Blog Heap o'Links for April 2009

"That wasn't me," President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One. It actually was him - and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years - who shaped a budget so out of balance.

A New York police officer called to help a drunken woman get home safely instead raped her as she lay face down in her bed, semiconscious and covered in vomit while his partner acted as a lookout, prosecutors alleged Tuesday.

A former prison officer has given birth to a baby fathered by a 'dangerous' inmate. ... Police were called in over accusations that she had breached security, but she resigned before they finished investigating.

KATY — Police say a 12-year-old suburban Houston girl fatally shot her father in the back of the head, possibly while he was sleeping. ... Neighbor... told the newspaper there had been tension between the girl and her father.

'I will give £5 to anyone in Britain who wants to live under Sharia law,' he declares. 'It will help pay for their ticket to Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan, or wherever it is customary to live under Sharia law. 'Please, please go and leave us alone. This is Britain, not 10th century Arabia!'

A man who Los Angeles police believe raped and murdered dozens of women decades ago was arrested by cold case investigators this month after a computer matched his DNA to evidence from two killings in the 1970s.

The wedding is off, the attorney confirmed, and not likely to ever happen.

A North Carolina congresswoman says she made a poor choice of words when she called the infamous murder of a gay Wyoming student a "hoax" to justify passing hate crimes bills. ... Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx said the 1998 death of Matthew Shepard wasn't a hate crime....

Thirteen people were killed at a university in Azerbaijan Thursday when a gunman went from floor to floor firing on teachers and students after the bell rang for morning classes. The gunman, a Georgian citizen of Azeri origin described as a loner by local media, was among the dead.

"So, from my perspective, what it relates to is mitigation. If you're out in the middle of a field when someone sneezes, that's one thing. If you're in a closed aircraft or closed container or closed car or closed classroom, it's a different thing." That contradicted more restrained advice from President Barack Obama and the federal government — and the last thing the White House wants to do right now is shut down the airline industry and big-city subways out of mass panic.

Vice president Joe Biden said Thursday he would tell his family members not to use subways in the U.S. and implied schools should be shuttered as the swine flu outbreak spread to 16 states. His remarks quickly caused a stir, drawing a rebuke from New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and later leading the White House to apologize.

It was a really nice day. Then you hear a bang. Everyone looks up and you see people flying through the air

announced to a skeptical crowd of reporters and Zodiac aficionados here not only that the killer was her adoptive and long-dead father, Guy Ward Hendrickson, but that she had been present at at least one killing and had even scribbled some of the taunting notes the Zodiac sent to the press and the police. "I was a child and just thought I was helping my dad,"

After a cliffhanger of a plane landing in the Talkeetna Mountains earlier this month, 21-year-old Matthew "Jake" Soplanda of Anchor Point and a skiing buddy managed to climb away from Soplanda's dated, single-engine Taylorcraft as it hung perched over a 1,500-foot drop.

For over 30 years, a controversy has swirled over what may be the earliest known photographic image of Abraham Lincoln.... a healthy young man in the prime of life.... lacks what collectors call "provenance," a documented evidentiary history that establishes without break the exact chain of ownership of an antique or historical object of interest. Not long after Kaplan purchased the unidentified daguerreotype, the New York art gallery director died and the gallery's records that should have indicated the image's seller were lost....

It's been interesting to watch the media ramp-up to hysteria over the new influenza strain and now drop it like spoiled news because it's not deadly enough for the headlines. Too bad that's wrong twice.

When a container holding swine flu exploded on a Swiss train on Monday, it could have led to a nightmare scenario. Luckily the virus was not the mutated swine flu that has killed around 150 people in Mexico and that has already spread to parts of Europe.

As the World Health Organization raised its infectious disease alert level Wednesday and health officials confirmed the first death linked to swine flu inside U.S. borders, scientists studying the virus are coming to the consensus that this hybrid strain of influenza -- at least in its current form -- isn't shaping up to be as fatal as the strains that caused some previous pandemics.

"The claim of the conspiracy theorists is that this new combination could not have occurred naturally, but this is not true," the New Scientist's biology editor Michael Le Page wrote. "Flu viruses consisting of a mixture of human, swine and bird strains have been found before." Sound science, however, is no match for the Internet and unsubstantiated media reports when it comes to providing a forum for ideas that have forced responses from governments and companies alike.

The WHO says the phase 5 alert means there is sustained human-to-human spread in at least two countries. It also signals that efforts to produce a vaccine will be ramped up.

suggest a magnitude-7 earthquake occurs every 2,000 to 3,000 years in the basin, and that the largest fault in the basin, West Tahoe, appears to have last ruptured between 4,100 and 4,500 years ago.

What do you do when you have a fossil quarry that has yielded some of the most important and rarest of dinosaur fossils in North America, but the fossil-bearing layer of rock is tilted at 70 degrees and there is so much rock that not even jackhammers can get you to the fossils any longer? ... Over several days these skilled employees, using their expertise with explosives, blew away the rock covering the fossils and exposed a significant amount of the fossil-bearing layer so that excavation can begin again this year. Without their talents, scientifically important fossils would have remained locked underground in their stony mausoleum.....

Hitchens joined Anderson Cooper last night on a shortened version of "AC360" to discuss the life of Jerry Falwell. Former Director of the Christian Coalition Ralph Reed was first up and as expected, praised Falwell...then came old Chris and he offered up an alternate perspective.

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an anomalous layer at the top of a subducting plate coincides with the locations of slow earthquakes and non-volcanic tremors... The presence of such a layer in similar settings elsewhere could point to other regions of slow quakes. Slow earthquakes, also called silent earthquakes, take days, weeks, or even months to release pent-up energy instead of seconds or minutes as in normal earthquakes....

[World tectonic plates illustrated]

After studying a cockatoo that grooves to the Backstreet Boys and about 1,000 YouTube videos, scientists say they've documented for the first time that some animals "dance" to a musical beat.

"While we as humans might find it appealing to free a long-term captive animal," the researchers say in the paper, "the survival and well-being of the animal may be severely impacted in doing so."

According to court papers police found more than 1,000 bags of heroin and cash in both the women's homes on Ehler Street near Stroudsburg. Both are charged with possession with intent to deliver. Police believe the sisters had been dealing heroin out of their homes for almost six months and pulling in about $10,000 a week in sales.

A 1/10th-scale model of a NASA Saturn V rocket launched successfully on Saturday, becoming what is thought to be the largest amateur rocket ever to take off and be safely recovered. The feat could herald the arrival of the first amateur rockets to reach orbit.

Researchers said Thursday a skeleton found last year in Utah's redrock country is that of a 20-year-old artist, poet and wanderer who disappeared in the 1930s and has been the stuff of Western lore and Navajo legend ever since. The bones of Everett Ruess, a self-described vagabond from California, were discovered by a grandson of a Navajo elder who, according to a family story, had witnessed the young man's murder by other Indians and was haunted by it.

One of the more intersting new disclosures around Windows 7 has been the addition of Windows XP Compatibility Mode, which creates a virtualized Windows XP Professional environment to run what is essentially legacy code. However, enabling this mode also requires a separate download. Also of interest is the "Play To" feature, with improved media streaming around the network. Microsoft has also disabled the AutoRun feature from Windows 7, a response to worms like Conficker, which apply deceiving Autorun messages in an attempt to provoke users to click ad launch the malware.

Africans have more genetic variation than anyone else on Earth, according to a new study that helps narrow the location where humans first evolved... nearly three-fourths of African-Americans can trace their ancestry to West Africa... The so-called "Cape-colored" population of South Africa has highest levels of mixed ancestry on the globe, a blend of African, European, East Asian and South Indian... about 71 percent of African-Americans can trace their ancestry to western African origins. They also have between 13 percent and 15 percent European ancestry and a smaller amount of other African origins. There was "very little" evidence for American Indian genes among African-Americans....

grade school principal suspended over accusations she hawked her racy self-published potboiler during faculty meetings

'Whatever will they bring out next? Drug-addict Barbie? Alcoholic Barbie?'

Experts predict that consumer demand, already growing at 60 percent a year, will start to exceed supply as early as 2010 because of more people working online and the soaring popularity of bandwidth-hungry Web sites such as YouTube and services such as the BBC's iPlayer... Beginning in 2012... PCs and laptops are likely to operate at a much reduced speed, rendering the Internet an "unreliable toy."

appears yet another administrative account on the micro-blogging site has been breached, giving world+dog an inside peek at the accounts of Barack Obama, Ashton Kutcher, and other celebrities.

described as "broken" by one industry expert and as "childlike" by another...

Appearing Wednesday before a Senate panel, Napolitano said that "passive surveillance" is "not an accurate picture of what is going on" at U.S. entry points.

Flying the presidential jet over lower Manhattan for a photo op, sending panicked New Yorkers running into the streets, was as "stupid a thing to do as one could dream up," the White House said Wednesday. And it cost far more than the $328,835 the Air Force says it spent.

Anyone in the White House ever hear of Photoshop?

Joe Scarborough, Glenn Beck, and others, on Obama's short, error-prone time in office

North Dakota woman, 26, is facing a child neglect charge for allegedly breast-feeding while drunk ... Since alcohol can pass from mother to child via breast milk, Anvarinia was arrested for neglecting her six-week-old infant ...

A new report from the Institute of Medicine calls for significant reforms to prevent financial conflicts-of-interests in medicine from hindering patient care or the advancement of medical knowledge.... For example, documents revealed in the course of drug marketing litigation recently revealed that a prominent Harvard psychiatrist promised to deliver positive results to major drug maker Johnson & Johnson before the start of some clinical trials.... from 2000 through 2007, the same psychiatrist received $1.6 million from the drug maker, with only a fraction of that reported to Harvard.....

China has dropped long-standing objections to Taiwan participating in the World Health Organization's annual assembly. The development marks a major victory in Taiwan's campaign for greater international recognition.

Taiwan has been pushing for an invitation every year since 1997, only to have their application be repeatedly blocked by China, which sees the democratic island as a Chinese province and therefore ineligible to participate alongside other sovereign states. "It's an inevitable development," says Political Scientist Yang Tai-shuenn of Taipei's Chinese Culture University. "The pressure from the international community has been accumulating. Health is a universal value China cannot continue to reject."

Serdar Tatar received a sentence of 33 years in prison and Mohammad Shnewer drew a life sentence from U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler in a Camden, N.J., courtroom, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. They joined Cherry Hill, N.J., brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, each of whom received life sentences Tuesday for their roles in the plot, for which they were convicted of conspiracy to kill U.S. soldiers after an eight-week trial.

The World Health Organization said on Wednesday the world is at the brink of a pandemic, raising its threat level as the swine flu virus spread and killed the first person outside of Mexico, a toddler in Texas.

The boss of Ryanair has claimed only people living in 'slums' will be affected by swine flu. Michael O'Leary's comments came as a four-year-old boy from a small Mexican village was identified as the earliest confirmed victim of the illness.

Alarmed by the spread of a new swine flu virus, airports around the world have rushed to install temperature scanners to pick out the sick, but the microbe is proving too clever for modern technology.

AirTran Airways Flight 85 from Cancun, Mexico radioed ahead to the airport about the two men, said airport spokesman Jonathan Dean. They had fevers and were sick to their stomachs.... the men just had too much to drink.

Egypt began slaughtering the roughly 300,000 pigs in the country Wednesday as a precautionary measure against the spread of swine flu even though no cases have been reported here yet ... The move immediately provoked resistance from pig farmers. At one large pig farming center just north of Cairo, farmers refused to cooperate with Health Ministry workers who came to slaughter the animals and the workers left without carrying out the government order....

A member of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has dismissed claims that more than 150 people have died from swine flu, saying it has officially recorded only seven deaths around the world.

It sounds like something out of a movie: Labor unions looking for payback from a president they helped elect squaring off against big business interests with deep pockets hoping to thwart a possible law they say would hamper their businesses. ... Here's what all the fuss is about: On March 10, a bill called The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA ) was introduced to both the House and Senate. The bill eliminates the veto power employers hold over the card-signing method of obtaining majority votes needed to unionize a work place. Since the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, employers have had the right to call for a private ballot vote. "They look at this bill and it makes their blood boil," says Brad Close, vice-president of public policy for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) in Washington....

magniture 3.4 quake was centred 37 kilometres west-southwest of Bay Roberts, which is located on the island's Avalon Peninsula.

The Dynamic Designs Challenge will invite teams of students around the world to take part in a unique competition to design a building for an earthquake zone.

A Nielsen report this week revealed that Twitter has an uncanny knack for hemorrhaging users. In fact, some 60 percent of new users bail on the service within a month. For those of us who've been tweeting for a couple of years, this isn't exactly a shocker. Many longtime users have gone through that initial period of wondering what, if any, use Twitter might be. And maybe it's better for everyone if those who don't get it refrain from tweeting until they do.

Last year, a team of Swiss and Australian social scientists published a study concluding that the practice of self-Googling (or "ego-surfing," as it's sometimes called) can partly be traced to a rise in narcissism in society, but that it is also an attempt by people to identify and shape their personal online "brand." The authors of the survey no doubt returned to their cubicles and Googled themselves to see if the study was posted online. (It is.... To give people a bit more control over search results, Google introduced a feature this week it calls a "Google profile," which users can create so that a thumbnail of personal information appears at the bottom of U.S. name-query search pages. Once users create a Google profile, their name, occupation and location (and photo if they choose) appears in a box on the first page of the search results for their name. Next to the thumbnail info, there's a link to a full Google profile page that in many ways resembles a Facebook page.

