News of the Weird

[skalnbyc]

A muslim dentist made a woman wear Islamic dress as the price of accepting her as an NHS patient, it is alleged.

Omer Butt is said to have told the patient that unless she wore a headscarf she would have to find another practice.

Later this month, Mr Butt will appear before a General Dental Council professional misconduct hearing, which has the power to strike him off.

It is claimed that the 31-year-old dentist asked to speak to the woman in private after she turned up for an appointment at his clinic in Bury.

According to the charges, he questioned her on whether she was a Muslim and told her that if he was to treat her she would have to wear Islamic dress.

He is also said to have read out a number of religious rules to her.

He then told his nurse to give the patient her own headscarf to wear, the accusation says.

It is not known whether the woman was a Muslim.

The charges to be heard by the General Dental Council say that Mr Butt undermined public confidence in his profession by discriminating against a patient and failed to act in her best interests.

Mr Butt is the older brother of former Islamic extremist Hassan Butt, who once declared he had \'no problem\' with terror attacks on Britain and who said that September 11 "served the pleasure of Allah".

He has since recanted and now calls for all Muslims to abandon violence.

The dentist also featured in immigration hearings involving an asylum seeker suspected of providing a safe house for Kamel Bourgass, an Algerian terrorist jailed for life for stabbing PC Stephen Oake to death in Manchester in 2003.

Mr Butt, the immigration hearing was told, was introduced by his brother to the asylum seeker, who at various points claimed three different identities.

The tribunal was told that Mr Butt was "a respectable and responsible person who wishes to help devout and practising Muslims in difficulty".

He "did not regard the use of false names as unusual for asylum seekers".

The headscarf incident is alleged to have happened in 2005, at a time when between 4,000 and 8,000 people in Bury were unable to find an NHS dentist.

According to the charges, Mr Butt "asked to speak to Patient A in private.

"In the course of conversation with Patient A you: (a) asked whether she was Muslim; (b) told her words to the effect that, in order to receive treatment from you, she needed to wear appropriate Islamic dress; (c) quoted to her parts of the Ahadith."

The Ahadith is a series of instructions on behaviour attributed to Prophet Mohammed but not written as part of the Koran.

The charge continues: "You told Patient A that, if she did not wear a headscarf, she would need to register with another dentist. You instructed your dental nurse to give Patient A her headscarf.

"The dental nurse took Patient A to another room where she was given the nurse\'s headscarf to wear.

"In seeking to impose an Islamic dress code on Patient A in order for treatment to be provided you undermined public confidence in the profession by discriminating against Patient A."

If the charges are upheld, the Porsche- driving dentist will be found guilty of serious professional misconduct.

Penalties can range from a public warning to suspension and being struck off.

Tory MP Sir Paul Beresford, a former minister and a dentist, said: "When a patient comes to see me I have no concern with their religion. I do not ask Muslim patients to read the Bible.

"My practice tries to respect religious belief. For example, during Ramadan we try to help Muslim patients by making sure they do not have to swallow water when they are fasting. We do not ask patients to become Christians."

Women staff at Mr Butt\'s Bury practice do not routinely wear headscarves while at work.

One female patient said: "I think it is a pretty outrageous thing to ask but I have never felt as if I am being discriminated against at this practice as a Western woman.

"If I was then I would certainly make a full complaint. If it is true then it shows a reverse prejudice bordering on racism."

Mr Butt was involved in another controversial incident earlier this year when police stopped his Porsche 911 and said they could not read its customised number plate.

The dentist recorded the subsequent search of the car on his mobile phone and passed the video to the BBC, which broadcast it on a local news bulletin. It shows Mr Butt asking an officer: "Are you a racist?"

The dentist was then arrested for racially aggravated behaviour. There were no charges, and a complaint against the police by Mr Butt is still being considered.

Mr Butt was unavailable for comment yesterday. Staff at his practice said he was on holiday.

[skalnbyc]

This really isn\'t weird news and I\'m posting strictly for the taint content.

Feds bust alleged munchie operation in East Bay

OAKLAND - Four people were charged in Oakland federal court today with growing marijuana that became the not-so-secret ingredient in treats resembling popular candy bars and other packaged food, including barbecue sauce.

Authorities say the four were connected with an operation known as Tainted Inc. that made marijuana-laced candies, cookies, ice cream, peanut butter, barbecue sauce, granola bars and brownies.

"Tainting candy and other products with marijuana is not sweet, it is criminal," said Javier Pena, special agent in charge of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration in San Francisco. "These items could have harmful effects on a user, especially the unsuspecting ones."

