Blog Heap o'Links for March 2009

In a law enforcement first, Ohio cops this month arrested a man for drunk driving on a motorized bar stool.

Opening a car trunk or controlling a home air conditioner could become just a wish away with Honda's new technology that connects thoughts inside a brain with robotics. Honda Motor Co. has developed a way to read patterns of electric currents on a person's scalp as well as changes in cerebral blood flow when a person thinks about four simple movements—moving the right hand, moving the left hand, running and eating. Honda succeeded in analyzing such thought patterns, and then relaying them as wireless commands for Asimo, its human-shaped robot.

The Bartlesville is divided into 2 distinct members, referred to as Upper and Lower Bartlesville. Upper Bartlesville sand thickness is 9.6 net feet and covers the complete area. Lower Bartlesville averages 24.7 net feet and covers the same area.

signed an agreement with Disney/ABC and ESPN, which will open their own channels on the video community site — and control their own ad inventory

The encyclopedia is dead. Long live critical thinking. ... I'm not saying Encarta was a bad product. On the contrary, it did a fine job of making encyclopedic articles searchable and accessible on a computer. However, I'm thrilled to see it go because of what it represents. Kids will just go to Wikipedia or the first three hits on Google, now, right? While that remains too true, what it really represents is the absolute challenge to educators to teach kids real Web-based research skills. Leave the encyclopedias behind and dig.

Barack Obama defied violent protests and political wrangling ahead of today's G20 summit to celebrate America's 'special relationship' with Britain. But as Britain fell under the spell of Mr Obama and his wife Michelle last night, anarchy was unleashed in the City of London. One protester died after a mob stormed the Royal Bank of Scotland and besieged the Bank of England. Police were pelted with bottles as a medical team tried to revive the demonstrator, who had collapsed at a makeshift camp being set up near the Bank of England. The man, who was said to be in his forties, was pronounced dead from natural causes shortly after arrival at hospital.

Symantec is warning Web users that searching for information on computer viruses such as Conficker could put them at risk of unintentionally downloading the virus on to their PC. ... searching for 'conficker' in a number of the Web's most popular search engines brings up a number of hoax Websites that actually host the virus and infect any users that navigate to the site....

April 1 is reportedly D-Day for the latest variant of the global worm, but is the hype living up to reality. Dire predictions for the wave of destruction coming with Conficker.C's activation may be grossly exaggregated, but that doesn't mean solution providers shouldn't help their customers prepare for this and many other security threats.

A tenacious computer worm which has wriggled its way onto machines worldwide is set to evolve on April Fool's Day, becoming harder to exterminate but not expected to wreak havoc. ... The worm is programmed to modify itself on Wednesday to become harder to stop....

if Robert Lemire had not decided on pizza for dinner or if Alex Day had not come to the apartment on Haverhill Street for Bible study... Neither might have seen the heart-stopping sight of a girl in a diaper and T-shirt dangling from an apartment window three stories above the ground, and they might not have been waiting to catch her when she finally fell. ... survived a 30-foot plummet Sunday night and probably owes her life to the two men who ran to the spot below the window and caught her, one by the legs, another above the waist, and brought her, unhurt, back to her father in the apartment upstairs. ... The toddler fell with her body tilted toward the ground. "He pretty much got the top and I got the diaper end, or the bottom half, or whatever you call it," said Lemire. "She looked at me and had a weird look on her face as if to say, 'Wow, all of a sudden I'm down here,' " Day said.

RICHMOND, Va. -- A federal official said space junk from a Russian rocket most likely caused residents across the Southeast to report "great balls of fire" in the night sky.

A major spring blizzard plodding eastward over the Southern Plains shut down major highways Friday and paralyzed the region as residents braced for up to a foot of snow, freezing 45-mph winds and massive snowdrifts.

The chief of the Missouri highway patrol is blasting a report issued by the Missouri Information Analysis Center that linked conservative groups to domestic terrorism, assuring that such reports no longer will be issued. The report warned law enforcement agencies to watch for suspicious individuals who may have bumper stickers for third-party political candidates such as Ron Paul, Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin. It further warned law enforcement to watch out for individuals with "radical" ideologies based on Christian views, such as opposing illegal immigration, abortion and federal taxes.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius signs a bill ensuring that women and girls seeking abortions can see ultrasound images before the procedure. The legislation, signed Friday and taking effect July 1, also ensures that abortion patients can listen to the fetal heartbeat.

A woman who has spent 29 years in prison for taking part in the murder of a Campbell liquor store owner, gunned down by her abusive husband while she sat outside in a car, will be freed on parole next week.

The widow of producer Aaron Spelling is placing "The Manor" in the exclusive Holmby Hills neighborhood on the market for a jaw-dropping $150 million, making it by far the most expensive home for sale in the U.S.

In calling its new family sedan the "Model S," Tesla likely wants to evoke the Model T of days gone by. The implication is that this new electric car will be accessible to mainstream Americans -- and that it will radically change the way people travel from one place to another.

It is the largest monthly contract award for roads and bridges in Oklahoma's history. Friday, state officials unveiled plans on how Oklahoma will spend its 250-million dollar portion of the President's economic stimulus package for road and bridge repairs. 7NEWS has learned 6 of the 40 proposed projects will happen in southwest Oklahoma.

"It will create jobs, it will help Oklahoma companies," Governor Henry said. "These dollars don't just fall in a hole somewhere; they turn over multiple times in our economy and will create a much bigger impact than just the $250 million will be awarded next Monday." The federal dollars will fund about 40 highway improvement projects across the state, including interstate repairs, major bridge improvements and safety initiatives such as cable barriers.

None of the sirens in Bartlesville went off despite two tornado warnings. The Washington County Emergency Management team stands by its decision. It released a statement saying, "the tornado was weak and short lived....and based on the information that our office received from NWS and trained spotters on the field, we believed the significant tornado threat would remain to the south and east of Bartlesville." However, some people wished they would have been warned.

State Senate leaders expect a vote next week on a bill allowing two coal-fired power plants in southwest Kansas. They also said Friday they expect the measure to go to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who vetoed three similar bills last year.

Obama joked at one point about the most popular question from his online audience—whether he favored legalizing marijuana and could that turn around the economy. "I don't know what this says about the online audience," he said with a smile, adding that he opposed legalizing the illicit drug. [JACKASS!]

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has introduced legislation that would "bar the dollar from being replace by any foreign currency." ... On Monday, Geithner and Bernanke both rejected the idea of a global currency in Congressional testimony. But in remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday, Geithner indicated he was open to the idea.

unveiled the design for the 2009 Louis Braille Bicentennial Silver Dollar ... The coin will go on sale in the spring of 2009 ...

The first phase of the Pentagon's plan to regrow soldiers' limbs is complete; scientists managed to turn human skin into the equivalent of a blastema — a mass of undifferentiated cells that can develop into new body parts. Now, researchers are on to phase two: turning that cellular glop into a square inch of honest-to-goodness muscle tissue.

President Obama gave his longest interview so far to Steve Kroft on CBS's "60 Minutes" Sunday night, and he couldn't seem to stop laughing about all of the problems facing our nation. The president's uncontrollable giggling prompted Kroft to ask him if he was suffering from an interesting affliction.... "Are you punch drunk?" ... a state induced by suffering a brain injury that is a result of repeated head blows and is typically marked by mental confusion, incoordination and slurred speech.

What kind of politician brings a teleprompter to a news conference? A careful one. President Barack Obama took no chances in his second prime-time news conference .... It was a carefully modulated statement, and Obama—relying on a familiar crutch—read it off a flat-screen monitor perched at the back of the East Room.

"He read that opening statement from one massive TV monitor from the back and middle of the East Room. White House officials removed the normal glass teleprompters that usually are positioned on both sides of the podium. That change likely a reaction to the focus on the President's heavy use of teleprompters."

