Blog Heap of Links for the day 21 April 2009

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,"