/
/
blog-heap o' links
from
2007-feb
Just random links galore. Latest on top.
Links load in a separate page.
Suggestions welcome.
TUE 2007-FEB-27
Iran
breitbart.com/ ... 09:40:08
The US military has no evidence to corroborate an Iranian claim that it fired a rocket into space and suspects that the event never happened...
Transport Tragedy
upi.com/ ... 09:36:59
The California Highway Patrol says a deadly head-on crash north of Sacramento was likely caused by
a man at the wheel working on his laptop computer...
Violence
bloomberg.com/ ... 09:27:00
Saudi Arabian authorities don't rule out terrorism in the killing of four Frenchmen... The toll rose to four today, when a 17-year-old boy died of injuries sustained in yesterday's shooting...
Mass Murdering Monsters
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:24:37
At least nine people have died in a suicide bombing near the main US base in Afghanistan during US Vice-President Dick Cheney's stay, US officials say. Mr Cheney, who was unharmed, was staying at the Bagram base near Kabul. The US military said the bomber was also killed. Some reports say 14 people died - more than 20 others were hurt...
Scary Times
hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:17:10
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C... Two young siblings playing in the woods near their home found a small, inactive military practice bomb... dragged it to their house... [Mother:] "It did look like a missile to me but I didn't think it was anything to be concerned about because how often do you find a missile in your backyard?"...
Digital Convergence
ft.com/ ... 09:42:33
Leading mobile communications companies are due to meet in London on Tuesday to consider a plan that would help turn handsets into personal barcode readers a move that could stimulate the first big mobile-driven advertising market. By pointing their camera phones at special 2D barcodes printed on advertisements or product packaging, users would be able to find out more information or instantly download coupons or other marketing offers, supporters of the plan say...
dailytech.com/ ... 09:29:45
BitTorrent today announced the launch of the BitTorrent Entertainment Network, featuring a comprehensive library of downloadable digital entertainment content from 20th Century Fox, Lions Gate, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. and, the latest studio on the bandwagon, MGM. The BitTorrent community can rent movies, purchase television shows and music videos, and even publish and share their own content to be displayed alongside titles from the worlds largest studios...
US Military
washingtonpost.com/ ... 09:29:17
Forty-one years ago... Retired Army Lt. Col. Bruce P. Crandall... flew his unarmed Huey helicopter into the deadliest landing zone of the Vietnam War -- not once or twice, but 22 times -- to keep resupplying a besieged Army battalion and evacuating dozens of wounded, even as North Vietnamese soldiers fired AK-47 rifles at him from as close as 30 yards away. Crandall's bravery created a critical lifeline of ammunition, water and medical support for hundreds of U.S. soldiers at risk of being overrun. Whatever fear he had for his own life, he said, was overwhelmed by the more horrible certainty that if he failed, they would die...
"I kept saying to myself: 'Don't screw it up. You have to get the support in there....'"
... today at the White House, he will receive the Medal of Honor, the military's highest award...
Animal Companions
hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:20:21
CATARACT, Wis.... Jason Schindler says he wouldn't be alive if it were not for his dog, Dude... the 8-year-old mixed-breed hound jumped between him and an attacking black bear Thursday night... sustained at least 28 puncture wounds to his chest and neck... buried the dog with a blanket and pillow the next day, using a rented jackhammer to dig the grave in the frozen soil...
Feeding Ourselves
hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:13:39
CLEARFIELD, Pa... Denny's Beer Barrel Pub... The Beer Barrel Main Event Charity Burger weighs in at 123 pounds... its cooks maintain[s it] shatters the world record of 105 pounds... an 80-pound beef patty... a pound each of lettuce, ketchup, relish, mustard and mayonnaise, 160 slices of cheese, up to five onions and 12 tomatoes.... topped with a couple of pounds of banana peppers... 30-pound bun.... garnish of 33 pickles.... $379...
History - still with us
hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:09:32
VANCOUVER, Wash... Archaeologists are using broken pottery, bullets and buttons found over the past 60 years to piece together the history of a 19th century fort along the Columbia River. Some 2 million artifacts have been dug up at
Fort Vancouver, which from 1829 to 1866 served as a hub for fur and mercantile trade and military activity in the West.
The salvaged pieces have been stored in a replica fur store on the southern edge of a replica fort. Scientists are cataloguing the items, and hope to learn the history of the fort and the thousands who lived there...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:08:47
MEXICO CITY... Archeologists said Monday that porcelain plates and other artifacts found along the Baja California coast could be from the wreckage of a Spanish galleon that sailed between the Philippines and Mexico hundreds of years ago. Seals and other markings on some of the estimated 1,000 fragments of porcelain plates found at the site indicate they were made in China in the late 1500s....
Oh! The Irony!
tennesseepolicy.org/ ... 09:39:30
Last night, Al Gores global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that...
Gores mansion... consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year.... Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gores energy consumption has increased
....
Big Nanny
thesmokinggun.com/ ... 09:42:27
Free the Chippendales Eight! A Texas prosecutor has decided not to press charges against a cadre of male adult dancers who were busted earlier this month at a Lubbock sports bar for dancing suggestively in front of 1100 female fans. The dancers, wearing tight leather pants and boxer shorts, were popped after they began gyrating and thrusting pelvises in a manner meant to cause "sexual gratification..."
thisislondon.co.uk/ ... 09:37:47
Prince Charles today said banning McDonald's fast food was the key to a healthy lifestyle....
Free Expression
hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:21:42
SAN MATEO, Calif.... A woman who has covered her roof and property with painted slogans she calls messages from God has been ordered to remove them or face possible fines or jail time. The San Mateo City Council unanimously ruled last week that [47yo EB's] writings violate city codes regulating the size of signs.... [EB] also broadcasts the messages from a loudspeaker on her car's roof, has said the messages come to her from God through a statue at her church and from the Bible. She claims the city's ruling violates her free speech rights...
Big Whoops Cascade
hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:19:07
QUANTICO, Va.... For many suburbanites, life without garage door openers is unimaginable. But neighbors of the Marine base here have been reduced to just that after a strong radio signal coming from the facility began neutralizing remote-control openers... Repair shops started getting a flurry of calls when the base began using the frequency in late December. Last fall, residents around an Air Force facility in Colorado Springs saw their garage-door remotes stop working when the 21st Space Wing began testing a frequency for use during homeland security emergencies or threats. Two years ago, testing of a similar system in Fort Detrick in Maryland resulted in similar problems... For decades, the military has held a portion of the radio spectrum, from 138 to 450 megahertz, in reserve. That part was borrowed by remote-control manufacturers, with the understanding that the signal be weak enough to be overridden by the military. The reserve frequencies became active after... Sept. 11, 2001...
Reasons for Repeal
hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:16:03
PHILADELPHIA... Workers at a downtown boutique called police after
[
unexpectedly receiving two buckets of marijuana worth
[prohibition-inflated black market street price of]
$90,000
]
.... about 20 pounds.... received a package from FedEx and when he opened it there was a five-gallon bucket inside... 10 pounds of marijuana. The second package arrived about an hour later... from a different delivery service but with similar contents....
Just Random Chance
hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:11:52
DES MOINES, Iowa... "[Co-worker] said, 'Read this article about the idiot that hasn't claimed his ticket.' So I read it and noticed where the ticket was bought," O'Neill said. "I thought, 'Gee, I better look at my ticket.' That's when I said, 'I think I won.'..." After taxes, the couple will get about $560,000...
MON 2007-FEB-26
Love is Strange
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:57:52
A Chinese businessman has advertised on the Internet for a stand-in mistress to be beaten up by his wife to vent her anger and to protect his real mistress... More than 10 people had applied for the job...
Sick, Sick, Sick
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:57:04
A sick woman in eastern India was beaten to death by her in-laws because they suspected she had AIDS and feared she would infect the rest of the family...
Prison Sucks
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:45:48
Four imprisoned Guatemalan policemen were killed in their cells Sunday, days after being arrested in connection with the deaths of three Salvadoran politicians.... Rioting inmates also took the warden and other prison officials hostage....
Violence
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:16:19
Three French nationals have been shot dead in Saudi Arabia and at least one other seriously wounded... police were treating the incident as a "terrorist attack". The shooting happened near the ruins of Madain Saleh, in north-western Saudi Arabia, which is popular with tourists... victims were part of a group of French nationals, some of whom were Muslims heading to Mecca... none of those shot was Muslim...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:49:16
A Palestinian man has been shot dead and another wounded during an Israeli raid in the West Bank city of Nablus... Eight residents were wounded by rubber bullets in fighting on Saturday and about 30 have been detained throughout the raid...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:48:51
A bomb placed inside an Iraqi ministry has exploded during a ceremony attended by Vice-President Adel Abdul Mahdi, injuring him and killing five others.... more than 25 people were injured in the blast at the Public Works Ministry in central Baghdad...
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:37:31
Two U.S. citizens were rushed to Moscow's main emergency hospital on Sunday with suspected poisoning... a mother and daughter with a Slavic surname... unable to identify the poison...
Civilization vs Gangsterism
today.reuters.com/ ... 23:18:30
Former "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla is mentally capable of assisting defense lawyers at his terrorism trial but chooses not to, according to a prison psychologist who testified on Monday that Padilla is fit to stand trial. Defense lawyers have said Padilla suffered brain injuries caused by abuse and extreme isolation during the 3 1/2 years he was held by presidential order in a U.S. military prison, before he was charged in the civilian court with aiding Islamist terrorists... "His behavior is consistent with those of captured al Qaeda operatives..."
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:48:15
Three Somali police speedboats and a U.S. military vessel were headed Monday toward a U.N.-chartered cargo ship hijacked by pirates.... Police boats were within sight of the ship "but we asked them to stop going further because our biggest concern is the safety of the crew of 12 on board...."
Somali pirates are trained fighters, often dressed in military fatigues, using speedboats equipped with satellite phones and Global Positioning System equipment. They typically are armed with automatic weapons, anti-tank rocket launchers and various types of grenades.... Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:36:33
Pirates hijacked a cargo ship delivering U.N. food aid to northeastern Somalia on Sunday - at least the third time since 2005 that a vessel contracted to the United Nations has been hijacked off the country's dangerous coast.... had just dropped off more than 1,800 tons of food aid in the semiautonomous region of Puntland in northeastern Somalia when the pirates struck... It was not immediately known if any of the 12 crew members aboard - six from Sri Lanka and six from Kenya - were injured in the attack...
Mass Murdering Monsters
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:35:36
A female suicide bomber triggered a ball bearing-packed charge Sunday, killing at least 41 people at a mostly Shiite college whose main gate was left littered with blood-soaked student notebooks and papers amid the bodies...
Iraq
today.reuters.com/ ... 23:19:50
Iraq's cabinet on Monday endorsed a draft oil law crucial to regulating how wealth from the country's vast oil reserves will be shared by its ethnic and sectarian groups, a move hailed as a major political milestone. Passing a law to help settle potentially explosive disputes over the world's third largest oil reserves has been a key demand of the United States, which has linked it to continuing support for the Shi'ite-led national unity government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki...
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:51:12
The U.S. military showed on Monday what it said was further evidence of Iranian-made weapons being used by Iraqi militants, including explosives linked to sophisticated roadside bombs. The weapons, which included mortar bombs and 122 mm rockets, were found during a raid by U.S. forces and Iraqi police on Saturday near the volatile city of Baquba, north of Baghdad...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:34:48
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani fell ill Sunday and was rushed unconscious to a hospital before being flown to neighboring Jordan for an immediate medical checkup...
Extraterrestrial Threat
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:15:36
The explosion of a Russian rocket stage in space may have created over 1,000 pieces of orbiting debris which could threaten other spacecraft. The rocket section exploded on 19 February, generating as much debris as the destruction of a satellite by China last month, if not more. This space wreckage could remain in orbit for years...
Feeding Ourselves
today.reuters.com/ ... 23:15:12
Many U.S. chain restaurants are promoting "extreme eating" with dishes that pack at least a day's worth of calories and fat, without giving customers facts about their orders...
Digital Convergence
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:56:38
When Toyota Motor Corp. wanted to promote its new Scions to young buyers, it turned to one of the growing number of digital design companies doing business in the popular online universe "Second Life." The firm, Millions of Us, conjured up Scion City - a futuristic urban island with a dealership that sells the cars and a racetrack where consumers' online personas can take them for virtual test drives...
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:55:45
CBS Corp. will invest in virtual world content developer Electric Sheep Co., the U.S. television broadcaster said on Monday. hoping to expand its reach beyond the living room... Electric Sheep develops 3-D properties in virtual worlds like Second Life...
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:51:31
Google Inc. is working with Dow Jones & Co. Inc., Conde Nast, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and other large content companies to syndicate their video content on other Web sites...
Staying Healthy
today.reuters.com/ ... 23:14:53
Preventing the spread of disease in a hospital may be as simple as opening a window... ironically, old-fashioned hospitals with high ceilings and big windows may offer the best design for this...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:34:22
...Hormone skin patches and gels... are far less likely than pills to cause dangerous blood clots.... the finding from a recently published French study. Patches and gels are already known to be effective for relieving the hot flashes and sleep-interrupting night sweats that plague many women. No one knows whether they will prove safer than pills in terms of breast cancer, heart attack or stroke risk....
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 21:29:18
Army Sgt.
Jeremy D. Barnett
, 27, of Mineral City, Ohio, died Feb. 24 at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Landstuhl, Germany, of wounds sustained from a landmine detonation in Ad-Dujayl, Iraq, on Feb. 21. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:17:54
Army Staff Sgt.
Joshua R. Hager
, 29, of Broomfield, Colo.
Army Pfc.
Travis W. Buford
, 23, of Galveston, Texas
Army Pfc.
Rowan D. Walter
, 25, of Winnetka, Calif.
died Feb. 23 of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near their HMMWV during combat operations in Ramadi, Iraq, on Feb. 22. All three soldiers were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colo.
Big Nanny
hosted.ap.org/ ... 23:19:29
LONDON... Authorities are considering taking an 8-year-old boy who weighs 218 pounds into protective custody unless his mother improves his diet... weighs more than three times the average for his age...
People Gamble
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:59:19
A teenage girl in southern Pakistan, whose late father lost her in a poker game when she was 2 years old, has asked authorities to save her from being handed over to a middle-aged relative. Rasheeda, 17, said she has filed applications with the police and a local councillor asking them to prevent Lal Haider, 45, from taking her to his home... Despite being paid his money last year, she said Haider still insisted the girl should be given to him because of tribal customs...
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:58:44
Macau's gaming bureau has ruled that the Sands Macao casino -- operated by U.S. gaming giant Las Vegas Sands -- must pay an under-age player's HK$740,000 ($94,900) jackpot winnings to her mother... Macau's gaming legislation states that persons under the age of 18 are barred from casinos, but it is unclear about how gaming venues should respond if minors gain entry and win...
Digital Business
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:56:22
Google Inc., fighting to consolidate its trademark globally, faces an obstacle in the world's second largest Web market -- China's www.Gmail.cn, which is refusing to sell its Internet address to the U.S. giant. A legal source told Reuters on Monday that Google was trying to buy the Internet domain name www.gmail.cn, which is run by Beijing-based ISM Technologies...
Supernatural Silliness
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:55:22
Archaeologists and clergymen in the Holy Land derided claims in a new documentary produced by James Cameron... Simcha Jacobovici, the Toronto filmmaker who directed the documentary, said... "...I don't know why, if Jesus rose from one tomb, he couldn't have risen from the other tomb...."
[This just gets sillier and sillier!]
In 1996, when the British Broadcasting Corp. aired a short documentary on the same subject, archaeologists challenged the claims. Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the site, said the idea fails to hold up by archaeological standards but makes for profitable television. "They just want to get money for it," Kloner said... "It was an ordinary middle-class Jerusalem burial cave," Kloner said. "The names on the caskets are the most common names found among Jews at the time..." Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem... is even unsure that the name "Jesus" on the caskets was read correctly. He thinks it's more likely the name "Hanun." Ancient Semitic script is notoriously difficult to decipher...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:50:43
Jesus had a son named Judah and was buried alongside Mary Magdalene, according to a new documentary by Hollywood film director James Cameron. It examines a tomb that, it is claimed, belonged to Jesus and his family, and was found near Jerusalem in 1980... says statistical analysis and DNA show the tomb is that of Jesus. Archaeologists say that the burial cave is probably that of a Jewish family with similar names to Jesus's family...
Be Prepared!
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:38:19
Despite the Bush administration's insistence it has no plans to go to war with Iran, a Pentagon panel has been created to plan a bombing attack that could be implemented within 24 hours of getting the go-ahead from President George W. Bush, The New Yorker magazine reported in its latest issue...
[Well, I would HOPE the military is doing what militaries are supposed to be doing... planning for contingencies! The real question is, why is this news?]
Digital Culture
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:33:12
One-third of U.S. Internet users have connected to the Web using a wireless network... 20 percent of Internet users now have wireless networks available at home, double the number recorded in January 2005.... Some 34 percent of Internet users surveyed said they have logged on to the Web using a laptop computer, hand-held personal digital assistant or cell phone...
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:32:05
The Dutch village of Oosterbeck is not a very big place -- population 31,944. So it must have been quite a shock when a local hotel received a phone call from Atlantic Records looking for assistance in tracking down an 18-year-old resident named Esmee Denters. The label representative had the astonished hotel clerk provide phone numbers for every Denters listing in the local phone book and then called each one until he reached Esmee's very surprised mom. That call was just one of many Denters has received from artist and repertoire (A&R) reps during the last five months to discuss a potential recording contract. Well, hundreds of thousands of YouTube members have.... No. 22 on the all-time most-popular list.... The obvious logical next step, then, is a record label deal, right? Not so fast....
People Live
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:29:22
A 107-year-old Hong Kong villager, who still enjoys an occasional smoke, has
attributed his longevity in part to decades of sexual abstinence
.... "I don't know why I have lived this long," [said] Chan Chi.... a widower whose youthful bride perished during the Japanese invasion in World War Two.... "Maybe it has to do with the fact that I have lived a sex-less life for many years -- since I was 30...." A former chef, he said a low-fat diet and regular dawn exercises had helped him fight off the ravages of old age.... admits the pleasures of tobacco have been harder to resist. "Now I want to quit....
Maybe the government should ban cigarette sales so I can give it up
...."
[Proving by that last comment that old age doesn't necessarily bring any wisdom about Big Nanny....]
Transport Without Borders
businessweek.com/ ... 10:17:02
The news that
Mexican trucks will be allowed to haul freight deeper into the United States
drew an angry reaction Friday from labor leaders, safety advocates and members of Congress. They said Mexico has substandard trucks and low-paid drivers that will threaten national security, cost thousands of jobs and endanger motorists on the northern side of the border.... According to the Transportation Department, U.S. inspectors will inspect every truck and interview drivers to make sure they can read and speak English. They'll examine trucks and check the licenses, insurance and driving records of the Mexican drivers. Inspectors will also verify that the trucking companies are insured by U.S.-licensed firms.... National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman questioned how the U.S. could spare sending inspectors to Mexico when only a tiny percentage of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. truck companies are inspected every year. "They lack the inspectors to conduct safety reviews of at-risk domestic carriers.... That situation only gets worse if resources are diverted to the border." One-fourth of all U.S. trucks are taken off the road after random inspections because they're so unsafe, she said. An even higher percentage of Mexican trucks are taken off the road at Texas border crossings.... Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, said inspections will be meaningless because the trucks won't be equipped with black boxes that record how long a driver has been behind the wheel....
SUN 2007-FEB-25
US Civil War - still with us
apnews.myway.com/ ... 10:29:21
the Virginia General Assembly voted unanimously Saturday to express "profound regret" for the state's role in slavery... The resolution does not carry the weight of law but sends an important symbolic message...
Nature can be Deadly
breitbart.com/ ... 10:31:12
DENVER... A large, fast-moving snowstorm closed sections of major highways on the Plains on Saturday and threatened to dump more than a foot of snow on the Upper Midwest. Interstate 70... was closed for about 200 miles in both directions from just east of Denver to Colby, Kan., because of blowing snow and slippery pavement... Between Denver and the beginning of the highway closure, about 35 cars collided in a pileup in whiteout conditions Saturday morning on an icy section of I-70. No major injuries were reported. The weather service reported wind gusts of 68 mph in the Denver area. A number of other highways also were closed in the two states...
breitbart.com/ ... 10:30:18
DUMAS, Ark.... Authorities went door to door in search of an unknown number of people who remained unaccounted for after severe storms swept through southern Arkansas, shredding home and businesses and injuring at least 27 people. Residents reported seeing multiple tornadoes Saturday in Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Kansas.... a twister touched down near Lucas in central Kansas. The storms knocked out electricity across the area....
delawareonline.com/ ... 10:12:26
A large, fast-moving snowstorm closed sections of major highways on the Plains on Saturday, dumped more than a foot of snow on the Upper Midwest and caused seven traffic deaths in Wisconsin. The storms knocked out power to more than 145,000 customers, mostly in Iowa, where freezing rain coated trees, power and utility lines. Outages were also reported in Oklahoma and Nebraska...
Transport Tragedy
news.monstersandcritics.com/ ... 10:10:00
Jakarta - Indonesian rescue workers rescued 21 more bodies from rough seas off Jakarta Bay on Sunday, bringing the death toll from a ferry blaze up to 41 as the search continued for more missing people...
Mass Murdering Monsters
edition.cnn.com/ ... 10:09:20
A combination of rocket and bomb attacks -- the worst taking place at the entrance to a university -- killed more than 50 people and wounded dozens of others Sunday in Iraq. A suicide bomber killed at least 40 people and wounded 55 others when he detonated his explosive vest outside the economic and management college of Mustansriya near Baghdad's Sadr city.... Most of the dead were students....
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:59:19
A fuel tanker rigged with explosives killed 40 people when it blew up near a Sunni mosque in western Iraq on Saturday, a day after the mosque's imam had criticized al Qaeda militants.... exploded in a market in the town of Habaniya in the restive province of Anbar, where U.S. forces are battling Sunni Arab insurgent groups, including al Qaeda..... the market had been destroyed and 64 people wounded. Women and children were among the dead....
In Baghdad, more than 20 loud explosions in quick succession rocked a southern district of the capital after night fell... U.S. military said the cause of the blasts were "indirect fire..."
Theory of Sex Education
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:58:00
A federal judge in Boston has dismissed a suit by two families who wanted to stop a Massachusetts town and its public school system from teaching their children about gay marriage.... asserting that the reading of a gay-themed book and handing out to elementary school students of other children's books that discussed homosexuality without first notifying parents was a violation of their religious rights. Federal Judge Mark Wolf ruled on Friday that public schools are "entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens in our democracy.... Diversity is a hallmark of our nation. It is increasingly evident that our diversity includes differences in sexual orientation...."
Iran
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:56:52
Israel's deputy defense minister denied on Saturday that Israel was in talks with the United States to use Iraqi airspace as part of possible plans to attack Iranian nuclear sites. Britain's Daily Telegraph, citing an unnamed senior Israeli defense official, said on Saturday that Israel had sought permission from the U.S. Pentagon to be able to use an "air corridor" in Iraq in the event that the Jewish state decided to launch air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities....
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:56:04
Vice President Dick Cheney said on Saturday that the United States and its allies must not allow Iran to become a nuclear power and raised concerns about Tehran's actions and "inflammatory" rhetoric...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:55:47
Iran's foreign minister said Saturday the United States was in no position for another war, and maintained that negotiations - not threats - were the only way to resolve the standoff over its nuclear activities.... "We do not see America in a position to impose another crisis on its tax payers inside America by starting another war in the region...."
[Don't bait a bear, dude; don't tease a tiger!]
Violence
hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:54:21
Four Palestinians, including two supporters of rivals Hamas and Fatah, were killed in a family feud late Friday and early Saturday.... [28yo], a local commander of Hamas' military wing, was killed in a drive-by shooting outside his home in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis. A 22-year-old man from a Fatah-allied family... was killed several hours later, as was 75-year-old... caught in the line of fire. Later Saturday, 27-year-old... died of gunshot wounds. Thirty-seven people were also wounded in the violence, four critically.... a Palestinian political analyst, said that family feuds "are part of the rubble left over from the fighting...."
World Zookeeping
breitbart.com/ ... 10:32:49
DENVER... A zookeeper died Saturday after a 140-pound jaguar mauled her in its enclosure, and the big cat was fatally shot when it approached emergency workers treating the injured woman.... The jaguar, a 6-year-old male named Jorge, was shot by a zoo employee and the public was never at risk... had been at the zoo for nearly two years.... "The jaguar is the third largest cat in the world behind the tiger and lion. Yet, they have the most powerful jaw of all the big cats..."
Animal Companions
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:01:14
CLIFTON, N.J.... ...City Council... is expected to introduce an ordinance
setting a limit on how long dogs can bark.
Noisy canines will be defined as those that bark for more than 30 minutes on two consecutive days.... Fines for the new ordinance could start at $250...
Reporting Science
article.nationalreview.com/ ... 10:28:49
This Sunday, Al Gore will probably win an Academy Award for his global-warming documentary
An Inconvenient Truth, a riveting work of science fiction
... The main point of the movie is that, unless we do something very serious, very soon... much of Greenlands 630,000 cubic miles of ice is going to fall into the ocean, raising sea levels over twenty feet by the year 2100... According to satellite data... Greenland was shedding ice at 0.4 percent per century. "Was" is the operative word. In early February, Science published another paper showing that the recent acceleration of Greenlands ice loss from its huge glaciers has suddenly reversed... Nowhere in the traditionally refereed scientific literature do we find any support for Gores hypothesis...
Supernatural Threats
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:25:54
Pope Benedict on Saturday
condemned genetic engineering
and other scientific practices that allow people to select so-called "designer babies" by screening them for defects.... also
attacked artificial insemination and the widespread use of medical tests
that can detect diseases and inherited disorders in embryos.... He also
spoke out against civil unions as an alternative to marriage
, his latest criticism of a bill approved this month by the Italian government granting rights to unwed and gay couples...
[From the same folks who persecuted Galileo for saying the earth revolved around the sun and brought us the Inquisition...!]
Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!
tob.hollywood.com/ ... 10:23:16
Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz Smoking Marijuana in Hawaii...
wsbtv.com/ ... 10:22:36
Lawrenceville -- Gwinnett County investigators say they recovered
20 large trash bags of marijuana from a dumpster.
The bags were full of full grown marijuana plants. An employee at the McAlister's Deli on Old Peachtree Road in Lawrenceville, made the discovery Saturday (2/23) afternoon....
hendersondispatch.com/ ... 10:21:36
Investigators confiscated more than 400 pounds of marijuana and arrested two residents Wednesday afternoon when a search warrant was served... in the Dabney community.
The
[prohibition-inflated black-market by-the-joint]
street value of the drug was estimated to be $500,000....
Also seized were two firearms and three vehicles....
Broadcast is Dead
reuters.com/ ... 10:19:48
The FCC is expected to slap U.S. Hispanic network Univision with a record $24 million fine that will allow the broadcaster to proceed with a $12 billion private equity buyout, the New York Times reported on Saturday. The fine involves Univision's airing of a show three years ago about 11-year-old twin girls who swapped identities after learning they were separated at birth. Univision, the largest U.S. Hispanic network, mischaracterize the program as educational.... the fine, the largest the FCC ever imposed against a company.... Univision claimed to meet its obligations to broadcast educational children's programs by showing the Latino soap opera "Complices al Rescate" (Friends to the Rescue) and other such telenovelas, and characterizing the episodes as educational for children. Along with a plan to show more programming that would comply with FCC rules, the fine is part of a consent decree that Univision has tentatively agreed to that would resolve complaints by viewers. It covers violations at 24 Univision stations over a 116-week period from 2004 to early last year.... Following the expected approval of the penalty by the full commission, Univision will be able to complete its $12 billion sale to a consortium of private equity firms including Providence Equity Partners,
where a senior executive is former FCC chairman Michael Powell
, as well as investor Haim Saban...
[hmmm]
Digital Business
itwire.com.au/ ... 10:17:06
Prevented by law from suing Wikipedia, pro-golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is suing the owner of an IP address from where allegedly defamatory remarks were posted onto Wikipedia alleging that he abused drugs, alcohol and his family in what could set a precedent for online defamation cases... offending paragraphs... were posted on December 20 2006, and have now been removed... IP address of the posts was traced back to education consulting firm... [owner] says he is surprised that the complaint originated from his computer systems and doesnt know who at his company might have made the offending Wikipedia posts....Wikipedia claim not to have been informed of the case until it hit the media...
Lost & Found
wftv.com/ ... 10:13:34
PARRISH, Fla -- In what was called a kidnapping for ransom, the Manatee County Sheriff has named a local farmworker as the man believed to have abducted 13 year old... Friday as he waited at a school bus stop.... [Farmworker] has not been found and may have left the state....
Big Whoops Cascade
itv.com/ ... 10:11:41
A marketing stunt by Cadbury-Schweppes in the US for Dr Pepper has gone wrong, forcing the closure of a burial ground in Boston.... launched a treasure hunt across 23 US cities... promising more than £700,000 to anyone who found one of its hidden gold coins. But the idea backfired in Boston when the agency it hired to bury a coin in the city chose a historic old cemetery, now a public park, as the hiding place. Officials had to shut the 347-year-old Granary Burying Ground to avoid the desecration of graves after contestants turned up to find the bounty. Cadbury Schweppes ordered the retrieval of the coin, which had been hidden behind a stone slab covering the entrance to a 200-year-old crypt, and ditched the Boston part of the promotion....
SAT 2007-FEB-24
Violence
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:06:06
The Iranian military has killed 17 rebels in the north-west of the country... near the Turkish border.... A military helicopter involved in the operation crashed in bad weather killing a Guards commander on board.... There have been previous clashes in the area between Iranian security forces and militants linked to Kurdish groups...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:05:02
At least four Palestinians have been killed and nearly 20 hurt in the Gaza Strip in fresh violence between backers of the rival Hamas and Fatah factions...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:04:33
Fourteen paramilitary troops have been killed by separatist rebels in India's north-eastern state of Manipur... returning from a village to the state capital, Imphal, after Friday's final polling round for the state assembly. It is not yet clear which of Manipur's many separatist groups may have carried out the attack...
cbs3.com/ ... 10:45:29
PHILADELPHIA... A popular Germantown High School teacher suffered a broken neck Friday during a scuffle with students... after [60yo male] math teacher... confiscated an iPod from a 11th grade member of his class. Following class... 17-year-old student and a 15-year-old freshman then assaulted the teacher in the hallway... "suffered a gash on his face and broke two bones in his neck...." the students, who have been in trouble in the past, fled the scene. Both juveniles were arrested several hours later.... attack was captured on tape via surveillance cameras in the hallway....
chron.com/ ... 10:24:22
In a largely invisible cost of the war in Iraq, nearly 800 civilians working under contract to the Pentagon have been killed and more than 3,300 hurt doing jobs normally handled by the U.S. military...
boston.com/ ... 10:24:02
European cease-fire monitors said Friday nearly 4,000 people were killed in Sri Lanka in the past 15 months...
today.reuters.co.uk/ ... 10:23:56
U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed around 400 suspected militants since the start of a major security crackdown in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Saturday...
Animals can be Deadly
orlandosentinel.com/ ... 00:01:26
A Rockledge man bitten by a pygmy rattlesnake demanded Thursday that [Wal-Mart] do something to protect customers from the poisonous reptiles that are somehow slithering into its garden centers.... was mangled by an 18-inch snake at a Brevard County Wal-Mart in November.... [found] it has happened to at least seven other Wal-Mart shoppers nationwide, and the giant retailer is doing nothing to protect people...
Fun can be Fatal
aftenposten.no/ ... 00:00:00
A 78-year-old Norwegian woman died this week from burns suffered when... the TV exploded and sparked the fire in the victim's apartment.... explosion was apparently so powerful that the TV itself was virtually pulverized.... televisions, especially older ones, gather dust that can ignite from the warmth of the set. The dead woman's TV was said to be a 1990 model. Fire prevention experts recommend dusting TVs, turning them completely off when not in use and unplugging them during lengthy absences...
World Without Borders
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:03:32
...at a
controversial theme park in Mexico, tourists can pretend to be an illegal migrant. Tourists pretend to be illegal migrants
who are chased and shot.... most people who turn up are about as likely to cross illegally into the United States as President George W Bush is to tunnel his way into Mexico....
Disinformation Propaganda & Spin
gm.tv/ ... 10:46:07
Half of young children are anxious about the effects of global warming, often losing sleep
because of their concern, according to a new report today. A survey of 1,150 youngsters aged between seven and 11 found that one in four blamed politicians for the problems of climate change...
accessnorthga.com/ ... 10:42:53
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Thursday that through the war in Iraq the United States has lost its moral authority, and it will be up to the next president to restore the "goodness of American power."
"I think that Iraq is going to go down in history as the greatest disaster in American foreign policy...."
[Unlike her boss
Bill Clinton's encouraging terrorism by having no response to numerous acts against us around the world, or, say, Viet Nam...?]
breitbart.com/ ... 10:41:08
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama ridiculed Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday for saying Britain's decision to pull troops from Iraq is a good sign that fits with the strategy for stabilizing the country...
[Thanks for being so supportive of our American efforts Mr Hussein Osama!]
Reasons for Repeal
durhamregion.com/ ... 10:40:13
[18yo] was relaxing with a friend, having a beer on a Friday night when a struggle over a bag of dope spilled into his basement room; within moments he was fatally shot. ...killed by a man he didn't know when he stepped into a beef he had nothing to do with...
[Noting that at 18 he shouldn't have been drinking beer....]
kcbd.com/ ... 10:36:40
An employee at the Wal-Mart Distribution Center in Plainview... was filling an order around 4 a.m. Friday, and noticed one of the boxes was heavier than usual. When he opened the sealed box, he allegedly found 92 pounds of marijuana inside....
nwaonline.net/ ... 10:33:43
ROGERS -- A welfare check on a [42yo] Rogers woman led police to find suspected marijuana growing in a bedroom closet.... obtained a search warrant and collected 26 ounces of suspected marijuana in an ice chest, 11 small marijuana plants, drug paraphernalia, a pH meter, a marijuana guide book, a bottle of marijuana seeds and several other drug related items in the master bedroom... also found a silver tray with drug paraphernalia, suspected marijuana in the kitchen, a set of scales and horticultural light in the hall closet... allegedly told police the suspected marijuana belonged to her, but later
declined to talk to officers because "she was afraid someone would hurt her if she did..."
kansascity.com/ ... 10:31:28
PLATTE COUNTY... A 24-year-old Houston Lake man [G] has been charged with drug trafficking after a DEA task force confiscated 375 pounds of marijuana.... discovered a package containing 220 pounds of marijuana at a shipping center for a large freight carrier... was arrested Feb. 19 when he tried to pick it up.... The man told investigators [G] had paid him $500 to pick up the package... searched [G's] residence... allegedly found a large sum of cash and an additional 155 pounds of marijuana...
poughkeepsiejournal.com/ ... 10:29:34
FISHKILL PLAINS - An East Fishkill man was caught with what police say was one very expensive load of laundry... allegedly found with $10,000 worth of marijuana in a laundry bag in the trunk of his car...
progressiveu.org/ ... 10:29:08
"The study, conducted by Dr. Donald Abrams of the University of California at San Francisco, found marijuana to be safe and effective at treating peripheral neuropathy, which causes great suffering to HIV/AIDS patients. This type of extreme pain, which is caused by damage to the nerves, can make patients feel like their feet and hands are on fire, or being stabbed with a knife. Similar pain is seen in a number of other illnesses, including multiple sclerosis and diabetes, and cannot be treated effectively with conventional pain medications. Standard pain medicines -- even addictive, dangerous narcotics -- have little effect on this type of pain..."
Lost & Found
chron.com/ ... 10:27:28
PARRISH, Fla... A 13-year-old boy abducted at gunpoint from a school bus stop Friday morning... taken at gunpoint... bound and taken to a wooded area... left alone... managed to free himself and walk until he found a farm worker with a cell phone... called his mother....wasn't hurt except for scratches and scrapes... gunman was still being sought....
Digital Business
seattlepi.nwsource.com/ ... 00:02:41
A federal jury returned a $1.52 billion verdict against Microsoft Corp. Thursday in a dispute with Alcatel-Lucent over rights to the MP3 digital music technology -- reported to be the largest patent verdict in history.... "We are concerned that this decision opens the door for Alcatel-Lucent to pursue action against hundreds of other companies who purchased the rights to use MP3 technology from Fraunhofer, the industry-recognized rightful licensor...."
FRI 2007-FEB-23
Supernatural Violence
telegraph.co.uk/ ... 23:58:36
A father killed his wife and four daughters in their sleep because he could not bear them adopting a more westernised lifestyle, an inquest heard yesterday. Mohammed Riaz, 49, found it abhorrent that his eldest daughter wanted to be a fashion designer, and that she and her sisters were likely to reject the Muslim tradition of arranged marriages. On Hallowe'en last year he sprayed petrol throughout their terraced home in Accrington, Lancs, and set it alight...
Violence
onenewsnow.com/ ... 23:57:26
Illegal aliens are killing more Americans than the Iraq war, says a new report from Family Security Matters that estimates some 2,158 murders are committed every year by illegal aliens in the U.S. The group says that number is more than 15 percent of all the murders reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the U.S. and about three times the representation of illegal aliens in the general population...
Chappaquiddick
wnd.com/ ... 23:56:52
The college where a student shouted 'Remember Chappaquiddick!' as Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., began a speech will not discipline the 20-year-old even though campus police had warned the man of possible consequences of his action... was upset by an introduction of Kennedy given by Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., Tuesday in which the congressman noted how the long-time senator overcame hardship in life on his way to success. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. "Lynch said Kennedy had overcome such adversity to get to the place he was, and that's a bunch of bull..." J ust as Kennedy began speaking, Trost was walking out of the room when he shouted, "Remember Chappaquiddick!.."
Transport Tragedy
today.reuters.com/ ... 23:40:06
LONDON... An elderly woman was killed and five people were seriously injured when a high-speed London-to-Glasgow train was derailed in northwest England late on Friday...
Korean War - still with us
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:38:41
The US and South Korea have reached
a deal to hand control of South Korea's military back to Seoul by 2012.
The agreement ends a 50-year pact that gave the US wartime command of South Korea's army, dating to the Korean War. Under pressure in Iraq, the US had wanted to hand over in 2009. But South Korea pushed for a slower transition. The US currently has 29,500 troops on the Korean peninsula and Seoul's military numbers 680,000. North Korea has more than one million troops....
Mass Murdering Monsters
hosted.ap.org/ ... 23:37:31
MULTAN, Pakistan...
Two suspected terrorists died
in eastern Pakistan on Saturday when
a powerful bomb they were carrying on a bicycle accidentally exploded
near a cattle market... One passer-by was slightly injured when the bomb went off...
[I feel so sorry... for the passer-by and the cattle....]
Transport Near-Tragedy
hosted.ap.org/ ... 18:59:31
SPRINGFIELD, Mo.... The bus security cameras show the [3yo] girl getting off the bus with a cheery "Bye!" and
walking straight into traffic
on a busy street. [Bus driver] Chris Leslie, 38, is pictured streaking out the door after her. One view from the bus camera shows a car making a rapid stop directly in front of Leslie and the girl last week.... girl's mother was busy in the bus with another child in a stroller and the toddler didn't heed a command to wait....
Transport Trouble
hosted.ap.org/ ... 18:47:31
LONDON... A passenger train from London to Scotland derailed Friday night in northwestern England, seriously injuring some passengers and leaving as many as eight people trapped in a car that slipped down an embankment.... was carrying about 200 people.... no fatalities but numerous people were injured including the train driver.... leg injuries to back injuries and head injuries - ranging from minor to quite serious....
Prison Sucks
today.reuters.com/ ... 19:00:32
A retired British soldier who said he was
"falsely imprisoned" in Malaysia for 16 years
after authorities seized his passport has won about $860,000 in damages...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 18:45:59
CROWN POINT, Ind.... Officials are at a loss to explain how they
allowed a homeless, mentally ill man accused of stealing a soda to languish in jail for 17 months
.... attorney... psychiatrist... judge... and... jail officials all apparently believed he had been released a year ago.... police report... said that before stealing the soda, he said he had just gotten out of jail and wanted to go back....
Modern Medicine can be Dangerous
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:58:41
Federal health officials are warning doctors that certain types of metallic dye injected for MRI scans have been linked to a rare and dangerous skin disease in kidney patients...
Animals can be Deadly
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:54:28
A six-year-old girl was bitten to death by a tiger at a south China zoo while posing for a picture with the animal.... shortly after the flash went off....
Infrastructure Tragedy
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:51:18
GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala... A 330-foot-deep sinkhole killed at least two teenagers as it swallowed about a dozen homes early Friday and forced the evacuation of nearly 1,000 people in a crowded Guatemala City neighborhood.... blamed... on recent rains and an underground sewage flow from a ruptured main. The pit emitted foul odors, loud noises and tremors....
WW2 - still with us
tulsaworld.com/ ... 14:43:44
One of the most famous photographs of World War II -- an American flag being raised on Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi -- was shot after a suggestion by a Tulsa Marine.... a Marine Corps photographer from Tulsa... the late Meyers Cornelius told a World reporter 10 years later that he and another Marine photographer had crawled up the hill... and both men shot several photographs of a small flag with Marines posed around it.... As Cornelius and his group started down the hill, they met another group of photographers, including Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, who had started up the hill but stopped when the grenades were thrown. "I told a Marine movie photographer, who later was machine-gunned to death on that island, that he should go up and get some movies of the second flag being raised," Cornelius said. "That photographer, Rosenthal and several others crawled up the hill on their hands and knees to record the flag-raising...."
Supernatural Threats
foxnews.com/ ... 10:32:29
SANTA FE The Roman Catholic Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi was evacuated during noon Mass on Ash Wednesday when three CD players duct-taped to the bottom of pews began blaring sexually explicit language. The players were set to turn on at 12:22 p.m. as parishioners were in the middle of Mass... Church staff personnel removed the CD players, took them to the basement and called police.... The bomb squad blew up two of the players.... then kept the third one for analysis after determining the players were not dangerous....
Industrial Tragedy
allheadlinenews.com/ ... 10:27:08
Riga, Latvia... At least 25 people were dead or missing early Friday at a home for the elderly and disabled in western Latvia after a fire.... Firefighters were... able to save 80 people before the building's roof collapsed.... preliminary evidence indicates that a short-circuit in the building's electrical wiring was responsible.... firefighters had a hard time putting out the fire because several sources of water were frozen in the extreme cold.... firefighters were digging holes in the ice in order to find water...
Civilization vs Gangsterism
theaustralian.news.com.au/ ... 10:21:02
Kevin Rudd says he is astonished by the Defence Minister's admission there can be no victory in Iraq, but he insisted a Labor government would not leave the Americans in the lurch by withdrawing troops too quickly. The Labor leader's comments came as John Howard said now was not the time to be putting US forces under pressure by withdrawing, with the US going through a troubled patch in Iraq. Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said on Thursday "there is no such thing as victory in Iraq" and that the most important thing now was to see the war through until the Iraqis had control over their country....
news.monstersandcritics.com/ ... 10:19:54
Britain is
expected to deploy more than 1,000 extra troops in Afghanistan for a planned 'spring offensive' against Taliban forces
....
Extraterrestrial
chron.com/ ... 23:58:04
What would happen if an astronaut came unglued in space and, say, destroyed the ship's oxygen system or tried to open the hatch and kill everyone aboard? That was the question on some minds after the apparent breakdown of Lisa Nowak, arrested in Orlando this month on charges she tried to kidnap and kill a woman she regarded as her rival for another astronaut's affections. It turns out NASA has a detailed set of written procedures for dealing with a suicidal or psychotic astronaut in space. The documents, obtained this week by The Associated Press, say the astronaut's crewmates should bind his wrists and ankles with duct tape, tie him down with a bungee cord and inject him with tranquilizers if necessary...
Digital Convergence
today.reuters.com/ ... 18:56:09
The urge to merge within both the recording and satellite radio industries this week reflects how tough it is to compete profitably within the evolving digital media market. Struggling satellite radio operators XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. announced a proposed $4.9 billion merger and Warner Music Group Corp. this week said it had approached Britain's EMI Group Plc about a possible takeover bid.... seen as defensive reactions to an increasingly complicated digital entertainment market.... "In both cases, they're going to argue that technology has changed the landscape so much that their set of competitors are no longer confined to companies like themselves...."
Transport Future
today.reuters.com/ ... 18:54:40
SAN FRANCISCO... California's biggest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., is considering a
plan to charge fleets of battery-powered cars overnight with wind energy
and let consumers sell back some of the stored electricity during the day.... could help stoke production of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and give power managers more energy capacity on the grid for hot summer afternoons.... A six-month study in Colorado found that electric cars may reduce the overall cost of owning a car, and with new grid technology, cut harmful vehicle emissions by up to 50 percent...
Anthropology
today.reuters.com/ ... 18:51:30
A new study... maintains that chimpanzees and humans split from a common ancestor just 4 million years ago -- a much shorter time than current estimates of 5 million to 7 million years ago.... The theory of a molecular clock is based on the premise that all DNA mutates at a certain rate. It is not always a steady rate but it evens out over the millennia and can be used to track evolution.... gorillas and orangutans split off much earlier... most recent studies have put the date at somewhere around 5 million to 7 million years ago....
Antiquity - still with us
today.reuters.com/ ... 18:49:53
WASHINGTON...The Clovis people... likely were not the first humans in the Americas, according to research... Using advanced radiocarbon dating techniques... dated from about 13,100 to 12,900 years ago.... younger and shorter-lived than previously thought. Previous estimates had dated the culture to about 13,600 years ago.