Hector Huerta Rios was arrested Tuesday in the state of Nuevo Leon, which borders Texas in the southwestern United States. They say he was one of dozens of drug suspects on a most-wanted list published by the Mexican government on Monday. Authorities have described Huerta Rios as a member of the powerful Beltran Leyva cartel and that he was sought on a murder charge.

the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power. ... A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation's infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event — a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun. ... an extraordinary report funded by NASA and issued by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in January this year claims it could do just that.

a man wearing a ski mask walked into the store at Biscayne Boulevard and 54th Street and demanded money from a clerk. A customer, who has a concealed weapons permit, pulled a gun, said Officer Jeff Giordano, a Miami police spokesman. The customer and robber exchanged fire. The robber was shot dead at the scene. ... The customer... had several gunshot wounds... in serious but stable condition....

Geologists estimate that during the gold rush of 1849 in California, about 80 percent of the gold was never found. Today, with the price of gold soaring and the economy falling, the idea of panning, digging or diving for precious metal has become serious business.

The 112th anniversary of the historic Nellie Johnstone No. 1 oil discovery will be celebrated Wednesday with a drilling demonstration and gusher plus the presentation of a gift by a chapter of the Colonial Dames XVII Century Oklahoma Society.

A tornado is confirmed to have touched down in Washington County during storms that hit the area Thursday evening.... "The sirens were never sounded in the city of Bartlesville...."

The Vermont Senate has given its final stamp of approval to a bill that would allow same-sex couples to marry in the state. Lawmakers passed the measure on Tuesday in voice vote with no debate. Now the issue moves to the House, where the a committee has scheduled a week's worth of testimony on the bill.

Legislation that would streamline the review process for nuclear power plants in Oklahoma was sent to the floor of the state House Tuesday, but critics said the measure does little to protect consumers from onerous rate increases that would be needed to help pay for it.

Endeavor Power Corp. (OTCBB:EDVP) is pleased to announce that its joint venture partner on the Patrick Henry Lease (the "Lease") located in Oklahoma, Federated Energy, believes that the existing 13 wells that are being reworked should be producing, in the aggregate, approximately 30 barrels of oil per day by late spring to early summer.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on a two-day visit to Mexico, accepts that the U.S. market for narcotics and a cross-border trade in U.S. guns contribute to Mexico's drug violence. "We know very well that the drug traffickers are motivated by the demand for illegal drugs in the United States, that they are armed by the transport of weapons from the United States to Mexico.... We see this as a responsibility to assist the Mexican government and people." [So, if everybody would just ... not inhale?... Oh, that was Bill. This is Hill.]

Tackling a series of controversial measures, the New Hampshire House has voted to repeal the death penalty and to approve doctor-certified medical marijuana for people with serious illnesses. ... Both bills head to the state Senate, where their fate is uncertain ...

They are taking more of your quarters every day. And Chicagoans are in revolt. While some are saying enough by avoiding them, others are taking out their frustrations on the parking meters - literally! ... Near Broadway and Addison, meter after meter are broken....

Strontium sulfide, a material that can emit corrosive gases in moist air, was found at trace levels in testing of Chinese-made drywall.... gave off a sulfurous odor when heated, and in at least one case, sulfide gases corroded copper coils in an air conditioner of a Florida home containing Chinese drywall....

For the first time, scientists were able to track an asteroid from space to the ground and recover pieces of it. The bits are unlike anything ever found on Earth. ... spotted entering Earth's atmosphere over Sudan in October and was believed to have fully disintegrated, but an international team found almost 280 pieces of meteorite in a 11-square-mile section of Sudan's Nubian Desert. The largest was the size of an egg. ... from a rare class of asteroids known as ureilites, which contain a lot of carbon, much of it in the form of graphite, as well as diamonds produced by shock. The Sudan specimens show evidence of volcanic activity, which means they came from a parent body that was almost big enough to call a planet. ...

Hurdia victoria was originally described in 1912 as a crustacean-like animal. Now, researchers from Uppsala University and colleagues reveal it to be just one part of a complex and remarkable new animal that has an important story to tell about the origin of the largest group of living animals, the arthropods. ... Although the first fragments were described nearly one hundred years ago, they were assumed to be part of a crustacean-like animal. It was not then realised that other parts of the animal were also in collections, but had been described independently as jellyfish, sea cucumbers and other arthropods. ... had a segmented body with a head bearing a pair of spinous claws and a circular jaw structure with many teeth. But it differs from Anomalocaris by the possession of a huge three-part carapace that projects out from the front of the animal's head.

Researchers have found evidence which suggests that evolution drives animals to become increasingly more complex. ... "If you start with the simplest possible animal body, then there's only one direction to evolve in — you have to become more complex.... Sooner or later, however, you reach a level of complexity where it's possible to go backwards and become simpler again. "What's astonishing is that hardly any crustaceans have taken this backwards route. Instead, almost all branches have evolved in the same direction, becoming more complex in parallel. "This is the nearest thing to a pervasive evolutionary rule that's been found. "Of course, there are exceptions within the crustacean family tree, but most of these are parasites, or animals living in remote habitats such as isolated marine caves. "For those free-living animals in the 'rat-race' of evolution, it seems that competition may be the driving force behind the trend. "What's new about our results is that they show us how this increase in complexity has occurred. Strikingly, it looks far more like a disciplined march than a milling crowd."

There may soon be another option to play video games at home, in a very different way we have been used to so far. Rather than buying a fairly expensive console or PC, a small box promises to deliver games through the Internet to your TV or PC, no matter how powerful your local hardware is. Will cloud gaming have a chance to break through the barrier of modern game consoles and high-end PCs?

A video that appears to show police fatally beating a Tibetan protester was a fake concocted by supporters of the Dalai Lama, China said Tuesday — the same day the video-sharing network YouTube said its service had been blocked in China.

There is a similarity between Scientific Theory and Religion and The Urantia Book. "When the elements were arranged in increasing order of atomic weight it was found that elements with similar properties tended to recur at periodic intervals. [Frank Jakubowsky]

The Border Patrol plans to poison plant life along a mile stretch of the Rio Grande riverbank in Texas to eliminate the dense foliage used by suspected illegal immigrants and criminals to hide. If successful, the $2.1 million pilot project, which is set to begin this week, could later be duplicated along as many as 130 miles of river in the patrol's Laredo Sector, as well as other parts of the U.S.-Mexico border.... opponents of the action say it harkens to the Vietnam War-era Agent Orange chemical program and could be harmful over the long-term.

Medical marijuana users and dispensary owners in California have held their breath for years, fearful they would be targeted for prosecution by the federal government. They finally exhaled this past week when U.S.A. Attorney General Eric Holder said federal agents will now target marijuana distributors only when they violate both federal and state laws, a departure from the policy of the Bush administration. It's not seen by many as a move by the Obama administration toward the legalization of marijuana. [Yeah, sure]

Three European Union nations - France, Spain and Portugal - do not prosecute consenting adults for incest, and Romania is considering following suit. ... Laws exempting parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters from prosecution for incestuous acts if they are not forced upon adult family members are decades old in France, Spain and Portugal. In Romania, decriminalizing incest among consenting adults is being considered as part of a wide range of reforms to the country's criminal code. ...

IT solution providers in Alaska are watching the skies with trepidation as the ash fall from Alaska's Mount Redoubt volcano begins to creep closer to the downtown Anchorage region. ... Volcanic ash is known for its ability to wreak havoc on desktops, servers, and basically any type of IT infrastructure that has moving parts. And it also contains silica sand, a conductive material that's capable of destroying circuit boards....

A text-messaging hoax that apparently began making the rounds yesterday in at least 16 states warns women to stay away from Walmart stores or risk being killed. ... News reports from around the U.S. say police departments have been besieged by calls regarding the hoax texts, and Walmart has reached No. 5 on Twitter's list of trending topics. The text messages appear to be tailored to local conditions -- warning of gang activity in areas where gangs are active, but vaguer threats in areas, such as Walmart's home of Northwest Arkansas, where they aren't. ... A text rumor making the rounds in New Mexico says three women are to be killed in an initiation rite for a Mexican gang. ...

THREE Vietnamese men were killed while trying to saw through a war-era shell to salvage metal and explosives.... "The poor men wanted to sell the metal for money. They could not escape the sudden blast...." more than 38,000 Vietnamese nationals have been killed and 100,000 injured by explosives left over from the Vietnam War

The State Legislature honored Miss Oklahoma 2008 Kelsey Cartwright this week. During her reign, Cartwright has been traveling around the state and nation promoting her platform of open adoption to nontraditional families. She got the idea from her father's experience in attempting to learn about his adoption. Oklahoma currently has closed adoption laws and has placed legal barriers in the path of those wanting information about their adoption.

