Couldn’t Help But Notice (072607)

A Belgian bust:

BRUSSELS - A 39-year-old Moroccan who worked for years as a sworn interpreter at the court in Antwerp has been taken into custody because he has been in this country illegally all that time.

Who wants to bet that this isn’t happening here?

Related: Of course, sometimes the request to have an interpreter is a bogus tactic.

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Sniping at Sarkozy by the sore-loser French press has reached new depths:

PARIS, July 24, 2007 (AFP) - President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday defended his decision to involve France’s first lady in delicate negotiations on the release of six foreign medics from a Libyan jail, as he prepared to head to the north African country for cooperation talks.

….. Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, jailed for life in Libya on charges of infecting hundreds of children with the AIDS virus, were freed early Tuesday after the conditions Tripoli had set down for extradition were met.

The French president brushed off the controversy whipped up by his wife’s involvement — highly unusual for a French first lady and seen by his critics as evidence of his overly personal approach to power.

“We solved a problem. Period. There’s no point theorising about a new organisation of French diplomacy or the status of the head of state’s wife. We had to get them out, we got them out. That is what counts.”

….. Previous French first ladies have limited themselves to strictly humanitarian endeavours and played no part in diplomacy.

How many Old European press objections to a certain president’s unelected wife “endeavouring” to engineer a takeover of a country’s entire health-care system did we hear in the early 1990s?

Sarkozy’s success in turning around France will probably be directly proportional to the volume of sniping.

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New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is apparently auditioning for vice president on the Democratic ticket. But his intimidation act is wearing thin in Albany:

The media are doing their best Claude Rains act over the revelation that the office of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer orchestrated a smear campaign against State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno. But far from being a unique, out of character event, the episode is a classic example of the Spitzer political method: nasty and exaggerated accusations fed by selective, politically motivated news leaks. The difference is that this time his targets could fight back.

….. The investigation had been prompted by the Governor’s office after Mr. Spitzer’s communications aide and hatchet man, Darren Dopp, saw to it that allegations of impropriety against Mr. Bruno had found their way into the hands of gullible, pliant reporters.

….. The AG cleared Mr. Bruno of any wrongdoing, but in the process uncovered Mr. Dopp’s unseemly little scheme to plant the story and then use that as a pretext to call for the investigation.

Only dirty tricks that work will get you promoted, Eliot.

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Speaking of dirty tricks: As night follows day –

Researchers Crack the iPhone

Apple’s popular multifunctional device can be exploited for data theft or snooping purposes, according to a security firm.