"I would remind anyone who doubts the results that this is an Internet poll.... Doubting the results is kind of the point."

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) noted this morning that more than half of federal inmates are locked up for drug-related crimes, including high ratios of African American offenders. In 2007, Durbin said, 82 percent of people convicted on crack possession charges were black, and only 9 percent were white.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"X-Men Origins: Wolverine," premiering May 1, seems a straightforward concept. The X-Men movies were popular, and Wolverine was the most popular character, so make a movie about him. But there's really nothing straightforward about the history of the feral X-Man -- and the movie won't make it any simpler. Let me X-plain....

A prequel to the "X-Men" trilogy made between 2000 and 2006, "Wolverine" is silly and typical, not in spite of but because it bonds an undeveloped family feud onto the main character's renegade story.

The asteroid impact and dinosaur extinction, say the authors, may not have been simultaneous, instead occurring 300,000 years apart. That's an eyeblink in geologic time, but it's a relevant eyeblink all the same — one that occurred at just the right moment in ancient history to send the extinction theory entirely awry. ... "Not a single species went extinct as a result of the Chicxulub impact." ...

Once the province of shopping mall mavens, gum-snappin' waitresses and Amy Winehouse, bouffant was in and big hair was beautiful, if only for one night. The ladies — and one gent — of the International Fantasy Hair Competition proudly wore their hair hats high in the name of art and a good cause.

JAMES REAVIS (1843-1914) The Man Who Stole Arizona ... Ranchers from Scottsdale to Morenci, big-city bankers and merchants in downtown Phoenix, Papago Indians along the Santa Cruz River, Mormon farmers in Safford, and even cowboys in the Mogollon Mountains of New Mexico read and reread the legal notices that had been posted in public places across the territory.... said that all persons occupying land over the entire 18,750 square-mile territory under any and every title were "to communicate immediately with Mr. Cyril Barratt, attorney-at-law and agent general, representing Mr. James Addison Reavis, for registering tenancy and signing agreements, or regard themselves liable to litigation for trespassing and expulsion when the Peralta Grant is, as it must be, validated by the U.S. government."

probably the most ambitious seismological project ever conducted... USArray ... to run what amounts to an ultrasound scan over the 48 contiguous states of the US. Through the seismic shudders and murmurs that rack Earth's innards, it will build up an unprecedented 3D picture of what lies beneath North America. ... 400 transportable seismometers - will sweep all the way from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Having started off in California in 2004, it is now just east of the Rockies, stretching from Montana's border with Canada down past El Paso on the Texas-Mexico border. By 2013, it should have reached the north-east coast, and its mission end. ... "It is our version of the Hubble Space Telescope. With it, we'll be able to view Earth in a fundamentally different way..."

Federal officials knew that sending two fighter jets and Air Force One to buzz ground zero and Lady Liberty might set off nightmarish fears of a 9/11 replay, but they still ordered the photo-op kept secret from the public.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and announced today that he will run in 2010 as a Democrat, according to a statement he released this morning. Specter's decision would give Democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate assuming Democrat Al Franken is eventually sworn in as the next senator from Minnesota.

Veteran Republican Sen. Arlen Specter disclosed plans Tuesday to switch parties, a move intended to boost his chances of winning re-election next year that will also push Democrats closer to a 60-vote filibuster-resistant majority. "I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans," Specter said in a statement posted on a Web site

Oklahoma City Hall is open again after a suspicious package found outside the building was deemed safe. City officials said the package was found in a trash can on the south side of the building at 201 N Walker.

[Article is unavailable]

An Oklahoma City man is accused in a federal criminal complaint of making threats through the Internet social networking site Twitter ... posted threatening messages to his Twitter account involving the April 15 public tax "tea party" protests ... One post... reads: "Locked AND loaded for the Oklahoma State Capitol. Let's see what happens." ... [and similar]

The swine flu epidemic crossed new borders Tuesday with the first cases confirmed in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region, as world health officials said they suspect American patients may have transmitted the virus to others in the U.S.

The victim of the alleged "Craigslist killer" recently got sober and was looking to get her life on track....

Autistic children have variations on genes that help neurons route themselves in the brain of a developing fetus... One of the gene variants occurs 20 percent more often in autistic children and may play a role in 12 percent to 18 percent of cases of autism... The altered DNA is found near a gene that is active in the development of the frontal cortex, a brain region necessary for language and judgment....

Chesapeake Energy (NYSE: CHK), an independent producer of natural gas founded twenty years ago by Aubrey McClendon and Tom Ward.... third largest producer of natural gas in the United States (behind majors BP and ConocoPhillips), and at one time they were one of the fastest growing companies in the Southwest....

one of the common complaints about Heroes is that characters never really die, and just come back to life within a few weeks.

So, the finale airs and for those who've continued to watch, it's like admonishing a kid who achieves something great for not applying themselves all the time. Not saying that this was the best thing "Heroes" has ever done, but it might be the best ending so far.

It's tough being the dude who cares about this stuff even if he doesn't want to. It's a calling, really — like pulling a sword from a stone or being handed one of the Lantern Corps rings — and you can't turn it down. You have to watch the season finale of Heroes, even if you've sorta stopped caring.

HP is looking to draw in more small- and medium-sized-business users with its new ProBook s-series, a low-cost line sporting the Suse Linux, Vista or XP operating systems. Other features include the ability to link to an external modem as well HP Protect Tools for added security.

Facebook on Monday opened up massive parts of its site to third party developers, a move that effectively allows other sites to let users post updates, share pictures and links, and interact with Facebook without ever visiting Facebook.com. "Apparently, the company is prepared to lose gobs of traffic and, in turn, revenue from display ads on the site," notes BusinessWeek's Douglas MacMillan.

Mozilla on Tuesday released Firefox 3.5 beta 4, a release that promises improvements to performance, web compatibility, and speed. It is now available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux via an online download.

There are now (once again) three simultaneous development tracks for Mozilla's Web browser, as the first public beta of Firefox to be numbered 3.5 has officially hit the streets; the first private Beta 5 of Firefox 3.5 is being distributed to Mozilla testers; and the latest Firefox 3.6 Alpha continues to make headway

The Supreme Court ruled narrowly Tuesday in favor of a government policy that threatens broadcasters with fines over the use of even a single curse word on live television, yet stopped short of deciding whether the policy violates the Constitution.

Since 1988, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has used this list as a powerful alarm to raise awareness of the serious threats facing the nation's greatest treasures. It has become one of the most effective tools in the fight to save the country's irreplaceable architectural, cultural, and natural heritage.

just because Microsoft believes XP has outlived its usefulness doesn't mean you have to find a fresher OS. There's plenty of life left in your XP machines, though keeping XP hale and hearty is now up to users more than ever.

a photograph of the most distant object in the universe -- a smudge 13 billion light-years away. ... the most distant object ever seen by humanity...

The former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz must be preserved so future generations can learn lessons from the horrors of the Holocaust, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Tuesday. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently appealed for international donations to preserve the facilities and exhibits at Auschwitz, now a museum comprising 155 camp buildings and 300 ruined facilities.

President Obama's speech at the National Academy of Sciences Monday morning hit a brief snag when Obama got ahead of his script. Laying his plan for a President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Obama began to name the members of PCAST listed in his prepared remarks — before realizing he'd already introduced them, earlier in his speech.

Obama said Tuesday: "It was a mistake, as was stated ... and it will not happen again." ... A "furious" Mayor Bloomberg denounced the dunces who dreamed up the stunt - and the NYPD officials and bureaucrats who never told him about it. By day's end, an obscure City Hall deputy named Marc Mugnos, who makes $60,000 a year, was taking the fall for not telling Bloomberg that the low-flying planes were coming. He was reprimanded.

"Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision," said Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office. "While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it's clear that the mission created confusion and disruption."

A Southern California mother has been charged with murdering the 18-month-old daughter she initially reported missing last month.... Brother... says the child's death was an accident, but she didn't tell him what happened.

President Karzai bowed to international pressure yesterday by promising to amend a new law condoning marital rape and child marriage that provoked violent clashes in the Afghan capital. The Shia Family Law, signed by the Afghan President last month, appeared to reintroduce the draconian policies of the Taleban era, such as a ban on married women leaving their homes without their husbands' permission. The law applies to the 15 per cent of Afghans who are Shia Muslims.

without a secretary of Health and Human Services or appointees in any of the department's 19 key posts.... has not yet chosen a surgeon general or the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His choice to run the Food and Drug Administration awaits confirmation.... Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano...

A deadly swine flu virus strain could unleash a new global pandemic, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned Monday, after the probable death toll from the disease rose to 149 in Mexico. "We are concerned that this virus could cause a new influenza pandemic. It could be mild in its effect or potentially be severe," Ban told reporters. "We don't know yet which way it will go but we are concerned that in Mexico most of those who died were young and healthy adults."

General Electric Global Research says it has figured out a way to put up to 500GB of data on a regular-sized DVD disc under laboratory conditions. GE says its breakthrough was achieved by writing 3-dimensional patterns that represent data onto a disc made of highly reflective material. The disc then acts as a mirror that makes it possible for a laser to pick up the entire piece of data. GE's process doesn't just put information onto the surface of the disc -- as DVDs and CDs do -- but etches the micro-holographic patterns below the surface of the disc as well.

Story Highlights Ingrid Case switched from her Episcopalian church to becoming a Quaker Study: More than half of American adults have changed religion in their lives In the 19th century many people shifted religions as well, says Mark Silk "I began to see there were some things I wasn't able to get on board with fully. I don't like the traditional Episcopalian focus on the afterlife...."

'You'll have to support two versions of Windows,' Each needs to be secured, antivirused, firewalled and patched. If a company has 10,000 PCs, that's 20,000 instances of Windows.

Two Clare brothers [36yo & 43yo] charged with burning the anus of a 6-year-old boy with a propane torch could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted of first-degree child abuse.... "They said they were disciplining the child for making a mess in his pants...."

A live shark dumped on the doorstep of a Warrnambool newspaper office has survived thanks to the quick thinking of two police officers who made a mercy dash in a divvy van.

A mysterious email is showing up in the members' inboxes. The subject line says, "Remember Mary Cronin? Say hi to the newest class of '83 alum to join." Thing is, Mary Cronin, class of '83, didn't make it to her ten year reunion. Someone murdered her in April of 1992. Her killer has never been caught. Debbie McGrew, President of Westside's Alumni Association says, "It's extremely upsetting. You would think such a web service such as classmates.com would have a sophisticated data base or some sort of internal checks to make sure that the people trying to register with them are valid accurate grads of the high school they are representing ."

KANSAS CITY, MO. - The parents of a 5-month-old are under arrest and charged with endangering the welfare of a child after the baby was burned and they didn't take him to the hospital for weeks.... said he was accidentally burned with hot water during a bath.... She said she didn't call an ambulance because she "didn't want to pay the $700 for it...."

A number of people were injured - one seriously - when a hand grenade was thrown at them outside a Christiania cafe... in the Christiania area of Copenhagen. ... so far police have found no trace of the attacker....

TRACY, Calif. — Detective Nate Cogburn's last few months have been filled with the stuff of nightmares. Neighbors charged with shackling and torturing a teenager in a Tracy home. A substitute teacher accused of molesting upward of 15 students. A surgeon arrested for the alleged sexual abuse of dozens of patients. And, most recently, a Sunday school teacher charged with kidnapping, raping and murdering the playmate of her own little girl.

A research professor at Clemson University was among the three victims shot to death outside a community theater in Athens, Ga., yesterday, and the University of Georgia professor who is suspected in the killings remained at large as of this evening

George Zinkhan is on the lam after a deadly, multiple shooting in Georgia during which he killed his wife. Cops call it a "crime of passion" that happened in broad daylight while the shooter's two young children waited in his car nearby. Authorities think he's either on the way to Texas where he has relatives or to Amsterdam where he owns a home.

"The captain was captured from the beginning," said chief engineer Mike Perry of Riverview.The story of Phillips offering to exchange himself for the crew "is misleading," he said. "It is not an accurate portrayal."

An American professor doing research in London stumbled across a series of previously unknown letters written by, to, and about Benjamin Franklin, a stunning find that sheds new light on early U.S. history.... "I swear, I just about shot through the ceiling I was so excited," he said. "It's like finding a treasure chest...." The letters cover Franklin's success in dealing with British Gen. Edward Braddock, who had been sent to Pennsylvania in 1755 to defeat the French at Fort Duquesne, in modern-day Pittsburgh.

Responding to what some health officials feared could be the leading edge of a global pandemic emerging from Mexico, American health officials declared a public health emergency on Sunday as 20 cases of swine flu were confirmed in this country, including eight in New York City.

Canadian health officials reported six "mild" cases of swine flu on Sunday — the first confirmed cases in Canada since an outbreak of the illness began in Mexico several days ago — and warned there could be more cases in the days ahead.