World Zookeeping
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:56:53
Two snowy owls have been seen together in the UK for the first time in more than 30 years.... However, the birds were thought to be male which threatens to dash initial hopes they might be a breeding pair...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:55:28
Beavers grace New York City's official seal. But the industrious rodents haven't been spotted here for as many as 200 years - until this week... Biologists videotaped a beaver swimming up the Bronx River on Wednesday. Its twig-and-mud lodge had been spotted earlier on the river bank, but the tape confirmed the presence of the animal...
Feeding Ourselves
today.reuters.com/ ... 23:41:23
An outbreak of salmonella food poisoning that has sickened 329 people and sent 51 of them to the hospital was
definitely caused by contaminated Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Friday...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:56:08
Milk from cloned cows is not welcome at the nation's biggest milk company.... Dean Foods Co. of Dallas... owns Land O'Lakes and Horizon Organic, among dozens of other brands...
wnbc.com/ ... 11:03:19
It's hard to believe how bad the rat problem is at a downtown fast-food restaurant. The rodents are everywhere at a Kentucky Fried Chicken/Taco Bell in Greenwich Village, on 6th Avenue and West 4th Street... The New York City Department of Health recently said the restaurant had a clean bill of health. However, after the rats were captured on video, the Health Department vowed to do another inspection...
consumeraffairs.com/ ... 10:40:12
An
elderly Chicago area man may be the second person to die after eating tainted peanut butter....
was said to be in relatively good health just before his recent death from complications of food poisoning. His family believes he was
killed by his fondness for Peter Pan peanut butter....
lid bore the code number 2111, marking it as among the potentially tainted product. A
76-year old Pennsylvania woman's death last month is also allegedly linked to the salmonella-tainted peanut butter....
The family has hired an attorney who has filed suit against the manufacturer, ConAgra.... one attorney who had already filed a class action lawsuit claims to have been contacted by more than 2,000 alleged victims. ConsumerAffairs.Com has received more than 70 complaints from consumers who say they became ill. Many did not seek medical care and those who did were often misdiagnosed. Most of the consumers who have written to ConsumerAffairs.Com have "toughed it out," taking over-the-counter medications and hoping for the best, but doctors warn that
Salmonella is dangerous and requires medical attention....
intense vomiting and diarrhea can cause not only dehydration, but also an electrolyte imbalance, possibly leading to a fatal heart arrythmia.... But going to the emergency room or to one's private physician doesn't guarantee appropriate treatment.... "The ER did a CAT scan and came back with the general idea that I was suffering from a sinus infection due to the fact that they saw that my nasal passages were clogged...."
US Military
baltimoresun.com/ ... 10:24:45
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky.... Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, 24... was sentenced to 100 years in prison Thursday for the gang rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and the killing of her family last year... also was given a dishonorable discharge... will be eligible for parole in 10 years under the terms of his plea agreement....
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 18:38:32
Army Sgt.
Buddy J. Hughie
, 25, of Poteau, Okla., died Feb. 19 in Kamdesh, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when his unit came in contact with enemy forces using small arms fire and rocket propelled grenades. Hughie was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 180th Infantry, Oaklahoma Army National Guard, Ada, Okla.
defenselink.mil/ ... 18:38:13
Army Spc.
Louis G. Kim
, 19, of West Covina, Calif., died Feb. 20 in Ramadi, Iraq, of wounds suffered when his unit came in contact with enemy forces using small arms fire. Kim was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Schweinfurt, Germany.
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:08:42
Army Staff Sgt.
David R. Berry
, 37, of Wichita, Kan., died Feb. 22 in Qasim, Iraq, when the vehicle he was in struck an improvised explosive device. Berry was assigned to 1st Battalion, 161st Field Artillery, Kansas Army National Guard, Dodge City, Kansas.
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:08:14
Army Sgt.
Richard L. Ford
, 40, of East Hartford, Conn., died Feb. 20 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered during combat operations. Ford was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 325th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.
World Without Borders
hosted.ap.org/ ... 23:35:23
Promoting prosperity topped the agenda at a gathering of U.S., Canadian and Mexican Cabinet leaders Friday, but immigration and the threat of terrorism also were key topics
at the gathering.... a lead-up to a meeting of the countries' leaders this August in Canada.... reviewed a 63-page report... on how to streamline border crossings, harmonize regulatory standards and improve the supply and distribution of clean energy sources.... global bird flu pandemic, natural disasters, organized crime and drug trafficking....
People Do Drugs
hosted.ap.org/ ... 23:33:50
A high school banned a caffeine-packed energy drink and 7-Eleven pulled it from Colorado stores after some students said it made them sick and shaky and caused their hearts to race... Spike Shooter, made by Biotest Laboratories LLC. All recovered within hours.... A warning on the can says the drink isn't meant for anyone under 18... contains roughly the same amount of caffeine as two to three five-ounce cups of coffee...
Human Right
hosted.ap.org/ ... 23:32:20
A group of families has sued in an attempt to block Gov. Rick Perry's executive order requiring schoolgirls to be vaccinated against the virus that causes cervical cancer...
It's Only Money
hosted.ap.org/ ... 18:57:58
MCDONOUGH, Ga.... 15-month-old... While playing with a thrift store book bought earlier in the day for 25 cents... uncovered $1,300 in cash stuck between the pages. Her baby sitter... said she only bought the book at [child]'s insistence and was surprised when the toddler found a brown paper bag full of $100s, $50s, $20s and $10s.... took the money... dated as far back as the 1960s, to a local bank, where she received only $300 in exchange because most of the bills were in pieces....
Supernatural Whoops
today.reuters.com/ ... 18:48:31
U.S. troops detained on Friday the eldest son of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite leaders, outraging Shi'ite politicians and prompting a swift apology from the U.S. ambassador.... He was handcuffed and taken to a nearby U.S. military base.... soldiers had removed his cleric's black turban, an act Shi'ites would view as deeply insulting....
War of Independence still with us
hosted.ap.org/ ... 15:00:50
NASHVILLE, Tenn.... A
rare, 184-year-old copy of the Declaration of Independence
found by a bargain hunter at a Nashville thrift shop is being valued by experts at about 100,000 times the $2.48 purchase price....
What's In a Name?
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:59:39
A newly opened store catering to very pampered dogs, especially female dogs, is getting more than questioning looks for its name, High Maintenance Bitch...
Digital Privacy Threat
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:58:16
Tiny computer chips used for tracking food, tickets and other items are getting even smaller. Hitachi Ltd., a Japanese electronics maker, recently showed off radio frequency identification, or
RFID, chips that are just 0.002 inches by 0.002 inches and look like bits of powder....
thin enough to be embedded in a piece of paper....
Rebuilding
tulsaworld.com/ ... 14:41:08
BUHRIZ, Iraq... In a muddy, half-collapsed police station northeast of Baghdad, in the heart of insurgent territory, 30 American and 60 Iraqi troopers hunker down amid constant mortar fire and study how to undermine an enemy who is literally next door. Such compounds are likely signs of the future in Iraq. Instead of storming an area to drive away militants and then withdrawing to the relative safety of big bases, select forces are being stationed among the insurgents themselves in the heart of communities, where soldiers are warned to be "ready each day to be greeted with a handshake or a hand grenade...." The hope is that increased contact with ordinary Iraqis will pay off with goodwill and sharper tips on militant activity and let Iraqi soldiers learn how to rule the streets on their own....
Theory of Education
hosted.ap.org/ ... 23:32:00
MURRAY, Ky.... A middle school teacher trying to buy pot was arrested after she sent text messages to state trooper instead of a dealer....
tulsaworld.com/ ... 14:39:29
TAMPA, Fla.... A [41yo] middle school principal bought $20 worth of crack in his office Thursday while students were on campus.... was arrested in the school lobby after buying the drugs from an undercover police officer.... Additional officers posed as parents in the lobby and made sure no students were nearby....
Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!
tulsaworld.com/ ... 14:37:20
A payoff protection scheme involving Tulsa police and bootleggers was "a strange and disgusting story...." Twenty men, including Police Commissioner Jay Jones, Police Chief Paul Livingston and Tulsa Tribune reporter Nolen Bulloch, were on trial in the scheme that also involved gambling and prostitution. Sixteen were convicted. It was the most important criminal case spawned by Oklahoma's prohibition laws....
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:04:04
NEW YORK... Come and meet those dancing feet, up on 42nd Street - but only in nightspots with special licenses. The city's
80-year-old cabaret law banning dancing by patrons in ordinary bars and restaurants is legal
, the state Supreme Court's Appellate Division ruled Thursday. The Gotham West Coast Swing Club and several people had sued, saying the law violated their constitutional right to free expression...
shortnews.com/ ... 11:01:45
Swiss farmers are being told by the country's Agriculture Ministry that they face prosecution if they feed cannabis to their cattle. The practice has been outlawed since 2005 but advertisements promoting it have appeared again recently.
Many farmers see cannabis as a cheap efficient food for cattle which makes the animals happy....
meadvilletribune.com/ ... 11:00:56
Legalize prostitution and marijuana
By Leif M. Wright MUSKOGEE PHOENIX (Muskogee, Okla.)...
Imagine two people get together to do what adults sometimes do when theyre alone together. Theyre responsible people. They take all the appropriate precautions to avoid negative repercussions of their actions. When theyre about to part ways, cops bust down the door, slam the couple to the ground, handcuff them and cart them away to jail. Their crime? Having consensual sex. Or try this one on for size: A couple of friends, over 21, get together, put Pink Floyds "The Wall" on iTunes, crack open a case of Budweiser or Coors, sit back and get a little drunk. Its OK, though, because none of them plans to leave tonight. Theyre all going to crash here and listen to some more good tunes later. Just in the middle of "Is There Anybody Out There?" cops bust down the door and arrest everyone, confiscating the beer, the stereo and any cash the guys have on them. The crime? Possession of alcohol with the intent to distribute. Sounds stupid, doesnt it? Outrageous, even. How dare the government arrest two people for having consensual sex, or for enjoying an intoxicating beverage in the privacy of their own home? It goes against everything America stands for, if you think about it. The whole idea behind the Bill of Rights, after all, was to keep the government out of our private lives, out of the things we do behind closed doors, as long as they dont infringe on other peoples rights. But take it one step further and thats exactly what this countrys doing. In the first scenario, if the two exchange money, we arrest them both and throw them in jail. In the second scenario, if they are smoking marijuana instead of drinking beer, we lock them up...
rutlandherald.com/ ... 10:59:49
A
bill expanding Vermont's medical marijuana law to patients suffering from chronic pain
passed a key committee this week and may come to the Senate floor for a vote next week.... Many patients suffering from chronic pain have a difficult time with traditional medications because they often kick in after the pain recedes.... the new bill would bring Vermont's law closer in line with 10 other states that have similar statutes. The proposal is not completely what supporters were hoping for glaucoma was stripped from the bill's text as an illness that could be treated with marijuana.... The bill also increases the amount of the drug a patient on the state marijuana registry can possess.... Patients could have up to four mature plants and 10 immature plants, as long as they had the OK from a doctor and were registered with the Vermont State Police. Patients would still be restricted to having two ounces of marijuana at any time....
Defending Ourselves
chron.com/ ... 10:30:34
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica...
An American senior citizen killed an alleged mugger with his bare hands, and his traveling companions aboard a tour bus fended off two other assailants
in the Atlantic coast city of Limon.... The American, who is about 70 years old and retired from the military, put the 20-year-old in a head lock and broke his clavicle after the suspect and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus.... The two other men fled when the 12 senior citizens started defending themselves during the Wednesday attack.... [Dead mugger] had previous charges against him for assaults.... The tourists left on their Carnival cruise ship after the incident... The ship, The Carnival Liberty, continued on its scheduled itinerary....
US Election 2008
boston.com/ ... 10:23:27
...David Geffen has kicked up a storm by
saying publicly something that Democrats usually only whisper privately....
Clinton is "a reckless guy" who "gave his enemies a lot of ammunition to hurt him and to distract the country....
I don't think anybody believes that in the last six years, all of a sudden Bill Clinton has become a different person...
"
"I believe Bill Clinton was a good president, and I'm very proud of the record of his two terms," Hillary said...
THU 2007-FEB-22
Disturbing Family Patterns
wcbstv.com/ ... 19:55:39
A Long Island woman found living in squalor with her three children was under investigation Thursday... inside the home police were stunned to find hundreds of bottles of urine, feces, soiled clothes, a dead cat, piles of garbage and used toilet tissue scattered everywhere.... [Father] compared the living conditions of his daughters, ages 10, 12, and 14, to a war camp, calling them "prisoners...." during their bitter six year separation, he says he had not seen the girls or their filthy and unhealthy living conditions....
Fun can be Fatal
azfamily.com/ ... 19:47:34
Arizona... A 5-year-old girl died after police say she was thrown from her horse this morning during the Rodeo Parade. A team of horses pulling a wagon behind the girl spooked then ran into her horse and she fell off.... a member of a family of equestrians and musicians.... in violation of the parade's rules [too young]....
Threats
suntimes.com/ ... 11:53:54
Two Chicago area cousins were charged Wednesday with scheming to "kill, kidnap or maim" Americans overseas, including troops in Iraq.... had traveled to a convention in Cleveland and discussed sniper tactics with a trainer and "their desire to receive training in firearms and counter surveillance techniques...." planned to meet with that trainer for explosives and paramilitary instruction, but that never happened, according to charges....
Criminally Stupid
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:52:51
CALGARY, Alberta... A would-be thief proved himself lacking in key skills like reconnaissance and driving after he tried to pull a heist beside a police-dog training site and then got stuck in the snow trying to flee...
Violence
nytimes.com/ ... 19:44:59
American troops on a raid near Falluja discovered three car bombs under construction in a bomb-making factory that appeared intended to be used with chemicals.... Five of the buildings raided by American forces were packed with munitions and chemicals....
Just west of Falluja in Ramadi, the Anbar provincial capital, American forces fought a fierce battle with insurgents early Thursday morning that officials at the Ramadi hospital said left at least 27 Iraqis dead.... The United States Marine Corps, which patrols western Iraq, disputed the account of Ramadi hospital workers. The Marines said U.S. soldiers, including troops in tanks, took fire from insurgents and returned fire. Any building that was attacked by United States forces had been used as shelter by insurgents who were firing on the troops during the skirmish, they said. At least 12 people were killed, all of them insurgents, they added...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:44:28
A US helicopter which crash-landed north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad was shot down, the US military has said. All nine people aboard the Black Hawk were evacuated by a second helicopter and none suffered serious injuries...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:44:08
Police in India say they have detained three people in connection with Sunday's bomb attack aboard a train travelling from India to Pakistan. Two men and a woman were picked up from northern Rajasthan state following a tip-off from the police in neighbouring Haryana, where the blast took place...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:41:21
Four Iraqi soldiers have been charged with raping a Sunni Muslim woman in Talafar, northern Iraq.... confessed.... second time this week that members of Iraq's security forces have been accused of serious sexual assault of Sunni women.... The woman is thought to be a 40-year-old married mother of 11 from Iraq's Turkoman minority....
Mass Murdering Monsters
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:36:17
US military officials say they are concerned about recent attacks by insurgents in Iraq involving poisonous chlorine gas. The warning came after a pick-up truck carrying chlorine gas canisters rigged with explosives blew up in south-west Baghdad, killing two Iraqis. Many others were wounded in the attack. It was the third such bombing in Iraq this month. Chlorine burns the skin on contact and can be fatal after a few breaths...
Transport Tragedy
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:37:19
A driver has fallen to his death after crashing through a Tokyo bridge, leaving his 24-ton lorry dangling above traffic some 10m (33ft) below.... The truck came to rest upside down on one of the bridge's supporting pillars.... "If the vehicle had fallen on the road below, it would have been a disaster..."
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:35:32
A fire broke out on an Indonesian ferry carrying 300 passengers Thursday, killing at least 16 people and sending scores of passengers jumping into the sea... More than a dozen people remained unaccounted for...
Anthropology
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 19:59:06
Chimpanzees in Senegal have been observed making and using wooden spears to hunt other primates... 22 cases of chimps fashioning tools to jab at smaller primates sheltering in cavities of hollow branches or tree trunks.... Chimps had not been previously observed hunting other animals with tools... In a number of cases, chimps also trimmed the ends of the branch and stripped it of bark. Some chimps also sharpened the tip of the tool with their teeth. Adult males have long been regarded as the hunters in chimp groups. But the authors of the paper... said females and juveniles were seen exhibiting this behaviour more frequently than adult males...
World Zookeeping
news.independent.co.uk/ ... 19:42:35
...the capture of a spectacular colossal squid could be a symptom of something bigger.... Only half a dozen colossal squid have been caught. The specimen hauled out of the inky waters of Antarctica is believed to be the biggest, weighing half a ton, with eyes as big as dinner plates.... about 39ft long, with a large beak and razor-sharp hooks on the end of its tentacles, was feasting on a Patagonian toothfish - itself one of the more sizeable members of the marine population - when it was caught.... if calamari rings were made from it, they would be the size of tractor tyres.... took fishermen two hours to land it.... believe[d]... to be the first intact adult male ever landed.... "It really has to be one of the most frightening predators out there. It's without parallel in the oceans...." growing evidence to suggest that even normal squid are becoming gradually larger thanks to rising sea temperatures....
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 20:01:15
Army Pfc.
Jason D. Johns
, 19, of Frankton, Ind., died Feb. 21 in Bagram, Afghanistan, of a non-combat related injury. His death is under investigation. Johns was assigned to the 3rd General Support Aviation Battalion, 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.
defenselink.mil/ ... 20:00:50
Army Spc.
Christopher K. Boone
, 34, of Augusta, Ga., died Feb. 17 in Balad, Iraq, of a non-combat related injury. Boone was assigned to the 121st Infantry (Long Range Surveillance), Georgia Army National Guard, Fort Gillem, Ga. The incident is under investigation.
defenselink.mil/ ... 20:00:29
Army Sgt.
Shawn M. Dunkin
, 25, of Columbia, S.C.
Army Pfc.
Matthew C. Bowe
, 19, of Coraopolis, Pa.
Army Pfc.
Adare W. Cleveland
, 19, of Anchorage, Alaska
died Feb. 19 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when the vehicle they were in was struck by an improvised explosive device. They were assigned to the 1st Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y.
defenselink.mil/ ... 19:59:46
Marine Cpl.
Timothy D. Lewis
, 20, of Lawrenceburg, Ky., died Feb. 15 as a result of non-hostile action in Jolo, Republic of the Philippines. His death is under investigation. Lewis was assigned to Combat Logistics Regiment 37, 3rd Marine Logistics Group, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Okinawa, Japan.
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:05:13
Army Pvt.
Kelly D. Youngblood
, 19, of Mesa, Ariz., died Feb. 18 in Ramadi, Iraq, of wounds suffered during combat operations. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga.
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:04:26
Marine Capt.
Todd M. Siebert
, 34, of Baden, Pa., died Feb. 16 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.
Marine Lance Cpl.
Brian A. Escalante
, 25, of Dodge City, Kan., died Feb. 17 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Twentynine Palms, Calif.
Marine Lance Cpl.
Blake H. Howey
, 20, of Glendora, Calif., died Feb. 18 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Twentynine Palms, Calif.
Marine Pfc.
Brett A. Witteveen
, 20, of Shelby, Mich., died Feb. 19 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to Marine Forces Reserve's 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, Grand Rapids, Mich.
Marine Sgt.
Clinton W. Ahlquist
, 23, of Creede, Colo., died Feb. 20 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
US Military
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:02:16
National Guard... This week, the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps announced a decrease, while the Navy had an increase and the Coast Guard number remained the same. The net collective result is
1,133 fewer reservists
mobilized than last week.... This brings the total National Guard and Reserve personnel, who have been mobilized, to
83,718
, including both units and individual augmentees....
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:01:00
The Department of Defense announced today that it
transferred seven detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Saudi Arabia....
approximately 85 detainees remain at Guantanamo who the U.S. government has determined eligible for transfer or release through a comprehensive series of review processes....
It's All in Your Mind
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:46:26
Memories of traumatic events are not suppressed by the people who experienced them but can be recalled clearly, according to Canadian researchers. Sigmund Freud developed a theory that victims of horrific events repressed difficult memories in order to cope with what happened to them. But scientists at Dalhousie University in Halifax found in a five-year study that
pleasant events were more difficult to recall than unhappy ones...
Theory of Education
philly.com/ ... 19:57:10
An Abington Township woman and her 10-year old son have sued the Abington School District, saying that the principal at the Willow Hill Elementary School there would not allow the boy to wear a Jesus costume, complete with a paper-and-twig crown of thorns, during a Halloween parade there last fall. Instead, the suit says, he
was told that he could wear only his white robe, without the crown, and should say he was a Roman emperor...
[One can sort-of understand religious sensitivity preventing the Jesus costume, but... a Roman emperor???]
Theory of Justice
smh.com.au/ ... 19:52:01
Even by the standards of the O. J. Simpson and Michael Jackson cases, the battle for the body of Anna Nicole Smith was bizarre beyond words. It ended with the judge, Larry Seidlin, delivering his judgement while blubbering... Given his rambling emotional state, it wasn't clear if this was the judge's advice to the guardian, or a court order... In what was a fairly simply legal matter about next of kin, Judge Seidlin allowed days of testimony about the paternity of her daughter, her drug use, and who profited from her fame. He took phone calls in court from the medical examiner about the state of Smith's decomposing body. But mostly it was about the judge himself. During the proceedings, the judge, who grew up in the Bronx and once drove taxis, told the court he played tennis in white shirt and white shorts, that he didn't have his first child until 50, and that he eats tuna sandwiches for lunch. During the final day, one lawyer - apparently a diabetic - collapsed. Judge Seidlin offered to buy him an orange juice with a credit card. He addressed Smith's mother as "momma" and called other attorneys "Texas" and "California"... A commentator on Fox News described Judge Seidlin's courtroom as a "parallel universe". CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said it was a "surreal judicial experience"... It was appropriate that for such a circus, Anna Nicole Smith appeared in a cameo on video, painted like a clown...
Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!
texarkanagazette.com/ ... 11:59:53
A deputy was patrolling at 12:10 a.m. Tuesday when he made a traffic stop at the 15-mile marker of Interstate 30... Miller County deputies made one arrest and seized 70 to 80 pounds of marijuana.... 14 bricks of marijuana in the vehicles speaker box, each weighing 4 to 6 pounds... [Male] of Little Rock was arrested...
healthcentral.com/ ... 11:58:41
People who smoke marijuana for a long time face many of the same kinds of respiratory problems -- such as phlegm, coughing and wheezing -- as long-term cigarette smokers, say researchers at the Yale School of Medicine. They reviewed previous studies from 1966 to 2005.... Some of the studies found a link between short-term marijuana use and relaxation and opening of the air passages. However, other studies identified an association between long-term marijuana use and increased risk of respiratory symptoms.... The data did not show an association between long-term marijuana smoking and airflow obstruction (emphysema).... There were several common kinds of limitations in the studies they reviewed, the Yale researchers noted. These included: inadequate control of the complicating effect of tobacco smoking; lack of standardized measures for the amount or duration of marijuana use; and lack of standardized measures of the outcomes that were evaluated...
[It's SMOKING, not marijuana itself that is the problem here, of course....]
accessnorthga.com/ ... 11:56:36
GAINESVILLE, Ga.... Authorities discovered
hundreds of marijuana plants in the basement
of a south Hall County home, the second such operation uncovered in the same area this week.... the houses are bought specifically to create marijuana "farms..." No arrests have been made in the case. Agents found 173 marijuana plants at one house yesterday after discovering 115 plants at another house on Monday....
kare11.com/ ... 11:55:29
No federal charges will be filed against a Washington state couple who were found in St. Paul with more than 150 pounds of marijuana in the gas tank of their pickup....
157 pounds of marijuana... the federal Drug Enforcement Administration does not bring marijuana cases to the U.S. Attorney's office unless the confiscated amount is more than 500 pounds....
sfgate.com/ ... 11:52:15
Medical marijuana advocates tried a new approach Wednesday in their tug-of-war with the federal government, filing suit under a law tThe suit was filed in federal court in San Francisco under the Data Quality Act, a little-known statute signed by President Bush in 2001. It directs federal agencies to allow members of the public to "seek and obtain correction" of false or misleading government information that affects them. Morrison said the law was originally pushed by businesses that objected to government statements taking dim views of products or entire industries, notably Clinton administration reports that listed industrial activities among the causes of global warming. He said he knew of only two lawsuits filed under the statute, neither of them successful... hat requires the government to correct its own misstatements -- including, the advocates say, the assertion that marijuana has no medical value...
Big Whoops Cascade
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:51:20
OCONOMOWOC, Wis... A man says he broke into an apartment with a cavalry sword because he thought he heard a woman being raped, but the sound actually was from a pornographic movie his upstairs neighbor was watching. "Now I feel stupid," said James Van Iveren, who has been charged in the case. "This really is nothing, nothing but a mistake..." charged with criminal trespass, criminal damage and disorderly conduct, all while using a dangerous weapon, and is due in court March 5. Together, the misdemeanor counts carry a maximum sentence of 33 months in jail...
[Another good case for headphones...]
Man and Woman
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:48:45
Males stand further away when talking to other males in the virtual world of Second Life and are less likely to keep eye contact, according to a study that shows at least one aspect of human behavior carries over into the virtual realm... Female-female pairs stood only slightly closer to each other than male pairs, but were more likely to maintain eye contact... Avatars of all genders were more likely to look away from each other when standing close, much like people in the real world face away when crammed into an elevator...
Digital Culture
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:49:24
When officials in this Minneapolis suburb didn't like the two eye-popping digital billboards that Clear Channel erected along the freeway, they pulled the plug. They had the power company cut off the electricity. That move in December sparked a court fight that local governments and the advertising industry alike are watching as digital billboards with fast-changing messages become more prevalent...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:49:04
A one-time college couple say their melodramatic Valentine's Day breakup - complete with singers, hundreds of spectators and a profanity-laced tirade - was real. Those who were there say it all seemed a little too staged. Still, there's no question it's an Internet hit...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:47:56
One of the most prestigious prizes in computing, the
$100,000 Turing Award, went to a woman Wednesday for the first time
in the award's 40-year history.
Frances E. Allen, 75, was honored for her work at IBM Corp. on techniques for optimizing the performance of compilers,
the programs that translate one computer language into another.... joined IBM in 1957 after completing a master's degree in mathematics at the University of Michigan. At the time, IBM recruited women by circulating a brochure on campuses that was titled "My Fair Ladies...."
Rebuilding
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:45:28
Tony Blair's
plan to recall 1,600 British troops from Iraq
within the next few months has been
welcomed by the country's president.
Jalal Talabani's spokesman said it was a "welcome catalyst" that would force Iraqi forces to take responsibility for the country's security....
Free Expression
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:43:44
An Egyptian court has
sentenced a blogger to four years' prison for insulting Islam and the president.
Abdel Kareem Soliman's trial was the first time that a blogger had been prosecuted in Egypt.... A former student at al-Azhar [University], he called the institution "the university of terrorism" and accused it of suppressing free thought. The university expelled him in 2006 and pressed prosecutors to put him on trial.... three years for insulting Islam and inciting sedition, and one year for insulting Mr Mubarak [called him a dictator].... The UK-based organisation Amnesty International said the ruling was "yet another slap in the face of freedom for expression in Egypt"....
Business Culture
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:39:12
A visit to India by Wal-Mart executives has sparked protests by small shopkeepers worried about its plans for a tie-up with Bharti Enterprises. Communist protesters were briefly arrested... in Delhi, waving placards saying "Save small retailers".... Wal-Mart and Bharti are planning a joint venture for cash-and-carry.... "Around 40 million people depend on the retail sector and these people's livelihoods will be ruined if Wal-Mart is permitted to enter India's retail market...."
WED 2007-FEB-21
Nature can be Dangerous
kfvs12.com/ ... 12:16:55
Missouri...Tuesday night... Cities across the area, from Poplar Bluff to Scott City across the river to Tamms in Illinois were hit by very large hail. Many cars have damage including dents and smashed out windows. Some of the hail stones we saw are over three inches across. One woman in Scott City told us she was getting mad at her husband for slamming doors, until she realized it was actually hail hitting her home....
Criminally Stupid
kttc.com/ ... 12:10:34
ST. PAUL... A mechanic is being credited for thwarting a Washington couple's effort to move more than 150 pounds of marijuana worth about 157-thousand dollars. The couple stopped at a Midas muffler shop on St. Paul's East Side complaining that their pickup truck wasn't running properly.... attendant noticed fresh weld spots on the fuel tank.... man and woman were told the tank needed to be replaced and they insisted the repair wasn't necessary.... eventually they relented but insisted the old tank be saved. Suspicious workers called police, then found the gas tank had been split into two compartments. One was filled [with] fuel, the other with marijuana....
Hospitals can be Dangerous
today.reuters.com/ ... 12:07:20
BELGRADE... A routine appendix operation in Belgrade went badly wrong when two surgeons started fighting and stormed from the operating theater to settle their dispute outside... The operation was completed successfully by the attending assistant doctor...
Epidemic Without Borders
hosted.ap.org/ ... 12:06:29
More than 680 people have died in a suspected cholera outbreak in Ethiopia that has also affected neighboring countries, officials said Wednesday. Some 60,000 people have been infected, but the country's Health Ministry is resisting pressure to declare an emergency despite a U.N. warning that the disease is an epidemic...
Nicotine is a Drag
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:57:34
Smoking causes long-lasting changes in the brain similar to changes seen in animals when they are given cocaine, heroin and other addictive drugs...
[Ignorant headline of the day:]
Smoking changes brain the same way as drugs
[as OTHER addictive drugs it should say....]
Fun can be Dangerous
news.sky.com/ ... 12:50:04
A lightning strike killed a Chinese paraglider who was sucked into the same powerful thunderstorm that a German woman miraculously survived.... Preliminary post mortem results showed that he was killed by a lightning strike.... Ms Wisnierska survived her ordeal... encased in ice... hit by hail stones the size of oranges....
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:42:30
Two circus clowns have been shot dead during a performance in the eastern Colombian city of Cucuta.... attacker jumped into the arena and fired before fleeing.... audience of about 20 people, mostly children, thought the shooting was part of the show before realising both men had been killed.... Last year, a prominent circus clown, known as Pepe, was also shot dead by a unknown assailant in Cucuta. The motive for the latest killing remains unclear....
Violence
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:41:23
At least three people, including a policeman, have died and 16 have been wounded in a mine blast in eastern Sri Lanka... Tamil Tiger rebels targeted a police patrol near Batticaloa, 300km (187 miles) east of Colombo... Two civilians also died.
At least 64,000 people have died since the rebels began their fight for independence more than 20 years ago. An escalation in the fighting since December 2005 has left 4,000 dead...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:40:05
Israeli troops have killed a commander of the militant Islamic Jihad group in the northern West Bank...
Disturbing Family Patterns
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:36:50
LINCOLN, Neb... Lincoln police said a 50-year-old woman was charged Tuesday with child abuse and criminal mischief after having her 12-year-old granddaughter drive her to her niece's house, where the grandma broke five windows...
Iraq
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:45:26
Prime Minister Tony Blair has told MPs that 1,600 British troops will return from Iraq within the next few months. He said the 7,100 serving troops would be cut to 5,500 soon, with hopes that 500 more will leave by late summer... Basra remained a "dangerous" place but he said that Iraqis would "write the next chapter" in its history...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:33:38
Denmark is considering boosting its contingent in Afghanistan by 200 troops to 600... Earlier, the government presented plans to withdraw troops from Iraq... by August and transfer security responsibilities to Iraqi forces, and that the decision had been made in conjunction with the Iraqi government and Britain, under whose command the Danish forces are serving near Basra...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:29:57
Army Chief Warrant Officer
Hershel D. McCants Jr.
, 33, of Ariz.
Army Chief Warrant Officer
John A. Quinlan
, 36, of New Jersey
Army Sgt.
Adam A. Wilkinson
, 23, of Fort Carson, Colo.
Army Spc.
Travis R. Vaughn
, 26, of Reinbeck, Iowa
Army Spc.
Brandon D. Gordon
, 21, of Naples, Fla.
Army Pfc.
Ryan C. Garbs
, 20, of Edwardsville, Ill.
Army Pfc.
Kristofer D. S. Thomas
, 18, of Roseville, Calif.
died Feb. 18 in southeastern Afghanistan when the Chinook helicopter they were in crashed. The incident is under investigation. McCants, Quinlan, Wilkinson, Vaughn, and Gordon were assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), Fort Campbell, Ky. Garbs and Thomas were assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, Fort Benning, Ga.
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:25:59
Army Sgt.
Pedro J. Colon
, 25, of Cicero, Ill.
Army Spc.
Montrel S. Mcarn
, 21, of Raeford, N.C.
died Feb. 19 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when their unit came under attack by enemy forces using multiple weapons. They were assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:25:20
Army Pfc.
Justin T. Paton
, 24, of Alanson, Mich., died Feb. 17 in Taramia, Iraq, when his unit came in contact with enemy forces using small arms fire. Paton was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:24:51
Army Sgt.
Matthew S. Apuan
, 27, of Las Cruces, N.M., died Feb. 18 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when his unit came in contact with the enemy using small arms fire while on combat patrol. Apuan was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:24:19
Army Pfc.
Chad E. Marsh
, 20, of Wichita, Kan., died Feb. 18 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when a grenade detonated near him during combat operations. Marsh was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Schweinfurt, Germany.
Antiquity - still with us
dailymail.co.uk/ ... 12:18:38
The body of a
strikingly tall 5,000-year-old woman with an artificial golden eye
has been discovered in Iran. Archaeologists said the woman was a female soothsayer or priestess and would have transfixed those around her with her eyeball, making them believe she had occult powers and could see into the future.... 25-30-year old Persian woman... almost 6 feet tall... buried with an ornate bronze hand mirror... golden eyeball is engraved with lines coming out of a central circle like rays of light. It is a half-sphere with a diameter of just over an inch and made from lightweight material thought to be derived from bitumen paste, which is painted gold. There are two tiny holes drilled on either side of the eyeball, through which a fine thread held it in place.... an imprint on the woman's eye socket proved she wore the golden eye in life, rather than having it placed in her eye at burial...
Extraterrestrial
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:56:18
A spacecraft that aims to land on a comet may also establish whether there is a thin ring of debris around the Red Planet this week. The Rosetta probe will use Mars' gravity to pick up speed on a mission that will reach its climax in 2014. But during a very close flyby, Rosetta will look for a scattering of dust from Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos...
Prehistory - still with us
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:55:51
A sharp freeze could have dealt the killer blow that finished off our evolutionary cousins the Neanderthals
, according to a new study.... new data from their last known refuge in southern Iberia indicates the final population was probably beaten by a cold spell some 24,000 years ago.... climate downturn may have caused a drought, placing pressure on the last surviving Neanderthals by reducing their supplies of fresh water and killing off the animals they hunted.... The cause of this chill may have been
cyclical changes in the Earth's position relative to the Sun - so-called Milankovitch cycles....
in an interesting new development, scientists are also now reporting another site, from south-east Spain, which has yielded evidence for the late survival of Neanderthals.... Sediment layers containing Neanderthal tools were found to date from 45,000 years ago until 21,000 years ago.... Neanderthal bones have also been excavated from these sediment units, including a male skull fragment which could potentially be very recent....
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:51:46
SEMINOLE, Fla.... A 16-year-old high school student stumbled upon what archaeologists say could be the biggest fossil find in Pinellas County in nearly a century.... "I looked down and saw a huge bone that could not be a rock. Most of it was exposed, but we dug and found that it was bigger and bigger. I thought, 'Oh my gosh, what are these? Are they people bones...?'" The jaw and tooth weigh 65 pounds and are about a yard long.... determined the football-sized rock was actually the tooth of a long-extinct mammoth. Paleontology and archaeology experts have confirmed the find, and recent digging at the site has turned up teeth and bones from a second mammoth, giant sloths, camels, turtles with shells up to 6-feet-long, saber-toothed cats and giant armadillos the size of Volkswagen Beetles. Scientists believe the remains are between 10,000 and 100,000 years old....
US Military
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:50:15
FORT CAMPBELL, Kentucky... A U.S. soldier under court-martial at a Kentucky military base broke down in tears on Wednesday as he described how he and others planned the rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, murdered along with her family. Sgt. Paul Cortez, 24, is the second U.S. soldier to plead guilty to raping the girl, killing her and her family in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, in March 2006, then burning the bodies to cover up the crime....
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:40:34
Washington has ordered a review of the way wounded US soldiers are cared for at military hospitals, following highly critical reports in the US media. A top defence official has admitted one hospital, Walter Reed, had problems that must be fixed "immediately". Reports in the Washington Post said some of the soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan lived in buildings infested with rodents and cockroaches. It said others had to wait for months to get their disability pay...
Animal Companions
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:34:43
Tampa-based Checkers Drive-in Restaurants Inc. is distributing "Rapcat" bags designed with cutaway areas for the cat's legs and tail. The cat's head sticks out the opening of the bag, which is designed to look like to a basketball jersey and gold chain worn by the hip-hop Rapcat puppet in Checkers commercials. A Hillsborough County Animal Services news release on Monday said forcing a real, unwilling cat into a "Rapcat" bag could be considered felony animal cruelty. The bag's warning - "not all cats will be down with wearing this bag. Do not harm or endanger any cat" - is not enough, the agency said...
World Without Borders
breitbart.com/ ... 12:48:21
Forty Brazilian immigrants were found loaded inside a stifling tractor-trailer about 75 miles north of the Mexican border.... No injuries were reported.... "As soon as those agents opened the back of the trailer, they could just feel the heat coming from inside...."
US Election 2008
hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/ ... 12:15:56
Obama... spokesperson Robert Gibbs... "...ironic that Senator Clinton lavished praise on Monday and is fully willing to accept today the support of South Carolina State Sen. Robert Ford, who said if Barack Obama were to win the nomination, he would drag down the rest of the Democratic Party because he's black...."
editorandpublisher.com/ ... 12:14:38
Maureen Dowd's column in The New York Times today... quoted former Bill Clinton supporter David Geffen offering a few caustic comments....
"Everybody in politics lies, but they [the Clintons] do it with such ease, its troubling...."
Reasons for Repeal
seattlepi.nwsource.com/ ... 12:13:25
SPOKANE, Wash... An Airway Heights couple was arrested after authorities said they
flushed more than 70 marijuana plants down the toilet
....
...in Spokane, firefighters summoned by a neighbor reported finding pot plants in a house that caught fire Tuesday evening. The occupant, who was detained for questioning, said he was authorized to grow marijuana for medicinal purposes...
nctimes.com/ ... 12:11:21
ESCONDIDO ---- Officers investigating suspicious activity Tuesday in Escondido discovered a man driving a car loaded with more than 200 pounds of marijuana...
Human Right
365gay.com/ ... 12:09:25
France's highest court on Tuesday ruled that
the partner of a gay mom cannot adopt the child.
The court said there is nothing in the law to permit same-sex couples to be co-parents....
Theory of Justice
breitbart.com/ ... 12:51:46
SHEBOYGAN, Wis.... No charges will be filed against an 8-year-old Wisconsin girl who made more than 100 prank calls to emergency operators last week.... third-grader identified herself to dispatchers as "Matthew" when she made the calls, some of which contained profanities....
because of her age, she won't be charged. "At this point, the matter was corrected," Risseeuw said. "We'll leave it for the parents to deal with..."
[Unusual in this day & age!]
bloomberg.com/ ... 12:07:39
A U.S. appeals court threw out lawsuits by hundreds of inmates challenging their detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, giving the Bush administration a victory in its handling of "enemy combatants" in the war on terrorism...
People Live
hosted.ap.org/ ... 12:05:52
JACKSON, Tenn... A Jackson woman who contracted polio 57 years ago and continues to rely on an iron lung to breathe recently celebrated her 60th birthday, defying doctors' expectations that she could live so long and so fully. Dianne Odell, who turned 60 last week, is among only 30 to 40 people in the U.S. who depend on the devices... "It's just the way God wanted it," she said. Odell does not remember being able to walk, but she has been told that once upon a time she did...
Digital Threat
hosted.ap.org/ ... 12:03:46
A potentially devastating hole in Google Inc.'s prevalent desktop search product could have exposed personal files on users' computers to data thieves. Google fixed the defect within weeks of being informed about it and says it has no evidence the vulnerability was exploited. The flaw was uncovered late last year by Watchfire Corp., a security-analysis provider. While the vulnerability exists in roughly 80 percent of Web applications, this problem appeared far more extreme "given the sensitive nature of what Google Desktop is doing..."
Digital Democracy
today.reuters.com/ ... 12:01:10
The Baltic state of Estonia plans to become the
world's first country to allow voting in a national parliamentary election via the Internet
next month.... including the chance to choose the "king of the forest". Voters could pick an animal from 10 candidates, including moose, deer and boars.... Estonia rushed to modernise after independence, and has become a major European base for Internet telephony group Skype: Estonians helped develop the service, owned by ebay Inc. Just under 10,000 people voted via the Internet in local elections in October 2005. Computer specialists have estimated 20,000-40,000 of 940,000 registered voters will vote via the Internet from February 26-28, ahead of the March 4 election day....
Digital Business
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:04:47
An electronic clipboard that has the potential to save lives has been unveiled. It is hoped the device - known as a mobile clinical assistant (MCA) - will cut the time doctors and nurses spend on paper work. It could also improve patient safety and speed up treatment times. The portable device lets clinicians access patient records at the bedside, write notes and order essential tests in real-time. One senior doctor described it as one of the "most exciting developments in my 25 years in medicine"...
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:59:16
A deal between Google Inc. and CBS Corp. that would let YouTube users watch clips from CBS shows... has unraveled, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. The two companies had been closing in on a multi-year deal.... also discussed ways to peddle CBS Radio advertising spots to Google advertisers... could not agree on issues such as how long the deal would run...
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:49:02
Annual consumer spending on Internet downloads of movies and TV shows will top $4 billion in 2011, up from just $111 million last year, according to a study released on Wednesday by Adams Media Research. "The Internet is going to revolutionize the distribution of video..."
Digital Culture
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:04:26
UK.... The government has rejected a call to ban the digital locks that limit what people can do with the software, music and movies they own. A petition calling for the ban on the government's e-petition website gathered more than 1,400 backers. In its response, the government said these digital locks, known as Digital Rights Management, helped give users "unprecedented choice". But it added that DRM must respect the rights and needs of consumers...
today.reuters.com/ ... 12:02:51
Virtual enactments of child pornography may be a crime under Dutch law
if it encourages child abuse, the public prosecutor said on Wednesday. In the virtual world of Second Life, a popular Internet destination, everyone aged under 18 is supposed to be limited to a "teen grid". However, it would be relatively easy for children to get on to the adult grid if they wished since there is no proof of age required. In the adult section, some users participate in "age play", in which adult users can create child-like characters and have virtual sex that would be illegal in the real world.... With the increasing popularity of virtual worlds, there are
fears people may turn to them to carry out activities considered illegal in the real world....
[?!?]
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:46:43
...Bill Gates... said his 10-year-old daughter, his oldest child, was not a hard-core Internet and computer user until this year, when she started at a school where the students use tablet computers for almost everything. "She became very avid and discovered a lot of computer games, including one that runs on the Xbox 360 called Viva Pinata, where you take care of your garden.... She could spend two or three hours a day on this Viva Pinata, because it's kind of engaging and fun." Gates said he and his wife Melinda decided to
set a limit of 45 minutes a day of total screen time for games and an hour a day on weekends, plus what time she needs for homework
...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:38:41
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y... A man who was
fired by IBM for visiting an adult chat room at work
is suing the company for $5 million, claiming he is an Internet addict who deserves treatment and sympathy rather than dismissal.... says he visits chat rooms to treat traumatic stress incurred in 1969 when he saw his best friend killed during an Army patrol in Vietnam...
People Die
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:36:11
A Haight-Ashbury man returning home from an extended vacation tripped and fell on a corpse in his bedroom after finding his apartment had been ransacked... The resident's orange-and-white tabby cat
seen prowling the investigation scene was taken away by animal control officials but was unharmed...
TUE 2007-FEB-20
Hitler is alive and well
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:49:10
Small packets of sugar bearing the likeness of Adolf Hitler and carrying Holocaust jokes have been found in some cafes in Croatia, prompting an investigation... The incident will embarrass the government which has been keen to play down the country's past links with Nazism. Reuters Pictures Editors Choice: Best pictures from the last 24 hours. View Slideshow Croatia's Ustasha regime sided with the Nazis in World War Two and enforced ethnic laws under which thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, as well as anti-fascist Croats, were killed in local concentration camps in 1941-45...
Transport Tragedy
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:39:14
At least a dozen Indian children and three teachers have died after the boat they were travelling in capsized. The accident happened during a boat trip on the Periyar river at a wildlife park in the southern state of Kerala. Most of the children on the trip were reported to be under the age of 11. Ten managed to swim to the shore while about 17 others were reported missing...
Supernatural Violence
foxnews.com/ ... 11:18:42
NASHVILLE, Tenn. A Muslim cabdriver from Somalia ran over two college students near Vanderbilt University after getting into an argument with them about religion.... the two men exited the cab, and the cabbie also got out. They paid him his fare, and then they exchanged words. According to the incident report, Ahmed then returned to his cab as the students fled on foot. Ahmed then allegedly drove across a parking lot, jumped a curb and struck the two men... One of the students... [has] critical injuries. The other... avoided the cab.... [Driver] charged with assault and attempted homicide, is being held on $300,000 bond. He also was also charged with theft because police said the license plate on his cab was listed as stolen....
