Blog-heap o' links from 2004-Dec

FRI 2004-DEC-31

Digital Consequencesnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:21:27Web logs or blogs are everywhere, with at least an estimated five million on the web and that number is set to grow.

New Year 2005ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:21:43Murder rates declined in several urban areas in 2004, including New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:20:42Nations around the world are marking the start of 2005 but celebrations have been restrained amid global mourning for victims of the Asian earthquake.nytimes.com/ ... 18:17:51Hundreds of tourists began the annual ritual of staking out small plots of land in Times Square this morning, as preparations for the 100th New Year's Eve celebration there got into full swing....reuters.co.uk/ ... 18:17:33A spokesman for the Mayor of London said the capital planned to commemorate the victims of the disaster with a two-minute silence at 11:55 p.m. British time.chron.com/ ... 18:17:12New Year's Eve parties canceled across Asia... In many places people were too busy counting the dead, feeding survivors and combating the spread of disease....

Mechanical Disasterreuters.com/ ... 18:16:43the tragedy was made worse by the owner's decision to lock a truck-sized emergency exit at the club to keep people from sneaking in without paying. "Because of greed, a lot people who could have been saved lost their lives...." club had a permit for 1,100 people... Local media estimated the crowd at between 4,000 and 6,000....reuters.com/ ... 11:31:56The flares are sold on streets all over Latin America for the New Year holiday festivities.ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:26:42 A fire swept through a crowded Buenos Aires nightclub during a rock concert, killing at least 174 people and injuring more than 410... "Someone from the crowd tossed a flare and there were immediately flames..."

Great Quake of 2004ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:23:30snapshots on the sixth day since the Indian Ocean quake-tsunami catastrophe... Translators are key aid workers in tsunami-stricken southern Thailand, where people of some 40 nationalities were on vacation when the waves hit....news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:53:15The web is helping aid agencies gather resources to help cope with the aftermath of the tsunami disaster. Many people are making donations via websites or going online to see how they can get involved with aid efforts. High-profile web portals such as Google, Yahoo, Ebay and Amazon are gathering links that lead people to aid and relief organisations. So many were visiting some aid-related sites that some webpages were struggling to cope with the traffic.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:47:55Pictures - BBC story.news.yahoo.com/ ... 11:47:18Pictures of the aftermath -- morgues, memorials, prayers news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:44:43White flags of mourning have been hoisted and the national flag taken to half-mast as Sri Lanka holds a day of commemoration for its tsunami dead. Inter-faith services were being held and a simultaneous bell-ringing organised as the nation comes to terms with its loss of around 28,000 people... some hope the tsunami may help the peace process between Tamil Tiger rebels and the government.... One UN convoy of five trucks with sugar, lentils and rice did get through to northern relief camps holding about 80,000 homeless people. Tamil cricket star Muttiah Muralitharan was aboard the convoy. The Tamil Tigers initially criticised aid distribution to the area but both the government and rebels are making conciliatory gestures. Before the tsunami there were real fears the nation could revert back to civil war. President Chandrika Kumaratunga has said the threat of war is now "remoter"....ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:31:30Pilots dropped food to Indonesian villagers stranded among bloating corpses Thursday...
...police in a devastated provincial capital stripped looters of their clothing and forced them to sit on the street as a warning to others...

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 11:55:03U.S. troops rounded up 49 suspected guerrillas near Saddam Hussein's hometown Friday... In Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, U.S. troops came under mortar attack Friday. They opened fire, killing one Iraqi and wounding two others... in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, two civilians were killed and four Iraqi National Guardsmen wounded when rebels detonated a car bomb next to the taxi the soldiers were riding in. A passing car absorbed the brunt of the blast, and its two occupants were killed.... In Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. military convoy.. One American vehicle was damaged but there were no casualties....

THU 2004-DEC-30

Digital Consequencesap.tbo.com/ ... 20:50:58Two couples have been charged in a price-switching scheme that allegedly defrauded Wal-Mart stores in 19 states of $1.5 million over the last decade. Authorities said the scheme involved using a home computer to produce UPC bar codes for cheaper products and slipping them over the real codes on high-priced items. The suspects then allegedly sold the merchandise, or returned it for refunds or store gift cards that also were sold.

20th Century - Still With Usvoanews.com/ ... 20:45:33Artie Shaw says the famed bandleader and clarinetist has died at age 94 after a lengthy illness. Mr. Shaw, an icon in the swing jazz and big band era, was famous for his 1938 recording of the song, "Begin the Beguine." The breakthrough hit earned him the title of the new "King of Swing."

Extraterrestrialnews-leader.com/ ... 11:25:53 Additional observations have ruled out that a recently discovered asteroid, believed to be about 1,300 feet long, could hit Earth in 2029

History - still with usworldnetdaily.com/ ... 11:23:49Mystery of Reagan's lost 'doomsday codes' solved -- on brink of war with Soviets, nuclear key card went missing when prez shot

Transportap.tbo.com/ ... 20:51:30DELTONA, Fla. - It took 1,282 truckloads of sand, but a 225-foot-wide sinkhole that opened in this bedroom community - forcing some people to leave their homes - has been filled. An estimated 25,640 cubic yards of sand were used Wednesday to finish filling the 50-foot-deep hole on Howland Boulevard, a major thoroughfare in this community ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:06:33Some of the 300 passengers stuck on an international flight that was delayed 18 hours by fog, regulations and mechanical glitches said the passengers were almost ready to riot as the wait dragged on. Food and water ran short, and the toilets stopped working before Northwest Airlines Flight 33 finally reached Seattle early Wednesday, 28 hours after leaving Amsterdam.

Preternatural Patternsreuters.com/ ... 20:54:34When the separated parents of a five-year old Italian boy could not agree whose house he should stay at over Christmas, a judge settled the dispute by tossing a coin ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:54:12A judge denied a 94-year-old woman's attempt to force the Massachusetts Lottery Commission to pay her entire $5.6 million winnings up front on grounds she otherwise won't live long enough to collect it all. "I'd like to get it and do what I want with it... I'm not going to live 20 years. I'll be 95 in March."wftv.com/ ... 11:01:13EVANSVILLE, Ind. -- Two Wal-Mart employees who police say followed a manager's orders to shoot and kill a stray cat have been charged with federal animal cruelty.

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 20:58:12

Army Staff Sgt. Nathaniel J. Nyren, 31, from Reston, Va., died in Baghdad, Iraq on Dec. 28, when a civilian vehicle struck his military vehicle.

Human Rightreuters.com/ ... 11:12:18Darlene Jespersen, who had worked for nearly 20 years at a Harrah's Entertainment Inc casino bar in Reno, Nevada, objected to the company's revised policy that required female bartenders, but not men, to wear makeup... In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling in favor of Harrah's. All three judges are males appointed by Democratic presidents...