A security guard found her on Nov. 2, 1994, wandering through the Woodbridge Center mall, well-dressed and clean but lost and disoriented. She carried no identification in her purse, and in broken English explained she couldn't remember who she was or how she had gotten there. For years, a private room at the Senator Garrett W. Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital in Hunterdon County has been her home, where she has remained a Jane Doe unknown to herself and the world -- missed, it seemed, by no one. All the while, Hagedorn's mystery woman drifted deeper into Alzheimer's, losing her ability to speak. But through the diligence of a Human Services police officer who made her case his own special mission for six years, she now has her name back and some of her past. ... "The fact that she was deprived of her IDs... whoever left her at the mall didn't want her to be identified and didn't want to be found themselves...."

Carbon Motors Corp.'s new high-tech cop car prototype might not be quite up to superhero specs, but some police say it could be a welcome addition to their arsenal. ... every feature on the Carbon E7 concept vehicle draws on suggestions from more than 3,000 law enforcement professionals. ... 300-horsepower clean diesel engine, flashing lights visible from all angles, an ergonomic cockpit, an onboard computer with voice command and instant license plate recognition, integrated shotgun mounts, and more. (Weapons of mass destruction detectors are available as an option -- seriously.)

A New York hotel with luxury sheets and state-of-the-art audio for less than $100 a night? All you have to sacrifice is a bit of privacy and a little—well, a lot—of space. Moving beyond budget accommodations to an idea that borrows from a ship's berth or a train's sleeper car, developers are gambling that in tough times travelers looking for a little pampering at lower prices will embrace micro-hotels.

President Barack Obama has dropped a proposal to bill veterans' private health insurance for combat-related injuries... [How very... white of him... (sorry, couldn't resist)]

A former Children's Hospital Boston pediatrician and best-selling author accused of sexually abusing as many as 50 boys will never practice medicine again, according to an agreement he signed yesterday with the medical board in North Carolina....

The networks powering industrial control systems have been breached more than 125 times in the past decade, with one resulting in U.S. deaths.... evidence of more than 125 control systems breaches involving systems in nuclear power plants, hydroelectric plants, water utilities, the oil industry and agribusiness.... a June 1999 gasoline pipeline rupture near Bellingham, Washington. That rupture spilled more than 200,000 gallons of gasoline into two creeks, which ignited and killed three people. Investigators found several problems that contributed to the rupture, but Weiss has identified a computer failure in the pipeline's central control room as part of the problem. ... It could take the U.S. a long time to dig out from coordinated attacks on infrastructure using control systems.... The industrial control system industry is years behind the IT industry in protecting cybersecurity, and some of the techniques used in IT security would damage control systems...

The government is working on a new Smart Grid that would use computer technologies to make the country's energy infrastructure more efficient. But the government's plans for increased technology research and a smart electric grid could be compromised if cybersecurity is not improved.... "Unfortunately, if the new smart meters are not secure, they can be hacked, taken over by attackers and used to disrupt the delivery of electricity.... If the smart grid is built to existing standards, however, it will not be secure. ... The real risk lies in the long-term damage to our economic competitiveness and our technological leadership...."

Earlier this week, the social networking site Twitter was rocked by a brief Tweet exchange which stirred up feelings all over the web. The widely reported on story is of a woman, Connor Riley, who Tweeted the following: "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work." Shortly thereafter a Cisco employee spotted the Tweet and responded with: "Who is the hiring manager. I'm sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web." The exchange launched what really seemed to be the entire Internet into an uproar.

The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them. Undercover FBI agents used this hyperlink-enticement technique, which directed Internet users to a clandestine government server, to stage armed raids of homes in Pennsylvania, New York, and Nevada last year. The supposed video files actually were gibberish and contained no illegal images.

a British parody of American sitcoms of the 1950s. That seems normal enough, right? It featured a husband and wife dealing with domestic hijinks such as not getting along with the neighbors. So why would such a show fail so quickly? Oh, one more thing: the husband and wife? Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. ... aired precisely once on Britain's Galaxy satellite channel... Hitler's neighbors are Jewish... To be fair, the show's creators knew they were courting controversy and that many people would find the concept to be in very poor taste. I think they just underestimated. A lot.

Confronted with orbiting junk again, NASA ordered the astronauts aboard the linked space station and shuttle Discovery to move out of the way of a piece of debris Sunday. Discovery's pilots fired their ship's thrusters to reorient the two spacecraft and thereby avoid a small piece from a 10-year-old Chinese satellite rocket motor that was due to pass uncomfortably close during Monday's planned spacewalk.

FAYETTEVILLE — At the start of every school day, administrators at Fayetteville Christian School will impound every student's cell phone beginning Tuesday. A local newspaper reports the policy came to fruition after teachers caught students texting test answers twice this year

The tool is mainly aimed at IT professionals working in a corporate environment who still need test the new browser with internal applications and sites, although individuals may use it as well.

One of the deadliest spiders in the world.... employee at the Whole Foods Market found the spider amongst some bananas on Sunday, and casually caught it in a food container.... from Honduras.... [video of scientist describing how deadly the spider is]

A Filipino woman who acknowledged giving birth to a baby on a flight from the Middle East and then leaving him in the trash on the plane said she was raped by her employer.... The baby was found by a security guard at Manila's airport last Sunday in a trash bag unloaded from a Gulf Air flight from Bahrain. The trash apparently came from the plane's bathroom..... abandoned the baby because she was afraid of what her family would say.... baby... already bluish in color, may have died within a few minutes had he not been found.... is now fine but underwent an X-ray because of two bumps on his head....

US news weekly Time, which like other publications has been looking for ways to reinvent itself in print and on the Web, is allowing readers to put together their own personalized magazine. The experiment, called "Mine," allows readers to create a print or Web version of a magazine with content drawn from titles owned by Time and its partner in the venture, American Express Publishing.

A volcanic eruption close to the South Pacific nation of Tonga has destroyed rich birdlife and vegetation, leaving a wasteland of black ash and tree stumps.... frequent explosions hurtling rocks and ash hundreds of metres into the air.... on the small, uninhabited islet of Hunga Ha'apai 63 kilometres (39 miles) northwest of the Tongan capital Nuku'alofa.... "The island itself is totally destroyed.... there is no living thing left there, it's all covered in black ash. ... There are only black stumps where the coconut trees were.... We saw dead birds and fish in the water."

Scientists sailed Thursday to inspect an undersea volcano that has been erupting for days near Tonga — shooting smoke, steam and ash thousands of feet (meters) into the sky above the South Pacific ocean.... does not pose any danger to islanders at this stage, and there have been no reports of fish or other animals being affected....

In a further sign that the Obama administration is shifting away from the "war on drugs" policies of its predecessor, the country's top law enforcement official has announced that the federal government will end raids on groups that supply medical marijuana. Eric Holder, the attorney general, said federal agencies would now concentrate their efforts on traffickers who pass themselves as medical dispensaries and "use medical marijuana laws as a shield".

An urban legend about a gang initiation at Wal-Mart that included a killing spree was being spread once again in Salt Lake County on Thursday. But law enforcers wanted to assure the public that there was no truth behind the myth. ... But enough people have received the rumor through text messages that the sheriff's office was forced to spend much of Thursday morning answering phone calls from concerned residents. The text tells people, "Do not go to any Wal-Mart tonight. Gang initiation to shoot three women tonight. Not sure which Wal-Mart, so please pass this on."

Jerry Jalava's 2GB USB finger looks like a normal finger, but it's detachable and he leaves it inside his computer's slot while using it. The Finnish programmer plans to "upgrade" his finger in the future with one that has a removable fingertip, an RFID tag and more storage space.

The final build of Internet Explorer 8 has been released in 25 languages. ... The public Windows 7 beta is not being updated, and although Microsoft released an update for IE8 for Windows 7 in February, the next update is not likely to arrive until the Windows 7 Release Candidate next month. For everyone else, in the coming weeks Microsoft will put IE8 out as an optional download on Windows Update and then later roll it out to users via Automatic Updates.

