blog-heap o' links
from
2008-feb
Just random links galore. Latest on top.
Links load in a separate page.
Suggestions welcome.
FRI 2008-FEB-29
To Tell the Truth
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:44:14
Almost nothing Misha Defonseca wrote about herself or her horrific childhood during the Holocaust was true. She didn't live with a pack of wolves to escape the Nazis. She didn't trek 1,900 miles across Europe in search of her deported parents, nor kill a German soldier in self-defense. She's not even Jewish...
International Incidents
reuters.com/ ... 22:39:53
Turkey pulled its troops out of northern Iraq on Friday, ending a major offensive against Kurdish PKK rebels that Washington had feared might destabilize the wider region...
Mystery
reuters.com/ ... 22:37:08
An unidentified man is in critical condition with suspected ricin poisoning after staying in a Las Vegas hotel room where the potentially deadly substance was found... not thought to be terrorism related... not clear where the ricin came from, or what is was doing in the room... castor beans, the basis for making ricin, were found in the hotel on Thursday and... the ricin was found in vials in the room...
Civilization vs Gangsterism
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 22:42:00
At least 35 people have been killed by a suicide bomber at a funeral in north-western Pakistan. The funeral was for one of three policemen killed by a roadside bomb earlier on Friday...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 22:41:46
Prince Harry has been withdrawn from Afghanistan after news of his secret deployment leaked out...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 22:40:28
The execution of Saddam Hussein's cousin and henchman "Chemical Ali" has been approved by Iraq's presidency...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 22:40:18
A worldwide security alert has been issued two days after a suspected Islamist militant leader escaped from jail in Singapore... Mas Selamat Kastari... thought to be a leader of the Jemaah Islamiah militant group... Police believe he planned attacks on the US embassy in Singapore and plotted to hijack and crash a plane at the city-state's international airport...
reuters.com/ ... 22:36:06
Gunmen kidnapped the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul on Friday
in the northern Iraqi city and killed his driver and two guards...
Fun can be Dangerous
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:23:00
WAUSAU, Wis... Excessive chlorine levels in a pool sent more than 40 young children... kindergartners... to hospitals Friday, including one who remained in critical condition... started to have difficulty breathing after about 30 minutes in the water...
Korean War - still with us
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:20:15
U.S. and Chinese officials signed a document Friday morning in Shanghai, China to formalize research in Chinese archives on Korean War POW/MIA matters....
Criminally Stupid
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:17:35
DES MOINES, Iowa... The robber of a convenience store left behind... a W-2 form...
Sex can be... disturbing
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:16:17
Victoria's Secret, the lingerie company that introduced the Very Sexy bra, the Fantasy Bra, and the Internet server-crashing fashion show, has become "too sexy" for its own good, its top executive said...
Transport Tragedy
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 00:15:12
The death toll from Thursday's accident involving a ferry in Bangladesh has risen to 39... The ferry, carrying more than 100 passengers, collided with another vessel in the Buriganga river, near Dhaka, and capsized...
A recent study on ferry safety said that about 20,000 cargo and passenger vessels operate in Bangladesh, and about half of them fail to meet basic safety standards, or take on more than their legal quota of passengers...
Nature vs Infrastructure
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 00:14:16
A landslide has cut off Ecuador's main export oil pipeline but the state oil firm Petroecuador says it will try to use other routes...
Yuck!
hosted.ap.org/ ... 00:14:03
A restaurant cook is out of a job and facing a felony charge after being accused of hiding hairs in a ribeye because a customer complained the first steak served to him was overcooked...
Infrastructure Failure
sun-sentinel.com/ ... 00:13:22
It took only three minutes for an overheated switch and then a fire at a power substation near Miami on Tuesday afternoon to shut down a nuclear plant south of the city and trigger Florida's largest blackout in at least 20 years. Figuring out why is going to take longer...
Threats
miamiherald.com/ ... 00:09:48
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is purchasing "three or four times" more weapons than he needs, a top U.S. intelligence chief said Wednesday, but there is no evidence so far he is providing arms to Colombian guerrillas... Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said that the 100,000 AK-103s and AK-104 assault rifles purchased by Venezuela from Russia are going "into armories..."
It's All in Your Mind
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:35:34
Two University of Virginia researchers believe that humans are genetically predisposed to be deathly afraid of snakes... because snakes would have posed a significant threat to our ancestors...
Mars
reuters.com/ ... 22:34:34
It made a big splash when scientists announced in 2006 that images from a NASA spacecraft indicated water apparently had flowed on the surface of Mars in the past decade but new research casts doubt on that finding...
Healing Ourselves
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:25:08
The government announced Friday that it has said goodbye to one of the world's greatest lifesavers - the oldest smallpox vaccine. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this month made arrangements to dispose of the last of its 12 million doses of Dryvax, and notified other health departments and the military to do the same by Feb. 29... being replaced in federal vaccine stockpiles by a more modern product manufactured in laboratories. Dryvax was unusually dangerous for a vaccine, blamed in recent years for triggering heart attacks and a painful heart inflammation in some patients...
"It was a vaccine that eliminated smallpox from the United States..."
Food Recall
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:24:03
HARRISBURG, Pa... Gorton's Inc. recalled about 1,000 cases of frozen fish in 10 states on Friday after confirming that
items a Pennsylvania customer reported finding in her food were pills...
described... as beige and aspirin-size. "It's kind of frightening to not only find something in your mouth, a foreign object.... But then basically my heart stopped when my daughter said, 'I have one in my mouth, too,' and pulled it out..."
US Military
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:19:44
The Defense Department announced today that charges have been referred against Guantanamo detainee
Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza al Darbi of Saudi Arabia.
...brother-in-law of the Flight 77 hijacker al Mihdhar... the plane that hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11... charges are: Conspiring with others to attack civilians, commit murder in violation of the law of war, destroy property in violation of the law of war, hazard a vessel and commit terrorism; and providing material support to terrorism. Al Darbi was allegedly involved in planning and procuring equipment for attacks on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and off the coast of Yemen. The charges authorize a maximum sentence of confinement for life.....
It came from the sky
tcpalm.com/ ... 00:08:34
No one knows exactly what the mysterious "space debris" on the beach near Pebble Beach Condos is but residents removed the object that washed ashore earlier this month...
Reasons for Repeal
jacksonsun.com/ ... 23:00:42
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation says it has dismantled a marijuana-growing operation that was housed in a buried metal tank... about 20 feet long and 8 feet tall... 1,000 marijuana plants, several guns, documents related to the marijuana operation and $4,000 in cash...
foxnews.com/ ... 23:00:15
A Hummer-driving Minnesota man claiming he was a student in need of extra cash was busted for allegedly receiving 213 pounds of marijuana shipped by UPS from California...
delawareonline.com/ ... 22:59:56
A 49-year-old New Jersey man was arrested Tuesday night after being found with more than 100 pounds of marijuana in his van when he was stopped for running a red light...
delawareonline.com/ ... 22:59:43
A rookie state trooper making a routine traffic stop near Harrington uncovered 140 pounds of marijuana Thursday stashed in three laundry bags hidden in the vehicle... saw a 1999 Chevrolet blazer bearing the registration belonging to a 1988 Mazda... troopers then noticed a green leafy substance believed to be marijuana in the center console...
[Stupid stupid pot smuggler....]
foxnews.com/ ... 22:59:00
WILMINGTON, N.C. A Wilmington high school student accused of giving her teacher drug-laced cookies is going to trial... marijuana...
foxnews.com/ ... 22:58:40
MONROE, La. A newborn was hospitalized after doctors discovered marijuana in his system shortly after his birth and Ouachita Parish
sheriff's investigators arrested the mother...
online.wsj.com/ ... 22:58:14
Mexico's Illegal Drug Problems and Our Own Are Tied Together...
ap.google.com/ ... 22:58:04
A Look at Major Drug-Producing Countries...