Churches stood empty Sunday in predominantly Roman Catholic Mexico City after services were canceled, and health workers screened airports and bus stations for people sickened by a new strain of swine flu that experts fear could become a global epidemic.

Iowa counties begin processing same-sex marriage applications Monday and the first gay weddings could happen within hours, but details of just what changes and benefits the ceremonies will bring are still being untangled. ... "It's all about me having the legal right to protect my family, and it's about my daughters being able to grow up knowing that their family is absolutely as valid as any other family...."

The United States and Iraq on Saturday dismissed fears a rash of bloody bombings could tip Iraq back into all-out sectarian war, while Iran said Washington was to blame for the attacks on Shi'ite Muslims. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, visiting Baghdad after bomb blasts that killed 150 people in two days, rejected the charge from Tehran.

A 70-year-old man who dove into the Atlantic Ocean to save two children from drowning is being hailed a hero. Charles Schulze... saw two boys struggling in a rip current.... dove in to save the boys and brought them to shore. Shortly afterwards, Schulze became caught in the undertow. Another man jumped into save Schulze but it was too late. Schulze died.... [Brought them to shore, but was himself caught in the undertow?? That's... rough.]

An Oregon City man just couldn't catch a break Friday. First he lost his job and then he went home to find his house on fire. Victor Gonzalez said there was a silver lining to getting fired Friday. "If I hadn't gotten fired from work, I wouldn't have come home, and I don't know how far the fire would've gotten. So I guess that's a good thing," he said.

A lost Soviet bomb from World War II has been found just outside the Berlin apartment of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, triggering a city-centre lockdown as bomb-disposal experts defused it. The 100-kilogram bomb was discovered just 10 centimetres below the sandy surface of a museum forecourt.

The body of a 3-year-old New Jersey girl was found in the Passaic River, just hours after her uncle left with her and told family members "to watch the 6 o'clock news tonight."

Two north Florida sheriff's deputies were fatally shot at a shooting range by a suspect who was later killed in an exchange of gunfire with deputies after he fled across the county line

A University of Georgia professor apparently shot and killed his wife and two other people at a community theater group's reunion Saturday, then dropped the couple's two children off at a neighbor's and fled.

The Italian authorities at the centre coordinating rescue operations in the province of L'Aquila after the earthquake on Monday morning confirmed the death, in a building that collapsed in the town bearing the same name, of a Romanian 8 year old boy, the fifth victim with Romanian citizenship besides the woman and the three-member family whose death was already reported by the Romanian authorities.

A federal judge has denied Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols' request for a special diet. Nichols had asked for a court order to force prison officials to provide him with a high fiber diet that includes raw vegetables.

Authorities have canceled school at all levels in Mexico City and the state of Mexico until further notice, and the government has shut most public and government activities in the area

has spread to Kansas and likely to New York City.... Wichita... a mix of human, pig and bird strains ... The Spanish flu pandemic, which killed at least 40 million people worldwide in 1918-19, also first struck otherwise healthy young adults.... Health officials are puzzled at why all U.S. victims have recovered while dozens stricken in Mexico died...

has declined in popularity in recent years thanks to the plethora of similar and easier-to-use services—not to mention the rise of social networks like MySpace that allow the same demographic to make equally horrific pages and try to pick each other up at the same time

A plane en route from New York to Tel Aviv was diverted to Boston after an Israeli citizen allegedly began banging on the cockpit door

Much of history is the tale of luxuries becoming necessities. ... But can things go the other way? The Pew Research Center is out with a poll today that seems to say they can. Whether this is a brief, recession-induced pause, or a real change, is not easy to say.

first time Microsoft has relied on virtualization to provide backward compatibility... directly from the Windows 7 desktop without having to first open a separate virtual machine window...

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano apologized to the country's largest veterans organization Friday for a report warning that right-wing extremist groups were trying to recruit disgruntled troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Napolitano met with the American Legion at its request for about 45 minutes in a private meeting. The group had called for an apology from her in a letter earlier this month. It was at least the third apology Napolitano has offered ever since the report was leaked to the media nearly two weeks ago, prompting a growing chorus of criticism -- including a small group of vocal conservative lawmakers calling for Napolitano's resignation.

"It was just a navigation mistake, the GPS went and the pilot got confused,"

abandoned their three children -- aged eight months to four years -- in a restaurant in Italy....

25-year-old Long Island woman was allegedly high on drugs Sunday night when she crashed her car.... injured [her] nine-year-old daughter... injured a cop who had the unenviable task of guarding her at a Bay Shore hospital... [and is giving a one-finger salute in the mugshot].

says she remembers Markoff as being "extremely brilliant. Our junior year in college before organic chemistry exams, we would study together. I had been studying all week. He would come in the morning, 9:00 in the library, sit down next to me, saying, 'I haven't opened a book, I don't know anything. Teach me something." ' Houston says Markoff was a serious partier. Still, she observed, "Everyone partied. But when he partied, he'd party. But he would also stay in a lot."

the Obama administration's attempt to justify a controversial "right-wing extremism" report by citing Timothy McVeigh, a counter-terrorism group has posted a video statement by a prominent Democrat investigator who contends the Oklahoma City bomb plot was hatched not by right-wingers but by Islamic jihadists.

US medical authorities expressed strong concern Friday about an unprecedented multi-strain swine flu outbreak that has killed at least 60 people in Mexico and infected seven people in the United States. "It's very obvious that we are very concerned. We've stood up emergency operation centers," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spokesman Dave Daigle told AFP.

The Oklahoma Department of Human Services (DHS) is notifying more than one million state residents that their personal data was stored on an unencrypted laptop that was stolen from an agency employee. The computer file contained the names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and home addresses of Oklahoma's Human Services' clients receiving benefits from programs such as Medicaid, child care assistance, nutrition aid and disability benefits

Kevin Roose managed to blend in during his single semester at Liberty University, attending lectures on the myth of evolution and the sin of homosexuality, and joining fellow students on a mission trip to evangelize partyers on spring break. Roose had transferred to the Virginia campus from Brown University in Providence, a famously liberal member of the Ivy League. His Liberty classmates knew about the switch, but he kept something more important hidden: He planned to write a book about his experience at the school founded by fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell.

UK's Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President Al Gore at a high profile global warming hearing on Friday April 24, 2009 at 10am in Washington. Monckton told Climate Depot that the Democrats rescinded his scheduled joint appearance at the House Energy and Commerce hearing on Friday. Monckton said he was informed that he would not be allowed to testify alongside Gore when his plane landed from England Thursday afternoon. "The House Democrats don't want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face...."

While the Internet has dramatically changed lives around the world, its full impact will only be realised when far more people and information go on-line, its founders said Wednesday. "The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past," said Tim Berners-Lee, one of the inventors of the World Wide Web, at a seminar on its future.

He is one of the first in the nation to seek leniency from a judge after U.S.A. Attorney General Eric Holder announced last month that federal agents will now target marijuana distributors only when they violate both federal and state laws. However, Holder didn't say how the new approach would affect pending cases, and federal prosecutors have recommended a five-year prison sentence for Lynch.

An ancient script that's defied generations of archaeologists has yielded some of its secrets to artificially intelligent computers. Computational analysis of symbols used 4,000 years ago by a long-lost Indus Valley civilization suggests they represent a spoken language. Some frustrated linguists thought the symbols were merely pretty pictures.... used between 2,600 and 1,900 B.C. in what is now eastern Pakistan and northwest India, belonged to a civilization as sophisticated as its Mesopotamian and Egyptian contemporaries. However, it left fewer linguistic remains. Archaeologists have uncovered about 1,500 unique inscriptions from fragments of pottery, tablets and seals. The longest inscription is just 27 signs long. ... used pattern-analyzing software running what's known as a Markov model, a computational tool used to map system dynamics. They fed the program sequences of four spoken languages: ancient Sumerian, Sanskrit and Old Tamil, as well as modern English. Then they gave it samples of four non-spoken communication systems: human DNA, Fortran, bacterial protein sequences and an artificial language.... When they seeded the program with fragments of Indus script, it returned with grammatical rules based on patterns of symbol arrangement. These proved to be moderately ordered, just like spoken languages. As for the meaning of the script, the program remained silent....

In flying to and from Iowa today, President Obama took two flights on Air Force One and four on Marine One. The press office at Andrews AFB wouldn't give me the fuel consumption numbers for the 747 that serves as Air Force One without the approval of the White House Press Office, which as I write this has yet to be given. But Boeing says its 747 burns about 5 gallons of fuel per mile. It's 895 miles from Washington to Des Moines, so a round trip brings the fuel consumption for the fixed-wing portion of the President's trip to 8,950 gallons.

announced Thursday that security forces had arrested the group's current leader, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. The news was a morale boost in Iraq, which has seen increased violence in recent weeks, including two bombings Thursday that killed dozens.

As emergency crews tended to the driver, police Sgt. Raul Ramirez told the ABC-7 crew from across the barrier to leave. Several people and half a dozen cars were also stopped on the eastbound shoulder. Darren continued to try to get information from the men in fatigues when the situation began to escalate. The sergeant jumped the barrier and told Darren to get in the truck (an ABC-7 news unit) and leave, then held Darren with his hands behind his back to the side of the truck belonging to a witness that was parked on the shoulder. "I'm not doing anything," Darren said repeatedly. Darren and Ric were handcuffed, read their Miranda rights and taken to the Westside Regional Command Center. They were released within a few minutes. The entire incident lasted about an hour.

Lawrence Summers, Director of the White House's National Economic Council, was caught dozing off during a meeting with credit card officials on Thursday.

Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell, the sixth man ever to walk on the moon, has a message for all citizens of Earth: We are not alone. "We are being visited," the 79-year-old grandfatherly "spacefarer" told 100 or so UFOlogists gathered at a National Press Club conference called by the Paradigm Research Group (motto: "It's not about lights in the sky; it's about lies on the ground"). "It is now time to put away this embargo of truth about the alien presence," said the astronaut who made the longest moonwalk in history. "I call upon our government to open up … and become a part of this planetary community that is now trying to take our proper role as a spacefaring civilization."

Gov. Brad Henry today applauded state senators for sustaining his veto of a bill that would have made it a crime for a scientist to perform any form of embryonic stem cell research. Senators voted 26-19 this morning to override his veto. Senators needed 32 votes to override it. The Republican-controlled Senate took up the override attempt minutes after the House voted to override the governor's action.

Astronomers searching for the building blocks of life in a giant dust cloud at the heart of the Milky Way have concluded that it tastes vaguely of raspberries. ... While they failed to find evidence for amino acids, they did find a substance called ethyl formate, the chemical responsible for the flavour of raspberries....

A Kit-Kat which supposedly contains an image of Jesus

morning people's circadian clocks can't resist the biological pressure to sleep, while night owls don't buckle as easily

bald eagle had swooped down and snatched her bag out of her hand... landed in the street and pulled the handbag open to check the contents.... Police... later found the bird hiding in a field and traced it back to its owner Ernst Koenig.... "It's a trained bird which got out into the wild. It's never had to find food for itself before and the woman's handbag was the same colour and shape as the bag its owner keeps his food in."

GeoCities had suffered a long and drawn-out battle with its health over the past decade. An antiquated service model and outdated technology are widely blamed for the struggle. An official cause of death, however, has yet to be determined. ... GeoCities was born as "Beverly Hills Internet" in the winter of 1995. Its parents, David Bohnett and John Rezner, wanted to create a virtual community that mimicked the real world, with pages hosted in "cyber cities" and other similarly nauseating concepts.

The Senate approved a bill Wednesday night to let voters decide if Oklahoma should make English its official language. House Joint Resolution 1042 now returns to the House to have the Senate amendments approved. The amended version of the bill passed the Senate 44-2 with no debate.

"Now programs with millions of lines of code are written by teams of programmers, none of whom knows the entire program; hence, no individual can predict the effect of a given command with absolute certainty since portions of programs may interact in unexpected, untested ways." That's what might have happened during an exercise in South Africa in 2007, when a robot anti-aircraft gun sprayed hundreds of rounds of cannon shell around its position, killing nine soldiers and injuring 14.

kicked her children out of the car in downtown White Plains and drove away on Sunday after they were bickering... 45-year-old mother let her 12-year-old daughter back in the car after she ran to catch up. A Good Samaritan picked up the crying 10-year-old and bought her ice cream while calling police.

The phone in the Parentes' 10th-floor hotel room rang just before midnight. By then, a mother and two daughters staying there had been beaten and suffocated by the man who answered the phone. Not long after taking that call -- from a college roommate of his older daughter's -- the father used a knife to commit suicide.

Rogers County authorities say a man charged with drunken driving showed up in court so drunk he had to be hospitalized. ... blood alcohol level measured .31 — nearly four times the amount considered legally drunk.

Although the state faces a $900 million budget hole, the House approved a measure Tuesday that would drop the state's income tax rate from 5.5 percent to 4 percent.

Fidel Castro says President Barack Obama "misinterpreted" his brother Raul's remarks regarding the United States and bristled at the suggestion that Cuba should free political prisoners or cut taxes on dollars people send to the island.

Apple -- on the verge of celebrating its 1 billionth App Store download -- has pulled a controversial application called "Baby Shaker" from its virtual store shelves that generated public outrage. ... a game that involved shaking the iPhone vigorously to make a crying baby on the screen stop crying. Two red X's appear over the baby's eyes when you "win."

