Blog Heap o'Links for June 2009

Not a single American soldier was in sight. Gone, too, were the American helicopters whose buzz has for years defined Baghdad's background track. Left alone to protect the capital Tuesday were thousands of Iraqi troops and police manning checkpoints, with army tanks deployed at potential trouble spots and convoys of pickup trucks with machine guns roaming the streets.

Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern (R.) has proposed the "Oklahoma Citizen's Proclamation for Morality," an almost hilarious document but one that, nonetheless, deserves some scrutiny in the vicinity of the nation's capital; … [A long, boring, ill-parsed rant more sanguine than anything Kern produced by Laura Harrison-McBride, "DC Ethical Issues"]

A similar accident last week in Indiana crushed a pickup truck between two semis, killing a family of five.

Beijing postpones a requirement that PC makers preinstall Green Dam software for filtering Internet content. But it may be just a temporary reprieve. Read this blog post by Stephen Shankland on Politics and Law.

China has indefinitely delayed enforcement of a requirement that PC makers preinstall Green Dam-Youth Escort software that experts believe would have screened not just Internet pornography but also some online political content.

A Tulsa domestic dispute led to a chase involving a hatchet and one person being shot

Two former Tulsans, one of whom became caught up in the conspiracy theories swirling around the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, have been indicted in a 2004 Arizona bombing.... bombing was part of a wider conspiracy "to promote racial discord by destroying buildings, facilities and real property of both the government and businesses whose activities defendants believed conflicted with their goals."...

[10yo] Lindsey Baum, last seen walking from a friend's house six blocks away from her home in McCleary [Washington] Friday night,... [Mother] worried her daughter was kidnapped.... Lindsey has been upset over her parents' ongoing divorce and may have run away....

Family members have periodically called Althedia's phone number. At first, it was disconnected, but last weekend, something strange happened. "It rang five to six times and went to voicemail and said, you have reached Althedia Vaught, which is her name and it was her voice and she sounded real tired or drugged. We called back and a guy answered named David and he said he got the phone from Cricket and couldn't get that voicemail off there,"

Nearly all the victims, most of whom are female and younger than 19, reported eating raw cookie dough in the days before the onset of symptoms. Health officials still do not know how E. coli 0157, a bacterium that lives in cattle intestines, ended up in a product that seems so unlikely to contain it.

Solomon Alexander McCorvey, 19, faces charges of trafficking illegal drugs and concealing proceeds of drug transactions... 136 tablets of what is thought to be "ecstasy" and methamphetamine...

I just love the old hometown and continue to write down my memories of the place.

Republicans are raising questions about why the EPA apparently dismissed an analyst's report questioning the science behind global warming.

New research challenges the widely held belief that teens underestimate the dangers associated with risky behaviors because they think they are invincible. The study found that adolescents who engaged in risky behaviors such as drug use, fighting, and unsafe sex were more likely to believe that they would die young than those who didn't.

The net is rich with specialized search services... we surveyed some 50 specialty search services and picked out our favorites...

In a bid to turn file sharing into a legal business opportunity, Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB (GGF.SK) said Tuesday it is acquiring file sharing web site the Pirate Bay for 60 million Swedish kronor ($7.8 million).

The top U.S. military commander in Iraq on Tuesday accused Iran of continuing to support and train militants who are carrying out attacks, including most of the ones in Baghdad... made the comments just after the U.S. relinquished security for Baghdad and other urban areas to Iraqi forces...

ODOT admits the scope of the IDL construction project made signage for it a challenge - but they believe once everything is in place - drivers will be able to understand what's ahead.

32-year-old Shawnee man has died after saving 8-year-old girl from drowning at the Chickasaw National Recreation Area in Murray County.

Universal chargers for cell phones are a good start. How about simplifying the rest of our tech lives.

The device is considered part of a new category of gadgets called mobile Internet devices, or MIDs, which are designed to fit into the market between a mobile phone and a laptop or Netbook computer.

U.S. President Barack Obama [SIDING WITH CHAVEZ AND CASTRO] said on Monday the coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was illegal and would set a "terrible precedent" of transition by military force unless it was reversed... Despite Obama's comments, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the administration was not formally designating the ouster as a military coup for now...

The New York Times reported on Monday that it had collaborated with online encyclopedia Wikipedia to keep news of its kidnapped reporter in Afghanistan from going public for more than seven months.... Times reporter David Rohde... and his translator, Tahir Ludin, were able to make a clean escape from their captors at a facility in Pakistan this month. Prior to their escape, Bill Keller, editor of the Times, asked Wikipedia to keep news of his kidnapping from going public.... Times believed that publicity over his kidnapping would worsen negotiations to ensure Mr. Rohde’s safe return....

A Yemeni airliner with 150 people on board has crashed in the Indian Ocean near the Comoros archipelago.

All of the dead were from family groups, including a set of four in Oklahoma City.

Two major computer makers indicate that each will comply with a Chinese law requiring all computers shipped to the country include a particular type of web-filtering software. The recent moves by Acer Inc. (2353.TW) and Sony Corp. (SNE) to comply suggest some PC makers aren't willing to miss out on one of the world's biggest PC markets, despite concerns about abiding by an unpopular government policy, and the potential damage the software itself can do to their computers. [BOYCOTT ACER! BOYCOTT SONY!]

The interim president picked to rule Honduras after the army ousted leftist President Manuel Zelaya said on Monday the coup had saved the country from swinging to a radical Venezuelan-style socialism.... said Zelaya had lost respect for the law.... [Which doesn't bother Obama any...]

Police say a New York man running to the aid of another motorist fell to his death from a bridge, apparently because he didn't know there was a large gap between lanes.

Staff Sgt. Sean Samaroo was inspired to join the military nine years ago by the Army's "be all you can be" TV commercial. It was a prophetic slogan for Samaroo, who last year found himself in the midst of one of the deadliest battles of the war in Afghanistan, tenaciously fighting back an overwhelming enemy onslaught. Earlier this month, Samaroo was awarded the Silver Star, the military's third-highest medal.

...countries such as Iran and China block access to the internet at their peril. "The internet is the strongest force for individual self-expression ever invented...."

Operation Pastorius was a failed plan for sabotage via a series of attacks by Nazi German agents inside the United States.

The gruesome details of Jada Justice's death were revealed Friday when prosecutors charged the 2-year-old girl's cousin and her boyfriend with murder.... That night, while they were on their way to buy heroin, the couple realized that Jada was dead....

...tractor-trailer slammed into a line of cars stopped by an earlier accident... about 1 p.m. on the Will Rogers Turnpike northeast of Miami.... "quite possibly the largest death toll in a single crash" in state history... Investigators don't think the truck driver tried to stop before the crash... Three more accidents happened in the eastbound lanes as cars slowed following the tractor-trailer wreck, and later a four-car crash occurred on the westbound side of the turnpike... wreckage and emergency vehicles covered an estimated three-quarters of a mile....

"I didn't want to knit anymore. I had just lost my joy," said Salyers, who fell five stories after the bombing and was discovered under a pile of rubble. "But if I didn't grab back on to what I love, they may as well have killed me." Some of her colleagues at the U.S. Customs Office on the fifth floor of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building recovered a basket of yarn, covered with debris, and returned it to her. Salyers said she became motivated to return to knitting after learning that other survivors had similar experiences — one man who lost a daughter and a grandson who no longer enjoyed woodworking and a woman who couldn't start sewing again. She finally used the yarn to craft a sweater with 168 stars, one for each victim of the April 19, 1995, blast... The "First Person: Stories of Hope" lecture series will continue every Friday during the summer at the museum.

The United States is phasing out funding for opium eradication programs in poppy-filled Afghanistan while significantly boosting funding for alternate crop and drug interdiction efforts.... [END NANNY TYRANNY! (And cut the drug gangs' profits to zero!) LEGALIZE!] U.S. eradication programs were only driving Afghan farmers into the hands of the Taliban.

Ulysses, a joint NASA and European Space Agency mission, will officially cease operations Monday, June 30, when the command to switch off the transmitter is uplinked to the spacecraft. Ulysses, which operated for more than 18 years, had charted the unexplored regions of space above the poles of the sun.

A Louisville pastor is welcoming gun owners into his church's sanctuary Saturday for what he says is a show of support for the right to bear arms... The "Open Carry Celebration" will include a handgun raffle....

The South Korean military plans to speed up efforts to deploy ground, air and naval weapons systems for use in strikes against key facilities in North Korea in the event of war, the Ministry of National Defense said Friday.

Arizona school officials violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old girl when they strip-searched her on the suspicion she might be hiding ibuprofen in her underwear, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The decision put school districts on notice that such searches are "categorically distinct" from other efforts to combat illegal drugs.... What was missing, Souter wrote, "was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear."... Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter. "Judges are not qualified to second-guess the best manner for maintaining quiet and order in the school environment..." [Oh, go back to your hairy Coke, Clarence!]

A body found in rural northern Indiana may be that of missing 2-year-old Jada Justice... police started questioning [babysitter's] story last week, and began investigating both [her] and her boyfriend... Neither has been cooperative with the authorities...

Sri Lankan police say they have arrested an astrologer after he predicted serious political and economic problems for the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse. [Not so dissimilar to some things happneing in America now...?]

President Barack Obama's signature on a bill this week to grant the US Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority over tobacco was historic, and represents a step in the march to eliminate tobacco use in this country by 2047, two national tobacco experts said today. [AAAHHHHH! "TOBACCO EXPERTS!" BEHAVIOR NAZIS! STOP THE TYRANTS! I hate tobacco, but SAVE US FROM SUPERNANNY!]

The New York City health department is moving forward with a plan that would require about 12,000 cigarette retailers to post large anti-smoking signs. [I hate tobacco, but GOD SAVE US FROM BIG NANNY GOVERNMENT!!]

Soraya, a woman brutally slain because her husband wanted to marry a 14-year-old girl, refers to herself as an inconvenient wife in the shattering and powerful drama The Stoning of Soraya M.

A booby-trapped motorcycle loaded with nails and ball-bearings exploded in a crowded bazaar Friday in Baghdad, killing at least 15 people

Republicans' opposition to the climate change bill... [is] playing into the hands of the Iranian regime and the Saudi Arabian kingdom, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) argued Friday. [WHAT AN EVIL MAN!]

The United States may have been behind the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman whose fatal videotaped shooting Saturday made her a symbol of opposition to the June 12 presidential election results, the country's ambassador to Mexico said Thursday. [The CIA should only be so clever! What a bunch of propaganda loons -- do even the stupidest, most brainwashed Iranians (or anyone else) really buy this nonsense?] In response, CIA spokesman George Little said, "Any suggestion that the CIA was responsible for the death of this young woman is wrong, absurd and offensive."...

for the Chinese government there really is no difference. Political dissent and pornography are two sides of the same coin — negative forces that disrupt "wholesome society." That's why the same ministry deals with pornography and political speech.

Google Inc. said it's investigating reports that its Google.com Web site is inaccessible in China, a week after the company was criticized by the government for spreading pornography in the biggest Internet market by users.