Unclear on the Concept
infoworld.com/ ... 22:51:33
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should allow broadband providers to manage their networks and slow "bandwidth hogs," despite concerns that such practices arbitrarily target some customers,
said a coalition of seven civil rights groups...
[??????]
Net neutrality rules for broadband providers would protect bandwidth hogs at the expense of other customers and civic organizations, said the coalition... includes the National Black Chamber of Commerce, Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association, League of Rural Voters, and National Council of Women's Organizations...
[OOOhhhh....]
Free Expression
news.com/ ... 22:51:52
Federal Communications Commission chief Kevin Martin on Monday targeted Comcast's contention that delaying peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic serves user interests, appearing to sympathize with the cable company's critics...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 22:41:24
A Berlin art gallery has temporarily closed an exhibition where one of the posters made fun of Islam's holiest shrine, the Kaaba in Mecca. The decision came after threats believed to be from Muslims...
Digital Threat
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:30:25
A federal judge who shuttered the renegade Web site Wikileaks.org reversed the decision Friday and allowed the site to re-open in the United States...
Digital Privacy
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 22:29:46
The use of material taken from personal profiles on social networks by newspapers is to be the subject of a major consultation undertaken by industry watchdog the Press Complaints Commission (PCC)...
Digital Past -- less with us
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 22:29:19
A web browser that gave many people their first experience of the web is set to disappear.
Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 March 2008,
the company has said... In the mid-1990s, as the commercial web began to take off, the browser was used by more than 90% of people online. Its market share has since slipped to just 0.6%...
Digital Future is Now
reuters.com/ ... 22:22:06
Nearly 70 percent of Americans believe traditional journalism is out of touch, and nearly half are turning to the Internet to get their news...
People Live
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:16:46
MIDDLETOWN, Ohio... two, unrelated women have turned 104 just three days apart...
Leap Year
indianasnewscenter.com/ ... 22:50:21
why do we have Leap Years? Well, according to the Royal Greenwich Obervatory...
deseretnews.com/ ... 22:49:49
In a perfect world, perhaps, everything would come out even. The Earth would move around the sun in exactly 360 days. The calendar would be divided into 12 months of 30 days each, months that would exactly coincide with the time it takes for the moon to rotate around the Earth. But that's not the way it is...
wptv.com/ ... 22:49:36
However, some exceptions to this rule are required since the duration of a solar year is slightly less than 365.25 days. Years which are evenly divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they are also evenly divisible by 400, in which case they are leap years. For example, 1600 and 2000 were leap years, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not. Going forward, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2500, 2600, 2700, 2900, and 3000 will not be leap years, but 2400 and 2800 will be. By this rule, the average number of days per year will be 365 + 1/4 - 1/100 + 1/400 = 365.2425, which is 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 12 seconds...
actionfigureinsider.com/ ... 22:48:57
We do this because the Earth does not orbit the sun in a nice round 365 days, but rather in 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds...
blogs.usatoday.com/ ... 22:48:30
BBC News points out that those of you who receive an annual salary are working an extra day without extra pay. (Where's the fairness in that?) The Washington Post says the leap gives zoos an excuse to celebrate "The Year of the Frog." Newseum examines how newspapers are covering the extra day. The people of Anthony, Texas/New Mexico, have anointed their town the "Leap Year Capital of the World..."
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:18:17
As Julie Austin of Galesville [Wis] prepared to observe her leap day birthday Friday... her daughter, Melissa Boudreau, gave birth to a girl at 3:23 a.m... "I never thought we'd have two leap day babies in our family, and to have a granddaughter on my birthday is so special..."
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:15:57
Tillie Iverson is observing her 24th birthday Friday - at the age of 96... born in 1912 on Feb. 29... she still feels a little cheated as a Leap Day baby. "I didn't enjoy it at all.... The day before, that's not my birthday. And the day after, that's not my birthday either. I've been shorted on birthdays..."
Theory of Sex Education
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:24:18
New research by a University of New Hampshire domestic abuse expert says spanking children affects their sex lives as adults...
stltoday.com/ ... 00:11:01
[27yo] teacher at Barat Academy in Dardenne Prairie e-mailed two topless photos of herself to [15yo] student...
Theory of Education
chron.com/ ... 00:10:12
The Houston school district is investigating allegations that a Memorial Elementary School teacher repeatedly called her 4- and 5-year-old students "stupid" and said she had a right to be mean to them...
Evolution Isn't Easy
telegraph.co.uk/ ... 00:09:00
A leading scientist accuses creationists of peddling the lie that there is no fossil evidence of evolution...
US Election 2008
ap.google.com/ ... 00:08:05
Barack Obama said he has successfully quit smoking cigarettes despite the pressures of a closely contested and lengthy presidential campaign. "I've been chewing on this Nicorette, which tastes like you're chewing on ground pepper but it does help..." His wife, Michelle, had used his smoking as leverage when the two were discussing whether he should run for president. She would agree only if Obama agreed to give up smoking...
THU 2008-FEB-28
Disturbing Family Patterns
thesun.co.uk/ ... 23:27:02
7-year-old 'bird boy' has spent his life in a flat filled with bird cages with a mum who treated him like one of her pets... can reportedly only communicate by 'chirping...' 31-year-old mum did not talk [to] him and treated him like a bird, forcing him to learn avian language... the boy becomes frustrated at not being able to communicate and flaps his arms...
nydailynews.com/ ... 23:20:04
Cops have released a photo of a little girl abandoned inside a livery cab in Queens this morning and investigators hope someone will come forward to ID her...
Violence
reuters.com/ ... 23:08:02
The father of an abandoned toddler, who is wanted in New Zealand in the killing of his wife, has been arrested in the United States... Nai Yin Xue was arrested in the town of Chamblee, Georgia, near Atlanta, after members of the local Chinese community recognized him from a picture in a Chinese newspaper and tied him up until police arrived... Xue made headlines in September after security camera footage showed him abandoning his 3-year-old daughter, Qian Xun Xue, at a railway station in Melbourne, Australia, before boarding a flight to Los Angeles... body of Xue's wife, Anan Liu, 27, was found in his car outside the couple's home in Auckland four days after Xue left...
War is Hell
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:48:15
Thursday, 28 Feb... Four Palestinian children have been killed in an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip, local medics say. The boys were playing near the Jabaliya refugee camp. The Israeli army said it had targeted a rocket-launching cell. Later, two Hamas militants were killed by Israeli strikes in Beit Hanoun and on a security post near Hamas leader Ismail Haniya's home in Gaza City...
Transport Tragedy
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:45:17
A police plane has crashed onto a playing field in the Chilean capital, Santiago, killing all six people on board and five on the ground. The five, including a mother and young child, were exercising in the playing field when the plane came down...
Opposing Tyranny
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:44:55
Lesbians from across Africa have called on African governments to stop treating homosexuals like criminals. The demand came as about 75 activists gathered at a conference in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. The Coalition of African Lesbians called the conference to highlight discrimination across the continent...
Under Tyranny
in.reuters.com/ ... 23:25:37
China, worried about an ageing population, is studying scrapping its controversial one-child policy but will not do away with family-planning policies altogether...
reuters.com/ ... 20:57:55
The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world and for the first time in the nation's history,
more than one in every 100 American adults is confined in a prison or jail...
Tough sentencing laws,
record numbers of drug offenders
and high crime rates have contributed...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:43:46
The European Union has criticised the new penal code being drafted in Iran, particularly a section that
imposes the death penalty for giving up Islam...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:43:31
Russian freedom of speech is "shrinking alarmingly" under President Vladimir Putin, says Amnesty International...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:41:58
Raul Castro has been unanimously selected to succeed his brother Fidel as leader by Cuba's National Assembly...