Threats
breitbart.com/ ... 11:13:53
Kirk Yeager makes bombs from the stuff found under kitchen sinks. He does it to help the FBI defend against what officials say is the next frontier for terrorists in the United States... Yeager says, the "Mother of Satan" explosives are considered the most likely weapon that terrorists will use against the U.S., more so than a nuclear or radiological "dirty" bomb. "Every serious terrorist group knows about them and knows how to make them..." Yeager's brews are used for testing and training police officers and bomb-sniffing dogs. Until recently, authorities knew little about peroxide-based bombs because they are too volatile to handle casually. Moreover, TATP in particular is hard for dogs to detect. Over the past year, the FBI and Transportation Security Administration have trained dog teams to sniff out the chemical cocktails at 75 airports and on subway, train and bus systems in 13 cities. The government pays up to $50,000 to train each of the 420 teams currently in action...
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:08:36
The Czech Republic said on Tuesday it would not be intimidated by Russia over plans to site parts of a U.S. missile defense system on its territory and said attempts at "blackmail" by Moscow would backfire...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:08:17
US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure, the BBC has learned. It is understood that any such attack - if ordered - would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres. The US insists it is not planning to attack, and is trying to persuade Tehran to stop uranium enrichment...
[Let's be clear... Our military should be ready for anything, including a full-scale attack on BRITAIN, much less Iran. There is a difference between having a
plan
ready just in case and having the
intention
to use it.]
1960s - still with us
reuters.com/ ... 11:05:50
Previously unreleased footage of John F. Kennedy's fateful motorcade in Dallas moments before he was gunned down was released on Monday, a surprising new detail in a saga that has gripped the United States for four decades. The silent 8mm film shows a beaming Jacqueline Kennedy close up in vivid color waving to the crowd. A group of excited bystanders -- women sporting big 1960s hairstyles -- waves to the cameraman shortly before the motorcade sweeps past. The president's coat is clearly if briefly seen bunched up on his back -- a detail that will be scrutinized by conspiracy theorists who see evidence of a plot in, among other things, the fact the bullet wounds on his jacket and body did not appear to match...
Violence
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:40:27
KABUL... An Afghan suicide bomber disguised as a doctor blew himself up at a hospital in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, wounding six Americans... U.S. soldiers opened fire on the man who was acting suspiciously as he and U.S. officers attended a function in the hospital...
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:39:41
A bomb destroyed a truck carrying chlorine north of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing five people and spewing out toxic fumes that sickened nearly 140 others in an apparent dirty-bomb attack...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:38:47
A gunman has shot dead a provincial minister in Pakistan just as she was about to address a political meeting. Zill-e-Huma was social welfare minister in Punjab and an active member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League... Ms Huma was meeting Muslim League party activists and supporters when a man got up and opened fire on her, hitting her in the head... According to the police, he told them during questioning that women occupying senior positions was against the rule of God, and was an attempt to subjugate men...
baltimoresun.com/ ... 10:47:18
FREDERICK... A 29-year-old gunman was believed to have perished yesterday in a fire that broke out in a liquor store during his standoff with police and engulfed a Frederick shopping complex... had spoken with police by telephone before the fire broke out...
Mass Murdering Monsters
canada.com/ ... 10:42:39
A suicide bomber struck a funeral in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least seven people... at least 15 people were injured.
In other bloodshed across Baghdad, a car bomb and a suicide attacker killed at least 11 people...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 11:50:43
Army Sgt. 1st Class
William C. Spillers
, 39, of Terry, Miss., died Feb. 17 in Baghdad, Iraq, from a non-combat related injury. Spillers was assigned to the 230th Finance Detachment, Jackson, Miss. The incident is under investigation.
defenselink.mil/ ... 11:50:21
Air Force Tech. Sgt.
Scott E. Duffman
, 32, of Albuquerque, N.M.,
died Feb. 18 when the coalition MH-47 helicopter he was riding in crashed in eastern Afghanistan. Duffman was assigned to the 24th Special Tactics Squadron, Pope Air Force Base, N.C. An investigation will be conducted to verify the cause of the crash.
Digital Convergence
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:45:57
BOSTON... ...SpotScout Inc. hopes to create an online marketplace where drivers armed with mobile phones can not only reserve private spaces in garages and driveways, but also swap public parking spots in real time, with vacant spaces going to the highest bidder...
Antiquity - still with us
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:41:53
CAIRO, Egypt... A mud brick tomb dating back more than 4,000 years has been discovered near Egypt's most ancient pyramid in the Saqqara complex south of Cairo.... found five wooden statues depicting the tomb's owner and his wife in a niche at the tomb's forefront. Among the wooden figures was a unique double statue of a seated Ka-Hay and his wife....
Digital Future is Now
telegraph.co.uk/ ... 11:20:54
As a depressed machine roaming through space in the fictional Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Marvin the Paranoid Android popularised the concept of a robot with feelings. However, the real thing will be available far closer to home in just 10 years, scientists predicted yesterday. They now claim it is essential to give robots their own emotions if they are to be capable of running independently and efficiently enough to take on a variety of domestic tasks... A number of groups around the world are now developing robots that have basic emotions in a bid to motivate the machines. If a robot feels happy after it has cleaned a dirty carpet particularly well, then it will apparently seek out more dirt to do the same. Similarly, if the robot feels guilt or sadness at having failed at a task, it will try harder next time...
Feeding Ourselves
telegraph.co.uk/ ... 11:27:18
Organic and locally-grown food may be no better for the environment than conventional produce, according to a Government-funded report... Milk, tomatoes and chicken produced to organic standards can be more polluting than their intensively-farmed equivalents... The energy needed to grow organic tomatoes is 1.9 times that of conventional methods, the study found. Organic milk requires 80 per cent more land to produce than conventional milk and creates 20 per cent more carbon dioxide, it says. The use of manure to fertilise land can lead to acidification of soil and the pollution of water courses. Organic chickens require 25 per cent more energy to rear and produce more carbon dioxide than conventional battery or barn hens, according to the report. However, the study points out that there are many organic foods with lower ecological impacts than conventional produce. It suggests there is no clear-cut answer as to whether an organic or a conventional trolley of goods has more or less impact...
forbes.com/ ... 10:57:17
The drumroll for tainted food continued Monday with a nationwide recall of Oscar Mayer chicken breast strips for bacterial contamination.... involves 52,650 pounds of fully cooked chicken breasts produced on Jan. 9 and distributed nationwide to retailers. The six-ounce packages are labeled "OSCAR MAYER/LOUIS RICH CHICKEN BREAST STRIPS WITH RIB MEAT, GRILLED, FULLY COOKED -- READY TO EAT." Each package has the number "P-19676" inside the USDA inspection mark on front and a use-by-date of "19 Apr 2007" on back...
US Military
washingtonpost.com/ ... 10:54:00
Nearly half of the more than 3,100 U.S. military fatalities in Iraq have come from towns... where fewer than 25,000 people live, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. One in five hailed from hometowns of less than 5,000... The Census Bureau said 56 percent of the population in 2005 lived in towns under 25,000 and in unincorporated areas, but it could not provide the number of people in living only in communities of less than 25,000. The 2000 census showed 16 percent of the population lived in unicorporated rural areas... Many of the hometowns of the war dead aren't just small, they're poor. The AP analysis found that nearly three quarters of those killed in Iraq came from towns where the per capita income was below the national average. More than half came from towns where the percentage of people living in poverty topped the national average...
[Heroes and defenders of freedom have always disproportionately come from these strong-hearted areas. This blog-heaper has also noted a sad number of Jr, II, III, and even IV's following the names of military casualties; this says a lot about the family mentality of those same soldiers.]
There's a "basic unfairness" about the number of troops dying in Iraq who are from rural areas, said William O'Hare, senior visiting fellow at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute, which examines rural issues....
[Yup... too many people are letting these poor rural folk do their job for them....]
Big Whoops Cascade
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:43:55
TORONTO... The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have pulled online job recruitment advertisements that mistakenly appeared... on Web sites run by the notorious 18th Street Gang, a Los Angeles-based group thought to be one of the largest and most violent gangs in the world... On one message board, violent messages and death threats to gang rivals appeared as if they were endorsed by an RCMP logo that invited youths to apply to the force....
Coincidentally
mercurynews.com/ ... 11:25:34
There, big as life, was a card with her picture on it. A 45-year-old picture, from when she was a 3-year-old living in a San Jose homeless shelter. "I just gasped," says Gilmore, 48, of Fresno. "I had to do a triple-take. What am I doing on a greeting card in a nationwide store?" Gilmore knew that picture. No mistaking it. The mischievous little girl lifting her skirt to show off her petticoat. The mortified little boy, covering his face in embarrassment. "Hope your birthday is full of surprises!" one version of the $2 card says... That day at Target? She bought every copy of the card they had. Then she went to two more Targets and bought all they had. Then she called Graphique de France, the company that produced the card. "I did alert our sales department that there may be temporary bumps in sales numbers in California," jokes Helen Simmons, of Graphique, whose U.S. division is in Massachusetts. Gilmore says she didn't call Graphique to argue about where the company gets off using her picture, or to demand money or an acknowledgment or even free greeting cards. "I personally don't care about all that kind of stuff," Gilmore says. What she cared about was finding out how the card came to be. The precise route of the photo from the front-page of the News to the face of a greeting card might never be known...
US Election 2008
breitbart.com/ ... 11:09:43
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that South Carolina should remove the Confederate flag from its Statehouse grounds, in part because the nation should unite under one banner while at war...
[Hillary just lost a lot of the Southern vote....]
Human Right
shortnews.com/ ... 11:07:00
A 13-year-old girl from the Italian town of Torino has been forced to have an abortion due to her angry parents' opposition. The law states that minors must defer the decision to their parents. After the abortion, she threatened suicide after going into a frenzy, requiring treatment.... The father is her 15-year-old boyfriend....
Reasons for Repeal
htrnews.com/ ... 11:04:15
MANITOWOC Possession of marijuana in Manitowoc might soon be an ordinance violation meaning offenders would only be issued a city citation for the crime...
[Part-way measures are less logically consistent than outright repressive prohibition. Logically, either it's a person's right to use, possess, and obtain a substance or it's not. Morally, it's a right.]
news.rgj.com/ ... 11:02:38
Nevada
parents who grow a single marijuana plant in their home where children live could be subject to a prison term of up to 15 years,
according to a bill that was debated Monday at the Nevada Legislature... the same penalties as adults who operate methamphetamine labs in front of children....
[Prohibition madness just keeps getting sicker and sicker! And this in a state where prostitution and gambling are legal!]
cbs4denver.com/ ... 11:01:00
Gorman told CBS4 a few weeks ago about the dangers of being a known grower of marijuana. "I mean, I've had a gun stuck to my head, people stabbed in my house from people trying to get my marijuana," Gorman said on Jan. 31. Gorman said his home had been burglarized 15 times... No arrest have been made. No suspects have been identified publicly...
dfw.com/ ... 11:00:11
Two El Paso men remained in the Parker County Jail on Tuesday after troopers found 975 pounds of marijuana in the tractor-trailer they were driving to Chicago... a routine commercial vehicle inspection... the two men "displayed signs of nervousness," the report said... Troopers received consent to search the vehicle
[yeah, sure!]
and noticed that a security seal on the trailer was broken, according to the report...
[Due to prohibition-inflated black marketing, the vegetable matter had an]
estimated street value of $500,000
denverpost.com/ ... 10:58:06
While Denver police hunt for a motive in the deadly shooting of medical-marijuana provider Ken Gorman, his brother and marijuana activists said the business of providing the drug to sick people isn't the safest line of work. "I've heard Ken had dealt with previous attempts to rob him, and it's likely the result (of the fact that) that marijuana is on the black market," said Mason Tvert of SAFER, a group that unsuccessfully tried to get voters to legalize small amounts of pot in Colorado last November. Gorman, 59, was shot to death Saturday night in his home in the 1000 block of South Decatur Street in Denver. No arrests were announced Monday...
Digital Liberty
itwire.com.au/ ... 10:56:13
Just as Slysofts AnyDVD software lets consumers easily watch copy-protected DVDs by remove region coding and going straight to playing the movie without waiting for FBI warning or other logos, AnyDVD HD gives consumers the same freedom with HD DVD movies at last... SlySoft, makers of the CloneCD, CloneDVD and AnyDVD software programs, have released software to deal with the problems of HD DVD encryption. It allows you to decrypt HD DVD movies, watch HDCP compliant movies on non-compliant HDCP monitors and graphics cards, and play back HD DVD movies through PowerDVD Ultra DVD viewing software for PCs. For owners of an HD DVD drive for PCs and a collection of HD DVD movies, the possibility of making a backup to a hard drive now exists,
restoring what should be a consumers right to making a backup in case the original is damaged...
Digital Threat
pcworld.com/ ... 10:54:57
Account holders with at least two Australian banks have become victims of a phishing scam in which malicious code reveals the physical location of affected IP addresses using Google Maps. Bank account holders in Germany and the U.S. have also been targeted. The software installs a trojan capable of key-logging user activity, hijacking infected computers...
Headline of the Day
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:45:37
Tsunami warming
[sic]
after Indonesia hit by strong quake
...
[More proof that the global warming scare tactics are having deep psychological impact]
Lost & Found
examiner-enterprise.com/ ... 11:31:38
GOVERNMENT CAMP, Ore.... ...The climbers' fall was the start of yet another drama on Oregon's highest mountain, one that had a happy ending Monday as rescuers reached the three who had slid about 500 feet. All three, plus Velvet the 4-year-old dog, who had been clipped to a rope the trio of climbers had used, were transported off the 11,239-foot mountain Monday afternoon.... The rescuers credited the group's rescue to two things -- one low-tech and one high-tech: Velvet, who offered warmth as the three climbers huddled overnight, and the activation of a radio transmitter the size of a sunglasses case that helped rescuers to the group....
blog.oregonlive.com/ ... 10:44:26
When rescuers approached the three stranded climbers and their dog Monday afternoon, they were huddled under a tarp and trying to take shelter along a rock... the climbers were able to get off the mountain on their own. One woman suffered a head injury that left her confused on Sunday... when rescuers reached her, she was lucid but one of her eyes was swollen shut...
People are Born
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:43:16
A baby girl said to have spent the shortest time in her mother's womb is to be released from the hospital in Miami where she was born.... believed to be the first baby to have survived following a gestation period of less than 22 weeks. She weighed a mere 10 ounces (284 grams) at birth on 24 October...
Big Nanny
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:46:53
A Malaysian state plans to recruit "spies" from the public to snoop on unmarried lovers and report them to Islamic religious authorities...
theage.com.au/ ... 10:41:32
...how did the humble incandescent light globe earn its reputation as greenhouse enemy number one?.. The Federal Government has announced that Australia will become the first country to ban incandescent light globes to save wasted energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions. But do the old globes deserve their reputation as being bad for the planet? And is a ban the right way to go?.. today's incandescent bulbs remain very inefficient, converting only about 5 per cent of the energy they produce into light... Today's compact fluorescent lights last up to 6000 hours or four to 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs and use about 80 per cent less electricity... According to the Government, phasing out incandescent globes over the next three years could save about 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year by 2012 and as much as 4 million tonnes in 2015. At best, that would be far less than a 1 per cent cut in Australia's greenhouse emissions, which were 564.7 million tonnes at last count in 2004 and are forecast to keep growing rapidly... According to the Government, phasing out incandescent globes over the next three years could save about 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year by 2012 and as much as 4 million tonnes in 2015. At best, that would be far less than a 1 per cent cut in Australia's greenhouse emissions, which were 564.7 million tonnes at last count in 2004 and are forecast to keep growing rapidly... "The cost of this policy will hit low-income households harder so there needs to be a program to subsidise the upfront costs of replacing these light bulbs..."
[How one insane government program leads to more....]
MON 2007-FEB-19
Transport Incident
aero-news.net/ ... 10:57:52
No one was injured, but an Embraer 170 is a bit worse for wear after it skidded off the runway while landing at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (CLE) on Sunday... Shuttle America Flight 6448, operating as a Delta Connection flight from Atlanta with 70 passengers and four crewmembers onboard, slid off the departure end of runway 28 at 3:14 pm EDT...
Nature can be Deadly
washingtonpost.com/ ... 10:56:30
Weekend avalanches killed six people in Montana, Utah and Idaho, with one bruised survivor traveling miles by snowmobile and on foot to reach help...
Data Threat
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:49:00
HARTFORD, Conn.... More than 1,700 state workers recently learned that some of their personal information, including their names and Social Security numbers, had been inadvertently posted on the Internet...
Mass Murdering Monsters
playfuls.com/ ... 10:54:52
"On the basis of information given by eye-witnesses, one person who was present in one of the two coaches that caught fire has been detained," the Press Trust of India news agency quoted Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav as telling reporters. Pakistani and Indian survivors of the explosion onboard the Samjhauta Express near Panipat city, 100 kilometres north of New Delhi, were fighting for their lives in hospitals. At least 66 people were killed and 60 others injured... Ten Pakistanis and two Indians, including a one year-old baby, were fighting for their lives at the specialized burns unit at Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:43:27
A number of bombings have killed 20 people and wounded many others in Iraq... Eleven people, including five police officers, were killed in a car bomb attack near the city of Ramadi... In Baghdad, attacks killed seven people and wounded almost 50 others. Bombs in the south-east of the city have killed two people and injured 40...
Scary Times
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:42:50
A suspicious package at the Canadian embassy in Paris triggered an alert when a staff member had a nosebleed shortly after opening the envelope. French police said initial tests showed the contents were non-toxic and that the alert was now over...
Civilization vs Gangsterism
boston.com/ ... 10:57:16
American intelligence and counterterrorism officials say Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, have reestablished significant control over the worldwide terror network, The New York Times reported today... mounting evidence that the two leaders have in the past year established a network of training camps in the tribal regions of Pakistan along the mountainous Afghan border, including an operations hub in North Waziristan...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:40:26
KABUL, Afghanistan... Suspected Taliban insurgents briefly captured a small town in western Afghanistan after police abandoned their posts Monday, a day after a roadside bomb killed four officers involved in opium poppy eradication.... Police fled to a forest near Bakwa in Farah province.... The militants stayed for about 30 minutes and seized three vehicles before leaving in an unknown direction.... Police planned to move back into the town on Tuesday morning....
Violence
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:44:01
Two U.S. soldiers were killed and 17 wounded when insurgents launched a coordinated attack on an outpost north of Baghdad on Monday in what appeared to be one of the biggest such assaults in months...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:37:23
LONDON... Police arrested a man early Monday in connection with a series of letter bombs sent to offices linked to traffic enforcement.... Altogether, nine people have been injured in the attacks.... no details about the suspect....
It's All in Your Mind
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:53:40
Math anxiety -- feelings of dread and fear and avoiding math -- can sap the brain's limited amount of working capacity, a resource needed to compute difficult math problems...
Digital Future is Now
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:51:25
The way we use the web is changing and the future lies in mixing, mash-ups and pipes... The real transformation comes from having the ability to take other people's content and then filter, refine, recombine and reuse it in interesting and innovative ways. This remix model brings us closer to the original vision of a hypertext, put forward by Vannevar Bush in the 1940s and realised by Tim Berners-Lee at Cern in the 1980's. Bush's "Memex", an electro-mechanical system for providing easy access to information stored on microfilm, relied on cross-references and user annotation, allowing people to add new documents but not directly to edit those they have. Now Yahoo! has launched a new service that could have a massive impact on the way we think about our online activity... Their new offering, Pipes, lets you take a data feed such as the result of a web search, or an RSS feed from a blog or news site, or a set of tagged photos on Flickr, and transform it to produce the outcome you want. You can then make it available for other people to see. It's web-based, no more complicated than creating programs for Lego MindStorms, and already stirring up a lot of interest... We have had mashups for a while now... but they generally require some programming ability and usually combine two sources at a time, like the BBC News and Google Maps mashup in Ben O'Neill's excellent news map. Pipes take things much further...
Being Human
en.wikipedia.org/ ... 10:48:29
Iridology -- from Wikipedia... an alternative medicine practice in which patterns, colors, and other characteristics of the iris are examined for information about a patient's systemic health. Practitioners match their observations to iris charts which divide the iris into zones that correspond to specific parts of the human body. The eye, therefore, acts as a "window" into the body's state of health. Iridology is a practice that is not recognized by mainstream medicine... [Considered "disputed science]
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:47:34
It may be possible to read a person's personality through their eyes, Swedish researchers have said. They have detected patterns which show warm-heartedness and trust or neuroticism and impulsiveness...
["Iridology" has been an alleged means of doing this for years...]
a neurodevelopmental gene called PAX6 could also play a major role...
People Live
apnews.myway.com/ ... 11:03:21
BELLMORE, N.Y.... Three young brothers [8, 10, & 16] who fell through ice into a frigid creek were rescued by a teenage [18yo] neighbor who heard his mother's frightened screams for help... He pulled the three boys to safety before police arrived...
Reporting Science
epw.senate.gov/ ... 11:02:11
CARDINAL GEORGE PELL: Keeping a cool head amid warming hysteria... We have been subjected to a lot of nonsense about climate disasters, as some zealots have been presenting extreme scenarios to frighten us... What we were seeing from the doomsayers was an induced dose of mild hysteria -- semi-religious if you like, but dangerously close to superstition. I'm deeply sceptical about man-made catastrophic global warming, but still open to further evidence. I would be surprised if industrial pollution and carbon emissions had no ill-effects at all. But enough is enough...
World of Cultures
washingtontimes.com/ ... 10:56:06
LONDON -- A majority of people worldwide do not think the world is locked in a "clash of civilizations" that will lead to violent conflict between Islam and the West, according to findings of a poll... The British Broadcasting Corp. World Service poll of more than 28,000 people found that 56 percent of respondents thought "common ground can be found" between Muslims and Westerners, while only 28 percent said violence was inevitable. The survey also found that 52 percent of people thought that tensions between Muslims and Westerners were caused by political power and interests, compared with 29 percent who said religion and culture were to blame...
[Seems a lot of people are a bit unclear on the concept....]
People Do Drugs
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:53:14
A novel study may provide an answer to a question that has puzzled drug abuse researchers for years -- namely, why someone would try a drug like heroin for the first time knowing that it is highly addictive. Based on their findings, the researchers infer that people experiment with drugs that they know are addicting partly because they can't fully appreciate the intensity of drug cravings and therefore underestimate the odds that they will become addicted...
Digital Culture
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:52:48
China's cellular operators estimate Chinese customers will send around
14 billion Lunar New Year text messages on their mobile phones
during the week-long holiday...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:52:18
The impact of heavy use and high temperatures on hard disk drive failure may be overstated, says a report by three Google engineers. The report examined 100,000 commercial hard drives, ranging from 80GB to 400GB in capacity, used at Google since 2001... "Our data indicate a much weaker correlation between utilisation levels and failures than previous work has suggested..."
Reasons for Repeal
denverpost.com/ ... 11:00:50
A Denver man who was killed in a South Decatur Street shooting Saturday was a well-known advocate of medical marijuana... Ken Gorman, a 59-year-old activist who promoted passage of Colorado's medical marijuana law in 2000, was shot sometime after 7 p.m...
gainesville.com/ ... 10:59:39
Gainesville resident... said he did what any victim of a home-invasion robbery would do: He called police. But what makes Chu's story different is he told police he was robbed of four ounces of marijuana and $1,000.... Gainesville police's violent crimes task force subsequently arrested two Gainesville men for the Saturday night robbery.... Now police are deciding whether to charge [theft victim] with any crimes, said Lt. Keith Kameg, Gainesville police spokesman. He said
the robbery illustrates the dangers of drug dealing
...
wqad.com/ ... 10:58:21
A man from Chicago's West Side is being held in liue of 15 thousand dollars bond after he allegedly accepted a shipped parcel that contained 32 pounds of marijuana that police say would have fetched 232 thousand dollars on the street...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:42:21
Mexico is sending thousands more federal troops and police to two states bordering Texas, in a further attempt to crack down on drug gangs.... The new move includes defence ministry, navy and security ministry forces. The navy will also patrol the Gulf Coast to try to intercept drug shipments.... the states of Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas.... Officials say that in the raids, 3,873 hectares (9,566 acres) of
marijuana, and 3,324 hectares (8,210 acres) of opium poppies have been destroyed...
US Election 2008
orlandosentinel.com/ ... 10:38:47
THE VILLAGES -- Before former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney could tout his conservative credentials Friday in this tri-county hotbed of Republicanism, he first had to defend his religious background as he begins the long road toward the 2008 GOP presidential nomination...
SUN 2007-FEB-18
Transport Tragedy
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:20:53
A train traveling to Pakistan caught fire early Monday in northern India, killing at least 53 people, and an explosive device was found near the tracks.... two suitcases stuffed with flammable material were also found at the scene - one inside a burned train car and the other on the railroad track.... engulfed two cars of the Samjhauta Express, one of two train links between rivals India and Pakistan.... at least 30 passengers burned and injured in the blaze have been hospitalized in the nearby town of Panipat.... The train links are one of the most visible results of the peace process under way between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, and one of the easiest ways to travel between the two countries....
Sex can be Dangerous
today.reuters.com/ ... 16:48:05
Israeli police investigating why a car was blocking traffic in the fast lane of a major highway Sunday found a couple inside having sex... gave in to their passions without pulling over to the side of the road...
Mass Murdering Monsters
chron.com/ ... 13:24:14
At least 28 bombs exploded Sunday in apparently coordinated attacks in parts of southern Thailand plagued by a Muslim insurgency, killing three people and wounding more than 50... targeted hotels, karaoke bars, power grids and commercial sites in the country's southernmost provinces, the only parts of predominantly Buddhist Thailand with Muslim majorities....
news24.com/ ... 13:23:27
A double car bomb attack on a crowded market in mainly-Shi'ite east Baghdad killed at least 56 on Sunday... at the Kindi Hospital in downtown Baghdad... 42 [dead]... 83 seriously wounded... at the city's Ibn Nafees hospital... 14 dead and 20 critically wounded... A first explosion ripped through a crowded vegetable market, while at almost the same moment another explosives-laden car detonated a few hundred metres away near a row of electrical goods shops...
Threats
latimes.com/ ... 16:59:58
Among the myriad military and intelligence agencies that make up Iran's security forces, none has the skill and reach of the
Quds Force, an elite unit nominally within the command structure of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps....
The Quds Force and its predecessors consisted of the Guard's most skilled warriors. Experts said they were highly secretive commando units sent abroad to help Shiites usurp monarchies in the Persian Gulf, gun down enemies and battle Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. They also reportedly have run operations in Sudan, South Asia and Western Europe.... "It's a remarkably efficient organization, quite possibly one of the best special forces units in the world...." The extent to which the Quds Force is controlled by the government has been hotly debated in U.S. foreign policy circles...
csmonitor.com/ ... 13:25:09
US officials are casting doubt on a report that Al Qaeda in Iraq chief Abu Ayyub al-Masri was injured in a confrontation with Iraqi police. CNN, however, reports that Iraqi authorities are standing by their intitial story... The Associated Press reports that the Iraqis are now changing one element of their original statement. It was first reported that senior aide to Al Mazri had been killed during the clash. But an Iraqi Army officer said Friday the aide is still alive...
nytimes.com/ ... 13:08:14
Documents captured from Iraqi insurgents indicate that some of the recent fatal attacks against American helicopters are a result of a carefully planned strategy to focus on downing coalition aircraft, one that American officials say has been carried out by mounting coordinated assaults with machine guns, rockets and surface-to-air missiles. The documents, said to have been drafted by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, show that the militants were preparing to "concentrate on the air force...." Officials say they are a fresh indication that the United States is facing an array of "adaptive" adversaries in Iraq, enemies who are likely to step up their attacks as American forces expand their efforts to secure Baghdad....
cbsnews.com/ ... 13:04:07
Terrorism charges brought Friday against the administrator of a loan investment program claimed that he secretly tried to send $152,000 to the Middle East to buy equipment such as night vision goggles for a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan... pleaded not guilty...
Violence
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 16:44:12
Police are questioning two hospital workers, a day after 390 pieces of bone from newly-born babies or foetuses were found buried near a hospital in India. Officers in the town of Ratlam, Madhya Pradesh, dug up a pit near a Christian missionary hospital after a tip-off. Ratlam's police chief said they were investigating the possibility of female infanticide or illegal abortions...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 16:43:34
NATO-led forces in southern Afghanistan shot to death an Afghan civilian mistaken for a suicide bomber because of twine and straps protruding from his jacket... was crossing a road Saturday about seven miles west of Kandahar and appeared to be approaching a NATO convoy... "He appeared to be chanting and refused to heed warnings to stop..."
foxnews.com/ ... 16:37:11
An explosion hit a McDonald's restaurant in the city center on Sunday, injuring at least six people... blew out windows at the restaurant and partially destroyed the ceiling... four... were hospitalized with various injuries, including concussions and cuts from flying glass... Officials did not say whether they believed the explosion was related to terrorism or a criminal act. McDonald's restaurants have been targets of both criminal gang disputes and terrorist attacks in Russia in the past...
theaustralian.news.com.au/ ... 13:21:58
TWO more teams of would-be suicide bombers from an organisation linked to al-Qa'ida were arrested in Pakistan yesterday, capping 48 hours of violence... a government surgeon in the Bajaur region who was trying to eradicate polio, was killed on Friday by a bomb under his car, which was planted by militants who believe the vaccination program is a conspiracy to stunt the population growth of Muslims...
ksl.com/ ... 13:02:38
The father of Trolley Square shooter Sulejmen Talovic apologizes over and over for the ordeal. Suljo Talovic says no one who knew his son saw this coming, and he believes someone pushed him to do it... doesn't know where his son got the guns or how he learned how to use them...
Healing Ourselves
today.reuters.com/ ... 21:21:27
Japanese researchers said on Sunday they had grown normal-looking teeth from single cells in lab dishes, and transplanted them into mice. They used primitive cells, not quite as early as stem cells, and injected them into a framework of collagen, the material that holds the body together. After growing them, they found their structures had matured into the components that make teeth, including dentin, enamel, dental pulp, blood vessels, and periodontal ligaments. They were "arranged appropriately when compared with a natural tooth..."
hosted.ap.org/ ... 17:11:11
Researchers are trying to find ways to regrow fingers - and someday, even limbs.... There's the guy who sliced off a fingertip but grew it back, after he treated the wound with an extract of pig bladder. And the scientists who grow extra arms on salamanders. And the laboratory mice with the eerie ability to heal themselves. This summer, scientists are planning to see whether the powdered pig extract can help injured soldiers regrow parts of their fingers. And a large federally funded project is trying to unlock the secrets of how some animals regrow body parts so well, with hopes of applying the the lessons to humans...
Geology
news.independent.co.uk/ ... 17:03:51
The mystery of why the Himalaya mountains and the Tibetan plateau are the highest in the world has at last been answered, with the discovery of a gigantic chunk of rock slowly sinking towards the centre of the Earth. When the massive slab - up to eight times the area of the UK and as thick as a dozen Everests on top of each other - dropped off, the lighter crust above it rebounded upwards like a cork released under water, geophysicists say. This "sudden uplift" would have raised the Himalayas by as much as 2km (1.24 miles) to their present height... "While attached, this immense piece of mantle under Tibet acted as an anchor, holding the land above in place.... Then, about 15 million years ago, the chain broke and the land rose..." By pushing the Himalayas to their current altitude, more than 8,000m above sea level, and raising the Tibetan plateau to 5,000m, the detachment of the block was responsible for both the monsoon rains that make south Asia so fertile and the Gobi desert in central Asia. Warm winds blowing from the Pacific Ocean cool as they rise over the mountains, releasing the moisture they contain as torrential rains, leaving almost no water to fall on the arid interior of the continent. Some scientists have even suggested that the rise of the Himalayas could have triggered the Ice Age by increasing the total amount of global rain and removing vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the air...
Extraterrestrial
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 16:46:31
Astronauts heading to the Moon should learn the art of cross-country skiing
, a scientist who flew on the last lunar Apollo mission claims. Harrison Schmitt, part of the 1972 Apollo 17 crew, said it would allow them to explore faster and more easily...
Antiquity - still with us
hosted.ap.org/ ... 16:45:48
An Israeli archaeologist said the site of an archaeological dig outside a disputed holy compound in Jerusalem might contain a Muslim prayer room... Muslim leaders and critics of the dig said the announcement of the find, three years after it was discovered, confirmed their fears that Israel is intent on hiding Muslim attachment to the site. Israeli officials denied that...
World Zookeeping
telegraph.co.uk/ ... 17:05:07
A duck farm has been looking after a four-legged duckling, christened Stumpy... A rare genetic mutation has left the bird, now eight days old, with two legs behind the two he runs about on. A four-legged duckling would not survive in the wild.... "He's eating and surviving so far and he is running about with those extra legs acting like stabilisers...."
today.reuters.com/ ... 16:47:27
Genetic tests of North American birds show what may be 15 new species including ravens and owls -- look alikes that do not interbreed and have wrongly had the same name for centuries... If the findings from a study of birds' DNA genetic "barcodes" in the United States and Canada hold true around the world, there might be more than 1,000 new species of birds on top of 10,000 identified so far... A parallel study of South American bats in Guyana also showed six new species among 87 surveyed, hinting that human studies of the defining characteristics of species may have been too superficial to tell almost identical types apart...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 16:45:17
PORTLAND, Ore... Tusko the elephant. It took veterinarians and a dentist nearly five hours Saturday to remove what was left of an elephant's infected tusk at the Oregon Zoo, and it took a chain saw, hand saws and a drill that can punch through concrete to do the job... At least 20 people worked from midmorning to early afternoon to remove the rock-hard ivory, which was extracted in foot-long, bloody slabs. A ring the size of a roll of duct tape remains; veterinarians plan to go after it in about six weeks...
Staying Healthy
washingtonpost.com/ ... 16:38:07
A nice cup of the right kind of cocoa could hold the promise of promoting brain function as people age... flavanols, an antioxidant found in cocoa beans that can increase blood flow to the brain...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 13:30:48
Army Sgt.
John D. Rode
, 24, of Pineville, N.C.
Army Sgt.
Carl L. Seigart
, 32, San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Army Spc.
Ronnie G. Madore Jr.
, 34, of San Diego.
died Feb. 14 in Baqubah, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near their vehicle. They were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
US Military
chron.com/ ... 13:21:15
A U.S. helicopter suffered a "sudden, unexplained loss of power" and crashed Sunday in southeastern Afghanistan, killing eight American troops, the military said. Fourteen people on board survived. A NATO spokesman denied the helicopter had been shot down, saying the pilot had radioed ahead to report engine problems...
Transport Future
breitbart.com/ ... 13:12:10
Scientists are developing the next generation of robot-driven cars and predict they could be shuttling humans around by the year 2030.... The first wave of intelligent robot cars, capable of understanding and reacting to the world around them, will be tested this November in a competition run by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Scientists are developing vehicles which will not only be driven by robots independently, but will be able to operate in a simulated city environment.... [One] entrant... is a converted 2006 Volkswagen Passat whose steering, throttle and brakes all have been modified by engineers to be completely computer-controllable. An array of lasers fitted on the car bumpers, radar and global positioning systems feed data into the on-board computer to determine its location and position...
[When the real computer-guided vehicles arrive, this will all seem so laughable... o, wait... it already is... supersophisticated robots driving our primitive vehicles...!]
Extraterrestrial Threat
alertnet.org/ ... 13:26:41
An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday. Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036...
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 13:04:36
Solar flare activity is expected to build for the next three years to a crescendo that some scientists say could be cataclysmic, causing a telecommunication blackout that would down mobile phones and navigational systems...
Feeding Ourselves
insidebayarea.com/ ... 13:01:55
As health officials confirmed two California cases of salmonella illnesses linked to contaminated peanut butter Friday, recalled jars could still be found on some Bay Area store shelves... The outbreak has sickened 290 people in 39 states since August. At least 46 patients have been hospitalized. No deaths have been reported... Four days after the recall began... a spot check of area stores showed some continued to stock the peanut butter.... At Wal-Mart on Hegenberger Road in Oakland, 11 jars of Wal-Mart's house peanut butter brand, Great Value, were for sale. All had the recalled product code stamped in the lids. When a checkout cashier scanned the jar, the product came up as "not available." The cashier asked the customer, who did not identify herself as a reporter, to fetch another jar from the shelf. When the second recalled jar also came up as "not available" on the scanner, the cashier manually typed the price...
Digital Business
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:22:04
It's not often you can compare Internet addresses with clothing, but a growing practice comes close, contributing to a global shortage in good names. Entrepreneurs have been taking advantage of a five-day grace period to sample millions of domain names, keeping the relative few that might generate advertising revenues and dropping the rest before paying. It's akin to buying new clothes on a charge card only to return them for a full refund after wearing them to a big party...
Human Right
dailymail.co.uk/ ... 17:09:13
A landlady who swore at two lesbian police officers fondling in her public house - The Old Cock
[oh, the irony!]
- has been cleared of a public order offence.... Uncomfortable onlookers saw the pair passionately kissing each other during a night out in the traditional pub.... [The women]claimed to be merely holding hands.... kissing for more than five seconds, three or four times. Mrs Hackett admitted swearing at them when she asked them to stop, but denied banging her fists on the table or "using words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress...." "I have nothing against gay people - some of my friends are gay - but I can't have my customers being made to feel uncomfortable by public displays of passion whether it be from gay or hetrosexual couples..."
Big Whoops Cascade
telegraph.co.uk/ ... 17:06:36
Swiss prosecutors are investigating a green energy project after it was revealed that it caused earthquakes. The inquiry was launched after experts confirmed that the Deep Heat Mining project to exploit geothermal energy near the north-west border city of Basel had caused tremors measuring 3.3 on the Richter scale. The project involved injecting large quantities of pressurised water into three-mile-deep boreholes, where underground temperatures reach 200C. The super-heated water is circulated back to the surface where it is used to produce steam and drive a turbine to generate electricity...
[big BIG whoops cascade!!]
Big Nanny
iht.com/ ... 17:10:23
CHICAGO: A hot dog restaurateur who advertised that he was selling foie gras despite the city's ban on its sale has become the first to be cited. A city health department inspector turned up just before Hot Doug's opened Friday, slapped owner Doug Sohn with a citation and confiscated the duck- or goose-liver delicacy. Sohn faces a fine of from $250 to $500 (190 to 380) when he appears at a March 29 hearing. "I was poking the grizzly bear, and it snapped my head off," Sohn told the Chicago Tribune...
wcbstv.com/ ... 17:01:43
TRENTON, N.J.... When Sen. Ellen Karcher proposed a ban on trans fats at restaurants in the Garden State last fall, she received so many threatening phone calls that state police closed her office and escorted her staff out the door.... "It was so out of proportion," she said.
"We're talking about replacing cooking oil to try to make New Jersey healthier and save some money" on long-term health costs....
Legislating food has become an issue du jour, as elected leaders around the country try to offer solutions to the nation's obesity crisis. New York City and Philadelphia have passed measures banning the controversial cooking oil.... A wide range of food and hotel chains, even cruise lines and airlines have announced their own voluntary trans fat bans. At least 16 states and some cities, including Los Angeles, have proposed bills to restrict or ban trans fat....
World Without Borders
canada.com/ ... 16:57:52
OTTAWA -- A sweeping accord for the economic integration of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico has unleashed a firestorm of debate south of the border. Everyone from national congressmen and state legislators to bloggers and YouTubers are raising the alarm about the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a plan to harmonize the countries' economic and security practices. Criticism ranges from measured calls for stronger congressional oversight to hysterical charges that the "treasonous" deal will flood the U.S. with illegal aliens and terrorists... Canada will be in the eye of the storm next Friday as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff arrive in Ottawa to meet their Canadian and Mexican counterparts to discuss the accord, in the lead-up to a summit of the heads of state in Alberta this June. The wide-ranging accord lays the tracks for the harmonization of everything from immigration screening and terrorist watch lists to drug-safety and consumer-protection regulations...
Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!
theage.com.au/ ... 16:42:51
ONE in three young people find cannabis use unacceptable, according to research suggesting the drug is now seen as addictive and linked to health and social problems. A new survey by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre found marijuana use has become socially unfashionable, with three-quarters of the 1500 adults surveyed believing it is dangerous or very dangerous. Nearly half believed cannabis can cause schizophrenia, depression and anxiety disorder to a moderate or large degree. Almost half of people aged under 30 reported having friends who use cannabis...
[Disinformation, propaganda, and spin still works...!]
langleytimes.com/ ... 13:28:54
Langley RCMP cut the heart out of a large, sophisticated marijuana grow operation on Valentines day, seizing 3,000 plants and arresting two Langley men. Acting on a tip, drug officers searched an outbuilding in the 3100 block of 216 Street that appeared to have been modified to conceal the operation. The building was equipped with security cameras, an alarm system, and all interior and exterior doors were of reinforced steel and locked with high-security padlocks... majority of power came from an industrial-sized generator concealed within the building. The amount of money invested in the operation led police to believe that it is linked to organized crime...
playfuls.com/ ... 13:28:02
State troopers in Colorado say they found 569 pounds of marijuana in the back of a pickup truck when they pulled the driver over for a traffic violation... [prohibition-inflated black market price on this simple weed] street value of $1,000 a pound...
boston.com/ ... 13:27:14
HARTFORD, Conn. --A former flight-school operator will spend 18 months in prison for flying 100 pounds of marijuana into Brainard Airport last spring in his private plane...
US Congress
sptimes.com/ ... 13:20:23
The Senate gridlocked on the Iraq war in a sharply worded showdown Saturday as Republicans foiled a Democratic bid to repudiate President Bush's deployment of 21,500 additional combat troops. The 56-34 vote fell four short of the 60 needed to advance a nonbinding measure identical to one the House passed Friday...
People Die
today.reuters.com/ ... 13:09:22
Police called to a Long Island man's house discovered the mummified remains of the [70yo] resident, dead for more than a year, sitting in front of a blaring television set... body was discovered on Thursday when they were called to the house over a burst water pipe...
Digital Privacy
nytimes.com/ ... 13:07:02
On the second floor of a state office building here, upstairs from a food court, three facial-recognition specialists are revolutionizing American law enforcement. They work for the Massachusetts motor vehicles department. Last year they tried an experiment, for sport. Using computerized biometric technology, they ran a mug shot from the Web site of "Americas Most Wanted," the Fox Network television show, against the states database of nine million digital drivers license photographs. The computer found a match. A man who looked very much like Robert Howell, the fugitive in the mug shot, had a Massachusetts drivers license under another name. Mr. Howell was wanted in Massachusetts on rape charges. The analysts passed that tip along to the police, who tracked him down to New York City, where he was receiving welfare benefits under the alias on the drivers license. Mr. Howell was arrested in October. At least six other states have or are working on similar enormous databases of drivers license photographs. Coupled with increasingly accurate facial-recognition technology, the databases may become a radical innovation in law enforcement.... Critics say the databases may therefore also represent a profound threat to privacy. "What is the D.M.V.?" asked Lee Tien, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a privacy advocate. "Does it license motor vehicles and drivers? Or is it really an identification arm of law enforcement?" Anne L. Collins, the Massachusetts registrar of motor vehicles, said that people seeking a drivers license at least implicitly consent to allowing their images to be used for other purposes...
Supernatural Threats
israelnationalnews.com/ ... 12:59:46
Israel... Police Chief Moshe Karadi has raised the alert level around the country to Level III, the second-highest. Jerusalem is of special concern, because of the Moslem rioting violence and threats regarding the construction of a ramp to the Temple Mount from the Western Wall plaza.... The ramp was heavily damaged during a snowstorm three years ago, and is being replaced. Before the construction can take place, however, Israeli law requires that preparatory archaeological excavations take place to determine if important findings lie below. Arab leaders have raised an uproar over the works, and have called for another intifada to "save the Al-Aqsa Mosque [on the Temple Mount]." This, despite the fact that the works are underway well outside the Temple Mount.... Last Friday saw what some termed the worst rioting in Jerusalem in many years. Police were forced to use tear gas and stun grenades to disperse thousands of rioting Muslims, while outside the compound, near Lion's Gate, hundreds of Arab teenagers hurled stones, iron bars, vegetables, and at least one firebomb at police.... "The Arabs actually want the Mughrabi Gate passway to collapse," Knesset Member Aryeh Eldad said this week, "so that they will be able to close the only gate that is under Jewish control. That will end the era of Jewish visitation rights to the Temple Mount. They have been waiting for this for a long time, and that's why they don't want us to refurbish it..."
Supernatural
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 13:13:37
some people believe they're seeing an image of the Son of God on a silver maple tree in upstate New York... first noticed by... a 54-year-old retiree who comes to North Clinton Ave. daily for coffee with friends... "I've looked at that tree thousands of times in the past couple years, but never noticed it till now..."
mysanantonio.com/ ... 12:56:29
CRYSTAL CITY [Tx]... The pair was the latest to make the trip to Avenue D here Thursday afternoon to examine a pruned backyard tree that many believe resembles a crucified Jesus... stood under the tree for several minutes, studying both the tree and the handful of pictures and notes that have been left behind the past few days after the image of Jesus was first spotted in the gnarled limbs by Betty Jo Hernandez. Hernandez, 31, took a photo of the tree and shared it with co-workers at an elementary school where she works. Many agreed they could see the image of Jesus on the cross, and from there, it spread across town and beyond, fueled over the past two days by news media reports. Hundreds have since visited the site, leaving behind mementos and flowers, mostly roses. A row of candles sits on the ground. But not everyone can see it...
Disinformation Propaganda & Spin
newsbusters.org/ ... 13:05:28
NBC military analyst Ken Allard, a former army colonel, has resigned from the network, citing a general drift to the left at MSM outlet, especially following NBC's inaction over scurrilous remarks made by one of its other analysts, a leftist named Bill Arkin, that implied the military was full of "mercenaries" raking in "obscene amenities." (This was the same Bill Arkin who has hated the military for years and released a book called "Code Names" in which he exposed classified military codenames to the world. Of course, the same media that has clamored about "treason" and "scandal" in the Valerie Wilson nonsense has no such compunction when it comes to this type of exposure of military secrets.)...
blogs.abcnews.com/ ... 12:55:02
An al Qaeda-produced video claiming to show how U.S. and Afghan forces were driven out of a heavily defended base in the last few weeks appears to be a phony. U.S. and NATO military officials have studied the tape but say they have no record of any such attack in the last month, and an analysis of the tape by ABC News raises many questions of whether the base was even occupied when it was supposedly attacked...
