA Novosti.



“The doctors who arrived at the scene continued the resuscitation measures that the prison’s doctors had already provided,” RIA quoted an official as saying.
“They carried them out for more than half an hour. However, the patient died. The ambulance team reached the prison in less than seven minutes, and doctors reached the patient two minutes later.”
The Russian prison service said Navalny “felt unwell after a walk” and “almost immediately” lost consciousness. It said it was investigating his “sudden death”.

For some time his supporters and family declined to believe the news, pointing out there had been earlier such reports that proved false.
His long-time chief of staff, Leonid Volkov, wrote on Twitter: “We have no reason to believe state propaganda. If this is true, then not ‘Navalny died’, but ‘Putin killed Navalny’ and only that. But I don’t trust them one penny.”
The Kremlin said Vladimir Putin had been informed.


It later emerged that he was being held in a place where the temperatures drop as low as -30C.
He was often held in solitary confinement – more than 300 days in total, according to his supporters – and last month his spokesperson said he had been sent again to a so-called “punishment cell” for 10 days for “incorrectly introducing himself” to a guard.
Navalny later said: “The idea that Putin was pleased enough that he had put me in a barracks in the Far North that they would stop throwing me in solitary confinement was ... naive.”

American, writes the most delightfully engrossing back country set thrillers, involving game wardens and sheriffs, with a bit of homespun domestics thrown in for good measure.

He has written lots of novels, and is still going, so with luck I will not run out of entertainment to keep me amused between science fiction doorstops.

Wonderful stuff, recommended. 

R.I.P. Alexi Navalny, a very brave man brought down by scum.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68315943

Reportedly the last photo of Navalny alive

https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1...lny_alive/

The man himself:

https://i.redd.it/lwetvfc6gyic1.jpeg

https://i.redd.it/rhe4p24cgzic1.jpeg

BBC coverage:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68320268

Wainuitech

I am using a Brother Printer MFC-L27130DW. I am trying to scan a document into Thunderbird to email,  and not having much success.

I think I have exhausted my efforts and would appreciate some help if you have the time please.

And about bloody time,too. Absolutely outrageos that he's been imprisoned for so long simply for telling the world the truth which America found inconveninet.

https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/02/15/aus-l...n-assange/

"Australia's House of Representatives has ramped up pressure on the United States and Britain to end the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by passing a motion calling for the Australian citizen to be allowed to return to his home country.
Independent lawmaker Andrew Wilkie moved the motion on Wednesday one week ahead of Britain's High Court of Justice hearing Assange's appeal against extradition to the United States on espionage charges.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was among the 86 lawmakers who voted for the motion that called on the United States and Britain to bring the "matter to a close so that Mr. Assange can return home to his family in Australia".

The motion was opposed by 42 lawmakers including most of the main opposition party that unsuccessfully proposed amendments.
Leaders of both the government and the opposition have publicly stated that the United States' pursuit of the 52-year-old had dragged on for too long.
Assange has been in London's high-security Belmarsh Prison since he was arrested in 2019 for skipping bail during a separate legal battle. Before that, he spent seven years inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault. Sweden dropped the rape investigation in 2019 because so much time had elapsed.

Assange's brother Gabriel Shipton on Thursday welcomed the lawmakers' vote, adding that his notorious sibling could potentially be extradited to the United States next week.
"That means all the ties to his family, his lifeline that are keeping him alive inside that prison will be cut off and he'll be lost into a horrific prison system in the United States," Shipton told reporters at Parliament House.
"This show of support from the Parliament is at a crucial time and now gives the government a real mandate to advocate very, very strongly for a political solution to bring Julian Assange home," Shipton added.
Wilkie, who authored the motion, argues the extradition should be dropped.


Assange's plight is seen as a test of Albanese's leverage with the administration of US President Joe Biden.

American prosecutors allege he helped US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk.
Australia argues there is a disconnect between the US treatment of Assange and Manning. Then-US President Barack Obama commuted Manning's 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her release in 2017."

This time at a super bowl parade, but only one death thankfully.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-us-canada-68300903


"Shifting briefly away from the news conference in Kansas City, a local law enforcement source has told the BBC's US partner, CBS News, that the shooting does not appear to be terror related.