Industrial Tragedy
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:41:45
One person is missing after a blast tore through a shopping centre in the US state of Illinois, injuring six... gas leak... Mannequins strewn among debris from the blast were at first mistaken for the body of victims...
Earth Shakes
hosted.ap.org/ ... 16:42:05
The
fault line that spawned the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami
has ruptured nearly 20 times this month, causing three strong earthquakes. The activity shows the stress the seam is under and
could be a harbinger of worse to come
, scientists warn...
reuters.com/ ... 16:39:07
An earthquake with a magnitude of
5.2 shook parts of Britain
on Wednesday but officials said there were no reports of anyone being killed or serious damage...
Animals can be Deadly
reuters.com/ ... 16:38:15
An Austrian scuba diver died after a shark bit his leg in the Bahamas...
Out of Control Prosecutors
reuters.com/ ... 16:17:54
A Pennsylvania man who shot and wounded a police officer more than 41 years ago will stand trial for his murder following the officer's death last year... Prosecutors say the victim, Walter Barclay, died of injuries directly linked to the 1966 shooting... William Barnes, 71, who already served around 20 years in prison for the shooting and other offenses, was rearrested last year and charged with murder following Barclay's death.... Judge... sided with prosecutors, although he noted that he
had not found any other case in the United States in which a suspect had been charged with murder so long after causing an injury...
Civilization vs Gangsterism
abcnews.go.com/ ... 23:07:01
Across the United Kingdom today, it was breaking news: Prince Harry has secretly been serving in Afghanistan since Christmas...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:50:35
Feb 28... A pre-dawn explosion demolished a house in Pakistan's wild frontier zone on Thursday, killing up to 12 suspected militants... explosion "ripped through heavy explosives stored at a house" in a village in South Waziristan...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:49:08
The chief of the Iraqi Journalists' Union died Wednesday of wounds suffered in an ambush described as a tragic example of the dangers still faced by the country's journalists...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:48:53
Feb 27... A roadside bomb killed two Polish soldiers patrolling in eastern Afghanistan... in the Sharan district of Paktika province...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:47:26
Swedish police say they have arrested three men in the capital, Stockholm, on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts and financing terror groups...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:45:35
An Israeli has been killed in a barrage of rockets fired by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip. The Hamas militant group says it fired at least 20 rockets, including eight at the town of Sderot, a frequent target...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:44:15
Five members of the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas have been killed in an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip, medics say...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:43:18
Tuesday, 26 Feb... Five policemen have been killed after a roadside bomb hit a police vehicle in eastern Afghanistan... Among the dead was an officer, his two sons and two nephews. All five worked as policemen...
reuters.com/ ... 16:54:19
Sun Feb 24... A suicide bomber detonated a vest packed with metal ball bearings in a refreshment tent full of Iraqi pilgrims heading to a Shi'ite festival on Sunday, killing 40 people and wounding 60...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 00:49:34
NATO soldiers on patrol in eastern Afghanistan Tuesday hit a roadside bomb that killed two of the troops...
NATO said it found and destroyed $400 million worth of opium in the south...
Nature can be Deadly
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:42:31
Nearly 145,000 people have been left homeless by a cyclone that tore through Madagascar, killing 44 people... figures double previous estimates...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 00:48:59
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar... The death toll has risen to 44 and the number of homeless is up to 145,000 more than a week after a cyclone tore through this island in the Indian Ocean...
International Incidents
hosted.ap.org/ ... 00:44:41
Turkey says it is not targeting civilians as it chases after separatist rebels in northern Iraq, but people in Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region say they have lived in fear since the incursion began...
Criminally Stupid
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:56:28
A man found out that February in the East Tennessee mountains isn't the best time to try hiding from the law underwater... had to be "manually extracted." He was treated for hypothermia at a local hospital and released...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 00:42:52
SYDNEY, Australia... armed robber... raided an Australian bar... About 50 members of the Southern Cross Cruiser Club had just started a club meeting in another room... ended up hog-tied and in a hospital...
Lasting Contributions
amuniversal.com/ ... 17:04:59
Universal Press Syndicate Remembers Bill Buckley... I always had to prepare for a couple of hours before meeting with Bill, like I was cramming for a college exam. His intellect and insight were incredible and I'll never forget his talent... also gained acclaim as host of the long-running weekly debate program "Firing Line." The program, which ended its 33-year run on television in 1999, featured such distinguished guests as George Bush, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, John Kenneth Galbraith, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Barry Goldwater, Germaine Greer, Edward Heath, Henry Kissinger, the Dalai Lama, Norman Mailer, Groucho Marx, James Michener, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Theodore White and Tom Wolfe. Buckley has written more than 40 books, including God and Man at Yale, Saving the Queen, Up From Liberalism, Airborne and most recently, Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton. He has contributed articles to most major American publications, including Architectural Digest, Art & Antiques, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Foreign Affairs, Harper's, Life, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Playboy, The Saturday Evening Post and Yachting...
reuters.com/ ... 17:04:00
Writer and commentator William F. Buckley, the patrician intellectual credited with founding the modern conservative movement in U.S. politics, died on Wednesday at age 82... died early on Wednesday while writing in his study in Stamford, Connecticut, said Jack Fowler, publisher of National Review, the magazine Buckley founded in 1955... U.S. President George W. Bush said from the Oval Office. "He was so articulate and he captured the imagination of a lot of folks because he had a great way of defining the issues. It was erudite and yet a lot of folks from different walks of life could understand it..." in a 1968 television debate with writer Gore Vidal... Buckley said, "Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll knock you in the God-damned teeth..."
Only Natural
hosted.ap.org/ ... 16:46:00
Study shows bacteria are common in snow... The focus on Pseudomonas in the past has been to try and eliminate it, Christner said, but now that it turns out to be a major factor in encouraging snow and rain, he wonders if that is a good idea. Would elimination of this bacteria result in less rain or snow, or would it be replaced by other nuclei such as soot and dust?..
World Zookeeping
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:57:01
Federal wildlife managers said Thursday they want to increase by more than 20-fold the amount of land designated as critical habitat for the threatened Canada lynx, to nearly 43,000 square miles in six states...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:47:43
At least 600 rare Himalayan goats that provide the soft wool for Kashmir's prized Pashmina shawls have died of starvation... thousands more goats face death after their desert habitat was blanketed with snow during the region's heaviest snowfall in 30 years...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 16:43:54
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas... When tourists found a 5-inch green sea turtle bloody and missing three of her flippers, the people who run a hospital for the endangered animals here gave her little chance of survival. But the turtle persevered, thanks to injections of antibiotics and a forced diet of squid. Somehow, she swam with just one flipper, even though she can only move in counterclockwise circles and has to push her now 10-pound body off the bottom with her head to breathe... Now, her caregivers hope to make her what's believed to be the first sea turtle fitted with a prosthetic flipper...
Animal Culture
reuters.com/ ... 16:41:25
Bats stay aloft by employing an aerodynamic trick previously thought unique to insects, researchers said on Thursday... a tiny cyclone of air over each wing called a leading edge vortex provided as much as 40 percent of the lift required to keep the animals in the air. "It wasn't known that vertebrates can do it too..."
Earth-Moon System
reuters.com/ ... 16:40:26
The moon's south pole region, a possible future landing site for human or robotic lunar missions, is far more rugged than had been thought, with towering peaks and deep craters, NASA said on Wednesday...
Dinosaurs -- still with us
reuters.com/ ... 16:40:04
The fossil of a 15 meter (50 ft) long "sea monster" found in Arctic Norway was the biggest of its kind known to science with dagger-like teeth in a
mouth large enough to bite a small car...
150-million year old dinosaur-era pliosaur, a fierce marine reptile, was about five meters (16 ft 5 in) longer than the previous pliosaur record holder found in Australia...
Antiquity - still with us
reuters.com/ ... 16:38:32
A ceremonial plaza built 5,500 years ago has been discovered in Peru, and archeologists involved in the dig said on Monday carbon dating shows it is one of the oldest structures ever found in the Americas...