SAT 2007-FEB-17
Hurricanes Aftermath
cbs4.com/ ... 14:18:40
An elderly woman who had been living without power in her home due to hurricane damage was finally seeing the light Friday night, when power to her home was restored. What makes her story amazing is that the hurricane which put her in the dark was Andrew, almost 15 years ago, and she's been living without power to her house since August 24, 1992. No heat when the winter chill settled over South Florida. No air conditioning when the mercury climbed into the 90's and the humidity clung to 100% . Not one hot shower at home in nearly 15 years. Every morning started with an icy blast... Like many people after that horrific storm, she had a problem with an unscrupulous contractor, and when the money from the insurance settlement ran out, the contractor did too, leaving her home half-repaired and not up to code, which meant it would not have the electricity connected. She didn't have the money to complete the work, and she didn't have anyplace else to go... So she lived with it. She celebrated the new millennium with one tiny lamp and a single burner... Her plan is to let the water get hot, really hot, and then take her first bubble bath, in her own bathtub, in a decade and a half...
WW1 - still with us
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:10:18
A British soldier's postcard to his sweetheart has finally arrived - 92 years after he sent it from the trenches of World War I. Pvt. Walter Butler wrote to Amy Hicks in 1915 telling her he was alive and well - but the army issued postcard never made it to her home in Wiltshire, 60 miles west of London. Butler survived the war, and the couple went on to marry... A local postman called the home of the couple's daughter, Joyce Hulbert, to announce the discovery. Hulbert, 86, a grandmother of three, said her late parents rarely discussed the war, and that the relic of the past had little meaning for her. She wondered what the fuss was all about...
Animals can be Dangerous
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:09:20
VIRGINIA, Minn... A furry, uninvited guest had manly men at an Iron Range tire shop shrieking and hopping on desks. "It was pretty humorous..." "It was the size of a cat..." turned out to be a muskrat...
Nicotine is a Drag
today.reuters.com/ ... 14:06:31
Germany may outlaw smoking in cars because it is a health hazard and a safety risk...
[Big Nanny strikes again]
Modern Medicine can be Dangerous
today.reuters.com/ ... 14:03:38
A drug used to treat schizophrenia was mailed to some consumers who had ordered other medications via the Internet, and several users had to seek emergency treatment because they could not breathe... instead of receiving the products they ordered, some consumers were sent the prescription drug haloperidol. Several patients had to seek emergency care after taking the pills...
Rebuilding
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:46:35
Nato forces are preparing for a new wave of fighting in Afghanistan. But away from the battlegrounds, local and international schemes are attempting to break the country's cycle of conflict and poverty...
Iraq
hosted.ap.org/ ... 13:45:22
First, American soldiers scoured the home for weapons as four veiled Iraqi women cowered on a dusty rug. Then a platoon sergeant politely wiped his muddy boots, came in and talked to the family about the violence suffocating their city.... he was careful to follow up with expressions of respect and concern. "Tell them, 'Thank you,' for their hospitality," James asked his translator.
U.S. troops are working hard to strike a tricky balance between force and friendship in the opening days of a push to bring order to Iraq's capital...
Industrial Incident
chron.com/ ... 13:29:17
SUNRAY Emergency workers say an explosion rocked a West Texas refinery Friday, injuring nearly 20 people and sparking a fire that sent a huge black cloud billowing into the sky that was visible from 60 miles away. No fatalities were reported and all employees at the Valero McKee Refinery were accounted for...
Family Tragedy
upi.com/ ... 13:26:19
WAYNESBURG, Pa., Feb. 17... Six children and a 26-year-old woman were killed early Saturday morning during a house fire in Pennsylvania's Franklin Township community.... four young girls... ages 4, 7, 9 and 10... and two boys... ages 2 and 3... another man was hospitalized with injuries.... Several adults reportedly escaped the house during the fire and one was being treated at a hospital.... no official cause... multiple heating sources had been present...
Fun can be Dangerous
timesonline.co.uk/ ... 13:24:24
A champion [35yo female] paraglider... caught in a storm that sucked her to an altitude higher than Mount Everest.... believed to have flown unconscious for almost one hour through a violent thunderstorm that catapulted her to the cruise altitude of a jumbo jet and left her body heavily bruised and covered in ice. Her paraglider came through the storm intact and she landed 60km (37 miles) from her launch site..... severe frostbite injuries to her face but... otherwise unharmed.... a Chinese paraglider who flew into the same storm, was found dead on Thursday, 75km from his launch site. He is believed to have suffocated or frozen to death after being sucked up into the centre of the storm....
Violence
news.xinhuanet.com/ ... 13:21:54
Explosive devices and arsenals used in a terrorist attack in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan on Wednesday came from the United States, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Saturday.... an "informed source..." pointed out that Jundallah, a shadowy Sunni militant group, had several plots for assassinating Sunni and tribal leaders to sow discord and foment conflicts between the Shiite and Sunni citizens in Sistan-Baluchestan province...
Mass Murdering Monsters
alertnet.org/ ... 13:20:56
A suicide bomber in Pakistan killed 15 people, including a judge, in a courtroom in the city of Quetta on Saturday... Intelligence officials have attributed other attacks to sectarian Sunni militants linked to al Qaeda and groups operating from tribal areas... Police made a string of arrests this week, including two suicide bomb teams caught in southern Pakistan. The bomb in Quetta exploded while a lower court was in session. A senior judge and six lawyers were among those killed... At least 25 people were injured... six of them were in a critical condition...
Staying Healthy
today.reuters.com/ ... 14:05:12
Morbidly obese men tend to have more breathing difficulties than morbidly obese women, partly because they have much larger waistlines... the so-called "waist-to-hip ratio..." People with a high ratio have an "apple-shaped body," whereas people with a low ratio have a "pear-shaped body..." men tend to have more of an apple shape and women more of a pear shape..." Men also tended to have poorer "pulmonary gas exchange" compared with women. Because of the larger waistlines in men, "the oxygenation of their blood is lower and the impairment of oxygen transfer is higher..."
Lasting Contributions
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:02:32
Hit the mute button for a moment of silence: The co-inventor of the TV remote,
Robert Adler
, has died. Adler, who won an Emmy Award along with fellow engineer Eugene Polley for the device that made the couch potato possible, died Thursday of heart failure at a Boise nursing home at 93... Adler was a prolific inventor, earning more than 180 U.S. patents. He was best known for his 1956 Zenith Space Command remote control, which helped make TV a truly sedentary pastime... "People ask me all the time - 'Don't you feel guilty for it?' And I say that's ridiculous," he said. "It seems reasonable and rational to control the TV from where you normally sit and watch television..." also was considered a pioneer in SAW technology, or surface acoustic waves, in color television sets and touch screens. The technology has also been used in cellular telephones... [Wife said] "He was a man who would dream in the night and wake up and say, 'I just solved a problem.' He was always thinking science..."
Digital Convergence
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:00:01
the way we track time is changing with the times. Market researchers say more people are carrying electronic devices that also tell time, whether a phone, an iPod or a BlackBerry. They're also finding that young people, in particular, are more interested in spending their money on other kinds of accessories, such as shoes and hand bags. In a survey last fall, investment bank Piper Jaffray & Co. found that nearly two-thirds of teens never wear a watch - and only about one in 10 wears one every day...
Feeding Ourselves
today.reuters.com/ ... 14:06:04
All Peter Pan peanut butter bought since May 2006 should be discarded, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Friday in a statement broadening its warning about salmonella-contaminated peanut butter... The CDC has identified the strain of bacteria as Salmonella Tennessee... They can cause nausea, diarrhea and other ill effects, but usually the sickness clears up on its own in less than a week...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:02:57
Some 18,000 children die every day because of hunger and malnutrition and 850 million people go to bed every night with empty stomachs... the head of the U.N. food agency said...
today.reuters.com/ ... 13:57:54
A moth with a big appetite that once chomped its way through huge swaths of cacti in Australia has landed in Mexico, where the spiky plant is a favorite food stuff and major agricultural product. Officials said on Friday a moth trapped close to the beach resort of Cancun this week could be the same species that destroyed some 50 million acres of cacti in Australia, opening the possibility the moth will spread to Mexico's cactus farming regions. The Cactoblastis cactorum moth landed on Mexico's Caribbean island Isla Mujeres last year, sparking a major government pest control operation... The edible cactus, or nopal, industry in Mexico is worth about $150 million each year. About 10,000 farmers cultivate the plant...
Extraterrestrial Threat
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:56:32
A draft UN treaty to determine what would have to be done if a giant asteroid was on a collision course with Earth is to be drawn up this year. The document would set out global policies including who should be in charge of plans to deflect any object... The threat of an asteroid hitting the Earth is being taken more and more seriously as more and more NEOs are found... At the moment, Nasa tracks all objects greater than 700m (2,300ft) in diameter. The agency's new goal is to track all objects greater than 70m (230ft) in diameter... Nasa estimates that there are about 20,000 potentially threatening asteroids yet to be discovered... Ideas could include hitting the asteroid with a spacecraft or rocket to deflect its orbit. Other less destructive proposals include a "gravity tug" that would simply hover over the asteroid and use gravity as a "towline" to change its path. But any decision to deflect an NEO could come with its own set of conundrums for the UN, as changing its path may simply alter its final target...
History - still with us
hosted.ap.org/ ... 13:53:17
Researchers at Arizona State University and the University of Pittsburgh have mixed technology, art and science to re-create the real face of George Washington. Using anthropology, 3-D scanning and digital reconstruction, the 2 1/2-year project has culminated in new life-size figures of the nation's first president and some say the images are the most accurate yet of Washington at a younger age...
Raising Ourselves
hosted.ap.org/ ... 13:54:58
Adults thinking back rarely can remember anything before preshool, but those bright infant eyes staring back at mommy and daddy really are forming memories. It's just that babies also forget. In fact, babies' rate of forgetting is even faster than that of adults.... Researchers have long speculated that babies' brains were simply unable to form memories, but Bauer said new research indicates that is incorrect...
reuters.com/ ... 13:27:35
Babies whose mothers had diabetes during pregnancy may be less able to form early memories than children whose mothers had normal pregnancies... suggests that babies deprived of oxygen and iron before birth are not as able to develop early memories... The need for iron doubles during pregnancy because it is used to make blood cells for the fetus. In pregnant mothers with diabetes, fluctuating glucose levels can result in iron deficiency, which can reduce the blood's capacity to carry oxygen...
Just Random Chance
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:12:20
RALEIGH, N.C.... A [38yo] prison guard stepped forward briefly Friday to claim her $74.5 million Powerball jackpot before dashing off in a stretch SUV limousine... quit her job at a prison in neighboring Virginia and hired financial advisers.... decided to take her prize in a lump sum - about $36 million before taxes... matched all five numbers - 2, 8, 9, 12 and 19 - and the Powerball - 25. She said the numbers represented the ages of children in her family...
Fire
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:07:07
SHELTON, Conn... A volunteer firefighter who was the first to arrive at the scene of a Shelton house fire used snow from the lawn to put out most of the flames...
Digital Business
today.reuters.com/ ... 13:59:26
By the time Swedish band Peter Bjorn and John's "Writer's Block" saw U.S. release on February 6, lead single "Young Folks" was on track to outsell the group's previous album by itself. The song, a '60s-influenced slice of wistful pop, spins a tale of two hesitant lovers, a pair of "30-year-olds who have been burned by previous encounters with love," guitarist/vocalist Peter Moran says. With its bongo-like drumming and whistled melody, the playful tune has attracted the attention of TV music supervisors: "Grey's Anatomy" and "How I Met Your Mother" both have featured the cut. It also has become a YouTube hit, thanks to a retro-styled cartoon clip generating well more than 1 million views...
today.reuters.com/ ... 13:58:45
The media industry is clashing with YouTube over its proposal to offer anti-piracy tools only to companies that have distribution deals with the top online video-sharing service... The move contrasts with YouTube's biggest rival, News Corp.'s, popular Internet social network, MySpace, which said on Monday it would offer its own version of copyright protection services for free...
Big Whoops Cascade
hosted.ap.org/ ... 13:54:25
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.... A mile offshore from this city's high-rise condos and spring-break bars lie as many as 2 million old tires, strewn across the ocean floor - a white-walled, steel-belted monument to good intentions gone awry. The tires were unloaded there in 1972 to create an artificial reef that could attract a rich variety of marine life, and to free up space in clogged landfills. But decades later, the idea has proved a huge ecological blunder. Little sea life has formed on the tires. Some of the tires that were bundled together with nylon and steel have broken loose and are scouring the ocean floor across a swath the size of 31 football fields. Tires are washing up on beaches. Thousands have wedged up against a nearby natural reef, blocking coral growth and devastating marine life.... similar problems have been reported at tire reefs worldwide...
US Congress
today.reuters.com/ ... 13:52:55
The U.S. House of Representatives denounced President George W. Bush's Iraq troop buildup on Friday in a symbolic challenge to his unpopular war strategy... The
Democratic-led House voted 246-182
for a resolution that voices support for U.S. forces but opposes the Republican president's decision to send 21,500 more troops to bolster security in Baghdad and violent Anbar province... The resolution passed with support of all but two of the House's 233 Democrats and 17 of its 201 Republicans... Democrats now faced divisions in the debate over whether to restrict war funds. "The future of this debate is much more unifying for us and much more dividing for them," he said. Some Democrats fear restricting funds could be seen as failing to support U.S. troops... The Senate, which usually acts first in major foreign policy matters, has been deadlocked on procedural issues surrounding the Iraq debate...
New Year 4705
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:48:52
People across China are celebrating the arrival of the Lunar New Year... The year of the pig is supposed to bring good luck and prosperity. But this time it is a golden pig year, which happens once in six decades... Some soothsayers warn that the pig can bring turbulence, and warn of a rise in natural disasters and conflict in 2007. The Year of the Pig will also be celebrated with greater sensitivity in some Asia countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia with large Muslim populations, which view pigs as offensive and unclean...
Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!
news1130.com/ ... 13:31:55
MISSION.... RCMP in Mission raided 6 homes yesterday and put 6 marijuaha grow-ops out of business. At least 4 of the homes were unoccupied, some right next door to each other. In one house, the only occupants were a malnourished pit bull and a pot-bellied pig, along with 200 plants of "BC bud". A couple living in the first house were arrested and their 3 children were turned over to a relative...
azstarnet.com/ ... 13:30:53
A Mexican man was arrested at the Nogales port of entry Thursday after U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers found more than 2,700 pounds of marijuana hidden among pallets of produce on a truck he was driving... The driver, a 40-year-old man from Nogales, Sonora, was a participant in the Free and Secure Trade program, which makes it easier for low-risk international trade participants to enter the country... officers screening commercial trucks and imports noticed the driver acting nervous when asked routine questions and then conducted an intensive search of the truck and the produce inside... truck was screened with a mobile x-ray truck, which uncovered abnormalities in the trailer's contents...
Since Oct. 1, the beginning of the fiscal year, officers at the Nogales port of entry have seized 17,207 pounds of marijuana in 101 incidents...
Ummm....
news.monstersandcritics.com/ ... 13:28:37
Tongue firmly in cheek, a Canadian researcher said Virgos are more likely to vomit while pregnant, while Pisces have an increase[d] risk of heart failure... said data gleaned from Ontario hospitals reveal the 12 astrological signs can be associated with at least two disorders each. But, he said, his research was intended to prove a point, not about astrological signs, but about research. 'Replace astrological signs with another characteristic such as gender or age, and immediately your mind starts to form explanations for the observed associations,'...
FRI 2007-FEB-16
Hospitals can be Dangerous
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:52:28
HELENA, Mont... After being advised not to the leave a hospital, an Idaho woman [36yo] allegedly pepper sprayed her way out. Police were called.... fled the scene and ran toward Interstate 15. She caught the attention of a man driving a pickup and tried to spray him as well.... was taken into custody, and officers returned her to the hospital....
Meth is Murder
today.reuters.com/ ... 21:47:50
Research suggests a link between a disease of the heart muscle called cardiomyopathy and use of methamphetamine...
Alcohol Was Involved
news.independent.co.uk/ ... 21:40:56
A man who caught a four-foot shark with his bare hands off an Australian beach today said he only did it because he was drunk on vodka... "He was just thrashing around in the water ... starting to turn around and try to bite me and I thought 'well, it's amazing what vodka does'..." bit a hole in [his] jeans but all he suffered was a slight scratch...
Threats
today.reuters.com/ ... 21:38:18
The Taliban have deployed 10,000 fighters for a spring offensive of "bloody attacks" against foreign troops in Afghanistan, a rebel commander said on Friday...
Iraq
today.reuters.com/ ... 21:39:06
U.S. and Iraqi forces sweeping through Baghdad met little resistance on Friday in an offensive that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told President Bush had been a "brilliant success" so far...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:31:38
The number of Iraqi civilians killed in Baghdad's sectarian violence fell drastically overnight, an Iraqi military official said Friday, crediting the joint U.S.-Iraqi security operation that began in force just days ago.... only 10 bodies had been reported by the morgue in the capital, compared to an average of 40 to 50 per day.... Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, also reported a reduction in violence, attributing it to both the increased U.S. and Iraqi security presence and an apparent decision by the militias and insurgents to lay low. "They're watching us carefully. There's an air of suspense throughout the city. We believe, there's no question about it, that many of these extremists are laying low and watching to see what it is we do and how we do it. How long that will last, we don't know...."
Violence
news.scotsman.com/ ... 22:12:01
Clashes broke out between police and an armed group following a bomb explosion in south-east Iran on Friday... The device in the city of Zahedan caused no casualties...
cbsnews.com/ ... 13:07:33
...al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri was wounded and his aide, identified as Abu Abdullah al-Majemaai, was killed... Thursday in a clash with Iraqi forces north of Baghdad, the Interior Ministry spokesman said. The clash occurred near Balad, a major U.S. base about 50 miles north of the capital... declined to say how Iraqi forces knew...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:22:32
Army Pfc.
Branden C. Cummings
, 20, of Titusville, Fla., died Feb. 14 in Baqubah, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device exploded near his vehicle during combat operations. Cummings was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:22:05
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Korean War, have been identified and returned to his family for burial with full military honors.
Army Cpl.
Jimmie L. Dorser
of Springfield, Mo. He will be buried tomorrow in Lake Forest, Calif.... Dorser was a member of I Company, 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division (organized into the 31st Regimental Combat Team). The RCT was engaged against the Chinese People's Volunteer Forces along the Chosin Reservoir, North Korea from Nov. 27-Dec. 1, 1950. The unit was forced to retreat to the south and many men were reported missing in action under the intense enemy fire. In 2002, a joint U.S. and Democratic People's Republic of North Korea team, led by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, excavated a mass grave on the eastern side of the Chosin Reservoir. The remains of five individuals were recovered.... The additional remains cannot be attributed to specific individuals at this time and will undergo further analysis....
chron.com/ ... 22:13:25
A Texas couple sued ConAgra Foods Inc. today, saying their two children [5yo & 2yo] got sick after eating peanut butter linked to a salmonella outbreak... got painful gastroenteritis after eating the peanut butter... About 300 people in 39 states have fallen ill from salmonella since August. Federal health investigators said they suspect Peter Pan peanut butter and certain batches of Wal-Mart's Great Value house brand both manufactured by ConAgra... Customers nationwide were told to throw out jars with a product code on the lid beginning with "2111." Another lawsuit against ConAgra over the salmonella outbreak linked to its peanut butter was filed today in U.S. District Court in Kansas City...
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:06:57
Army Sgt. First Class
Allen Mosteiro
, 42, of Fort Worth, Texas, died Feb. 14 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when his unit came in contact with the enemy using small arms fire during combat operations Feb. 13 in Taji, Iraq. Mosteiro was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:06:30
Marine Lance Cpl.
Daniel T. Morris
, 19, of Crimora, Va., died Feb. 14 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. Morris was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:06:05
The Department of Defense announced today the classification of five Marines that died Feb. 7 in a helicopter crash to killed in action. The crash was determined to be a result of enemy action in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
Marine Capt.
Jennifer J. Harris
Marine 1st Lt.
Jared M. Landaker
Marine Sgt.
Travis D. Pfister
Marine Sgt.
James R. Tijerina
were assigned to Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 364, Marine Aircraft Group 39, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
Marine Cpl.
Thomas E. Saba
was assigned to Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 262, Marine Aircraft Group 36, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Okinawa, Japan.
Digital Future is Now
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:58:54
MIDDLEBURG, Pa.... The wintry blast was a perfect opportunity for Bill Lauver to put his robot plow through its paces. For three years, Lauver has often done snow clearing from the comfort of his living room, watching from the window as the converted golf cart with plow attachment plies the drive while he operates the remote control...
Animal Companions
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:54:18
BRANDON, Fla.... A palm-sized pet turtle and the golden retriever that gobbled it up survived the misadventure thanks to the quick actions of a 12-year-old girl... on the advice of a vet, her parents made Bella vomit. Out came Pepper, still alive despite a shattered shell and an estimated 10 minutes inside Bella's belly... veterinarian... patched up Pepper's shell and credited Shelby with saving Bella, too. "The turtle would definitely have caused an obstruction.... Without cutting it out directly, it eventually would have killed the dog..."
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:50:42
Pickles the cat is in a predicament a long way from her Arkansas home. The calico feline from Bismarck, Ark., stowed away in a moving van unloading furniture at a neighboring home... The truck's driver, who is highly allergic to cats, discovered her the next day in Fort Walton Beach...
Antiquity - still with us
today.reuters.com/ ... 21:46:14
Dutch archaeologists have discovered the tomb of the Pharaoh Akhenaten's seal bearer, decorated with paintings including scenes of monkeys picking and eating fruit.... belonged to the official named Ptahemwi and was discovered during a Dutch team's excavation in the Sakkara area, the burial ground for the city of Memphis....
Akhenaten, the 18th-dynasty pharaoh who ruled Egypt from 1379 to 1362 BC, abandoned most of the old gods and tried to imposed a monotheistic religion based on worship of the Aten, the disc of the sun. He built a new capital called Akhetaten at Tell el-Amarna, 250 km (160 miles) south of Cairo, and the find shows that high officials continued to build their tombs in Memphis near Cairo....
washingtonpost.com/ ... 21:45:09
Inhabitants of the New World had chili peppers and the makings of taco chips 6,100 years ago, according to new research that examined the bowl-scrapings of people sprinkled throughout Central America and the Amazon basin. Upcoming questions on the research agenda -- and this is not a joke -- include: Did they have salsa? When did they get beer?...
[And what about tequila?]
the findings... make the chili pepper the oldest spice in use in the Americas, and one of the oldest in the world...
US Military
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:20:35
The Department of Defense announced today the accelerated deployment of the 3rd Infantry Division headquarters, based in Fort Stewart, Ga. to Iraq. The headquarters was previously identified for deployment on Nov. 17, 2006. The unit was scheduled to begin its deployment in June 2007, but will now begin its deployment in March 2007. The headquarters will provide command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities in support of Baghdad security operations. This three-month acceleration affects approximately 1,000 service members....
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:04:50
National Guard: This week, the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps announced a decrease, while the Coast Guard number remained the same. The net collective result is
4,334 fewer reservists
mobilized than last week.... This brings the total National Guard and Reserve personnel, who have been mobilized, to
84,851
, including both units and individual augmentees....
mercurynews.com/ ... 21:41:52
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - Two weeks after returning from a yearlong deployment to a joyous midnight homecoming, Marines from Regimental Combat Team 5 gathered under the California sun Thursday to remember their 100 comrades killed in Iraq. "They did not die alone," said the regiment's commanding officer, Col. Larry Nicholson. "They were surrounded by their brothers." The dead included 40 lance corporals, 24 corporals, 18 sergeants, a handful of privates and four officers, as well as seven soldiers and two Navy corpsmen. The main cause of death was from improvised explosive devices, followed by sniper and small-arms fire... "Iraq is a better and safer place because of the services and sacrifices made by the regimental combat team," Nicholson said. "Future generations will marvel at the courage and sacrifice borne by Marines today." The regiment was based in Fallujah and patrolled much of Al Anbar province. Nicholson said the main focus was on training Iraqi security forces, as well as carrying out patrols. The death toll was not especially high for a Marine regiment, considering 11,000 troops served with it over the year, Nicholson said...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 21:36:21
A US Air Force sergeant who posed nude for Playboy magazine has been removed from active duty and demoted. The move reverts Michelle Manhart to air national guard status, a move which has prompted her resignation, she says... appeared in the Playboy's February edition in a range of poses, some in uniform and striking a military pose, others while naked...
World Water
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:06:21
Giant "blisters" containing water that rapidly expand and contract have been mapped beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. Fed by a complex network of rivers, the subglacial reservoirs force the overlying ice to rise and fall...
Healing Ourselves
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 21:46:45
A bionic eye implant that could help restore the sight of millions of blind people could be available to patients within two years. US researchers have been given the go-ahead to implant the prototype device in 50 to 75 patients. The Argus II system uses a spectacle-mounted camera to feed visual information to electrodes in the eye. Patients who tested less-advanced versions of the retinal implant were able to see light, shapes and movement...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:59:02
Researchers have discovered
a type of brain cell that continuously regenerates in humans.
A pool of "resting cells" migrate to create new nerve cells in the part of the brain which deals with smell. The system has been shown in mice and rats but it was believed it did not exist in the human brain.... opened up the potential for research into repairing brains in conditions such as Alzheimer's disease...
Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!
cbs4denver.com/ ... 22:18:24
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. A 36-year-old motorist is in jail Friday after a routine traffic stop near Grand Junction led investigators to more than
500 pounds of marijuana
.
[Note article below where small amounts of marijuana is essentially LEGAL! What hypocrazy! Note also, these are just the ones they CATCH!]
douglasdispatch.com/ ... 22:16:57
DOUGLAS, Ariz - U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers at the Douglas Port of Entry stopped two attempts at smuggling large quantities of marijuana into the country on Monday, seizing
269 pounds
of the drug
[It's a plant not a drug]
and arresting two people from Mexico.... Since the beginning of the new fiscal year, which began on October 1st, CBP officers at the Douglas port of entry have stopped 78 attempts to smuggle marijuana into the United States, seizing almost 8,200 pounds of the illicit drug....
[The headline:]
Customs seize nearly $900,000 in marijuana...
[Absurd prices inflated by prohibition]
gaywired.com/ ... 22:14:29
A University of California at San Francisco study appearing in this week's issue of the journal Neurology puts to rest any doubts about the need to change the laws to allow for legal access to marijuana for the seriously ill, officials of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) in Washington, D.C. said Monday. The trial involved HIV/AIDS patients suffering from peripheral neuropathy, a painful condition stemming from nerve damage done either by HIV itself or by the drugs used to treat it. There are no FDA-approved treatments for the condition, which eventually afflicts about one-third of those who are infected with HIV. Neuropathic pain -- which is also common in other illnesses, including multiple sclerosis -- is notoriously resistant to conventional pain drugs, including highly addictive opiates...
stopthedrugwar.org/ ... 22:01:23
An associate municipal court judge in the Colorado town of Lafayette has resigned his position in protest of the city's preliminary harsh new penalties for marijuana possession. Judge Leonard Frieling, who is also a Boulder criminal defense attorney, had served in the position for the past eight years... would raise the fine for possession of small amounts of marijuana from $100 to $1,000 and a year in jail. Under Colorado state law, possession of under an ounce of marijuana has been decriminalized and those caught with pot face only a $100 fine...
BREAKING: We've just been informed that the town council has withdrawn the ordinance -- victory, at least for now, they will revisit the issue at a meeting April 3rd...
Ummm....
today.reuters.com/ ... 21:59:37
Researchers who wanted to find out why it is not only taboo to kiss your sister, but also disgusting, said on Wednesday they have discovered why in a discovery that challenges some basic tenets of Freudian theory. The instinct evolved naturally and cannot be taught, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides of the University of California Santa Barbara wrote in their report in the journal Nature. Spending time in the same household and watching your mother care for your brother or sister is all it takes...
People are Born
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:57:44
CONNELLSVILLE, Pa.... A woman gave birth to a boy outside a western Pennsylvania hospital - a delivery that happened so quickly that the newborn wound up in his mother's sweatpants... had just gotten out of the car at Highlands Hospital in Connellsville and was still in the parking lot when her 5-pound, 15-ounce son... arrived Wednesday...
Just Random Chance
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:56:37
An airline pilot from Maplewood [Minn.]
won a $25,000 lottery jackpot - two days in a row....
matched the winning numbers 11-14-23-26-31 to win Saturday's Northstar Cash drawing with odds of about 170,000 to 1.... On Sunday [he] stuck with 11 and switched to 3-7-19-28 -- and won again. Lottery officials said such a sequence was so farfetched that the
odds against it were "virtually incalculable.... "
But is it Art?
today.reuters.com/ ... 21:49:24
A media exhibit featuring a campaign for a fake drug to treat a fictitious illness is causing a stir because some people think the illness is real. Australian artist Justine Cooper created the marketing campaign for a non-existent drug called Havidol for Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD), which she also invented. But the multi-media exhibit at the Daneyal Mahmood Gallery in New York, which includes a Web site, mock television and print advertisements and billboards is so convincing people think it is authentic. "People have walked into the gallery and thought it was real," Mahmood said in an interview... "The thing that amazes me is that it has been folded into real Web sites for panic and anxiety disorder. It's been folded into a Web site for depression. It's been folded into hundreds of art blogs..."
Monarchy is Dead
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 21:37:48
Nepal's King Gyanendra has come under attack from a stone-throwing crowd as he travelled in a motorcade. The monarch, who was on his way to a pilgrimage site in Kathmandu to attend a Hindu festival, escaped unhurt...
Defending Ourselves
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:34:29
A fast-thinking pilot with passengers in cahoots fooled a hijacker by braking hard upon landing, then accelerating to knock the man down. When he fell, flight attendants threw boiling water in his face, and about 10 people pounced on him... Along the way, speaking to the hijacker, the pilot realized the man did not speak French. So he used the plane's public address system to warn the passengers in French of the ploy he was going to try... also warned women and children to move to the back of the plane in preparation for the subterfuge... Around 20 people were slightly injured when the plane braked suddenly... the man's motives were not terrorism; he wanted the plane to fly to France so he could request political asylum...
edition.cnn.com/ ... 13:10:37
LAS PALMAS, Spain... A man armed with two pistols hijacked an Air Mauritania flight Thursday but was subdued by two passengers... plane landed safely in the Canary Islands and no one was hurt.... had been trying to commandeer the Boeing 737 to Paris.... Reports differed on the hijacker's nationality.... Moroccan.... Mauritanian.... "...passengers fought back and they took the hijacker and now everything is OK...."
Digital Culture
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 21:47:24
Deaf people could soon be using video mobiles to chat with their friends using sign language. Video compression tools made by US researchers make it possible to send live pictures of people signing across low bandwidth mobile networks. The system cuts down on the bandwidth needed by only sending data about which parts of each frame have changed... increases detail around face and fingers...
tgdaily.com/ ... 13:01:22
the first study that provides "credible estimates" of the energy consumed by national and global data centers annually. According to AMD, data centers and their infrastructure swallowed the entire power production of... five 1000 MW power plants in 2005... total data center electricity consumption in the U.S., including servers, cooling and auxiliary equipment, was approximately 45 billion kWh, resulting in total utility bills of about $2.7 billion - or 1.2% of all U.S. electricity sales...
Digital Threat
news.com.com/ ... 12:59:57
If you haven't changed the default password on your home router, let this recent threat serve as a reminder. Attackers could change the configuration of home routers using JavaScript code, security researchers at Indiana University and Symantec have discovered... if the owner uses a connected PC to view a Web page with the JavaScript code. This DNS change lets the attacker divert all the Net traffic going through the router. For example, if the victim types in "www.mybank.com," the request could be sent to a similar-looking fake page created to steal sensitive data...
THU 2007-FEB-15
Theft
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:46:40
Thieves have stolen a copy of the bird statue at the heart of "The Maltese Falcon" from the San Francisco restaurant used as a setting for the 1941 film classic starring Humphrey Bogart as the rough-and-tumble private detective. The small, black figure was swiped over the weekend along with 20 vintage books, including copies of the 1930 Dashiell Hammett novel on which the film is based...
Animals can be Dangerous
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:37:03
Sharks killed four people and bit 58 others around the world in 2006, a comparatively dull year for dangerous encounters between the two species...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:35:28
NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla.... A man retrieving balls from a golf course lake was attacked by a 7-foot alligator Wednesday morning, suffering minor injuries to his foot... gouged at the creature's eyes and tried to pry its jaws apart while trying to free himself... "Any time you go into the water in Florida you have to make sure you're extra careful, because alligators are definitely out there.... He was lucky to get away with the minor injuries he received..."
Nature vs Transport
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:30:37
An American Airlines flight made an unscheduled landing in Honolulu after pilots heard something skittering about in the wire-laden space over the cockpit. The airline blamed the emergency landing of the Tokyo-Dallas flight with 202 passengers on a stowaway squirrel...
cbs2chicago.com/ ... 10:30:05
A total of 8.8 inches fell at O'Hare International Airport on Tuesday, which set a record for the date of Feb. 13. The 9.7 inches that fell at Midway International Airport was the record for a one-day snowfall there... Even after streets are plowed, motorists will have to put in some work to dig out their cars. A Phase Three Snow Removal was also in place for the city, bringing 747 workers and 70 pieces of equipment from the city departments of Transportation and Water Management, as well as non-snow related bureaus of Streets and Sanitation...
Under Tyranny
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:18:35
Nigeria's House of Representatives has held a public hearing on a new bill seeking to outlaw gay relations. The bill, which could become law before April's elections, proposes
a five-year sentence for anyone convicted of being openly gay or practising gay sex...
Critics say the bill is anti-freedom, but religious leaders say it will help "protect society's morals and values". Homosexuality is taboo across most of Africa, although South Africa recently legalised gay marriages...
Threats
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:17:31
President George W. Bush on Wednesday said he was convinced a unit of Iran's military gave explosive devices to Iraqi militants... but admitted "I don't think we know" if Iran's leaders were behind the effort...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:16:36
The risk of terror attacks in Europe is high and is increasing, France's leading anti-terrorism judge said, warning that a recent alliance between al-Qaida and a North African terrorist group poses a grave threat. The Salafist Group for Call and Combat, known by its French initials GSPC, staged seven nearly simultaneous attacks in Algeria on Tuesday, targeting police in several towns east of Algiers, killing six and injuring around 30, according to officials, police and hospital staff. Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, the new name for the GSPC, claimed responsibility for the strikes...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:51:40
Army Pfc.
Nickolas A. Tanton
, 24, of San Antonio, died Feb. 13 in Kirkuk, Iraq, from non-combat related injuries. He was assigned to the 3rd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. The incident is under investigation.
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:51:17
Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class
Laquita Pate James
, 33, of Orange Park, Fla., died Feb. 12 of apparent natural causes while deployed aboard the multipurpose amphibious assault ship the USS Bataan. The cause of death is under investigation. James was a Navy master-at-arms supporting operations off the Horn of Africa aboard the USS Bataan.
US Military
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:49:47
The Department of Defense announced today the 173rd Airborne Brigade, located in Vicenza, Italy, will deploy to Afghanistan beginning in spring 2007. The brigade, which was previously scheduled to deploy for Operation Iraqi Freedom, will instead deploy to Afghanistan.... This deployment affects approximately 3,200 personnel, and sustains the United States' current commitment to Afghanistan by providing a replacement for the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, which was recently extended for up to 120 days. Two U.S. brigade combat teams in Afghanistan provide military capability and combat power required for NATO to continue its initiatives in promoting stability and security in the winter and spring, while denying safe haven for the Taliban....
Feeding Ourselves
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:44:50
Consumers should throw away certain jars of Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter after the spread was linked to a salmonella outbreak that has sickened almost 300 people around the country... Consumers should throw away certain jars of Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter after the spread was linked to a salmonella outbreak that has sickened almost 300 people around the country...
Science Marches Onnnnnn
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:43:18
Quantum computing is such an elusive goal that even the company claiming to have the "world's first commercial quantum computer" acknowledged it isn't entirely sure the machine is performing true quantum calculations...
Raising Ourselves
medpagetoday.com/ ... 10:41:21
breastfed infants had been significantly more likely to climb above their social station as adults than those who had been bottle-fed...
Healing Ourselves
emedicine.com/ ... 10:32:44
Hiccups... Prayer: The most novel cure for one patient was to pray to the Catholic patron saint of lost causes, St. Jude. After 8 years and more than 60,000 suggested treatments, his prayer to St. Jude was answered...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:32:08
Jennifer Mee can't stop hiccuping. For more than three weeks now, the 15-year-old St. Petersburg teen has hiccuped close to 50 times a minute - despite the best efforts of doctors and home remedies. She's had blood tests, a CT scan and an MRI. Drugs haven't worked. Neither has holding her breath, putting sugar under her tongue, sipping pickle juice, breathing into a paper bag and drinking out of the wrong side of a glass. And, yes, people have tried to scare them out of her. The hiccups do stop when she's sleeping...
Cosmology
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:28:51
Dwarf spheroidals are galaxies composed almost entirely of dark matter; faint examples have been discovered orbiting the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. Scientists believe these dark systems were once gas-rich, but as they became satellites of larger galaxies, most of their visible matter was stripped away. The study, reported in the journal Nature, may shed light on dark matter. The scientists used computer simulations to uncover what might have happened 10 billion years ago as a gas-dominated dwarf galaxy hurtled into the orbit of a larger, Milky-Way-sized system. They found the drag force, or "ram pressure", created as a smaller galaxy moved through the more massive one would have stripped away the dwarf galaxy's interstellar gas. The model also showed the gravitational tug from the larger system would have wrenched away many of the dwarf system's luminous stars...
Animal Culture
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:42:22
Bats, lauded for scooping up mosquitoes and other nasty pests but reviled for drinking blood and spreading rabies, now have another unpopular habit to live down -- it appears they eat songbirds, scientists said on Tuesday... one large species of bat preys on little birds as they migrate through the dark of night over the Mediterranean...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:28:02
Big deep-sea squid emit blinding flashes of light as they attack their prey...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:19:46
MERIDEN, Conn... Workers at the Meriden Humane Society are marveling at a short-haired mother cat that has adopted a 6-day-old Rottweiler puppy that was rejected by its mother... nurses alongside a jumble of black and gray kittens recently born to Satin, who was taken to the shelter by an owner unable to care for her...
Staying Healthy
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:46:05
Your office desk harbors far more bacteria than your workplace restroom, and if you're a woman, chances are your workspace has more germs than your male co-workers'.... Women have three to four times the number of bacteria in, on and around their desks, phones, computers, keyboards, drawers and personal items as men do... "...women have more interactions with small children and keep food in their desks. The other problem is makeup...." Women's desks typically looked cleaner. But the knickknacks are more abundant, and cosmetics and hand lotions make prime germ-transfer agents...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:16:02
Very active young women who took higher-than-recommended doses of calcium and vitamin D supplements for eight weeks had fewer stress fractures than women who were given dummy pills...
Prehistory - still with us
apnews.myway.com/ ... 10:15:28
A Mexican researcher announced the rare find of a tiny tree frog completely preserved in amber on Wednesday that he estimates lived about 25 million years ago...
Now
That's
Funny!
drishtikone.com/ ... 10:50:14
Mathematics Question of the Day...
[You have to see it....]
Prohibition Kills
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:44:17
...while U.S. teenagers' use of marijuana is declining, their abuse of prescription drugs is holding steady or in some cases increasing...
Music industry is dead
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:43:50
Almost two-thirds of music industry executives think removing digital locks from downloadable music would make more people buy the tracks...
Digital Culture
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:42:59
Although emails are quick and easy to send, their lack of facial cues, body language and emotional feedback mean they can be easily misinterpreted...
[Just like any other form of text. :)]
It's Only Money
washtimes.com/ ... 10:40:55
the U.S. Mint... introduced its new $1 George Washington gold coin [Wednesday].... The new coin, which weighs 8 grams, will be much lighter in people's pockets than four quarters would... will work in most coin machines, including parking meters, vending machines, toll booths, and laundromats... four designs featuring American presidents will be released each year in the order of their service, with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to be released later in 2007... The face of each coin shows an original image of the president and the years of his terms of office. The Statue of Liberty will adorn the back of the coins...
Long Underwear Heroes are Dead
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:39:18
Three schools in the north Phoenix suburb of Cave Creek were on lockdown for about 45 minutes Wednesday morning after a student at Desert Arroyo Middle School reported seeing a person dressed as Batman run across campus, jump a fence and disappear into the desert... A nearby elementary school and high school also were on lockdown as officers sought the caped crusader. The result - no Batman...
Digital Business
internetnews.com/ ... 10:38:02
Google's YouTube and a company called Live Digital will offer no refuge to users who uploaded pirated copies of Fox Television's "24" and "The Simpsons" onto their video platforms. In an e-mail to internetnews.com, a 20th Century Fox Television spokesperson said that Google and Live Digital complied with subpoenas issued by the U.S. District Court in Northern California and disclosed to Fox the identities of two individuals who illegally uploaded entire episodes of "24" prior to its broadcast and DVD release...
Transport Law
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:36:33
...Lawyers for six motorists who received tickets for exceeding the 20 mph speed limit on London's Tower Bridge in 2005 argued that the signs were unlawful under the 1984 Road Traffic Regulation Act, because they had a tiny black border. Judge Igor Judge, who heard the case with Judge David Lloyd Jones, ruled that the appeal "was based entirely on a technicality that was utterly devoid of merit...."
Ummm....
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:33:45
Villagers in southwestern China are scratching their heads over the county government's decision to paint an entire barren mountainside green. Workers who began spraying Laoshou mountain last August told villagers they were doing so on orders of the county government but were not told why... Some villagers guessed officials of the surrounding Fumin county, whose office building faces the mountain, were trying to change the area's feng shui... Others speculated it was an unusual attempt at "greening" the area in keeping with calls for more attention to environmental protection...
Valentine!
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:27:17
...a Roman denarius coin which depicts [Cleopatra] the celebrated queen of Egypt as a sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman with a protruding chin. In short, a fair match for the hook-nosed, thick-necked Mark Antony on the other side of the coin, which went on public display Wednesday at... [Britain's University of Newcastle['s] Shefton Museum... "The image on the coin is far from being that of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton..." The notion that Cleopatra was not in Taylor's league was hailed as a revelation in British newspapers on Valentine's Day, though the image is hardly a discovery. Replicas of the denarius can be found on eBay, and images on other ancient coins are no more flattering...
Under Liberty
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:25:06
News Corp.'s MySpace said on Wednesday a federal court dismissed a negligence lawsuit filed by the family of a teenage girl who was sexually assaulted by someone she met on the popular Internet social network. Judge Sam Sparks of the U.S. District Court for the Western district of Texas... said that as an "interactive service", MySpace was protected from materials posted on its site by the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996.... "To ensure that Web site operators and other interactive computer services would not be crippled by lawsuits arising out of third party communications, the Act provides interactive computer services with immunity...." noted also that the girl lied about her age, posing as an 18-year-old when she was only 13, and registered for an account.... [The boy was 19.] [Lawyer for the family] said they planned to appeal the dismissal of the negligence charge and to refile charges of fraud and misrepresentation in a different court "in the very near future"...
[just as long as the lawyer can milk the case....]
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:21:41
PAHRUMP, Nev.... The board of this growing desert town has
struck down a law that made English the official language and barred residents from flying a foreign flag by itself.
The ordinance, which briefly put this community 60 miles from Las Vegas in the middle of the national immigration debate, was enacted in November but never enforced. The Pahrump Town Board repealed it Tuesday.... The five-person board includes four members who took office this year....
WED 2007-FEB-14
Opposing Tyranny
firstcoastnews.com/ ... 10:12:12
As a child, Ayaan Hirsi Ali fled violence in Somalia with her family. As an adult she fled Kenya to escape an arranged marriage. She left her adopted Holland after she was caught up in political turmoil and had her life threatened. Now Hirsi Ali -- a brave critic of Islam to her supporters, a bigot to her critics -- has found refuge in the intellectual bastion of leading U.S. conservatives... These days, Hirsi Ali is promoting her autobiography, "Infidel." It gives a graphic account of how she rejected her faith and the violence she says was inflicted on her in the name of Islam... At the institute, Hirsi Ali's studies will involve Islam and women: the relationship between the West and Islam; women's rights in Islam; violence against women propagated by religious and cultural arguments; and Islam in Europe...
Family Tragedy
breitbart.com/ ... 10:09:49
WHITEHALL, Mich.... A 5-year-old girl fended for herself for days while home alone with the body of her mother, who apparently succumbed to bacterial meningitis.... Police forced their way into the rural home about 45 miles northwest of Grand Rapids on Sunday and found the cupboards open, rice and cereal spilled all over, and the bathroom sink overflowing. The body of... [39yo mother] was on the couch in the living room. Her daughter... had rummaged the house for food for an unknown number of days. The family dog was tied up inside....
Theory of Sex Education
breitbart.com/ ... 10:07:58
...says, she lived the quiet life of a small- town substitute teacher, with little knowledge of computers and even less about porn. Now she is in the middle of a criminal case that hinges on the intricacies of both, and it could put her behind bars for up to 40 years. She was convicted last month of exposing seventh-grade students to pornography on her classroom computer.... before her class started, a teacher allowed her to e-mail her husband. She says she used the computer and went to the bathroom, returning to find the permanent teacher gone and two students viewing a Web site on hair styles. ...says she chased the students away and started class. But later, she says, pornographic images started popping up on the computer screen by themselves. She says she tried to click the images off, but they kept returning, and she was under strict orders not to shut the computer off.... Prosecutor... contended... she actually clicked on graphic Web sites... Computer consultant Herb Horner testified for the defense that the children had gone to an innocent Web site on hair styles and were redirected to another hairstyle site that had pornographic links. "It can happen to anybody...." defense argued that the images were caused by adware and spyware... [which] can generate pop-up ads -- in some cases, pornographic ones....