Eight young Cherokee bicyclists will tackle a nearly 1,000-mile Remember the Removal Ride, which follows one of the Trail of Tears routes, in the searing summer heat. But it's a chance for them to see the same countryside their ancestors saw when they were forced at gunpoint to abandon everything.

A local couple arrested on domestic assault charges Sunday had an unusual choice of alleged weaponry -- Cheetos. [To accompany the "Frito Lay" bust in OKC.]

Tulsa businessman Dewey Bartlett, Junior, announced he will be seek the Republican nomination for Tulsa Mayor.

The Democrat-led House pressed Thursday for enough votes to pass landmark legislation that would combat global warming by forcing U.S. companies to reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions, expanding expensive renewable-energy sources and trimming consumers' choices on new light bulbs and hot tubs. [WHERE'S G BUSH WHEN WE REALLY NEED REGEIME CHANGE?]

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) slowed Democrats' attempt to pass a sweeping climate-change legislation Friday evening, reading page-by-page through a 300-page Democratic amendment before allowing a roll call vote.... "...the House is going to spend a whopping five hours debating the most profound piece of legislation to come to this floor in 100 years. And the chairman has the audacity to drop a 300-plus page amendment in the hopper at 3:09 a.m. this morning. And so I would ask my colleagues, don't you think the American people expect us to understand what's in this bill before we vote on it?"

wind speeds across the country have decreased by an average of .5 percent to 1 percent per year since 1973.... more in the East than in the West, and more in the Northeast and the Great Lakes.... [Researchers "think that global warming will cause lighter winds" but there's no mention in this article of the range of variability, shorter-term or longer-term trending, or the margin of error. But of three possible causes, "There are some good theoretical reasons to think that global warming will cause lighter winds"... yeah... like US Gov funding? Oh, pardon my cynical and suspicious nature....]

As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming. Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S....

an umbrella term for a number of psychological techniques that share a theoretical basis in behavioristic learning theory and cognitive psychology.... In cognitive oriented therapies, the objective is typically to identify and monitor thoughts, assumptions, beliefs and behaviors that are related and accompanied to debilitating negative emotions and to identify those which are dysfunctional, inaccurate, or simply unhelpful. This is done in an effort to replace or transcend them with more realistic and useful ones.....

not only is CBT ineffective in treating schizophrenia and in preventing relapse, it is also ineffective in preventing relapses in bipolar disorder.... has only a weak effect in treating depression, but it has a greater effect in preventing relapses...

A Columbus firefighter admits that he took his two dogs to the basement, tied them up and blasted them with a rifle so he and a girlfriend could vacation without paying to board the animals. "He said chunks of concrete were flying everywhere...." 90 days in jail, pay $4,500 to cover the cost of his investigation and serve five years' probation.... [sick]

Passing President Obama's "cap and trade" energy program would cost the average Oklahoma family $3,200 a year, Sen. Jim Inhofe said Friday, but he's confident the measure will be killed in the Senate no matter what happens in the House of Representatives.

Darren Brazeal has a spectacular backyard with an outdoor kitchen, fireplace and a beautiful pool and spa. He has created his perfect environment and he's done it in the most energy efficient and environmentally safe way he could. Dennis Daniel with Vivian Pools designed the pool system. "Instead of using chlorine in this pool, it doesn't use chlorine at all it uses purified water softener salt.... And, the other cool thing is it monitors itself...." The pool and the house are heated and cooled geothermally.....

The country's smallest state has the longest official name: "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." A push to drop "Providence Plantations" from that name advanced farther than ever on Thursday when House lawmakers voted 70-3 to let residents decide whether their home should simply be called the "State of Rhode Island." It's an encouraging sign for those who believe the formal name conjures up images of slavery, while opponents argue it's an unnecessary rewriting of history that ignores Rhode Island's tradition of religious liberty and tolerance.

An Emergency Room source at UCLA hospital said Jackson aides told medics he had collapsed after an injection of potent Demerol — similar to morphine.

hasn't aged in the conventional sense... body is not developing as a coordinated unit, but as independent parts that are out of sync... still has baby teeth at 16... bone age is estimated to be more like 10 years old... mental capacity of a toddler...

As a woman gets older, physical problems are less likely to influence whether she is sexually active than her partner's health or interest in sex, according to a new study.

As I told CNN on April 22, 2004, "My great fear, and why I felt I had to be distanced from Michael … was that he would not live long. My fear was that Michael's life would be cut short. When you have no ingredients of a healthy life, when you are totally detached from that which is normal, and when you are a super-celebrity you, God forbid, end up like Janis Joplin like Elvis… Michael is headed in that direction."

The dollar dropped after China's central bank reiterated a call for a worldwide currency. [THE COLD WAR CONTINUES.... WILL FREEDOM SURVIVE ON THIS PLANET??]

President Obama uses network primetime special and overtime 'Nightline' coverage to talk for more than 45 minutes of combined 75-minute programs, revealing nothing new. [IMPEACH]

President Obama struggled to explain today whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people -- like the president himself -- wouldn't face. [IMPEACH!]

Tens of thousands of North Koreans shouted slogans to denounce international sanctions at a rally in central Pyongyang on Thursday, as the communist country vowed to enlarge its atomic arsenal and warned of a "fire shower of nuclear retaliation" in the event of a U.S. attack. [Where is G Bush when you really need regeime change?]

"I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificently gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curves of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of night's light — but hey, that would be going into the sexual details ..." [Er...yuck]

Hackers broke into the computers of the Oregon University System and posted a message telling President Barack Obama to mind his own business and stop talking about the disputed Iranian election. The message, which asserted there was no cheating in the election, was up for 90 minutes before technicians took it down Wednesday morning. The hackers apparently took advantage of third-party software that had not been properly updated... The text, in red on a black background... [YUCK! Why not make it FLASHING as well!]

Their bodies were among the 49 that French and Brazilian military boats have plucked from the Atlantic since the plane crashed June 1

killed and more than 30 injured in a series of bomb attacks in Iraq.... At least four policemen were killed....

A man who said he left a ruthless street gang in Central America and later won praise for his anti-gang work in Los Angeles was arrested Wednesday by authorities who allege he conspired to kill a rival even as he spoke out against gang life.

poorly developed and puts users at risk of having their computers compromised, a security expert who examined the code said on Thursday.

The Chinese Health Ministry on Thursday ordered sharp restrictions on Internet access to medical research papers on sexual subjects. It is the latest move in what the ministry calls an antipornography campaign that many China experts see as a harbinger of a broader crackdown on freedom of expression and dissent.

There's not really any doubt that Green Dam is ripping off CyberSitter.... Last night, for the first time ever, Solid Oak suffered "server problems" so severe the machines had to be rebooted. While DiPasquale shied away from claiming a Chinese attack on the company, she said, "we suspect there's something being done. We've never had a problem until last night...."

"We have found that the English version of google.com has spread lots of pornographic, lewd and vulgar content, which is in serious violation of Chinese laws and regulations," said foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang at a news briefing. He said authorities summoned Google representatives and told them to "remove the material immediately." [HAHAHAHAHAHA]

A judge has denied a request by Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols for a court-appointed lawyer to help him with a lawsuit over prison food.

A witness to the killing of an Oklahoma woman who tried to back out of a Ku Klux Klan initiation was sentenced Thursday to one year in prison for her role in the case.

Police believe they may have found the van involved in a drive-by shooting that stole the life of a 9-year-old girl who was washing her dog and injured three others in the South Side's Hamilton Park neighborhood.

An inmate booked into the Oklahoma County jail Wednesday on an assault complaint was revealed to be one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives after a fingerprint check.... wanted in connection with the stabbing deaths of his estranged wife in Cleveland in 2002 and of a man in Baldwin Park, Calif., in 1995....

Two U.S. Democratic lawmakers want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards for mortgages on new condominiums, saying they could threaten the viability of some developments and slow the housing-market recovery... [DIDN'T WE GET ENOUGH OF THIS ALREADY????]

The actors helping to fight off the enemies in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" were actually real life service members. Lt. Col. Jimmy Warren is a commander stationed at Tinker Air Force Base, but he can also been seen commanding the famous E-3 aircraft in the movie. "My line was, 'scramble the strike package for the USS Enterprise,'" said Lt. Col. Jimmy Warren. "Twenty-two years in the Air Force. It was the most unique experience I've ever had."

...individuals physically abused in childhood are more likely to develop cancer than those who have not been abused. Childhood physical abuse is associated with 49 per cent higher odds of cancer in adulthood....

Computer systems that dynamically create, monitor, manage or suspend online contractual agreements are being developed to deliver greater reliability and security to service-oriented e-business applications.

Six years after the Episcopal Church consecrated a gay bishop, setting off a firestorm of protests, delegates meeting in Bedford, Texas, this week officially constituted the new Anglican church with 700 congregations and 100,000 members.

...Priming, he said, is when someone is exposed to a certain environment and their subconscious is activated, and then they tend to act in accordance with that environment without deliberate intent. Priming can manipulate behavior; if someone witnesses violent behavior, they would likely behave more violently... "Once they were in a patriotic point of view, they were less empathetic," Alvarado said. "They didn't put themselves in other people's perspective." Though songs like "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" were meant to be neutral primes, the researchers found that they stimulated a pro-social response.... [Ummm...]

The mysterious 1908 Tunguska explosion that leveled 830 square miles of Siberian forest was almost certainly caused by a comet entering the Earth's atmosphere, according to new research. The conclusion is supported by an unlikely source: the exhaust plume from the NASA space shuttle launched a century later.

Researchers recently showed that dry granular materials such as sands, seeds and grains have properties similar to liquid, forming water-like droplets when poured from a given source. The finding could be important to a wide range of industries that use "fluidized" dry particles for oil refining, plastics manufacturing and pharmaceutical production.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad compared Obama on Thursday to former President George W. Bush. [Sure, let's see... they're both male (I think), and... both were elected President... and... uh....]

The Iranian regime has appointed one of its most feared prosecutors to interrogate reformists arrested during demonstrations, prompting fears of a brutal crackdown against dissent.... [As opposed to what's been happening already???]

banking on brick ovens for its latest success. Beautiful Brands International and Kyro Pizza are joining forces to take the Baltimore-based pizzeria worldwide.

"If the U.S. imperialists start another war, the army and people of Korea will ... wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all," the official Korean Central News Agency said.

South Carolina GOP Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday to an affair, and resigned his position as chair of the Republican Governor's Association following a strange week in which the governor dropped off the grid and could not be located. [What is WITH these idiots?]

China has made its first big foray into Iraq in a C$8bn (£4.4bn) deal to buy London-listed oil explorer Addax Petroleum.

A New Jersey man described as an Internet radio talk show host and blogger was arrested for allegedly threatening to kill three U.S. Appeals Court judges in Chicago who earlier this month upheld a law banning handguns.

…was defending her mother when she shot and killed 47-year-old…

Composting will prevent tons of material from going to the landfill, create healthy soil for our local farms and help us fight global warming. [HELLLPPPP!!!!! THE REAL COMPOST IS BIG NANNY GOVERNMENT!!!]