Staying Healthy
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 16:41:41
New generation anti-depressants have little clinical benefit for most patients, research suggests...
reuters.com/ ... 16:18:52
Dust mites and cockroach allergens can weaken defense mechanisms of the human skin, making it more permeable and vulnerable... important, especially for people with eczema, to protect themselves from such microscopic bugs and filth...
US Military
abcnews.go.com/ ... 23:27:26
After completing two tours in Iraq, Sgt. Wayne Leyde won $1 million from a scratch-and-win lotto ticket on Tuesday... Now that he's won, Leyde, a 26-year-old member of the Washington National Guard, says he's still going to volunteer to go back to Iraq for a third tour and won't spend any of the money in the meantime...
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:56:42
National Guard... This week, the Army, Navy and Marine Corps announced an increase, while the Air Force announced a decrease. The Coast Guard number remained the same. The net collective result is
786 more reservists
mobilized than last week.... This brings the total National Guard and Reserve personnel who have been mobilized to 96,014, including both units and individual augmentees...
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:55:34
The Defense Department announced today that three charges have been referred against Guantanamo detainee Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al Bahlul. The first two charges are conspiracy and solicitation to commit: murder of protected persons, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, murder in violation of the Law of War, destruction of property in violation of the Law of War, terrorism, and providing material support for terrorism. The third charge is providing material support for terrorism. The charges authorize a maximum sentence of confinement for life. The charges allege that in about February of 1999, al Bahlul traveled to Afghanistan to attend military-type training and to join al Qaeda. Once a member of Al Qaeda, he allegedly served as the personal director and media director of Usama bin Laden. The charge sheet states al Bahlul created a propaganda video titled "The Destruction of the American Destroyer U.S.S. Cole," proposed propaganda declarations styled as martyr wills for Sept. 11 hijackers Mohammed Atta and Ziad al Jarrah, researched the economic effects of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States for Usama bin Laden, and operated Al Qaeda's media communication equipment. The charges also allege al Bahlul armed himself to protect and prevent the capture of Usama bin Laden....
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:56:01
Army Spc.
Orlando A. Perez,
23, of Houston, died Feb. 24 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered from small arms fire during dismounted operations. He was assigned to the 2nd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment, Vilseck, Germany.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:54:46
Army Spc.
Micheal E. Phillips,
19, of Ardmore, Okla., died Feb. 24 in Baghdad, Iraq, from wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:54:33
Army Spc.
Kevin S. Mowl,
22, of Pittsford, N.Y., died Feb. 25 at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Md., of wounds suffered in Baghdad, Iraq on Aug. 2, 2007, when the vehicle he was in encountered an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, Fort Lewis Wash.
Theory of Education
boston.com/ ... 23:28:24
HALLOWELL, Maine - Jonathan McCullum was in excellent health at 155 pounds when he left last summer to spend the school year as an exchange student in Egypt. But when he returned home to Maine just four months later, the 5-foot-9 teenager weighed a mere 97 pounds and was so weak that he struggled to carry his baggage or climb a flight of stairs. Doctors said he was at risk of a heart attack. McCullum says he was denied sufficient food while staying with a family of Coptic Christians, who fast for more than 200 days a year, a regimen unmatched by other Christians...
People Live
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:46:59
A fisherman swam for more than 10 hours to find help for the two companions he left behind after their boat sank off the east coast of Australia. The exhausted swimmer was found on a beach, and coastguards were then able to find one of the men. He had spent 30 hours at sea, clinging to debris...
US Election 2008
weblogs.chicagotribune.com/ ... 23:29:09
"They threw in the obvious, ultimate fear bomb," [Michelle] Obama said today of her husband's 2004 Senate race. "We're even hearing [that] now. 'When all else fails, be afraid of his name, and what that could stand for, because it's different.'" The senator's wife said that rivals use innuendo to play on fears. "Just as they're saying it now..."
blogs.abcnews.com/ ... 23:27:55
In an interview with ABC News' Cynthia McFadden to air on this evening's "Nightline," Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., says it's tougher for her to run as a woman than it is for her male opponent...
sfgate.com/ ... 23:19:44
Editorial... You can't be serious, Ralph... Ralph Nader sure knows how to marginalize his candidacy for president: He picked a brooding, far-left running mate who couldn't get elected mayor of San Francisco...
boston.com/ ... 23:09:17
Ralph Nader... announced his running mate... Matt Gonzalez... In 2000, he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, becoming the first Green Party candidate to get elected in the city by the bay. The Texas-born activist and lawyer previously lost a race for district attorney in 1999, then lost a race for San Francisco mayor in 2003... Nader, whom many Democrats blame for costing Al Gore the White House in 2000, has insisted he did not swing that race... He has also criticized Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for voting to fund the war in Iraq and to increase the military budget opposing a single-payer, government-run healthcare system, supporting nuclear power, and for not advocating sweeping changes in US policy in the Middle East...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:46:34
Hillary Clinton has lost a prominent black supporter, Democratic Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, to her rival Barack Obama. The defection comes the day after the two main Democratic presidential candidates clashed in a TV debate...
Unclear on the Concept
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:46:02
The largest survey to date of Muslims worldwide suggests the vast majority want Western democracy and freedoms, but do not want them to be imposed...
[Just exactly how does one "impose" democracy and freedom?]
Sportsmanship
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:44:28
The diversion of water for the Beijing Olympics threatens the livelihoods of millions of people, a senior Chinese government official has said...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:42:48
Steven Spielberg's resignation from the Beijing Olympics because of China's policy in Sudan has put pressure on others associated with the event. British director Daryl Goodrich, who has just made a promotional film for the Olympics, admits he now questions his involvement in the games...
World Without Borders
reuters.com/ ... 17:06:35
U.S. immigration officials said on Thursday they had dismantled a Guatemalan human smuggling ring that brought more than 100 illegal immigrants a week into the Los Angeles area... 13 people, including two of the suspected ringleaders, face charges... "The human smuggling trade is a ruthless, greed-driven enterprise that puts communities at risk and generates billions of dollars in illicit proceeds..."
Digital Culture
hosted.ap.org/ ... 16:42:50
The concept of a comprehensive encyclopedia of life on the Internet proved too popular. Its computers were overwhelmed and couldn't keep it alive when it debuted Tuesday... Scientists at the Encyclopedia of Life sought help from experts at Wikipedia for keeping their fledgling Web site going despite massive - and anticipated - interest. The site went back up Tuesday afternoon, but with expectations of more problems, although only temporary ones...
reuters.com/ ... 16:31:11
Giles Martin, the Grammy Award-winning producer of the band's "Love" album, has teamed with a new site called iVideosongs to create teaching videos to the Web. Launched this month, the site shows clips of Martin teaching fans -- even the ones who can't read music -- how to play their favorite songs. Martin's music credentials are impressive. Beyond his award-winning work, he is the son of legendary British record producer Sir George Martin, often described as the 'fifth Beatle'...
Recall
hosted.ap.org/ ... 16:24:02
Safety officials announced a recall of 24,000 cribs Thursday and also warned parents against putting their babies to bed with pillows and other soft bedding that could suffocate them. The 24,000 Indonesian-made cribs were recalled for putting children at risk of falling out...
People are Born
reuters.com/ ... 16:23:24
AHMEDABAD, India... a moving Indian train...
[33yo woman 7 months pregnant...]
relieving herself... Most toilets on Indian trains are filthy chutes emptying directly onto the tracks... fainted on the toilet seat... for a few minutes before waking up and alerting her family. "My delivery was so sudden... I did not even realize that my child had slipped from the hole in the toilet.... They stopped the train and ran on the tracks to find the baby..." Railway staff at a nearby station were alerted and soon
found the newborn girl lying uninjured on pebbles by the track...