California corrections officials released a new photograph of imprisoned mass murderer Charles Manson on Thursday, showing the balding, gray-bearded killer at the age of 74. [Still has swastika tat, doesn't really have the manic eyes anymore, but still an a'hole.]

Woburn, Mass.-based Terrafugia Inc., founded four years ago by MIT graduates, reported today that its Transition "roadable" aircraft completed its first flight at Plattsburgh International Airport in Plattsburgh, N.Y. on March 5 with retired U.S. Air Force Col. Phil Meteer at the controls. The short flight was confined to the expanse of the runway, but it was enough to allow the company to test the Transition's stability and controllability.

[Photo]

an errant arrow that came flying out of the Bronx sky as she was dropping off churchgoers at a nursing home.... clutched the shaft of the 30-inch long arrow that pierced her 2 inches above her bellybutton and screamed for her friends to call 911....

A predicted slowdown in Atlantic Ocean currents will cause sea levels along the US northeast coast to rise twice as fast as the global average, exposing New York and other big cities to violent and frequent storm surges, according to a new study. [Yeah, sure]

Oklahoma exports reached the $5 billion dollar level in 2008 — an increase of more than $500 million over 2007

Seattle will be a one-newspaper town after Tuesday, when the 146-year-old Seattle Post-Intelligencer prints its last edition. The P-I will continue to live on the Internet with a much smaller staff. Parent company Hearst Corp. says it has failed to find a buyer for the newspaper, which it put up for sale in January after nine years of financial losses. The end of the print edition leaves The Seattle Times as the only major daily in the city.

NASA kept close tabs on an old piece of space junk Monday that threatened to come too close to the international space station, as the shuttle Discovery raced toward the orbiting outpost for a 220-mile-high linkup. Experts initially warned that the debris from a Soviet satellite that broke up in 1981 could veer within a half-mile of the space station. But later in the morning, they said it appeared that the small piece of junk—about 4 inches in size—might remain at a safe distance.

For months, perhaps longer, the Montague County Jail was "Animal House" meets Mayberry. Inside the small brick building across from the courthouse, inmates had the run of the place, having sex with their jailer girlfriends, bringing in recliners, taking drugs and chatting on cell phones supplied by friends or guards, according to authorities. They also disabled some of the surveillance cameras and made weapons out of nails. The doors to two groups of cells didn't lock, but apparently no one tried to escape—perhaps because they had everything they needed inside.

Gay rights groups are complaining about the firing of a rural Oklahoma high school teacher who lost her job last week after assigning a play about the 1998 death of a gay college student. But the tiny school district says the move came after the teacher held a mock "funeral" for a canceled film production of the play.

STUNNED teenager Rachael Yannetta was rushed into hospital with stomach pains ... and then gave birth to a baby daughter. The 19-year-old had no idea she was heavily pregnant and simply thought she was "piling on weight". "I'm still in complete shock," said Miss Yannetta. "Surprise isn't the word, the whole family's stunned."

BUCKFIELD - A Sunday afternoon motorcycle ride to shake off winter's cabin fever took a serious turn for a Hartford rider after he was knocked off his bike by a wild turkey. ... flew directly into his chest ... "That's like hitting a bowling ball at 45 miles per hour," said Trooper Corey Huckins of the Maine State Police.

arrested on charges of online solicitation, promotion of kiddie porn and sexual performance of a child. ... playing Warhawk on PS3s when O'Shea convinced the girl to take nude photos of herself and send them to him

* Governments, corporations snooping on website visits... * Next big thing on Web is linked data...* Berners-Lee says future of Web is on mobile phones Surfers on the Internet are at increasing risk from governments and corporations tracking the sites they visit to build up a picture of their activities, the founder of the World Wide Web said on Friday.

Twitter has jumped the shark for the digerati attending South by Southwest here in Austin. Daniel Terdiman at CNET points out what everyone trying to follow the #sxsw tweets has discovered — there are just too many of them. It seems that, while Twitter's hardware can scale for the many millions of people who have joined the community, the actual service cannot. Twitter is still up and running, but the idea of generating a real time picture of what folks are doing, and extracting relevant information from that picture, is kind of like trying to pick out your grandma at the Washington Mall on the satellite image taken during President Barack Obama's inauguration.

With the world swirling about it, the House took a moment Thursday to honor pi, the Greek letter symbolizing that great constant in mathematics representing the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.

The Bartlesville Symphony Orchestra's production "Baroque and Beyond" was the first Twimphony — a symphony with Twitter accompaniment — held anywhere, worldwide.

our mental abilities begin to decline from the age of 27 after reaching a peak at 22. ... in nine out of 12 tests the average age at which the top performance was achieved was 22. The first age at which performance was significantly lower than the peak scores was 27 — for three tests of reasoning, speed of thought and spatial visualisation. Memory was shown to decline from the average age of 37. In the other tests, poorer results were shown by the age of 42.

Like characters in Charles Dickens' 1859 novel, the triumphs and tragedies of Bartlesville and Ponca City will forever be entwined. Separated by just 70 miles of highway, the fortunes of these two mirror image Oklahoma communities have been tied to the oil and gas industry for nearly a century.

He's been confined to a wheelchair for 20 years. Now a paraplegic man is walking again. And his doctors call it a miracle. ... A Brown Recluse sent him to the hospital, then to rehab for eight months. "I'm here for a spider bite. I didn't know I would end up walking...."

Police in Washington state have located a 14-year-old Tecumseh girl and the 41-year-old man Oklahoma investigators believe she left with more than a month ago.

The Obama administration says it is dropping the "enemy combatant" designation for inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba and that it will draw on international law for its detention policy.

An American fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone as it was flying over Iraq.... Details of the previously-unreported shoot-down, which occurred last month, are still sketchy. But we do know that American commanders have long accused Tehran of supplying weapons and training to all sorts of Iraqi militant groups.

Alan W. Livingston, who created the character of Bozo the Clown and signed the Beatles to a contract at Capitol Records during a long and multifaceted show business career, died Friday in Los Angeles. He was 91.

The piece of orbital space junk that forced three astronauts to briefly evacuate the International Space Station on Thursday was bigger than originally reported.... The object, identified as a piece of rocket engine that flew in 1993, was about 5 inches (12.7 cm) in diameter, not .35 inches (0.89 cm).

New England travelers should benefit from faster, more frequent and safer train travel with an extra $1.3 billion pumped into the long-struggling Amtrak, half of it directed to the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington, the Obama administration announced yesterday.

One day after signing the $410 billion omnibus funding bill into law, along with provisions ending the Department of Transportation's Mexican truck demonstration project, the Obama administration has announced intentions to restart the program as soon as possible. [Of course!]

The Senate is gearing up to ratify a Nixon-era U.N. treaty meant to create universal laws to govern the seas -- a treaty critics say will create a massive U.N. bureaucracy that could even claim powers over American waterways.

Ten children at a day care center drank windshield wiper fluid after a staffer served it from a container mistaken for Kool-Aid and placed in a refrigerator, ... Doctors estimate the children, ages 2 to 7, drank about an ounce of the blue fluid ... Only one child remained hospitalized Friday morning, after blood samples showed "measurable levels" of methanol,...

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — An unemployed truck driver seething over liberalism told police he opened fire in a church last year because it harbored gays and multiracial families and he hoped others would follow his example.

Three Ochelata residents are being held on bonds ranging from $1,000 to a quarter of a million dollars after their arrests for drugs and related resisting arrest charges

The near-hit of space junk Thursday was a warning fired shot across the bow of the international space station, experts said. There's likely more to come in the future.

The $410 billion omnibus funding bill headed toward President Obama's desk for signing contains a carefully worded measure that would shut down the Bush administration demonstration project allowing 100 Mexican trucking companies to run their long-haul rigs throughout the U.S. in direct competition with American truckers.

A lawyer lobbying the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Supreme Court for a review of Barack Obama's qualifications to be president says a key conservative justice has hinted that another conservative justice has been voting against hearing the dispute.

New York and other Northeast states lag in dropping landlines. Surprisingly, Oklahoma and Utah lead in going wireless

Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen Zappa (born July 30, 1979) is an American artist, also known for several acting roles in film and television, as well as recording a one-off comedy single. She is the youngest daughter of musician Frank Zappa.