But many remain skeptical, including [man] who served on [her] jury. "So many kids noticed this going on," Steinmetz said. "It was truly uncalled for. I would not want my child in her classroom. All she had to do was throw a coat over it or unplug it. We figured even if there were pop-ups, would you sit there?.."
[Sorry, juror, but you are an idiot regarding this technical problem. She maybe only had to unplug the monitor, but likely didn't know how, anymore than she knew how to stop javascript-generated pop-ups when you try to close a window. As a comment in another article I read said, how can you find a dozen jurors so completely ignorant of the reality of this problem?]
9/11 - still with us
voanews.com/ ... 09:53:46
In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg joined the chorus of state officials calling on the federal government to provide the city with more funding for
sustained treatment of 9/11-related illnesses
... health impact of the attacks on the World Trade Center September 11, 2001, is costing New York's health care system
$393 million each year
...
Modern Medicine can be Dangerous
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:57:28
Men who have had a vasectomy may face an increased risk of developing a rare type of dementia marked by a steady loss of language skills... a neurological condition called primary progressive aphasia, or PPA... surveyed 47 men with the condition... Of those with primary progressive aphasia, 40 percent had undergone a vasectomy... Preliminary data also linked vasectomies to another form of dementia involving behavioral changes. Among 30 men with frontotemporal dementia, more than a third had undergone a vasectomy... "...unfortunately it's the kind of news that ends up scaring people even though they may not need to be scared..."
[?!?]
washingtonpost.com/ ... 09:52:28
The Food and Drug Administration warned yesterday of potentially life-threatening twisting of the intestines in infants vaccinated against a virus that is the leading cause of early-childhood diarrhea. The condition, called intussusception, is the same that led to the withdrawal of the first rotavirus vaccine eight years ago... unknown whether the recently approved vaccine, called RotaTeq, caused the 28 new cases of the condition, which also can occur spontaneously. Indeed, the reports don't exceed the numbers expected to occur naturally each year -- the "background rate," the FDA said...
Threats
voanews.com/ ... 09:47:35
The top American military officer is standing by remarks he made Monday... that appear to contradict U.S. military officials [in] Baghdad, who said Iran's government is providing powerful bombs to Iraqi insurgents. The general also says the United States has no intention of attacking Iran.... The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, says he has no disagreement with others in the U.S. government who have spoken on the subject, in recent days, but he believes it is important to be precise... he repeated that the American government knows that material from Iran is being used to make powerful bombs in Iraq and that Iranians have been arrested twice, in the last month, participating in the distribution of such material. But, on all three occasions, he
contradicted U.S. military briefers in Iraq, who told reporters Sunday that Iran's government is behind the effort... "That does not translate to that the Iranian government per se [specifically], for sure, is directly involved in doing this," he said...
Mass Murdering Monsters
guardian.co.uk/ ... 09:04:19
Sunni rebels allegedly linked to al-Qaida were blamed for a deadly car bomb attack which destroyed a bus and killed at least 11 Revolutionary Guards today in the latest outbreak of violence to strike one of Iran's most unstable provinces... as the guards were being bussed to work... Officials said four suspects had been arrested shortly afterwards. One was said to have been carrying grenades with which he unsuccessfully tried to blow himself up as security forces apprehended him...
Violence
edition.cnn.com/ ... 09:45:40
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah... 18-year-old gunman... [had] a bandolier of shotgun shells under his trench coat and a backpack of ammunition on his shoulder... armed with a shotgun and a .38-caliber pistol... stepped out of his car at a crowded shopping mall and immediately began shooting... fired randomly at anyone in his line of sight... trying to hit as many people as possible... killed five, wounded several others and would have slain many more... had not an off-duty officer jumped up from his seat at a restaurant and cornered the suspect. The two exchanged fire until other officers arrived and killed the assailant.... Four people who were wounded remained hospitalized Tuesday, two in critical condition, two serious... investigators struggled to determine why the teenager went on the deadly rampage, targeting shoppers with a supremely calm look on his face.... lived in Salt Lake City with his mother... family moved to Utah from war-torn Bosnia....
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:05:26
A senior Taleban commander has been killed in Afghanistan, along with a number of civilians in a Nato air strike... The International Security Assistance Force said a precision strike was launched on a compound in Helmand province with no "collateral damage". Local people told the BBC that 15 people had been killed - eight of them Taleban, but the rest were civilians. They told the BBC that the senior Taleban commander was Mullah Manan...
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:02:48
[Further details:]
[44yo] investor disgruntled over a bad deal called six colleagues to a boardroom meeting before shooting dead execution-style three of them and eventually turning the gun on himself... blamed the men for the loss of about $200,000... "He told them something like 'You have a minute or two to say your prayers...'" One man... was shot "numerous times," but survived by calling 911 after he slipped his bindings and spliced together the wires of a telephone that had been ripped apart...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:47:23
Army Spc.
Dennis L. Sellen Jr.
, 20, of Newhall, Calif., died Feb. 11 in Umm Qasr, Iraq, of non-combat related injuries. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 185th Infantry Regiment, Fresno, Calif. The incident is under investigation.
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:46:28
Army Pvt.
Clarence T. Spencer
, 24, of San Diego, died Feb. 4 in Balad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when his unit came in contact with the enemy using small arms fire in Baqubah, Iraq. Spencer was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:45:53
Army Pfc.
Brian A. Browning
, 20, of Astoria, Ore., died Feb. 6 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered from enemy small arms fire while conducting security operations. Browning was assigned to the 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y.
Animal Companions
breitbart.com/ ... 10:15:21
The Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers not to buy or use Wild Kitty Cat Food after the agency found salmonella in a sample of the raw product... affects 3.5-ounce and 1-pound containers of Wild Kitty Cat Food's "Raw All Natural, Frozen Cat Food -- Chicken with Clam Recipe"
[um... yuck!]
manufactured by Wild Kitty Cat Food in Portland, Maine... Cats and other pets who eat the food could become infected with salmonella. People are at risk of infection if they handle the cat food, touch pets that ate the food or come into contact with any surface the food has touched...
Big Whoops Cascade
sheboygan-press.com/ ... 10:13:34
Sheboygan County prosecutors are seeking to add imprisonment to injury. A 31-year-old Sheboygan man who shot himself in the foot with a rifle on Friday was charged Monday in Sheboygan County Circuit Court with being a felon in possession of a firearm... was cleaning a .22-caliber rifle which he said belonged to his father... when it fired as he attempted to clean the trigger... father said [son] forgot to check the chamber before cleaning the gun...
What's In a Name?
thesmokinggun.com/ ... 09:55:35
Government officials have rejected a Florida man's bid to trademark the term "Obama bin Laden," ruling that the conflation of the names of a U.S. Senator and the world's leading terrorist was "scandalous" and wrongly suggested a connection between the politician and the mass murderer...
Digital Threat
pcworld.com/ ... 09:51:49
Microsoft Corp. released its February set of security updates Tuesday, including critical fixes for bugs in Office and the scanning engine used by the company's security products. The security software flaw is of particular concern because it could, in theory, be very easily exploited by an attacker to run unauthorized software on a victim's PC. The bug has to do with the way that Microsoft's Malware Protection Engine, used by Windows Live One Care and Windows Defender, processes PDF files...
US Election 2008
abclocal.go.com/ ... 09:50:54
Republican
Rudy Giuliani
assured people today at Tulare's World Ag Expo that he is in the race...
news.bostonherald.com/ ... 09:50:26
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama told a campaign trail crowd in Iowa on Sunday that the nations Iraq war dead were lives "wasted" but immediately claimed a "slip of the tongue..." "I was actually upset with myself when I said that, because I never use that term," he later told the Des Moines Register. "Their sacrifices are never wasted . . . What I meant to say was those sacrifices have not been honored by the same attention to strategy, diplomacy and honesty on the part of civilian leadership that would give them a clear mission..." told reporters he meant to criticize civilian leadership of the war, not those serving in the military...
nydailynews.com/ ... 09:49:38
...Speaking in Iowa this weekend, Obama said the Iraq war "should never have been waged," adding, "We now have spent $400 billion and have seen over
3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted
." He hastened to say yesterday that he did not mean to disparage the troops' sacrifice... "
It is not at all what I intended to say
, and I would absolutely apologize if any [military families] felt that in some ways it had diminished the enormous courage and sacrifice that they'd shown..."
Reasons for Repeal
kltv.com/ ... 10:00:42
...140 pounds of cocaine has a street value of 6 million dollars...
[
because of prohibition inflating black market prices
]
.... [discovered] in a vehicle driving down I-20, near Lindale.... near Highway 69.... Deputy... pulled over the truck and trailer for multiple traffic violations.... got permission to search the truck and trailer
[yeah, sure!]
... found the cocaine inside four televisions. "I began noticing a strange smell coming from the TV and noticed tampering marks.... inside of the picture tube was a large amount of baby diapers, that was used for packing material. Once we removed the diapers it exposed the black kilo bricks...." "As the way it sits here right now is 1.6 million dollars. When they are distributed cut up and sent out, it has approximate street value of over 6 million dollars...."
mercurynews.com/ ... 09:54:20
So few people signed up for California's medical marijuana cards that the state is now being forced to raise fees tenfold to cover the cost of running the program...
bloomberg.com/ ... 09:04:51
Civilian casualties in Afghanistan and U.S.-supported policies such as forced poppy destruction are driving increasingly impoverished Afghans in the south into a "grassroots" Taliban insurgency that's jeopardizing attempts to stabilize the country...
TUE 2007-FEB-13
Digital Sex can be Dangerous
today.reuters.com/ ... 15:07:20
Be careful who you fall for this Valentine's Day -- they may just splash your most intimate secrets across the Internet. Thousands of people around the world have started personal Internet journals or "blogs" which expose... details of their sex lives... Blog tracking Web site Technorati lists nearly 7 million sex-related blogs. Their rise has sparked a legal, ethical and moral debate that pits free speech against the right to privacy of those who, perhaps unwittingly, feature in these blogs...
Nature can be Deadly
today.reuters.com/ ... 15:19:19
One person was killed and several injured on Tuesday when a tornado swept through New Orleans neighborhoods still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. The lone death was an 86-year-old woman living in a government-provided trailer...
cbs2chicago.com/ ... 15:16:37
The entire Chicago area is in the midst of an all-day snowstorm that could leave a foot or more of snow in some areas when it's over... south of Interstate 80 in both Illinois and Indiana, 8 to 13 inches may fall. In the far north suburbs toward the Wisconsin state line, only 3 to 5 inches are likely... The full fleet of snow-fighting trucks have been out on all major roadways since around 11 p.m., ahead of the snowfall... About 525 flights in and out of O'Hare International Airport had been cancelled for the day as of 9:15 a.m., along with about 150 flights at Midway International Airport for the morning and early afternoon...
today.reuters.com/ ... 15:05:51
A major snowstorm was moving through the U.S. Midwest causing transportation hang-ups, making it difficult to move grain and livestock to terminal markets... 3 to 6 inches fell across central Illinois, Indiana and Ohio in the past day. Snow was still falling Tuesday morning with some Midwest areas expected to see a total of 6 to 12 inches...
Violence
localnewsleader.com/ ... 15:22:53
A trench coat-clad teenager who opened fire on shoppers at a mall had one thing in mind: "to kill a large number of people," and he likely would have killed more than the five victims who died had an off-duty officer not confronted him, the police chief said Tuesday... an 18-year-old who lived in Salt Lake City with his mother...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 15:19:06
A gunman has opened fire in a crowded shopping centre in the US state of Utah, killing five people, police say. The man was cornered by police at the Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City and was killed. It is thought he was shot by an off-duty police officer. Three people were critically injured and one is in a serious condition...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 15:00:04
PHILADELPHIA... Three men were shot to death in a marketing company conference room and another was critically injured by a gunman who killed himself as police closed in... two other men had been bound with duct tape but not attacked... police believed [gunman] might have been an investor...
Mass Murdering Monsters
news.com.au/ ... 15:13:46
SEVEN bombs went off almost simultaneously in Algeria, killing six people east of the capital Algiers in an elaborate assault.... targeted police stations.... residents said they suspected a group of Islamist rebels who have aligned themselves with al-Qaeda and stepped up a campaign of bombings and ambushes in recent months....
today.reuters.com/ ... 15:04:33
A suicide bomber driving a small truck rigged with explosives blew up near a Baghdad college on Tuesday, killing 18 people... wounded 40... set cars ablaze and destroyed a nearby home. Police said some members of the family were among the dead, but a witness said only one girl died...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:56:34
Bombs packed with metal pellets tore through two commuter buses in a mainly Christian area of Lebanon on Tuesday, a day before the second anniversary of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination. At least three people were killed and 20 wounded in the coordinated attack... A senior politician speculated the blasts were meant to scare people away from a rally Wednesday to commemorate Hariri...
Civilization vs Gangsterism
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:55:32
Al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, called for Muslim unity and said American elections that gave Democrats control of Congress would not change U.S. policy in Iraq, in a new audiotape released Tuesday by a U.S. group that tracks extremist messages.... "The people chose you due to your opposition to Bush's policy in Iraq, but it appears that you are marching with him to the same abyss," al-Zawahri told the Democrats according to the transcript...
Digital Convergence
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 15:08:50
US media company Viacom is to begin letting people take videos from a number of its websites to post on their own blogs and sites. The move will mean that clips of MTV-owned shows such as Pimp My Ride will become available...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:07:07
Marine Pfc.
Tarryl B. Hill
, 19, of Shelby Township, Mich., died Feb. 7 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. Hill was assigned to Marine Forces Reserve's 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, Mount Clemens, Mich.
Human Right
boston.com/ ... 15:15:07
Gay marriage opponents launched a petition drive yesterday in hopes of persuading lawmakers to amend the state constitution to include a definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The drive comes one week before New Jersey begins allowing gay couples to legally unite in civil unions...
US Executive Branch
washingtonpost.com/ ... 15:14:34
President Bush yesterday sounded perplexed that anyone would think he is preparing to attack Iran -- going so far as to make a sour face and lower his voice in a mocking imitation of his critics...
Culture
today.reuters.com/ ... 15:12:38
Instead of burying their head in a book or heading to the nearest coffee shop to beat the boredom of laundry, New York writer Emily Rubin has organised a series of readings called "Dirty Laundry: Loads of Prose," at laundromats in New York...
Valentine!
hosted.ap.org/ ... 15:11:51
A word of advice to young Thai lovers on Valentine's Day: No kissing in public. Bangkok police say they plan to protect underage couples from the sting of Cupid's arrow, and will crack down on what is deemed to be "inappropriate" behavior. Patrols will start after school hours in "high-risk areas" such as public parks, shopping malls and restaurants...
today.reuters.com/ ... 15:11:09
Feeling insecure in close relationships with others may take a toll on the immune system...
Digital Threat
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 15:10:01
Online finance service PayPal, which is used by many people on eBay to pay for items, is introducing a security token to tackle fraud. The $5 (£2.57) token generates a random, six-digit code every 30 seconds which is then used as part of the login process for the website. Customers will also need to enter their user name and password. PayPal hopes the token will defeat phishing attacks which ask for login details to gain access to accounts... more sophisticated phishing attacks which also ask for the token passcode and then act on the information quickly, or programs which sit on a computer and monitor PayPal logins, could leave accounts vulnerable to fraudsters...
Digital Business
pcworld.com/ ... 15:23:16
IBM Corp. Monday introduced new services, dubbed Open Client, designed to make it easier for customers to run its Lotus collaboration software on a mixture of Windows and Linux desktop operating systems...
today.reuters.com/ ... 15:08:20
A Belgian court ruled on Tuesday that Google may not reproduce extracts from a variety of Belgian newspapers, imperiling one of the web search leader's most popular services if other courts follow suit...
Supernatural
today.reuters.com/ ... 15:03:32
For the fourth time in eight years, the Kansas Board of Education is preparing to take up the issue of evolution and what to teach -- or not teach -- public school students about the origins of life. After victory at the polls in November, a moderate majority on the 10-member board in the central U.S. state plans to overturn science standards seen as critical of evolution at a board meeting on Tuesday in Topeka. New standards would replace those put in place in 2005 by a conservative board majority that challenged the validity of evolution and cited it as incompatible with religious doctrine...
Reasons for Repeal
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 15:02:02
authorities are investigating whether there are links between drug cartels and the mayor of the south-western Mexican city of Acapulco. Welcoming the inquiry, Mayor Felix Salgado said he was "clean". In the latest drug-related violence, seven people were shot dead last week in government offices in the city...
Iraq
hosted.ap.org/ ... 15:01:09
Iraq will close its borders with Syria and Iran for 72 hours as part of the drive to secure and pacify Baghdad, the Iraqi commander of the crackdown said Tuesday, hours after a suicide bombing in a mainly Shiite neighborhood killed at least 15 people.... A government official said it was expected within two days. The government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the borders with Iran would only be partially reopened even after the 72-hour period ended...
Digital Theory of Education
hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:53:47
MIDDLEBURY, Vt.... Middlebury College history students are no longer allowed to use
Wikipedia
in preparing class papers. The school's history department recently adopted a policy that says it's OK to consult the popular online encyclopedia, but that it
can't be cited as an authoritative source
by students. The policy says, in part, "Wikipedia is not an acceptable citation, even though it may lead one to a citable source..."
[Even though Wikipedia has been assessed as being as reliable as Encyclopedia Brittanica...!]
MON 2007-FEB-12
Transport Trouble
breitbart.com/ ... 18:34:32
A 66-year-old German tourist, annoyed by stringent security at Manila's airport, dropped his pants before walking through an X-ray machine... Authorities were not amused...
local6.com/ ... 18:30:45
Mountains of trash stuffed inside a woman's car in Cape Cod, Mass., caused the car to accelerate and crash, according to police... there was so much trash in 53-year-old['s] Ford Focus that some of it fell onto the gas and brake pedals, causing her to lose control.... drove through a post office parking space, over the curb and across a freeway... then hit a Ford Explorer and backed over another sidewalk before finally crashing into a flowerpot in a gas station's parking lot...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 18:16:56
in northern Virginia on Saturday... nearly 165,000 eggs spilled out of an overturned tractor-trailer on the Capital Beltway... forcing officials to close an exit ramp to Interstate 66 and the far left lane of Interstate 495 north for several hours... The truck driver fled the scene before police arrived and had not been located by Saturday afternoon... the eggs made their way to a drainage ditch, where they created "a river of yellow yolk."' It's a good thing it wasn't summer, officials said, because the mess could have been worse. But cold temperatures prevented workers from using any water to clean the road for fear of freezing the eggs and the roadway. Instead, the cleaning crew used kitty litter - 250 pounds of it - to absorb the highway omelet then swept it up and took it away in three trash bins...
Nature can be Deadly
hosted.ap.org/ ... 17:54:36
LOS SILOS DE TENERIFE, Canary Islands... A group of 30 scientists and nature lovers got lost in a maze of narrow underground tunnels in Spain's Canary Islands, and six of them died after apparently suffocating... were more than a mile underground Saturday in area where gases may have seeped in, cutting off their oxygen...
Mass Murdering Monsters
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 17:45:10
At least 76 people have been killed in four bomb attacks in market areas of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Three explosions in quick succession at the Shorja market killed at least 71 people and wounded about 164. Half an hour earlier a parcel bomb exploded at the Bab al-Sharqi market, killing five people...
Cold War - still with us
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 17:41:28
Those tunnels around Lucerne can be quite irritating, especially in fine weather. Just as you are enjoying a spectacular view of the lake and the mountains, you are plunged into darkness. But when you get to the Sonnenberg, make sure your eyes adjust, and take a closer look, for this is much more than a tunnel. In here is the world's largest nuclear shelter. Under Swiss law, local governments are required to provide shelter spaces for everyone, and in the early 1970s Lucerne was short by several thousand. The new Sonnenberg motorway tunnel, just being built, seemed a neat solution: kit it out as a nuclear shelter as well and it could hold 20,000 people... The Sonnenberg, in theory, is able to withstand a one megaton nuclear bomb, as close as half a mile away... Inside, the tunnel is a surreal monument to neutral Switzerland's desire to survive a total war which would, naturally, have been started and waged by someone else. Every eventuality has been thought of. There are vast sleeping quarters, with bunk beds four layers deep. There is an operating theatre, a command post, and as Mr Fischer points out, a prison...
Cascading Weirdness
hosted.ap.org/ ... 18:19:10
SPOTSYLVANIA, Va.... A foot fished from a landfill was not the human variety. Cleaned and X-rayed, the appendage was determined to be apelike... appeared to have been cleanly sawed off above the ankle...
marinij.com/ ... 17:34:12
A San Rafael man has filed a race discrimination claim with the state against a local taxi company, saying he was humiliated when the cab he was riding in made an unexpected detour to the county jail.... [The 29yo] San Rafael restaurant manager... said he hailed a cab at the San Rafael Transit Center on June 22, 2006, and requested a ride home. The driver started for [his home]... but... suddenly locked the doors of the cab, made a U-turn and began heading in the opposite direction toward the Marin Civic Center.... "I'm locked in the car - he's not telling me what's going...." [Cabbie] told [him] he "fit the profile" of a man who refused to pay for previous cab rides... gave him two choices: pay in advance or talk to sheriff's deputies inside.... asked the driver repeatedly to radio the dispatcher to verify that he'd requested rides to his home address in the past. Finally, the driver complied... and was told by the dispatcher that it was OK to complete the trip.... [Cabbie] told him he wouldn't charge... for the ride if he kept quiet about the incident....
Threats
today.reuters.com/ ... 17:53:30
The FBI had more than 300 weapons and laptops lost or stolen in just under four years, and some of the computers contained sensitive or classified information... Fewer had gone missing than before a 2002 report in which Inspector General Glenn Fine's office reported 354 FBI weapons and 317 laptops lost or stolen over the previous 28 months, but he said the bureau had done too little to address the problem...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 17:45:41
Iran's hard-line president, who has berated the United States and refused to compromise on his nuclear program, is now softening his tone, saying Monday he wants dialogue rather than confrontation in Iraq. Tehran also denied it gave sophisticated weapons to militants to attack U.S. forces...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 17:44:38
Italian police say they have broken up a major arms trafficking ring that was planning to supply thousands of weapons to insurgents in Iraq. They say the group involved had connections in Malta, Russia, Libya and China and some of those arrested were wealthy businessmen working in exports. This began as a routine drugs investigation...
ynetnews.com/ ... 17:29:25
A French intelligence report says that
France is being targeted by al-Qaeda
.... warned decision makers of a series of scenarios, including a terror attack which will take place ahead of the presidential elections in a bid to influence their results.... composed by various intelligence and security organizations in the country for three months.... fear a terror attack similar to the one which took place in Madrid in March 2004.... published for the first time a letter handwritten and signed by Osama bin Laden, which instructed a radical Islamic organization in Algeria to "attack in eastern and southern France..."
Disturbing Family Patterns
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 17:43:06
A row has erupted in Austria over three girls who were kept cut off from the outside world by their mother for seven years... After the mother's separation from her husband the girls were reportedly kept in darkness at the family home and lived amid human filth... the girls had developed their own language and played with mice... Their mother - who is now in custody - had kept the curtains permanently drawn, unscrewed the light bulbs and shunned all social contact...
startribune.com/ ... 11:22:54
[Father, 41,] accused of endangering the life of his 4-year-old son by leaving the boy in a parked car... which was not running... for nearly 90 minutes... on a subzero night while he played blackjack in a casino... 7 degrees below zero with a 22-below windchill... A customer found the boy wandering, gloveless and shivering, in the parking lot. He was suffering from mild hypothermia and faced potentially dire physical consequences... the boy's core body temperature was measured by paramedics at 94.5 degrees. "It would have been not more than several more minutes..." Speaking through a Korean interpreter, [Father] said, "I will do the right thing ... I'm sorry..." Immigration officials... believe he is in the country illegally...
sheboygan-press.com/ ... 10:53:29
A Sheboygan woman was arrested Wednesday after police say she left her two children... 23 months and 10 years... in the car... unlocked and not running... in subzero wind chills so she could go tanning... The children had been in the car 20 minutes when police arrived... temperature at the time was 12 degrees, with a wind chill index of about minus 2... "She said she was going on vacation and apparently felt that the tanning was a priority..." They did not require medical attention... The father had come to the tanning salon to meet [the mother] and was angry when he found out the children had been left outside...
Theory of Sex Education
today.reuters.com/ ... 18:21:45
Nearly one in three Britons think that if a woman jumps up and down, washes or urinates immediately after sex, she can prevent pregnancy, a survey revealed Monday. It was one of a string of revelations in the survey... They reveal "widespread confusion and misunderstanding" about some of the basic facts... half the 500 people questioned did not know that a woman's most fertile time is between 10 and 16 days before her next period... 89 percent of respondents were unaware that it is possible for sperm to live inside a woman's body for up to seven days...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 17:39:44
A Kenyan secondary school has sent home 20 boys because they were not circumcised, saying it feared they would be bullied by other students.... told not to return until they had completed the procedure... Circumcision is not obligatory for admission to secondary school, but a study released in December said it reduced the risk of contracting HIV/Aids. Circumcision is practised in many, but not all, of Kenya's various ethnic groups...
foxnews.com/ ... 10:49:41
A Woonsocket mother [33] and her boyfriend [36] are headed to trial on charges they had intercourse in front of the woman's 9-year-old daughter as a way to teach the girl about sex... have pleaded not guilty to felony child-neglect charges... When questioned... [she] said [they] had sex "all the time" in front of the child and that "we don't believe in hiding anything...." He said the girl would often be on the bed watching as the couple had sex. Though they did not ask her to leave, they also did not force her to remain on the bed... The child [said they] never touched her or tried to include her in the sex... The couple is accused of "providing an environment that is lewd and depraved in a manner that makes their home unfit for the child to live in..."
Nuclear is Nasty
ft.com/ ... 18:29:32
Iran will be able to develop enough weapons-grade material for a nuclear bomb and there is little that can be done to prevent it, an internal European Union document has concluded...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:40:41
In the coming days, Iran is expected to make what is being billed as a major announcement on its nuclear programme to coincide with the anniversary of the Iranian revolution... Both Iran and some of its critics may have their own reasons for exaggerating the progress - but the real truth is hard to establish... any statement is likely to be as much about political positioning as real technical progress, according to nuclear analysts...
iht.com/ ... 10:39:43
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday that it had suspended 22 of its 55 technical aid programs with Iran, giving Washington a modest victory in its efforts to isolate Tehran internationally in the hope of curbing its nuclear ambitions. The agency, in a report to its board, said it had also suspended a number of lesser activities, including three fellowships, participation in a training course and procurement of 15 pieces of equipment...
Civilization vs Gangsterism
foxnews.com/ ... 21:17:20
The FBI is baiting its hooks with up to $5 million in reward money, hoping to land two of the biggest fish in international terrorism. The jumbo rewards are for tips leading to the arrest of Mohammed Ali Hamadei, wanted for the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, during which a U.S. Navy diver was executed and his body dumbed on the tarmac; and Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah, founder of the Palestinia Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a terrorist front with headquarters in Damascus, Syria...
breitbart.com/ ... 10:39:09
Asserting a right to self-defense, American forces in eastern Afghanistan have launched artillery rounds into Pakistan to strike Taliban fighters who attack remote U.S. outposts, the commander of U.S. forces in the region said Sunday... The use of the largely ungoverned Waziristan area of Pakistan as a haven for Taliban and al-Qaida fighters has become a greater irritant between Washington and Islamabad since Pakistan put in place a peace agreement there in September that was intended to stop cross-border incursions... Army Col. John W. Nicholson, commander of the 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, said in an Associated Press interview that rather than halt such incursions, the peace deal has led to a substantial increase...
Violence
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 17:44:11
There has been a small explosion near a United States' military base south of the Japanese capital, Tokyo... Police found two pipes believed to have contained explosives close to the camp... no reports of injuries... v
sfgate.com/ ... 10:35:37
Three Italian women were brutally attacked while vacationing on a resort island off the coast of West Africa, dragged into the woods, pelted with stones and left for dead at the bottom of a hole... The bodies of two of the women [28 & 33] were found half-buried near a beach Friday in the Cape Verde islands... three local men... arrested... The women were part of a surfing group that arrived in the islands last Sunday for a weeklong vacation... The [17yo] survivor... suffered fractures and needed 18 stitches in her head... had been invited to dinner by one of their attackers a man who apparently had had a relationship with one of the victims... The story of the attack has shocked Italians, many of whom consider the archipelago a paradise for beachgoers and windsurfers...
Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony, is located about 500 miles to the west of Senegal's capital, Dakar, in the Atlantic Ocean...
Staying Healthy
sciam.com/ ... 21:18:22
a new study shows that getting some midday shut-eye could be heart-healthy...
US Military
defenselink.mil/ ... 21:14:57
The Department of Defense announced today its recruiting and retention statistics for the active and reserve components for the month of January. All services met or exceeded their recruiting goals in Jan. Retention in the services remains solid. The Marine Corps and Air Force are meeting or exceeding overall retention missions. Army met 109 percent of its year-to-date mission and Navy met 93 percent. Four of six Reserve components met or exceeded their accession goals for January 2007.
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 21:13:50
Army Capt.
Donnie R. Belser Jr.
, 28, of Anniston, Ala., died Feb. 10 in Baqubah, Iraq, of wounds suffered when his unit came in contact with the enemy using small arms fire during combat operations. He was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division and attached to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team with the 1st Cavalry Division. Belser was a member of the 524th Transition Team, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kansas.
defenselink.mil/ ... 21:13:21
Army Sgt.
Robert B. Thrasher
, 23, of Folsom, Calif., died Feb. 11 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when his unit came in contact with the enemy using small arms fire during combat patrol. Thrasher was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Bliss, Texas.
defenselink.mil/ ... 21:12:56
Army Sgt.
Russell A. Kurtz
, 22, of Bethel Park, Pa., died in Fallajah, Iraq, Feb. 11 of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations. Kurtz was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska.
defenselink.mil/ ... 21:12:32
Army Sgt.
Long N. Nguyen
, 27, of Portland, Ore., died Feb. 10 in Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan, of a non-combat related wound. Nguyen was assigned to the 141st Brigade Support Battalion, Portland, Ore. The incident is under investigation.
defenselink.mil/ ... 21:12:00
Army Sgt.
James J. Regan
, 26, of Manhasset, N.Y., died Feb. 9 in northern Iraq of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle while on combat patrol. Regan was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, Fort Benning, Ga.
defenselink.mil/ ... 21:11:29
Army Staff Sgt.
Alan W. Shaw
, 31, of Little Rock, Ark.
Army Staff Sgt.
Eric Ross
, 26, of Kenduskeag, Maine
Army Spc.
Leeroy A. Camacho
, 28, of Saipan, Mariana Islands
died Feb. 9 in Baqubah, Iraq, of wounds suffered from an explosion during breaching operations. The soldiers were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
defenselink.mil/ ... 21:10:21
Army Sgt.
James J. Holtom
, 22, of Rexburg, Idaho
Army Spc.
Ross A. Clevenger
, 21, of Givens Hot Springs, Idaho
Army Pvt.
Raymond M. Werner
, 21, of Boise, Idaho
died Feb. 8 in Karmah, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near their unit while on combat patrol. The soldiers were assigned to the 321st Engineer Battalion, Boise, Idaho.
defenselink.mil/ ... 21:09:20
Marine Lance Cpl.
Matthew P. Pathenos
, 21, of Ballwin, Mo., died Feb. 7 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. Pathenos was assigned to Marine Forces Reserves 3rd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, Bridgeton, Mo.
defenselink.mil/ ... 21:08:45
Marine Capt.
Jennifer J. Harris
, 28, of Swampscott, Mass.
Marine 1st Lt.
Jared M. Landaker
, 25, of Big Bear City, Calif.
Marine Sgt.
Travis D. Pfister
, 27, of Richland, Wash.
Marine Cpl.
Thomas E. Saba
, 30, of Toms River, N.J.
Marine Sgt.
James R. Tijerina
, 26, of Beasley, Texas
died Feb. 7 when the helicopter they were flying in crashed while supporting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. Harris, Landaker, Pfister, and Tijerina were assigned to Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 364, Marine Aircraft Group 39, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif. Saba was assigned to Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 262, Marine Aircraft Group 36, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Okinawa, Japan. The cause of the incident is under investigation.
Animal Companions
hosted.ap.org/ ... 18:20:38
RIVERSIDE, Calif.... An exotic animal with a long snout, bear-like claws and a tail like a raccoon scared the heck out of some narcotics investigators searching a home for drugs.... eventually identified as a coatimundi, usually found in the forests of Central and South America. Possessing a coatimundi is illegal in California without a license... the animal's owner... will have to give it up to a zoo or to someone with an exotic animal license.... was arrested after deputies discovered methamphetamine...
Digital Convergence
today.reuters.com/ ... 18:13:28
YouTube, the popular online video sharing site owned by Google Inc., has signed a deal with Digital Music Group Inc. to offer such 1960s U.S. television programs as "I Spy" and "My Favourite Martian"...
Digital Future is Now
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:13:10
Britons keen for their homes to be digital playgrounds will soon be able to call on specially-trained tradesmen. An industry association has drawn up qualifications that recognise trade expertise in the technologies used in home entertainment and automation...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:04:04
A chip with 80 processing cores and capable of more than a trillion calculations per second (teraflop) has been unveiled by Intel. The Teraflop chip is not a commercial release but could point the way to more powerful processors...
Antiquity - still with us
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:03:30
Researchers are to carry out the first detailed survey of the Great Wall of China to establish just how long the ancient barricade is... will map the wall's exact route. And it will check the condition of the fortification... the world's largest man-made structure, is estimated at over 5,000 kilometres (3,100 miles) in length...
Extraterrestrial
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:02:33
A UK team is developing a concept mission that aims to land a spacecraft on the potato-shaped... Mars' moon Phobos... and grab material off its surface. These small rock fragments would then be despatched to Earth in a capsule...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:01:52
Saturn's moon Enceladus... [has] geysers which spray out material that eventually settles over other satellites... One of Saturn's rings - the E ring - is largely made up of icy material from Enceladus' volcanic plumes...
Animal Culture
today.reuters.com/ ... 18:05:38
Two Hungarians puzzled by how certain creatures with shells, like turtles and beetles, are able to self-right have developed a shape with one stable and one unstable point of equilibrium to explain the phenomenon...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 17:58:40
Chimpanzees may have been using stone "hammers" as long as 4,300 years ago... earliest known use of tools by chimpanzees.... used to crack nuts, a behavior still seen in chimps in that area.... may indicate that a "chimpanzee stone age" began in ancient times.... The earliest reports of stone tool use by chimpanzees in this area date to the writings of Portuguese explorers in the 1600s...
World Zookeeping
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:22:50
SANDPOINT, Idaho... Stop chasing the moose. That's the message police in this north Idaho city are trying to convey to residents and visitors. During the past few weeks, the Sandpoint Police Department has received dozens of phone calls each day reporting moose inside city limits - and of area residents chasing after them... residents are currently sharing the city with about three to five moose... "When these animals roam into the city, they can become frightened and disoriented, making them more dangerous than if they were encountered in the wild..." police may have to cite residents for "molesting wildlife..."
today.reuters.com/ ... 18:22:37
Conservationists in Nepal have opened a special "restaurant" to offer safe food to vultures, whose existence is being threatened from eating carcasses of cattle treated with drugs...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 18:18:07
MAPLEWOOD, N.J.... A woman glancing out a kitchen window in this bedroom community just west of New York City was startled to find a black bear peering back in at her... She screamed, spooking the 211-pound bear, which ran to a nearby tree, climbed 40 feet up and wouldn't budge... State wildlife officers eventually shot the animal with a tranquilizer dart. After hanging on for about 10 minutes, the bear dropped into a net. It was taken away, tagged, then released at a state wildlife management area...
"It's not something you get to see every day - bears falling out of trees..."
hosted.ap.org/ ... 17:57:23
researchers are planning a worldwide effort to track the movement of sea creatures tagged with tiny electronic devices... Sea life ranging from salmon to whales, turtles to sharks, will be tagged so they can then be tracked as they swim past arrays of sensors placed at critical locations in the oceans... The goal is to eventually have 5,000 ocean receivers arranged in 60 lines worldwide, capable of tracking up to 1 million animals at the same time...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 17:56:15
A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production... Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some affected commercial beekeepers - who often keep thousands of colonies - have reported losing more than 50 percent of their bees. A colony can have roughly 20,000 bees in the winter, and up to 60,000 in the summer... The country's bee population had already been shocked in recent years by a tiny, parasitic bug called the varroa mite, which has destroyed more than half of some beekeepers' hives and devastated most wild honeybee populations... commercial bee colonies are important to agriculture as pollinators, along with some birds, bats and other insects...
Science Marches Onnnnnn
thescotsman.scotsman.com/ ... 11:11:38
The humble carrot is set to be used in ways never imagined before, thanks to a discovery by two Scottish scientists who have found a way to convert the vegetable into an advanced material to make products from fishing rods to warships... The material is also more environmentally friendly than current methods using glass and carbon fibres... they were already looking at using other vegetables such as turnips, swede and parsnips...
Only Natural
tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/ ... 10:45:27
Greenland isnt melting as fast as we feared. It was big news when the rate of melting suddenly doubled in 2004 as ice sheets began moving more quickly into the sea. That inspired predictions of the imminent demise of Greenlands ice and a catastrophic rise in sea level. But a paper published online this afternoon by Science reports that two of the largest glaciers have suddenly slowed, bringing the rate of melting last year down to near the previous rate. At one glacier, Kangerdlugssuaq, "average thinning over the glacier during the summer of 2006 declined to near zero, with some apparent thickening in areas on the main trunk..."
Over the past few years there has been a major revolution in the way scientists think about ice sheet response to climate change. Previously, it was assumed that the big ice sheets react very slowly to climate, on the order of centuries to millenia. This is because surface melting and precipitation was thought to be the dominant way in which ice sheets gain and lose mass under changes in climate. However, over the past five years we have observed that the flow speed of the ice sheets, and therefore the rate at which the ice flows to ocean can change dramatically over very short time scales.... Greenland was about as warm or warmer in the 1930s and 40s, and many of the glaciers were smaller than they are now. This was a period of rapid glacier shrinkage world-wide, followed by at least partial re-expansion during a colder period from the 1950s to the 1980s. Of course, we dont know very much about how the glacier dynamics changed then because we didnt have satellites to observe it. However, it does suggest that large variations in ice sheet dynamics can occur from natural climate variability....
People Do Drugs
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:21:38
If you thought pillow menus in hotels were over the top, how about customized mini-bars? The Catalina Hotel and Beach Club in Miami's South Beach is offering themed mini-bar packages for $50 each and up. Forget pretzels and tiny bottles of vodka; the hotel is calling this deal "Pimp Your Fridge." You'll actually get that bottle of vodka in the Rock Star mini-bar, which also comes with Krispy Cremes and Red Bull. For the morning after, you get Visine, Alka Seltzer, a chilled eye mask, and Gatorade. You get a pack of cigarettes with that, too, but there's no smoking in the hotel, so you'll have to step outside to light up...
Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!
today.reuters.com/ ... 21:20:58
A vicious Mexican drug gang war has moved onto Internet video site YouTube, where rivals taunt each other with blood-soaked slideshows and film of their murder victims...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:20:40
Concluding that there is an inadequate supply of marijuana for medical research, an administrative law judge has recommended to the Drug Enforcement Administration that it grant a Massachusetts professor's application to grow the drug in bulk. The judge's ruling is nonbinding. But officials at the American Civil Liberties Union hope that the recommendation to grant the application of Professor Lyle Craker will eventually lead to more research into the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes...
[Medical marijuana research is all fine, but we still need complete REPEAL of prohibition!]
today.reuters.com/ ... 21:19:51
Mexican President Felipe Calderon's government wants to decriminalize first-time possession of small amounts of drugs in a move likely to draw criticism from U.S. anti-narcotics officials. Under the proposed legislation, users found for the first time with 2 grams (0.07 ounces) or less of marijuana and small amounts of other drugs ranging from cocaine to methamphetamine would not be prosecuted...
[Is it possible Mexico is FINALLY about to start doing something to end the drug war, DESPITE USA prohibitionist madness?]
US Election 2008
foxnews.com/ ... 21:18:00
Republican Mitt Romney's choice of a museum honoring auto pioneer Henry Ford as the site of his presidential announcement was strongly criticized Monday by Jewish Democrats, who noted Ford's history of anti-Semitism...
[Tough start...]
World Without Borders
english.people.com.cn/ ... 21:16:47
Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf on Monday said that militants and terrorist elements are seeking refuge in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan and "they are using the camps as a safe heaven." "Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan must be closed under a phased program at the earliest," the president told the U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on Monday. "The closure of these camps would deny terrorists of sanctuaries, making it easier to track and bring them to justice," Musharraf said... adding that it was imperative that Afghan refugees return to their country... The president said that problems of extremism and terrorism were indigenous to Afghanistan, adding that the Taliban phenomenon was a spillover from Afghanistan into Pakistan...
[Sounds much like self-effacing spin...]
Easter 2007
scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/ ... 18:41:00
CONFECTIONERY giant Cadbury will today launch a national advertising campaign to alert customers about a recall of Easter eggs because they have the wrong nut allergy labelling...
Reporting Science
newsbusters.org/ ... 18:33:48
more and more dissenters speak out against the junk science involved in this mythology. The most recent was Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic... Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment...
Theory of Justice
today.reuters.com/ ... 18:22:17
A Dutch journalist asked an Amsterdam court on Friday to convict him for eating chocolate, saying by doing so he was benefiting from child slavery on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast... seeking a jail sentence to raise consumer awareness and force the cocoa and chocolate industry to take tougher measures to stamp out child labor...
Reasons for Repeal
hosted.ap.org/ ... 18:14:54
Smoking marijuana eased HIV-related pain in some patients in a small study that nevertheless represented one of the few rigorous attempts to find out if the drug has medicinal benefits... The Bush administration's Office of National Drug Control Policy quickly sought to shoot holes in the experiment...
Woman's Right
hosted.ap.org/ ... 18:14:24
Portugal's prime minister said he will enact more liberal abortion laws in the conservative Roman Catholic country even though his proposal to relax restrictions failed to win complete endorsement in a referendum... almost 60 percent of voters approved the referendum... However, under Portuguese law more than 50 percent of the country's 8.9 million registered voters must participate in a referendum to make the ballot valid. The turnout Sunday was 44 percent...
Valentine!
today.reuters.com/ ... 18:06:06
Italy won't split up its Stone Age "lovers". In a Valentine's Day gift to the country, scientists said they are determined to remove and preserve together the remains of a couple buried 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, their arms still wrapped around each other in an enduring embrace...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 17:59:23
It's probably the last thing most people think about when buying roses - by the time the bright, velvety flowers reach your Valentine, they will have been sprayed, rinsed and dipped in a battery of potentially lethal chemicals... Most of the toxic assault takes place in the waterlogged savannah surrounding the capital of Colombia, the world's second-largest cut-flower producer after the Netherlands. It produces 62 percent of all flowers sold in the United States...
People Live
thisislondon.co.uk/ ... 11:10:18
Shot from the tiny camera in the helmet of champion skydiver Michael Holmes, it records with chilling clarity what happened when he plummeted 12,000ft to earth. There is the moment when he tugs his ripcord and discovers his parachute won't open. There are the frantic efforts to release it, made as he spins so fast that movement is almost impossible... There is his attempt to release his reserve parachute - and the horror as he realises that, too, has become entangled above him... Just 550ft above the ground, he waves goodbye to the world and screams a last message into the camera's microphone, resigned to a horrific death. Moments later comes the sound of the sickening impact - and then blackness... friend... who jumped from the the same plane, also filmed the whole event and landed shortly afterwards. As he rushed to help, his helmet camera recorded the incredible outcome. Michael was bleeding, broken, unconscious - but alive.... with only a punctured lung and a broken ankle.... "I should be dead, absolutely. I'd certainly given up hope. When I was up above Lake Taupo, I had a little bit of hope that I'd land in the water. But even then, the sensible part of me knew it wouldn't be all right - that I'd probably be knocked unconscious at best and drown. I was spinning so fast that I was nearly passing out from the G-force. There was no way I could choose my landing spot or aim in any way. Towards the end, I thought I was headed towards the airfield car park. That was when I assumed survival wasn't an option. I thought I was going to hit the concrete and gravel and be killed instantly. It was just a matter of saying goodbye and then waiting...." As one of the world's top ten skydivers with more than 7,000 jumps to his name, Michael - known as Mikey by his friends - is aware of the risks of his career and knows that panic-induced human error is to blame for almost all accidents... "I didn't have time to think about anything.... Friends ask if I was scared but really I was just angry that I'd done everything exactly as I should and it hadn't worked. "I was very focused on what I was doing and I remember everything. Nothing's a blur..." there was a 6ft-high thicket of brambles and wild shrubbery on a patch of wasteground between the airfield and the shoreline...
Theory of Education
stltoday.com/ ... 10:43:19
St Louis.... A Moscow Mills couple [she 41, he 43] has been charged with child endangerment after the 8-year-old son of the woman brought a loaded handgun to school.... At the end of the day, as he was leaving, he opened his backpack to show the gun to another child; a third child overheard their conversation and told a teacher. The gun's safety was not on.... The boy... has been suspended for at least the rest of the school year....
It was unclear whether any charges would be brought against him.
[!?!]