Broadcast is Dead
hosted.ap.org/ ... 00:53:27
ABC said Monday it will release hit shows like "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" for free over video-on-demand cable services, with the hitch that viewers will have to sit through commercials without being able to fast-forward...
[SSSSSOOOOOOOOOOO unclear on the concept....]
Digital Liberty
blog.wired.com/ ... 23:21:16
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White issued a document late Thursday suggesting he might have erred last week when he signed an order that took down the WikiLeaks site and also locked "the WikiLeaks.org domain name to prevent transfer of the domain name to a different domain registrar." A hearing on the issue is scheduled for Friday morning in U.S. District Court in San Francisco...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 00:53:46
Government surveillance of personal computers would violate the individual right to privacy, Germany's highest court found Wednesday, in a ruling that German investigators say will restrict their ability to pursue terrorists...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 00:53:02
Federal regulators on Monday said they are ready to discipline Internet service providers who secretly favor certain types of data traffic, like Web surfing, over others, like file sharing...
Digital Sex can be Disturbing
hosted.ap.org/ ... 00:52:42
Each week, about 100,000 sexually explicit images of children arrive on CDs or portable disk drives at Michelle Collins' office. They are sent by police and prosecutors who hope Collins and her 11 analysts at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children can verify that the graphic pictures are real, not computer-generated. When they can't, officials sometimes turn to outside experts. All this is being done - at an annual cost in the millions of dollars collectively in child-pornography cases alone - as software like Photoshop makes it easier to fake photos and as juries become more skeptical about what they see...
Digital Future is Now
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 16:26:21
A university in Devon is preparing to find out if a baby robot can be taught to talk...
reuters.com/ ... 00:46:08
Restaurants in Europe, the United States and Japan are testing technology to let diners order their food direct from a screen at their table instead of depending on a fellow human being to note their choice -- sometimes grumpily or erroneously...
Digital Threat
hosted.ap.org/ ... 20:49:56
A repairman discovered a confidential government computer disc hidden inside a laptop bought on eBay... disk was marked "Home Office" and "Private and Confidential." The Home Office - the government body responsible for maintaining law and order and fighting terrorism - confirmed the disk was genuine and said it was investigating the incident...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 16:27:09
Leading Internet scholars at Harvard University will convene a yearlong task force to explore how children can avoid unwanted contact and content when using MySpace and other popular online hangouts...
[Hmm... Parental supervision? Pull the plug?]
hosted.ap.org/ ... 00:53:58
A company that sells Internet addresses is being sued for its controversial practice of holding a domain name in reserve if someone checks for its availability but does not buy it right away...
reuters.com/ ... 00:45:28
A battery in a Samsung... notebook computer melted on Sunday, officials from the company and South Korea's fire department said... the P10 model, which was produced in 2002...
Digital Business
reuters.com/ ... 16:30:13
Microsoft Corp released the latest version of its Windows operating system for powerful servers on Wednesday, thrusting itself into the red-hot market for virtualization technology that allows one computer to act like many machines. Windows Server 2008 marks Microsoft's first major challenge against VMware Inc, the leader in virtualization, by building the technology into its core operating system...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 00:54:11
EU regulators approved the purchase of Netherlands-based PC maker Packard Bell BV by Taiwan's Acer Inc. on Wednesday...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 00:49:11
The latest version of web browser Firefox will make changes to the way people search for information online, says its developer...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 00:43:49
Adobe has launched software designed to make it easier for computer users to use online applications offline...
Virtual Future is Now
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 00:44:25
the man behind Populous, Black and White and the three-million selling Fable says he has failed as a designer because he has not been able to attract a wider audience to gaming. That failure, he says, has sparked his passion to see the problem solved. "It's a failure borne out of myself as a games designer and creator and indeed the wider games industry. "For making games that only appeal to a small part of world. The number of people playing games is going up, but it's going up slowly. "The number of people who could potentially be playing games is huge..."
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 00:43:35
Virtual worlds are becoming increasingly rich and diverse environments with complex social and economic eco-systems. Science fiction trading game Eve Online is one of the most dynamic worlds, with its own economists helping players get to grips with the intricacies. More than 220,000 people pay a subscription to play Eve Online, a game set in a vast universe of more than 5,000 solar systems distributed over 66 regions...
WED 2008-FEB-27
Criminally Stupid
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:11:14
PLAISTOW, N.H... same man tried to rob the same bank, wearing the same clothes and telling employees the same thing on Tuesday as he did two weeks ago... On his second attempt, tellers refused to give him money and he took off empty-handed...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:09:14
witnesses thought it was odd when they watched the man pull a stocking over his head before the heist. And a half-dozen people pointed to the apartment building and said, "He went there..."
reuters.com/ ... 22:06:30
An elderly German who hid a stolen suit under his clothes was caught because he forgot to take it off the hanger...
Iran
afp.google.com/ ... 21:57:34
A top Iranian cleric made a rare criticism of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's verbal attacks on Israel on Wednesday, saying a foreign policy of "coarse slogans" was not in the national interest...
Disturbing Family Patterns
ketv.com/ ... 21:49:36
OMAHA, Neb. -- An Omaha-area mother is wanted by police on allegations child abuse and three child pornography charges after she allegedly posted child pornography on Web sites featuring images of her teenage daughter...
Theory of Sex Education
cbs2chicago.com/ ... 21:43:40
JOLIET, Ill... fourth-graders received an unwanted anatomy lesson during a field trip... [46yo male] arrested after allegedly fondling himself while driving naked next to a school bus for several miles... "The driver was still naked when he was taken into custody..."
Transport Tragedy
breitbart.com/ ... 21:42:07
An American Airlines passenger died after a flight attendant told her he couldn't give her any oxygen and then tried to help her with faulty equipment, including an empty oxygen tank...
Alcohol Was Involved
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:12:07
Now they're trying to determine if the weapon involved was a spork... [52yo] intoxicated and carrying a small pocketknife as well as a backpack containing a fast food bag and sporks...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:07:15
APPLETON, Wis... apparently drunk man... arrested... after he reportedly relieved himself in front of the police department...
tcpalm.com/ ... 21:39:19
he leader of a[n]... agency established to provide classes for people convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs was suspended from her job Wednesday in the wake of her DUI arrest Monday...
Staying Healthy
reuters.com/ ... 22:18:21
Taking the herbal supplement ginkgo biloba may help delay the onset of cognitive impairment in normal elderly adults...
reuters.com/ ... 22:17:22
The best way to stop the next influenza pandemic in its tracks could be to shut down schools and keep students at home, according to the authors of a new study of social contact networks...
reuters.com/ ... 22:16:45
The use of vitamin E supplements appears to increase the risk of tuberculosis in some middle-aged smokers...
It's All in Your Mind
reuters.com/ ... 22:17:11
Aggression in some teenage boys may be linked to overly large amygdalas, a region in the brain involved in emotion and other functions... these boys may also be unable to control their emotions because other parts of the brain that normally control strong emotions don't mature till the early 20s...
reuters.com/ ... 22:16:32
Scientists have identified the part of the brain that may hold the key to why some cocaine users become addicts while others just take the drug socially... Brain scans of cocaine users while they performed simple computer tasks showed changes in the part of the brain responsible for controlling behavior and making appropriate decisions...
Why People Go Vegan
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:06:49
From sausages to stews, reindeer are usually a main dish in Alaska. But the antlered animals were the main event at Anchorage's first annual running of the reindeer...
Antiquity - still with us
reuters.com/ ... 22:06:17
Exterminators looking for termites in a monastery in Brazil's biggest city of Sao Paulo found a mummy and a skeleton believed to be at least 200 years old...
Animal Culture
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:10:45
16-foot python stalked a family dog for days before swallowing the pet whole in front of horrified children in the Australian tropics... "The lady who was there threw some plastic chairs at the snake, but you've got to remember that this is about 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of aggressive muscle..." will soon be relocated...
breitbart.com/ ... 21:59:03
for at least one species of male spider: playing dead... strategy that works best... to score with the ladies...