With Care, Felt Hats develop more character and become better with age.

Newly released documents show, however, that Warren Commission member Congressman Gerald Ford pressed the panel to change its description of the wound and place it higher in Kennedy's body. Ford wanted the wording changed to: "A bullet had entered the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine." The panel's final version was: "A bullet had entered the base of the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine."

By the time he became president in 1969, Richard Nixon had been on the giving and receiving end of major underworld favors for more than two decades. Watergate was just the tip of the iceberg.

Back in the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson gave us the War on Poverty. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon launched the War on Drugs. Now that we have seen President Barack Obama's first-year legislative agenda, we know what kind of a war he intends to wage. It is no wonder that markets are imploding around us. Obama is giving us the War on Business.

A 75-year-old widow in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 40 lashes and four months in jail for mingling with two young men who are not close relatives

Claim: Responding to pressure from religious groups, Alabama's state legislature redefined the value of pi from 3.14159 to 3 in order to bring it in line with Biblical precepts. Status: False.

The bill House Bill No. 246, Indiana State Legislature, 1897, reportedly set the value of pi to an incorrect rational approximation.

A canny chimpanzee who calmly collected a stash of rocks and then hurled them at zoo visitors in fits of rage has confirmed that apes can plan ahead just like humans, a Swedish study said Monday. Santino the chimpanzee's anti-social behavior stunned both visitors and keepers at the Furuvik Zoo but fascinated researchers because it was so carefully prepared.

What if I told you that there was a piece of legislation that would: (1) Defund all of the Mexican, Islamic and other drug cartels. (2) Defund all of the local drug gangs (3) Cripple the movement toward a centralized Globalist Government (4) Reclaim the liberties lost in the wake of 911 And what if I told you that this legislation would minimally add 26.6 Billion dollars in revenue to the US economy: without the imposition of any further taxation on the American people? And furthermore what if I told you that this legislation could be implemented world wide yielding similar benefits throughout the planet? Wouldn't you be interested in learning more about it?

During the campaign and again in presenting his budget, Obama pointed his finger at us and said that no one who earned under $250,000 would pay higher taxes. The details of his budget tell a different story. Taxes for about 10 million Americans that have oil or gas production income will go up 15 percent. His new energy program plans to raise taxes on oil income by eliminating the depletion allowance for oil and gas production.

President Obama was so concerned that he had appeared to dismiss a question from New York Times reporters about whether he was a socialist that he called the newspaper from the Oval Office to clarify his policies. "It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question," he told reporters... [Yeah, hard to believe you had the huevos to ask!

Wikipedia, the online "free encyclopedia" mega-site written and edited entirely by its users, has been deleting within minutes any mention of eligibility issues surrounding Barack Obama's presidency, with administrators kicking off anyone who writes about the subject, WND has learned.

Gang units with the Orange County Sheriff's Office arrested two men they said were illegally broadcasting a gang-promoting radio show. ... Inside, investigators found Senat smoking marijuana while on the air. He and DJ Christopher Robert Roth were both arrested and charged with unauthorized transmission and possession with the intent to deliver marijuana....

BY STRIPPING the funding for the nuclear repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, President Obama has succeeded in killing the contentious project that remains unfinished 22 years after Congress selected the site. He compounds the error by not offering an alternative. If the president's vision for a clean energy future is to be believed or is to come to fruition, nuclear energy must be a part of the mix, and the safe disposal of its radioactive waste must be given more serious consideration. [This president has no such vision.]

The Clackamas County Sheriff's Office is continuing the investigation into the officer involved fatal shooting on S. Macksburg Road in Mulino on Wednesday night that occurred when deputies were attempting to arrest two people on warrants in connection with a marijuana growing operation. ... two deputies went to home of 80-year old Marjorie Crawford about 10:30 p.m., March 4, and at 10:39 p.m. shots fired and a person down was reported. ... Crawford, experiencing medical issues unrelated to the incident, was taken from the scene by ambulance. She was arrested for manufacturing, delivery and possession of marijuana and was lodged in the Clackamas County Jail....

BELOIT, Wis. - Police years ago pulled over a young woman who rushed through an amber traffic light. "I'm about to arrest this person right now," the irritated officer radioed to a dispatcher. "She's telling me her name is Marijuana Pepsi Jackson." It's the truth. ... the Beloit woman embraces them as a symbol of her struggle to succeed and to help other children overcome obstacles.

The novelist Julie Myerson who evicted her cannabis-smoking son then penned a book about it, has admitted to smoking joints.... said the feeling of being stoned was 'very nice.'

facing exhaustion over America's economic crisis and is unable to focus on foreign affairs

Russian media has been poking fun at US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after she gave her Russian counterpart a "reset" button with an ironic misspelling.... instead of the Russian word for "reset" (perezagruzka) it featured a slightly different word meaning "overload" or "overcharged" (peregruzka).

Cell phones belonging to hospital staff were found to be tainted with bacteria -- including the drug-resistant MRSA superbug -- and may be a source of hospital-acquired infections....

The entire population of Taloga, Oklahoma was evacuated Thursday due to a raging fire that has burned tens of thousands of acres.... All of the approximately 400 residents left, but are now allowed back in....

Over the past 30 years, author Alan Moore has almost single-handedly reinvented the comic book, transforming its language, broadening its scope and deepening its intellect. So, naturally, Hollywood has been poaching his stories for years, the most egregious being the 2003 loud and dumb adaptation of his otherwise highly literate "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." ... This weekend, however, we get director Zack Snyder's sprawling adaptation of " Watchmen...." Moore has sworn off movie profits inspired by his books; he recently told the Los Angeles Times that he is opposed to movies based on his work. About "Watchmen" he said, "I will be spitting venom all over it for months to come."

"'Watchmen' is an embarrassment of riches to the comics-obsessed philosopher," said Mark D. White, editor of the book "Watchmen and Philosophy: A Rorschach Test." The book is one of a series that uses pop culture as an entry point to the sometimes abstract subject of philosophy.

Craigslist's chief executive has fired back at an Illinois sheriff who is suing the popular website for promoting prostitution with free classified ads for "erotic services." ... Buckmaster maintains that Craigslist had "very positive communications" in 2007 with the Cook County Sheriff's Office, explaining the legality and intent of the classified-ad website's Erotic Services section. Craigslist says it has since instituted new measures to prevent the website from being used as a tool in the illegal sex trade and implemented an anti-abuse plan endorsed by attorneys general in Illinois and 39 other states.

Two Bountiful Junior High School teachers are accused of sexually assaulting the same 13-year-old student, after their separate relationships with him spiraled from personal conversations to the exchange of sexual text messages and phone sex

Barack Obama appears to be graying around the temples since the Presidency takeover

A tourist who refused to take his clothes off at a swinger sex party has been blamed for "a mini-riot" at a north Queensland nudist colony.... "They felt uncomfortable with him eyeing them off and I asked him to show some respect and take his clothes off," said the nudist colony manager. "He then threatened to bash me, there was some argy-bargy and I ordered him off the premises and police were called." [OMG! Not argy-bargy, too!]

Cathay Pacific has apologized for embarrassing a customer whose anguish after missing her flight was captured on video by an airline employee and posted on the Internet. The Hong Kong airline said in a statement to The Associated Press on Thursday that the worker who filmed the video has been disciplined but that another person posted the footage on YouTube, a video-sharing Web site.

Certain adhesive patches that deliver medication through the skin have been found to be a risk to patient safety. The patches, if worn while undergoing magnetic resonance imaging scans or MRIs, can cause skin burns, says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration today.

Tammy Fausel said that she and her family were shocked at what happened during her uncle's funeral in Gray Court. A Candler, N.C., woman danced in front of the service, waved a wand around the casket, opened the lid, laid her hands on the deceased's head and struck the body with a wand.... charged with disturbing a funeral and public disorderly conduct.... When deputies asked the woman why she acted the way she did, the woman said "she felt that it was the right thing to do at the time...."

In a February 25th press conference with DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters that ending federal medical marijuana raids "is now American policy." [Yeah, sure]

The real Obama has stood up and lived up to his ranking as the most left-wing member of the Senate. Barack has no mandate for this. He was even behind John McCain when the decisive event that gave him the presidency occurred — the September collapse of Lehman Bros. and the market crash. Republicans are under no obligation to render bipartisan support to this statist coup d'etat. For what is going down is a leftist power grab that is anathema to their principles and philosophy.