[executed 1959 June 25] ...an American spree killer who murdered 11 people in Nebraska and Wyoming during a road trip with his pubescent girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate. He became a national fascination in the United States....

A bomb in a sprawling Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Baghdad killed at least 72 people and wounded more than 135 Wednesday, highlighting the danger that Iraq will slip back into violence after a deadline for U.S. combat troops to leave its cities -- now less than a week away.

Among the legion of today's most popular diet regimens, the Mediterranean diet has become a poster child for healthy eating, garnering praise from nutrition experts and home gourmets alike. But while few would dispute the health benefits of such a diet, what is it about the Mediterranean menu that makes it so healthy?

A Connecticut church has outraged gay rights advocates by posting a video of members performing an apparent exorcism of a teen's "homosexual demons."

Earlier this week, ABCnews.com published an article outlining the top frustrations doctors experience with their patients. But there was another side to the coin. Our audience shot back with comments about the bad habits doctors had that they felt often led to wasted time and wasted money.

A newfound vulture-bone flute is likely the world's oldest recognizable musical instrument, a new study says. The 40,000-year-old flute may add to evidence that music helped do in the Neanderthals.

The Sears Tower will undergo a $350 million green remodeling effort at the 110-story skyscraper, including wind turbines, green roofs and solar panels

Operators of an unauthorized New York airport van service that took five French tourists on a high speed chase in an attempt to evade police

No RSVPs from Iranian diplomats offered a chance to party down on July 4th with U.S. officials at embassies around the world means no more invitations.

GREENSBORO -- A buck-a-day -- that's the incentive being offered to young girls to keep them from getting pregnant. Wednesday, June 24, 2009.

There's no doubt the film and TV industries need to find a way to protect their copyrighted programming on the Web. But the strategy unveiled Wednesday by Time Warner and Comcast falls short of the ideal solution.

A chance recording by astronauts on the International Space Station has captured the moment a volcano explosively erupted, sending massive shockwaves through the atmosphere.

Huge geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus may be fed by a salty sea below its surface, boosting the odds of extraterrestrial life in our own Solar System

The Pentagon will create a Cyber Command to oversee the U.S. military's efforts to protect its computer networks and operate in cyberspace.... will be responsible for defending U.S. military systems but not other U.S. government or private networks...

In what appeared to be a coordinated exchange, President Obama called on the Huffington Post's Nico Pitney near the start of his press conference and requested a question directly about Iran.

The Obama administration plans to kill a controversial Bush administration spy satellite program at the Department of Homeland Security.... would have provided federal, state and local officials with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery — but no eavesdropping capabilities— to assist with emergency response and other domestic-security needs, such as identifying where ports or border areas are vulnerable to terrorism....

Nine fatalities have been confirmed in the worst accident in the history of Washington's Metro subway system, authorities said Tuesday morning... Among the dead was the operator of the train that crashed into the stopped train...

Interview with Kevin Dunn on Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged Congress to pass "historic legislation" to fight global warming, prompting his fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives to aim for a vote on Friday on the bill to reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide.... incentives to encourage utilities, manufacturers and other companies to switch from higher-polluting oil and coal to cleaner energy alternatives... [Better incentive for everyone: IMPEACH!]

Social problems like bullying and stereotyping involve thoughts, feelings and reactions that resist change. New research shows that when students play active roles in virtual dramas their attitudes and behavior can change.

In "Magnificent Desolation" Buzz Aldrin recounts his experience — from takeoff to splashdown — in breathtaking detail, and his harrowing return to normal life after the moon mission, when the astronaut battled depression and alcoholism.

On Jan. 23, 1973, when the Supreme Court struck down state criminal abortion laws in Roe v. Wade, President Richard M. Nixon made no public statement. But privately, newly released tapes reveal, he expressed ambivalence.... Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster "permissiveness," and said that "it breaks the family." But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.... [If only we could kick the jerk out of office AGAIN!]

Materials released by the Nixon Presidential Library on Tuesday show aides trying to head off a constitutional crisis and save a presidency after Nixon fired the Watergate special prosecutor and forced out the two top Justice Department officials in October 1973.... The idea: Convince lawmakers that prosecutor Archibald Cox wanted an "unending crisis of the body politic" and needed to be removed. That didn't work....

It is Khamenei who has the ultimate responsibility for the apparent decision to skew Iran's presidential election in favor of his preferred candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and for unleashing the security forces that have killed at least 17 Iranians protesting the outcome in the past week, sending Iran into its greatest political crisis in 30 years. Khamenei is preserving his vision, say analysts, of what the Islamic Republic should look like in the short term by denying the popular will. But he has taken that step, they say, at a cost so great to his own image and to that of the office he occupies that the Islamic Republic is unlikely to be the same again. ...

Ed McMahon, best known for his role as Johnny Carson's No. 2 on the "Tonight Show," died at a hospital in Los Angeles this morning.... esponsible for bringing the infamous "Heeeere's Johnny!" line into the pop culture lexicon.....

Modern glaciers, such as those making up the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, are capable of undergoing periods of rapid shrinkage or retreat, according to new findings by paleoclimatologists.

"I told her, 'Neda, don't go,'" the Times quotes Golshad. "She said, 'Don't worry. It's just one bullet and it's over.'" ... "We were stuck in traffic and we got out and stood to watch, and without her throwing a rock or anything they shot her," ...

As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding "secret energy meetings" with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies.

killed at least 14 people earlier Monday, hours after gunmen fired rockets at local army bases.

A U.S. Navy destroyer is tailing a North Korean ship suspected of carrying illicit weapons toward Myanmar.... suspects the cargo ship Kang Nam is carrying missiles and related parts...

North Korea has accused US President Barack Obama of plotting a nuclear war on the communist nation... At a summit with Lee in Washington Wednesday, Obama warned that North Korea is a "grave threat" and vowed to defend South Korea....

"Which is why no one likes to hang with Tyrese," says his costar Kevin Dunn, mentioning the potential global embarrassment of candid -- and yes, possibly drunken -- photos being sent out to "everyone on the planet." "Here's me, with a glass of tequila on my forehead," says Dunn, as everyone laughs.

President Obama signed into law today the toughest new measures ever on the tobacco industry designed to stop young people from smoking, a powerful habit that the president himself started as a teenager -- and one he is still grappling with on a day-to-day basis.... [IMPEACH THE HYPOCRIT & FREE TOBACCO! (And I REALLY hate tobacco!]

In the first presidential address in 136 years to a joint session of France's two houses of parliament... President Nicolas Sarkozy... "The burqa is not a religious sign, it's a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement—I want to say it solemnly.... It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic...."

four dead from the collision, and officials say there are 67 people injured... may be as many as three more dead in the part of the train that was the most severely damaged.... trains were traveling in the same direction when one rear ended the other when one train stopped and the other did not

Bombings and shootings killed more than 30 people across Iraq on Monday, including high school students on their way to final exams, part of a new round of violence ahead of next week's deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from urban areas.

Estimating the chronology of population migrations throughout mankind's early history has always been problematic. The most widely used genetic method works back to find the last common ancestor of any particular set of lineages using samples of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), but this method has recently been shown to be unreliable, throwing 20 years of research into doubt. The new method refines the mtDNA calculation by taking into account the process of natural selection - which researchers realised was skewing their results - and has been tested successfully against known colonisation dates confirmed by archaeological evidence, such as in Polynesia in the Pacific (approximately 3,000 years ago), and the Canary Islands (approximately 2,500 years ago).

Plastic containers should be rinsed out... Plastics should be separated into three types... [HOW TO KILL INTEREST IN RECYCLING]

Charges against a former Bartlesville Police Department reserve officer accused of attempting to stop a motorist on south U.S. Highway 75 in April were dismissed Friday

"When the human eye searches for an object it looks globally for the rough location, size and orientation of the object. Then it zeros in on the details," said Jiang, an assistant professor of computer science. "Our method behaves in a similar fashion, using a linear approximation to explore the search space globally and quickly; then it works to identify the moving object by frequently updating trust search regions."

Scientists have discovered that the original statistical model used to calculate dinosaur mass is flawed, suggesting dinosaurs have been oversized.... implications for numerous theories about the biology of dinosaurs, ranging from their energy metabolism to their food requirements and to their modes of locomotion....

radar to give them a 3-D close-up of the San Andreas Fault... will map the fault segment by segment, repeating the same radar observations in hopes of measuring deformations in the crust that might occur between observations...

The developers of the Blu-ray high-definition video format may have beat HD DVD on the technology, but both are losing the war for the hearts and minds of video consumers who look to cable, satellite and the Internet for video.

Iranian police massing in force broke up a demonstration over the disputed presidential election just hours after the Revolutionary Guards said they would crush further protest.... used tear gas and fired shots into the air... helicopters hovered overhead...

Physical violence permeated Scientology's international management team…. Staffers are disciplined and controlled by a multilayered system of "ecclesiastical justice….' the church muscled the IRS into granting Scientology tax-exempt status…. The defectors are liars, they say, bitter apostates who have dug up tired allegations from the Internet and inflated the importance of the positions they held….

A tiny radio chip is arousing fear — but also great enthusiasm. Is it a threat to everything that we know as personal data protection, or the optimal way of keeping track in a chaos of products?

a jet stream deep inside the sun is migrating slower than usual through the star's interior, giving rise to the current lack of sunspots.

first-ever comprehensive computer model of sunspots. The resulting visuals capture both scientific detail and remarkable beauty.

If it were in a position to do so, Al Qaeda would use Pakistan's nuclear weapons in its fight against the United States, a top leader of the group said in remarks aired Sunday.... [wearing a sign that said "SHOOT US!"...]

introduced the amateur color film in 1935 and it became the first commercially successful color film... sales are just a fraction of 1% of the company's still-picture film revenue... Kodak estimates that current supplies of the film - which is slide or transparency film, not the more familiar color negative film - will last until early this fall....

"Don't be afraid, Neda dear, don't be afraid," a white-haired man says desperately in Persian. Another man presses on her chest, trying to keep her alive. Scarlet blood gushes from her nose and mouth and courses across her pale face. Men and women scream in horror as they realize she is dead or dying. The death of the woman identified as Neda Agha Soltan was captured on amateur videos and spread around the world in less than 48 hours...turned the woman described as a 27-year-old music student into an instant icon of the clash between Iran's cleric-led government and the self-described "green wave" movement that claims hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole his June 12 re-election through fraud....

It was a dramatic weekend in the relatively small city of Shishou in Hubei province [China]. Tens of thousands of rioters torched a hotel and overturned police cars, after the authorities allegedly tried to cover up the murder of a 24-year-old man as a suicide.... It's a strange story, and it gets stranger...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has plans to crack down on blogosphere payola with guidelines that would impose penalties on bloggers who promote products without adequate disclosure.... [WHY?] first time a government agency is attempting to hold bloggers accountable for the content they produce...

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling related to the 1965 Voting Rights Act.... ruled that a small voting district in Texas can seek to be exempted from the law's requirement that any changes in voting procedures must be approved in advance by the federal government....