Animal Companions
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:08:43
Dayton [Ohio] police and U.S. marshals called for backup from animal control when they found two alligators instead of the suspected probation violator they were after...
apnews.myway.com/ ... 21:57:06
LOS ANGELES... Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Tuesday signed one of the nation's toughest laws on pet sterilization, requiring most dogs and cats to be spayed or neutered by the time they are 4 months old...
World Energy
reuters.com/ ... 21:59:19
A drop in wind generation late on Tuesday, coupled with colder weather, triggered an electric emergency that caused the Texas grid operator to cut service to some large customers...
iht.com/ ... 21:56:38
Gasoline prices, which for months lagged the big run-up in the price of oil, are suddenly rising quickly, with some experts fearing they could hit $4 a gallon by spring. Diesel is hitting new records daily and oil closed at an all-time high on Tuesday of $100.88 a barrel...
reuters.com/ ... 21:38:41
Nuts picked from Amazon rainforests helped fuel the world's first commercial airline flight partly powered by renewable energy on Sunday...
Big Nanny
reuters.com/ ... 22:17:49
All U.S. children aged from six months up to 18 should be immunized every year against influenza, a panel of federal vaccine advisers said on Wednesday...
reuters.com/ ... 22:17:41
Mexican lawmakers voted on Tuesday to ban smoking in bars, restaurants and other enclosed public spaces across the country, which counts some 65,000 cigarette-related deaths each year...
Defending Ourselves
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:13:13
HATLEY, Wis... Fed up that their mailbox was smashed four times in two weeks, Greg Fisher and his son set up a middle-of-the-night stakeout to catch the vandals - and it worked. Four teens were caught after a high speed chase... "This one ended peacefully, but taking the law into your own hands can have tragic results as well..."
Public Servants
hosted.ap.org/ ... 22:08:06
ECONOMY, Pa... A school bus driver in Beaver County said he told students he was an undercover officer so they wouldn't misbehave on the bus. They didn't... [He's] charged him with impersonating a public servant...
signonsandiego.com/ ... 22:02:11
La Mesa Mayor Art Madrid told a City Council audience last night that an incident last week where police found him and a city employee apparently intoxicated on a city street was "unfortunate," and he promised it would never happen again...
katu.com/ ... 22:01:54
ARLINGTON, Ore. - The mayor of a small Oregon town who came under fire for racy pictures of her posted on the Internet was recalled in a close vote Monday...
Digital Future is Now
breitbart.com/ ... 21:59:40
Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP...
Theory of Education
wcbstv.com/ ... 22:02:27
Milford officials expelled a Jonathan Law High School student, who was accused of lighting her science teacher's hair on fire during class...
news.yahoo.com/ ... 21:58:25
PARMA, Ohio - A kindergarten student with a freshly spiked Mohawk has been suspended from school... mother of 6-year-old... said nothing in the... school handbook prohibits the haircut... school said the hair was a distraction...
People are Trashy
news.yahoo.com/ ... 21:56:14
Pollution turned part of a major river system in central China red and foamy, forcing authorities to cut water supplies to as many as 200,000 people...
Sportsmanship
seattlepi.nwsource.com/ ... 21:49:11
A Power Dancer of the Houston Rockets dunks the ball over four fellow dancers at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas...
US Election 2008
theaustralian.news.com.au/ ... 22:01:05
REPUBLICANS have pounced on the photo of Barack Obama in traditional Somali dress, using it in a slur to cast the Democratic candidate as an enemy of Jews. A statement by Tennessee Republicans headlined "Anti-Semites for Obama" has described the senator as a menace to Israel... A spokesman for Republican presidential front-runner John McCain had no immediate comment on the Tennessee statement, which spelt out Senator Obama's middle name Hussein...
woai.com/ ... 22:00:11
Longview, Texas... vandals spray-painted racial slurs outside the campaign headquarters... for Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama...
nypost.com/ ... 21:46:58
The photo of a Muslim-garbed Barack Obama that appeared on the Internet likely won't have any negative impact on him - but could damage Hillary Rodham Clinton, experts said yesterday...
newsday.com/ ... 21:41:50
Hillary Rodham Clinton often invokes her "35 years of experience making change" on the campaign trail, recounting her work in the 1970s on behalf of battered and neglected children and impoverished legal-aid clients. But there is a little-known episode Clinton doesn't mention in her standard campaign speech in which those two principles collided. In 1975, a 27-year-old Hillary Rodham, acting as a court-appointed attorney, attacked the credibility of a 12-year-old girl in mounting an aggressive defense for an indigent client accused of rape in Arkansas - using her child development background to help the defendant. The case offers a glimpse into the way Clinton deals with crisis. Her approach, then and now, was to immerse herself in even unpleasant tasks with a will to win, an attitude captured in one of her favorite aphorisms: "Bloom where you're planted..."
Digital Culture
reuters.com/ ... 21:40:11
A video of French President Nicolas Sarkozy... Sarkozy offered his hand to a man who said: "Don't touch me, you are soiling me." In reply, Sarkozy said, without dropping his smile: "Get lost, dumb ass..." has become a hit on the Internet...
TUE 2008-FEB-26
Scary Times
ap.google.com/ ... 14:10:30
FERRUM, Va... Ferrum College... Classes were canceled and a small private college went on lockdown Tuesday as police searched for a man who was seen with a gun on campus... no reports of threats and no one on campus had been harmed...
Civilization vs Gangsterism
reuters.com/ ... 14:06:38
Israeli troops killed a Palestinian farmer near the Gaza Strip's border on Tuesday, his relatives and hospital officials said, but the Israeli army described the dead man as a militant...
International Incidents
voanews.com/ ... 14:06:03
The Iraqi government has demanded the immediate withdrawal of Turkish troops, saying the five-day incursion is threatening their otherwise friendly relations... Ali al-Dabbagh, the spokesman for the Iraqi government... acknowledged the threat posed to Turkey by the rebels and said the government stands ready for dialogue... About 20 percent of Turkish citizens are Kurds and in the southeast, bordering Iraq, they make up the majority. But Kurds in Turkey say their culture and language are oppressed. Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani, president of the Iraqi Parliament, says they have asked Turkey to resolve the situation peacefully. He says the Turks should hold a referendum in south Turkey to give the Kurds the rights they want...
Infrastructure Failure
cfnews13.com/ ... 14:03:18
Florida is experiencing a widespread power outage affecting schools, traffic lights, businesses and more after 2 nuclear generators in south Florida went down...
Under Tyranny
apnews.myway.com/ ... 10:26:55
President Hugo Chavez's government is taking its battle against U.S. "imperialism" into Venezuelans' dictionaries, urging state phone company workers to avoid English-language business and tech terms...
Nuclear is Nasty
news.yahoo.com/ ... 10:26:35
The U.N. nuclear monitoring agency presented documents Monday that diplomats said indicate Iran may have focused on a nuclear weapons program after 2003 the year that a U.S. intelligence report says such work stopped...
Violence
foxnews.com/ ... 14:09:23
BALDWIN PARK, Calif. Police arrested a man late Monday after two women and a 4-year-old girl were found dead and two other children wounded in a shooting at two Baldwin Park houses... "We believe the suspect who was detained got into some type of argument with his mother, shot and killed her, then went next door on some type of a shooting rampage and shot his neighbors..."
cbs3.com/ ... 10:25:37
Philadelphia teenager who was... shot in the head at point-blank range... and killed over an errant snowball... celebrating his 16th birthday... after a wayward snowball accidentally struck a passing neighbor. Police said the adult male became enraged and left the scene, returning moments later with a gun... "He didn't get a chance to get married, he didn't get a chance to have children," Teven's father Keith said. Philadelphia police detectives said they are actively searching for the gunman...