Threatsap.tbo.com/ ... 20:52:04Basque's parliament approved a proposal for virtual independence from Spain, with last-minute support from a formerly banned party seen as the political wing of the Basque separatist group ETA. The plan poses the stiffest challenge to the Spanish central government since the Basque region became semiautonomous 25 years ago.voanews.com/ ... 20:44:05The FBI is investigating at least six incidents where laser beams have been aimed into the cockpits of commercial jets in recent days - an act that can harm the vision of pilots.

Violencereuters.com/ ... 11:04:09The soldier who died in Mosul was on a patrol that was hit by a suicide car bomb close to a U.S. outpost. Gunmen tried to overrun it, sending in another suicide truck bomber and firing mortars and rockets in an apparent bid to wipe out the unit. About 15 U.S. troops were wounded before jets put the attackers to flight, leaving about 25 insurgents dead cnn.com/ ... 01:15:17An Israeli drone fired three rockets into Khan Yunis in southern Gaza early Thursday, killing two field commanders from the militant group Hamas and another person, Palestinian security forces said. One report said the third person killed in the rocket strike shortly after midnight was an 18-year-old civilian.

Great Quake of 2004ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:53:02He warned the governments of India, Indonesia and Australia. India, fearing another tsunami, took him seriously enough to issue a public warning. Tens of thousands of Indians fled their coastal homes in panic Thursday, but no quake or giant waves materialized. Authorities now are chagrined they acted on the advice, since Park is not a geologist. The Indian science minister later dismissed Park's prediction as "hogwash," and one American scientist called it "gobbledygook." Park, standing next to his truck outside of a strip mall, said there still is a chance that his prediction will come true.sify.com/ ... 20:47:50 India's last active volcano, in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, has erupted in the aftermath of the huge earthquake that set off tsunamis killing thousands of people bernama.com/ ... 20:47:24death toll in Acheh, the region worst hit by last Sunday's tsunami, may exceed 400,000 news.scotsman.com/ ... 20:46:45United States President George Bush was tonight accused of trying to undermine the United Nations by setting up a rival coalition to coordinate relief following the Asian tsunami disaster.theadvertiser.news.com.au/ ... 20:46:29As many Westerners waited for news of missing loved ones others arrived to take holidays as usual.ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:05:09From India to the Philippines, ingenious devices such as storm shelters on stilts, mangrove forests that slow cyclones and huts anchored by car tires have sprung up in poor communities that cannot afford expensive technology to protect themselves from disasters such as Sunday's tsunami.sify.com/ ... 11:03:5330 minutes of terror caught live on home video reuters.com/ ... 10:58:31death toll in the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster soared above 120,000 on Thursday... could yet eclipse a cyclone that struck Bangladesh in 1991, killing 138,000 people.... edition.cnn.com/ ... 10:47:03Sri Lanka said it would follow suit, but then quickly decided against issuing any evacuation orders.reuters.com/ ... 10:46:14The Indian government on Thursday issued tsunami alerts for all areas hit by the weekend's killer waves, prompting panicking people to flee the coastlines. "It is for a precautionary measure based on some information we have," the official said. He gave no details.abc.net.au/ ... 01:05:09"Please save my twins, just let me go, as long as they're safe," a tearful Riza recalled the mother saying. Riza said she grabbed the twins and placed them on her back. As she struggled through the torrent, she saw a snake as big as a telephone pole gliding left with current of the water and towards what turned out to be a makeshift bank. "Strangely I felt no fear," Riza said, adding she followed the snake to safety.

WED 2004-DEC-29

WW2 - still with usnytimes.com/ ... 23:46:10Federal prosecutors are seeking to revoke the United States citizenship of a Trenton man whom they accuse of working for a Nazi-run police organization that persecuted tens of thousands of Jews and shipped them to their deaths at concentration camps during World War II.

Mechanical Disasterfoxnews.com/ ... 12:32:02MUSKOGEE, Okla. — Emergency workers found the bodies of two men Wednesday in the wreckage of a scrap metal plant that exploded in a fiery blast, shooting debris in the air, shattering windows in nearby homes and causing a shock felt up to 55 miles away.... No foul play was suspected....

Only Naturalnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:54:01Romanian doctors say a 67-year-old woman is seven months pregnant with twin girls after fertility treatment.drudgereport.com/ ... 23:50:37SHE admits it hurts. But Paula Cooke believes allowing herself to be stung by bees every day is helping in her battle against MS.

Human Rightreuters.com/ ... 19:54:00An Arkansas circuit judge on Wednesday threw out the state's ban against foster parenthood by gay couples or by households that include a gay adult.

US Militarydefenselink.mil/ ... 15:44:11This week, the Air Force announced an increase in the number of reservists on active duty in support of the partial mobilization, while the Army, Navy and Coast Guard had a decrease and the Marine Corps number remained the same. The net collective result is 198 more reservists mobilized than last week.

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 19:58:03

Navy Seaman Pablito Pena Briones, Jr., 22, of Anaheim, Calf., died Dec. 28 of a non-hostile gun shot wound in Fallujah, Iraq.defenselink.mil/ ... 15:43:26

Marine Staff Sgt. Jason A. Lehto, 31, of Mount Clemens, Mich., died Dec. 28 in a non-hostile incident in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.defenselink.mil/ ... 15:42:37

Army Spc. Jose A. Rivera-Serrano, 26, from Mayaquez, Puerto Rico, died Dec. 27 in Baghdad, Iraq, from wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device hit his vehicle.

Threatskktv.com/ ... 23:46:44Federal officials are investigating reports from two pilots who say bright lights were aimed from the ground into their cockpits as they headed into the Colorado Springs Airport. Both planes landed without problems on Monday night.washingtontimes.com/ ... 18:47:59REPLAY from Wed 2004-Sep-29
A pilot flying a Delta Air Lines jet was injured by a laser that illuminated the cockpit of the aircraft as it approached Salt Lake City International Airport last week... Officials were unsure of the source of the laser and could not determine whether the exposure was deliberate or accidental.... "The Air Line Pilots Association has received reports in the past of incidents where lasers penetrated cockpits and, in at least one case, caused injury...." incidents of lasers being directed at commercial airliners during takeoff and landings have raised fears that "this in fact may be a new form of terrorism."...news.yahoo.com/ ... 18:44:21CLEVELAND - Authorities are investigating a mysterious laser beam that was directed into the cockpit of a commercial jet traveling at more than 8,500 feet.nytimes.com/ ... 18:43:26President Bush: ...al Qaeda leader's call for Iraqis to boycott the elections in January "make the stakes of this pretty clear to me. His vision of the world is where people don't participate in democracy. .. His vision of the world is one in which there is no freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and/or freedom of conscience. And that vision stands in stark contrast to the vision of, by far, the vast majority of Iraqis."worldnetdaily.com/ ... 15:38:45A Tunisian astrologer who reportedly predicted the deaths of Princess Diana, Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Yasser Arafat says President Bush will be killed by an assassin's bullet in 2005.

Violencenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:54:15Saudi police have killed seven people they describe as militants after two car bombs exploded in the centre of Riyadh on Wednesday evening.reuters.co.uk/ ... 18:43:45U.S. troops backed by warplanes have killed 25 guerrillas in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul after facing a fierce coordinated assault by two suicide bombs and dozens of insurgents olympics.reuters.com/ ... 18:42:03Two huge car bombs exploded after militants tried to storm Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry and a security unit on Wednesday in what appeared to be the latest brazen strike by al Qaeda in the world's top oil exporter. Security sources said the militants had tried to drive one of the cars into the vast, heavily fortified ministry compound in central Riyadh, but it exploded outside one of the gates. Another explosives-laden vehicle tried to enter a center for special emergency forces in the capital but was stopped at the gate before police opened fire and it blew up worldnetdaily.com/ ... 15:38:19A Muslim cleric who offered prayers of peace was abducted and had his throat slit by Islamic radicals in Western India, near Pakistan.

Great Quake of 2004ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:55:45The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.. is using its spy satellites.. to funnel information, including damage assessments of roads, bridges, ports and airfields, to the U.S. agencies handling disaster relief.ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:55:04"I think that psychologically, people have to be given the chance to identify their family members.... Whatever disease the person has while still alive poses no threat to public health in a corpse."cnn.usnews.printthis.clickability.com/ ... 23:53:29An American woman who was scuba diving with her husband in Thailand as one of Sunday's tsunamis roared overhead said she was oblivious to the disaster until after they surfaced...
...they had lost all their possessions, including their documentation, they had to have new passports issued... But the U.S. officials demanded payment to take the passport pictures.... couple had managed to hold on to their ATM card, so they paid for the photos and helped other Americans who did not have any money get their pictures taken and buy food....apnews.myway.com/ ... 23:50:17survivors fought over packs of noodles in quake-stricken Indonesian streets Wednesday while relief supplies piled up at the airport for lack of cars, gas or passable roads to move them....
a lone fisherman... rescued.. after clinging to his wave-tossed boat for three days....guardian.co.uk/ ... 19:52:57Four days after the tidal wave hit, normal life has returned to much of Phuket and surrounding resorts such as Patong. The "girlie" bars are reopening, the bazaars selling rip-off Rolex watches are busy, the tourists are streaming off flights and on to the beach....japantimes.co.jp/ ... 19:50:39Japanese tourist: "I got off the bus and stood in front of a Seven-Eleven shop, which was about 500 meters away from the beach. Then I heard all these people shouting, screaming and I saw people running from the beach, jumping into cars... At first I thought a bomb had exploded, but someone said it was a wave and I thought, 'What wave?' .. Then I looked back and I saw the water, the mud, the cars, the trees, mixed up with everything coming. It was like a flash flood, very fast. It was just 100 meters away from me.... It was lucky, because I had my sneakers on and I was in good shape. I made it to the hill, but many did not... All of this happened in just one minute."....theherald.co.uk/ ... 19:48:01FIVE million people were last night without food, shelter or fresh water washingtontimes.com/ ... 19:47:21 islands off India experienced eight strong aftershocks Wednesday... between 5.1 and 6.1...boston.com/ ... 19:43:28Photos, Dec 26-27 boston.com/ ... 19:42:59Photos Dec 27-28 sfgate.com/ ... 19:42:14S.F. coastline susceptible to huge quake-triggered waves csmonitor.com/ ... 15:41:38UNICEF Chief of Emergencies in India, Vinod Menoni, says that a meeting Wednesday evening was scheduled in Chennai, India, to help coordinate the work of a number of international aid agencies. "Some are good at some things and others at other things. This is going to be one of the largest initiatives in the sense that it involves so many countries all at the same time and we have to make sure that we get what we need for this country,"newstodaynet.com/ ... 15:36:10 the quake was actually predicted by a team of research scholars of the Department of Applied Geology, University of Madras, with a permissible error, a week ago.... 'we predicted that the disaster will occur on 26 December 2004 at 00:30 (GMT) with 3.54 N latitude and 97.17E longitude, which is located near the coast of Banyak Island, Sumatra, Indonesia, with a magnitude at around 6 to 7. The actual calamity occurred on 26 December 2004 at 00:58 (GMT), with 3.298 N latitude and 95.779 E longitude, located off the west coast of northern Sumatra'. The difference in distance between the predicted place and the epicentre was 157.11899 km with a time difference of 28 minutes.... According to the method, when two or more planets, Sun and the Moon get aligned more or less in line (0 to 180 degree) with the earth it could affect the angular momentum of the earth and decrease the speed of rotation of the earth which could trigger an earthquake. But in order to trigger an earthquake in one particular place, two conditions should be taken into consideration, said Venkatanathan. One is the distance of the planetary configurations and two the directions of force acting at the possible epicenter.worldnetdaily.com/ ... 15:33:10The 9.0 killer earthquake in Asia that unleashed tsunamis killing tens of thousands followed exactly one year to the hour after the Bam, Iran, earthquake that killed 26,000.... The 2003 quake hit at 01:56:52 UTC, while the 2004 quake struck at 00:58:55 UTC – exactly one year, 58 minutes apart.... quake map dec 29

cbsnews.com/ ... 12:30:55Money may see like an impersonal way to help, but in this hour of need, cash rings loudest of all... List of aid agencies accepting contributions for assistance that they or their affiliates are providing for those affected by the earthquake and tidal waves in Asiacbsnews.com/ ... 12:29:25"We were trying to remain calm and we were trying to keep our children calm. I got on the phone and was calling my brother in New York to ask him if he knew anything that was going on, because my wife and I have gone through the 9-11 event in New York, living a couple of blocks away, and then we moved to Hong Kong and we lived through the event with SARS.