Authorities said the parents told them they had shown the boy how to load and unload the .22-caliber handgun, but they did not know he had taken it to school. When they went to the boy's home, authorities found 80 weapons -- some were loaded, some were secured, others were not. The weapons had been obtained legally, authorities said. They believe the couple collected firearms...
Iraq
cnn.com/ ... 10:37:58
Australia's conservative prime minister slammed Barack Obama on Sunday over his opposition to the Iraq war
, a day after Obama announced his intention to run for the White House in 2008. Obama said the country's first priority should be to end the war in Iraq. He has also introduced a bill to prevent President Bush from increasing American troop levels in Iraq, and to remove U.S. combat forces from the country by March 31, 2008.... Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who will face his own re-election bid later this year,
said Obama's proposed deadline would spell disaster for the Middle East. "I think that will just encourage those who want to completely destabilize and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and a victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for an Obama victory....
If I were running al Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama but also for the Democrats." Howard, a staunch supporter and personal friend of Bush, has defied widespread domestic opposition to the war, keeping about 1,400 Australian troops in and around Iraq, mostly in non-combat roles...
SUN 2007-FEB-11
Mass Media is Dead
blog.foreignpolicy.com/ ... 12:18:21
yesterday's episode of CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. Anna Nicole Smith['s death], naturally, got top billing... When Wolf finally moved on to the subject of Iran and Iraq, CNN commentator Jack Cafferty added his two cents...
Is Anna Nicole Smith still dead, Wolf?
..
Nature can be Dangerous
apnews.myway.com/ ... 12:11:05
PARISH, N.Y... another severe snowstorm brought snow to an area already inundated by more than 8 feet.... A warning in effect until Monday morning said 2 to 4 more feet of snow was possible with wind gusting up to 24 mph....
Modern Medicine can be Dangerous
foodconsumer.org/ ... 12:02:39
Deaths from prescription drug poisoning increased by 68 percent between 1999 and 2004 in the United States, becoming second only to motor vehicle crashes as a cause of unintentional deaths in the country...
Transport Trouble
forbes.com/ ... 12:02:13
A barge struck a cruise ship Saturday morning on the Mississippi River, leaving a 30-foot gash on the ship. There were no injuries reported...
Mass Madness
voanews.com/ ... 11:59:36
An explosion in the Somalia port city of Kismayo has killed at least five people and wounded twenty-five. The explosion hit a rally in support of foreign peacekeepers, prompting government troops to fire into a crowd of thousands... described the incident as chaotic, "a number of people were wounded as a result of the stampede as government forces opened fire. There were sporadic gunshots, people just scattered..."
Violence
chron.com/ ... 12:00:45
The shooting Monday of a civilian contract truck driver for KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, is under investigation by the company and by the U.S. Army. The U.S. military confirmed on Saturday that American forces shot and killed the truck driver at Camp Anaconda, an air base about 42 miles north of Baghdad...
alertnet.org/ ... 12:00:18
U.S. military helicopters killed eight Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers and wounded six others in northern Iraq on Friday in what appeared to be a "friendly fire" incident... The U.S. military said it killed five armed men in an air strike in the northern city of Mosul after U.S. troops hunting suspected al Qaeda militants there came under fire from a bunker near the building they were targeting. The men, who had ignored warnings in Arabic and Kurdish to put down their weapons, turned out to be Kurdish policemen...
telegraph.co.uk/ ... 11:57:55
America today blamed Iran for the deaths of 170 US troops inside Iraq, accusing Teheran of supplying insurgents with increasingly sophisticated bombs... They said the "highest levels" of Irans regime were responsible for giving them to Shia militias in Iraq. These bombs are specially designed to penetrate heavily armoured military vehicles and are capable of crippling the US armys main battle tank, the Abrams M1. They have killed 170 US troops since June 2004, according to the American officials. They added that some weapons have been captured and they bore the hallmarks of having been manufactured in Iran...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:37:47
Marine Sgt. Maj.
Joseph J. Ellis
, 40, of Ashland, Ohio, died Feb. 7 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. Ellis was assigned to Battalion Landing Team 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable), I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:37:16
Navy Petty Officer 1st Class
Gilbert Minjares Jr.
, 31, of El Paso, Texas
Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class
Manuel A. Ruiz
, 21, of Federalsburg, Md.
died Feb. 7 in a helicopter crash in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. The cause of the crash is under investigation. Minjares was assigned to Marine Aircraft Group 14, 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, Cherry Point, N.C., and Ruiz was assigned to 2nd Medical Battalion, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:36:18
Marine Cpl.
Jennifer M. Parcell
, 20, of Bel Air, Md., died Feb. 7 while supporting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. Parcell was assigned to Combat Logistics Regiment 3, 3rd Marine Logistics Group, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Okinawa, Japan.
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:35:51
Marine Sgt.
Joshua J. Frazier
, 24, of Spotsylvania, Va., died Feb. 6 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. Frazier was assigned to 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C...
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:35:12
Marine Lance Cpl.
Brandon J. Van Parys
, 20, of New Tripoli, Pa., died Feb. 5 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:34:32
Army Capt.
Kevin C. Landeck
, 26, of Illinois, assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 15th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y.
Army Staff Sgt.
Terrence D. Dunn
, 38, of Houston, was assigned to the 210th Brigade Support Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y.
died Feb. 2 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near their vehicle.
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:33:19
Army Chief Warrant Officer
Keith Yoakum
, 41, of Hemet, Calif.
Army Chief Warrant Officer
Jason G. Defrenn
, 34, of Barnwell, S.C.
died Feb. 2 in Taji, Iraq, of wounds suffered when their Apache helicopter was forced to land during combat operations. Both soldiers were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 227th Aviation Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. The incident is under investigation.
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:32:11
Army Sgt.
Randy J. Matheny
, 20, of McCook, Neb., died Feb. 4 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle. He was assigned to the 1074th Transportation Company, Sidney, Neb.
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:31:38
Marine Cpl.
Richard O. Quill III
, 22, of Roswell, Ga., died Feb. 1 from a non-hostile cause in Al Anbar province, Iraq. Quill was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:30:59
Army Staff Sgt.
Ronnie L. Sanders
, 26, of Thibodaux, La., died Feb. 3 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle. He was assigned to the 407th Brigade Support Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:30:23
Army Spc.
Alan E. McPeek
, 20, of Tucson, Ariz., assigned to the 16th Engineer Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, Giessen, Germany
Army Pvt.
Matthew T. Zeimer
, 18, of Glendive, Mont., assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga.
died Feb. 2 in Ramadi, Iraq, of injuries sustained when they came in contact with enemy forces using small arms fire.
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:29:02
Army Pfc.
David C. Armstrong
, 21, of Zanesville, Ohio
Army Pfc.
Kenneth T. Butler
, 21, of East Liverpool, Ohio
died Feb. 1 in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries suffered from a vehicular accident. They were assigned to the 57th Military Police Company, 8th Military Police Brigade, 8th Theater Sustainment Command, U.S. Army Pacific, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. The incident is under investigation...
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:27:53
Army Sgt.
Corey J. Aultz
, 31, of Port Orchard, Wash.
Army Sgt.
Milton A. Gist Jr.
, 27, of St Louis
died Jan. 30 at Ramadi, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near their vehicle during combat operations. They were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 77th Armor Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Schweinfurt, Germany...
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:26:44
Army Spc.
Eric R. Sieger
, 18, of Layton, Utah, died Feb. 1 at Buritz, Iraq, of wounds suffered when his Bradley Fighting Vehicle rolled over. Sieger was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. The incident is under investigation...
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:26:12
Army Sgt. Maj.
Michael C. Mettille
, 44, of West St. Paul, Minn., died Feb. 1 at Camp Adder, Iraq, from a non-combat related injury. Mettille was assigned to the 134th Brigade Support Battalion, Brooklyn Park, Minn. The incident is under investigation...
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:25:37
Army Sgt.
William M. Sigua
, 21, of Los Altos Hills, Calif., died Jan. 31 in Bayji, Iraq, of wounds suffered when his unit came in contact with the enemy using small arms fire during combat operations. Sigua was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C...
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:24:59
Army Cpl.
Stephen D. Shannon
, 21, of Guttenberg, Iowa, died Jan. 31, in Balad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when his vehicle was hit by a rocket during combat operations Jan. 30 in Ramadi, Iraq. Shannon was assigned to the 397th Engineer Battalion, Wausau, Wis...
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:24:29
Navy Hospitalman
Matthew G. Conte
, 22, of Mogadore, Ohio, died Feb. 1 while his unit was conducting combat operations against enemy forces in the Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Conte was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii serving as a hospital corpsman in Iraq under the command of I Marine Expeditionary Force (forward)...
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:23:50
Marine Sgt.
Alejandro Carrillo
, 22, of Los Angeles, Calif., died Jan. 30 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. Carrillo was assigned to Combat Logistics Battalion 7, Combat Logistics Regiment 1, 1st Marine Logistics Group, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Twentynine Palms, Calif...
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:23:20
Marine Gunnery Sgt.
Terry J. Elliott
, 34, of Middleton, Tenn., died Feb. 1 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. Elliott was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii...
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:22:49
Marine Lance Cpl.
Adam Q. Emul
, 19, of Vancouver, Wash., died Jan. 29 from wounds received while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. Emul was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Twentynine Palms, Calif.
US Military
defenselink.mil/ ... 12:38:44
National Guard (In Federal Status) And Reserve Mobilized as of Feburary 7, 2007
This week, the Navy and Air Force announced an increase, while the Army, Marine Corps and Coast Guard had a decrease. The net collective result is
2,627 fewer reservists
mobilized than last week.... This brings the total National Guard and Reserve personnel, who have been mobilized, to
89,185
, including both units and individual augmentees...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:19:28
A US marine who was the only member of his squad to plead guilty to murder over the death of an Iraqi civilian has asked to withdraw his plea. Cpl Trent Thomas made his request via his lawyer at the last minute, as the court was preparing to sentence him... Military judge Lt Col Tracy Daly granted Cpl Thomas' request after warning him he was creating a "very sticky problem" for the court... Cpl Thomas was the first member of his unit to come forward with his version of events about the killing...
washingtonpost.com/ ... 12:01:23
SAN DIEGO -- A seven-ton truck overturned during a training exercise at Miramar air base early Saturday, killing one Marine and injuring 19 others... The truck was part of a six-vehicle convoy on regularly scheduled training when it went off a dirt road and overturned sometime after 3 a.m...
US Election 2008
ctv.ca/ ... 12:13:17
Barack Obama evoked the memory of Abraham Lincoln as he officially began his marathon race to become the first black president of the United states. "We can build a more hopeful America," the freshman U.S. senator told supporters Saturday in Springfield, Ill.. "And that is why, in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a house divided to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still live, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States of America..."
Digital Threat
breitbart.com/ ... 12:12:09
Security experts are warning PC users to be on guard against viruses masquerading as Valentine's Day messages, which could damage computers... Security firm Symantec said it had detected "large-scale spamming" of e-mails including a Trojan horse... a new version of Trojan, Peacomm or the "Storm Trojan..."
Reporting Science
telegraph.co.uk/ ... 12:09:05
Man-made climate change may be happening at a far slower rate than has been claimed, according to controversial new research. Scientists say that cosmic rays from outer space play a far greater role in changing the Earth's climate than global warming experts previously thought...
timesonline.co.uk/ ... 12:08:47
When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works... Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported... Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winters billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean...
Socialism
azcentral.com/ ... 12:06:04
Arizona... under the state's new minimum-wage law that went into effect last month... Some Valley employers, especially those in the food industry, say payroll budgets have risen so much that they're cutting hours, instituting hiring freezes and laying off employees. And teens are among the first workers to go... Companies maintain the new wage was raised to $6.75 per hour from $5.15 per hour to help the breadwinners in working-poor families. Teens typically have other means of support...
Woman's Right
playfuls.com/ ... 11:58:42
Portuguese voted on Sunday on whether to legalize abortion in a referendum that could bring the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country closer into line with most other European states. Opinion polls showed a majority of voters in favor of making abortion legal in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. But rain swept the country, raising the possibility of a low turnout that could make the ballot invalid...
SAT 2007-FEB-10
Hospitals can be Dangerous
breitbart.com/ ... 10:00:41
Two hospitals are asking visitors, especially children, to stay away until they control an outbreak of a highly contagious stomach virus that has sickened patients and staff members... The number of people affected wasn't immediately available... Three suspected norovirus cases first appeared on Feb. 1 and were not confirmed until Wednesday... wasn't clear where the infection originated. "It's coming in from elsewhere.... It's in our community..."
Violence
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:58:17
An al-Qaeda-backed group on Friday released an Internet video of what it said was the shooting down of a U.S. helicopter in Iraq this week, which killed seven military personnel... showed an apparent missile hitting the helicopter. The footage also showed the plane pulling away while trailing smoke before being engulfed in flames and crashing behind distant trees...
Supernatural Threats
content.hamptonroads.com/ ... 09:57:44
A plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against Pat Robertson says the televangelist threatened his life and that of his family at a legal proceeding Wednesday in the Norfolk federal courthouse... The accuser, Phillip Busch, is suing Robertson for misappropriation of his image in the promotion of Robertson's protein diet shake... According to a complaint Busch filed with the Norfolk police, Robertson entered a room in the courthouse Wednesday afternoon to be questioned for a deposition - an out-of-court form of testimony - and told Busch: "I am going to kill you and your family..." This is not the first time Robertson has been accused of threatening an adversary...
Nature can be Deadly
apnews.myway.com/ ... 09:53:07
More than a week of bitter cold and slippery roads have contributed to at least 20 deaths across the northern quarter of the nation - five in Ohio, four in Illinois, four in Indiana, two in Kentucky, two in Michigan, and one each in Wisconsin, New York and Maryland... Officials expected up to 14 inches of snow overnight, a trend that would push the
seven day total beyond 100 inches
and continue through the weekend...
Hitler is alive and well
foxnews.com/ ... 09:49:11
In a brazen online posting, a Holocaust denier detailed how he attacked Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel in his hotel last week. Wiesel's attacker approached him on the elevator, saying he wanted to interview him... then pulled Wiesel out of the elevator... the attacker, identified as Eric Hunt, fled the scene when Wiesel started yelling...
Threats
nytimes.com/ ... 09:54:18
The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq
is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being
supplied by Iran
. The assertion of an Iranian role in supplying the device to Shiite militias reflects broad agreement among American intelligence agencies, although officials acknowledge that the picture is not entirely complete...
Iran is providing "lethal support" to Shiite militants in Iraq...
alertnet.org/ ... 09:46:54
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov on Friday rejected U.S. arguments for deploying an anti-missile defence system in eastern Europe and insisted Russia would not be drawn into a Cold War-style arms race. Ivanov said there was no need to base part of the system in NATO countries Poland and the Czech Republic to defend the United States from rockets launched in Iran and North Korea, as Washington argues... U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates... said he had sought to reassure Ivanov during the meeting that the system posed no threat to the Russians. "We've made quite clear to them that it's not directed at them..."
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:45:20
Iran insisted on Saturday a dispute with the West over its nuclear program could be resolved by negotiation as its chief nuclear negotiator arrived in Germany for meetings with European officials. But European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana played down chances of a breakthrough at a planned meeting on Sunday with the negotiator, Ali Larijani, saying at most it could launch new efforts to resolve the stand-off. "We believe the Iranian nuclear dossier is resolvable by negotiation," Larijani told Reuters...
hindu.com/ ... 09:44:28
Negotiators failed on Saturday to clear final hurdles to a deal for North Korea to start dismantling its nuclear program, but officials held out hope they could resolve
lingering disputes over how to compensate Pyongyang for disarming
...
US Military
voanews.com/ ... 09:47:45
The U.S. military released more details Friday about its plans for a new Africa Command center or AFRICOM. The center is going to coordinate U.S. military activities for almost all of the African continent... the new African command center will pull together responsibilities for Africa that had formerly been divided up among U.S. Central Command in the U.S. state of Florida, U.S. Pacific Command in the Pacific island state of Hawaii, and U.S. European Command, located in Germany... U.S. Central Command will continue to handle Egypt, along with the Middle Eastern countries, as it has in the past...
People Gamble
telegraph.co.uk/ ... 09:59:30
A "world lottery draw" with a possible £250 million jackpot could be available within five years... "biggest lottery on earth..." So far 48 countries have expressed an interest... Under the proposal, "up to 100 millionaires" will be created every month, with one annual game that could bag a winner up to £250 million...
Reasons for Repeal
cnews.canoe.ca/ ... 09:52:04
Police have arrested three men and are searching for a fourth after fire destroyed a home containing an alleged dope operation in Scugog Thursday. Durham Regional Police the fire was caused by an explosion involving flammable materials used to produce illegal drugs. When police arrived around 2:30 p.m., the house was engulfed in flame... Damage to the residence and several vehicles at the scene is estimated at $1 million... Each face a number of marijuana and cannibis resin charges, as well as arson - disregard for human life...
Digital Threat
pcworld.com/ ... 09:51:07
Expect 12 sets of security patches from Microsoft next week that fix critical vulnerabilities in several products, including new security software... The bulk of the patches will fix flaws in the Windows operating system and Office...
Theory of Justice
foxnews.com/ ... 09:50:24
The government has lost another case in the War on Terror, with the D.C. Court of Appeals on Friday ruling in favor of a man with U.S.-Jordanian citizenship who has been held in Iraq for over two years on suspicion of terror activities. Shawqi Omar has been held by multinational forces in Iraq on suspicion of planning kidnappings and terror operations in and around Baghdad. The U.S.-led forces had sought to turn Omar over to an Iraqi criminal court that specializes in terrorism prosecutions, but his wife and son stepped in and initiated habeas action in the United States. The government argued that U.S. courts had no jurisdiction over events unfolding halfway around the world, nor did they have jurisdiction over the operations of international forces. The government cited two WWII-era court cases to strengthen its argument. But on Friday, the D.C. Court of Appeals strongly disagreed... court said, in effect, that the two cases cited by the government did not apply to Omar because the defendants in those cases were citizens of foreign countries and had been convicted of prior crimes. Omar is a U.S. citizen who just stands accused of plotting acts of terror...
Rebuilding
chron.com/ ... 09:43:11
Gen. David Petraeus took command of the 135,000-strong U.S. force, declaring "
we will have to share the burdens and move forward together. If we can do that and if we can help the people of Iraq, the prospects of success are good. Failing that, Iraq will be doomed to continued violence and civil strife...
The stakes are very high. The way ahead will be hard, and there undoubtedly will be many tough days. But as I recently told members of the U.S. Senate, hard is not hopeless." Petraeus, who has served two previous tours in Iraq, takes over from Gen. George Casey who becomes Army chief of staff. In a letter to U.S. troops in Iraq, Petraeus said "in the end, Iraqis will decide the outcome of this struggle. Our task is to help them gain the time they need to save their country..." "
FRI 2007-FEB-09
Violence
voanews.com/ ... 10:26:31
The U.S. military says an American airstrike mistakenly hit a Kurdish police position in northern Iraq, killing five policemen in the city of Mosul. The military said the attack early Friday was intended against suspected al-Qaida in Iraq members. Kurdish officials put the death toll from the airstrike at eight killed and six wounded...
U.S. ground troops called for air support after coming under heavy fire during a raid in the Arab Jabour area late Thursday.
Britain's Ministry of Defense says a roadside bomb killed one British soldier and wounded three others today in Basra in southern Iraq.
Three U.S. soldiers were killed during combat operations in western al-Anbar province on Thursday...
news.monstersandcritics.com/ ... 10:25:35
Afghan and NATO forces killed at least ten suspected Taliban in a clash in the volatile southern province of Helmand... Afghan security forces recovered a lot of weapons and ammunition from the battlefield.... no Afghan or NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) forces were hurt in the engagement....
Threats
news24.com/ ... 10:22:58
A top Iranian cleric said on Friday the United States was within Iran's "firing range", a day after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed to hit back at US interests worldwide if attacked...
washingtonpost.com/ ... 10:17:03
British police on Friday charged five men arrested in Birmingham last week with terrorism-related offenses, officially alleging for the first time that the men were plotting to kidnap and kill a British soldier... spokesman for the West Midlands police, said police had recovered 4,500 pieces of evidence, including computers and mobile phones, that point to "the stark reality of what was being planned in our midst..."
Supernatural Violence
edition.cnn.com/ ... 10:14:14
An Israeli-Arab legislator Friday helped negotiate an end to a standoff between Palestinians and police at a disputed Jerusalem holy site. The Palestinian protesters were upset with an Israeli construction project near Al Aqsa Mosque... The area known as the Temple Mount to Jews... According to Israeli police, 15 Israeli police officers were wounded and 17 Palestinians were arrested...
Healing Ourselves
smokedot.org/ ... 10:31:35
a recent study has found a chemical that is like THC, but is produced naturally in the brain and controls mobility. This chemical could be used to help treat Parkinson's...
Reasons for Repeal
startribune.com/ ... 10:37:00
David Monson arrived at church the picture of rural conservative respectability, dressed in a suit and accompanied by his 79-year-old mother. Tall, neatly trimmed, attentive to neighbors as he escorted his mother to a pew, he is all you might expect and more: farmer, rural school superintendent, president of his Lutheran congregation, member of the Eagles, assistant Republican leader in the state House of Representatives. He also is on the radar of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, a hero of High Times Magazine. "He had to get fingerprinted," farmer Howard Hove said, laughing as he watched his friend mingle at church. "And a background check!" Monson, 56, wants to be the first U.S. farmer licensed to experiment with industrial hemp. Although it is a crop with a patriotic past, it is suspect now, guilty by association with its horticultural cousin, cannabis... Monson plans to raise hemp on only 10 acres at first, a demonstration crop, but under federal regulations, the acreage still must be completely fenced and reported by GPS coordinates. All hemp sales also must be reported. "That's a per-acre cost of about $400, and that would be prohibitive..."
kxly.com/ ... 10:35:10
Back in 1998 Washington voters passed an initiative giving people who suffer from certain types of diseases the right to use and possess small amounts of marijuana. But now even nine years later those same patients struggling to make sure if they get the treatments they need they won't wind up here in court. Pam Murch is a former advertising executive stricken with multiple sclerosis and scoliosis. After trying pain killers and muscle relaxers she found marijuana treats her symptoms the best...
dailybulletin.com/ ... 10:34:22
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge issued a temporary restraining order Friday against the owner of Claremont's medical marijuana dispensary, forcing the business to remain shut through at least March 15... "I am trying to run a city, and I'm going to make the decision when Claremont is ready" for a dispensary, Mayor Peter Yao said. "No one is going to change the priority in terms of how things get done in Claremont..." dispensary... opened... without a business license... The city passed a moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries in late September and can extend the moratorium through September 2008... on Friday, [owner] was flanked by two attorneys, including 29-year-old Allison Margolin, who touts herself as "LA's Dopest Attorney" and wears revealing clothing in print advertisements...
santamariatimes.com/ ... 10:31:59
Because the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors allows a needle exchange program in the county, 4th District Supervisor Katcho Achadjian said he couldn't deny establishment of medical marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated areas. "I never thought I'd be supporting this ... (but) the turning point for me was how could we allow a needle exchange (program) and not allow this..."
contracostatimes.com/ ... 10:31:06
A Northern California marijuana cultivation and distribution ring was smashed Wednesday morning with the seizure of at least $6 million worth of the plant, including some being harvested at a house across the street from Sequoia Elementary School in Oakland... Five houses in Oakland and West Sacramento were raided and at least six people arrested...
[There would be no illegal grow ops or dangerous meth labs, no black market, and certainlyno $6mil for a bunch of weeds, if there were no evil laws prohibiting individuals from doing what they want to do with their own bodies and driving the market underground! Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!]
Big Nanny
seattlepi.nwsource.com/ ... 10:29:12
Philadelphia is set to become the second large American city to ban restaurants from serving trans fats, which doctors say increase the risk of heart disease...
US Election 2008
washingtonpost.com/ ... 10:28:03
Former senator John Edwards (D-N.C.) condemned comments made by two bloggers on his presidential campaign staff but chose not to fire the women... Before joining the Edwards campaign, [the two women] each maintained personal Web logs on which they posted highly critical and profane thoughts about topics including the Roman Catholic Church. Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, called on Edwards to fire the duo, whom he described as "vulgar, trash-talking bigots..." Donohue was subsequently attacked by a number of left-leaning groups -- led by Media Matters for America -- who cast his comments as purely partisan...
World Without Borders
breitbart.com/ ... 10:24:52
Three illegal immigrants were shot dead and two more were wounded after falling prey to suspected bandits as they crossed into the United States from Mexico...
Theory of Education
wben.com/ ... 10:24:29
Two fourth-grade students told administrators they believe they saw 59-year-old [female substitute teacher] using drugs in the classroom last week. Police were called in and found evidence of what they think was cocaine. She was charged with child endangerment and banned from the school...
Big Brother
apnews.myway.com/ ... 10:22:43
Isaac Daniel calls the tiny Global Positioning System chip he's embedded into a line of sneakers "peace of mind..."
guardian.co.uk/ ... 10:22:15
A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act. The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists' ability to probe people's minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future...
Modern Culture
chron.com/ ... 10:21:47
Joachim Horvitz nearly threw out the glossy photo two weeks ago. Today, it's funding his 18-month-old son's college fund on the Internet auction site, eBay. Last week, the signed NASA publicity still of Lisa Nowak was one of thousands NASA hands out each year to promote the space agency. But that was last week, before Nowak the 43-year-old Naval Academy graduate and mother of three became the lead character in a bizarre news story that unfolded in Florida. By late Thursday, the bidding for Horvitz's autographed Nowak photo was at $1,825.50, and there's four more days of bidding left...
Transport
articles.moneycentral.msn.com/ ... 10:20:25
Britain's biggest bus company will buy Greyhound's parent, Laidlaw International, for $3.6 billion... Greyhound could find itself back on the deal market soon, however. One analyst speculated that FirstGroup would move to sell off the bus line, which made up 40% of Laidlaw's revenue last year...
Disinformation Propaganda & Spin
cbc.ca/ ... 10:40:33
U.S. drivers who tested positive for cannabis over a 10-year period had a 29 per cent higher risk of causing a fatal crash than motorists not taking the drug, a new Canadian-led study suggests... the researchers report in Wednesday's edition of the Canadian Journal of Public Health.
The journal's publisher has launched a campaign against drug-impaired driving...
[So there's no chance the report could be slanted...?!?]
David Malmo-Levine, a long-time marijuana user in Vancouver, believes steady pot smokers are actually more cautious on the road. "You're going to be relaxed, you're going to be focused, it might help fight fatigue and might help you deal with road rage and be able to mellow out," said Malmo-Levine...
There are problems with Bedard's study
, said pharmacology professor David Cook of the University of Alberta. The study only found the presence of cannabis, not evidence of intoxication a missing link in the research...
boston.com/ ... 10:23:43
I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that
global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers,
though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future... -Ellen Goodman
abcnews.go.com/ ... 10:18:55
A "very damning" report by the Defense Department's inspector general depicts a Pentagon that purposely manipulated intelligence in an effort to link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida in the runup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq... The investigation by acting inspector general Thomas F. Gimble found that prewar intelligence work at the Pentagon, including a contention that the CIA had underplayed the likelihood of an al-Qaida connection, was inappropriate but not illegal...
US Congress
bloomberg.com/ ... 10:16:21
Feb 8... "I have said that I am happy to ride commercial if the plane they have doesn't go coast to coast," Pelosi said today...
cnn.com/ ... 10:15:56
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not request a larger plane for personal use to travel cross-country without stopping, Bill Livingood, the House sergeant at arms, said Thursday. Livingood said the request was his, and he made it for security reasons... "I have never asked for a larger plane," Pelosi said. "This is a myth that they are talking about on the floor." The White House also stood behind Pelosi. "As speaker of the House, she is entitled to military transport and ... the proper arrangements are being made between the Sergeant of Arms Office in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Department of Defense," White House spokesman Tony Snow said. "We think it's appropriate," he added. "And so, again, I think this is much ado about not a whole lot. It is important for the speaker to have this kind of protection and travel..."
THU 2007-FEB-08
Sex can be... disturbing
timesunion.com/ ... 11:20:38
BRATTLEBORO, Vt. -- A 47-year-old data processing supervisor in the state comptroller's office this week denied charges that he was naked and masturbating inside a glass-enclosed ski lift car at a Vermont ski area... charged with felony lewd and lascivious conduct... also was charged with misdemeanor
marijuana possession... a 26-year-old man riding a gondola down the hill passed Barret's gondola, which was on its way up. The witness, according to a police affidavit, could see a naked man standing up in the enclosed ski lift car. The witness said the man was masturbating... noted the number on the side of the gondola and made a report to the ski patrol when he got to the bottom of the hill. Police and Stratton security greeted a fully dressed Barret at the bottom of the hill, and the witness identified him as the naked lift rider...
Under Tyranny
breitbart.com/ ... 11:15:48
Iran has said it had identified 100 spies working for the United States and Israel in border areas of the Islamic state. "One hundred people who were directly working for the US and Israeli intelligence ... who were intending to collect political and military information were identified and are now in our intelligence net..." added that a number of Iranians who wanted to take part in spying courses abroad had also been arrested...
Modern Medicine can be Dangerous
seattlepi.nwsource.com/ ... 10:14:55
A disturbing number of doctors do not feel obligated to tell patients about medical options they oppose morally, such as abortion and teen birth control, and believe they have no duty to refer people elsewhere for such treatments, researchers say...
Industrial Tragedy
sfgate.com/ ... 10:03:00
Calif... Two divers with the state Department of Water Resources died Wednesday while inspecting underwater equipment at a pumping plant in Merced County... entered about 30 feet of water at the Dos Amigos Pumping Plant, about 10 miles south of Los Banos, to look for freshwater mussels that have been attaching to equipment... The water around the plant is dark and murky with only a foot or so of visibility... and it isn't unusual to get large debris -- including abandoned cars and large appliances like refrigerators -- in the canals... moves at about 5-10 mph at the surface and runs faster toward the bottom of the waterway and where it meets a grate that filters out large debris... first fatal accident in the department's history... The pumping plant and canal where the men died is part of the State Water Project, which carries drinking water to Southern California...
[um... yuck!]
Threats
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:16:36
Iran's Revolutionary Guards test-fired missiles on Thursday that a commander said could sink "big warships" in the Gulf, the Sea of Oman and the northern Indian Ocean...
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:57:55
Israel said on Thursday it hoped to avoid further fighting along the Lebanon border following a clash with the Lebanese army but cautioned that it would not tolerate hostile activity against Israeli forces...
euronews.net/ ... 09:57:39
Israeli and Lebanese troops have exchanged fire on the border between the two countries, in an incident described as "serious" by a United Nations force in the area. The Israeli Defence Force says its troops were searching for mines on its own side of the frontier when they came under fire. The Lebanese army claims an Israeli vehicle crossed into Lebanon. There was a brief exchange of fire but neither side has reported any casualties...
forbes.com/ ... 09:56:13
North Korea agreed in principle Thursday to take initial steps toward dismantling its nuclear programs
at the start of international talks seeking the first concrete progress on disarming Pyongyang. The main U.S. negotiator said talks resumed on a positive note, and that sides were hoping to achieve an agreement on the first steps for the North's disarmament...
[And we can trust what they say because...?]
It came from the sky
cbs4.com/ ... 11:13:17
Nearly a decade after the highly publicized Phoenix Light Phenomenon, more strange lights have appeared in the night sky over downtown Phoenix. Tuesday night, mysterious lights lit up the western skies over Phoenix and soon after, phones began ringing off the hook at radio, television and police stations from witnesses wondering what the lights were... The Yuma Marine Base claims it has the answer. Base officials said the amber-colored flares came from training flights on the Goldwater Gunnery Range. They went on to explain that the amber flares are used as targets...
wxii12.com/ ... 11:12:17
in the Piedmont-Triad... There have been strange reports about flying objects in the skies -- and some people think they're UFOs... lots of lights and made no noise... Strange sightings have been reported in a number of locations in recent days. The National Weather Service said it has seen nothing out of the ordinary on its radar, and the Appalachian State University Observatory said it was probably a bolide -- a fireball-like meteor that frequently enters the earth's atmosphere but is rarely seen...
World Zookeeping
terradaily.com/ ... 11:11:08
Sweden said Wednesday it would give its reindeer herders millions of euros... in emergency aid to help them feed their animals, which are starving because of thick ice that is preventing them from reaching the lichen they eat...
[See Al Gore article in "unlear on the concept" column for why this couldn't be happening....]
Extraterrestrial
time.com/ ... 10:11:52
he perfectly lurid way it all came unraveled is a tale that doesn't require much tellingnot that it won't be told and told and told again by cable, tabs and blogs. The truly meaningful question is why that unraveling happened at all. Annapolis grads and shuttle jocks aren't supposed to come unglued. And NASA, a brutally Darwinian place that has been screening astronauts for almost 50 years, is not supposed to let loose screws through. Is NASA not as good at this as we thought? Are astronauts more destructible souls than they seem? And what does all this say about the weight-bearing ability of any human mind when the load grows too great?..
Theory of Education
wcbstv.com/ ... 11:19:10
BROOKVILLE, N.Y. Five college students have been stripped of residence-hall jobs and are facing campus hearings over a video that mimics a hostage taking... In the video, five figures in ski masks speak in crude Middle Eastern accents as they threaten a mock captive -- a rubber duck that serves as the mascot of a residence hall at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University... posted on the Web sites Google and YouTube, but it has since been removed... was accompanied by a statement saying it was a joke, but university administrators saw it as insensitive... "I think the tape was an insult to the victims and families involved in hostage situations..." Student employees were expected to serve as role models, and "we expect them to be instructing our students on being sensitive regarding all groups," the provost said...
Print is Dead
haaretz.com/ ... 11:16:21
NY Times publisher: Our goal is to manage the transition from print to internet...
Unclear on the Concept
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:10:08
Emerging economies such as China are justified in holding back on fighting greenhouse gas emissions until richer polluters like the United States do more to solve the problem, former Vice President Al Gore said Wednesday
... "Never before has all of civilization been threatened," Gore said...
Theory of Justice
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:15:01
A former youth pastor was sentenced to death Wednesday for killing a teenager and her fetus in what is believed to be the first such order in Texas... convicted Friday of one count of capital murder for the death of [the teenager] and the fetus, of which he was the father... A 2003 Texas law amended the definition of the word "individual" to include an "unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth..." was three months pregnant Dec. 12, 2005, when her body was found in her family's home. She had been choked and stabbed 13 times... former youth pastor for a church, admitted to the stabbing the day after the killings. Prosecutors also said he worked out at a gym and went shopping after the crime. He showed no emotion when his punishment was read... at least 36 states have homicide laws defining a fetus as a person...
breitbart.com/ ... 11:09:10
Russert seemed uncomfortable at times as Libby's attorneys asked him to explain why he willingly told an FBI agent about a July 2003 conversation with Libby, then gave a sworn statement saying he would not testify about that conversation because it was confidential... Russert's credibility is under fire because he and Libby tell very different stories about a July 2003 phone call that is at the heart of the case. The question of which to believe could be a critical jury room issue...
What's In a Name?
stuff.co.nz/ ... 10:47:59
Country singer Keith Urban has filed a lawsuit against a... New Jersey... painter of the same name, claiming that the lesser known Keith Urban's website infringes trademark and cyber-squatting laws... says in the lawsuit that the website is being used "in a manner likely to deceive the public into believing that the website has a connection to Plaintiff that does not exist"...
[Comment:]
The courts have already settled this. If your name is John Smith, you can keep www.johnsmith.com, no matter who else more famous or richer also has that name... -Justin Starren...
[Comment:]
While I'm normally all for the underdog little guy fighting for his rights, it is kind of hard to cheer for Keith Urban (the painter) when he does such underhand things on his site as place the words "One of the best fine artists and computer graphics artist today" in invisible text. So I'll just be pulling for the lawyers to make lots of money and the newspapers to get lots of website hits for trumping up such a non-story. -Joe Petrow...
Film is dead
news.monstersandcritics.com/ ... 10:15:35
Eastman Kodak Co. will cut an additional 3,000 jobs by year`s end as it seeks to retool itself for digital imaging... now expects to cut 28,000 to 30,000 jobs...
Researching the Obvious
sciam.com/ ... 10:15:11
Ingredient in Male Sweat Raises Women's Hormone Levels...
Digital Threat
usatoday.com/ ... 10:14:23
A hacker attack on the Internet failed this week but experts warn there could be more to come. Three of the 13 computers that help direct all Internet traffic were hit with a flood of data requests Tuesday... not yet clear where the torrent came from...
technical groups that quietly run the Internet behind the scenes have built a system designed to reroute traffic during an attack. It appeared to have worked
, since few users noticed any slowdown... In a worst-case scenario, the attack may have been a small-scale assault designed to test the vulnerability of the system... The unknown hackers "may be thinking about something big..." On the other hand, "It may have just been kids...."
US Congress
sfgate.com/ ... 11:17:44
Top House Republicans such as Minority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri and Rep. Adam Putnam of Florida, chairman of the House Republican Conference, agree the speaker merits the use of a military jet for security reasons, but say Pelosi has been pressing the Pentagon to provide her with a bigger jet than used by Hastert so she can ferry family, other lawmakers and lobbyists across the country. Pelosi and her staff scoff at the criticism, saying she has just asked the Pentagon for guidance because of the travel distance to California and even President Bush believes security concerns warrant military aircraft for her. But Putnam said Pelosi's bid for a bigger plane, which he dubbed "Air Force Three," shows "an arrogance of office that just defies common sense" and constitutes a major deviation from the previous speaker's perks...
abcnews.go.com/ ... 09:59:43
A source close to the controversy over the request made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for use of a military plane that can fly to and from her home district in San Francisco without having to stop to refuel, told ABC News that the
Pentagon has rebuffed Pelosi's request
... Pentagon officials and the Bush administration have instead offered Pelosi use of the same plane made available to former Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.: a C-20, which seats about 12 passengers and five crew members... would generally have to stop to refuel to complete the 2,800-mile trip from Washington, D.C. to the San Francisco Bay Area, depending on the headwinds... Pelosi has expressed concern about having to stop and refuel, primarily for security reasons...
WED 2007-FEB-07
Violence
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:53:09
SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan... More than 1,000 villagers have fled a southern Afghan town as Taliban fighters dig in to repel NATO efforts to drive them out... Helmand provincial governor Haji Assadullah Wafa told Reuters by phone a military operation would soon be launched to recapture Musa Qala, which the Taliban over-ran last week...
Supernatural Tyranny
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:50:09
The number of religious believers in China could be three times higher than official estimates... A poll of 4,500 people by Shanghai university professors found 31.4% of people above the age of 16 considered themselves as religious. This suggests 300 million people nationwide could be religious, compared to the official figure of 100 million...
Supernatural Threats
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:50:41
Israeli police have arrested the head of the country's Islamic movement, as he tried to protest against excavations near al-Aqsa mosque in east Jerusalem. Sheikh Raed Salah was detained along with six other activists after they tried to enter the Old City. Police limited access to the area amid calls by Muslim leaders for mass protests to stop the work going ahead. Palestinians say it could damage the foundations of the Aqsa compound, also revered by Jews as the Temple Mount. The Israeli authorities say renovations are needed to safeguard the ancient site and have guaranteed that they will be no structural damage to the ancient site...
thisislondon.co.uk/ ... 09:47:24
UK... The principal of an Islamic school has admitted that it uses textbooks which describe Jews as "apes" and Christians as "pigs" and has refused to withdraw them... She said: "Yes, I do recognise these books, of course. We have these books in our school. These books have good chapters that can be used by the teachers. It depends on the objectives the teacher wants to achieve..." [said] allegedly racist sections had been "misinterpreted"... school is owned, funded and run by the government of Saudi Arabia... Pupils have allegedly been heard saying they want to "kill Americans", praising 9/11 and idolising Osama bin Laden as their "hero"...
Scary Times
guardian.co.uk/ ... 09:06:31
Two of the nine men arrested under anti-terrorism laws during raids in Birmingham last week were released without charge today. Speaking after the men's release, a prominent Muslim spokesman said the events of the past seven days had left community relations "in tatters". Police were forced to either charge or release the men when a district judge refused to grant an extension to the time for which they could be held in custody... their solicitor said... "They have left the police station without any better understanding of why they were there than when they first arrived seven days ago.... Not a word was ever mentioned to either of them about a plot to kidnap, or the grisly suggestion of a beheading, or even of a soldier at all. Both have been met with a consistent refusal over seven days for any explanation for their arrest. They are convinced that others in the police station must be as innocent as they, and urge that they also be swiftly released...."
Digital Sex can be Dangerous
cbc.ca/ ... 09:04:55
Authorities in Vienna said Wednesday they have uncovered a major international child pornography ring... more than 2,360 suspects from 77 countries who paid to view videos depicting infants and young children being sexually abused... FBI was investigating about 600 of the suspects in the United States... No suspects were yet in custody, but Austrian authorities said they were sharing their information with law enforcement in other countries in hopes that suspects could be investigated and charged... Within a 24-hour period, investigators recorded more than 8,000 hits from 2,361 computer I.P. addresses in 77 countries ranging from Algeria to South Africa...
US Military
washingtonpost.com/ ... 09:37:07
A Sea Knight helicopter went down northwest of Baghdad on Wednesday... the fifth helicopter lost in Iraq in just over two weeks. The CH-46 helicopter went down about 20 miles northwest of the capital, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said, but he declined to comment on casualties...
It's Only Money
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:51:40
The U.S. Federal Reserve sent record payouts of more than $4 billion in cash to Baghdad on giant pallets aboard military planes shortly before the United States gave control back to Iraqis... The money, which had been held by the United States, came from Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the U.N.-run oil-for-food program and frozen assets belonging to the ousted Saddam Hussein regime... Bills weighing a total of 363 tons...
Free Expression
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:49:23
Two French Muslim groups have begun a lawsuit in a Paris court against magazine Charlie Hebdo over cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad. The groups say the magazine "insulted people on the basis of religion" in a case seen as a test of free speech. Charlie Hebdo reprinted Danish cartoons that provoked a violent backlash in the Muslim world a year ago. The newspaper Liberation republished the cartoons on Wednesday in solidarity with the magazine...
Digital Threat
news.com.com/ ... 09:48:35
A forthcoming bill in the U.S. Senate lays the groundwork for a national database of illegal images that Internet service providers would use to automatically flag and report suspicious content to police. The proposal, which Sen. John McCain is planning to introduce on Wednesday, also would require ISPs and perhaps some Web sites to alert the government of any illegal images of real or "cartoon" minors. Failure to do would be punished by criminal penalties including fines of up to $300,000...
[Only someone incredibly unclear on the technological hurdles and astronomical costs involved could make such a proposal!]
wnbc.com/ ... 09:40:45
A state senator from Brooklyn said on Tuesday he plans to introduce legislation that would ban people from using an MP3 player, cell phone, Blackberry or any other electronic device while crossing the street in either New York City or Buffalo...
Iraq
cnsnews.com/ ... 09:40:16
On Wednesday morning, Sens. John Kerry (Mass.), Patty Murray (Wash.), Jack Reed (R.I.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) will join veterans of the Iraq war in calling on Senate Republicans to "stop blocking a debate" on President Bush's plan to send 21,500 additional troops to Iraq. "Before sending another 48,000 young Americans into battle, the Congress owes it to our troops, their families, and their communities to have an honest and open discussion about their mission," the Democrats said in a news release. (It's not clear where the 48,000 number came from.)... Republicans insist they certainly do want a full debate on the issue -- but not just on the no-confidence resolution. Republicans complain that Democrats themselves are refusing to debate two other resolutions dealing with the Iraq war. One of those nonbinding resolutions says the Senate will not cut off funding for the war. But Democrats apparently want to avoid taking a position on war funding. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told the Senate on Tuesday that the U.S. mission in Iraq is the most important issue facing the country...
TUE 2007-FEB-06
WW2 - still with us
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 22:58:09
In the summer of 1940, the war with Germany was at a critical stage... On the morning of 29 August, a small team of the country's top scientists and engineers, under the direction of Sir Henry Tizard and in conditions of absolute secrecy, was about to board a converted ocean liner. With them they carried possibly the most precious cargo of the war - a black japanned metal deed box containing all of Britain's most valuable technological secrets. They were on their way to America - to give them away... Earlier that morning, radar expert, Dr Edward "Taffy" Bowen - a vital member of this Tizard Mission and responsible for looking after the metal deed box that was to become known as "Tizard's briefcase" - almost lost it. When he had arrived at London's Euston station, the Welshman had handed it to a porter while gathering up his remaining luggage, then watched helplessly as the man headed off to find the 0830 boat train to Liverpool without waiting for his customer. As he struggled to keep the porter in sight above the wartime throngs, Eddie Bowen would not have drawn much attention from the busy Londoners. Only his face would have betrayed his concern... But the greatest treasure of all was the prototype of a piece of hardware called a cavity magnetron... the key that would allow us to develop airborne radar... "...remains the key piece of technology that lies at the heart of your microwave oven today. The cavity magnetron's invention changed the world..."
Fun can be Dangerous
breitbart.com/ ... 22:54:28
CARRABASSETT VALLEY, Maine... while skiing down the Haulback Trail at Sugarloaf/USA. "My first thought was, 'What hit me?...a (snow) boarder? drunk skier? linebacker...?'" A whitetail deer attempting to cross the trail... The deer also went down. "Its legs were just pumping away really fast, they never stopped moving.... Luckily we just glanced off each other. I'm just glad the deer wasn't hurt..."
Disturbing Family Patterns
breitbart.com/ ... 22:51:24
ALBANY, Ore... [23yo] Albany father
used a 100,000-volt stun gun on his 18-month-old son
.... used it "multiple times" over three weeks.... up to 10 instances.... wife, 21, who was not named, reported the abuse on Saturday.... police haven't established a motive for the abuse, nor why it began about three weeks ago... not a Taser... but an older model that's applied directly to someone's skin...
