Blog Heap of Links for the day 14 May 2009

the army has launched what appears to be a full-blown assault on the Taleban in the Swat Valley. Unusually, it also has widespread support from Pakistan's political parties, as well as from moderate Islamic clerics.

told US border guards he was taking them to his new job with the National Institutes of Health at the Biodefense Research Laboratory in Bethesda, Maryland.

OKC -- High winds early Wednesday broke in two a piece of granite that is part of the fallen law officer monument...

News crews in Oklahoma captured a tornado forming as severe weather rolled through that state. [video]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday accused the CIA of misleading Congress about its use of enhanced interrogation techniques on terror detainees. ... Pelosi adamantly insisted that she was not aware that waterboarding or other enhanced interrogation techniques were being used on terrorism suspects. ... The CIA immediately disputed Pelosi's accusation, saying the documents describing the particular enhanced interrogation techniques that had been employed are accurate. ...

Karl Rove: Mrs. Pelosi "questioned whether we were doing enough" to extract information... does that make her an accessory to a crime of torture, as many Democrats are calling enhanced interrogation?

Lions and tigers and bears and just about any other exotic animal you can think of were found on a mega yacht in Miami and caused quite an expensive problem for one of the wealthiest men in America. The decorative animal hides, stuffed heads and ivory carvings are illegal to have in the U.S., an endangered species law lost on Tamir Sapir, the New York billionaire who owns the vessel.

City authorities in Mumbai demolished the shanty home of a "Slumdog Millionaire" child star on Thursday, forcing his family into the streets months after the Oscar-winning film shot him to global fame.

Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry has denied clemency for a Cleveland County man convicted in the 1995 beating death of an 8-year-old boy whose battered remains were found in an abandoned freezer. Henry announced Monday that the execution of 48-year-old Donald Lee Gilson will proceed on Thursday

Retired Cleveland County Sheriff's Department investigator Cliff Winkler can't ever forget the images of finding 8-year-old Shane Coffman's badly decomposed body packed inside a deep freezer behind a Newalla trailer home on Feb. 9, 1996. "It's a case that has really haunted me over the years and I feel like at least tomorrow, there will be some closure to it...."

The case is closely watched because it could increase the cost of raising chickens and lead to higher meat prices.

Rising U.S. sales of acai, a purple Amazon berry promoted as a "superfood" on Oprah Winfrey's Web site, are depriving Brazilian jungle dwellers of a protein-rich nutrient they've relied on for generations.

This morning the European Space Agency successfully launched two new science heavyweights — the Herschel Space Observatory and the Planck Surveyor — onto journeys deep into space, where they will begin their much-awaited missions. With its far-infrared vision, Herschel will help astronomers learn more of how stars are born today and how galaxies formed in the early universe. Planck will look even earlier. It should help unravel the origin of the universe as a whole by mapping in new detail the microwaves radiated 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

an energy watchdog is alarmed about the threat to the environment from the soaring electricity needs of gadgets like MP3 players, mobile phones and flat screen TVs.

OKC --High winds early Wednesday broke in two a piece of granite that is part of the fallen law officer monument

As thousands of General Motors workers await word on more U.S. plant closures, reports that the company plans to import Chinese-made vehicles to the U.S. have created a political problem for the automaker and the White House.

A white fraternity that traces its roots to the Civil War and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee is again facing complaints over its antebellum-themed events. This time, University of Alabama alumnae are upset after Kappa Alpha Order members wearing Confederate uniforms and carrying battle flags paraded past a historically black sorority as the women celebrated the group's 35th anniversary.

Here's what we know about the authenticity of Zhao Ziyang's memoirs,which will be published in English on May 19 (20 years to the day when he was removed from his post as general secretary of the Communist Party).

A new memoir by the deceased former Communist Party chief ousted for refusing to help suppress 1989 pro-democracy protests offers a rare window into the power struggle that surrounded the bloody crackdown as its 20th anniversary nears.

Western governments have condemned the new charges brought against Burma's pro-democracy opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. ... She faces trial on Monday for breaching the terms of her house arrest after an apparently uninvited visit by a US man. ...