Today Linden Lab announced more concrete plans for separating out adult content from the rest of Second Life. Originally discussed last month, the plans began by soliciting community feedback for definitions of adult content and, eventually, filtering that out of search results and locating it on a separate virtual continent from most of Second Life's activities. The specific plans now include definitions of PG, Mature, and Adult content for ratings and preferences, a more rigorous age verification system, either through payment information or the Aristotle system added in 2007, and the launch of a new viewer with more controls.

The base for the filtering is a new three-tiered rating system that will offer the ability to divide Second Life into Adult, Mature and PG regions. Search results will also be filtered according to the new ratings system. Adult-oriented content will be migrated from the Second Life mainland to a newly created continent.

incredible pictures from Nasa's new telescope show a galaxy of millions.... Scientists believe it could unveil the first gripping evidence of small, rocky planets like the Earth with the right conditions to support life....

Troubled by the possible shuttering of his hometown paper, Sen. John Kerry reached out to the Boston Globe on Tuesday, then called for Senate hearings to address the woes of the nation's print media. "America's newspapers are struggling to survive, and while there will be serious consequences in terms of the lives and financial security of the employees involved, including hundreds at the Globe, there will also be serious consequences for our democracy where diversity of opinion and strong debate are paramount," Mr. Kerry said. [Also seeks to bolster the blacksmith industry....]

Scientists have found the first skeleton of a land-dwelling relative of seals, sea lions, and walruses. The 20-million- to 24-million-year-old Arctic fossil sports webbed feet instead of flippers, providing a long-sought glimpse of what such animals looked like before they dove into the sea.

David Kellermann, the acting chief financial officer of money-losing mortgage giant Freddie Mac, was found dead at his home early Wednesday in what police said was an apparent suicide.... Some neighbors said Kellermann had lost a noticeable amount of weight under the strain of the job, and some said they suggested to him he should quit to avoid the stress.... was named acting chief financial officer last September when the government seized control of the company and ousted top executives. Freddie Mac lost more than $50 billion last year, and the government has pumped in $45 billion to keep the company afloat.... death is the latest in a string of blows to Freddie Mac, which owns or guarantees about 13 million mortgages and us the No. 2 mortgage finance company after sibling Fannie Mae. The company has been criticized for financing risky mortgage loans that fueled the real estate bubble, and its first government-appointed CEO, David Moffett, resigned last month after six months on the job. As the company's financial chief, Kellermann was working on the company's first quarter financial report, due at the end of May, with federal regulators closely overseeing the company's books and signing off on major decisions.... Kellermann was neither a target nor a subject of the investigation and had not been under law enforcement scrutiny....

Tuesday marked the official unveiling of Bluetooth Core Specification Version 3.0 + High Speed (HS), the next iteration of the personal area networking technology. The revision aims to improve the speed of data transmission by harnessing the power of 802.11 connections, borrowing part of their bandwidth to transmit large files.

The Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century. There are no sunspots, very few solar flares - and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time. The observations are baffling astronomers... Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity....

stunning images of Saturn taken by Nasa's Cassini spacecraft show the ringed planet, its moons and rings in the most incredible detail yet.

Plans by Internet service providers to deliver targeted adverts to consumers based on their Web searches threaten online privacy and should be opposed, the founder of the Web said Wednesday.

In an interview broadcast Monday on the CBC, Ms. Napolitano attempted to justify her call for stricter border security on the premise that "suspected or known terrorists" have entered the U. S. across the Canadian border, including the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack. ...

In a release Tuesday night following the interview, she called Canada a "close ally and an important partner" and said she was simply misunderstood. "I know that the September 11th hijackers did not come through Canada to the United States," she said in the statement. "There are other instances, however, when suspected terrorists have attempted to enter our country from Canada to the United States. Some of these are well-known to the public -- such as the Millennium Bomber -- while others are not due to security reasons."

Lawrence went to the restroom, leaving her purse on the table, and the man snatched it, Boss' mother said. But the 5-foot-10, 250-pound Boss was right behind him as he jumped over a 5-foot fence behind the Float. She felt her leg snap as she hit the ground but grabbed the man's shirt, spinning him around and causing him to fall, Westerman said. Five men nearby saw the man fall and pinned him before he could get away.

handshake with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez "was not helpful" and could lead "foes" of the U.S. to "think they're dealing with a weak president."

As a senator, Barack Obama led the charge last year to pass a bill allowing black farmers to seek new discrimination claims against the Agriculture Department. Now he is president, and his administration so far is acting like it wants the potentially budget-busting lawsuits to go away. The change isn't sitting well with black farmers who thought they'd get a friendlier reception from Obama after years of resistance from President George W. Bush.

In the first independent analysis, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that President Obama's budget would rack up massive deficits even after the economy recovers, forcing the nation to borrow nearly $9.3 trillion over the next decade.

The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of "enhanced techniques" of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) -- including the use of waterboarding -- caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles. According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack -- which KSM called the "Second Wave"-- planned " 'to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into' a building in Los Angeles."

Gov. David Paterson, who is legally blind, used his response to last night's LCA show to hit back at an 1199/GNYHA TV ad released during the budget battle that featured a blind man in a wheelchair slamming the governor's proposed healthcare spending cuts. Paterson was pushed onto the stage in a wheelchair. He was wearing sunglasses, a white shirt and a silver necklace over his tuxedo pants - an outfit similiar (minus the tux) to the one worn in the ad by 52-year-old Juan Pietri when he asked the governor: "Why are you doing this to me?"

Boston cops on Monday night branded a 22-year-old med student engaged to be married as the "Craigslist Killer" who murdered a pretty New York masseuse and attacked at least two other escorts in hotels.

Prosecutors here said on Tuesday that investigators had discovered a semi-automatic handgun, ammunition, and plastic ties in the home of the 22-year-old medical student accused of killing one woman and attacking another who had advertised massage services on Craigslist.

In California, more allegations are surfacing against the Sunday school teacher charged with killing an 8-year old girl. Melissa Huckaby is now accused of kidnapping and drugging another little girl in the same area two months before Sandra Cantu vanished.

She is described as a straight-laced preacher's granddaughter, a member of her high school dance team who never got into trouble. She is passionately devoted to her 5-year-old daughter. She has no serious criminal history, just a couple of petty thefts, and no violent mental illnesses that several of her closest relatives know of, just depression. It leaves those who know her to wonder: If she is responsible, did Huckaby have a sudden psychotic break from a hidden mental illness and go crazy, raping an 8-year-old playmate of her daughter, killing her and throwing away her body in a suitcase?

Police said a 23-year-old man is in stable condition after he pretended that he was falling off a bridge over the Minnesota River, then actually fell off the bridge. ... had been drinking....

The thousands of taxpayers who gathered in several locations around the Granite State on Tax Day didn't even know what they were protesting, according to the state's top Democratic Party official. "They looked like they lost their minds," said Ray Buckley, Chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party of the protesters. [Or have minds a Democrat can't comprehend? What, protest taxes??]

Reinforcing the African Union peacekeeping force already in Somalia will be the topic of the day Wednesday while the main international donor meeting starts Thursday. There have been other meetings to discuss how Somalia can be reconstructed, but this is the first one where donors will be expected to make financial pledges or offer equipment to help reconstruct Somalia's security apparatus.

Animal rights activist Daniel Andreas San Diego became the first U.S. terror suspect on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list

Add top-secret plans for the expensive, much-delayed Joint Strike Fighter to the list of victims of alleged Chinese and Russian hack attacks, or so the Wall Street Journal reports. The paper cites "current and former government officials familiar with the attacks," and claims that the Air Force's air traffic control system has also been compromised.

A woman was paralyzed and two other people were injured during a turbulent flight from Houston that arrived here early Saturday morning. The woman, 47, was using the plane's bathroom when the aircraft encountered turbulence and descendent rapidly, throwing her against the ceiling.... suffered a fractured neck....

planet known as Gliese 581d has a lot more in common with Earth than astronomers first thought. ... New measurements of the planet's orbit place it firmly in a region where conditions would be right for liquid water, and thus life as we know it.... orbits its host in 66.8 days, putting it just inside the cool star's habitable zone....

Thanks to exponential increases in computer power — which is roughly doubling every two years — robots are getting smarter, more capable, more like flesh-and-blood people. Matching human skills and intelligence, however, is an enormously difficult — perhaps impossible — challenge. Nevertheless, robots guided by their own computer "brains'' now can pick up and peel bananas, land jumbo jets, steer cars through city traffic, search human DNA for cancer genes, play soccer or the violin, find earthquake victims or explore craters on Mars.

Crow v Crocus

J.J. Abrams had come up with a tremendous idea, inspired no doubt by the success of Batman Begins and Casino Royale, both of which had reinvigorated tired franchises by recasting and going back to basics. The result is not only by far the best of the 11 Star Trek movies, it must rank as the outstanding prequel of all time.

The Supreme Court today sharply limited the power of police to search a suspect's car after making an arrest, acknowledging that the decision changes a rule that law enforcement has relied on for nearly 30 years [Note circular logic of dissenters]

why is a local transportation agency painting crooked lines on the road on purpose? The Virginia Department of Transportation says it's part of a safety campaign to get drivers to slow down in a high pedestrian and bicycle area.

Google Images can be a great tool when searching for pictures on the Web, but the feature is imperfect, to say the least. If you're searching for "Paris," for example, are you looking for the City of Lights, or a Hilton? The ever-restless folks at Google, however are thankfully always looking for ways to improve their services, and the latest addition to Google Labs, Google Similar Images Search, is an interesting new feature aimed at improving image results.

A feature known as Similar Images uses a picture rather than text to find other matching images. Timeline presents information already available in Google News but organised and displayed chronologically. Alongside these features is a new version of Google Labs, in which users can take a peek at what its thousands of engineers are working on.

If you're thinking of upgrading your IT setup, I would highly recommend a Mac, even if you need to run a PC. Same logic applies for laptops in your organization. Even during a recession, the productivity gained by giving your employees computers that just work can't be underestimated. [Yeah, sure]

One of the two projects, News Timeline, lets people browse history through Google's eyes, with a sliding chronological framework that draws information from newspapers, Wikipedia, and other sources. The other, Similar Images lets people search for images that look like one they've already found.

The singer who shocked the world! NO, Susan has NOT passed away, despite what some idiots are posting in the comments. I'm not normally into this kind of music, but she has a beautiful voice. Other YouTube vids have been squashed to 4:3, so I have uploaded my own copy.

Today, after years of coordination with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, Congressman John Sullivan announced that he has secured a permanent ICE Investigations office for Eastern Oklahoma.

It was dangerously irresponsible for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, speaking to a crowd of tax protesters, to suggest his state might want to consider secession from the United States, writes columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. Doesn't he know there are folks on the fringe who just might take him seriously? Those of us who do not live on that fringe can only mourn this new reality in which ideology supersedes country. [Or, maybe it's just beyond your comprehension, Lenny?]

lab mice bred to develop breast cancer had a significantly lower risk of breast cancer if fed the human equivalent of a handful of walnuts a day. "Walnuts are better than cookies, french fries or potato chips when you need a snack,"

Phoenix police arrested a suspect in the fatal shooting of a man who was operating a state police photo radar unit that was parked on a north Phoenix freeway to catch speeders

A Texas man has been charged with intoxication manslaughter in the Saturday drownings of four children who were in his car when it veered into a Houston bayou.... A fifth child who was in the car, a 3-year-old girl, was missing ...believed to have drowned also.... three were [his] children, and the other two were friends of the family....

[Photo]

"We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised."

Famed mathematician Stephen Hawking was rushed to a hospital Monday and was seriously ill.... has been fighting a chest infection for several weeks...

Soap is an American sitcom that originally ran on ABC from 1977 to 1981. The show was created as a parody of daytime soap operas, presented as a weekly half-hour prime time comedy. Similar to a soap opera, the show's story was presented in a serial format and included melodramatic plot elements such as amnesia, alien abduction, demonic possession, murder and kidnapping.

White House senior adviser David Axelrod says President Barack Obama spent about a month pondering whether to release Bush-era memos about CIA interrogation techniques, and considered it "a weighty decision." "He thought very long and hard about it, consulted widely, because there were two principles at stake," Axelrod said . "One is … the sanctity of covert operations … and keeping faith with the people who do them, and the impact on national security, on the one hand. And the other was the law and his belief in transparency." [Yeah, sure.]

OAKLAND PARK, Fla -- A small plane sputtered and dove into a house shortly after taking off from a local airport Friday morning, slicing the home down the middle into two charred pieces. The pilot was killed. ... The owner's nephew barely escaped the catastrophe, leaving just before the aircraft hit to visit his aunt.

There was almost no pomp and circumstance to welcome the 19 crew members of the Maersk Alabama to the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center yesterday morning -- at least none visible to the public. Instead, the courageous mariners who survived a pirate attack on the Indian Ocean last week spent their first full day on U.S. soil eating a buffet-style breakfast of eggs, bacon and hash browns -- and answering questions from the horde of reporters....

A giant set of golden arches outside a McDonald's in eastern Arizona toppled in high winds Wednesday, crushing a Naperville couple's Chevy Trailblazer as they sat inside the parked vehicle. Retirees Russell and Carolyn Janke suffered multiple injuries....