People make value judgments about others based on their facial expressions. A new study shows that -- after looking at a face for only 100 milliseconds -- we can detect expressions of happiness and surprise faster than those of sadness or fear.

Dr. David Scheiner took care of Obama for 22 years. But they don't see eye-to-eye on how to fix the health care system.

The U.S. military is preparing for a possible intercept of a North Korean flagged ship suspected of proliferating weapons material in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution passed last Friday

A Denver police officer has been suspended after allegedly brandishing his gun at a McDonald's restaurant in Aurora after his order took too long to fill.... flashed his police badge and pointed a pistol through the drive through window in a threatening manner, before driving off without paying....

Outspoken Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann says she's so worried that information from next year's national census will be abused that she will refuse to fill out anything more than the number of people in her household... anyone over 18 years of age who refuses to answer "any of the questions" on the census can be fined up to $5,000.... [IMPEACH! REPEAL! REVOLT!]

In a move that could disrupt Google's growth in China, which now has more internet users than the US, the Chinese government said it had told Google to suspend foreign searches and a feature that automatically suggests multiple search results once typing commences in the search window.

Charges against a former Bartlesville Police Department reserve officer accused of attempting to stop a motorist on south U.S. Highway 75 in April were dismissed Friday. Prosecutors could not withstand a "motion to dismiss" filed by defense attorneys for Eric Evans, who was charged with impersonating a police officer.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson broke ground on Friday on construction of Spaceport America, the world's first facility built specifically for space-bound commercial customers and fee-paying passengers.

A 79-year-old Vienna man who was fed up with his Verizon service died after trying to stop a technician's van from pulling out of his driveway.

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor resigned Friday from an elite all-women's club after Republicans questioned her participation in it. Sotomayor said she resigned from the Belizean Grove to prevent the issue from becoming a distraction in her confirmation hearings. [TOO LITTLE TOO LATE if that's what she wants. Not to compare the organizations, but if a guy had quit the KKK only for those reasons, would you expect everybody to just drop the matter?]

Dutch twin brothers who mugged a teenager in the northern town of Groningen were arrested after being caught on camera by a car gathering images for Google's online photo map service

As part of routine background checks, the city asks job applicants to provide their usernames and passwords for their social-networking sites. And it has been doing it for years... City officials maintain the policy is necessary to ensure employees' integrity and protect the public's trust, but the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana says they may be crossing the line.... [MAY be crossing the line? MAY BE????!!!!!]

The Treasury announced a record $104 billion worth of bond auctions for next week, part of its effort to finance a rescue of the world's largest economy.

Former President George W. Bush fired a salvo at President Obama on Wednesday, asserting his administration's interrogation policies were "within the law," declaring the private sector - not government - will fix the economy and rejecting the nationalization of health care.

He was appointed with fanfare as the public watchdog over the government's multi-billion dollar bailout of the nation's financial system. But now Neil Barofsky is embroiled in a dispute with the Obama administration that delayed one recent inquiry and sparked questions about his ability to freely investigate.

Suspected U.S. missiles pounded militant hideouts Thursday in the tribal belt near Afghanistan where Pakistani troops are building up for a major offensive against the country's top Taliban leader.... killed at least eight people...

North Korea may fire a long-range ballistic missile toward Hawaii in early July, a Japanese news report said Thursday, as Russia and China urged the regime to return to international disarmament talks on its rogue nuclear program.

A suspended Stillwater police officer who's charged with raping a 15-year-old girl allegedly told a colleague he planned to marry the girl.

Conservation officers in Squamish, B.C., continue to hunt for two more cougars after a rash of attacks, including one in which a mother fought off an attack on her daughter, 3, who couldn't understand why the big kitty didn't want to "play nice."

A condemned home belonging to a deceased woman and her 30 cats will be demolished.... contained four years of built up fecal matter.... Neighbors have asked to be notified 72 hours before it's torn down so they can leave due to health concerns....

told them he was sitting on a bus station bench Wednesday, about to put mayonnaise on his sandwich, when another man began staring at him.... Hamilton told police that the man then punched him in the mouth and grabbed his sandwich and left....

Even some of the drawers, containing a selection of ready-meals for passengers, remained wedged securely inside the unit

The Beijing government's Spiritual Civilization Office says it is trying to recruit 10,000 volunteers to monitor net content. It's part of a plan of "purifying social civilization," said spokesman Ms. Guo... Meanwhile Chinese youth mock the Green Dam program, kidding each other that if they don't behave, "I'll youth-escort you." Anti-Green Dam websites and petitions are popular. And a Manga-style cartoon mocking the thought police has appeared: Green Dam Girl....

Investigators and family members say they are suspicious about the account the cousin of a 2-year-old girl has given of how the child disappeared from outside a convenience store....

The new strain of H1N1 flu is causing "something different" to happen in the United States this year -- perhaps an extended year-round flu season that disproportionately hits young people

Supervisors suggest putting unemployed parents to work caring for their own children... "What we're saying is do not cut Welfare to Work outright...." [Right. Just redefine NOT working to be WORK (with all due respect to the hard work of motherhood)]

The resolution passed Thursday includes a disclaimer saying that nothing in it supports or authorizes reparations by the United States.

Two Japanese men are detained in Italy after allegedly attempting to take $134 billion worth of U.S. bonds over the border into Switzerland. Details are maddeningly sketchy, so naturally the global rumor mill is kicking into high gear.... The implications of the securities being legitimate would be bigger than investors may realize. At a minimum, it would suggest that the U.S. risks losing control over its monetary supply on a massive scale.... Think about it: These two guys were carrying the gross domestic product of New Zealand or enough for three Beijing Olympics. If economies were for sale, the men could buy Slovakia and Croatia and have plenty left over for Mongolia or Cambodia....

Possessing a greater purpose in life is associated with lower mortality rates among older adults according to a new study.

Does God or some other type of transcendent entity answer prayer? … analysis of 17 major studies on the effects of intercessory prayer — or prayer that is offered for the benefit of another person — among people with psychological or medical problems. He found a positive effect….

a technique known as rapid prototyping, or three-dimensional printing, could enable tissue engineering that replicates the porous and hierarchical structures of natural tissues at an unprecedented level.

The FBI said DNA tests conducted on John Robert Barnes, of Kalkaska, Mich., found he could not, in fact, be Steven Craig Damman, who disappeared on Oct. 31, 1955, after his mother left him in front of a Food Fair supermarket in East Meadow while she shopped.... In addition, a certified birth certificate obtained by Newsday on Thursday through Barnes's father shows John Barnes was born on Aug. 18, 1955, in Pensacola, Fla. That would make him less than 3 months old at the time of the disappearance....

"I'm his dad," Richard Barnes told The Associated Press. When asked whether John Barnes had been kidnapped as a little boy, Richard Barnes said, "No, no," and called the accusation "a bunch of foolishness."

Scientists have discovered a unique beaked, plant-eating dinosaur in China. The finding, they say, demonstrates that theropod, or bird-footed, dinosaurs were more ecologically diverse in the Jurassic period than previously thought, and offers important evidence about how the three-fingered hand of birds evolved from the hand of dinosaurs.

A U.S. appeals court says a California girl conceived from the frozen sperm of a dead man cannot receive his Social Security benefits. A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued its decision Wednesday, ruling the girl wasn't dependent on her father at the time of his death… he died unexpectedly in 1995 from an allergic reaction….

The 1930s-era Meadow Gold sign glows as it once did along historic Route 66... The sign is at the same height and facing the same direction as before, but it's about a mile west of its original site.

By a 5-4 vote, the nation's highest court refused to create a new legal right for post-conviction DNA testing, which has exonerated at least 232 people nationwide years after they had been found guilty.... The U.S. Justice Department supported Alaska and said a right to post-conviction DNA testing would "open the floodgates" for lawsuits seeking new tests for old evidence. It said the issue was best left to the states and Congress to adopt their own procedures.... [Oh, my, yes, we wouldn't want a "flood" of innocent people released, after working so hard to convict them. REVOLT!]

the lake appears to have covered as much as 80 square miles and was up to 1,500 feet deep -- roughly the equivalent of Lake Champlain bordering the United States and Canada

The two Okies, who that fall were driving their fellow scouts crazy with talk about the University of Oklahoma Sooners football team, themselves ran the ultimate 100-yard dash, not once, but twice. Both were awarded Bronze Stars for their actions. One of the Afghan soldiers died from his wounds, but one lived — a second chance at life for a central Asian country boy, courtesy of two Oklahoma country boys.

"Could you say 'senator' instead of 'ma'am?' It's just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title. I'd appreciate it." --Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to Brigadier General Michael Walsh during Senate hearing Tuesday

Hundreds of thousands of protesters wearing black and carrying candles filled the streets of Tehran again Thursday, joining opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi to mourn demonstrators killed in clashes over Iran's disputed election.

[Yeah! Impeach that heinous killer!]

"It appears to suggest that I was removed because I was disabled -- based on one occasion out of hundreds," he said. "I would never say President Obama doesn't have the capacity to continue to serve because of his (statement) that there are 56 states," Walpin said, adding that the same holds for Vice President Biden and his "many express confusions that have been highlighted by the media." Obama mistakenly said once on the campaign trail that he had traveled to 57 states.

The plan would give the government new powers to seize key companies whose failure jeopardizes the financial system, as well as creation of a watchdog agency to look out for consumers' interests. [IMPEACH!]

US Sen. Tom Coburn issued his own report Tuesday questioning billions in specific stimulus projects, complete with a photo of actors Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment in the decade-old film "The Sixth Sense." The Oklahoma Republican's report has Osment's character seeing stimulus checks instead of dead people....

Stillwater Police officer has been arrested .. worked as a school resource officer at the junior high school and is accused of being involved with a 15-year-old student...

A man who was arrested by an off-duty state trooper after being seen with a gun and ammunition in a Tulsa restaurant has received a five-year prison sentence... was praying to Allah to help him on a "mission," and the word "kill" was heard... diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia... had not taken any medication for about a month...

Bad practices that many students believe will make them become expert engineers are the ire of managers who hire recent engineering graduates.

A startling number of children are falling through the cracks at one Chicago Public School. More than half of the kids didn't even pass the eighth grade.

The Miami teen accused of brutally killing nearly two dozen cats can be released on bail because he poses no danger to himself or the community, a judge ruled Wednesday... will wear an electronic monitoring bracelet while he awaits his trial and will be allowed to attend counseling sessions that were recommended by a doctor after a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation...

Technical problems are degrading the accuracy of signals from the latest GPS satellite launched by the Pentagon, sparking worries about the next generation of satellites.

Officers said they had to break into the room Tuesday and found eight adults and half a dozen baby rabbits, one dead. The police say some were caged, some roaming....

"I didn't go through what most people go through," Hess said. "I gained some weight. I pretty much thought it was like the 'freshmen 15.'" Hess was shocked when what she thought were bad menstrual cramps were actually contractions, and that led to the surprise birth of a seven pound baby in the dorm bathroom….