Nature can be Deadly
reuters.com/ ... 10:19:54
Six people have been killed in three days by icicles falling from buildings in a central Russian region...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 14:25:00
Marine Lance Cpl.
Drew W. Weaver,
20, of St. Charles, Mo., died Feb. 21 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Twentynine Palms, Calif.
defenselink.mil/ ... 14:24:32
Army Spc.
Keisha M. Morgan,
25, of Washington, D.C., died Feb. 22 in Baghdad, Iraq, of a non-combat related cause. She was assigned to the Division Special Troops Battalion, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. The circumstances are under investigation.
Staying Healthy
efluxmedia.com/ ... 14:18:33
"Antibiotics exposure is extensive in nursing home residents with advanced dementia, and it increases as patients near death. We really need to determine if antibiotics should be given to patients at the end of life. Do they benefit from treatment..."
US Military
defenselink.mil/ ... 14:24:15
The Department of Defense announced... that based on debris analysis, officials are confident the missile intercept and destruction of a non-functioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite, achieved the objective of destroying the hydrazine tank and reducing, if not eliminating, the risk to people on Earth from the hazardous chemical. "By all accounts this was a successful mission...."
foxnews.com/ ... 14:16:51
An adult and two children were found dead inside family housing Monday following a domestic disturbance at Tinker Air Force Base [Oklahoma]... "At that point in time, the information that we received was that a member of the military and an ex-spouse had an altercation, that the ex-spouse had left the residence, and that she had heard gunshots upon her departure from the residence..."
ap.google.com/ ... 14:08:46
The Army's top general said Tuesday he wants to reduce combat tours for soldiers in Iraq from 15 months to 12 months this summer and hopes that sticks. Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, told a Senate panel he would not embrace going back to the longer tours even if President Bush decided to suspend troop reductions for the second half of the year. The Army is under serious strain from years of war-fighting, he testified, and must reduce the length of combat tours as soon as possible...
World Zookeeping
allafrica.com/ ... 14:08:22
Elephant culling
will be permitted for the first time in SA since 1994 to control growing herds and to halt environmental damage. The government estimates the elephant population of the Kruger National Park, SA's largest conservation area, is increasing 7% a year, and might reach 20000 by 2012 and 30000 by 2019. In neighbouring Botswana, the elephant population has now reached about 106000 from 34000 in 1983, according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species...
Raising Ourselves
breitbart.com/ ... 10:27:38
Children feel under pressure to own the latest designer clothes and computer games and most adults believe the "commercialisation of childhood" is damaging young people's well-being, a poll said Tuesday...
It's All in Your Mind
breitbart.com/ ... 10:27:18
teens who regularly get into fights with their parents have significantly different brain structures than their more laid-back peers...
World Climate
nationalpost.com/ ... 10:21:15
Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966... many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February... average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average..." China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century... And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past. The ice is back...
Animal Companions
news.com.au/ ... 10:13:00
PETS at risk of self-harm are increasingly being prescribed anti-depressants because they cannot discuss problems in their lives with others... Zoo and wildlife medicine specialist... more pets were being prescribed Prozac. Tropical birds such as parrots seemed to have been the most affected by depression...
Screwy Light Bubs
google.com/ ... 14:22:33
Google Search on High-Intensity LED lighting...
wmtw.com/ ... 14:21:05
In a new study, the DEP said people should consider
not using the bulbs where they can be easily broken or in places frequented by young children or pregnant women. People also are advised to not vacuum up shattered bulbs,
which could contaminate the vacuum cleaner and further spread the mercury into the air. DEP officials still are
encouraging people to use the bulbs, saying the benefits far outweigh the risks...
[see below]
blog.nj.com/ ... 14:20:18
...Unlike traditional light bulbs, each of the spiral ones contains a bit of mercury. An insignificant amount really, until you realize that
over 300 million fluorescent bulbs were sold in the United States last year and perhaps as many as 1 billion bulbs will be sold this year.
Suddenly, that's a lot of mercury. And where does the mercury go? It's a huge problem. In Ridgewood, for instance, Village officials have warned residents not the throw out fluorescent bulbs the way they routinely do with the old kind of light bulbs. Instead, the only means to properly dispose of the bulbs is to bring them to a household hazardous waste disposal day sponsored by the Bergen County Utilities Authority. There are seven such days a year, scattered throughout the county...
boston.com/ ... 14:19:32
Compact fluorescent lamps - those spiral, energy-efficient bulbs popular as a device to combat global warming - can pose a small risk of mercury poisoning to infants, young children, and pregnant women if they break, two reports concluded yesterday. But the reports, issued by the state of Maine and the Vermont-based Mercury Policy Project, urged homeowners to keep using compact fluorescents because
their energy-saving benefits far outweigh the risk posed by mercury released from a broken lamp...
[On average for society, that is, not necessarily for the mercury-inhaling themselves...!!!]
Pareidolia
telegraph.co.uk/ ... 14:17:32
An American furniture maker claims to have discovered a likeness of Jesus Christ inside a tree trunk... uncovered the "holy" sap stain in a pine tree he had cut down for a friend...
Under Digital Tyranny
businessweek.com/ ... 14:15:24
Pakistan's telecommunications regulator said Tuesday it has lifted restrictions on YouTube that knocked out access to the video-sharing Web site in many countries for up to two hours over the weekend. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority told Internet service providers to restore access to the site after the removal of what it called a "blasphemous" video clip... featuring a Dutch lawmaker who has said he planned to release a movie portraying Islam as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals...
Digital Business
arstechnica.com/ ... 14:14:05
Google announced today that it plans to join five other international companies in building an additional undersea cable between the US and Japan. The need for the cable itself is unsurprising, given that trans-Pacific bandwidth needs grew by 63.7 percent between 2002 and 2007, but the fact that Google is joining the consortium of Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, KDDI Corporation, Pacnet, and SingTel is unusual. Google is insisting, however, that this new move does not signal a change in focus for the company...
Music industry is dead
macworld.com/ ... 14:13:22
The popularity of the iTunes Store has propelled Apple to the number two music retailer spot in the US, following only Wal-Mart...
Supernatural
christianpost.com/ ... 14:11:46
A massive religious study showing that a large number of Americans are religiously unaffiliated caused pollsters to question whether America is heading down the same religious path as that of Europe where people may consider themselves religious but dont belong to any institution...
Reasons for Repeal
reuters.com/ ... 14:07:40
The UK government finally axed controversial plans for Britain's first Las Vegas-style supercasino on Tuesday as it gave the green light to build a new generation of 16 smaller casinos...
[END GOVERNMENT TYRANNY OVER GAMBLING! REPEAL! REPEAL! REPEAL! Let fools and their money be soon parted!]
Business Culture
leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/ ... 14:06:55
When Starbucks shuts down all of its nearly 7,100 national stores from 5:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. (central time) this evening for employee retraining (some of the contracted Starbucks are on a different training schedule), Dunkin Donuts will hand out free small hot lattes in all of its 450 Chicagoland stores...
Sportsmanship
bloomberg.com/ ... 14:06:21
China's government said it's willing to resume a dialogue with the U.S. on improving human rights after a five-year halt, taking a step to prevent rights advocates from boycotting Beijing's Olympic Games in August...
Theory of Education
usatoday.com/ ... 10:28:58
Big Brother. McCarthyism. The patience of Job. Don't count on your typical teenager to nod knowingly the next time you drop a reference to any of these. A study out today finds that about half of 17-year-olds can't identify the books or historical events associated with them... "If you think it matters whether or not kids have common historical touchstones and whether, at some level, we feel like members of a common culture, then familiarity with this knowledge matters a lot," says American Enterprise Institute researcher Rick Hess, who wrote the study...
In all, students earned a C in history and an F in literature, though the survey suggests students do well on topics schools cover...