[Original article unavailable. This is a Google search on Mass Fatalities.]

Very few people think of Illinois and its midwestern neighbors as the sites of such disasters. But, records of earthquakes that have either occurred or been felt in the past indicate that Illinois may be just as susceptible to these catastrophes as any other place on the globe.

findings of a two-year study on the impact of a 7.7 magnitude earthquake on states in the New Madrid Seismic Zone... areas within the NMSZ would experience widespread and catastrophic physical damage, negative social impacts, and economic losses. ... total economic impact of a series of NMSZ earthquakes is likely to constitute the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States. ...

Five people were arrested Thursday, including an Oklahoma City firefighter, on allegations of using, manufacturing and distributing anabolic steroids.... [Great deer-in-the-headlights mugshot]

The state senate overwhelmingly approved a bill, 37-9, that authorizes the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry to issue aerial hunting permits to holders of commercial big game licenses. Those opposed to the measure cited concerns for safety.

New Madrid appears to be cold and dying. ... thermally New Madrid is surprisingly similar to other areas of the eastern United States.... future earthquakes will occur somewhere else when the New Madrid system "shuts down." Once this happens, it may be a very long time — thousands of years or longer — before New Madrid becomes active again. "Although we don't know when the New Madrid fault system will shut down, it may be dying today,"

A Swedish court today found the Pirate Bay guilty of copyright infringement, otherwise known as pirating (surprise!). With all the news lately of pirates capturing ships off the Somali coast, it's easy to forget that online pirates are out there as well.

Looks like Pat's son, Monty Paulsen, is gearing up for a 2012 run for the White House. Here he hits the campaign trail to find the pulse of American voters.

"There is at least the possibility that in man at the present time we can observe a significant evolutionary change, inasmuch as, in many persons, the wisdom teeth fail to cut the gums and are consequently for such person's vestigial organs. If this change establishes itself generally, man will only have altogether twenty-eight teeth. He will thus have gone farther along a path already traversed some little way by his recent ancestors" STR, P460 "The continuation of such biologic adjustments is illustrated by the evolution of teeth in the higher Urantia mammals; these attained to thirty-six in man's remote ancestors, and then began an adaptative readjustment toward thirty-two in the dawn man and his near relatives. Now the human species is slowing gravitating toward twenty-eight. The process of evolution is still actively and adaptatively in progress on this planet" UB, P737

Georgetown University says it covered over the monogram "IHS"--symbolizing the name of Jesus Christ—because it was inscribed on a pediment on the stage where President Obama spoke at the university on Tuesday and the White House had asked Georgetown to cover up all signs and symbols there. [Only the beginning....]

A man and woman accused of having sex in a Wal-Mart parking lot face a charge of crime against nature Wednesday.... told police that they were having sex and [he] gave her $20 for oral sex.... [Mugshots: sad cases]

When two Domino's Pizza employees filmed a prank in the restaurant's kitchen, they decided to post it online. In a few days, thanks to the power of social media, they ended up with felony charges, more than a million disgusted viewers, and a major company facing a public relations crisis.... prepared sandwiches for delivery while putting cheese up his nose, nasal mucus on the sandwiches, and violating other health-code standards while a fellow employee provided narration....

Canada's ambassador to Afghanistan says some of the men who sit in the Afghan parliament are furious that a controversial new law stifling the rights of women was passed without their input. As Canadians question the human cost of a military mission in a country where rights often seem to be regressing, Ron Hoffman says he is encouraged by the outpouring of frustration he heard during a meeting this week with local politicians in Kabul.

Thousands of people rallied at the state Capitol as part of a National Tax Day Tea Party to protest excessive government spending. Thousands Attend OKC 'Tea Party' OKC Tea Party Web Site Join Our u local Community Get Wireless Alerts! Capitol Patrol officers estimated close to 4,000 people gathered Wednesday on the south steps of the state Capitol. Similar events were held in communities across the state.

Oklahomans upset with the federal government's economic stimulus funds may vent their frustration on the day state and federal taxes are due. A rally to protest the $787 billion federal economic stimulus package is scheduled for today on the south steps of the state Capitol. Organizers call the rally the Oklahoma Tax Day Tea Party

Holding signs bearing phrases such as "We the People, Not 'I' the Government" and "Obama, Pelosi, Reid, The Axis of Taxes," protesters gathered Wednesday at the Centennial Park in downtown Bartlesville as part of the nationwide National Tax Day Tea Party demonstrations — numbering nearly 800 across the country — protesting government spending, taxes and growth.

Somali pirates vowed to hunt down American ships and kill their sailors and French forces detained 11 other brigands in a high-seas raid as tensions ratcheted up Wednesday off Africa's volatile eastern coast. Pirates fired grenades and automatic weapons at an American freighter loaded with food aid but the ship escaped and was heading to Kenya under U.S. Navy guard.

A couple of the coolest gadgets from this year's CES, Sony's OLED-based Walkman and Samsung's slim Blu-ray Disk player, are now on their way with availability from April.

Sony Japan has finally acknowledged the existence of the X-Series Walkman by noting that Japanese consumers will be able to purchase a NW-X1050 (16gb; 40,000y) or a NW-X1060 (32gb; 50,000y) on April 25th. The Japanese Touchscreen Walkman will have the ability to receive broadcast TV signals.

The dominant media player of the '00s (the iPod) still hasn't integrated with wireless headphones. Maybe it should take a quick lesson from the dominant media player of the '80s: the Walkman.

The 3-inch OLED touchscreen has 240 x 432 resolution. The Walkmans will have an audio player, One-Seg TV tuner, and FM tuner for basic use, but the fun really starts when you use the built-in Wi-Fi web browser, including a YouTube interface. The players support MP3 and AAC files, so your unprotected iTunes library might have a new home.

Gov. David Paterson introduced a bill Thursday to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, comparing the effort to the fight for the abolition of slavery. Paterson, whose job approval rating has plunged below 30 percent, is making a political gamble that he can ride the momentum of other states that have recently allowed the practice, and it's unclear how the legislation will play in New York.

Pacific Gas & Electric ... said that it will seek approval from regulators to purchase 200 megawatts worth of solar energy delivered from stealth space solar power company Solaren over 15 years

Satellite solar cells would capture the sun's rays 24 hours a day, without fear of cloudy mornings or dark nights. The orbiters then convert this solar power to radio-frequencies that transmit to ground stations in Fresno County, Calif. Once received, the radio energy would change into electricity and flow into the grid. [WHAT could go WRONG?]

AN architect has painted his entire house, and everything in it, bright blue.... has outraged locals in the quiet neighbourhood of tree lined Klagenfurt, Austria....

A Norwegian man faces a heavy fine and a driving ban after police caught him having sex with his girlfriend while speeding on the motorway.... "It was veering from one side to the other because the woman was sitting on the man's lap while he was driving and doing the act, shall we say.... He couldn't see much because her back was in the way.... Why they did it on a highway with such a high risk we don't know."

When the economy started to squeeze the Wojtowicz family, they gave up vacation cruises, restaurant meals, new clothes and high-tech toys to become 21st-century homesteaders. Now Patrick Wojtowicz, 36, his wife Melissa, 37, and daughter Gabrielle, 15, raise pigs and chickens for food on 40 acres near Alma, Mich. They're planning a garden and installing a wood furnace. They disconnected the satellite TV and radio, ditched their dishwasher and a big truck and started buying clothes at resale shops. "As long as we can keep decreasing our bills, we can keep making less money," Patrick says. "We're not saying this is right for everybody, but it's right for us."

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano apologized Thursday after some veterans groups were offended by a department report about right-wing extremism. The report said extremist groups may try to attract veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also said extremists also may use the recession and the election of the nation's first African-American president to recruit members. The American Legion was among those who objected to the report's mention of veterans.

On the day of its first foreign policy discussions with Mexico, the Obama administration remains mum on whether it will honor a campaign promise to alter a Bush administration policy establishing a massive fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, including in federally protected areas. [Yeah, sure]

"And I really do want to stress to the veterans out there watching this today, that report did not, and we do not mean to suggest that veterans as a whole are at risk of becoming violent extremists...." [But we'll be WATCHING....]

Social networks such as Twitter may blunt people's sense of morality, claim brain scientists. ... A study suggests rapid-fire news updates and instant social interaction are too fast for the 'moral compass' of the brain to process. [Oh, my!]

A 13-year-old boy who police say was caught red-handed a block away was accused on Tuesday of robbing a bank in Peoria. The unidentified boy was charged with felony armed robbery in juvenile court, accused of threatening a teller with a gun and demanding cash.

Officers recovered a vast cache of weapons including an anti-aircraft gun capable of firing 800 shots per minute, five rifles, a grenade and part of a grenade launcher. They believe the haul belongs to a group allegedly linked to the powerful Beltan Leyva drug cartel.

How often have you noticed the numbers 11:11, 12:12, 10:10, 22:22, 12:34, 2:22, 3:33, 4:44 or 5:55 popping up all over the place? ... Millions of folks all around the world are now seeing these amazing 11:11 prompts.... it's become a major phenomenon.... These 11:11 Wake-Up Calls on your digital clocks, mobile phones, VCR's and microwaves are the "trademark" prompts of a group of just 1,111 fun-loving Spirit Guardians, or Angels, and the 11:11 prompt is their way of using our innate ability for pattern recognition to let us know that they are here.... Our earthly 1,111 Spirit Guardians, often called "Midwayers," have been assisting folks of all walks of life for many centuries. ...

11:11 is a pre-encoded trigger placed into our cellular memory banks prior to our descent into matter which, when activated, signifies that our time of completion is near. This refers to the completion of duality. When the 11:11 appears to you, it is your wake-up call. A direct channel opens up between you and the Invisible. When this happens, it is time to reflect on whatever you are doing for a moment and Look Larger. A transfer is in position. You can enter the Greater Reality if you wish pray or meditate and seed your future and also, you can be seeded by the Invisible. You can ask for help in some specific area of your life or simply listen quietly and receive a revelation.

You cannot stand on the outside of this door and pretend to know what is on the other side. You must live the truth, then you will see the glory of all that resides within. I live within this space. Heal yourself. Walk through this door on your 11:11.

It's possible you have prominent "11," or "22" (11+11=22) in your comprehensive natal and, or timing charts. Perhaps you are transiting through some key related timing. Or, it could be purely a subconscious attachment to the numbers for any number of reasons. For example, maybe years ago during an important event, even viewing a particular circumstance in a movie or TV show, you happened to look at the time and saw 11:11. The number was burned into your subconscious and your unconscious now associates a particular event with that time/number. All memories, consciously known or not, are stored in your subconscious. Therefore, this is a very personal issue you're asking about, which would require a lot of analysis.

Numerologists believe that events linked to the time 11:11 appear more often than can be explained by chance or coincidence. This belief is related to the concept of synchronicity. Other authors believe it is an auspicious sign, and others that it signals a spirit presence. The belief that it has mystical powers has been adopted by believers in New Age philosophies. However, skeptics say that Uri Geller's examples of 11:11 phenomenon in world events are examples of post-hoc reasoning and confirmation bias.

Dogs and small children who share similar social environments appear to understand human gestures in comparable ways.... 3-year-olds rely on the direction of the index finger to locate a hidden object, whereas 2-year-olds and dogs respond instead to the protruding body part, even if the index finger is pointing in the opposite direction....

A pod of dolphins has saved a Chinese ship from being hijacked by Somali pirates, it has been claimed. ... China Radio International said thousands of dolphins blocked suspected pirate ships as they raced towards a Chinese ship in the Gulf of Aden. As the dolphins leapt out of the water, the pirates turned back.

The legend is that the great rulers of Canaan, the ancient land of Israel, were all men. But a recent dig by Tel Aviv University archaeologists at Tel Beth-Shemesh uncovered possible evidence of a mysterious female ruler.... an unusual ceramic plaque of a goddess in female dress, suggesting that a mighty female "king" may have ruled the city.... may be an artistic representation of the "Mistress of the Lionesses," a female Canaanite ruler who was known to have sent distress letters to the Pharaoh in Egypt reporting unrest and destruction in her kingdom.

new microscopy technique to watch the growth of individual neurons in the microscopic roundworm.... They asked, "How long should a worm's neurons be?" And the worms fired back, "Long enough to reach their targets..." Rather than growing like the branches of a tree — extending outward — certain neurons work backward from their destination, dropping anchor and stretching their dendrites behind them as they crawl away.

new instrument that is able to track the transition between the relatively gentle winds of Earth's atmosphere and the more violent flows of charged particles in space... help pinpoint the so-called edge of space... space begins 118 km above Earth...

could be used to build carbon-neutral homes of the future to help combat climate change and boost the rural economy... a unique housing project to develop the use of hemp-lime construction materials in the UK. Hemp-lime is a lightweight composite building material made of fibres from the fast growing plant, bound together using a lime-based adhesive.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has thrown his support behind a growing movement to rein in the federal government by resurrecting the 10th Amendment, which reserves to states "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution." "I believe that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state," Perry said. "That is why I am here today to express my unwavering support for efforts all across our country to reaffirm the states' rights affirmed by the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution...."

a man fathered 14 children with 13 women and owes more than $530,000 in unpaid child support.... jailed Thursday.... hasn't made a support payment in six years....