Authorities said Tainted Inc. grew from a small outfit that cooked marijuana leaves in butter for chocolate truffles into a large enterprise that supplied marijuana-laced candies to cannabis clubs in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Seattle, Vancouver and Amsterdam.

Over the past two years, Tainted Inc. ordered nearly four tons of chocolate from suppliers, investigators said. Its candies and other food items sold for $2.50 to $20 apiece, depending on the strength of the product, authorities said.

The investigation bears similarities to DEA raids in Oakland last year in which five people connected with a company called Beyond Bomb were convicted of making marijuana-laced treats with names like Buddahfingers, Munchy Way, Rasta Reece\'s and Puff-a-Mint Pattie.

Federal prosecutors charged Tainted Inc.\'s alleged owner, 33-year-old Michael Martin of El Sobrante, with conspiracy to manufacture or distribute controlled substances. Also accused of those charges were the operation\'s alleged manager, Jessica Sanders, 30, of San Leandro, and couriers Michael Anderson, 42, of Oakland and Diallo McLinn, 35, of Oakland, authorities said.

Martin is a fugitive; the other three defendants are to appear this afternoon in U.S. District Court in Oakland.

Drug agents said they searched homes or warehouses Wednesday on the 900 block of 61st Street, where Tainted Inc. products were made; the 300 block of 40th Street in North Oakland, where an alleged marijuana-growing operation was located; Martin\'s home on the 3300 block of Brentwood Avenue in El Sobrante; Anderson and McLinn\'s home on the 4100 block of Howe Street in Oakland; and Sanders\' home on the 600 block of Black Pine Drive in San Leandro.

During the raids, investigators seized hundreds of marijuana products, 460 marijuana plants, a handgun, an undetermined amount of cash and a 2005 GMC truck, Pena said.


E-mail Henry K. Lee at hlee@sfchronicle.com.

[Lexington]

Tainted Inc.
genius.
ps, great bandname

[Me!]

marijuana Barbeque sauce??

:drool:

[FrankZappa]

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - Three Mexican minors detained in California on suspicion of smuggling drugs stole a U.S. Border Patrol car while still wearing handcuffs and drove it back across the border to Mexico.

Police in the Mexican border city of Mexicali said on Tuesday the three boys had been driving a pick-up truck on a remote Californian highway when a Border Patrol agent stopped them.

Suspicious they were carrying marijuana, he handcuffed them and put them in his patrol car while he searched their truck.

"As the agent was doing his search, he left the vehicle running and the keys in the ignition, so one of the lads, still wearing handcuffs, grabbed the steering wheel and they headed back to Mexico," a police spokesman said.

The Border Patrol, which plays cat and mouse around the clock with illegal Mexican migrants and drug traffickers, confirmed the vehicle was stolen in southern California on Sunday and driven over the border near Mexicali.

Mexican police used a helicopter to locate the patrol vehicle in a remote agricultural area near the border.

[Spacey]

marijuana Barbeque sauce??

:drool:

me too.

almost as :drool: as the crazy pancake escapde in Burlington 2 Aprils ago.

[Me!]

marijuana Barbeque sauce??

:drool:

me too.

almost as :drool: as the crazy pancake escapde in Burlington 2 Aprils ago.

I think the :drool: factor of the Brahlington pancake escapade can\'t be compared to anything.

[FrankZappa]

No hugs allowed at Ill. middle school
OAK PARK, Ill. - If you need a hug, you won\'t get it at Percy Julian Middle School. Principal Victoria Sharts banned hugging among the suburban Chicago school\'s 860 students anywhere inside the building. She said students were forming "hug lines" that made them late for classes and crowded the hallways.

[davepeck]

http://www.thebreakfast.info/forum/showthread.php?t=10697

[FrankZappa]

man, I\'m slacking lately! oh well.

[derickw]

not really wierd but interesting

DULUTH, Minn. - The recording industry hopes $222,000 will be enough to dissuade music lovers from downloading songs from the Internet without paying for them. That\'s the amount a federal jury ordered a Minnesota woman to pay for sharing copyrighted music online.
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"This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not OK," Richard Gabriel, the lead attorney for the music companies that sued the woman, said Thursday after the three-day civil trial in this city on the shore of Lake Superior.

In closing arguments he had told the jury, "I only ask that you consider that the need for deterrence here is great."

Jammie Thomas, 30, a single mother from Brainerd, was ordered to pay the six record companies that sued her $9,250 for each of 24 songs they focused on in the case. They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs in all.

It was the first time one of the industry\'s lawsuits against individual downloaders had gone to trial. Many other defendants have settled by paying the companies a few thousand dollars, but Thomas decided she would take them on and maintained she had done nothing wrong.