Saudi Arabia's interior minister signalled his backing for the kingdom's controversial morality police this week, saying they were on a par with the security forces.... [Other than being, you know, unjust and tyrannical...]

multilayer aseptic cartons (a.k.a. 'boxes') may help reduce levels of substances that contribute odors to wine and can lower its quality.

The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged...

A former Mc- Intosh County sheriff and undersheriff who were charged last month with taking confiscated cash from a motorist were caught up in an FBI sting that originated with another traffic stop 19 months ago, court records show.

Beneath the surface of news blasts covering Iran's tainted elections, riots, protester deaths and government crackdowns, a subtext of women's rights is emerging. It is a subtext only to the extent that women's oppression isn't often acknowledged directly —- not even by the leader of the free world. But human rights are at the core of what is occurring now.

Those pesky graying hairs that tend to crop up with age really are signs of stress, reveals a new report.

A novel bacterium -- trapped three kilometers under glacial ice for over 120,000 years -- may hold clues as to what life forms might exist on other planets.

Allen Passmore of Duncan OK has claimed the winning Powerball ticket from Saturday's drawing worth $1,000,000.

as cells and tissues age, the expression of a key protein, called p16INK4a, dramatically increases in most mammalian organs. Because p16INK4a is a tumor suppressor protein, cancer researchers are interested in its role in cellular aging and cancer prevention.... same biomarker is present in human blood and is strongly correlated both with chronological age and with certain behaviors such as tobacco use and physical inactivity, which are known to accelerate the aging process....

A new study contradicts the conventional wisdom that living near a fast food outlet increases weight in children and that living near supermarkets, which sell fresh fruit and vegetables as well as so called junk food, lowers weight.

Soothing anxiety and helping with behaviors linked to obsessive-compulsive disorder could lead to more severe symptoms in children.

Scientists have discovered a "magnetic superatom" -- a stable cluster of atoms that can mimic different elements of the periodic table -- that one day may be used to create molecular electronic devices for the next generation of faster computers with larger memory storage.

skull characteristics of a new species of parrot-beaked dinosaur and its associated gizzard stones indicate that the animal fed on nuts and/or seeds. These characteristics present the first solid evidence of nut-eating in any dinosaur.

extending benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees…

Medically unexplained (or 'functional') symptoms (MUS) are physical symptoms that prompt the sufferer to seek healthcare but remain unexplained after an appropriate medical evaluation... developmental factors may play a role in some cases.... Maternal perception of a threatening environment may be transmitted to the fetus when hormones cross the placenta and affect fetal physiology, effectively 'programming' the fetal stress response system and associated behaviors toward enhanced vigilance. After birth, intense stress responses in the individual may result in similar vulnerability, which may be unmasked by subsequent stressors....

Nanoparticles specially engineered by University of Central Florida Assistant Professor J. Manuel Perez and his colleagues could someday target and destroy tumors, sparing patients from toxic, whole-body chemotherapies.

Autistics are up to 40 percent faster at problem-solving than non-autistics

"Trakr was so much a part of my life, and, you know, he was more than just my partner," Symington said. "He was my best friend and my lifelong companion. Seeing and having his legacy live on in these puppies is a tremendous gift...." actually pulled the last remaining survivor from the rubble itself...

A Brooklyn special education student who won a national essay contest and was made the title character of a Superman comic got his first peek at the book Tuesday.

A Michigan man said Wednesday he is "99% convinced" that he's the Long Island toddler kidnapped in a long-unsolved 1955 crime. [Comparative photos]

online photographs led him to believe he found his birth mother... after years of feeling he didn't belong in his family, the woman he called his mother murmured on her death bed a few words about him being kidnapped...

a new analog to DNA that assembles and disassembles itself without the need for enzymes. Because the new system comprises components that might reasonably be expected in a primordial world, the new chemical system could answer questions about how life could emerge.

all of the girls said Factor made them feel uncomfortable by touching their legs, backs, buttocks, shoulders, arms, hands or knees. One girl said the situation eventually led her to leave Hale and TPS altogether. She said Factor called her "babe," moved his chair close to hers and put his hands between her legs while helping her in class. She said she repeatedly told him to stop, took her concerns to the school's principal, dean, attendance dean and a coach and tried in vain to be transferred out of Factor's class. "They told me that they could not do anything and that it was my word against his," she wrote. "When I went back to class, Mr. Factor said to me, quietly in my ear, 'Thanks for telling on me.' During the semester I turned in a paper to be graded. I asked, 'Can you grade my paper now?' He said, 'I'll grade it if you stop telling on me....' "

Charles Cox traveled in a covered wagon, courted in a Model T and served on four continents in the Army. His history also contains this jaw-dropping nugget: Cox's father fought in the Civil War... born when his father, who married three times, was 73....

A new type of robot being developed will make it easier to detect drugs, weapons, explosives and illegal immigrants concealed in cargo containers.

…eight people face accusations that they illegally posted [Dungeons & Dragons'] newest handbook for download on the Internet… Another case is against Mike Becker of Bartlesville, Okla…

Recently-predicted and much-sought, the material allows electrons on its surface to travel with no loss of energy at room temperatures and can be fabricated using existing semiconductor technologies. Such material could provide a leap in microchip speeds, and even become the bedrock of an entirely new kind of computing industry based on spintronics, the next evolution of electronics.

Gene regulatory networks in cell nuclei are similar to cloud computing networks, such as Google or Yahoo!, researchers report in the journal Molecular Systems Biology. The similarity is that each system keeps working despite the failure of individual components, whether they are master genes or computer processors.

A Nevada newspaper says it has been served a federal grand jury subpoena seeking information about readers who posted comments on the paper's Web site. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Tuesday that its editor, Thomas Mitchell, plans to fight the request, which the newspaper received after reporting on a federal tax fraud case against business owner Robert Kahre.... prosecutors told the judge in the case that some comments hinted at acts of violence and the subpoena was issued out of concern for jurors' safety....

County public health officials backtracked on the number of previously unpublicized HIV cases in adult film performers Tuesday, saying they don't know if those who tested positive were actively working in the industry at the time.

[The buried lede in all the scare-tactic propaganda:] first active performer to contract the disease since a 2004 outbreak [In other words, the industry appears to be doing a pretty good job of taking care of itself]

Using a highly sensitive new test, scientists are reporting "convincing evidence" that marijuana smoke damages the genetic material DNA in ways that could increase the risk of cancer.[Which is why you hear about so many cases of cancer among potsmokers.... Oh... wait a minute...!] "The data obtained from this study suggesting the DNA damaging potential of cannabis smoke highlight the need for stringent regulation of the consumption of cannabis cigarettes, thus limiting the development of adverse health effects such as cancer." [NOOOOOOOOOOOOO it doesn't!]

Douglas Hampton was paid about $101,000 in 2008 and $144,000 in 2007 as Ensign's administrative assistant. But a financial disclosure form he filed in 2007 and 2008 — required for senior congressional staffers - showed only checking and savings account worth a maximum $30,000 combined. A review of public records shows that the Hamptons in 2006 took out a $1.2 million mortgage on their Las Vegas home, at an interest rate of 8 percent. Political insiders in Nevada and in the Senate said that Ensign decided to acknowledge the affair publicly after the husband of the woman he had been seeing asked him for a substantial sum of money....

International media said Wednesday they were skirting the ban on reporting from the streets of Iran by using a flood of emails, Twitter messages and phone calls from people inside the country....newspapers and websites are reprinting emails, the contents of phone calls, and messages from Twitter and social networking site Facebook....

Gary IN... A 26-year-old convenience store clerk was shot and killed in broad daylight in Gary, Ind., and police say witnesses stood by and did nothing.... several customers walking around the store after the crime. But only one called 911 for help...

Many women taking the crowded train in Tokyo opt for women-only carriages during the rush hour to avoid gropers. Now, for fear of being accused of groping, some are asking for carriages reserved for men....

The inspector general fired last week by President Obama appeared confused, disoriented and unable to answer questions at a late May board meeting of the Corporation for National and Community Service, according to a White House letter delivered to lawmakers... In response, Walpin said Tuesday night that "This is nonsense to rely on a supposed single meeting which makes no sense whatsoever and is just grasping at straws...."

A CIA spokesman is sharply downplaying Director Leon Panetta 's recent comments that appear to question whether former Vice President Dick Cheney is hoping for another terrorist attack against the United States.... "The Director does not believe the former Vice President wants an attack...."

wove a tale for two months about being an unmarried mother who chose to carry her child who is now terminally ill to term rather than have an abortion because of her deep Christian faith... posted her story on a blog that got nearly a million hits until one of her followers exposed the lie last week....

Police arrested a woman at a Target store in Oklahoma City after an employee said he saw her stuff nearly $1,000 worth of Blu-ray discs in her pants.... she bit and clawed at them when they confronted her....

tracked a suspected bank robber through his mobile phone

There was a time when American capitalists would have strongly protested totalitarian censorship, but that was before they became complicit in it. Moral indignation once again loses out to global profits... The best I found was a Dell spokesman saying they were "reviewing" the issue... When the Chinese people show themselves to love freedom more than American CEOs, there clearly is a problem. And it isn't in China....

Iranian authorities are restricting all journalists working for foreign media from firsthand reporting on the streets.

The youngest son — and reportedly heir apparent — of North Korea's ailing leader Kim Jong Il secretly visited China last week and was urged by President Hu Jintao to have the North halt additional nuclear tests....

A plea deal that sent an ex-convict accused of raping a 4-year-old girl to jail for only a year has prompted outrage across Oklahoma, where lawmakers are calling for the removal of the judge who approved the deal and the attorney general is investigating a new set of abuse allegations.

Wheat farmers in Oklahoma say the crop has taken a beating -- but is showing some positive signs.

A small company that prints the letters WWJD a common acronym for the question What would Jesus do? on its correspondence has been sued by the president of a competing company, who claims the reference is abusive and harassing…. claiming the motto violates the federal Debt Collection Practices Act…. use of "WWJD" invokes shame or guilt in the letter's recipient, portraying the debtor "as a sinner who is going to hell…." [It must be asked… WWJD?]

after suffering decades of pain he found it had never actually healed... "Everyone tells me that having a broken leg for nearly 30 years is unheard of...." He will now have a metal Ilazarov frame fitted around his leg and foot to stretch the bone 1mm each day for seven to nine months. Then he will be in plaster for a further three months.

About 3 hours later at home, Jack started exhibiting, well, strange symptoms. "His eyes were kind of glossed over, very out of touch, I mean, he didn't seem to recognize me at first.... When he was trying to walk, he was looking at his paw, and then looking at the ground and then trying to get his paw to reach the ground, but was unsuccessful." Concern for Jack turned to relief when she heard the vet's diagnosis: Jack had swallowed a large amount of dried, harvested marijuana....

Until Steven's disappearance, child kidnapping was unheard of,

Sources would not disclose why the Michigan man believes he is the long-missing boy

On Tuesday, Opera released Opera Unite, a technical preview of a service that turns the Opera browser into a Web server for file sharing and streaming.

British sculptor Willard Wigan creates micro-sculptures that fit in the eye of a needle.