"So when this was happening, and I'm kind of a tech person, I wanted to get someone online so they could do a search on the Internet. I got a hold of a friend in mine in Hong Kong who told me about 40 minutes earlier, an earthquake had happened off the coast of Indonesia, and thus, we knew it was a tidal wave...."thisislondon.com/ ... 11:37:18With the water level rising, Mr Shaw... was forced to break his own ankle to get himself free of the debris....thisislondon.com/ ... 11:35:55"We were lying on the beach, having just walked down from the hotel after breakfast. All of a sudden the tide went right out and the water was sucked out to sea. It was really strange and people started taking pictures. Then we saw the water rising like a wall out to sea. The locals knew something was wrong and started shouting, 'move, move'...."
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:34:50Deadly Tsunamis... of the Past news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:34:28according to estimates from India, only one-quarter of those affected there were wealthy enough to afford insurance, and only one-quarter of that group at most will have taken out policies. Indonesia is likely to have even lower take-up rates.thisislondon.com/ ... 10:25:03The death toll in the tsunami disaster soared past 100,000 today - and is set to climb higher.... vast majority of the 3,500 foreigners still unaccounted for in the disaster region are from Scandinavia. The missing include at least 1,500 Swedes, 800 Norwegians, 214 Danes and 200 Finns....abcnews.go.com/ ... 10:18:04The first Indonesian military teams reached the devastated west coast of Sumatra island, finding thousands of bodies and increasing the death toll across 12 nations to more than 76,700.reuters.com/ ... 04:51:52The stench of decomposing corpses spread over the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, and fresh water, food and fuel were running short. Many in the city feared fresh quakes and tsunamis, and roads were filled with people trying to leave. "There is no food here whatsoever. We need rice. We need petrol. We need medicine. I haven't eaten in two days," said Vaiti Usman, a woman in her mid-30s, gesturing angrily at her filthy sarong, saying it was the last of her possessions....nytimes.com/ ... 04:37:55This island is so flat that residents say water did not just wash in from the sea during the tsunami that struck on Sunday morning, but came up through cracks in the earth opened by the quake before it.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 04:37:16Israel has cancelled plans to send a 150-person rescue mission to Sri Lanka after the devastated island objected to the military composition of the team. The delegation - including 60 soldiers - had been due to set off on Tuesday to help after Sunday's tsunami disaster.dailyrecord.co.uk/ ... 04:36:47 'There are about 30 of us Europeans stuck here with water all around us, with crocodiles and the like surrounding us. We can't get out. No one knows we are here. Please tell the Foreign Office that we are here. The waves came from nowhere and swept away every hotel by the beach.'abc.net.au/ ... 04:35:3613-year-old... Meghna Rajshekhar disappeared along with 77 other people when the giant tsunami struck an Indian Air Force base by the sea on Car Nicobar island... locals found her walking in a daze along the beach.... "She spent two days floating at sea, far out at sea..."breakingnews.iol.ie/ ... 04:33:07Many tourists said casualties would have been much greater if the wave hadn’t struck in the daytime, when most people were awake and mobile. Male’s airport reopened today after being closed most of Sunday. A half a dozen charter flights from Europe and India came to take tourists home. Hundreds of tourists packed the airport’s internet café and telephone booths informing families and friends they were safe.cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ ... 04:30:29 Sri Lankan wildlife officials are stunned -- the worst tsunami in memory has killed around 22,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast, but they can't find any dead animals.... "No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit," he added. "I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening."

TUE 2004-DEC-28

Christmas 2004silive.com/ ... 13:34:02The Christmas spirit turned sour yesterday when two parents fought over seats to watch their children perform at a holiday pageant inside a packed Great Kills pre-school auditorium.

Whoops!editorandpublisher.com/ ... 13:31:20Libby Averyt, editor of the Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times, believes the decision of one of the paper's reporters to pose as a prostitute, as part of a police operation that led to two arrests, was a mistake. "Having a reporter become involved in law enforcement activities was a mistake and will not happen again," Averyt said in an article in the paper. "The thought was to try to give our readers an inside view of a new police initiative, and unfortunately we didn't think through the situation as well as we should have. "For us to maintain our watchdog role, we should not get involved in law enforcement activities and will not in the future."

Digital Consequencesnews.com.com/ ... 13:30:35Days after Google acted to thwart the Santy worm, security firms warned that variants have begun to spread using both Google and other search engines. The Santy problem originally flared up a week ago as bulletin board Web sites found their pages erased and defaced by the worm's own text. The worm spread by targeting pages that used vulnerable versions of the PHP Bulletin Board (phpBB) software, and used Google to locate those pages.reuters.com/ ... 03:46:29 It reads like a VIP list of failures -- Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Intel, and Philips. Each of these technology powerhouses tried to conquer a promising technology for making thin, big-screen televisions -- called LCoS, or liquid crystal on silicon -- only to back out in defeat. "The roadside is littered with those who have tried and failed,"

US Election 2004news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 01:00:58Before this election year gets away, here's a look at the party-vote makeup in US Presidential elections going back to 1948

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 23:09:16

Army Staff Sgt. Todd D. Olson, 36, from Loyal, Wis., died Dec. 27 in the 67th Combat Support Hospital in Tikrit, Iraq from wounds sustained in Samarra, Iraq on Dec. 26, when an improvised explosive device detonated.

US Militarydefenselink.mil/ ... 23:08:38 U.S. Pacific Command is sending a forward command element (FCE) to Utapao, Thailand, to establish the command, control and communication structure for Joint Task Force 536 (JTF 536). Thailand's decision to allow use of this Thai military facility is welcomed. The U.S. intends to use, with Thailand's cooperation, this military facility as a regional support center for emergency and medical personnel providing assistance throughout the region as well as a staging area for U.S. military and rescue aircraft, forensic experts, and other relief assistance.

Only Naturalnews.yahoo.com/ ... 20:25:49 the U.S. Census Bureau today projected the Jan. 1, 2005, population of the United States will be 295,160,302 ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:16:22A 55-year-old woman acting as a surrogate for her daughter gave birth to triplets Tuesday. Tina Cade gave birth to her own grandchildren - the two boys and one girl news.com.au/ ... 13:33:44TWENTY sperm whales are dead after a stranding near Strahan, on Tasmania's west coast, yesterday... Tasmanian research released earlier this year linked whale strandings to weather patterns. Other experts believe strandings could be linked to seismic testing....
Whale sightings and strandings should be reported to 0427 942 537, or 0427 WHALES.

Justice?society.guardian.co.uk/ ... 13:29:39Young teenagers face on-the-spot fines of up to £40 from this week for antisocial behaviour such as vandalism and underage drinking, the Home Office announced last night. The new police powers to fine 10- to 15-year-olds are to be used in seven forces including Merseyside, Nottinghamshire and the West Midlands.

Reasons for Repealnews.scotsman.com/ ... 03:47:01American scientists are investigating whether the illegal “rave” drug Ecstasy can ease the anxiety of dying cancer patients in their final days.

Freedomboston.com/ ... 03:44:51Re-vote reverberates across Ukraine -- Apparent loser refusing to yield

Rebuildingazcentral.com/ ... 03:47:43BAGHDAD.. the most prominent Sunni Muslim party said it was dropping out of the race...

Violencenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:21:48At least 28 people have been killed in an explosion as Iraqi police raided a house in Baghdad ap.tbo.com/ ... 13:43:13Law enforcement organizations reported Tuesday that 154 officers died in the line of duty in 2004, nearly half of them in traffic-related accidents.news.xinhuanet.com/ ... 13:37:55Two Palestinian militants escaped on Tuesday an Israeli assassination attempt as they managed to jump from the car that was targeted by an Israeli missile fired from an unmanned pilotless drone ap.tbo.com/ ... 03:45:20Insurgents killed 12 Iraqi policemen in an attack on a near the city of Tikrit

9/11 - still with uscnn.usnews.printthis.clickability.com/ ... 00:38:51A Pentagon spokesman insisted that Rumsfeld simply misspoke

