Blog Heap of Links for the day 19 May 2009

President Barack Obama's allies in the Senate will not provide funds to close the Guantanamo Bay prison until the administration comes up with a satisfactory plan for transferring the detainees there, a top Democrat said Tuesday.

A Bakersfield father is accused of biting out one of the eyes of his small child and similarly mutilating the other eye, leaving the child blind. After attacking the child, 34-year-old Angel Vidal Mendoza Sr. quickly left his apartment in a wheelchair, entered a backyard of a nearby vacant home and attacked his own legs with an ax, severely injuring himself.... The child, 4-year-old Angelo Mendoza Jr., later told police, "My daddy ate my eyes."... unknown whether the child will regain vision in his right eye....

US government officials are concerned that the quality of the Global Positioning System (GPS) could begin to deteriorate as early as next year, resulting in regular blackouts and failures — or even dishing out inaccurate directions to millions of people worldwide. The warning centres on the network of GPS satellites that constantly orbit the planet and beam signals back to the ground that help pinpoint your position on the Earth's surface. The satellites are overseen by the US Air Force, which has maintained the GPS network since the early 1990s. According to a study by the US government accountability office (GAO), mismanagement and a lack of investment means that some of the crucial GPS satellites could begin to fail as early as next year.

Calling it a "stupid, silly, one-line aside," he touched on the attention it received. "I think it's an incorrect statement to say I was, in any way, trying to disparage legitimate protests," said Cooper. "I don't think it's my job to disparage, or encourage, which oddly other networks seemed to be doing. Protest is the great right of all Americans, and it's not my job in any way to make fun of people or disparage what they're doing."

botching statements on three subjects in one news conference ... mangled his party's position on... Guantanamo Bay... "We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States," he said. No one, of course, was talking about releasing terrorism suspects among the American populace. Imprisoning them, perhaps, but not releasing them.

in the process of developing a code that synthesizes employee surveys, promotions and pay to estimate which employees are most likely to quit the company.

The DNA of a suspected serial killer was linked Tuesday to a seventh woman murdered in Milwaukee, as part of a major investigation into unsolved homicides stretching back 23 years. The State Crime Laboratory reported that the suspect's DNA has now been found on Florence McCormick, a 28-year-old prostitute strangled on April 24, 1995, police said. The other homicides occurred in 1986, 1995, 1997 and 2007 - all but one on the north side of Milwaukee. The unknown male suspect may be linked to more murders. Testing continues on DNA from about two dozen other unsolved prostitute homicides.

CONNEAUT — City administrators have sent a letter to a local Website operator, ordering her to remove information related to municipal offices.... Ward 1 Councilman Dave Campbell, who has promoted the Web site, was outraged by the letter, calling it "garbage. We cannot dictate how she runs her business...."

A former U.S. Democratic Party fundraiser whose 2007 arrest prompted Hillary Clinton to return $850,000 in campaign contributions was found guilty on Tuesday of breaking federal campaign laws. Businessman Norman Hsu, 58, was convicted by a jury in federal court in New York of violating election laws by making donations to political campaigns in other people's names. Hsu also pleaded guilty on May 7 to charges of mail fraud and wire fraud in running a Ponzi scheme of up to $60 million.

Oklahoma state legislature passed a resolution claiming sovereignty and rebuking Congress and the Executive Branch for issuing mandates that go beyond their Constitutional powers. Though largely symbolic, the resolution, passed by the Oklahoma Senate this week, could impact the ability of Oklahoma to use federal tax dollars offered to the state.

The coconut crab (Birgus latro) is a type of land hermit crab with a spectacular appearance and intriguing biology. Able to grow to relatively gigantic proportions, the coconut crab is probably the largest terrestrial arthropod in the world. Indeed, Charles Darwin described the coconut crab as "monstruous" when he encountered it on the Keeling Islands during the voyage of the Beagle

The coconut crab, Birgus latro, is the largest land-living arthropod in the world, and is probably at the upper size limit of terrestrial animals with exoskeletons in today's atmosphere. It is also known as the robber crab or palm thief, because some coconut crabs are rumored to steal shiny items such as pots and silverware from houses and tents.

a leading paleontologist said scientists have dug up the 47 million-year-old fossil of an ancient primate whose features suggest it could be the common ancestor of all later monkeys, apes and humans. Anthropologists have long believed that humans evolved from ancient ape-like ancestors. Some 50 million years ago, two ape-like groups walked the Earth. One is known as the tarsidae, a precursor of the tarsier, a tiny, large-eyed creature that lives in Asia. Another group is known as the adapidae, a precursor of today's lemurs in Madagascar. Based on previously limited fossil evidence, one big debate had been whether the tarsidae or adapidae group gave rise to monkeys, apes and humans. The latest discovery bolsters the less common position that our ancient ape-like ancestor was an adapid, the believed precursor of lemurs.

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