Posters depicting the symbolic genitals of 100 artists have been deemed unsuitable by the Venice Biennale authorities.

Thousands of bloggers who operate behind the cloak of anonymity have no right to keep their identities secret, the High Court ruled today... [OMG! Imagine Britain ruling this on print during the Revolution!]

National Digital Newspaper Program celebrates the first 1 million pages posted on a free, government-funded Web site.

looked in the La Bamba bag and found two bundles of cash totaling $5,000, along with a bank deposit slip. The money had been dropped accidentally by a La Bamba manager who had meant to take it to the bank…. She told the driver what she had found… she said the cabdriver began acting strangely, insisting that the money should be taken to a cab stand, and drove Narsete around and around, running up the fare. "He wouldn't let me out of the car…."

President Barack Obama announced the appointment Monday of Kimberly Teehee, a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, as his senior policy adviser on American Indian issues.

Letterman said he had no idea Palin was at the Yankees game with her 14-year-old daughter, Willow, when he joked about her getting "knocked up" by player Alex Rodriguez last week. [Oh, Dave, that makes you SO much less of a smelly old man!]

After the CIA director apparently told The New Yorker that he thinks the former vice president is crossing his fingers for another attack on America, Dick Cheney says he hopes his "old friend" didn't really say those words.... Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called on Panetta to "retract immediately" his statement, arguing that the director crossed the line....

The United States has determined that the nuclear test conducted by North Korea last month yielded an explosion of a few kilotons, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence

may be an association between use of stimulant medications used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and sudden cardiac death in healthy children... [BUT THEY SAY, KEEP GIVING THEM THE DRUGS!!]

One of the Chinese developers of the "Green Dam" filtering software pledged to patch the software's vulnerabilities, while intimating that he may take legal action against the authors of a U.S. report that discovered them. [BWAH HAHAHAHAHHA]

some of the blacklists the software uses to filter sites was taken from U.S.-based Solid Oak Software, maker of Cybersitter... It wasn't just that "blacklisted" URL addresses appeared to be copied directly from Cybersitter; "a news item, almost like a press release that Cybersitter sent to customers was included in the shipping version of Green Dam software," Halderman said. "It appeared to be copied into Green Dam by mistake."...

On Tuesday, June 16, thirty young adults with Bike & Build Inc., a national non-profit committed to affordable housing, are bicycling into Bartlesville on their journey across the United States.

Bartlesville -- Westside Community Center Director Morris McCorvey is free on bond after his arrest on marijuana-related offenses following a raid on his Bartlesville home Sunday evening... also found what appeared to be a "grow room..."

Google.... co-founder Sergey Brin is so rattled by the launch of Microsoft's rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service

Iran's hardline Islamic Basij militiamen killed at least one person on Monday and wounded more when their building was attacked by demonstrators protesting an election they say was stolen

There is a similarity between Scientific Theory and Religion and The Urantia Book. There is a popular idea that the origin of humans began in Africa. This idea is promoted by scientists that specialize in these areas, such as paleoanthropologists. So it is a difficult task to change that idea. But looking at their findings there are serious objections to the idea that humans arose in Africa.... -Frank Jakubowsky

Let's come together and boycott products that advertise on Letterman's show.... The media wolf pack attacks on women candidates observe no political boundaries...

it seems that Palin and her husband, the first dude of Alaska, feel the need to keep this ball up in the air.... I used to feel sorry for Palin, a not-very-smart person ... [Another dirty old man supporter]... she reminds me of my sister when she was in 10th grade. I never had a sister, but you know what I mean. [OH, and an IDIOT]

In this age of out-of-control political correctness, it never ceases to amaze me how thin our skins have become. Can anyone around here take a joke anymore? I'm referring to the latest — and utterly ridiculous — furor being made over the comments David Letterman made last week about Sarah Palin's daughter. Palin, of course, went ballistic.... [Well, guess we know where "Chuck Barney" stands on the filthy old man issue.]

Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday that "everyone guessed wrong" on the impact of the economic stimulus, but he defended the administration's spending [Of course he did!]

CIA director Leon Panetta says it's almost as if former vice president Dick Cheney would like to see another attack on the United States to prove he is right in criticizing President Barack Obama for abandoning the "harsh interrogation" of terrorism suspects. [Right... so when they attack, we can blame Cheney. IMPEACH!]

President Barack Obama said on Friday he was hopeful the robust debate taking place in Iran's presidential election would advance his administration's efforts to engage longtime US rival Tehran in new ways. [IMPEACH!]

North Korea vowed Saturday to step up its atomic bomb-making program and threatened war if its ships are stopped as part of new U.N. sanctions aimed at punishing the nation for its latest nuclear test.

The mayor of Hiroshima... denounced North Korea for threatening to build more nuclear weapons... "I am furious, with them (North Korea) for defying strong protests from the international community, including Hiroshima, the city attacked in an atomic bombing..."

The teenager accused of mutilating more than a dozen cats in South Miami-Dade was not the reserved yet rabid killer some expected. He was a dog-loving class clown, a swim class instructor, an 18-year-old who grew up before the eyes of the four-legged victims' families. He appeared to be appalled by the horrific killings, and joined the Facebook group "Catch the Cat Killer!'' ... Police, working with tips gathered from the community and reading his Facebook and MySpace pages... ''He was always so nice to my animals... I have three cats and they loved him....''

After hearing the news of the gorilla's escape, a local GOP activist exposed his vile racism, by suggesting that the gorilla was an "ancestor" of Michelle Obama, the lovely and admired First Lady of the United States.

Miami Fla--A teenager has been arrested in a string of cat killings and mutilations that horrified residents of Miami's southern suburbs...

"... the heat generated from laptops can impact sperm production and development making it difficult to conceive down the road."... Other tips to protect male fertility... Avoid hot tubs... [Isn't all this old news?]

...By the time he and the deputy got there, his 2,200-square-foot house and a barn, valued at $200,000, had been reduced to debris and dumped into four huge Dumpsters. The backhoe and crane were still in the yard... His grandmother's dining room set and china were in the house. So was the family Bible... "(He) said he was just given GP coordinates [!!!!!] and they lined up to my property..." the house intended for demolition is across the street and up the road about 150 yards....

In what a U.S. military official calls an "inadvertent encounter," a Chinese submarine hit an underwater sonar array being towed by the destroyer USS John McCain on Thursday.

THE Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic with 228 people on board broke apart before it hit the water, throwing out some passengers at high altitude, investigators believe.... Their conclusion is based on the discovery of two trails of bodies more than 50 miles apart, suggesting that the Airbus split in two after going out of control in bad weather...

It's called a ghost bike. It is a somber reminder on the side of the road, an informal memorial marking the scene of a crash where two bicyclists were killed. ...painted all white.

Several foreign news organisations complained Sunday that Iranian authorities were blocking their reporters from covering protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election.

most famous for its catastrophic eruption on May 18, 1980... deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in the history of the United States...

Rusted, busted, waterlogged and crud-encrusted, the Buried Belvedere rose from its resting place at the Tulsa County Courthouse two years ago this weekend. It's still not exactly ready for the drag races, but at least some color has returned to its cheeks

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has defended his "completely free" re-election as Iran's president, amid violent clashes on the streets over claims of election fraud. Mr Ahmadinejad condemned the outside world for "psychological warfare" against Iranians during the election.

Louis Dobbs... CNN anchor and managing editor for Lou Dobbs Tonight. He is an editorial columnist and syndicated radio show host....

...the husband, who was 25, and the man who was summoned by the wife got involved in an altercation after the husband allegedly broke the man's car window. The suspect then went to his car, retrieved a gun and chased and shot the victim.. [to death...]

ad-libbed and experimental style that would come to make his reputation, including video effects, superimpositions, reverse polarities and scanning, and quick blackouts. He was also noted for abstraction and carefully timed non sequitur gags and for carefully allowing the so-called fourth wall to be breached. Kovacs' cameras commonly showed his viewers activity beyond the boundaries of the show set—including crew members and, on occasion, outside the studio itself. Kovacs also liked talking to the off-camera crew and even introduced segments from the studio control room. Ernie frequently made use of accidents and happenstance, incorporating the unexpected into his shows....

[fOR] the first time the transmission spectrum of the Earth has been measured.... The spectrum not only contained signs of life but these signs were unmistakably strong. It also contained unexpected molecular bands and the signature of the earth ionosphere.... "Now we know what the transmission spectrum of a inhabited planet looks like, we have a much better idea of how to find and recognize Earth like planets outside our solar system where life may be thriving...."

Astronomers have at last uncovered newborn stars at the frenzied center of our Milky Way galaxy... have known that stars can form in this chaotic place, but they're baffled as to how this occurs…

two men who fooled the City Clerk's Office into letting them tie the knot…. The gullible clerk didn't seem to notice that both Nelson, 18, and Stenson, 21, have male first names…. By a fluke, Nelson's ID card has an "F" for female on it…. As they walked out of the building hand in hand, Jason said to his new spouse, "I think we just made history…." When they told another male couple about duping the city, that pair made a bee-line for the clerk's office and were also wed….

REM sleep fosters the formation of associative networks in the brain... ""We found that — for creative problems that you've already been working on — the passage of time is enough to find solutions.... However, for new problems, only REM sleep enhances creativity..." appears REM sleep helps achieve such solutions by stimulating associative networks...

Horowitz was able to show that the human tendency to attribute a "guilty look" to a dog was not due to whether the dog was indeed guilty. Instead, people see 'guilt' in a dog's body language when they believe the dog has done something it shouldn't have — even if the dog is in fact completely innocent of any offense.

Religiously devout Jews barred by rabbis from surfing the Internet may now "Koogle" it on a new "kosher" search engine... rabbis... restrict use of the Web to ensure followers avoid viewing sexually explicit material.... links to Israeli news and shopping sites also filter out items most ultra-Orthodox Israelis are forbidden by rabbis to have in their homes... "If you try to buy something on the Sabbath, it gets stuck and won't let you...."

More than 100 feet deep in Lake Huron, on a wide stony ridge that 9,000 years ago was a land bridge, researchers have found the first archeological evidence of human activity preserved beneath the Great Lakes.

Kendall Craig Farris, who heads the Over the Wall Foundation in Marina del Rey, is arrested after an undercover Redondo Beach officer is sold fake methamphetamine and ecstasy tablets.

A new billboard located off a busy street in Oklahoma City is advertising the legalization of drugs.... 10,000 members of the organization Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, known as LEAP. The officers use the badge to make their message more credible.... [And some opposing propaganda bla bla bla put down of LEAP's noble men...]

…a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight — and the finding means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs…. may finally force many paleontologists to reconsider their long-held belief that modern birds are the direct descendants of ancient, meat-eating dinosaurs….

element 112... zinc and lead nuclei merge in a nuclear fusion to form the nucleus of the new element...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday defended his weekend election victory while security forces cracked down on opposition leaders and demonstrators... defeated challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, said in a statement he was under house arrest and banned from appearing in public...

While studying genealogy on the Internet, she came across the controversy surrounding possible photographs of the first president and prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "I went, 'Oh, well I have a picture of him,'" she says.... could be the most accurate known image of the church leader....