Great Quake of 2004olympics.reuters.com/ ... 23:31:09..."One in every five inhabitants in the entire Nicobar group of islands is either dead, injured or missing..."
In parts of India's Tamil Nadu state officials had given up trying to count the dead and were disposing of bodies as quickly as possible in mass burials....
may have caused the Earth to wobble on its axis, permanently accelerating its rotation and shortening days by a fraction of a second washingtonpost.com/ ... 23:25:171,000 people killed in the Indonesian province of Aceh when a three-story-high wall of water slammed into a sports field during a match apnews.myway.com/ ... 23:21:27The flooding uprooted land mines in Sri Lanka - torn for years by a civil war - threatening to kill or maim aid workers and survivors attempting to return to what's left of their homes.nypost.com/ ... 23:10:54It hardly raised a ripple when it was reported over the summer, but news that a tsunami could one day hit New York is suddenly getting a second look. Several months ago, geologists raised concerns that an unstable flank of a volcano in the Canary Islands off the coast of Western Africa could slide into the sea and send giant waves across the Atlantic at the speed of a jumbo jet. Within three hours, the wave could swamp the west coast of Africa. Within five hours, it could hit southern England, and within 12 hours, it could build up enough force to wipe out the U.S. East Coast, including New York, Washington, Boston and Miami, according to a British researcher.reuters.com/ ... 20:28:18experts warned disease could kill as many people as the 63,000 already dead from the violent crush of Sunday's tsunami.sify.com/ ... 20:25:14Sex workers in Ahmednagar and the district have come forward to donate over Rs 13,000 -- their day's earning -- as a humanitarian gesture for those affected by Tsunami tidal waves in southern India.thestandard.com.hk/ ... 20:24:57... in the isolated west of Indonesia's Aceh... Witness accounts from aircraft flying over a 240-kilometre stretch of shoreline say absolutely nothing remains of villages and towns in an area left underwater... aerial reconnaisance... saw no signs of life in Meulaboh, a town with a population of 40,000.... In an e-mail contact from Meulaboh.. local police said only 20 per cent of the town still stood... what remains.. is completely cut off and still being battered by surging waters... food is running out, there is looting and further catastrophe looms....guardian.co.uk/ ... 17:02:08...The train had nearly reached its destination Sunday when the tsunami struck - a wall of water some 30 feet high, enveloping the Queen and lifting its cars off the track into a thick marsh, killing at least 802 people....ap.tbo.com/ ... 13:43:38The world's biggest reinsurer said Tuesday that the deadly Indian Ocean tsunamis likely will cost it less than 100 million euros ($136 million), saying its exposure to the extensive damage would be limited by low insurance coverage.reuters.com/ ... 13:42:36...disease could kill as many people as those killed by the wall of water, a top World Health Organization (WHO) official said... In a French-run hotel at Khao Lak on the Thai mainland north of the island of Phuket, up to half the 415 guests were believed killed.... many bodies.. found in their rooms.... In Sri Lanka, hundreds of people were killed when the wave crashed into a train, wrecking eight carriages and uprooting the track it was traveling on. The train was called "Sea Queen."...
"My son is crying for his mother.... I think this is her.... I recognize her hand, but I'm not sure."...
"We cannot fathom the cost of these poor societies and the nameless fishermen and fishing villages ... that have just been wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of livelihoods have gone."reuters.myway.com/ ... 13:39:29...pushing the toll from Sunday's tsunami close to 60,000... countless corpses... millions of homeless, increasingly threatened by disease amid the rotting corpses. Thousands more.. injured....reuters.com/ ... 13:38:28The international response to a catastrophic tsunami in Asia has been quick and generous, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday, playing down his earlier comments that wealthy nations were stingy. U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland rowed back from statements he made on Monday after an annoyed Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington was "the greatest contributor to international relief efforts in the world."abcnews.go.com/ ... 13:37:40 Rescuers began reaching India's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands on Tuesday, two days after passage of a devastating tsunami, to find barely a third of residents on one were still alive.... On another, only piles of rubble and debris remained of the housing blocks of an air force base, a hundred officers and their families swept out to sea by waves higher than the two-storey buildings in which they had sought shelter.... There has still been no contact at all with several of the islands, including one of the biggest, Grand Nicobar, which was closest to the epicenter...ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:42:10Humanitarian agencies began what the United Nations said would become the biggest relief effort the world has ever seen.... could be the costliest in history as well, with "many billions of dollars" of damage.... Hundreds of thousands have lost everything, and millions face a hazardous future because of polluted drinking water, a lack of sanitation and no health services.... deadliest known tsunami since the one caused by the 1883 volcanic eruption at Krakatoa - located off Sumatra's southern tip - which killed an estimated 36,000 people....thestar.com.my/ ... 00:37:45a 20-day-old baby survived, thanks to a floating mattress. ..
“I had never seen such a wave. I knew something was wrong as the wave was dark and as high as a coconut tree..." ...rode on the sand and screamed to the picnickers to leave the place.... “But many of them just stood and watched the coming wave. The first wave was not that strong but the second one was very powerful and lasted about five minutes....” ...managed to prevent a 16-year-old girl from being swept away by the wave.... “Fortunately enough, the people there ran to safety before the second wave came. But when I rushed to Batu Ferringhi, I saw many people being swept by the wave....”

MON 2004-DEC-27

New Year 2005reuters.com/ ... 13:11:00resealable champagne bottle that keeps sparkling wine bubbling for days.

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 13:29:52

Marine Lance Cpl. Eric Hillenburg, 21, of Marion, Ind.

Marine Lance Cpl. James R. Phillips, 21, of Hillsboro, Fla.

Marine Cpl. Raleigh C. Smith, 21, of Lincoln, Mont.
died Dec. 23 as result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.defenselink.mil/ ... 13:27:56

Navy Chief Joel Egan Baldwin, 37, of Arlington, Va., died in Mosul, Iraq on Dec. 21, when the dining facility was attacked.

9/11 - still with uswnd.com/ ... 13:02:29...Flight 93, the ill-fated plane that crashed in the rural fields of Pennsylvania... During his surprise Christmas Eve trip to Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld referred to the flight being shot down... Was it an error? Or was it the truth, finally being dropped on the public more than three years after...?

Violenceboston.com/ ... 02:49:02A suicide bomber detonated his car Monday at the gate to the home of the leader of Iraq's biggest political party, killing and wounding several of the guards but leaving the cleric unharmed

Under Tyrannychinadaily.com.cn/ ... 02:48:42With the launch of the first backbone network of the next-generation Internet in China, the country is expected to dramatically narrow its gap with the world's leaders