Two Democrats and a Republican — or perhaps I should say three "Democrats" in the Senate, have moved the ball further down the court to controlling and shutting down the Internet. What?! That's right. Senate Bill 773, the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 written by Jay Rockefeller, D-W. Va.; Bill Nelson, D-Fla.; and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, would give the president and the Commerce Department unlimited power to declare an emergency and pull the plug.

"It's like talking to another human. We found no evidence of anything mystical." [Surprise!]

It's Easter weekend and Britain is stocking up on chocolate eggs and hot cross buns, but elsewhere in the world there are some extremely wacky traditions going on...

Caricatures of flame warriors

Text messaging graphic pictures of yourself could soon be legal for teens in Vermont. Lawmakers there are considering a bill that would make it legal for teenagers 18 and under to exchange explicit photos and videos of themselves — an act that's come to be known by teens as "sexting." Under the current law, teenagers could be prosecuted as sex offenders if they get caught sending graphic sexual images of themselves, even if it was consensual.

IS this the filthiest fast-food joint in Australia? Countless discarded brown paper bags and burger wrappers lay strewn across the floor, piled up in trampled heaps around the tables and chairs. Abandoned soft drinks, squashed chips and other rubbish cover the table tops as diners sit eating amidst the detritus. Welcome to McDonald's on Hindley St.

advertisement for Burger King's chili-flavored "Texican" burger that has run in Europe shows a small wrestler dressed in a cape resembling a Mexican flag. The wrestler teams up with a lanky American cowboy twice his height to illustrate the cross-border blend of flavors. "The taste of Texas with a little spicy Mexican," a narrator's voice says. The much-taller cowboy boosts the wrestler up to reach high shelves and clean tall windows, while the Mexican helps the cowboy open a jar. Mexico's ambassador to Spain said Monday he has written a letter to Burger King's offices in that nation objecting to the ad and asking that it be removed. Jorge Zermeno told Radio Formula that the ads "improperly use the stereotyped image of a Mexican." [As opposed to the proper use of the stereotyped image of a Mexican??]

A [69yo] man died Monday, days after he was stabbed in a swordfight with the grandson of a woman who was also fatally stabbed when she tried to intervene in the fight.... [77yo man] also died as a result of stab wounds after the fight early Thursday morning, but police were not initially sure which of the men had stabbed her.

77-year-old woman suffered a fatal stab wound while trying to break up a sword fight

A tragedy thankfully didn't turn into a disaster Sunday when a passenger successfully landed a small airplane at Southwest Florida International Airport after the pilot had a seizure 20 minutes after takeoff. The pilot died before the plane landed.

With the nation's fiscal health in the tank, homegrown marijuana operations have soared by 60 percent. Since Oct. 1, the Drug Enforcement Administration has broken up eight hydroponic pot-growing set-ups around the state -- with five in the Big Apple. That compares with five for all of the previous fiscal year. Growing marijuana hydroponically -- in water -- is a lucrative business, said John Gilbride, head of the DEA's New York office. It is far more potent than the regular stuff -- with a pound going for about $5,000 on the street. A pound of grass smuggled in from Mexico goes for $400 to $1,500.

As much as they could, anyway, America's first family tried to blend in at the 11 a.m. Easter service at the historic St. John's Episcopal Church and take another step toward full-fledged membership in the city they are calling home for at least the next four years. But for the Obamas, even something as simple as going to church can be a political and logistical headache. [Did they ask that the symbols of Christianity be covered up?]

U.S. Navy special forces shot dead three Somali pirates on a lifeboat off Somalia and freed American cargo ship captain Richard Phillips on Sunday in a dramatic end to a five-day standoff

A leading female Afghan politician was shot dead yesterday after leaving a provincial council meeting in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, which her colleagues had begged her not to attend. Sitara Achakzai was attacked by two gunmen as she arrived at her home in a rickshaw - a vehicle colleagues said she deliberately chose to use to avoid attracting attention.

During his trip to Europe last week, President Obama announced that the US will host a global meeting this year to address the threat of nuclear weapons. The president called for reinvigorated international institutions to combat the prospect of nuclear terrorism and reverse nuclear weapons proliferation. He agreed to new negotiations with Russia to reduce both countries' nuclear arsenals. These efforts should be made. However, Mr. Obama also announced that the US must "seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." This is a goal that will undermine global nuclear security.

What America needs, of course, is defense against nuclear weapons, in addition to nuclear deterrent. Nuclear weapons are dangerous if they can be delivered to one's own soil, by missile attack or by terrorist stealth. Such dangers are a great argument for missile defense, and for increased homeland security and counter-terrorism measures. ... Obama can dream of a world without nuclear weapons, but it is not a good idea in the real world. ....

Minutes ago, Twitter confirmed that they have successfully closed the hole that allowed this worm to spread. You're safe to visit Twitter profiles again :)

A worm apparently infected Twitter on Saturday. The worm may originate with the StalkDaily.com site, and Twitter warned people against visiting the site or linking to it. "If you have been locked out of your acct due to the StalkDaily issue, pls do a p/w reset; we may have reset your p/w for safety,"

"I frankly don't understand all the brouhaha lately from Congress and even from some of my colleagues about referring to foreign law...." [Oh, nothing. Just a little matter of CONSTITUTIONAL LAW!]

At least 9 people were killed and more than 20 were wounded, Saturday, when a suicide bomber targeted members of U.S.-allied Sunni militiamen. The explosion is raising questions about the capacity of Iraqi forces to maintain security.

PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy ordered the rescue mission off the Somali coast that ended in tragedy when a young French yachtsman was killed as commandos stormed a vessel being held by pirates, releasing his wife and three-year-old son. For the first time yesterday, details emerged of an extraordinary rescue operation piloted from the Elysée Palace. It involved three French warships, a German frigate and the airdrop of dozens of French commandos some 400 miles off the African coast.

A U.S.-owned, Italian-flagged tugboat reported hijacked in the Gulf of Aden has 10 Italian citizens among its 16-member crew, according to NATO alliance officials on a warship in the region.

now that the CIA has started to declassify top secret programs developed at Area 51, former military officers and engineers are beginning to shed some light on the enigmatic airfield and give the UFOlogists some new information to consider. ... a super-secret spy plane ... "Area 51 was the most boring place I ever worked." No aliens, no spacecraft from far-flung planets, no underground passageways....

Added Monday were nine more members, including the Rev. Sharon Watkins, former Bartlesville clergywoman

It's not exactly a religious-art brouhaha of "Piss Christ" proportions, but a painting that uses popular cartoon characters to parody Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" is causing a bit of a stir in Old Town San Diego. And just in time for Easter weekend. "The Gathering," a new painting by artist Glen Tarnowski, uses Looney Tunes characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Marvin the Martian and Road Runner to stand in for Jesus and his disciples in da Vinci's famous 15th century fresco.

David Lance "Dave" Arneson (October 1, 1947 — April 7, 2009) was an American game designer best known for co-developing the first published role-playing game (RPG), Dungeons & Dragons, with Gary Gygax, in the early 1970s. Arneson's early work was fundamental to the development of the genre, developing the concept of the RPG using devices now considered to be archetypical, such as adventuring in "dungeons", using a neutral judge, and having conversations with imaginary characters to develop the storyline.

MENA, Ark. — The sirens sounded three times across this western Arkansas hamlet, and residents watched several funnel clouds pass harmlessly over the town. The fourth siren was for another twister that ended up being a killer. ... At least three people were killed, at least 30 others injured and 600 homes were damaged or destroyed. ...

Amidst backlash over Time Warner Cable's tentative plan for a 40GB broadband cap, the company said this week that it will offer an additional 100GB tier for heavy users. Pricing for this "super tier" has not been revealed. [Yes, we can, too, fight the rising tides! Sure we can!]

I, like many people, have been subscribing to Internet connection services since the days of 300 baud modems. Then I upgraded to 14.4k, 36.6k, 56k, DSL, and now cable. Unfortunately, due to where I am living today, I'm stuck on 3 Mbit Verizon DSL service, which is often running at less than 1 Mbit. Thankfully, my service doesn't have a download cap on it--at least not yet anyway.

syn·ec·do·che [si-nek-duh-kee] -- noun Rhetoric. a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special, as in ten sail for ten ships or a Croesus for a rich man.

The regional chain In-N-Out Burger has held its own against giants Burger King and McDonald's by stressing employee retention

Apparently an increasing number of young people enjoy "smoking" crushed Smarties candy. They inhale the candy dust into the mouth and then exhale, producing what looks like thick smoke. (Above is just one of many video demos on YouTube.) Guess what? It's generally a bad idea.

Comedic actress Nora Dunn has frequently played acerbic character roles in films and TV as foils to generally likeable leads.

Hell in a Handbag Productions is thrilled to present a benefit staged reading featuring Hollywood's legendary eye-popping, scenery chewing film divas of all time Miss Joan Crawford and Miss Gloria Swanson in the roles that made them fabulous! See Handbag Artistic Director David Cerda and acclaimed actress and Saturday Night Live alumni Nora Dunn take on Mildred Pierce and Sunset Boulevard as only they can.

Also of note is the supporting work of Nora Dunn as television journalist Adriana Cruz, a headline-chasing nightmare version of CNN's Christiane Amanpour....

I am troubled that once again the Obama administration has decided to invoke the state secrets privilege in a case challenging the previous administration's alleged misconduct. [But about anything the Obama administration does, secrecy is fine, right?]

[Photo of shameless fool in action]

[Salman Ibrahim in meeting with Obama - graphic]

[comparative graphic]

[graphic]

An al-Qaeda cell was days away from carrying out an "Easter spectacular" of co-ordinated suicide bomb attacks on shopping centres in Manchester, police believe.

A suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden truck into a wall around a police headquarters in northern Iraq on Friday, killing five American soldiers and two Iraqi policemen in the single deadliest attack against U.S. forces this year, the U.S. military and Iraqi police said. A sixth American soldier and 17 Iraqi policemen were also wounded in the blast that took place near the national police headquarters in southwestern Mosul—Iraq's third-largest city and al-Qaida's last urban stronghold.

[Graphic]

DEARBORN, Mich. — A student fatally shot a female classmate before turning the gun on himself Friday in an apparent murder-suicide that prompted a lockdown at a community college west of Detroit

Newly released notes and audio recordings left behind by a woman who shot her son and then took her own life leave little doubt that she planned the attack. In rambling messages to family, friends, police and the owners of Shoot Straight, the Casselberry gun range she chose for Sunday's fatal shooting, Marie Moore said the murder-suicide was the only way to save her son Mitchell Moore, her family and the world from violence and eternal damnation.

A Dutch TV jury has found Osama bin Laden not guilty of the September 11 attacks. In the conclusion Wednesday night to the show "Devil's Advocate" on Dutch public broadcaster Nederland 2, the jury of two men and three women, along with the studio audience, ruled that there was no proof bin Laden was the mastermind behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.

Spring wildfires in the middle of the country have now become deadly. The flames claimed two lives ... a couple was killed when flames tore through their rural home....

Derek Buckner utilizes a variety of sources for his paintings — video imagery of urban landscapes taken from airplanes and moving cars, models of dystopia's constructed in the studio, and most recently, piles upon piles of ubiquitous marshmallows.

[animated illustration of a tesseract]

Albert Einstein Marilyn Monroe Illusion When you look at this picture close range you see Albert Einstein.

Here we have an object illusion that may have been photoshopped.

Stare at this picture. After about 30 seconds you should begin to see a boat appear in the background. Amazing!

If you look really carefully after a few seconds you'll be able to see Toronto's CN Tower in the background.

Many of the images you will find here demonstrate visual phenomena, and optical or visual illusions. You will learn about the complexities of the human eye first hand. Visit the optical illusions below and give your eyes and brain the time of their lives!

An eight-year study of 218 couples found 90 percent experienced a decrease in marital satisfaction once the first child was born.

Marc Morano does not think global warming is anything to worry about, and he brags about his confrontations with those who do. ... once spotted former Vice President Al Gore on an airplane returning from a climate conference in Bali. Mr. Gore was posing for photos with well-wishers, and Mr. Morano said he had asked if he, too, could have his picture taken with Mr. Gore. He refused, Mr. Morano said. "You attack me all the time," Mr. Gore said... As a spokesman for Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Mr. Morano was for years a ceaseless purveyor of the dissenting view on climate change, sending out a blizzard of e-mail to journalists covering the issue....

Arneson worked with Gygax to create the original Dungeons & Dragons ruleset in 1974. According to IGN, disputes later caused friction and distanced Arneson from the D&D franchise. Nevertheless, Arneson's contributions have influenced numerous videogames, and probably always will.

A Russian and US space crew denied on Friday that new rules forbid them from sharing toilets and food in orbit, hailing their work as the "best partnership" in human history.