Family Tragedy
breitbart.com/ ... 22:48:52
SHELBY TOWNSHIP, Mich... A [30yo] woman who police say was hearing voices was charged Monday with stabbing to death her two young daughters [8 & 5], whose bodies were found side by side in their home... Police said that [she] acknowledged killing her daughters and that alcohol and drugs may have been factors... also found three dead Pomeranian dogs stacked atop one another inside a cage, as well as a dead pet mouse...
Transport Trouble
kstp.com/ ... 22:25:40
Two serious injuries were reported after a blistering 40-car pileup in the south Metro late Tuesday morning, capping off the worst rush hour of the year so far. The wreck--which included dozens of cars and several jackknifed semis--happened around 10 a.m. just north of the Elko exit on I-35. Cars and semis littered ditches on more than a quarter-mile of road... south of the Twin Cities... there is a small dip in the northbound lane just south of where the accident happened. Because of that dip, oncoming drivers were not able to see the accident until they cleared the dip in the road. By that time, it was too late for many of them to stop...
Prison Sucks
breitbart.com/ ... 22:21:38
A former U.S. Border Patrol agent who was convicted of shooting a drug smuggling suspect and then lying about it was beaten by fellow inmates in prison, his relatives and a congressman said Tuesday. Prison officials did not immediately confirm that Ignacio Ramos had been attacked...
Industrial Tragedy
alertnet.org/ ... 22:19:53
An explosion at a Colombian coal mine killed eight workers just three days after another deadly mining blast killed more than 30 people...
Violence
chron.com/ ... 22:17:19
Police thwarted a suicide attack on the airport serving Pakistan's capital late Tuesday, officials said. A shootout about 200 yards from the international terminal killed the assailant and wounded three police... sixth militant attack in the past 15 days mostly suicide bombings in Pakistan's northwestern frontier near the Afghan border...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:58:48
Pro-Taleban militants have killed two men they accused of spying against them in a Pakistani region near the Afghan border... No one has admitted killing the men, who officials said appeared to be Afghan refugees. They have yet to be formally identified...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:58:13
WOKINGHAM, England... A letter bomb exploded Tuesday at an office southwest of London, injuring two people, in the second attack of its kind in two days... too soon to say whether the explosion was linked to a letter bomb that detonated Monday in central London... The two employees injured in the explosion were not hospitalized...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:54:48
An Iranian diplomat has been kidnapped by gunmen in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad... Jalal Sharafi, the embassy's second secretary, was abducted from his car on Sunday in central Karrada district by men wearing Iraqi army uniforms. Iran condemned the kidnapping and said it held the US responsible for his life. A US military spokesman said no US or Iraqi troops had been involved...
War is Hell
hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:57:08
A leaked video in which an American pilot is heard saying "we're in jail, dude," after U.S. troops killed a British soldier during a friendly fire incident in Iraq was released by The Sun newspaper Tuesday. Lance Cpl. Matty Hull died when troops fired on his convoy in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on March 28, 2003. A coroner investigating Hull's death had demanded the video be released and presented as evidence in the inquest but U.S. authorities refused. The leak means that the material is now in the public domain, his office said Tuesday, suggesting it may be shown when the inquest resumes Feb. 16. U.S. military officials conducted their own investigation but the findings have not been made public...
timesonline.co.uk/ ... 09:54:21
Every war in history has suffered from friendly-fire incidents... systems to ensure that friendly forces can be identified, particularly from the air, have improved significantly over the years. Today, troops engaged in night-time operations in Afghanistan, for example, are required to have infra-red sticks attached to the top of their helmets which cannot be seen by the naked eye but show up brightly in the gloom for overflying coalition aircraft hunting for the Taleban... Judging by the radio chat of the two pilots in the American A10 tank-busting aircraft which opened fire on the armoured Scimitar carrying Lance-Corporal of Horse Matty Hull of The Blues and Royals, neither seemed to be fully aware of the British style of identification. Even when one pilot focused his night-vision goggles on the the British armoured patrol and spotted the "orange things" on the turret, it did not produce what should have been instant recognition of a friendly convoy... The two American pilots were flying one of the deadliest war machines in the American inventory. The A10 Thunderbolt "Warthog..." With such a beast under their control it is imperative that the pilots identify with 100 per cent conviction possible targets on the ground before opening fire. Yet in the case of the death of Lance-Corporal of Horse Matty Hull, the kill went ahead despite the element of doubt in the minds of the pilots...
Animals can be Dangerous
local6.com/ ... 09:47:17
A crew aboard a shrimping boat were rescued after a group of bull sharks rammed and bit the vessel until it eventually sank off the Florida coast... a group of sharks had been slamming into the Christy Nichole's hull for four days. But then a 14-foot bull shark broke the boat's tail shaft, leaving Schmall and his crew of two adrift about 100 miles off the coast... radioed for help, and another vessel picked the crew up...
Big Whoops Cascade
truthdig.com/ ... 23:01:02
Snickers parent company Mars has pulled the anti-homosexual ads it was hosting on its websiteexpressing regret and saying it will never air them again... featured two men reacting in violent disgust after accidentally kissing while eating a candy bar...
Film is dead
business.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 23:00:16
Kodak is considering hiving off its traditional photographic film arm
and selling or spinning off the business it created more than a century ago.... Antonio Perez, the chief executive of Kodak, who came in three years ago to turn around the ailing company,
believes that the traditional film business has just a decade of growth ahead of it....
the Hollywood movie industry is the last big film customer in the world, but... digitisation is gathering pace....
Love is Strange
dailymail.co.uk/ ... 22:23:38
Yesterday at Mantua... archaeologists revealed the discovery of a couple locked in a tender embrace, one that has endured for more than 5,000 years. The find was unearthed by experts digging at a neolithic site at a less than romantic industrial estate. Scientists are to examine the skeletons to try to establish how old they were when they died and how long they have been buried... "We have found plenty of women embracing children but never a couple. Much less a couple hugging -- and they really are hugging. It's possible that the man died first and then the woman was killed in sacrifice to accompany his soul. From an initial examination they appear young as their teeth are not worn down but we have sent the remains to a laboratory to establish their age at the time of death. They are face to face and their arms and legs are entwined and they are really hugging..."
Music industry is dead
forbes.com/ ... 22:21:11
Apple Chief Executive Steve
Jobs urged major record companies Tuesday to drop the anti-piracy usage restrictions they attach to music sold over the Web.
In doing so, Jobs joins a chorus of critics who argue that by locking up digital music, the record companies make their product less attractive and cripple sales...
Theory of Sex Education
blogs.chron.com/ ... 09:56:21
Citing concerns about cost and safety, key lawmakers Monday morning called on Gov. Rick Perry to rescind his executive order mandating that sixth-grade girls be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer. "We are not in an emergency. The Legislature is in session," said Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, referring to bills filed that Perry's order has rendered moot. She said she was outraged that Perry bypassed the legislative process and will ask the attorney general to review his authority to made such a sweeping order...
Digital Threat
news.zdnet.com/ ... 22:20:37
There are signs that hackers attacked key parts of the backbone of the Internet on Tuesday, but no damage seems to have been done... appears to have focused on the Domain Name System... Several key DNS servers saw traffic spike in the early in the morning on Tuesday, several experts said--a sign of an attack...
pcmag.com/ ... 09:55:47
Microsoft zero-day vulnerabilities are increasingly so commonplace, the risk is lost with the message. On Feb. 2, Microsoft issued another security alert, this one for Excel, that largely went unnoticed... Microsoft warned that "other Office applications are potentially vulnerable" to the zero-day flaw... Zero-day refers to a flaw for which there is an exploit but no available fix. The Excel vulnerability is Microsoft's fifth zero-day exploit since December, and part of an increasingly troubling trend...
Your Government at Play
apnews.myway.com/ ... 09:52:13
right after Hurricane Katrina... The Federal Emergency Management Administration has determined nearly 70,000 Louisiana households improperly received $309.1 million in grants, and officials acknowledge those numbers are likely to grow... gave out nearly $5.3 billion in aid to storm victims... At least 162,750 homes that didn't exist before the storms may have received a total of more than $1 billion in improper or illegal payments... The Justice Department so far has prosecuted more than 400 people for storm-related fraud, and $18 million has been returned to FEMA or the American Red Cross... The amount recovered so far, however, is slight compared with estimates of widespread fraud... hurricane aid was used for to pay for guns, strippers and tattoos. The GAO concluded that between $600 million and $1.4 billion was improperly spent on Katrina relief alone...
Yeah, Sure!
denverpost.com/ ... 09:45:50
The Rev. Ted Haggard emerged from three weeks of intensive counseling convinced he is "completely heterosexual" and told an oversight board that his sexual contact with men was limited to his accuser...
Marriage Today
nwcn.com/ ... 09:41:19
OLYMPIA, Wash. - An initiative filed by proponents of same-sex marriage would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or else have their marriage annulled... marriage would be limited to men and women who are able to have children. Couples would be required to prove they can have children in order to get a marriage license, and if they did not have children within three years, their marriage would be subject to annulment... All other marriages would be defined as "unrecognized" and people in those marriages would be ineligible to receive any marriage benefits...
MON 2007-FEB-05
Sick, Sick, Sick
breitbart.com/ ... 22:28:57
A 26-year-old man in Sweden will face assault charges and abortion law violations after he allegedly slipped his pregnant girlfriend abortion pills... leading her to nearly suffer a miscarriage...
Nature can be Deadly
breitbart.com/ ... 22:26:39
A bone-chilling cold wave with temperatures as low as 42 below zero shut down schools for thousands of youngsters Monday, sent homeless people into shelters and put car batteries on the disabled list from the northern Plains across the Great Lakes. At least four deaths were linked to the cold weather. The cold was accompanied by snow that was measured in feet in parts of upstate New York...
Civilization vs Gangsterism
today.reuters.com/ ... 22:22:22
A bipartisan resolution repudiating President George W. Bush's decision to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq failed to advance in the U.S. Senate on Monday, dealing a serious setback to critics of the war. The resolution needed 60 votes before the 100-member Senate could begin debate, but it got 49, with 47 voting against. Although it would not have been binding on the president, the measure was the first serious effort in Congress to confront Bush over the unpopular Iraq war...
Mass Murdering Monsters
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:54:01
The Iraqi government said on Sunday that half the Sunni Muslim militants behind the bombings shaking the country had arrived through neighboring Syria... "We have confirmation that 50 percent of these takfiris and killers who call themselves Arab jihadists come across the Syrian border," Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Al Arabiya TV, referring to radical Sunnis whose ideology brands some Muslims as infidels and allows their killing... "Syria closes its eyes. As we have said before and we say again today, we are facing a bloody and painful day for us in Iraq as a result of Syria's lack of seriousness in controlling the border..."
Under Tyranny
msnbc.msn.com/ ... 09:53:00
A Saudi Arabian judge sentenced 20 foreigners to receive lashes and spend several months in prison after convicting them of attending a party where alcohol was served and men and women danced... The defendants were among 433 foreigners, including some 240 women, arrested by the kingdom's religious police for attending the party in Jiddah... the rest of those arrested were awaiting trial...
Threats
tulsaworld.com/ ... 22:36:10
Pakistani police arrested six suspected members of an al-Qaida-linked Sunni Muslim militant group who were plotting attacks on a major Shiite festival... also seized some 30 assault rifles, 10 grenades and more than two pounds of explosives in Jan. 28 raids on homes in the eastern city of Lahore...
ynetnews.com/ ... 09:49:11
"Giant achievements" by Iran will be unveiled by its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in the coming days, the Iranian Fars news agency reported on Saturday. The Iranian news agency said an upcoming dramatic announcement on Iran's nuclear "rights" would be made on February 11. The report was accompanied by a series of announcements heralding alleged Iranian technological and medical breakthroughs, including an "AIDS cure..."
Digital Sex Education
playfuls.com/ ... 09:29:53
A new study to be published in this weeks edition of Pediatrics reveals that children and adolescents stumble upon more and more porn on the Internet, despite search filters. The exposure to porn occurs while simply browsing the Web and usually in an accidental manner, the study revealed. Among those questioned in the study, 42% have confessed that they have seen pornographic content (images or even short movies) in the last year. 66% of those who responded that exposure to porn occurred while they were Web-browsing have declared that they did not intentionally search for pornographic content and did not want it...
Violence
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:54:57
A bomb has gone off at a railway station at Barakaldo near Bilbao in Spain's Basque region, causing damage and fire but no injuries... Basque authorities say the bomb may have been planted by the armed separatist group Eta. On Sunday, 18 people from an illegal Basque youth group were arrested. Last month the Supreme Court ruled it was a terrorist organisation because it had links to Eta...
smh.com.au/ ... 09:28:50
LONDON: A letter bomb has exploded at the headquarters of the company which administers the British capital's traffic congestion toll, injuring a woman... her injuries were thought to be minor...
Animal Companions
dailymail.co.uk/ ... 09:48:36
His bright eyes and mischievous antics would melt the hardest of hearts. But this puppy found himself abandoned because he suffered the misfortune of being
born with no ears
... Experts say they have never seen anything like Weasel the border terrier cross - and hope he can find a new home where his disability won't be an issue. And, despite appearances, it seems the 10-month-old puppy can actually hear, for he is believed to have working inner ears covered by skin... Vets hope they will be able to let the tiny dog hear properly for the first time by making tiny openings where his outer ears should be... he has tiny earflaps sticking out...
Dinosaurs -- still with us
hindustantimes.com/ ... 09:46:54
In a remarkable feat, three amateur explorers have stumbled upon more than
100 fossilised eggs of dinosaurs
in Madhya Pradesh. The eggs, belonging to the Cretaceous Era (approximately 144 to 65 million years ago), have been discovered in Kukshi-Bagh area of Dhar district, some 150 kms south-west of Indore. The rare find is a significant step in the study of the pre-historic life in Narmada Valley.... three types of soropaud... also discovered footprints of the dinosaurs through which they could also trace the 'track way' of the heavy animals...
Extraterrestrial
orlandosentinel.com/ ... 22:24:19
A NASA astronaut is being held without bail after police say she attacked her rival for another astronaut's attention at Orlando International Airport Monday. Lisa Marie Nowak drove more than 12 hours from Texas to meet the 1 a.m. flight of a younger woman who had also been seeing the astronaut Nowak pined for...
startribune.com/ ... 09:45:05
From southeastern Wisconsin to as far as Des Moines, Iowa and St. Louis, people reported seeing balls of fire, possibly meteors, streaking across the sky Sunday night...
Defending Ourselves
tulsaworld.com/ ... 22:35:24
A man was killed Sunday afternoon when he allegedly tried to break in to a Tulsa home and was shot several times by the resident... man began knocking on and kicking the door at a home... apparently in an attempt to break in to the residence... The resident fired several shots into the door as it opened, hitting the suspect, who then backpedaled and collapsed on the ground next to the driveway where he was pronounced dead... If the shooting is ruled justifiable, it may fall under Oklahoma's "Make My Day" law.
Such a ruling would be made by the District Attorney's Office... The purpose of the law is to protect the victim of crime who defends home and family against unlawful intrusion from any criminal prosecution or civil action. The law states a person can use force, including deadly force, to defend his or her home...
Print is Dead
guardian.co.uk/ ... 22:30:48
For centuries, readers thumbed through the crackling pages of
Sweden's Post-och Inrikes Tidningar newspaper.
No longer.
The world's oldest paper still in circulation has dropped its paper edition and now exists only in cyberspace.
The newspaper, founded in 1645 by Sweden's Queen Kristina, became a Web-only publication on Jan. 1....
Lost & Found
breitbart.com/ ... 22:29:26
A Missouri man accused of kidnapping two boys and holding one for more than four years was charged Monday with forcible sodomy. The charges were the first time authorities have openly accused Michael Devlin of molesting any of the children...
Disinformation Propaganda & Spin
canadafreepress.com/ ... 22:26:10
Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was the first Canadian Ph.D. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why...
Big Brother
floridatoday.com/ ... 22:24:57
Police Chief William Berger vows to deploy an unmanned aerial vehicle despite contentions from the Federal Aviation Administration and a national pilots' association that his department must first get federal approval before doing so. Berger said the $30,000, 8-pound aircraft -- which he likens to a model plane and would use to aid police on the ground -- does not fall under FAA regulations. And he said he is prepared to seek assistance from Brevard County's congressional representatives, if necessary...
Unclear on the Concept
earthtimes.org/ ... 09:56:20
A growing number of Iraqis blamed the United States Sunday for the suicide bombing the day before that killed at least 130 people at a market in Baghdad.Those joining the criticism say the United States contributed to conditions that led to the worst single suicide bombing in the war, because of the slow pace of completing the new U.S. security plan...
[The democrats have a solution... getting us out completely...?!?]
Theory of Sex Education
msnbc.msn.com/ ... 09:54:28
Some conservatives and parents rights groups worry that requiring girls to get vaccinated against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer would condone premarital sex and interfere with the way they raise their children...
People are Born
breitbart.com/ ... 22:28:22
A newborn wrapped in blankets and abandoned on an elderly couple's frigid doorstep in Saskatoon in Canada's windy plains over the weekend was warm and well in hospital... The baby girl was found outside the couple's front door around 10:00 am Saturday when one of them, a retired construction worker, went out to start his car in frigid temperatures... The infant, weighing only 3.2 kilograms (seven pounds), was likely left there a half hour to a few hours earlier... "It was a close call..."
wcbstv.com/ ... 09:52:01
An Atlantic City woman playing the penny slots Saturday morning left the Resorts Atlantic City casino with her own little jackpot -- a new baby boy... was eight months pregnant... after going to the restroom she told a security guard that she might be giving birth. Thompson said the guard thought she was joking. Then her water broke. Minutes later, a boy weighing less than five pounds was born... Four security guards helped Thompson deliver the baby, wrapping the child in a jacket until paramedics arrived...
Digital Beatles
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:44:48
Apple Inc. has settled its long-running trademark dispute with The Beatles' company Apple Corps Ltd., in a deal which could pave the way for the band's songs to be played on Apple's iTunes music store. In a statement, the companies said Apple Inc. would now own all the trademarks related to "Apple" and would license certain trademarks back to Apple Corps for continued use. The trademark lawsuit between the companies will also end with each party bearing its own legal costs.
"We love the Beatles,
and it has been painful being at odds with them over these trademarks," Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in a statement...
Human Right
thestate.com/ ... 09:41:57
Michigan's marriage amendment prohibits government agencies and schools from providing health care and other benefits to the same-sex partners of employees if the benefits are similar to those offered married couples, the state Court of Appeals ruled in the first major legal interpretation of the proposal overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2004...
US Election 2008
wnbc.com/ ... 22:23:07
In a sign that he's serious about running for the White House... Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor... was filing a so-called "statement of candidacy" with the Federal Election Commission...
iht.com/ ... 09:50:31
Senator John Kerry... Last week, days after he announced he would not run again, Kerry said there was no point to dwelling on what might have been. "You know, that's such a waste of time right now," he said in a Capitol hallway interview. "I came close, but so what? I didn't make it, so move on. Just go forward. There's no sense going backwards..." Kerry says he finds it "freeing" to not be a presidential candidate. "Hopefully, the things I say and do will not be taken in the light of a presidential race anymore," he said. "And I think that's positive..."
nydailynews.com/ ... 09:40:56
Calling Sen. Hillary Clinton a "panderer and a flatterer," consumer advocate Ralph Nader said yesterday he'd be sorely tempted to mount his own 2008 presidential campaign if she wins the Democratic nod... Many Democrats blame Nader for costing Al Gore the White House in 2000. The Green Party candidate won 96,000 votes in Florida, the state Gore lost by several hundred votes...
Digital Culture
dailytech.com/ ... 09:39:48
In the software industry, piracy results in the loss of billions of dollars every year. It is estimated that over 35% of all software installations worldwide are pirated (22% in North America). That number is even higher in China and Vietnam where software piracy is estimated at 90% and 92% respectively... estimates that more than 33% of all Microsoft software is pirated... This comes as no surprise to Romanian President Traian Basescu. It is estimated that 70% of the software used in Romania is pirated -- and President Basescu is proud of it. In a recent joint news conference with Microsoft chairman and founder Bill Gates, Basescu had this to say about piracy; "Piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania..... It helped Romanians improve their creative capacity in the IT industry, which has become famous around the world ... Ten years ago, it was an investment in Romania's friendship with Microsoft and with Bill Gates." Not surprisingly, Bill Gates had no comment for Basescu's remarks...
SUN 2007-FEB-04
Sick, Sick, Sick
earthtimes.org/ ... 21:52:04
LOS ANGELES... A family has filed a claim against the California Highway Patrol after photos of a daughter killed in a car accident repeatedly appeared in e-mail... Gruesome photos of her decapitated body began appearing on relatives' e-mail accounts just days after the accident. The family later learned that the photos had been taken by CHP investigators and had been shown on various Web sites, often alongside pornography... officers acknowledged that the photos had been improperly released to the public... family requests $20 million for emotional distress and punitive damages...
Nature can be Deadly
news.monstersandcritics.com/ ... 21:50:33
Jakarta - Severe flooding that has killed at least 20 people and forced nearly 340,000 to flee their homes continued to paralyse much of the Indonesian capital Monday for a fifth day...
Digital Violence
today.reuters.com/ ... 21:41:21
"A street person was clubbed to death at dawn on Sunday," reads the Rio Body Count Web site, which counted 38 people dead and 25 wounded since February 1, when the page launched. Vinicius Costa, a 25-year-old systems analyst, and cartoonist Andre Dahmer, 32, founded www.riobodycount.com.br to capture the public's attention, which has become complacent to the daily brutality in the so-called Marvelous City...
Mass Murdering Monsters
timesonline.co.uk/ ... 22:01:40
ISLAMIC terror cells in Britain have been instructed to carry out a series of kidnappings and beheadings of the kind allegedly planned by the nine terrorist suspects arrested in Birmingham last week. The "strategic" assassination instruction was issued by Al-Qaedas leaders in Pakistan and Iraq to dozens of their followers in this country. It was uncovered by MI5 last autumn, senior security sources say. As a result police are on standby for multiple attempts by terrorists to kidnap and then behead people across Britain. MI5 is conducting a counter-terrorism surveillance operation to prevent such an attack...
today.reuters.com/ ... 21:40:36
Mortar bombs killed 15 people in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad on Sunday in fresh violence after a truck bomb killed 135 people in a Shi'ite area...
Yuck!
telegraph.co.uk/ ... 10:52:39
Sony Ericsson, the mobile phone company, has launched a handset that releases a faint smell as it is used...
Modern Medicine can be Dangerous
news.yahoo.com/ ... 10:50:18
A ruling by Switzerland's highest court released Friday has opened up the possibility that people with serious mental illnesses could be helped by doctors to take their own lives... "If the death wish is based on an autonomous decision which takes all circumstances into account, then a mentally ill person can be prescribed sodium-pentobarbital and thereby assisted in suicide..."
[Ummm... let's see now... people without mental competency, instead of being treated for their illness, will be helped to kill themselves... did I get that right?]
Don't Try This Yourself...
news.scotsman.com/ ... 10:46:40
[11yo] was engulfed by flames after copying scenes from Jackass: The Movie by spraying himself with deodorant and setting himself alight... rushed to hospital with severe burns... at his home in Greenock, Inverclyde... His father... said: "He was a ball of flames. He was screaming and bawling and ran into the living room. "I pulled him on to the floor and pulled his clothes off and put a damp towel around him. If I hadn't been there, he would have been roasted alive..." father and his mother... want the Jackass TV series and the 18-rated films banned following the incident...
[Blame the movie because your kid was an idiot? How many kids watched that movie and DIDN'T set themselves on fire...!]
Violence
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:43:29
A Philippine marine general and 19 others were released Sunday from a Muslim rebel camp where they were held for two days by guerrillas demanding more benefits under a 1996 peace accord... Two air force helicopters retrieved Maj. Gen. Ben Dolorfino and his group near the Moro National Liberation Front's remote Bitan-ag stronghold on southern Jolo island's Panamao town where he said they had been "virtually held hostage" since Friday... Rebel commander Habier Malik allowed Dolorfino and his group to leave his camp after being assured that a meeting would be hosted by the Organization of Islamic Conference in Saudi Arabia next month to discuss the full enforcement of the 1996 accord...
Data Threat
sfgate.com/ ... 10:40:19
Thousands of visa applications and other sensitive documents, including paperwork submitted by top executives and political figures, sat for more than a month in the open yard of a San Francisco recycling center after they were dumped there by the city's Indian Consulate. The documents, which security experts say represented a potential treasure trove for identity thieves or terrorists, finally were hauled away Wednesday after The Chronicle inspected the site and questioned officials at the consulate and the recycling facility...
Civilization vs Gangsterism
realcities.com/ ... 21:50:12
"To be honest, it's going to be like this for a long time to come, no matter what we do," said Hardy, 25, of Atlanta. "I think some people in America don't want to know about all this violence, about all the killings. The people back home are shielded from it; they get it sugar-coated." While senior military officials and the Bush administration say the president's decision to send more American troops to pacify Baghdad will succeed,
many of the soldiers who're already there say it's a lost cause...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 21:39:00
Two suspected members of a left-wing German group that carried out attacks in the 1970s and 1980s have surrendered to police, German officials say. The unidentified members of the Revolutionary Cells (RZ) are said to be a man and a woman, both aged 58...
The RZ emerged in the early 1970s from Germany's radical scene, which also gave birth to the better-known Red Army Faction (RAF)... said to have carried out some 186 attacks, mostly aimed at causing material damage, before disbanding after the fall of the Berlin Wall... RZ members were also linked to the 1975 hostage-taking at the Opec conference in Vienna and the hijacking of the Air France plane stormed by Israeli troops in Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976...
thestar.com.my/ ... 10:34:34
An Iraqi militant group linked to al Qaeda vowed on Saturday to widen its attacks to all parts of Iraq instead of just focusing on Baghdad, after Washington announced plans to beef up its forces in the capital. The leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, a body set up by al Qaeda's Iraq wing and other Sunni militant groups in October, said in a Web recording the campaign would stop only "when (U.S. President George W.) Bush signs a surrender accord"...
Nature can be Dangerous
kten.com/ ... 10:34:10
NORMAN, Okla. Officials say a tornado that devastated central Florida will be the first to be categorized under a new scale. Keli Tarp of the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman says it's a coincidence that the new scale was scheduled to be used... hours before the storms hit... A tornado rating a 5 on the Enhanced Fujita scale has winds of more than 200 miles per hour under the scale that took effect yesterday... the Florida storm has not been assessed yet, and it may take several days for the local weather service office to determine its strength...
Transport Tragedy
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:16:49
A passenger train crushed to death a group of six young boys as they played on a railway track in eastern Pakistan on Sunday... passing through the city of Bahawalpur... boys, ages 8 to 10 years old, died at the scene...
Pakistan has an antiquated railroad system and accidents involving trains are common, many are blamed on poorly-run railway facilities. Last week, 11 people were killed when they were either electrocuted or thrown off the roof of a crowded train in the southern Sindh province...
Industrial Tragedy
hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:42:10
SARDINATA, Colombia... An explosion tore through a makeshift coal mine in remote northeast Colombia on Saturday, killing 32 miners... The morning explosion was caused by "some spark and the gas that was inside" the mine...
Norte de Santander, where the mine is located, is one of Colombia's most violent-stricken states, an area overrun by leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups who often battle each other for control of lucrative drug smuggling routes across the border with Venezuela. Many mines in this Andean nation are makeshift affairs with few or no safety procedures...
[Yet another reason for repeal!]
World Zookeeping
sptimes.com/ ... 21:53:41
Bird specialists dressed as giant whooping cranes stalked through the Citrus County wilderness Sunday, hunting for No. 615 - the sole survivor. Authorities thought 615 had perished along with 17 other whoopers killed Friday by the storms that ravaged Central Florida and killed 20 people. But 615, which sometimes flies to the sound of a different drummer, cheated death. The bird was among 18 born last spring in Wisconsin and led to Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Reserve behind an ultralight airplane, in an effort to re-establish migrating flocks. The endangered birds were in a top-netted enclosure at the refuge near Crystal River when the storms hit....
Military Culture
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:47:15
The highest-ranking U.S. general to lead troops in Afghanistan took command of 35,500 strong NATO-led force Sunday, putting an American face on the international mission after nine months of British command. Gen. Dan McNeill replaced British Gen. David Richards at the helm of NATO's International Security Assistance Force at a time of increased violence and just before an expected uptick in fighting as spring settles in...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:42:19
LONDON... Fifteen British troops under the age of 18 have been "inadvertently" sent to fight in Iraq, violating a U.N. protocol on children's rights, the government said Sunday. Defense Minister Adam Ingram, who gave the figure in a written statement to lawmakers, said the "vast majority" of the young troops had been within a week of turning 18 when they were deployed, or had been removed from the war zone less than a week after arriving. "Fewer than five" were women, and none was under 17...
US Military
hosted.ap.org/ ... 10:46:56
The four U.S. helicopters that have crashed in Iraq since Jan. 20 were apparently shot down, the chief American military spokesman said Sunday - the first time the U.S. command has publicly acknowledged that the aircraft were lost to enemy fire...
armytimes.com/ ... 10:41:01
A dispute over the boundaries of acceptable war coverage erupted between the Army and The New York Times following the newspapers recent publication of images starkly portraying a dying soldier in Iraq. Despite early reports that commanders ordered the reporter and photographer who filed the story and images out of the unit they were covering, 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, the Army denies the pair was kicked out of its embed, saying they had already moved on. Still, the Army maintains that the Jan. 29 publication of a photograph of a dying Staff Sgt. Hector Leija and an online posting of a five-minute video of the moments in the operation before he was shot were violations of the ground rules that journalists sign when they get their credentials to cover operations in the war zone...
Feeding Ourselves
seattletimes.nwsource.com/ ... 10:24:20
Consumer Reports... rated McDonald's premium brand the best, calling it "decent and moderately strong" although lacking "subtle top notes..." Dunkin Donuts' coffee was deemed "inoffensive, but it had no oomph." Starbucks was labeled "strong, but burnt and bitter." Burger King's offering resembled coffee, "but tasted more like hot water..."
We're All Individuals
timesonline.co.uk/ ... 22:03:51
SCIENTISTS have found an answer to one of the most intractable squabbles in family life argumentative and disruptive children are born, not made. A study by American scientists has found that antisocial traits such as being argumentative, bullying and lying, are often inherited. The new research challenges the scientific consensus that difficult children are the product of disruptive homes and are copying parents behaviour...
Opposing Tyranny
apnews.myway.com/ ... 21:44:27
A revolt against a national driver's license, begun in Maine last month, is quickly spreading to other states. The Maine Legislature on Jan. 26 overwhelmingly passed a resolution objecting to the Real ID Act of 2005. The federal law sets a national standard for driver's licenses and requires states to link their record-keeping systems to national databases. Within a week of Maine's action, lawmakers in Georgia, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, Vermont and Washington state also balked at Real ID. They are expected soon to pass laws or adopt resolutions declining to participate in the federal identification network...
World of Cultures
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:43:58
LAKE DELTON, Wis... After more than half a century of wowing tourists (and causing probably more than a few cases of nausea), the Wonder Spot, a mysterious cabin where people can't stand up straight, water runs uphill and chairs balance on two legs, is no more. Owner Bill Carney has sold the iconic attraction to the village of Lake Delton for $300,000. The village wants to build a road through the crevice where the Wonder Spot has stood since the 1950s. Now, the Wonder Spot, one of more than a dozen sites around the nation dubbed "gravity vortexes" and a throwback to postwar, family-oriented tourist attractions, has a date with a bulldozer...
Big Whoops Cascade
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:42:44
A diplomatic gaffe marred Saturday's inauguration of a China-financed stadium on this Caribbean island when a
band performed the national anthem of Chinese rival Taiwan...
Print is Dead
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:42:12
Sorry, e-book fans, whoever you are. You will be able to read the new Harry Potter on paper, listen to it, probably purchase it in Braille. But don't expect to download the text - at least legally... Rowling has not allowed the first six Potter stories to be released as e-books and has no plans to change that for the seventh... Rowling has cited two reasons over the years: concern about online piracy (which has never been a major problem for the Potter books), and the desire for readers to experience the books on paper...
Sportsmanship
apnews.myway.com/ ... 21:47:44
MIAMI... A wet and wild Super Bowl, the winning conditions for Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts. A team built for indoors found its footing on a rain-soaked track and outplayed the Chicago Bears to win the NFL title 29-17 Sunday night... the first rainy Super Bowl and the first time an opening kickoff was run back for a touchdown when sensational Bears rookie Devin Hester sped downfield for 92 yards... The first half was marred by six turnovers, three for each team... The second half wasn't quite so ugly, but when much-maligned Bears quarterback Rex Grossman's wobbler was picked off and returned 56 yards for a touchdown by Kelvin Hayden with 11:44 remaining, it was over...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 21:37:46
A football spectator who fellow fans alleged shouted racist insults at a black player during a German first division match faces a life ban... Energie Cottbus said it would take legal steps against the spectator and praised the fans who reported him. Cottbus is in an economically depressed area near the Polish border. Correspondents say racist chanting and violence at matches there are commonplace...
Marriage Today
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:05:51
Now with retirement looming, the 56-year-old wants to get to know his wife better. He calls her by her name, Setsuko, instead of just grunting. And he says he recently learned a new phrase: "I love you." Fukatsu is among a small but growing group of men who took part in Japan's second annual "Beloved Wives Day" last week in hopes of salvaging their marriages by doing something different - paying attention to their wives...
Reporting Science
canada.com/ ... 10:52:10
Dr. Shariv, a prolific researcher who has made a name for himself assessing the movements of two-billion-year-old meteorites, no longer accepts this logic, or subscribes to these views. He has recanted: "Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. "In fact,
there is much more than meets the eye.
" Dr. Shariv's digging led him to the surprising discovery that there is no concrete evidence -- only speculation -- that man-made greenhouse gases cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-- the United Nations agency that heads the worldwide effort to combat global warming -- is bereft of anything here inspiring confidence. In fact, according to the IPCC's own findings, man's role is so uncertain that there is a strong possibility that we have been cooling, not warming, the Earth...
Theory of Sex Education
securityfocus.com/ ... 10:55:18
On January 5, a six-person jury found former Kelly Middle School substitute teacher Julie Amero guilty of four counts of risk of injury to a minor. The charges stem from an October 19, 2004 incident when
the computer in the classroom in which Amero was teaching started displaying pornographic pop-up advertisements.
Prosecutors argued that Amero surfed porn sites while in class, causing the pop-up advertisements, while the former teacher's defense attorney argued that spyware installed from a hairstyling Web site caused the deluge of digital smut. The case has attracted an enormous amount of interest, because the reported details of the trial appear to indicated that a lack of understanding of the technology involved and not solid digital evidence, led the jury to convict the teacher... The case has attracted an enormous amount of interest, because the reported details of the trial appear to indicated that a lack of understanding of the technology involved and not solid digital evidence, led the jury to convict the teacher...
centredaily.com/ ... 10:54:19
The question of who made the call to police has become a central issue in the lawsuit, which alleges that school officials' negligence led to this rape and rapes of three other first-grade boys in 2003 and 2004 at Central Elementary by a 12-year-old boy with behavioral problems. According to the suit, which seeks $15 million for the families of three of the four first-graders, school officials were required by law to contact police or children and youth services personnel, but failed to do so... "We were treated like sub-humans," the mother said...
wmcstations.com/ ... 10:39:36
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. A [31yo] female school bus driver has been charged on accusation that she had sex with a [then-15yo] teenage boy... last May... at [her] residence... booked yesterday into the Hamilton County jail on one count of statutory rape and released on 6 thousand dollars bond...
philly.com/ ... 10:37:19
Evesham parents who screened a controversial video shown to third graders in their district launched into emotional debate last night, at times screaming at each other across the cavernous gymnasium at Marlton Middle School. The video, That's a Family!, depicts children describing their various families, including those headed by grandparents, single parents, adoptive parents and same-sex couples. It was the segment on same-sex couples that drew the most ire... One woman stood at her seat and yelled, "They're 8 years old. They don't need to see homosexual people in the classroom..." "They don't need to see stuff like this in school.
We would rather have them learning reading, writing, math, art, history,
" said Mike Ricchini, who has a daughter at Van Zant. "
Treat everyone with respect. ... I'd rather see a video on teaching the Golden Rule...
"
Lost & Found
usatoday.com/ ... 10:35:58
Michael Devlin traveled to Arizona for a wedding nearly two years after one of the boys he is accused of kidnapping disappeared, a family friend says, but family and friends saw no signs of the boy... "This whole thing is so bizarre..." Devlin seemed to be the only out-of-town guest who didn't fly... wonders if Shawn was hidden in the Arizona hotel room...
World Without Borders
dfw.com/ ... 10:32:02
A Palestinian woman [pregnant] and four of her children were released Saturday from the Texas immigration detention center where they've been held for three months... Immigration officers arrested Salaheddin Ibrahim, his wife, Hanan, and four of their children [15, 14, 8, & 5] in November at their Richardson home more than two years after their petition for asylum was denied... husband, 37, was being held at Rolling Plains Regional Jail in Haskell, near Abilene. Attorneys for the family expect him to be released soon as well... Escalating violence in their homeland swayed a federal immigration panel Friday to reconsider the family's asylum request, nullifying the order for removal from the U.S...
Modern Family Life
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:28:48
A Malaysian Chinese couple are considering taking legal action against a hospital for sending them home with the wrong baby nearly 30 years ago. The couple, who had always suspected a mix-up, were reunited with their biological son after a chance meeting in a shopping centre. But the family may now face a battle with Malaysia's religious authorities. As well as taking a Chinese name, the son wants to renounce Islam - something which is very difficult in Malaysia...
Repeal Daylight Savings Time!
seattletimes.nwsource.com/ ... 10:21:55
Time change: Y2K all over again?
.. It seemed so simple and familiar: Spring forward, fall back. For 20 years, that's what Americans and their technology have done with their clocks on the first Sunday in April and the last Sunday in October. No longer. When few people were paying attention in August 2005, Congress lengthened daylight-saving time by four weeks in the name of energy efficiency. The change starts this year on March 11 and it has angered airlines, delighted candy makers, and sent thousands of technicians scrambling to make sure countless automated systems switch their clocks at the right moment...
[DST doesn't save energy, and has its origins in attempts to save WHALE OIL... time to REPEAL! REPEAL! REPEAL!]
Digital Threat
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ ... 10:19:10
NEW DELHI... President APJ Abdul Kalam's concerns over Google Earth providing detailed and unhindered view of sensitive' Indian establishments have been addressed, courtesy a formula which allows users uninterrupted access to the eye in the sky' while camouflaging key installations. Fuzzy, low resolution pictures and distorted building plans is how the government and Google Earth have agreed to get around concerns...
Modern Culture
seattletimes.nwsource.com/ ... 10:18:17
Portland... Trunk Monkey, a chimpanzee featured in a comical series of car-dealership commercials, has been winning over audiences so successfully that he's generated a profitable side business for the Portland ad agency that created him 3 ½ years ago. Dealerships from as far away as New Zealand pay to license the series of commercials for their own use and now are the largest source of revenue for the R/West agency...
SAT 2007-FEB-03
Alcohol Was Involved
indystar.com/ ... 21:06:48
FORT WAYNE, Ind. -- An intoxicated man who mistook an Indiana State Police post for a hotel, telling a dispatch he wanted "to get a room," got his wish -- but his lodgings turned out to be at the county jail... The post is next to a Holiday Inn...
Data Theft
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:00:06
A portable hard drive that may contain the personal information of up to 48,000 veterans may have been stolen, the Department of Veterans Affairs and a lawmaker said Friday... reported the external hard drive missing on Jan. 22. The drive was used to back up information on the employee's office computer. It may have contained data from research project... personal information of up to 48,000 veterans was on the hard drive and the records of up to 20,000 of them were not encrypted...
Yuck!
today.reuters.com/ ... 20:52:53
Mysterious yellow snow that fell on parts of Siberia earlier this week is not toxic, Russian emergency officials said on Friday... was "yellow, with oily marks and a distinctive smell..." Omsk region is home to a number of oil and gas refineries... may have been caused by a rare dust hurricane in neighboring Kazakhstan... may have been polluted by a chemical accident in Siberia...
Mass Murdering Monsters
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:51:05
At least 135 people have been killed and 305 injured in a lorry bombing at a market place in central Baghdad... vehicle blew up in al-Sadriya district as people bought food ahead of a night-time curfew. It shattered stalls and left a huge crater in the street, in the heavily populated, predominantly Shia area...
Infrastructure Tragedy
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:50:37
A fire at a hotel in the southern tip of Chile has killed 10 foreign tourists... blaze swept through the Blue House hotel in Punta Arenas in the early hours of Saturday morning... Officials in Punta Arenas believe four of the dead were from Argentina, four from Germany and two from Holland... three women, five men and two minors...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:49:58
At least 15 people have died and another five have been injured when a building collapsed in a Mumbai suburb. The wall of a partially-built warehouse crumbled, burying many of those working on the site under the rubble... all the victims were labourers, and that several people were still thought to be trapped under the rubble in an unknown condition...
Violence
thisislondon.co.uk/ ... 21:05:24
two thugs - one masked, one hooded - knocked the bike rider into the path of a car... stole his rucksack which contained his business takings for the day. The attack, which happened in Battersea, South-West London, was captured by chance by a passing photographer...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:49:29
Two Pakistani soldiers have been killed in a suicide car bomb attack in the north-west of the country... bomber rammed a military convoy on a road near Tank, about 50km (30 miles) west of the city of Dera Ismail Khan, near the Afghan border. The convoy was reported to have been heading for the restive tribal area of South Waziristan...
Nature can be Dangerous
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:45:50
A plan to drop concrete balls into the mouth of a "mud volcano" in East Java to stem its flow should go into action next week... Hot mud and gas have been spewing out of the ground since May 2006; experts warn the torrent could continue for months, if not years, to come. But the government-approved scheme could halt the flow within two to three months, the team behind the plan says...
People Gamble
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:40:27
BRENTWOOD, N.H.... The former Citizen of the Year in Derry pleaded guilty Friday to stealing more than $250,000 from the nonprofit agency she led... [accused] of taking the money and gambling it away on the Internet... faces up to 10 years at the New Hampshire State Prison. She also must repay the agency and spend 100 hours talking to the public about the dangers of gambling...
Sick, Sick, Sick
themilwaukeechannel.com/ ... 20:58:33
Did Jeffrey Dahmer confess to all his crimes? There's a call to reopen the investigation into Milwaukee's most notorious killer. There are new questions about Dahmer's criminal history before he returned to Milwaukee and never-reported details that some believe link Dahmer to one of the United States' most notorious cold cases... The boy at the center of that cold case is now a household name. Who can forget the toothless grin of 6-year-old Adam Walsh, the Florida boy abducted, dismembered and dumped in a drainage canal in 1981... new, never-revealed information in the Walsh case... Dahmer was living in south Florida when Adam Walsh disappeared...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:37:24
LUBBOCK, Texas... A 62-year-old man is suspected of stringing wires at neck level across a popular bike path, as well as scattering nails, broken glass and rocks across the trail in a series of traps set because he wanted to protect the environment... A grand jury was scheduled to review the case next week, to see if the man will face two third-degree felony charges of attempted aggravated assault with a weapon. Each count carries a maximum of 10 years in prison... Detective Rene Martinez said he questioned the man about the traps set over at least a yearlong period, and the man told him he just wanted to protect wildlife. "He just loves nature..."
[Aren't humans natural, too?]
Hitler is alive and well
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:34:55
Diplomats from five countries toured one of Iran's primary nuclear facilities on Saturday - an attempt by the Islamic republic to show that its atomic program is for peaceful ends and not a cover for nuclear weapons.
Sex & Politics
mysanantonio.com/ ... 09:14:05
Acting on an issue stirring controversy in the Legislature, Gov. Rick Perry on Friday
made Texas the first state to require girls to get a new vaccine for a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.
The executive order, which
would apply to all girls entering sixth grade next year
, prompted surprise and relief from one lawmaker who didn't think her bill requiring it would have passed. But it so angered many social conservatives who have consistently backed Perry that they
suggested money and political ties to the vaccine's manufacturer were behind the decision...
"Requiring young girls to get vaccinated before they come into contact with HPV is responsible health and fiscal policy that has the potential to significantly reduce cases of cervical cancer and mitigate future medical costs," Perry said in a news release... "This is 'follow the money' if I've ever seen it," said Cathie Adams, president of Texas Eagle Forum. "There's no health emergency for cervical cancer. The only emergency is in the Merck board room," said Dawn Richardson of Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education, an information group... Mike Toomey, former chief of staff to Perry, is a lobbyist for Merck. The pharmaceutical company has donated $6,000 to Perry since 2005 and $38,000 to legislative leaders and lawmakers...
Civilization vs Gangsterism
today.reuters.com/ ... 20:51:39
President George W. Bush will ask Congress for $99.7 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the rest of fiscal year 2007 and more than $145 billion for fiscal year 2008... Bush would estimate the costs for the Iraq war at $50 billion for fiscal year 2009. Bush will unveil those numbers when he presents his annual budget to Congress on Monday...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:46:09
The US military says it has prepared fresh charges against three terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay. The three men - an Australian, a Canadian and a Yemeni - face charges including murder, conspiracy and material support for terrorism. The move is the first step towards trials by new military commissions set up by the Bush administration...
telegraph.co.uk/ ... 09:11:23
Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, admitted yesterday that border guards had turned a "blind eye" towards Taliban militants crossing into Afghanistan to launch attacks on coalition forces... "We had some incidents I know of that in some posts, a blind eye was being turned," Gen Musharraf told a press conference when asked to comment on criticism of Pakistan's co-operation in the US-led war on terror. "So similarly I imagine that others may be doing the same." The government has been stung by claims that its Inter-Services Intelligence directorate has aided Taliban militants whose logistical headquarters is widely-believed to be in the south-western Pakistani border province of Balochistan...