US Election 2008
ap.google.com/ ... 14:13:05
Republican John McCain quickly denounced the comments of a radio talk show host who while warming up a campaign crowd referred repeatedly to Barack Hussein Obama and called the Democrat a "hack, Chicago-style" politician...
blogs.abcnews.com/ ... 10:23:18
[Regarding the NYT story on McCain] Huckabee said, "...In fact, if anything it's helped John McCain and I'm kind of hoping the New York Times will take me on and run a nasty front page story -- may be the best thing that could happen to me, certainly was to him..."
washingtontimes.com/ ... 10:21:55
Members of Washington's military and defense establishment are expressing trepidation about Sen. Barack Obama... But his backers, including a former Air Force chief of staff, say the rookie senator believes in a strong military, and with it, a larger Army and Marine Corps...
thesmokinggun.com/ ... 10:14:37
Pennsylvania man allegedly stabbed his brother-in-law in the stomach after the pair quarreled about their respective support of Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton...
blogs.abcnews.com/ ... 10:10:57
During a Monday interview with ABC's Dallas affiliate, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., did not flatly deny the DrudgeReport's charge that her campaign forwarded a photo of rival Barack Obama in traditional African dress.
She then turned the tables
[one of her favorite evasive tactics]
on her Democratic rival and accused him of using the controversy to distract the public's attention from deficiencies in his platform and experience...
"I know nothing about it," Clinton told ABC affiliate WFAA. "This is in the public domain. But let's just stop and ask yourself: 'Why are you -- why is anybody concerned about this?'..."
[Because of what it says about CLINTONS!]
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:09:44
A photo of US presidential candidate Barack Obama wearing Somali clothing is causing a storm after it got released to the Drudge Report website... These are the normal clothes that nomadic people wear... The head turban is especially used by elderly people as a suggestion of respect. It is something that has no meaning whatsoever in Somalia culture... There is no religious significance to it whatsoever...
SAT 2008-FEB-23
International Incidents
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 21:45:15
Iraq's foreign minister has warned that any escalation of Turkey's operation against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq could destabilise the region...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 21:45:08
A Russian cargo ship has been detained and boarded by armed coastguard agents in North Korean waters, Russian maritime officials say...
Under Tyranny
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 21:44:51
Prosecutors in Saudi Arabia have begun investigating 57 young men who were arrested on Thursday for flirting with girls at shopping centres in Mecca...
Civilization vs Gangsterism
reuters.com/ ... 21:43:43
The Bush administration said on Saturday U.S. telecommunications companies have agreed to cooperate "for the time being" with spy agencies' wiretaps, despite an ongoing battle between the White House and Congress over new terrorism surveillance legislation. The Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement saying wiretaps will resume under the current law "at least for now..."
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:41:05
The family of a Hamas preacher who died in Palestinian custody alleged Saturday that the prisoner was tortured by interrogators from the rival Fatah faction...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:40:52
Extremists fired an explosive barrage Saturday into the capital's heavily protected Green Zone, targeting the heart of America's diplomatic and military mission in Iraq... no injuries...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:40:08
Scattered battles in the war-torn jungles of northern Sri Lanka killed 20 separatist guerrillas and a soldier, the military said Friday, while the rebels accused the government of killing eight civilians in an airstrike...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:03:14
Army Capt.
Nathan R. Raudenbush,
25, of Pennsylvania, died Feb. 20 in Busayefi, Iraq, of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga.
US Military
reuters.com/ ... 21:42:22
A U.S. B-2 stealth bomber crashed at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam just after taking off but the two pilots on board ejected safely...
Staying Healthy
reuters.com/ ... 21:39:49
Picking up an E. coli bug from your pet might lead to a urinary tract infection...
reuters.com/ ... 21:39:37
People with very low cholesterol levels seem to be at increased risk of developing stomach cancer...
reuters.com/ ... 21:39:27
Men who want to avoid developing the benign but bothersome prostate enlargement that typically accompanies aging should cut their intake of fat and red meat, eat more vegetables, and have a couple of drinks a day...
Animal Companions
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:37:53
AZUSA, Calif... parked his pickup... leaving his 80-pound Boxer named Max in the passenger seat. When he came out, the truck and Max were gone... found the pickup across the street in a fast-food parking lot but had no idea how it got there... Max...
Digital Business
news.com/ ... 21:55:32
A U.S. District judge in Seattle has ruled that consumers can move ahead with a class-action suit against Microsoft over how it advertised computers with Windows XP as capable of running Vista, according to an article by the Associated Press. The suit claims that the labeling of computers as "Windows Vista Capable" misled consumers because many of the machines weren't powerful enough to run all of Vista's features, such as the Aero user interface, the AP said...
Reasons for Repeal
foxnews.com/ ... 21:50:42
OMAHA, Neb... Police say a 4-year-old girl demonstrated to them how to smoke marijuana from a joint, a pipe and a bong and learned the techniques from her [25yo] mother... charged with child abuse and could lose her daughter... Child Protective Services received a complaint that the 4-year-old and a 2-year-old son of Schuchard were dirty and living in a filthy home that had drug paraphernalia around. Police say the daughter told officers that Schuchard and her live-in boyfriend would offer her and her brother the marijuana, then laugh with friends when they smoked...
Woman's Right
telegraph.co.uk/ ... 21:48:55
Emma Beck was found hanging at her home in Helston, Cornwall, on Feb 1 2007. She was declared dead early the following day - her 31st birthday. Her suicide note read: "I told everyone I didn't want to do it, even at the hospital. I was frightened, now it is too late. I died when my babies died. I want to be with my babies: they need me, no-one else does.... I should never have had an abortion. I see now I would have been a good mum..." "She had a long history of anxiety and depression. Despite my best efforts, she was not willing to see a counsellor after the termination..."
US Election 2008
reuters.com/ ... 21:43:27
"Shame on you, Barack Obama," Clinton said, speaking to reporters after a rally in Ohio, a state that is key to her struggling campaign. Brandishing a copy of the leaflet, Clinton said the Obama campaign was spreading "false, misleading, discredited information" about her health-care plan... Obama said the content of the leaflet was correct. He said he was puzzled by the sudden "change in tone" by his rival because the leaflets Clinton referred to were sent out days or weeks ago. He suggested there was something "tactical" about her attacks now...
Ummm....
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:40:25
Poland will only sign up to accept a U.S. missile defense base if Washington gives significant help to modernizing Poland's military, the Polish defense minister said in comments published Saturday...
Vinyl lives
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:38:52
A winning bid of $3 million for a huge record collection offered on eBay was apparently a fraud... nearly 3 million vinyl albums, singles and CDs being sold by Paul Mawhinney, 68, of Ross Township... began collecting the records when he opened his record shop, Record Rama, in 1968. He closed it Thursday, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family...
Digital Threat
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:42:06
Want to break into a computer's encrypted hard drive? Just blast the machine's memory chip with a burst of cold air. That's the conclusion of new research out of Princeton University demonstrating a novel, low-tech way hackers can access even the most well-protected computers, provided they have physical access to the machines... encryption, long considered a vital shield against hacker attacks, can be defeated by manipulating the way memory chips work. The researchers say the ease of their attack raises fears about the security of laptop computers increasingly used to store sensitive information...
Freezing a dynamic random access memory [chip]... causes it to retain data for minutes or even hours after the machine loses power...
hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:36:33
LG Electronics Inc. halted sales of one of its laptop computer models after a report of a battery meltdown... The laptop is no longer produced and was sold only in South Korea...
FRI 2008-FEB-22
Peace 3000
ap.google.com/ ... 17:12:26
Powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr opted Friday to keep the cease-fire order for his Mahdi Army militia in place for another six months, a step that will hold down U.S. and Iraqi casualties while bolstering al-Sadr's importance as a political player as Iraqi factions jostle for power...
Transport Tragedy
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