The new advertiser-supported site, featuring professional videos, will be called Vevo and is expected to launch in coming months, the companies said.

now the proud parents of their first child, Stella, who was born in February. Yet when he was a teenage in the 1980's, he not only did not know if he would survive to adulthood or become a father. He was diagnosed with leukemia and had three years of chemotherapy. His doctors then recommended radiation therapy. His parents concerned about the possibility of him surviving but being sterile managed to persuade doctors to freeze a sperm sample for him. ... after 22 years the frozen sperm was thawed and via in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) last June his wife became pregnant....

they're all taking the wrong route, according to Israeli archaeologist Shimon Gibson. In a new book, titled "The Final Days of Jesus," Gibson says he has found the location of Jesus' trial, where Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, condemned him to death by crucifixion. ... So if the trial was outside the Old City, as Gibson believes, and not in the Antonia Fortress, then the traditional Via Dolorosa, the route Jesus took to his crucifixion, is wrong. ...

Their livelihood was being threatened, and they were tired of waiting for government help, so business owners and residents on Hawaii's Kauai island pulled together and completed a $4 million repair job to a state park -- for free.

Congressional aides say President Barack Obama is seeking $83.4 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into the fall. Once approved by Congress, the money would bring the total amount for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001 to almost $1 trillion.

A would-be suicide bomber aged 11 has been arrested alongside Taliban fighters. Known only as Abdullah, the youngster was caught crossing the mountains from Pakisrtan's tribal region into Afghanistan wearing a jacket packed with explosives. Police say he is the youngest terror recruit they have ever come across. Abdullah has also become Afghanistan's youngest prisoner but he is still being held at a top security prison in the capital, Kabul.

At some point around 2 a.m. PDT, a fiber optic line owned by AT&T but leased to Verizon became damaged. It was located in a manhole about 10 feet below the roadway. San Jose Police told KCBS-radio that they suspect vandalism and are treating the area as a crime scene. The damage to the line silenced landline phones, cell phone service and Internet access for many in the area. But it also impacted a number of Web sites, which have data centers in the Silicon Valley area that - apparently - are connected to that fiber optic line.

The CIA will decommission the infamous "black sites" where terrorism suspects were interrogated with harsh techniques that included waterboarding, agency director Leon Panetta said on Thursday.

Shortly after a report indicated Chinese and Russian hackers were accused of targeting the U.S. power grid infrastructure, Chinese officials have vehemently denied the accusations. "The intrusion doesn't exist at all," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said during a press conference. "We hope that the concerned media will prudently deal with some groundless remarks, especially those concerning accusations against China."

In May last year, he took a photograph of housing minister Caroline Flint walking along Downing Street, holding briefing papers which laid bare fears of a 10 per cent fall in the housing market. He said last night that he had tried to warn the Government before that photographers were able to read top secret papers when people go through the door of 10 Downing Street. He said: "I have told Downing Street before that the quality of lenses and digital lenses means that we can read ministerial papers. "Someone in Bob Quick's position should have known that. He must have been sitting with them on his lap in his car. Anyone could have read them. There was no cover on them."

Anti-terror chief Bob Quick quit yesterday with a pension pot worth millions - despite admitting he came close to endangering an operation to smash a suspected Al Qaeda terrorist unit. Mr Quick, who inadvertently revealed confidential details of the terror swoop while exiting his car for a Downing Street meeting, fell on his sword shortly after 8am after he lost the confidence of the Home Secretary.

The country's top counter-terrorism officer quit on Thursday after his security blunder forced police to bring forward a major operation to thwart a suspected al Qaeda plot involving Pakistani nationals. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said officers had been dealing with a "very big terrorist plot" which security officials had been following for some time.

Some Bartlesville students have been honored for their forward-thinking. Sophomores Meagan Schwegler, Emily Mueller and Amanda Cole are regional champions in the Toshiba ExploraVision contest. ... The three Bartlesville students' project focuses on changing the exhaust systems in vehicles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"Most regular church-goers have heard their less scrupulously observant fellows called 'Christmas and Easter Christians.' Well, they also have their counterparts in the mainstream media: "Christmas and Easter Anti-Christians," said Colleen Raezler, a research assistant at the conservative Culture and Media Institute, in a commentary on NewsBusters. "How else to explain the spate of skeptical, negative stories that inevitably accompany the two most important Christian holy days?"

The National Organization for Marriage, a key backer of the successful campaign against same-sex marriage in California, is launching a $1.5 million ad campaign to "energize" gay-marriage opponents in key states "by making the case that it will impinge directly on their own lives."

A 17-year-old boy suffered a head wound and was knocked unconscious when a woman jumped to her death off a New York City mall balcony and landed on him. ... Witnesses said she was muttering to herself and had removed her shoes before she took her own life....

A hidden camera captured footage of two men breaking into a Boynton Beach home on April 8, 2009. The homeowner was watching via live internet feed at her job. She called police, who surrounded the house and arrested the burgarly suspects. [video]

Thomas... set up the live video stream after her home was burglarized last October... The amazing surveillance video from inside Thomas's house was uploaded to YouTube by the Boynton Beach Police Department ...

Britney had barely started performing when she abruptly left the stage, leaving the crowd quite literally in the dark. After a few minutes, an announcement informed the audience that "It's become uncomfortable and unsafe for the performers, including Ms. Spears…The show will resume as soon as the air around the stage is clear." ... Britney had barely started performing when she abruptly left the stage, leaving the crowd quite literally in the dark. After a few minutes, an announcement informed the audience that "It's become uncomfortable and unsafe for the performers, including Ms. Spears…The show will resume as soon as the air around the stage is clear."

Dog-crazy Americans will soon be able to buy a pet-friendly car with a cushioned dog bed in the trunk, fitted with a built-in water bowl and fan and a ramp to help less agile dogs climb in.

Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials. The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven't sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war.

A Chinese man can finally sit in comfort after doctors removed a broken syringe needle which had been stuck in his bottom for over a quarter of a century.

The two Morris County men who staged a series of UFO hoaxes earlier this year ... fined ... $250 each and sentenced the two to 50 hours of community service for creating a disturbance. ... released helium balloons with traffic flares tied to them on five separate occasions....

The president's new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air. John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. [Save the climate: have Obama administration officials quit blowing hot air]

A cat named Felix was found alive and well beneath the rubble of a six-storey building in Cologne that collapsed five weeks ago.... The 12-year-old cat was in surprisingly good health....

Lee Ermey went on a recent drive with crew member Harlan Glenn to a museum when Lee spotted a black object on the road. He pulled over to find the black object was a bag full of money. ...appeared to be on route to a bank to be deposited.

A MELBOURNE father's speedy rescue of his two kidnapped sons has embarrassed Swedish police, who struggled with the case for six months. Armed with just a pair of binoculars and a rental car, it took the dad only one week to find his missing sons, aged 11 and ten, in Sweden. ... The boys were allegedly abducted in October last year by their Swedish mother. She was charged with their kidnapping and became a wanted fugitive in Sweden.

What happened next on the March 28 flight depends on who is talking. Correa said he ran straight to the business class bathroom. "I had no choice," he said in a telephone interview. Correa said flight attendant Stephanie Scott put up her arm and blocked his entry into business class, according to an FBI affidavit. Correa then grabbed her arm to keep his balance. Scott, however, said Correa stormed up the aisle and insisted to use the bathroom. She said she lightly placed her arm on his shoulder and asked him to move back. Correa then grabbed her right arm, pulled it downward and twisted it, she told an FBI agent.

A police car and rescue helicopter were called in to save a screaming man in a German forest, but it turned out that the man was in fact screaming with laughter... at a very funny book. [What book is not known]

Food marketers have come to realize that simplicity sells.... "It's a convergence of health, food safety, taste and traceability," said Phil Lempert, a food and consumer behavior analyst who calls himself the Supermarket Guru. "People are reading labels more carefully than they were previously. When they pick up a product and it has 30 ingredients and they don't know what half of them are, they are putting it back on the shelves."

signed photo of Saddam Hussein by US marines after the former Iraqi leader was shown their movie in prison.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now the longest waged by an all-volunteer force in U.S. history. Even as soldiers rotate back into the field for multiple and extended tours, the Army requires a constant supply of new recruits. But the patriotic fervor that led so many to sign up after 9/11 is now eight years past. That leaves recruiters with perhaps the toughest, if not the most dangerous, job in the Army. Last year alone, the number of recruiters who killed themselves was triple the overall Army rate. Like posttraumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, recruiter suicides are a hidden cost of the nation's wars.

President Obama has not attended church services on any of the 11 Sundays since he took office, despite his pledge to find a new church after quitting Trinity United nearly a year ago because of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's incendiary rhetoric. "We probably won't make any firm decision on this until January, when we know what our lives our going to be like," Obama told reporters last May at a press conference that he called to announce his break with Trinity. But the president made no decision in January, February or March. And now, with Easter just days away, Obama has yet to reveal what church he may have chosen or when he might attend his first Sunday services as president. [No suitable mosque nearby?]

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi Tuesday called Barack Obama a "flicker of hope in the middle of the imperialist darkness," but said he feared the president could be assassinated. [Gaddafi will regret his friendly remarks.]

Barack Obama's never had more foes -- or less clothing -- than in two comics about to hit the stands.

Cheered wildly by U.S. troops, President Barack Obama flew unannounced into Iraq on Tuesday and promptly declared it was time for Iraqis to "take responsibility for their country" after America's commitment of six years and thousands of lives. "You have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own as a democratic country," the president said as he made a brief inspection of a war he opposed as candidate and now vows to end as commander in chief. "That is an extraordinary achievement." [Which he will do his best to wreck. Just watch.]

ordered a criminal investigation into alleged misconduct by the prosecutors... "I've never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I've seen in this case."

Activists seeking to eliminate the Electoral College in favor of a popular vote to elect the president boast that their movement is almost one-fifth the way to its goal.

GREEN HILL, ALA.: Authorities say four people have been found shot to death in rural north Alabama ... investigators are seeking a man for questioning.

The Pentagon spent more than $100 million in the last six months responding to and repairing damage from cyber attacks and other computer network problems, military leaders said Tuesday. Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, who heads U.S. Strategic Command, said the military is only beginning to track the costs, which are triggered by constant daily attacks against military networks ranging from the Pentagon to bases around the country.

At least 207 people have been killed by Monday's earthquake in central Italy, with 100 residents critically injured ... 150 people had been rescued alive ... About 1,000 people were injured and 17,000 were left homeless....

The Canadian man who led fighter jets on a chase across six states Monday flew his stolen plane into the United States. in hopes the military would shoot him down and kill him, according to a Missouri state trooper who apprehended the rogue pilot. Missouri state trooper Justin Watson told "Good Morning America" today that 31-year-old Yavuz Berke, formerly known as Adam Leon, wanted to commit suicide, but didn't have the courage to do it himself.

A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money. Borrowing from a Depression-era idea, they are aiming to help consumers make ends meet and support struggling local businesses. The systems generally work like this: Businesses and individuals form a network to print currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount — say, 95 cents for $1 value — and spend the full value at stores that accept the currency.

In what could be a prelude to making the Beatles catalog available as digital files at on-line stores, the band's entire collection of compact discs will be digitally remastered for the first time in two decades and re-released Sept. 9.

GM and Segway unveiled the Project PUMA, a two-seat rickshaw minus a rick that uses the Segway's electric systems to glide around on two wheels. Capable of carrying 700 pounds in a frame about half the size of a Smart car, the PUMA (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility) can spin on a pin and "bows" to let passengers in and out.

Chief Executive Eric Schmidt sought to allay newspaper industry executives' concerns on Tuesday, telling them they need to work together with the Internet giant while downplaying recent indications of growing friction between Google and the Associated Press.

Here is a listing of same-sex marriage license laws in the U.S.

A couple who disappeared with their children, leading to a search of the South Dakota wilderness, turned themselves in to authorities near their Nebraska home on Monday.... Matthew Schade was arrested on a warrant for a probation violation in neighboring Antelope County, and his wife was being held by order of the Nebraska Department of Probation

When a Fairfax County mother got an urgent call from school last month reporting that her teenage daughter was caught popping a pill at lunchtime, she did not panic. "It was probably her birth-control pill," she thought. She was right. Her heart dropped that afternoon in the assistant principal's office at Oakton High School when she and her daughter heard the mandatory punishment: A two-week suspension and recommendation for expulsion.

The Manhattan district attorney's office has smashed a sinister plot to smuggle nuclear weapons materials to Iran through unwitting New York banks

After years of non-stop growth, global wine consumption started to retreat last year, along with the rest of the world economy... latest figures on wine making and drinking around the world reveal a few key shifts. For the first time, the United States surpassed Italy in terms of total wine consumption, with 27.3 million hectoliters compared to 26 million for Italy, the group said. On the vineyard end, European vineyards accounted for less than half the world's grape production for the first time last year.

A WOMAN was pulled out alive yesterday after 42 hours buried beneath the rubble of the Italian earthquake. Eleonora Calesini, 20, had been trapped beneath a toppled pillar but was able to speak to rescuers.

A baby miraculously survived a Baghdad car bombing cradled in his mother's lap as she was burned alive in a blast that claimed the lives of eight people on Tuesday....

"How much responsibility, if any, do you have for the financial crisis?" ... Frank can't answer because he's never admitted an ounce of wrongdoing. He's a disgrace and should have the decency to resign in disgrace. In fact, if he admitted what everyone already knows about his involvement, I'd have more respect for him. Watch as Barney Frank, among many others, claim that nothing is wrong at Fannie/Freddie....