The Bush administration's hostility toward stem-cell science created opportunity in Canada. ... The sight of waving hemp fields just across the Canadian border frustrates many American farmers.... When the United States banned the sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages in 1920, Canadians found another great export market. Rules governing alcohol varied from province to province, but Canada's generally lighter approach to booze opened new avenues for profit....

"The baby was described as very lethargic, not responsive."

Green-fingered Shane Burfield was so proud of his healthy plants that, like an increasing number of amateur horticulturists, he decided to show the progress of his cherished crop off to other enthusiasts on YouTube. Unfortunately for the 25-year-old, Avon and Somerset police also took an interest in Burfield's plants....

German police have launched a nationwide search of more than 200 homes and businesses of people suspected of belonging to the country's extreme right.... "The primary aim of the concerted action by crime fighting authorities is to seize and confiscate prohibited items like music in order to move effectively and extensively against the spread of right wing extremism...." [Prohibited items like music??]

a team of University of Illinois education professors has found that public-school students outperform their private-school classmates on standardized math tests, thanks to two key factors: certified math teachers, and a modern, reform-oriented math curriculum.

Top Democrats believe they have struck political gold by depicting Rush Limbaugh as the new face of the Republican Party, a full-scale effort first hatched by some of the most familiar names in politics and now being guided in part from inside the White House.

The mysterious door and window rattling that thousands of people felt across Orange County Tuesday night about 9:15 p.m. was likely caused by a sonic boom produced by a high speed jet, says Bob Dollar, a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. And, in an extraordinary odd coincidence, a similar event occurred at 9:15 a.m. today (Wednesday) in Central California.

common sense, not economic need, should persuade Americans it's past time for a sober look at our mad "reefer madness" laws. The Golden State legislator pushing the idea, Tom Ammiano of -- plug in the appropriate joke -- San Francisco, says licensing and taxing legal marijuana production and sales would earn California $1.3 billion a year. His bill would legalize marijuana possession and use for adults 21 or older, license commercial farming of it and tax it at $50 an ounce. A big problem: California can't do this on its own.

For the first time, a medical marijuana bill has passed the Illinois House Human Services Committee but will have to wait for state budget issues to be ironed out before it gets a chance in the state Senate. [Yeah, sure]

Evidently, Oklahoma has spent the past two years working on a very important legislative matter: the nomination and confirmation of the Flaming Lips' "Do You Realize??" as the state's official rock song.

About 100 million light-years away, in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus (the Southern Fish), three galaxies are playing a game of gravitational give-and-take that might ultimately lead to their merger into one enormous entity.

according to Tracy Harlow, ConocoPhillips spokesperson. "This is something that's in progress. It's not past tense at all. It basically has started today and our goal, to the extent possible anyway, is that all employees will know their status by the end of March...." There are approximately 3,000 employed by ConocoPhillips in Bartlesville.

An innovative and easily implemented technique in which nanoscale elements precisely assemble themselves over large surfaces could soon open doors to dramatic improvements in the data storage capacity of electronic media.... "The density achievable with the technology we've developed could potentially enable the contents of 250 DVDs to fit onto a surface the size of a quarter...."

A Spanish-British research project has come up with three future scenarios for the effects of climate change on the Mediterranean over the next 90 years, using global models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The conclusions show that ocean temperatures in this area will increase, along with sea levels. [Yeah, sure]

Power holders often seem misguided in their actions. ... power can literally "go to one's head," causing individuals to think they have more personal control over outcomes than they, in fact, do. ... implications for how power, once attained, is maintained or lost. The authors note that positive illusions can be adaptive, helping power holders make the seemingly impossible possible. But the relationship between power and illusory control might also contribute directly to losses in power, by causing leaders to make poor choices.

Hospital officials in Ohio say a Connecticut woman mauled by a 200-pound chimpanzee two weeks ago lost her hands, nose, lips and eyelids and may be blind and suffering brain damage. The Cleveland Clinic said 55-year-old Charla Nash also lost the bone structure in her face when she was attacked on February 16 in Stamford.

EXETER, N.H. -- A cat aptly named Ugly is attracting a lot of attention at an Exeter vet clinic, where clients say they can't take their eyes off his striking appearance. ... The cat's striking appearance is normal, for him. He was part of a litter of four with a sister that looked just like him.... Workers said many people who come into the building can't really believe what they're seeing. But they said despite appearances, Bat Boy has a nice disposition and real inner beauty.

Small robots the size of riding mowers could prepare a safe landing site for NASA's Moon outpost

The scientists found unexpectedly large amounts of methane in the atmosphere, and also discovered that the atmosphere is hotter than the surface by about 40 degrees, although it still only reaches a frigid minus 180 degrees Celsius.

A collision between U.S. and Russian satellites in early February may have been a test of new U.S. technology to intercept and destroy satellites rather than an accident, a Russian military expert has said.

scientists have proposed a new theory for how a universal molecular machine, the ribosome, managed to self-assemble as a critical step in the genesis of all life on Earth.

a major new theory for the evolution of flight that is changing textbooks around the world. It involves wing-assisted incline running and a fundamental bird wing angle.

Scientists from the Universities of York and Warwick now believe they have been able to pinpoint the necessary expertise to make this possible, in a project called 'Towards Real Virtuality'. 'Real Virtuality' is a term coined by the project team to highlight their aim of providing a 'real' experience in which all senses are stimulated in such a way that the user has a fully immersive perceptual experience, during which s/he cannot tell whether or not it is real.

A virtual reality helmet that recreates the sights, smells, sounds and even tastes of far-flung destinations has been devised by British scientists. The device will allow users a life-like experience of places such as Kenya's Masai Mara while sitting on their sofa. They can also enjoy the smell of flowers in an Alpine meadow or feel the heat of the Caribbean sun on their face. [And, uh, about what most folks look for on the web...?]

A 26-year-old passenger on board an American Airlines jet from Charlotte to Dallas opened a door and slid down an inflatable emergency chute Tuesday as the aircraft waited to taxi to its gate at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

Certain exotic atomic nuclei contain particles that shear off from the central core and create a cloud, which surrounds the central core like a 'heiligenschein' or halo.

Hardy's Paradox, the axiom that we cannot make inferences about past events that haven't been directly observed while also acknowledging that the very act of observation affects the reality we seek to unearth, poses a conundrum that quantum physicists have sought to overcome for decades. How do you observe quantum mechanics, atomic and sub-atomic systems that are so small-scale they cannot be described in classical terms, when the act of looking at them changes them permanently? ... research group explains how they used a measurement technique that has an almost imperceptible impact on the experiment which allows the researchers to compile objectively provable results at sub-atomic scales.

A couple drove 170 kilometres (100 miles) from South Africa's famous Kruger National Park with a highly venomous spitting cobra in their car ... Gordon Parratt, 69, felt the 85-centimetre (33-inch) long snake wind itself around his leg while he was driving. At first he thought an insect had brushed his leg and swiped it away, but when he looked down he saw the snake next to his left foot.... "Fortunately I'm not the panicky type. My wife immediately put her feet up on the dashboard...."

A Canadian who demanded courtesy from a U.S. border security guard says he was pepper sprayed and held in custody for three hours for asking the disrespectful officer to "say please" when ordering him to turn his car off during a search.

When gunmen jumped out of bushes and began spraying bullets at the bus carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team Tuesday, Khalil quickly sized up his options and got everyone to safety. "First I thought there were some firecrackers going off. Then, when I saw the elite force cars in front of me taking fire, I immediately lost my voice.... At that time, the other elite car that was with us gave me cover, and then, when I saw he was giving me cover, my courage and my patience returned. I decided to take the vehicle from there, and one way or another, even if I had to drive over someone, I would take this bus and escape."

Nearly 2,000 Mexican soldiers and armed federal police poured into the border town of Ciudad Juarez last weekend. ... 'This is to reinforce the operation in general ... to eradicate kidnappings, extortion, assaults and homicide....' The soldiers are the first contingent of as many as 5,000 troops and federal police being sent to Juarez.