Great Quake of 2004photos.reuters.com/ ... 22:24:37Pictures - Reuters news.search.yahoo.com/ ... 22:23:15Yahoo News pics asia.news.yahoo.com/ ... 22:22:55Besides grateful relatives, tourists returning from Asian countries struck by the killer tsunami are likely to be met by news agency representatives hunting for video of the cataclysmic event. "There will still be, I think, the definitive shot, the wall of water," Sandy MacIntyre, director of news for Associated Press Television News in London, said Monday.reuters.myway.com/ ... 22:22:29William Robins vowed Monday to change his life forever after the professional golfer from California and his new bride, Amanda, narrowly escaped death in the grip of a tsunami.voanews.com/ ... 22:21:56...an obviously worried U.N. Undersecretary General Jan Egeland said it is far too early to determine the scope of the devastation. "The figures we have now are so wrong that in many ways it may be wrong to really present them," Mr. Egeland says....news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 22:20:21"About 45 minutes later, I noticed that water had receded from Patong Bay. We'd never seen it before and we could hear people on the beach talking about it. You could even see fish flopping around on the beach, which was unusual. I noticed small kids and tourists walking to where the water had receded, curious as to why the water had gone...."ap.tbo.com/ ... 17:10:02...In country after country, children have emerged as the biggest victims of Sunday's quake-born tidal waves - thousands and thousands drowned, battered and washed away by huge walls of water that have decimated an entire generation of Asians....ap.tbo.com/ ... 17:09:22...By Monday, according to the International Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, some energy from Sunday's waves sifted into the Pacific Basin. At Manzanillo, Mexico, waves rose more than 8 feet. Minor fluctuations were reported in New Zealand and Chile, where waves rose between one and two feet.....guardian.co.uk/ ... 13:10:15reports estimating that 23,500 people had died ndtv.com/ ... 13:09:55The United Nations has now warned of possible epidemics within days unless health systems were put in place to cope with the tsunami disaster. Experts say the top five issues which have to be addressed were water, sanitation, food, shelter and health.reuters.com/ ... 13:08:32The Maldives said on Monday 52 people, including two British tourists, had drowned in tsunami waves that struck the Indian Ocean archipelago on Sunday, and has evacuated six of its 200 inhabited islands completely. Close to 70 people are still missing.... death toll could rise dramatically.... Male, which is 1.25 miles long and half a mile wide and home to 75,000 people, is bursting at the seams....reuters.com/ ... 13:06:59more than 22,700 people...
..The 21-year-old grandson of Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej was killed on a jet-ski...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:04:44Pictures news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:04:20At-a-glance: Countries hit apnews.myway.com/ ... 13:00:11...killed more than 22,000 people in nine countries, and officials indicated Monday the death toll could climb far higher....
..."The Andaman and Nicobar islands have been really badly hit...." unconfirmed reports put the death toll at 13,000 on the islands....
... entire villages disappeared on the African.. coastline...
...In Cuddalore, red-eyed parents buried more than 150 children laid in a mass grave that a bulldozer filled with sodden earth....
..A 620-mile section of a geological plate shifted...reuters.myway.com/ ... 12:56:42"This may be the worst natural disaster in recent history because it is affecting so many heavily populated coastal areas ... so many vulnerable communities... The longer term effects may be as devastating as .... the tsunami itself... Many more people are now affected by polluted drinking water. We could have epidemics within a few days unless we get health systems up and running... Many people will have (had) their livelihoods, their whole future destroyed in a few seconds."turkishpress.com/ ... 11:59:58Massive rescue operations were scrambled along Asia's devastated coastlines as the death toll from a powerful earthquake and the giant tidal waves it unleashed rose to more than 23,200 and hopes faded for many thousands more still missing.en.wikipedia.org/ ... 03:40:47Richter magnitude scale -- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.latimes.com/ ... 03:21:56...moved the entire island of Sumatra about 100 feet to the southwest... A normal wave, created mainly by wind, affects the top 30 feet of the ocean, at most, and moves very slowly. A tsunami, in contrast, affects the entire water column from surface to sea floor and can reach very high speeds. The deeper the ocean, the faster the tsunami travels. In open ocean, the tsunami moves upward of 500 mph, with the entire column of water moving up and down. But because the ocean is so deep, initial movement of the surface is very slight. Someone on a boat in the area wouldn't notice it....reuters.com/ ... 02:52:33killed more than 15,500... bodies rotting in the water were already beginning to threaten the water supply for survivors.... Among the missing were 200 Hindu pilgrims who had gone for a holy dip on the beach.... nypost.com/ ... 02:47:0614,500 DEAD... thousands.. missing... millions.. displaced....
A 9.0 quake releases the equivalent energy of 32 billion tons of TNT, or more than 2 million times the force of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

SUN 2004-DEC-26

Christmas 2004ap.tbo.com/ ... 21:43:13 An online casino that bought a cheese sandwich said to bear the Virgin Mary's image and a cane sold to banish a young boy's fear of ghosts has struck again - this time paying a man $5,300 for his naughty children's Christmas gifts.nypost.com/ ... 14:59:41 Police from the 46th Precinct responded to hundreds of emergencies this year — but their response to one Christmas call saved the holiday for a single mother and her nine children who had lost hope. It all started on Christ mas Eve, when a 9-year-old boy walked into the Bronx station house with a letter for the officers. "Dear Santa," began the letter, which was written by the boy's mother, Georgia Brown. "I am writing this letter on behalf of my children . . ."cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ ... 03:14:14"You get homesick but you have to push it to the back of your mind or you go nuts," said Lance Corporal Andrew Alderson, 20, of Pelham, North Carolina, who plans to marry on his return.

Transportap.tbo.com/ ... 00:53:33Days of bad weather, a computer malfunction and sick airline employees put tens of thousands of travelers in holiday limbo Saturday, with Comair canceling all its flights and US Airways trying to reconnect thousands of pieces of luggage with their owners.

Freedomsg.news.yahoo.com/ ... 21:33:10Yushchenko claims triumph in Ukraine: "Now we are free," he declares news.yahoo.com/ ... 03:12:19Western-leaning liberal Viktor Yushchenko was favorite to win when Ukrainians began voting in a re-run presidential election on Sunday after a rigged ballot last month.

Only Naturalap.tbo.com/ ... 21:42:35 Snow, sleet and freezing rain pelted the Carolinas on Sunday, knocking out power to thousands and causing hundreds of accidents on one of the busiest travel and shopping days of the year. At least two people were killed.NEWS BELOWIndonesian Earthquakes -- Thousands Killed 2004-DEC-26

Threatsabcnews.go.com/ ... 21:33:46Relations between China and Taiwan are grim and the mainland will crush any major moves toward independence by the island no matter what the cost, the government said in a policy paper on national defense on Monday.telegraph.co.uk/ ... 14:57:59A secret intelligence report has revealed that security chiefs believe al-Qaeda may target New Year celebrations across Britain.

Rebuildingtimesonline.co.uk/ ... 14:57:36Christopher Catherwood, London Times Online: Everything about Iraq says: chop it in three. Keeping an artificial nation united only invites more killing.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:00:37You might think he would be starting to despair by now. But the head of Iraq's tourism board, Ahmed al-Jabouri, is a confident man.

Violenceasia.news.yahoo.com/ ... 03:15:07Several people were killed and dozens were injured in a riot triggered when police allegedly beat to death a resident in southern China... after security officials beat to death a 15-year-old boy for stealing a bicycle....