I must be naive. I really thought the administration would welcome the return of bank bailout money. Some $340 million in TARP cash flowed back this week from four small banks in Louisiana, New York, Indiana and California. This isn't much when we routinely talk in trillions, but clearly that money has not been wasted or otherwise sunk down Wall Street's black hole. So why no cheering as the cash comes back? My answer: The government wants to control the banks, just as it now controls GM and Chrysler, and will surely control the health industry in the not-too-distant future. [Y'think?]

North Korea's new rocket launch gives the communist country another bargaining chip in negotiations over dismantling its nuclear weapons program even if the flight wasn't completely successful, analysts said Monday. Even with suspected problems in separating the second and third stages, the rocket flew twice as far as any missile the North previously launched. That range falls far short of U.S. territory, but neighbors are concerned by the expanded reach of a regime that claims to have atomic bombs.

Turkish officials have told the U.S. the man in custody is a "known fabricator" who has made various unsubstantiated claims in the past. U.S. officials tell CBS News, "There was never a serious plot or threat against the President." [Yawn. Article does not match scary headline]

A Tampa man charged with torturing a 10-year-old female relative because she discovered his pornographic movie collection remains jailed this afternoon. No bail has been set.

A controversial law condoning marital rape and reintroducing Taleban-era rules for Afghan women has been shelved after an outcry in the West. The Afghan Foreign Ministry said that the law had not been enacted, while Justice Ministry officials said that its contents might be reconsidered. The legislation was put on hold pending a review

A 41-year-old Somali woman has been kicked off a bus more than once in Denmark for refusing to bare her face to the bus driver. The case echoes a similar problem last month in Aarhus, Denmark's second-largest city.

Barack Obama, making his first visit to a Muslim nation as president, declared Monday the United States "is not and will never be at war with Islam." [Even if Islam is at war with the United States? Or is Obama at war with the United States?]

Just before he committed mass murder, Jiverly Wong laid out a litany of paranoid complaints in a letter he ended with a chilling signoff: "Have a nice day." Then Wong mailed the rambling, two-page letter to an upstate TV station and drove to Binghamton, where he murdered 13 people before killing himself.

Police officers accused of drunken driving. A female officer's alleged promiscuity and infidelity. A commander whose critics labeled his son a child molester. Jeff Pataky said he uses negative complaints and anonymous tips to fuel his blogging crusade against Phoenix police. A headline on his Web site suggests rewards would be provided for "dirt" on police indiscretions. ... said he believes his online criticism of the department - along with past criticisms of police investigations - led officers to serve a search warrant at his home last week. [Y'think?]

Six car bombs exploded Monday in Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad, killing at least 36 people and raising concern that the calm enjoyed in the capital in recent months is starting to fray.

A man and his five children are dead in what police believe was a murder-suicide at a mobile home in Washington state. ... four girls and a boy... body of the father was found in his still-running car, 30 kilometres from his home..... had apparently killed himself with a rifle.... A classmate of the eldest daughter said the girl told him Friday night that her parents had fought and her father had followed her mother, trying to persuade her to return after she left the home....

The lunatic behind the Binghamton massacre was a pathetic, gun-loving coward who got divorced, lost his job and was driven to depression because he could barely speak English after many years in the United States, officials and people who knew him said yesterday. ... on Friday picked up a pair of guns, hoisted a bulging sack of ammunition and marched maniacally into the American Civic Association, killing 13 people before turning the gun on himself. Another four victims remain hospitalized, but are expected to survive....

A 22-year-man who shot and killed three Pittsburgh police officers over the weekend had been stockpiling guns and ammunition, buying and selling the weapons online "because he believed that as a result of the economic collapse, the police were no longer able to protect society...." surrendered and was taken into custody after he was shot several times in the leg.

Somali pirates have seized a British-owned cargo ship and a Taiwanese ship, maritime officials say, after capturing three other vessels over the weekend. The UK-owned Malaspina Castle was boarded in the Gulf of Aden, while the Taiwanese ship was seized near the Seychelles, according to reports. A French yacht, a Yemeni tugboat and a German ship were also captured in the pirate-plagued waterway at the weekend.

Police believe an argument between two groups outside a South Philly bar led to one man to hit a pregnant woman with his car. Authorities say he then backed up over the woman and then drove forward a second time.

believed to be daughter of former slaves, broke the world record in January after a 115-year-old Portuguese woman died.... "We've seen her health decline a little, but she's a very strong woman...." outlived every one of her relatives, including her daughter, who died of typhoid at the age of 18. When Baines was born, Grover Cleveland was president and the U.S. flag had only 44 stars....

The new Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massacusetts, has given a sermon describing abortions as a "blessing" for the women who undergo them. The Rev Katherine Hancock Ragsdale also thinks that the people who run abortion clinics are "heroes" and even "saints".

It's not over quite yet, but we might be inching closer to the finish line. The latest man to contend for the director's chair is Martin Campbell, who's still coming off Casino Royale and just completed Edge of Darkness, also known as Mel Gibson's acting comeback.

Microsoft and its PC partners are going to allow Windows 7 users to downgrade not just to Windows Vista, but also to Windows XP, Microsoft officials are confirming.

Windows XP has already turned into a nightmare for Microsoft as the operating system competes with Windows Vista in many markets and today's news makes us wonder whether the operating system may actually outlive Windows Vista in one way or the other. Apparently, Microsoft has granted HP an exclusive OEM license extension for Windows XP that reaches deep into 2010. By then, Windows XP will be competing with Windows 7 for market share on netbooks.

There's nothing like a good scratch, but how does it take away the itchiness?... In people, a variety of stimuli, including chemicals like histamine, prompt sensory neurons to fire, sending a signal via the spinothalamic tract (STT) to the brain, prompting an itchy feeling.... scratching the skin caused the frequency of the firing to drop in some of the neurons, indicating that these are the ones targeted by scratching....

The pillow fight, which was to be one of at least 50 across the world Saturday organized by people on social networking Web sites, was shut down by Detroit police officers who were stationed at the park. "I am furious," 23-year-old Elida Quesada of Ferndale said as she fumed while watching officers take pillows as soon as people showed up with them. "It (a pillow fight) is so silly and childlike. It would have been fun. It seems like everything that is fun is illegal."

Tropicana's rebranding debacle did more than create a customer-relations fiasco. It hit the brand in the wallet. After its package redesign, sales of the Tropicana Pure Premium line plummeted 20%.... company announced it would bow to consumer demand and scrap the new packaging....

A teenage boy walking in the woods of Bruckberg, Bavaria... spotted what looked like human bones in the branches half way up a tree... the body of a 69-year-old pensioner who disappeared in 1980. It is believed the man tied himself to a branch of the tree with rope and shot himself - and then lay undiscovered for decades.

A 24-year-old man shot and killed himself inside a movie theater at a shopping mall during a screening of the movie "The Watchmen...."

[Article unavailable]

"...She said the gunman was right there when she was on the phone.... I keep saying, 'Mom, you're a CNN superstar' . . . They're saying you're a hero. And she says, 'No. I'm not.'" ... The 61-year-old DeLucia's courage under fire likely prevented the death toll from rising.... Binghamton police responded to the scene two minutes after her 911 call. They've speculated that Wong's bloody rampage would have continued if he hadn't heard sirens. Instead, police said, he shot himself.

An Italian scientist predicted a major earthquake around L'Aquila weeks before disaster struck the city on Monday, killing dozens of people, but was reported to authorities for spreading panic among the population.

The Associated Press will cut fees paid by U.S. newspapers that run its news coverage and says it will challenge websites that run its news content for free.

As programmers continue to pick apart the code underlying Apple's iPhone 3.0 OS, details are surfacing that point to possible new hardware features for both the iPhone and iPod Touch. One of the first details unearthed from the code is the addition of stereo Bluetooth-audio streaming--a feature that current (second-generation) iPhone and iPod Touch owners will be able to take advantage of once the new OS is available this summer.

"The X-chromosomes of any species, in addition to determining sex, carry genes. The corresponding genes in the pair of X-chromosomes that determine a female may or may not be identical. Thus the X-chromosome carries genes which give rise to sex-linked characters; and such genes will differ in different strains. We must explicitly repudiate the idea that the sex-chromosomes have no other activity than the determination of sex. They often carry other factors and, when these are modified by mutation, sex-linked changes may appear in the offspring" STR, P447 "This number twelve, with its subdivisions and multiples, runs throughout all basic life patterns of all seven superuniverses. There are also seven architectural types of life design, fundamental arrangements of the reproducing configurations of living matter. The Orvonton life patterns are configured as 12, 24, 48, 96, 192, 384, and 768. On Urantia there are forty-eight units of pattern control—trait determiners—in the sex cell of human reproduction" UB, P397

The U.S. and its allies sought punishment Sunday for North Korea's defiant launch of a rocket that apparently fizzled into the Pacific, holding an emergency U.N. meeting in response to fears the country was testing long-range missile technology. President Barack Obama called for a global response and condemned North Korea for threatening the peace and stability of nations "near and far." Minutes after liftoff, Japan requested the emergency Security Council session in New York.

One person is reported dead and several others injured after a car ran into an IHOP restaurant in northwest Oklahoma City.... [24yo woman] was turning into the restaurant parking lot when she hit a curb, struck a parking block and crashed into the building. The reported dead man was in a booth inside the restaurant.... driving under the influence manslaughter.

The FBI has been looking for patterns in killings along U.S. highways, suspecting that some long-haul truck drivers are responsible for many of them. The victims include prostitutes, hitchhikers and women whose cars have broken down.... The Highway Serial Killings Initiative began five years ago after an analyst with the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation asked the FBI for help with a string of seven killings of prostitutes along I-40. An FBI analyst going through the bureau's data base found killings that matched the Oklahoma crimes.

Sir Paul headlined the concert, in aid of The David Lynch Foundation, and sang a string of Beatles and solo career hits before bringing Starr on stage. The pair performed the Beatles song, With a Little Help from My Friends together before embracing afterwards. Sir Paul also paid a tearful tribute to the late John Lennon before playing Here Today, a song he wrote for him.

The famously subversive US cartoonist Robert Crumb has announced the completion of his long-awaited take on the Book of Genesis. The acclaimed satirist revealed on his personal website that he had finished the project, which is out this autumn, and which his UK publisher is predicting will "provoke the religious right". Four years in the making, Crumb worked from the King James Bible and Robert Alter's translation to reinterpret the Book of Genesis, from the Creation via Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to Noah boarding his ark.

The progress of the earth sciences and the advancement of technologies associated with the understanding of our planet during the 1940's and 50's have led geologists to develop a new way of looking at the world and how it works. This exhibit explains the history of our new understanding of the Earth and provides a brief overview of the theories behind it.

To see continental positions during a particular time, click on the STOP button of your browser as the red arrow reaches the era of interest.

After more than 40 years of transmissions these papers known as the "Urantia Papers" were published in 1955 as the Urantia Book. This 2,000 page book self proclaims to be the most recent presentation of truth to our planet. The first 1,300 pages teach how things are done in Heaven. The last 700 pages are the complete life and teachings of Jesus. These papers give a detailed account of 19 appearances of Jesus after his resurrection. The New Testament only tells of four appearances... -Lynn E. Rhoderick Grants

Three Pittsburgh police officers were killed and two others were injured after a heavily armed man began firing at them as they responded to a domestic call this morning at a home in Stanton Heights. ... told friends he was wearing a bulletproof vest ... surrendered to police about 11 a.m., four hours after the standoff began ... shot several times in the legs ...

"Legalize marijuana and take all that money and invest it in teachers and in education," Santana said in an interview this week. "You will see a transformation in America."

Henry said he hopes his choice of the memorial will be approved by federal officials and that the design will include the Survivor Tree. "The Survivor Tree really is the symbol of this place that's so powerful and moving and sad and uplifting at the same time," the governor said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. "This (is a) symbol of that Oklahoma standard — the courage, the kindness, the compassion, the charity that rose up above the evil of April 19, 1995. I think it really does depict the resilience."

The Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum already means so much to so many people and the entire nation will soon have another reminder of what it stands for. Governor Brad Henry announced Thursday that the memorial has been chosen to represent the state on a special quarter.

The Iowa Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling Friday finding that the state's same-sex marriage ban violates the constitutional rights of gay and lesbian couples, making Iowa the third state where marriage is legal. In its decision, the court upheld a 2007 district court judge's ruling that the law violates the state constitution. It strikes the language from Iowa code limiting marriage to only between a man a woman.

ELDORADO, Texas — It was a year ago that the outside world got its first glimpse beyond the battered green gate of the YFZ Ranch. And the view was mesmerizing: Women in pioneer-style dresses, their hair swept up in braids. Men who married multiple times — sometimes, it was said, to underage girls. Children snatched by authorities from their mothers, for fear that they might be abused. ... all but one of the 439 children who were taken away in one of the largest custody cases in U.S. history have returned to their families. About two-thirds are back at the ranch ... The documents obtained by The Associated Press offer a window into an industrious, prayerful community in which marriage was considered a mandatory ticket to heaven, where legal marrying ages are secondary to divine matches ordained by Jeffs. But more than anything else, these papers testify to a simple truth: At the YFZ Ranch, Warren Jeffs controlled everything.