DUSTIN, Okla. — Authorities say two sisters of a Missouri girl who was allegedly raped and impregnated four times by their father traveled to Oklahoma to help locate the unmarked grave of a baby from one of those pregnancies. Investigators found the remains of a 4-month-old girl Saturday near the small town of Dustin, about 85 miles east of Oklahoma City. Investigators believe the dead child is the first of four children born to the daughter, who is now 19.

students who choose to meet for sex in Bizzell or the Huston Huffman Center, the other popular Craigslist meeting point, take on a long list of risks including sexually transmitted diseases and legal trouble. In the past month, 20 ads for sex on campus have appeared in Craigslist's Oklahoma City personals section.

As text messaging has boomed in recent years, it has also given rise to so-called "textual harassment." Text messages antagonize recipients in a way that is not easily ignored: Most people are never far from their cell phones, and the gadgets tend to blink and chirp until unopened messages are acknowledged. Adding another sting, the victims are often charged by their cell phone companies for receiving the messages. ... 23 percent of stalking or harassment victims reported in 2006 that the stalker had used some form of cyberstalking, such as cell phone texting or e-mail, to harass them.

A White House decision to use a generic flash video player for hosting President Barack Obama's latest weekly video address on WhiteHouse.gov is being seen by some as a sign that the executive office is responding to previous concerns about the use of embedded YouTube videos on the site. The White House has denied that its use of a generic player signals any change in policy on using videos from YouTube and other third parties on WhiteHouse.gov.

The e-mail begins, "Racism still exists in this country." Attached to it is a photo of a window display at a bookstore in Coral Gables, Fla., featuring eight neatly placed tomes about President Obama and his family. Smack dab in the center of the display is a book titled "MONKEYS." The author of the e-mail then encourages a boycott of the store.

LINCOLN, Neb. -- A kitten is recovering after allegedly being stuffed in a bong while its owner smoked marijuana at the same time. ... Deputies said they witnessed the animal being trapped inside the homemade bong as it was being smoked. ... "[It was] taped shut so the cat was exposed to large amounts of marijuana smoke...." allegedly told deputies the kitten was high strung and needed to be put in the bong to keep it calm. ... "The individual stated he had done this several times...."

said the pump at the By-Pass Deli and Conoco service station at Stevens Drive and the Highway 240 Richland bypass registered only $26 for the fuel. But somehow the transaction was recorded on his debit card as totaling $81,400,836,908.... called customer service for PayPal, which is where he established the debit account.... "Somebody from a foreign country who spoke in broken English argued with me for 10 to 15 minutes.... Did you get the gas?' he asked. Like I had to prove that I didn't pump $81,400,836,908 in gas!"

A bad pairing of screen - glasses can ruin the anaglyphs vision!

"Kolmiulotteisia Kuvia" is an experimental 3D movie, the second ever anaglyph 3D film made in Finland. (The first one was made in the early 1950's, only one faded print remains of that film, and nobody knows if the negatives still exist...) The movie has no plot, its subject matter is reminiscent of the early Lumiere Brothers' first movies: a wiew of an approaching train, a view from the harbour, a magician doing his act (with camera tricks like Georges Melies used to do...), some shots from downtown Helsinki, and so on - the "retro" idea...

Anaglyph images are used to provide a stereoscopic 3D effect, when viewed with glasses where the two lenses are different (usually chromatically opposite) colors, such as red and cyan

An asteroid of a similar size to a rock that exploded above Siberia in 1908 with the force of a thousand atomic bombs whizzed close past Earth on Monday.... 2009 DD45, estimated to be between 21 and 47 meters (68 and 152 feet) across, raced by at 1344 GMT on Monday.... The gap was just 72,000 kilometers (44,750 miles), or a fifth of the distance between Earth and the Moon and only twice the height of satellites in geosynchronous orbit

A controversial Italian doctor known for his work allowing post-menopausal women to have children has claimed in an interview to have cloned three babies who are now living in eastern Europe. "I helped give birth to three children with the human cloning technique," Severino Antinori, a prominent gynaecologist, told Oggi weekly in an interview to appear Wednesday.

Eastern European governments that ran political risks to support former President George W. Bush's security policies are now concerned that his successor, Barack Obama, will backtrack on those regional commitments. Leaders in the Czech Republic, Poland and other former communist nations face a backlash at home over their support of Bush-era initiatives, including the proposed U.S. missile- defense system and troop participation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, concern is growing in eastern Europe that it will be put on "the back burner" as the Obama administration talks about working with Russia and western Europe on issues such as Iran

The Justice Department on Monday released a long-secret legal document from 2001 in which the Bush administration claimed the military could search and seize terror suspects in the United States without warrants. The legal memo was written about a month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It says constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure would not apply to terror suspects in the U.S., as long as the president or another high official authorized the action.

U.N. peacekeepers have upset traditional wild asparagus harvesters on the ethnically divided island of Cyprus by preventing them from entering a buffer zone to gather the tasty shoots.

The team that ran the most technologically advanced presidential campaign in modern history is finding it difficult to adapt that model to government. WhiteHouse.gov, envisioned as the primary vehicle for President Obama to communicate with the online masses, has been overwhelmed by challenges that staffers did not foresee and technological problems they have yet to solve. Obama, for example, would like to send out mass e-mail updates on presidential initiatives, but the White House does not have the technology in place to do so. The same goes for text messaging, another campaign staple. Beyond the technological upgrades needed to enable text broadcasts, there are security and privacy rules to sort out ...

Limbaugh, practically declared war on the newly-elected leader of the Republican National Committee today, following a television interview in which the RNC chair called Limbaugh's show "incendiary" and "ugly." ... Limbaugh responded today with an on-air diatribe against the new party chairman that ran nearly 20 minutes, alleging that Steele is more interested in being a "talking head" on television than leading the party to electoral success. ...

Iraq's special criminal court Monday acquitted Tariq Aziz, the man who once served as the urbane, cigar-smoking public face of Saddam Hussein's rule, delivering the most significant not-guilty verdict in a series of prosecutions for crimes against humanity that occurred before the U.S. invasion in 2003.

Born in Shawnee, Opal Hunter has been anxiously awaiting the return of the show in which her daughter stars as Oklahoma City police detective Grace Hanadarko. ... "My mother is the hugest fan of the show you can imagine," Hunter said. "And my roots are so in Oklahoma. My father was born in Oklahoma City and my grandparents were part of the Land Run. "Oh man, I wish we could come to Oklahoma for some filming, but it's a question of money, which is a drag. "You guys know we've all so much wanted to shoot there.... It would be incredible. But for now, I don't think that's a possibility with the economy being the way it is. "But the imagination of Nancy Miller (the show's creator who hails from Oklahoma City) is deeply rooted in Oklahoma. The characters she wants to explore and the subject matter she wants to talk about — all of it is oriented toward the state of Oklahoma. "So to me, it's as much about Oklahoma as it is about anything else."

Hunter's Grace Hanadarko is an Oklahoma detective whose skill as a cop is matched by her disregard for her own well-being. She drinks too much and when confronted with two paths will often choose the more reckless. That's part of the reason she's been assigned an angel, Earl (Leon Rippy), who tries to steer her toward a calmer, saner course.

The TV show "Saving Grace" continues to explore the issues of faith, sin and spirituality through the fictional life story of hard-drinking, fast-living Oklahoma City police detective Grace Hanadarko .

BARTLESVILLE — Local students have found a way to learn new technology, recycle used items and give to youth in the community in one project dubbed PC Empower. The students in instructor Glenda Inman's class at Tri County Technology Center have for the last year collected old, donated computers and rebuilt them. The students then give the refurbished computers as gifts to students in the community who need them. The pupils now are working on a new batch of computers that will find worthy homes.

...60 percent of the world's citizens own a cell phone ... due in large part to cell phone growth in poor, developing countries. ... By the end of 2008, there were an estimated 4.1 billion subscriptions globally, compared with roughly 1 billion in 2002, ... Approximately 23 percent of the population uses the Internet, up from 11 percent in 2002. Still, poor countries are far less likely to surf the Net....