Larger Quake Map Images
2004-12-27 03:08 UTC
2004-12-26 20:00 UTC
2004-12-26 08:00 UTC

Great Quake of 2004reuters.com/ ... 22:45:46Map by Reuters -- tsunamis.. smashed fishing boats and flooded low-lying areas along the east African coast, 3,728 miles to the west....ap.tbo.com/ ... 21:42:18Sunday's earthquake in Sumatra had a preliminary magnitude of 9.0, classifying it as a great quake and making it the strongest in 40 years. Earthquakes near the very top of the magnitude scale are difficult for scientists to measure. For one thing, they occur rarely - once a year or less - so researchers don't have many chances to analyze them. And, the tools that scientists use to measure movements in the planet's crust are becoming more sophisticated. So the way in which they assign a number to signal an earthquake's fury is evolving.....reuters.com/ ... 21:41:20The yen touched an 18-month low against the euro on Monday, slipping with emerging Asian currencies as traders tried to assess the economic fallout from tsunami waves that devastated parts of Asia the previous day.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 21:40:40BBC's correspondents report from the affected areas as rescue attempts begin.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 21:40:23We were still in bed in a ground floor room right on the beachfront when we suddenly heard some shouts from outside. Then the water started coming under the door. Within a few seconds it was touching the window.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 21:34:44pictures cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ ... 21:34:33 More than 12,600 people were killed...apnews.myway.com/ ... 21:32:27...on the African coast, where nine people were reported lost... 9.0-magnitude... More than one million people were left homeless in Indonesia alone... tsunami came.. without warning, on a morning of crystal blue skies. Sunbathers and snorkelers, cars and cottages, fishing boats and even a lighthouse were swept away.... "It all seems to have happened in the space of 20 minutes. A massive tidal wave of extreme ferocity ... smashed everything in sight to smithereens..." reuters.com/ ... 17:35:37"The United States stands ready to offer all appropriate assistance to those nations most affected, including Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Thailand and Indonesia as well as other countries impacted," spokesman Trent Duffy said news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 17:35:25Ten people are reported to have died in the Maldives... "Fatalities are feared to be 10, with around 30 injured," he added. "We are still unable to get through to some of the people stranded in the islands." Over 4,000 British holidaymakers could be affected after flooding triggered by the earthquake.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 17:32:05Residents of Madras are still reeling... Several hours after disaster struck, the roar of the sea is still very audible.... "People are scared to return to their houses as they fear more aftershocks..." "My scooter seemed to be dancing on the road. I ran out the cafe - everyone ran outside their houses." .. "I got a call to say that my uncle had gone jogging to the beach and had not returned."news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 17:30:04In graphics: Asia earthquake explained

maldive.com/ ... 15:57:17Maldives -- the last Paradise...cia.gov/ ... 15:56:21Maldives: CIA factbook... "low level of islands makes them very sensitive to sea level rise..."visitmaldives.com/ ... 15:54:16http://www.visitmaldives.com/ appears to not be online currently bartleby.com/ ... 15:53:27atoll -- A ringlike coral island and reef that nearly or entirely encloses a lagoon.bartleby.com/ ... 15:52:32Maldives: 19 atolls made up of more than 2,000 coral islands... Population: 246,000

news.yahoo.com/ ... 15:48:03As many as 11,460 people were killed and thousands more were missing... fifth largest ever recorded... walls of water up to 10 metres (33 feet) high... roaring ashore with bewildering speed, sweeping people off beaches, flattening hotels and homes, uprooting trees and overturning cars.... Indonesia at least 4,185 people.. killed... tidal waves that swallowed entire coastal villages... many foreign tourists who had flocked to idyllic resorts in Southeast Asia for the Christmas holidays.... 7,000 deaths reported across Sri Lanka and India and thousands missing.... in Tamil Nadu state, where scores of villages were under water... Thailand.. at least 310 people.. killed.. more than 5,000 injured in the south... top beach attractions.. among the worst-hit... popular resort of Phuket and the idyllic island of Phi Phi were devastated by the huge waters.... Maldivian government in a statement said there were several casualties, but gave no details.... Pope John Paul.. urged the international community to rush aid... President George W. Bush.. extended his condolences... Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf called for "swift and concerted" international efforts... European Commission said it was providing immediate emergency aid of three million euros... international Red Cross and Red Crescent organisations launched a five million euro (6.7 million dollar) relief aid appeal.... Lying at the collision point of three tectonic plates results in frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as pressure between the massive segments of the Earth's crust is released. reuters.com/ ... 12:01:15More than 200 prisoners escaped from a jail in Indonesia's restive Aceh province Sunday after a tsunami knocked down the prison walls... "The prisoners escaped from the jail. It appears some did it for their own safety after the tsunami crashed into the jail..."news.yahoo.com/ ... 11:59:38"All the planet is vibrating" said.. the head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute... even disturbed the Earth's rotation.
"People that were snorkeling were dragged along the coral and washed up on the beach, and people that were sunbathing got washed into the sea...."news.scotsman.com/ ... 11:57:14...the world’s fifth most powerful since 1900 and the strongest since a 9.2 tremblor slammed Alaska in 1964... causing buildings to sway hundreds of miles away, from Singapore to the city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, and in Bangladesh... Towns nearest the epicentre were levelled by tidal waves, which killed at least 1,902 people and left bodies wedged in trees as the waters receded... 200 of his bungalows were swept out to sea, along with some of his employees and customers.... In India, 2,016 people were killed, many swept away in boats, homes and vehicles... Tamil Nadu state where 1,567 people were killed.... Malaysia... closed some beaches... after 42 people were swept away near the northern city of Penang.... mainly tourists and included some foreigners.... reports that some vessels capsized at sea....news.scotsman.com/ ... 11:43:29More than 9,300 people across Asia were killed...thisislondon.co.uk/ ... 11:42:01More than 8,600 people across Asia have been killed after one of the most powerful earthquakes on record triggered massive tidal waves that slammed into coastlines in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Thailand and Malaysia.icsurreyonline.icnetwork.co.uk/ ... 03:37:25More than 700 people were killed... the scope of the disaster became apparent only after waves as high as 20ft crashed into coastal villages over a wide area of Sri Lanka -- some 1,000 miles west of the epicentre -- and killed around 300 people.... 286 people were confirmed dead in India, 20 in Thailand and seven in Malaysia. Thousands of people were missing, many of them fishermen at sea....bloomberg.com/ ... 03:35:48Nine aftershocks measuring between 5.8 and 7.3 spread across a zone from Sumatra to India's Andaman Island within four hours of the initial jolt... Thousands of people were reported missing across Southeast Asia.... We expect the big waves to lash Chennai and parts of Tamil Nadu for the next two days... reuters.co.uk/ ... 03:17:16The wave swept into the low-lying Maldive islands whose coral atolls are a magnet for tourists, flooding two-thirds of the capital Male... "The damage is considerable. The island is only about three feet above sea level and a wave of water four feet high swept over us.... It is a very bad situation. It is terrible... We have no communications with some of the outlying atolls. At this stage we fear the worst. We are trying to send boats to assess the damage, but our resources are stretched to the limit...."cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ ... 03:11:32About 400 fishermen are feared missing after a tsunami hit the coastal southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh asia.news.yahoo.com/ ... 03:10:49...7.36 temblor struck the southern port city of Chittagong, according to a statement by the Bangladesh Meteorological Department....asia.news.yahoo.com/ ... 03:09:48Seven people died and two were missing Sunday after being swept away by tidal waves off a Malaysian resort island.reuters.com/ ... 00:52:53"One hundred and fifty bodies have been brought to the hospital and about 3,000 are displaced and about six villages destroyed..."news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 00:52:27Large tidal waves along the east coast of Sri Lanka have reportedly killed at least 160 people. High tides striking India's coast are said to have killed at least 26 people. Deaths have also been reported in coastal Thailand and on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, believed to be near the centre of the powerful earthquake.bloomberg.com/ ... 00:51:41The quake was felt 950 kilometers (589 miles) away in Singapore.cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ ... 00:51:23At least 150 people were killed after a tsunamai triggered by an earthquake off the Andaman islands in the Indian Ocean struck Sri Lanka on Sunday.... The worst-hit area appeared to be the tourist region of the south and east and the chairman of the John Keells hotel chain said five of his hotels had been badly flooded. No communications were available with the low-lying Maldive islands to the south....uk.news.yahoo.com/ ... 00:50:33 "It's a great earthquake. It was widely felt all over south India and damage has also been reported in Port Blair (capital of India's Andaman and Nicobar islands in the Bay of Bengal). "Many aftershocks are still coming and more are expected."abcnews.go.com/ ... 00:49:41A powerful earthquake rocked Indonesia's northernmost province of Aceh Sunday and radio reports said several small buildings had collapsed and large waves had slammed the area's north coast. Witnesses told Jakarta's el-Shinta radio station that nine people were killed in the quake, but there was no immediate way to confirm the casualty and damage reports.earthquake.usgs.gov/ ... 20:47:40Magnitude 8.5 - OFF THE WEST COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA
2004 December 26 00:58:50 UTC