"She was in tears. She\'s devastated," Thomas\' attorney, Brian Toder, told The Associated Press. "This is a girl that lives from paycheck to paycheck, and now all of a sudden she could get a quarter of her paycheck garnished for the rest of her life."

Toder said the plaintiff\'s attorney fees are automatically awarded in such judgments under copyright law, meaning Thomas could actually owe as much as a half-million dollars. However, he said he suspects the record companies "will probably be people we can deal with."

Gabriel said no decision had yet been made about what the record companies would do, if anything, to pursue collecting the money from Thomas.

The record companies accused Thomas of downloading the songs without permission and offering them online through a Kazaa file-sharing account. Thomas denied wrongdoing and testified that she didn\'t have a Kazaa account.

Since 2003, record companies have filed some 26,000 lawsuits over file-sharing, which has hurt sales because it allows people to get music for free instead of paying for recordings in stores.

During the trial, the record companies presented evidence they said showed the copyrighted songs were offered by a Kazaa user under the name "tereastarr." Their witnesses, including officials from an Internet provider and a security firm, testified that the Internet address used by "tereastarr" belonged to Thomas.

Toder said in his closing argument that the companies never proved "Jammie Thomas, a human being, got on her keyboard and sent out these things."

"We don\'t know what happened," Toder told jurors. "All we know is that Jammie Thomas didn\'t do this."

Copyright law sets a damage range of $750 to $30,000 per infringement, or up to $150,000 if the violation was "willful." Jurors ruled that Thomas\' infringement was willful but awarded damages in a middle range; Gabriel said they did not explain the amount to attorneys afterward. Jurors left the courthouse without commenting.

Before the verdict, an official with an industry trade group said he was surprised it had taken so long for one of the industry\'s lawsuits against individual downloaders to come to trial.

Illegal downloads have "become business as usual. Nobody really thinks about it," said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, which coordinates the lawsuits. "This case has put it back in the news. Win or lose, people will understand that we are out there trying to protect our rights."

Thomas\' testimony was complicated by the fact that she had replaced her computer\'s hard drive after the sharing was alleged to have taken place — and later than she said in a deposition before trial.

The hard drive in question was not presented at trial by either party.

The record companies said Thomas was sent an instant message in February 2005 warning her that she was violating copyright law. Her hard drive was replaced the following month, not in 2004 as she said in the deposition.

"I don\'t think the jury believed my client regarding the events concerning the replacement of the hard drive," Toder said.

The record companies involved in the lawsuit are Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc.

[davepeck]

and there, you have what is wrong with our justice system.

people who kill people while driving drunk get a couple years in jail, and this woman\'s life is essentially ruined for sharing music. did she break the law? sure. but did she ruin anyone\'s life?

come on.

[derickw]

they can\'t be serious about her paying that back. it\'s all for publicity

[Spacey]

CANBERRA - An Australian barmaid has been fined for crushing beer cans between her bare breasts while an off-duty colleague has been fined for hanging spoons from her friend\'s nipples, police said Wednesday.

Police in Western Australia said the 31-year old barmaid pleaded guilty in the local magistrate\'s court to twice exposing her breasts to patrons at the Premier Hotel in Pinjarra, south of the state capital, Perth.

The woman "is alleged to have also crushed beer cans between her breasts during one of the offences," in breach of hotel licensing laws, police from the Peel district of Western Australia said in a statement.

The barmaid and the hotel manager were both fined A$1,000 ($900), while an off-duty barmaid was fined A$500 for helping to hang spoons from the woman\'s nipples, police said.

"It sends a clear message to all licensees in Peel that we will not tolerate this type of behavior in our licensed premises," local police superintendent David Parkinson said.

Beer Can Jugs

[derickw]

CANBERRA - An Australian barmaid has been fined for crushing beer cans between her bare breasts while an off-duty colleague has been fined for hanging spoons from her friend\'s nipples, police said Wednesday.

Police in Western Australia said the 31-year old barmaid pleaded guilty in the local magistrate\'s court to twice exposing her breasts to patrons at the Premier Hotel in Pinjarra, south of the state capital, Perth.

The woman "is alleged to have also crushed beer cans between her breasts during one of the offences," in breach of hotel licensing laws, police from the Peel district of Western Australia said in a statement.

The barmaid and the hotel manager were both fined A$1,000 ($900), while an off-duty barmaid was fined A$500 for helping to hang spoons from the woman\'s nipples, police said.

"It sends a clear message to all licensees in Peel that we will not tolerate this type of behavior in our licensed premises," local police superintendent David Parkinson said.

Beer Can Jugs

shoot where\'s the nearest non-licensed place