World Zookeeping
wavy.com/ ... 21:08:42
WINTON, N.C... The Jury has returned verdicts in the case of Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook, two employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA. Hinkle was found not guilty of animal cruelty and not guilty of obtaining property under false pretences. Cook was found not guilty of animal cruelty. Both were found guilty of littering for improperly disposing of the carcasses... "What was going to be done anyway, they did it in the most humane way possible." Prosecutors disputed that... "We're here because the defendant, Miss Hinkle, went to the Ahoskie Animal Hospital and lied to get an animal and then kill it..."
World Water
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:01:37
A professor who developed an inexpensive, easy-to-make system for filtering arsenic from well water has won a $1 million engineering prize - and he plans to use most of the money to distribute the filters to needy communities around the world...
Antiquity - still with us
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:59:12
ROME... The perennial tug-of-war between preserving ancient treasures and developing much-needed infrastructure is moving underground, as the city mobilizes archaeologists to probe the bowels of the Eternal City in preparation for a new, 15-mile subway line...
Digital Convergence
today.reuters.com/ ... 20:53:23
For those who tune in to the Super Bowl just for the commercials, there's now a way to watch them online shortly after they are shown, without having to put up with all that football in between. MTV-owned Web site iFilm.com will post Super Bowl commercials minutes after they air and, for the first time, make them available to bloggers to post on their own pages...
It's All in Your Mind
sptimes.com/ ... 20:47:53
She said she was Matera's sister. But she looked and sounded exactly like Matera. And the people wondered. Was it all a trick? According to an incident report from the Pasco County Sheriff's Office, this is what happened: Matera told them about the cancer last February, after two years in the choir. They were some of her closest friends, and she gave them frequent updates on her treatment. Near the end of last year, at the age of 27, she said she was giving up and entering hospice care... The nurse's voice sounded just like Matera's. Jan. 18, the same nurse called choir director Timothy Paquin and told him Matera had died at 7:04 p.m. He spread the news and planned the memorial. Soon after, Paquin got a call from a woman saying she was Matera's sister. She said Matera's body would be shipped north to her family. She, too, sounded just like Matera... she confessed to faking her sickness and death... She told the deputy she has attachment problems rooted in childhood trauma. Any time someone gets close, she feels the need to separate...
Animal Companions
tulsaworld.com/ ... 09:20:02
THOMASVILLE, Ga... A south Georgia woman bloodied in a car wreck says she owes her life to a German shepherd who -- thankfully -- just wouldn't stay in his yard... the wayward dog found her bruised and battered on the vehicle's trunk, pulled her by her shirt collar, dragged her about 50 yards through briars to a highway and let her lean against him so she could flag a passing motorist. His new name: Hero... Hero's previous owners have signed him over to the Thomasville-Thomas County Humane Society since the Jan. 26 accident because he kept wandering off... Not only have at least 50 people offered to adopt him, a dog trainer has agreed to see whether he has the right stuff for search and rescue work... said she can't adopt Hero because she already has six dogs, but she's showered him with gifts including a huge bone and a stuffed animal...
Your Government at Play
foxnews.com/ ... 21:05:54
A recent audit of cash-strapped Camden, N.J. school district's finances found it was paying an employee $130,000 annually and he's been dead for more than three decades...
Big Nanny
thisislondon.co.uk/ ... 21:04:34
Babies could be vaccinated with brain-altering chemicals
to stop them getting hooked on drugs and cigarettes in later life. Newborns would have jabs which could prevent addiction to cocaine, heroin or tobacco, under secret Downing Street plans. Details of the extraordinary proposal to stop the annual £20 billion cost of drug misuse are in a leaked No 10 policy document...
Faith and Fact
cushingdaily.com/ ... 21:03:10
NORMAN, Okla. Hundreds of churches across the globe will mark Evolution Sunday Feb. 11 with sermons and educational events dedicated to the idea that religion and science dont have to be sworn enemies. So far, 535 congregations from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, American Virgin Islands, and five foreign countries are scheduled to participate... "Its a way to fight back.... Its a way to show that you can believe in God and accept evolution. The scientific debate has kind of been forced into a political and religious one..."
Mystery
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:01:18
A mastodon tooth fossil found in an Ontario, Canada, attic remains a mystery, after a paleontologist concluded it does not belong with a skeleton here that is one of the world's most complete...
Digital Culture
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:00:57
The new Web site Me.dium.com is built to change something that most of us probably take for granted: the fact that cruising the Internet is a pretty solitary activity. Me.dium is based on the opposite idea - that people should be able to check out sites together, much as people get cues from one another and make serendipitous discoveries in the physical world... Me.dium tracks your Web browsing habits and reveals which sites are being visited at any given moment by people and friends with similar patterns. Those people and their sites appear as colored icons in a window that Me.dium puts on the side of a Web browsing session. The point is to let you see when some of your friends or even a crowd of strangers are gathering on a site presumed to be of interest to you - the way an urban stroll might lead you to the curiosity-provoking sight of a line forming outside a nightclub...
Theory of Education
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 20:56:10
A nation whose education officials already have warned that they will, when necessary, "bring the religious convictions of the family into line" with state requirements, now has removed a 16-year-old girl from her family and placed her in a child psychiatry unit after she turned in below-expected grades in math and Latin. The news of nearly two dozen officials and uniformed police officers physically taking the teen from her home in front of her shocked family is just the latest horror story to come out of Germany...
Digital Business
today.reuters.com/ ... 20:55:27
The Free Software Foundation is reviewing Novell Inc.'s right to sell new versions of Linux operating system software after the open-source community criticized Novell for teaming up with Microsoft Corp...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:55:06
A decade ago a 500 megabyte (MB) photo collection was something to boast about. Nowadays it is more likely be a collection measured in the gigabytes. But as our appetite for storage continues to grow thankfully so does the capacity of our hard drives. Hitachi has unveiled a drive which has reached the new heights of one terabyte (TB). Its drive looks like any other, but uses perpendicular magnetic recording to make space for all that data...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:54:02
A new class-action lawsuit claims that computer maker Dell Inc. inflated profits with secret payments of about $1 billion a year from chip maker Intel Corp. The lawsuit was filed Wednesday, the same day the company announced that founder Michael S. Dell would return to the chief executive's role amid more disappointing financial news. Filed in U.S. District Court in Austin, the lawsuit also claimed that Dell concealed problems in accounting and product quality from shareholders while company executives reaped $3.3 billion from selling their stock...
Nudity can be just Nudity
msnbc.msn.com/ ... 20:48:58
Male nudes are the norm in Greek art, even though historians have stated that ancient Greeks kept their clothes on for the most part. New research suggests that art might have been imitating life more closely than previously thought. Nudity was a costume used by artists to depict various roles of men, ranging from heroicism and status to defeat... newly published research shows that the Greeks did walk around in the buff in some situations. Men strode about free of their togas in the bedroom and at parties called symposia, where they would eat, drink and carouse. Nudity was also common on the athletic fields and at the Olympic games...
However, nudity was often risky for the Greeks...
World Without Borders
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:45:09
Deep in the mountains of eastern Iraq, a cluster of mud huts and the chatter of machine gun fire reveal another piece of the jigsaw puzzle called Kurdistan. Here, recruits are training to fight Iran, one of the four countries that rule the fractured Kurdish people. And although they belong to an organization officially outlawed as terrorist by Washington, they appear to be operating unhindered either by Iraqi-Kurdish units or the limited U.S. force in Kurdish areas...
Human Right
thisislondon.co.uk/ ... 20:44:29
A hotelier who runs a gays-only guesthouse fears the new anti-discrimination laws could put him out of business. Mark Hurst, 47, says the legislation will force him to open his doors to heterosexual guests. He believes this will put off his core customers, who may feel uneasy in a mixed group...
[Hey, reverse the orientation and see if that sounds right...!]
Marriage Today
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:43:35
He was 14 when the girl entered his grass-covered hut and placed a plate of steaming fish in front of him. Like all men on this African isle, Carvadju Jose Nananghe knew exactly what it meant. Refusing was not an option. His heart pounding, he lifted the aromatic dish, prepared with an ancient recipe, to his lips, agreeing in one bite to marry the girl. "I had no feelings for her," said Nananghe, now 65. "Then when I ate this meal, it was like lightning. I wanted only her..." In this archipelago of 50 islands off the western rim of Africa, it's women, not men, who choose...
Defending Ourselves
nbc4i.com/ ... 21:04:00
Police said 19-year-old Shandos Young and 18-year-old Justin Cockrell entered the market with bandanas over their faces and threatened the owner and another employee. "I seen these guys storm in with their guns. I dropped the phone, backed away, drew my gun and fired two shots and just tried to get them out of the store..." Investigators said set of footprints leading away from the store guided officers to the alleged weapon, a coat and latex gloves. Both teenagers were captured a few blocks away and charged in connection with the robbery...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:42:08
WASHINGTON... A quick-acting [62yo] retiree whacked a teenage robbery suspect over the head with a frying pan, an action praised by District of Columbia police... "I think he was shocked... I don't think he expected somebody like me to haul off and whack him..."
Transport Whoops!
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:43:02
KEWASKUM, Wis... Police Chief Richard Knoebel says he wasn't about to take the easy way out when he accidentally drove past a stopped school bus with its emergency lights flashing. For violating traffic laws, Knoebel wrote himself a ticket for $235, docked himself four points on his driving record and paid the fine the next day... was distracted by a stopped dump truck. He saw a car coming from behind and thought it might hit the truck, so he moved to pass the truck before he saw the stopped school bus in the far lane...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:39:31
According to New York City's traffic office, Russell Falkena ran a red light on Manhattan's West Side, in his rowboat... included photographs of the vehicle and its license plate captured by traffic cameras... the plate number on the ticket matches those on the registration for Falkena's aluminum rowboat, which he says hadn't left his yard in years...
Theory of Sex Education
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:41:09
LEEDS, Maine... A high school coach who told his players at halftime to reach into their pants to "check their manhood" before returning to the basketball court was fired... All but one player followed the coach's instructions...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:36:08
Sex is not a taboo subject at Yale, home to Sex Week, a biennial celebration that's one of the most provocative campus events in the nation. But a randy couple's frolic in a shower at one of Yale's undergraduate residential colleges prompted a professor to issue an e-mail of protest, which in turn has sparked debate on the Internet... e-mail warns against "intimate activity" in the showers, "especially that kind of activity that leaves the showers in a decidedly less hygienic state...
Big Whoops Cascade
tulsaworld.com/ ... 09:22:04
Bumbling train robber and bank bandit Elmer McCurdy's body was finally buried in Guthrie in 1977 -- 66 years after he was killed in a shootout with Osage County deputies. In the interim, his body had stood in a corner of a Pawhuska funeral home for several years, toured the country in sideshows, was collateral on a $500 loan and became a featured attraction hanging from a gallows in a California fun house. The fun house gig ended when owners, who thought the body was wax, discovered a bone inside when they tried to glue an arm back on after it fell off. The medical examiner's office was called, an autopsy was performed, and the mummy's body was identified as that of McCurdy. McCurdy's story began about 1880 in Maine...
bloomberg.com/ ... 09:16:23
Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Time Warner Inc.'s Turner Broadcasting unit is taking full responsibility for a marketing campaign that brought Boston to a standstill yesterday. Turner had its marketing firm Interference Inc.
[such an ironic name!]
of New York place 40 devices in 10 cities in the U.S. to promote its "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" show on the company's Cartoon Network, said Shirley Powell, 40, a company spokeswoman... The campaign backfired in Boston when the displays that light up with a cartoon character were mistaken for bombs... Turner gave a list of where the devices were in Boston and nine other cites to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who in turn gave the information to local police departments... Some look-alike devices, including one purported to have been used in Boston, turned up on EBay Inc.'s Internet auction site. Bids exceeded $500...
FRI 2007-FEB-02
Nudity can be just Nudity
news.yahoo.com/ ... 21:17:29
Self-conscious about what you wear while working out? A Dutch gym plans to introduce "Naked Sunday" for people who like to huff and puff in the buff... owner of Fitworld gym in the town of Heteren... said the response had been overwhelming positive and negative... Nude exercisers would be required to put towels down on weight machines and to use disposable seat covers while riding bikes. All machines would be cleaned and disinfected afterward. "We clean them every day anyway..."
Transport vs Nature
pressofatlanticcity.com/ ... 21:14:07
LONG BEACH TOWNSHIP The hazards of crossing the road proved fatal Tuesday night for a gray seal pup that had already managed to make it alone all the way to Long Beach Island from, probably, Canada... began to cross the northbound lanes of Long Beach Boulevard. It almost reached the median, but was struck and killed by a vehicle in the passing lane... "This is the first time in 20 years that I have seen a seal on the road. They usually stay on the beach..."
Criminally Stupid
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:45:26
New York... burglar who got stuck in the casing of an air conditioner that had been removed, his head and arms dangling out of the grocery store wall with the rest of his body inside... with his with pockets full of cash...
Scary Times
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:29:30
The White House Conference Center... was evacuated on Friday... due to a suspicious package...
Civilization vs Gangsterism
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:27:25
Suspected Muslim rebels have stormed a jail in the southern Philippines, freeing 47 prisoners... About 25 attackers, armed with guns and grenade launchers, attacked the jail in Kidapawan city, on the island of Mindanao... [freeing] the escapees, many of whom are accused of serious crimes... Some are also thought to be members of the MILF rebel group, which is supposed to have negotiated a ceasefire with the government...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:26:40
Taliban militants overran a southern Afghan town where a contentious peace agreement was negotiated last fall, roaming through the town center, burning its government compound and threatening elders... A resident of Musa Qala said that 200-300 Taliban fighters had overtaken the town, took weapons from the police and destroyed the government center late Thursday...
Animals can be Dangerous
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:36:38
CONROE, Texas... A 65-year-old retired truck driver who was attacked by a vicious pit bulldog during a neighborhood walk choked the dog to death as he defended himself... Von Pardue suffered bites on his arms and hands... heard barking and readied himself when he realized the dog was coming for him. "I turned to face him, and when I saw it was pit bull, I knew I was in trouble.... I put my hands up and I hollered at him. He immediately jumped to my throat..." shielded his body by grabbing the dog's head and ears, but the dog shook loose and started biting his right hand... kneed the dog in the ribs, spurring it to let go of his hand, and then grabbed the dog by its thick collar... dragged the dog to his house while maintaining a firm grip on its neck. His wife called police from the house. When the police arrived, Pardue was on the ground with the dog and still holding onto the collar. Police said Pardue's grip was so tight that he strangled the dog. Pardue said he didn't know the dog was dead until it was unresponsive when police tried to move it...
news.scotsman.com/ ... 11:16:47
Britain's top female paraglider has cheated death after being attacked by a pair of "screeching" wild eagles while competition flying in Australia. Nicky Moss, 38, watched terrified as two huge birds began tearing into her parachute canopy, one becoming tangled in her lines and clawing at her head 2,500 metres in the air... "It swooped in and hit me on the back of the head, then got tangled in the glider which collapsed it. So I had a very, very large bird wrapped up screeching beside me as I screamed back..." Wedge-tailed eagles are Australia's largest predatory birds and have a wing-span of more than two metres...
Theory of Sex Education
mysanantonio.com/ ... 11:14:50
San Antonio, TX.... The Northside Independent School District is now investigating one of its female teachers for allegedly having an inappropriate relationship with a [16yo] female student... said the coach lured her into having sex... [Another teacher] is also connected to the case... teacher took the girl to see the North East coach. The two women are friends.... teacher sent the girl threatening messages...
firstcoastnews.com/ ... 11:12:48
GILBERT, AZ -- A 38-year-old South Valley Junior High School student teacher has been arrested on suspicion of having sex with a 14-year-old boy several times over a six-week period... alleged victim did not attend the school... Investigators are looking into whether there may be other boys involved... faces six counts of sexual conduct with a minor and is being held on $100,000 bond...
Masses can be Asses
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 11:10:48
At least a dozen disruptive anti-war protesters have been arrested in congressional office buildings this week, and authorities say an investigation continues into the spray-paint vandalism done to the U.S. Capitol at last weekend's anti-war rally, and more arrests are possible... Brian Fitzpatrick, of the Culture and Media Institute, said the vandals "black-clad radicals, many wearing masks" did the damage. "Here's what ABC, NBC, CBS, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, USA Today and other major outlets did not find newsworthy:" he wrote in a commentary on the problem. "Waving red and black flags, and carrying riot shields emblazoned with 'America out of everywhere,' 300 protesters spray-painted 'anarchist symbols,' political taunts and curses on the west front steps of the Capitol building. The western side is the portion of the Capitol facing the Mall, which was in full view of every reporter and cameraman covering the march..."
Theft
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:37:30
KANSAS CITY, Mo.... A bad day got even worse for a [73yo] stranded motorist when the purported Good Samaritan who helped dislodge the man's car attacked him and stole the vehicle...
tcpalm.com/ ... 11:07:34
State agents and local deputies captured members of a baby formula trafficking ring that may be part of a much larger operation... The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, along with the Martin County Sheriff's Office, arrested seven people Wednesday and Thursday, seizing about $48,000 worth of powdered formula mix in 1,700 cans... One trafficker hauling an additional 1,450 cans of formula worth $40,600 had slipped away with the goods... "have been identified as being part of a much larger baby formula trafficking organization..." At $28 a can, it is possible the containers of powdered formula were stolen to sell back to distributors who sell right back to the stores that were victims of the shopliftings...
Extraterrestrial Threat
upi.com/ ... 21:15:06
"We are diverting the orbit of the ISS to prevent a possible collision with large fragments of space debris, a decision the Russian Mission Control took together with the Johnson Space Center in Houston," a Russian Mission Control spokesman told Novosti Friday. The spokesman said the debris did not threaten the space station, and that an anti-meteorite system protected it from smaller fragments...
abcnews.go.com/ ... 11:02:10
When the
Chinese government destroyed one of its weather satellites
in a military test last month.... engineers say it had a serious side effect -- it
increased the amount of orbiting space junk by about
10 percent.
That could mean danger -- to other satellites, and even, possibly, to astronauts on the International Space Station and future space shuttle flights... American radar is tracking at least 525 pieces of debris from the collision -- each at least the size of a baseball. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of smaller ones. The pieces are gradually spreading out in a ring around the Earth, creating a vast area where spacecraft face increased danger of being hit... "We've already seen in the range of 500 to 600 events where some piece of debris from this one event was coming within 5 kilometers [about 3 miles] of some payload..."
Threats
blogs.abcnews.com/ ... 11:23:47
The potentially lethal heroin-Tylenol PM combination known as
"cheese" is now showing up among some fourth graders
, according to Texas law enforcement officials and drug treatment therapists who say the problem has "exploded" in the last few months. "We've had 71 arrests for cheese over the past few months of children between the ages of 10 and 16..." One hit of cheese can cost as little as $2.... "Any child anywhere can afford a hit of cheese. It's just horrific..."
news.scotsman.com/ ... 11:17:27
Saudi police arrested a man with weapons hidden under his clothes as he tried to enter the Grand Mosque in Mecca... stopped the man late on Thursday because he appeared to be acting strangely. He was carrying a revolver and a sub-machinegun under his clothes, and was wearing what appeared to be a suicide belt but which later proved to be fake...
voanews.com/ ... 10:58:28
New York Senator Hillary Clinton... Speaking to a pro-Israel lobbying group... says the United States should keep open the option of military action against Iran... said she recognizes the real threat that Iran poses to the U.S. and the Middle East. She said Iran must not be allowed to build or acquire nuclear weapons...
Violence
news.independent.co.uk/ ... 21:08:15
Buildings in Gaza's two main universities were set on fire yesterday in a major escalation of infighting which health officials said killed at least 17 Palestinians - including four children - and left more than 200 wounded. Armed men mounted flying checkpoints in otherwise deserted streets amid heavy gunfire which continued across Gaza City and the northern Strip despite an "agreement in principle" to try and implement yet another ceasefire...
seattlepi.nwsource.com/ ... 11:22:07
Seattle... a black-clad attacker sprayed lighter fluid and set afire the hair of two women. He also is accused of assaulting an elderly man... Passers-by used jackets to put the flames out. She was not seriously injured. Others spotted the attacker and yelled, "He did it! He lit her on fire!.." [Three] men chased the assailant into an alley... cornered him and escorted him back to the intersection until Seattle police officers arrived... Seattle police arrested the 50-year-old man, a Seattle resident, on suspicion of assault... None of the victims suffered serious injuries... The attack began when the man grabbed Gus Jones, 82, and used a yellow canister to throw lighter fluid on his overcoat. The Central District resident, who is recuperating from a broken hip, whacked the attacker once with his gray, metal cane.
"I smelled that lighter fluid and hit him. I cussed him out," Jones said. "I bent my cane..."
usatoday.com/ ... 10:59:28
KINSHASA, Congo... Nearly 100 people died and 30 others were wounded this week in clashes that erupted when demonstrators protesting alleged electoral fraud rampaged through several towns and security forces tried to restore order... mostly demonstrators shot by police or soldiers... The protests were led by Bundu Dia Kongo, a group that supports former warlord-turned-senator Jean-Pierre Bemba. Violence spread to at least five towns in Bas Congo, including Matadi, Boma, Kasangulu, Kinzaomvwete and Moanda...
foxnews.com/ ... 10:57:35
U.S. forces said they
killed 18 insurgents
after coming under attack in a volatile city west of the capital. Local officials in Hillah announced a three-day mourning period after
two suicide bombers
detonated explosives Thursday among shoppers in a crowded outdoor market in the Shiite city south of Baghdad, while
police raised the casualty total to at least 73 people killed and 163 wounded...
Nature can be Deadly
today.reuters.com/ ... 21:12:16
Severe thunderstorms and at least one tornado killed 19 people on Friday when they ripped through Florida in the dead of night, tearing homes to shreds, toppling heavy trucks and leaving a trail of rubble... More than 1,500 homes, buildings and churches were damaged or destroyed across a wide area of central Florida north of the tourism region around Orlando...
fox28.com/ ... 10:52:58
At least 14 deaths are blamed on severe thunderstorms that pounded central Florida overnight Thursday. At least one tornado ripped through the region...
Healing Ourselves
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:33:24
Doctors shouldn't shy away from asking patients about their sex lives, a new research paper advises. Researchers say problems in the bedroom can translate into serious medical conditions, and ignoring sexual dysfunction may mean missing early indicators for heart failure, depression or other ailments...
Science Marches Onnnnnn
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:32:56
Prototypes of microscopic engines that could power molecular machines have been brewed up in a Scottish laboratory. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have created a tiny engine powered by light that can be made to sort molecules. The device may one day find a role in nano-scale machines...
World Water
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:31:39
Fleets of supertankers could one day ply the world's oceans laden not with oil but fresh water...
Transport Future
siliconvalley.com/ ... 11:25:33
a service that alerts you if your car is stolen -- or being driven too fast by the teenager who borrowed the keys. Among the nearly 70 emerging technologies on display this week at the DEMO conference is a system from Chandler, Ariz.-based Inilex Inc., which uses global-positioning satellites to track the location of customers' cars and deliver a bevy of other information...
Animal Companions
apnews.myway.com/ ... 21:20:56
A 77-year-old woman trying to rescue her seven cats from a house fire was found dead in a hallway, still clutching one of the animals... fire was probably started when one of the cats knocked over a decorative candle onto a stack of papers and magazines... The cat she was holding and another one died. Two were being treated at a veterinary clinic, two were missing and another was taken in by [her] daughter...
[Animal companions can be dangerous, too....]
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:44:32
STOCKHOLM... An elderly Swedish woman has taken animal protection too far by sheltering
11 full grown swans in her small, city center apartment...
"It is a real feat to be able to transport 11 large swans, which are not known to be the most serene of animals," police department official Bjorn Engstrom told Reuters...
[Wasn't that Christmas song about "11 swans a-swimming"..?]
apnews.myway.com/ ... 11:04:43
PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa... Phil did not see his shadow on Friday, which, according to German folklore, means folks can expect an early spring instead of six more weeks of winter... Since 1886, Phil has seen his shadow 96 times, hasn't seen it 15 times and there are no records for nine years... The last time Phil failed to see his shadow was in 1999...
US Military
foxnews.com/ ... 10:56:32
A spokesperson at the Coalition Press Information Center (CPIC) in Baghdad said the Apache, which can carry a total of two people, was brought down by enemy fire... shot down in the area surrounding Taji, an air base 12 miles north of Baghdad...
edition.cnn.com/ ... 10:55:43
A U.S. Apache helicopter went down in Iraq on Friday
, Pentagon officials said, the fourth helicopter to crash in two weeks. The U.S. officials could not say whether the AH-64 crashed or was brought down by insurgent fire or whether there were casualties... Iraqi soldiers in Taji, about 12 miles north of Baghdad, reported a U.S. helicopter was seen going down after coming under insurgent fire...
Free Expression
apnews.myway.com/ ... 21:18:59
DETROIT... An officer who arrested a man for cursing in a public meeting violated the man's right to free speech, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court's decision that Montrose Township police officer Stephen Robinson had probable cause to arrest Thomas Leonard in 2002 when Leonard cursed while addressing the township board. "It cannot be seriously contended that any reasonable peace officer, or citizen, for that matter, would believe that mild profanity while peacefully advocating a political position could constitute a criminal act..." At the time, Leonard's wife, Sarah, was suing the township over a towing contract. Thomas Leonard accused the board members in the meeting of cheating his family and saying, "That's why you're in a goddamn lawsuit..."
[Hope the BlogHeaper doesn't get arrested for repeating that....]
Headline of the Day
nytimes.com/ ... 21:11:07
The Groundhog Emerged, and Sounded a Lot Like Al Gore...
Big Whoops Cascade
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:46:25
A commercial promoting Serbia as a tourist destination appears to be jinxed after CNN used the soundtrack for a Kazakh tourism ad as backing music by mistake... widely pilloried at home as being boring and misleading for showing Serbia as a land of rolling hills, churches and nature reserves full of wildlife, but apparently devoid of people. Serb viewers also spotted that one medieval church featured prominently in the ad was not in fact Serbian but Romanian...
Defending Ourselves
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:42:28
CAMBRIDGE, Minn.... A farmer who chased down a thief and held him at gunpoint until authorities arrived now faces a more serious charge than the thief himself. Kenneth Englund, 74, was charged with second-degree assault, a felony. The thief, who the sheriff said admitted stealing about $5 worth of gasoline from Englund's neighbor, was charged with misdemeanor theft... Sheriff Mike Ammend said people can't take the law into their own hands, and that Englund's actions were "an invitation to a shootout. There's so many things that could have gone wrong here..." His shotgun turned out to be unloaded...
Policing Ourselves
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:40:23
GRETNA, La.... Now in Jefferson Parish:
Tasercams.
Any time a sheriff's deputy turns off a stun gun's safety, a tiny camera will roll. The video will both help defend deputies against lawsuits accusing them of excessive force and reduce any chance of such abuse by deputies...
Digital Culture
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:32:34
The time has come to bid farewell to one of the PC's more stalwart friends - the floppy disk. Computing superstore PC World said it will no longer sell the storage devices, affectionately known as floppies, once existing stock runs out...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:32:12
The scenario is all too common on the crowded streets of New York: A car crashes into another, confusion ensues and a slew of people at the site call 911 to offer the same or similar information. Now the city wants to broaden the 911 system to accept digital photos and video clips of accidents and crimes. But the expansion of the massive 911 system, which already handles roughly 11 million calls a year, raises questions about what to do with all that data...
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:31:17
"Silver surfers"
choose Web over gardening... Retired people are starting to prefer browsing the Internet to more traditional pastimes such as gardening, travel and DIY...
[Noted primarily for the usage "silver surfers...."]
Print is Dead
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:30:12
British publisher Penguin... a Web-based, collaborative novel that can be written, edited or read by anyone, anywhere thanks to "wiki" software... The novel, "A Million Penguins," went live on Thursday and its first lines are already being written, edited and rewritten by enthusiasts on www.amillionpenguins.com...
Rebuilding
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:28:53
The security situation in Iraq could become "increasingly perilous" unless efforts are made to halt the violence, a US intelligence report says. The National Intelligence Estimate, presented to the White House, warned that the US would have little control if the situation further deteriorated. It cited Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence as the primary source of conflict and the most immediate threat to US goals in Iraq...
Unclear on le Concept
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:28:28
The office of French President Jacques Chirac has issued a statement stressing France's opposition to Iran possessing a nuclear bomb. This follows confusion caused by an interview the president gave to two US newspapers and a French magazine. In it, he said it would not be very dangerous for Iran to possess a bomb or two, adding that the real danger was from nuclear proliferation. He later contacted the papers to say his remarks had been oversimplified...
Lost & Found
breitbart.com/ ... 11:18:40
Abducted teen Shawn Hornbeck was ordered to guard fellow captive Ben Ownby and hide him from police when they were repeatedly left alone in their captor's apartment... Shawn's cooperation stemmed from the isolation and abuse he experienced in the first 30 days after he was kidnapped in 2002... was so traumatized after that first month that he began to see Michael Devlin, accused of kidnapping both boys, as his protector and surrogate parent... [said an] official, who requested anonymity, citing a lack of authorization to speak publicly about the case...
US Election 2008
foxnews.com/ ... 11:11:21
More voters say they would be comfortable with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani as president than other top 2008 contenders
, though majorities would also be comfortable with other leaders from both parties, according to the latest FOX News Poll...
Big Nanny
kgwn.tv/ ... 11:09:25
Wyoming... The state House has rejected a bill that would have required pregnant women considering having an abortion to wait 24 hours and review materials about the potential risks and side effects of the procedure... by a vote of 32-28. Supporters of the bill
called it the women's right to know act....
Peace 3000
news.yahoo.com/ ... 11:03:23
Landmark Legal Foundation today nominated nationally syndicated radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize... for his "nearly two decades of tireless efforts to promote liberty, equality and opportunity for all humankind, regardless of race, creed, economic stratum or national origin. These are the only real cornerstones of just and lasting peace throughout the world," said Landmark President Mark R. Levin...
Broadcast is Dead
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:00:16
Viacom Inc. has demanded that Google Inc.'s online video service YouTube pull down all of its video clips after they failed to reach an agreement... About 100,000 video clips from Viacom-owned properties including MTV Networks and BET has been asked to be removed... Viacom said its pirated programs on YouTube generate about 1.2 billion video streams...
World Without Borders
hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:26:06
A U.N. envoy on Friday unveiled a long-awaited plan for Kosovo, a proposal recommending internationally supervised statehood for the contested province where separatists fought a bloody war with Serbia in the late 1990s. The plan was quickly rejected by Serbian President Boris Tadic, who said it "opens the possibility of independence" for the region that the Serbs claim as the heart of their ancient homeland...
telegraph.co.uk/ ... 11:25:05
Residents of a remote Chinese village are hoping that DNA tests will prove one of history's most unlikely legends that they are descended from Roman legionaries lost in antiquity... Liqian, a settlement in north-western China on the fringes of the Gobi desert, more than 200 miles from the nearest city... They are seeking an explanation for the unusual number of local people with western characteristics green eyes, big noses, and even blonde hair mixed with traditional Chinese features... "I really think we are descended from the Romans," said Song Guorong, 48, who with his wavy hair, six-foot frame and strikingly long, hooked nose stands out from his short, round-faced office colleagues. "There are the residents with these special features, and then there are also historical records about the existence of these people long ago..." A statue at the entrance of the nearby county town, Yongchang, shows a Roman legionary standing next to a Confucian scholar and a Muslim woman, as a symbol of racial harmony...
cbsnews.com/ ... 10:54:34
Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, announced plans Friday to begin
erecting a fence along the country's border with Afghanistan
....
Digital Threat
computerworld.com/ ... 21:09:24
The Web sites of Dolphin Stadium and the Miami Dolphins, host to Sunday's Super Bowl football game, have been hacked, and malicious code on those sites have been attempting to infect PCs for at least a week... Security experts strongly advise Web surfers to avoid these sites until the compromise is contained...
itwire.com.au/ ... 10:54:01
Microsoft's new operating system Windows Vista... blogger has found that Vista's speech recognition system is good enough for hackers to issue security breaching commands using malicious sound files on rogue websites...
THU 2007-FEB-01
Sex can be Dangerous
nydailynews.com/ ... 20:55:16
Their alleged web of raunchy wrongdoing was uncovered Sunday when a 43-year-old man contacted Nassau Police 3rd Squad detectives and said a female sex partner he met online was blackmailing him with illicit videotapes of their steamy encounters... [met through] an online dating Web site... [evidence] that indicates he and his lover may have victimized other people through dubious romances...
Criminally Stupid
suntimes.com/ ... 11:04:22
A 56-year-old man was arrested early Thursday after police found $22 million of drugs in the vehicle he was driving. Chicago Lawn District police tactical officers saw a U-Haul truck parked in a lot in the 4000 block at South Pulaski Avenue about 12:05 a.m., according to a police News Affairs release.
The officers noticed an "open brick of cannabis" on the trucks floor
and immediately arrested the 57-year-old driver.... officers discovered two large duffle bags of cash containing a total of about $100,000, 113 kilos of cocaine stored in Tupperware and hidden in two heaters and 3,000 pounds cannabis....
The cocaine has an estimated street value of $14 million, while the cannabis has an estimated street value of $8 million, the release stated...
[End the black marketeers' profits -- repeal, repeal, repeal! ]
Hospitals Suck
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:59:16
Russian prosecutors are investigating allegations that hospital staff in Yekaterinburg gagged babies because they did not want to hear them crying. The patient at the hospital in the southern Urals who reported the case heard the children's muffled cries. She used her mobile phone to film a baby lying in a cot with his mouth taped, while others had dummies taped to their mouths. They are all orphans...
Civilization vs Gangsterism
guardian.co.uk/ ... 10:52:15
The brother of the first British Muslim soldier to die on active duty condemned the alleged Birmingham kidnap terror plot and insisted
extremism would not triumph
... said the plot, if true, was a crime "with no justification"... said if the atrocity had been carried out, it would have had negative repercussions on Muslims worldwide. He said such extremist thinking was not the answer.
"One of the main reasons why my brother and I went into the military - apart from being British and feeling a sense of duty to the country - was because of the position of global politics and the clash between East and West.... Because we are British and Muslims, we thought we could be of benefit by taking part and perhaps ensure greater understanding through our position. What I would say to the extremists is that extremism does not help change anything. If you really want to make a change and be effective, I would say it's best to be part of the system and work peacefully within, not be outside it..."
Scary Times
thebostonchannel.com/ ... 10:04:34
BOSTON -- Two men were arrested Wednesday night in connection with the discovery of 38 hoax devices found throughout greater Boston, Mayor Thomas Menino and Attorney General Martha Coakley said Wednesday night. The devices were eventually determined to be part of a marketing campaign that involved a character from the cartoon show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force..."
US Civil War - still with us
charlottesvillenewsplex.tv/ ... 09:59:56
The House Rules Committee passed the resolution to have Virginia express "great regret" for Virginia's role during slavery on a unanimous vote. Orginally the resolution called on the state to "atone" for slavery. The word was changed by proponents of the resolution to express "contrition" after concerned lawmakers said atonement could be interepreted as requring reparations...
Violence
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:59:13
DUBAI, Jan 31... Unidentified gunmen shot and killed... Jamal Khalifa... a brother-in-law of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a raid on his home in Madagascar... the aim of the killers appeared to have been to rob [him]... a gang of 20 to 30 gunmen... Jamal was alleged to have helped finance the Islamist militant Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines. But [bro-in-law] denied his brother was involved in political activity...
US Military
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:36:52
National Guard (In Federal Status) and Reserve Mobilized as of January 31, 2007
This week, the Army, Navy and Air Force announced an increase, while the Marine Corps had a decrease. The Coast Guard number remained the same. The net collective result is
468 more
reservists mobilized than last week.... This brings the total National Guard and Reserve personnel, who have been mobilized, to
91,812
, including both units and individual augmentees...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:35:00
Army Cpl.
Timothy A. Swanson
, 21, of San Antonio, Texas.
Army Pfc.
Jon B. St. John II
, 25, of Neenah, Wis.
Army Pfc.
David T. Toomalatai
, 19, of Long Beach, Calif.
died Jan 27 in Taji, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near their vehicle during convoy operations. They were assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas...
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:33:47
Army Capt.
Mark T. Resh
, 28, of Pittsburgh, PA
Army Chief Warrant Officer
Cornell C. Chao
, 36, of California
died Jan 28 in Najaf, Iraq, of wounds suffered when their helicopter crashed during combat operations. They were assigned to the 4th Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment, 1st Air Cavalry Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:32:41
Army Sgt.
Mickel D. Garrigus
, 24, of Elma, Wash., died Jan. 27 in Taji, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat patrol. Garrigus was assigned to the 543rd Military Police Company, 91st Police Battalion, 10th Sustainment Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y.
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:32:15
Army Spc.
Carla J. Stewart
, 37, of Sun Valley, Calif., died Jan. 28 in Tallil, Iraq, of injuries suffered when her convoy vehicle rolled over. Stewart was assigned to the 250th Transportation Company, El Monte, Calif. The incident is under investigation.
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:31:43
Marine Lance Cpl.
Anthony C. Melia
, 20, of Thousand Oaks, Calif., died Jan. 27 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to Battalion Landing Team 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable), I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:31:01
Army Maj.
Alan R. Johnson
, 44, of Yakima, Wash., died Jan. 26 at Balad, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Humvee at Muqdadiyah, Iraq, the same day. He was assigned to the 402nd Civil Affairs Battalion, Tonawanda, N.Y...
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:30:31
Army Sgt.
Alexander H. Fuller
, 21, of Centerville, Mass.
Army Pfc.
Michael C. Balsley
, 23, of Hayward, Calif.
died Jan 25 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near their vehicle during combat operations. The soldiers were assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colo.
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:29:32
Navy Cmdr.
Peter Mongilardi Jr.
, of Haledon, N.J. The remains of the aviator, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors. He will be buried on April 11 at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington D.C. On June 25, 1965, Mongilardi departed the USS Coral Seain his A-4C Skyhawk on an armed reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam. His flight encountered bad weather and enemy fire over Thanh Hoa Province, causing the wingman to lose visual and radio contact with Mongilardi. Contact was never re-established and the aircraft failed to return to the carrier. In 1993... two local Vietnamese citizens... recalled the crash and said the pilot died in the impact. The men then led the team to the crash site. In 1994, another joint team excavated the crash site and recovered human remains and pilot-related items....
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:24:29
Army Pfc.
Nathan P. Fairlie
, 21, of Candor, N.Y., died of injuries suffered in Baqubah on Jan. 26 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Bradley Fighting Vehicle during combat operations. Fairlie was assigned to the 6th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas...
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:23:56
Army Pfc.
Darrell W. Shipp
, 25, of San Antonio, Texas, died Jan. 25 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas...
Animal Companions
local6.com/ ... 10:06:35
SANFORD, Fla. -- Residents in Sanford are concerned about their pets' safety after about 60 cats were found dead in recent months. It was believed that wild dogs were to blame for the deaths, but Local 6 News reported that domesticated dogs may be responsible for the killings. City officials said the dogs are not looking for food but want something live to chase... [Woman] whose cat was recently killed... said her rabbit may be used as live bait in a supervised scheme to catch the attacking animals...
Digital Culture
suntimes.com/ ... 11:05:59
...Bill Gates' saturation-bombing media schedule on Tuesday. There he was, apparently on every channel of the cable box at every hour of the day promoting the release of Windows Vista, changing his sweaters throughout the day like Madonna changing costumes throughout a two-hour concert. He was even on "The Daily Show," for God's sake (where Jon Stewart stumped him by asking, "What's the F12 key supposed to be for?")...
Modern Culture
suntimes.com/ ... 11:04:56
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the last of seven installments of the boy wizard's adventures, will be published July 21, author J.K. Rowling said Thursday...
Supernatural Whoops
telegraph.co.uk/ ... 11:00:05
The Australian prime minister has criticised a Sydney baptist church for erecting a sign declaring that "Jesus Loves Osama"... has provoked a storm of controversy across the country despite its apparently Christian message of forgiveness. Small print at the bottom of the sign urges churchgoers to "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you", a quotation from Matthew 5:44...
US Election 2008
washingtonpost.com/ ... 10:56:47
Backpedaling furiously, Sen. Joe Biden said he really meant to say "fresh" instead of "clean" in describing Democratic presidential rival Sen. Barack Obama. Appearing on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" late Wednesday, Biden said: "Look, the other part of this thing that got me in trouble is using the word clean. I should have said fresh. What I meant was that he's got new ideas, he's a new guy on the block..." But then Biden trailed off as he stared into Stewart's deadpan face. "It's not working, right?" the Delaware senator asked to much laughter from the show's audience...
Bartlesville - prarie frontier town
examiner-enterprise.com/ ... 10:10:10
Bartlesville Police Chief Leo Willey responded publicly Monday to a vote of "no confidence" cast by police union members last week... appeared on Tulsas KOTV Channel 6 News on Monday, saying he was unaware of any problems prior to the special FOP meeting... "I cant address what I dont know about," Willey said on the newscast. "Since they havent saw fit to talk about the problems, I dont know what they are..."
Digital Business
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:53:28
legal and technical communities have dug into Vista's "fine print"... The net effect of these concerns may constitute the real Vista revolution as they point to an unprecedented loss of consumer control over their own PCs. In the name of shielding consumers from computer viruses and protecting copyright owners from potential infringement, Vista seemingly wrestles control of the "user experience" from the user. Vista's legal fine print includes extensive provisions granting Microsoft the right to regularly check the legitimacy of the software and
holds the prospect of deleting certain programs without the user's knowledge... Vista intentionally degrades the picture quality of premium content when played on most computer monitors... the technological controls would require considerable consumption of computing power with the system conducting 30 checks each second to ensure that there are no attacks on the security of the premium content...
When Microsoft introduced Windows 95 more than a decade ago, it adopted the Rolling Stones Start Me Up as its theme song. As millions of consumers contemplate the company's latest upgrade, the legal and technological restrictions may leave them singing You Can't Always Get What You Want...
blogs.zdnet.com/ ... 20:49:51
Sometimes it just doesn't pay to be first. In the case of Windows Vista, the first wave of users are hitting some licensing glitches that are making them none too happy. The latest Vista licensing problem to come to light is a licensing-key glitch affecting those purchasing the Vista Family Pack. (The Vista Family Pack is a bundle of Windows Ultimate retail plus two $50 copies of Home Premium, designed for individuals with multiple PCs in a single household.) Family Pack purchasers are reporting they are being issued invalid keys for the Home Premium copies that are part of the bundle...
tgdaily.com/ ... 20:48:33
So far, I haven't been able to upgrade to Vista and won't be able to ever upgrade my current, six-week old PC to Vista... ended up in severe upgrade problems, which are estimated to be encountered by about 1% of all users trying to upgrade to Vista. And, it is just a re-affirming situation that Vista is not that kind of miracle Microsoft is promising, but rather, plain and simple, another version of Windows... When you are trying to install Vista over a pre-existing XP, the first thing you notice is how bloated this piece of software is. Does it really need to take more than 2 hours to install an OS?.. What is up with the system check and the notice that there may or may not be a problem with certain hardware pieces on my PC?.. sounded a bit like a physician telling your wife that she may be pregnant - or not. Take your pick... the PC refused to boot after finalizing the install. I was told there was a file missing. A very specific file that simply was not in the folder Vista would have expected it. There is a self-repair option, but after allowing Vista to search my PC for this problem for 60 minutes, I canceled the process and went back to XP...
At least on this side, Vista is just as rough as Windows 3.11, no doubt about it...
newpaper.asia1.com.sg/ ... 20:43:13
Naysayers complain that the long-delayed operating system is too power-hungry, too expensive, not revolutionary enough and so on. What they say is true. But trust me, once you start using Vista, you probably won't want to go back to the aged Windows XP... it wasn't built for creaky PCs and shouldn't be... you need to have a computer that comes with at least 1GB of RAM and a mid-range graphics card (about $300 for an decent model)... Vista's SuperFetch feature will learn which programs you use often, and will preload them, so that they fire up much faster... boots up, sleeps or shuts down with very little delay... much-hyped Aero interface... everything glows with lacquer-like gloss and mesmerising translucence. When you mouse over the program tabs at the bottom of the screen, you get a small thumbnail that shows what is happening in other hidden windows in real time.... the Windows Flip feature... lets you flip through different programs in a 3D space. Fancy, but pointless... powerful search capabilities... it is really pricey...
itwire.com.au/ ... 10:08:23
Seagate has formally announced its Digital Audio Video Experience (D.A.V.E) technology the project previously code-named "Crickett" at the DEMO 07 Conference in Palm Desert, California. The DAVE platform offers
10-20 GB of wireless storage in an accessory smaller than many common slim-line mobile phones.
It is designed to store, play and share digital files on mobile phones, PCs and other wireless-enabled devices...
Lost & Found
myfoxstl.com/ ... 10:03:48
stunning pictures of Shawn Hornbeck taken during his time in captivity. The photos give a glimpse into the life Shawn led when he was missing for more than four years. The pictures all appear to be taken at the apartment...
US Congress
politico.com/ ... 10:01:30
Rep. Loretta Sanchez has quit the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, accusing the chairman, Rep. Joe Baca, of telling people she's a "whore." Baca denied the charge... "You treat the women like $#!+. I have no use for him..."
Woman's Right
abc.net.au/ ... 09:57:02
the lavender and tea tree oils found in some soaps, shampoos, hair gels and body lotions can produce enlarged breasts in boys... the development was reversed when the boys stopped using the oils... suggests the oils can act in ways similar to the hormone oestrogen... "Whether the oils elicit similar endocrine-disrupting effects in prepubescent girls, adolescent girls or women is unknown..."
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