She's the only person to go all the way to court when sued by the recording industry over music file-sharing -- and this week, she'll be fighting back again.... a federal judge decided last September that he made a mistake in telling jurors that the companies didn't have to prove that anyone downloaded the songs she had allegedly made available....

The researchers hope that use of their fish robot for ship propulsion will help prevent shoreline erosion and the underminings of submarine installations caused by ships' screws. The fish robot's "soft" drive action should also prevent the churning up of seabeds and riverbeds and its effects on marine plants and aquatic-animal populations.

Engineering students at Duke University have taken advantage of the accelerometers in emerging cell phones to create an application that permits users to write short notes in the air with their phone, and have that message automatically sent to an e-mail address.

researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), who have come up with a mechanism that doubles the future lifespan of the biosphere—while also increasing the chance that advanced life will be found elsewhere in the universe.... "if we study exoplanets, maybe we will see it. Maybe the experiment has already been done...."

His main quest in life was to discover what had happened to his son, Zachary. Captured in Lebanon in 1982, there was information the past few years Zachary still was alive and was being held in Syria.

"I know this is going to sound weird, but in a way, it was a blessing. With all the problems my father had, I'm in a better place in life now than if he had raised me."

Oklahoma will begin deporting illegal immigrants who are serving sentences for nonviolent crimes when a new law takes effect July 1. The Oklahoma Criminal Illegal Alien Rapid Repatriation Act is expected to save Oklahoma taxpayers at least $4 million in the first year, said Rep. Randy Terrill, R-Moore, the author of the measure.

Suburban Chicago veterans have honored a garbage truck driver who's credited with saving 250 American flags from being improperly thrown out within the last 18 months... a 34-year-old native Canadian... married to a former Army medic who did two tours of duty in Kuwait.

For seven long years in Guantánamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, the four Central Asian friends gazed longingly at the azure sea from their cells. They were never allowed through the razor wire to paddle in the water. Now, suddenly set free in Bermuda.... "Our feelings are incredible. We did not think we were going to be this happy."

President Obama, who said as a candidate that he would seek repeal of a law denying federal recognition of same-sex marriage, has angered gay rights groups with court arguments portraying the law as a nondiscriminatory measure that "preserves scarce government resources." [IMPEACH!]

The Oklahoma Department of Public Safety has released video from a police dashboard camera of a scuffle between a paramedic and a state trooper after amateur video of the incident showed an officer grabbing the EMT by the neck.

A transcript makes clear how many details the investigators have about the last minutes of its flight — and how little it tells them.... routine message about a malfunction in one of the plane's lavatories is followed by a worrisome one that says that the speed sensor has a problem, but the cascade that follows is hard to parse....

Criminal charges have been approved against a 24-year-old woman... believed to be a Burmese immigrant... who abandoned her newborn boy near a Wheaton home early Friday morning... baby was found lying naked under a tree - umbilical cord still attached... child's condition was upgraded from serious to fair...

The son of James W. von Brunn says that he wishes it had been his father, not U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum guard Stephen T. Johns, who died in Wednesday's shooting and that von Brunn's hatred of Jews was a plague that ruined his family's life.... "...He should not be remembered as a brave man or a hero, but a coward unable to come to grips with the fact he threw his and his families lives away for an ideology that fostered sadness and anguish...." Larger-than-usual crowds have been visiting the museum since the incident... Sara Bloomfield, the museum's director, said, "People are not going to be deterred...."

Self-styled 'emancipator of women' baffles audience with his views towards opposite sex... to hundreds of baffled Italian women gathered for a rare audience with Muammar Gaddafi, if this was the king of women's rights then the movement still has a long way to go.... "with all these women working for him as semi slaves it seems a bit of a contradiction to call himself a liberator of women." [DUH]

About 15,000 customers, most of them in Dallas County, remained without electricity Saturday after severe storms pounded the North Texas area earlier in the week.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced on Friday plans to restart the country's first clean coal power project, scrapped by the previous Bush administration as too expensive. [BUT NOTHING IS TOO EXPENSIVE FOR OBAMA! IMPEACH!]

Six Flags Inc., the owner of 20 theme parks, sought bankruptcy protection 3 1/2 years after Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder become chairman and hired new managers in an attempt to return it to profitability.

Former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean... "I've had some inappropriate appearances that Keith Lewis has asked me to do.... one of them being Playboy... Another one was a gay movie premiere that he wanted me to attend incognito. He actually said he wanted me to wear a hat and go in disguise and attend this movie premiere promoting gay marriage and then come out with a statement the next day saying that Carrie Prejean attended a gay movie premiere....

Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline. [HELP! HELP! WON'T SOME GEORGE BUSH INVADE AMERICA AND TOPPLE THIS CREEP!]

There are a number of unanswered questions today about President Obama's abrupt decision to fire the inspector general of the AmeriCorps program... Inspectors General Reform Act... [co-sponsored by] then-Sen Barack Obama... requires the president to outline the cause for his decision to remove an IG. Beyond saying that he did not have the "fullest confidence" in Walpin, Obama gave no reason for his action.... Republican Sen. Charles Grassley... suggests that the White House first tried to muscle Walpin out of his job without having to go through the 30-day process. It was only when Walpin refused to resign that the White House then notified Congress of the president's intention to fire Walpin....

Too many analyses of the speech have ignored the fact that it was addressed primarily to the Muslim world, and was delivered in Egypt. And in that setting, Obama insisted that the US-Israel relationship could not be upended. He mentioned the Holocaust, (implicitly) berated Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his Holocaust denial, quoted the Talmud and called on Hamas to recognize Israel and abandon violence. Not bad. To be sure, it was not the speech that many Israelis would have written. Obama's articulated position on Iranian nuclear power is unacceptable, just as an absolute freeze on natural growth in "settlements," even in places where settlements are essentially cities, is both unfair and thoroughly unrealistic. And linking Israel's right to exist to the Holocaust is a significant intellectual and moral mistake.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday that civilian casualties in Afghanistan must be reduced as every casualty is a defeat for NATO and the U.S. troops fighting in the country. [A DEFEAT?!?!!? THIS IS THE US DEFENSE SECRETARY SAYING EVERY CASUALTY BY NUTBALLS IS SOMEHOW A DEFEAT FOR THE GOOD GUYS?? Not even barely good hyperbole! What an abysmally defeatist thing to say. What a maroon! What a poltroon! What about charging him with GIVING AID AND COMFORT TO THE ENEMY?]

I apologize to the Jewish community and all others who were offended by the way in which I framed my comments. I misspoke. [Translation: He spoke at all]

Trash collectors in San Francisco will soon be doing more than just gathering garbage: They'll be keeping an eye out for people who toss food scraps out with their rubbish.... Mandatory composting part of city's plan to eliminate landfill waste by 2020... [Ah, the People's Wacky Republic of Califunny!]

The head Iraq's main Sunni parliamentary bloc is killed at a mosque in Baghdad, leaving at least four others dead... Harith al-Obaidi, a human-rights advocate... teenager carried out the attack.... shot dead by a guard as he tried to escape... Mr Obaidi was the leader of Iraq's Accordance Front. A university professor with a doctorate in Islam, he had just finished delivering the sermon at Friday prayers....

Despite China's claims that Green Dam Youth Escort... is merely a porn filter, it's now clear that the software filters a whole bunch of political content.... [OH, WHAT A SURPRISE!] ... The documents related to political stuff are very big — much, much bigger than those related to pornographic content... software also appears to communicate with a centralized server...

...250 homeless victims of a tornado that killed 21 persons in a residential district here and roared off "whistling like 10,000 devils."

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is putting the brakes on a guardrail at Lake Optima in Texas County, after hearing criticism from city and state leaders who call the project a waste of money.

The security guards who returned fire when a white supremacist allegedly gunned down their colleague at the Holocaust museum Wednesday were a recently retired D.C. police officer and a former Marine, both of whom had worked at the museum only a few weeks.... Von Brunn was struck once in the face and remains in critical condition...

The European Commission has issued a statement that seems to side with Opera's position. The EU said: "The Commission had suggested to Microsoft that consumers be provided with a choice of Web browsers. Instead, Microsoft has apparently decided to supply retail consumers with a version of Windows without a Web browser at all. Rather than more choice, Microsoft seems to have chosen to provide less."

A 14-year old German boy was hit in the hand by a pea-sized meteorite that scared the bejeezus out of him and left a scar. [bejeezus?]

A headquarters is being built for his foundation, which raises scholarship funds for families of killed or disabled military personnel.

... continues to be offended by David Letterman's joke "about the statutory rape of my 14 year-old daughter.... " referred to Letterman as a "so-called comedian..." Letterman made one joke in his opening monologue about the ongoing controversy, saying, "I think everything's fine now: She called and offered to take me hunting...." [Actually a good idea. Let's take Cheney along! And take this writer, who says,] suggests she still doesn't get the idea that Letterman's self-admittedly "cheap" joke... had nothing to do with rape...

A Chicago police officer caught on video beating a stabbing victim who was handcuffed and shackled to a wheelchair was sentenced Thursday to more than three years in federal prison.

The Senate struck a historic blow against smoking in America Thursday, voting overwhelmingly to give regulators new power to limit nicotine in the cigarettes that kill nearly a half-million people a year

A move by the IRS to tax the use of company-issued mobile phones is spurring efforts by the wireless industry and others to kill the idea.

He was speaking Thursday in Rome, where he is on a three-day official visit... likening the 1986 U.S. Strikes on Libya to Osama bin Laden's terror attacks on the United States in 2001... [Wouldn't do much harm to bomb the jerk again, maybe?]

A woman and three children were killed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, when a suspected robber fleeing in a car jumped a curb and struck them, police said Thursday.... He literally cut a tree in half..."

The five-year-old Great Pyrenees is credited with saving the lives of Moss and her son David, 19, by alerting them to an early morning fire.... Smelling smoke and hearing the crackle of fire, mother and son fled the house around 6 a.m. with Jeter following. For an unknown reason, the 120-pound dog went back into the house and perished.... "He'd had such a tough time. He'd been starved, beaten and abused," Glenda Moss said, sobbing as friends and neighbors stopped by after hearing of the fire. "My dog was just amazing."

Four people originally arrested on marijuana, distribution of marijuana and child neglect related charges will instead face formal charges of possession of a controlled substance within 1,000 feet of a park or school and paraphernalia.

An advocacy group for online poker said Tuesday that the federal government has frozen more than $30 million in the accounts of payment processors that handle the winnings of thousands of online poker players.

Gov. Palin pushed back at Letterman again this morning, issuing a statement via Palin PAC spokesperson Meghan Stapelton. "The Palins have no intention of providing a ratings boost for David Letterman by appearing on his show," Stapelton said in an email to ABC News. "Plus, it would be wise to keep Willow away from David Letterman."

New York City plans to trap and kill up to 2,000 Canada Geese this summer in an attempt to avoid the type of collision that caused an airliner to ditch in the Hudson River last winter. The hunt will take place on dozens of city properties located within five miles of Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. Aviation officials have culled the bird flocks on airport property for years, but this will mark a major expansion of the effort into other parts of the city, including about 40 public parks.

