Blog Heap of Links for the day 13 May 2009

President Obama plans deep new cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal at a time when the government faces a 15-year backlog of warheads already waiting to be dismantled and a need for billions of dollars in new facilities to store and dispose of the weapons' plutonium.

The Obama administration's behavior in the Chrysler bankruptcy is a profound challenge to the rule of law. Secured creditors -- entitled to first priority payment under the "absolute priority rule" -- have been browbeaten by an American president into accepting only 30 cents on the dollar of their claims. Meanwhile, the United Auto Workers union, holding junior creditor claims, will get about 50 cents on the dollar.

In a dramatic, high-profile reversal for his young administration, President Barack Obama is seeking to block the release of 44 photographs depicting abuse of detainees in U.S. military custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. [Surprise??]

A Connecticut prosecutor says test results show a chimpanzee that mauled a woman had the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in its system. ... unclear if the drug played a role in the attack. ...

A Clarendon County waitress is accused of shooting a customer at the restaurant after the two had a dispute. ... Crystal Samuels Twitter Facebook Share Email Print - A A A + Written by Tony Santaella FILED UNDER News Crime Stoppers System.FormatException: Input string was not in a correct format. at Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.Conversions.ParseDecimal(String Value, NumberFormatInfo NumberFormat) at Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.Conversions.ToLong(String Value) --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.Conversions.ToLong(String Value) at Newsmaker.Controls.Masters.Article_MultipleVideos.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e)--> Yakeisha Ward The Waffle House in Manning Crystal Samuels EDITORS NOTE: This story was published on May 12, 2009, and was last updated on May 13, 2009. It has not been reposted by WLTX staff. The reason it is in the most read category on January 28, 2011 is because it has picked up enough pageviews on a blog or third party website to be counted in our tracking numbers for top stories of the day. Clarendon County (WLTX) - A Clarendon County waitress is accused of shooting a customer at the restaurant after the two had a dispute. Yakeisha Ward, 29, is charged with assault and battery with intent to kill. An early morning run for breakfast at the Waffle House on Paxville Highway in Manning turned terribly wrong for Crystal Samuel. "I thought I was gonna get me an All-Star," says Samuel. A popular meal on the menu. "Grits, sausage, toast, eggs and a waffle...."

One out of every four ballots requested by military personnel and other Americans living overseas for the 2008 election may have gone uncounted, according to findings being released at a Senate hearing Wednesday. Sen. Charles Schumer, chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, said the study, while providing only a snapshot of voting patterns, "is enough to show that the balloting process for service members is clearly in need of an overhaul."

Oklahoma authorities say Donald Lee Gilson is on schedule to be executed this week for the 1995 beating death of an 8-year-old boy.

A Bartlesville police officer currently on administrative leave was arraigned Wednesday on charges of obtaining merchandise by false pretense. Ronald Robert Sweeten Jr. was arraigned in Nowata County on charges stemming from an incident alleged to have occurred in 2007. ... used his position at the Bartlesville Police Department to transfer a valuable Colt M-16 rifle owned by the BPD to himself for $500 by going through a Nowata gun dealer.

Much of what we think of as being out there actually comes from in here, and is a byproduct of how the brain processes sensation. In recent years scientists have come up with a number of simple tricks that expose the artifice of our senses, so that we end up perceiving what we know isn't real - tweaking the cortex to produce something uncannily like hallucinations

theory that suggests that a clever cat parasite may alter human cultures on a massive scale. ... Toxoplasma gondii, has been transmitted indirectly from cats to roughly half the people on the planet, and it has been shown to affect human personalities in different ways. ... women who are infected with the parasite tend to be warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be less intelligent and probably a bit boring. But both men and women who are infected are more prone to feeling guilty and insecure. ... Other researchers have linked the parasite to schizophrenia.... Can a common cat parasite account for part -- even if only a very small part -- of the cultural differences seen around the world?

Imax ...said on Tuesday its "Star Trek" screenings grossed a record $8.5 million during the film's first weekend, even as some purists complained that the company's big screens were not big enough.

The Atlantis astronauts have captured the Hubble Space Telescope. ... now face five days of treacherous telescope repairs to the 19-year-old Hubble. That's because Atlantis and Hubble are flying in a 350-mile-high orbit, which is littered with space junk. ...

A remarkable ivory carving is arguably the oldest sculpture of a human figure yet found ... The distorted object, which portrays a woman with huge breasts, big buttocks and exaggerated genitals, is thought to be at least 35,000 years old. ...

A Tulsa-based company has reason to celebrate. FreshBerry Frozen Yogurt Cafes are going international. Its parent company, Beautiful Brands, has signed a deal with a Saudi based company to put 120 locations in the Middle East and North Africa. The first six stores open this summer.

No one was willing to pay $25,000 for what's believed to be an original recipe for Dr Pepper. Bill Waters of Tulsa said he found the Dr Pepper Pepsin Bitters recipe in an old pharmacy's book of formulas.

A missing 13-year-old boy from Ohio, who authorities say kept a diary hit list and threatened several faculty members and students at his school, was traced making a phone call from Kentucky

"The outstanding characteristic of this race was their peculiar urge to build, to build anything and everything, even to the piling up of vast mounds of stone just to see which tribe could build the largest mound. Though they were not a progressive people, they profited much from the schools of the Prince and sent delegates there for instruction. ... The orange race was probably part of those that built the pyramids, as it was said they liked to make vast mounds of stone. ... --Frank Jakubowsky

Be the envy of every other survivalist and have your own converted cold-war Atlas-F missile silo home!