China crashed a lunar probe into the moon Sunday.... Images released by the Chinese government show that the lunar satellite circled the Earth three times before traveling toward the moon and circling it twice before its crash. The government said the Chang'e I was controlled remotely and began to reduce speed about 45 minutes before the crash. Images show the lunar satellite breaking apart on impact. The deliberate crash of the lunar satellite aimed to give China experience for a moon landing in two years and eventual launch of an unmanned lunar rover.... China hopes to collect soil and stone samples from the moon by 2017 and send a manned rover to the moon by 2020...

A US clinic has sparked controversy by offering would-be parents the chance to select traits like the eye and hair colour of their offspring. The LA Fertility Institutes run by Dr Jeff Steinberg, a pioneer of IVF in the 1970s, expects a trait-selected baby to be born next year. His clinic also offers sex selection.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder declared this week that President Obama's campaign promise to stop "using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws" is now the active policy of the United States government. That could at least partially change the parameters of debate over whether or not to legalize medicinal cannabis when the subject comes up for discussion again in the Tennessee Legislature later this session. [Yeah, sure.]

The time has come for the People of Planet Earth to rise up and demand the Re-Legalization of Marijuana. In the weeks between the election and the inauguration President Obama created the change.gov website in order to gather policy recommendation from the American People. To Obama's surprise the most recommended "change," from the American People was to Re-Legalize Marijuana for both medical and personal use. And how did President Obama respond to "We the American People?" He flatly rejected the will of the American People by stating: "I am not going to Legalize Marijuana."

An Internet security company claims that Iran has taken advantage of a computer security breach to obtain engineering and communications information about Marine One

Two Aiken County men have been jailed after local and federal agents recovered 400 pounds of marijuana at a storage unit in Martinez and raided a Hampton Avenue home in Aiken Friday.... Narcotics investigators then served a search warrant at the 1375 Hampton Avenue home Lewis lives in with his father, a retired Aiken Public Safety officer. Local investigators said they have no reason to believe the former officer had any knowledge of the drug trafficking, but he was at home during the raid in Aiken and detained briefly while deputies seized a Ford Explorer utility trailer and a stolen motorcycle....

Usually, Curtis Thurmond is using his fork lift to pick up plywood. But, on Friday morning, investigators had other ideas. "They just came to ask me to give them a hand," says Curtis. "I had no idea what I was giving them a hand for at the time." That lift of his was picking up some of the 400 pounds of marijuana from a storage unit at the Flowing Wells Industrial Park in Martinez. "I was shocked to hear in this immediate area, we had that type of activity going on..." [Shocked!]

It has been nearly 40 years since President Nixon began the "war on drugs" in 1971. Its objective from the outset was to suppress the manufacture, distribution and consumption of illicit drugs. By all of those measures -- and by common agreement -- the multibillion-dollar effort has been a failure. Supply is plentiful, distribution sophisticated and consumption steady. Today, there is rare consensus among policymakers, law enforcement leaders and healthcare professionals: Our drug policy, they concede, is not working.

VANCOUVER — The Conservative government continued its law-and-order blitz Friday by reintroducing tougher penalties for drug offences. The changes came a day after Ottawa announced Criminal Code amendments aimed at gang violence. But a veteran defence lawyer gave the government's lock 'em up strategy a failing grade, saying it doesn't get at the roots of gangsterism — alienated young people and widespread demand for illegal drugs.

The list of athletes caught using marijuana is long. Could it be that drug warriors have been lying about marijuana's health impact? They've definitely been lying about the deterrent value of marijuana prohibition.

Will smoking weed soon be legal (for medicinal purposes only, of course) in the Garden State? New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine sure hopes so and he isn't alone. On Monday the New Jersey State Senate passed the "New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act" by a 22-16 vote. The bill proposed by Sen. Nicholas Scutari (D-Union) would permit terminally and chronically ill patients to get permission to grow, possess and smoke weed. In total patients could possess up to six plants and one ounce of weed, according to the bill.

North Coast medical marijuana growers and distributors offered guarded optimism to news that federal authorities are expected to stop raiding California pot dispensaries. "In general, we are very happy about it," said John Sugg, president of the Sonoma Patient Group in Santa Rosa. "It makes us feel better we're not going to be attacked just for political reasons." [Dream on! (What is he smoking? Oh, yeah....)]

The Temecula branch of Alternative Care Clinics opened four months ago, part of a growing network of Inland businesses connecting patients with medical marijuana. "We used to get a lot more questions," said Jonathan Arbel, ACC's director of operations. "Now it's just more recognized as a legitimate treatment." "It seems like it's a lot less of a negative thing now," said Tom Wiggins Jr., administrator for Inland Empire Cannabis Consultants of Temecula. The trend worries a local anti-drug organization.

Paul Harvey, the news commentator and talk-radio pioneer whose staccato style made him one of the nation's most familiar voices, died Saturday in Arizona, according to ABC Radio Networks. He was 90. Harvey died surrounded by family at a hospital in Phoenix, where he had a winter home, said Louis Adams, a spokesman for ABC Radio Networks, where Harvey worked for more than 50 years. No cause of death was immediately available.

BARTLESVILLE — Charles Roy "Chuck" Spears, owner of Spears Travel, died Thursday. He was 82.

"Bartlesville does something right," Inhofe said during a visit to the Bartlesville Regional Chamber of Commerce. "Bartlesville, the city, thinks things out. They've raised (water) rates for three consecutive years." He said community support goes a long way in achieving solutions to the city's issues. "There are a lot of elements that lead me to believe that we'll be able to do a little better job on the rates that the Corps (of Engineers) is charging," Inhofe said.

Printing presses normally used to make Australian dollar bills produced solar power cells in a trial near Melbourne last week. The giant machines arranged and stamped flexible solar panels onto plastic film.

The long-awaited 'Watchmen' movie takes loyalty to new limits. And that's exactly what's wrong with it.

Director Zack Snyder needed a superhero's fortitude to finish the controversial comic-book saga. We'll find out if that was enough after Friday.

Who watches the "Watchmen"? Or maybe the question is: How closely will lovers of "Watchmen" be watching? If you don't think the answer is "very," you're living in an alternate universe. The Warner Bros. superhero action-drama arrives Friday with more than 20 years of heavy expectations. For the comic-book set, this is the Holy Grail of graphic novels. And director Zack Snyder and the rest of the team behind the film knew all the pitfalls and perils that such a notorious pop-culture work would bring.

In response to user feedback, Microsoft has made numerous changes to the Windows 7 user interface as it readies the operating system -- viewed by many as a make-or-break product for the software maker -- for formal launch later this year or early next year.

A Seattle-area PC seller will offer free Windows 7 upgrades to customers who buy new Vista-powered machines starting next week, beating Microsoft Corp. and its biggest hardware partners to the punch by months.

Notes from CPAC, the national conservative conference, where this week youth has been served.

The Cannazine Cannabis News portal has come up with a novel way to use social networking phenomena Twitter. According to the CannaZine's in-house cannabis grower Red Dragon, who produces cannabis growing material for magazines such as Weed World magazine in the UK and Soft Secrets in Holland as well as the CannaZine, this is the future for a busy generation which is short on time....

As I stated in The New Evangelicalism And Its Bohemian-Style Emergent Church, it's just a matter of time before those in the Emergence against Sola Scriptura that are hitting the bong finally 'fess up like the man in the following story "testifies" for the Lord. Within that post I also pointed out that, from my days in a reggae band with two Rastas from Kingston, I personally can tell you for a fact that the spiritual seekers known as the Rastafarians beat both of them to the shtick that God supposedly gave us this herb for "wisdom."

Mitt Romney returned yesterday to a conservative gathering where his 2008 presidential campaign was both birthed and buried, helping to establish the onetime moderate Massachusetts governor as a movement favorite, de-facto leader of an out-of-power party, and an early, default front-runner for the 2012 nomination.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) addressed the recently approved stimulus, the Guantanamo Bay prison and troop withdrawal from Iraq while in Bartlesville on Friday to discuss local water issues. Inhofe, who opposed passage of the $787 billion federal stimulus bill, referred to stimulus funds as "welfare" during his visit, and said Oklahoma will get $1.9 billion in stimulus funds. "It's 7 percent stimulus and 93 percent welfare, that's essentially what we have and it is huge..."