Edward E. Whitacre Jr. built AT&T Inc. into the biggest U.S. provider of telephone service over a 43-year-career. By his own admission, he becomes chairman of General Motors Corp. knowing nothing about the auto industry.... [We're GM... We don't care. We don't have to!]

Snapshot Shows President With Feet On His Desk During A Phone Call With Netanyahu

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright says "them Jews" are keeping him from speaking to President Obama, according to the Daily Press newspaper of Virginia.

Caught On Tape: A newly released police tape shows an officer using a taser gun on a 72-Year-Old woman during a routine traffic stop. The woman claims she did nothing to provoke the attack.

Why Pedro Espada Jr., now a heartbeat away from the governorship, is an object lesson in everything that is wrong with New York State government.... His cronies stole food meant for poor, sick people and gave it out at his political rallies. He owes the city $61,750 in fines for fraudulent campaign fund-raising going back to 2001. He has failed to file 41 reports with the State Board of Elections, and has racked up $13,553 in penalties since 2002. He does not have an office in the district he was elected to represent in the Bronx. In fact, it looks as if he doesn’t even live there....

Horrified owners have been finding their cats killed and mutilated for the past month in two south Miami-Dade County communities. Many of the cats were missing fur and appeared to have been cut with a sharp, straight instrument, police said. In all, investigators are looking into about two dozen deaths, with enough evidence to try to prosecute at least 15 of the cases... manner of death indicates a person killed the animals, and that the deaths could be linked...

asked a teller to change a $1 million note. He reportedly told the teller that he needed $4 million for the bill.

An Oklahoma City filmmaker is apologizing for creating a scene of chaos near a busy highway... Upon closer inspection, police realized the torso in question was only a pair of pants that had been stuffed with soda bottles, chicken wire and lots of foam.... [film crew] accidentally left the fake torso behind...

Two cyclists are dead and a third was treated and released from the hospital after being hit by an SUV on Highway 51 in Sand Springs Tuesday afternoon.... Catron says the accident had a profound effect on her and the other witnesses who stopped to help. "Very tight knit group of people who came together, who were complete strangers and now I don't think any of us will forget the other,"

driving east on Oklahoma 51 when she swerved onto the south shoulder... hit three bicyclists [two killed]... continued driving for a quarter-mile before stopping... open container of alcohol in the SUV...

Two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on the Air France flight which crashed with the loss of 228 lives, it has emerged.

"I do feel I'm not guilty," Abdulhakim Muhammad told The Associated Press in a collect call from the Pulaski County jail. "I don't think it was murder, because murder is when a person kills another person without justified reason."

The first independent tests of screening software that will be installed on all Chinese computers finds it opens users to serious security risks.... communications between the software and the servers at the company that developed the program were unencrypted.... "...every computer in China potentially as part of a botnet..." system only runs on Microsoft Windows, allowing Mac and Linux users to bypass the software.... at least 3m computer users have already downloaded the software, opening them up to potential security problems.

spokesman for China's Ministry of Industry and Information Industry saying that users will have a choice whether to install the filtering software... [Right! Same choice you always get under tyranny. Install it or ELSE!!!]

Museum officials identified the guard as 39-year-old Stephen T. Johns of Temple Hills, Md. Johns, a special police officer, was a six-year veteran of the museum... suspect, 88-year-old James W. von Brunn... Holocaust denier....

The highlight of Gaddafi's trip to Rome is a meeting, personally requested by the Libyan leader, with 700 women from the worlds of "politics, industry and culture". So Berlusconi got down his Bumper Catalogue of Hot Stuff, got rid of any that were over 25, discarded those with a loud voice or body hair, and whittled down the rest by ballot until he got to 1,000, whereupon the disappointed remainder that didn't get to meet Muammar were given a senior post in his cabinet or a mini-break in his fancy villa with the pools and the elephants.

Comedy Central says it's bringing the animated comedy "Futurama" back from past cancellation for 26 new half-hour episodes... more than six years after ending its four-season run on... Fox ....

The US moves toward sending the Chinese Muslims to Palau, a remote Pacific island. But some experts say that would be a mistake... rather than allowing them to resettle on US soil... even the Bush administration did not classify them as enemy combatants. Yet their situation has been perhaps the most adversely affected by the recent debate in Congress about bringing detainees to America...

Mario Orion Bonilla, 24, pleaded guilty Nov. 25 to violating the federal drug-kingpin statute, which pertains to defendants who purportedly occupied management roles in drug-trafficking organizations involving at least five people who engaged in a series of felonies and made a substantial profit... pertained only to the marijuana aspect of the plot...

Attorney General Drew Edmondson today announced he's running for governor next year... U.S. Rep. Mary Fallin and state Sen. Randy Brogdon are running for the Republican nomination.... primary is July 27 and the general election is November 2.

Nearby Star May Be Getting Ready to Explode, Red giant Betelgeuse has suddenly shrunk in size, which means it may soon explode in a supernova.... It's possible we're observing the beginning of Betelgeuse's final collapse now.... If so, the star, which is 600 light-years away, will already have exploded — and we'll soon be in for a spectacular, and perfectly safe, interstellar fireworks show....

The program will accept paper, plastic and aluminum products. Glass will not be accepted for now. Hours of operation will be 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

proposed Sooner Park tennis court site would be the council's first option for a recycling drop-off...

Washington County voters by a 2-to-1 margin on Tuesday approved a proposal to construct a $14.5 million jail that will replace an outdated lockup that had been cited by the state for capacity violations.

A large crowd of law enforcement, county officials and court personal erupted into applause in the main Washington County Court room after County Treasurer Brad Johnson announced that the jail initiative had passed.

...700 feet up [picture!]

A bill that would allow nonprofit stores in Rhode Island to sell marijuana to medical patients is headed to the governor's desk.

examining the conduct of six officers connected to drug raids in November... found a large amount of cannabis... [OVER POT! THEY WERE WATERBOARDED OVER POT!] "Whilst the investigation is ongoing it is not appropriate to make assumptions...."

...on marijuana, distribution of marijuana and child neglect related charges... deputies told Cowan that due to the small size of the house and poor circulation that the 5-month-old was likely exposed to the marijuana smoke. The report states that when told this, Cowan (the child's mother) started to cry....

with actual user names

After nearly two decades in the business, Microsoft plans to stop selling its Microsoft Money personal-finance software...

An Oklahoma farm family could be the next global reality TV stars.... The Brits will be expected to attend church and help with chores around the farm.

The decision is a setback for the music and movie industries, which had praised the French law as a solution to illegal file sharing.

Surprised scientists say that typhoons which hit Taiwan unleash long, slow earthquakes, a phenomenon that may save the island from devastating temblors.

Tulsa Police and Fire are investigating an SUV found in the middle of the Arkansas River Wednesday morning.... at 31st and Riverside Drive... appears the vehicle has been in the river for a while...

Study calculates the odds that two planets collide or one crashes into sun in the next 5 billion years... For the new study, the researchers started with the best known information about the position and orbital velocity of each of the 10 bodies, and marched simulations forward in nine-day steps for the next 5 billion years, the projected life of the sun... Mercury collides with Venus about 1.76 billion years from now...

Sarah Palin lambasted late-night comedian David Letterman Wednesday for "sexually-perverted comments" about one of her teenage daughters - and rebuffed his moves to make nice.

the Politico newspaper reports in a June 9, 2009 article titled "Obama Invokes Jesus More Than Bush," that the current president has actually spoken about his faith far more frequently... Yet, the Politico says that atheists who railed against President Bush are giving president Obama a free pass.... [Surprise!]

The Obama numbers are pure fiction.... the administration has no way to measure how many jobs are actually being 'saved....' Of course, the inability to measure Mr. Obama's jobs formula is part of its attraction. Never mind that no one -- not the Labor Department, not the Treasury, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- actually measures "jobs saved." As the New York Times delicately reports, Mr. Obama's jobs claims are "based on macroeconomic estimates, not an actual counting of jobs." Nice work if you can get away with it....

When Barack Obama decided that questions from the German press about his trip agenda in that country were too pesky, he told the reporters, "So, stop it all of you!" He just wanted them to ask things he wanted to talk about. Well, what politico wouldn't want that? OK, dad. We'll behave. And according to a new Pew Research Center poll, we are behaving...like fans....

Single-use plastic bags.. have got to go, the United Nations' top environmental official said Monday.... recycling bags is on the rise in the United States... [90B unrecycled, but doesn't say what percentage this represents]

A red-faced Jessica Alba is apologizing for plastering shark-conservation posters around Oklahoma City - a stunt that sparked a police investigation.

kept it on his boat for 10 days... very corroded... live and in a very unstable state.

Vice President Biden, on a conference call Monday with reporters, claimed that the planned Hudson River tunnel between New Jersey and Midtown Manhattan would provide a much-anticipated route for automobiles. Problem is, it's for trains.

"It makes U.S. jobs more expensive," Ballmer said, "We're better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S." If Microsoft, perhaps our most competitive company, has to abandon the U.S. in order to continue to thrive, who exactly is going to stay?

GARNER, NC - A blast at a Slim Jim meat products plant Tuesday blew workers off their feet, ripped the building's roof off its supports and critically burned four people. Two workers were still unaccounted for Tuesday evening.

at an infection rate of 10.9% for those aged two or older... rate of infection in children and teenagers could be falling.... Africa has the world's largest HIV-positive population, at 5.5 million...

27 hydraulic cylinders bring the mechs to life, its movements matching those of the person inside it

Snake broadcasts pictures, sound to soldier with laptop [video]

Two-year-old Karina Oakley... has amazed experts after scoring 160 in an IQ test - the same as Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates.... mental age is the equivalent of someone between the age of four and five.... 'She enjoyed the test. "The pleasure she took in the mental challenge in itself I have found to be a sign of intelligence...."

Norman Brinker, a restaurant mogul who popularized the salad bar and built a worldwide casual dining empire that includes Chili's Grill & Bar, died Tuesday at age 78.... developed the concept for Steak & Ale... where he's credited with popularizing the salad bar and casual dining... created the Bennigan's chain and became known for creating a "fern bar" restaurant chain concept...

Guthrie soldier... Oklahoma Army National Guard Cpl. Adam Schuster... shot in the neck while serving in Iraq will be presented with a Purple Heart medal during a ceremony at the state Capitol.

In the early history these people were called the fair race, or modern man. They began about 40,000 BC. The modern Scandinavian people probably best represent them...... -Frank Jakubowsky

...He was a Navy veteran of World War II and later served in the Air Force. He had worked as an A B Seaman for the Military Sea Lift Command in Brooklyn, N.Y. He had also worked for Ralston Tree Service, the Hampton Cemetery Dept. and for Hanscom Air Force Base. He was a member of the Brotherhood of the Urantia....

Some say she needs to decide if she's running for president surreptitiously or overtly.

BALL -- 'Where's the Birth Certificate?' is the cryptic message on an electronic billboard at the corner of Tioga Road and U.S. Highway 165.