SAT 2004-DEC-25

To search this page and the archives for this year's Christmas stories, search for the headline "Christmas 2004"

Extraterrestrialap.tbo.com/ ... 20:48:11An unmanned cargo ship on a vital supply mission docked early Sunday at the international space station, carrying badly needed food for a U.S.-Russian crew that has been forced to ration dwindling supplies.space.com/ ... 18:34:57An asteroid that has a small chance of hitting Earth in the year 2029 was upgraded to an unprecedented level of risk Friday, Dec. 24.

Christmas 2004worldnetdaily.com/ ... 19:06:24

What did Jesus Christ of Nazareth look like as a boy? While no one knows for certain, forensic experts are now using computer images from the Shroud of Turin along with historical data and other ancient images to make an educated guess.reuters.com/ ... 13:56:01BAGHDAD - Fewer Iraqi Christians than usual came to church for Christmas Day prayers on Saturday, but those that did came despite fears insurgents, who have attacked churches and mosques in the past year, would strike again.....apnews.myway.com/ ... 13:53:23Folks in Victoria, Texas, just off the Gulf Coast, weren't dreaming Saturday when they woke up to a white Christmas. They had one - the first in 86 years.drudgereport.com/ ... 13:53:09Vatican's English translation of Pope John Paul II's "Urbi et Orbi" remarks abqtrib.com/ ... 13:52:40NEAR BAGHDAD, Iraq - What a nice Christmas weekend - but what a hellish week. While a lot of New Mexico troops here have worked to put out luminarias and cook posole and enchiladas this weekend, fresh in their minds is the fact that so many lives were lost in the suicide bombing of the military dining facility at our base in Mosul.....news.google.com/ ... 01:21:34Google News Search on "Christmas 2004"

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 01:20:07

Army 1st Lt. Christopher W. Barnett, 32, of Baton Rouge, La., died Dec. 23 in Baghdad, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his military vehicle. defenselink.mil/ ... 01:19:11

Army Capt. William W. Jacobsen Jr., 31, of Charlotte, N.C.

Army Sgt. Maj. Robert D. O'Dell, 38, of Manassas, Va..

Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul D. Karpowich, 30, of Bridgeport, Pa.

Army Staff Sgt. Julian S. Melo, 47, of Brooklyn, N.Y.

Army Staff Sgt. Darren D. VanKomen, 33, of Bluefield, W.Va.

Army Staff Sgt. Robert S. Johnson, 23, of Castro Valley, Calif.

Army Sgt. Lynn R. Poulin Sr., 47, of Freedom, Maine.

Army Spc. Jonathan Castro, 21, of Corona, Calif.

Army Spc. Thomas J. Dostie, 20, of Sommerville, Maine.

Army Spc. Cory M. Hewitt, 26, of Stewart, Tenn.

Army Spc. Nicholas C. Mason, 20, of King George, Va.

Army Spc. David A. Ruhren, 20, of Stafford, Va.

Army Pfc. Lionel Ayro, 22, of Jeanerette, La.
died Dec. 21 in Mosul, Iraq, when their dining facility was attacked.

Under Tyrannyap.tbo.com/ ... 13:56:50 On everything from sheets to shirts, napkins to neckties, one label is set to become increasingly widespread: Made in China.

Violenceworldnetdaily.com/ ... 19:09:10Citing only alleged European "secret reports," an article in a Saudi government daily accused the U.S. Army of harvesting the organs of Iraqis and selling them.boston.com/ ... 19:08:26ANKARA, Turkey -- One of Turkey's richest businessmen said he has been kidnapped in Iraq, appearing in a video aired Saturday alongside one of his weeping employees and saying they were being treated well by their captors.reuters.com/ ... 13:56:31U.S. Marines said on Saturday they had captured two leaders of a militant group linked to al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq's restive city of Ramadi. It said the men, Saleh Arugayan Khalil, also known as Abu Obaida, and Bassem Mohammad Hazim, also known as Abu Khattab, were captured on Dec. 8 and Dec. 12 during sweeps of the mainly Sunni Muslim province west of the capital.bartleby.com/ ... 13:55:41chi·cane reuters.com/ ... 13:55:25Rescuers dug seven bodies, all of them from the same family, from the rubble of their house on Saturday after an abortive truck bomb attack on the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad in which nine people died.... a fuel tanker appeared to have tried to ram its way to the Jordanian embassy but became stuck in a defensive chicane of concrete blocks and then exploded. The embassy -- which replaced a mission destroyed by a suicide bomber last year -- was unscathed, but a house across the street collapsed. heraldsun.news.com.au/ ... 13:51:28POLICE in Northern Ireland were stoned by angry crowds yesterday when they raided Republican areas looking for the proceeds of the $55 million heist at the Australian-owned Northern Bank.

FRI 2004-DEC-24

Digital Consequenceseweek.com/ ... 19:22:05Symantec Corp.'s Security Response service on Friday confirmed that unpatched Windows vulnerabilities could pose a serious risk for exploits via malicious Web pages and e-mail messages. One of the three security vulnerabilities involves image handling—a source of recent exploits on Windows and Unix operating systems. The other two risks are found in the Help system and in Window's ANI (Automatic Number Identification) authentication.techtree.com/ ... 16:05:04With more and more users opting for "alternate browsers", Firefox and Opera have been getting a fair deal of attention. Firefox 1.0 has already been downloaded 10 million times since its release in November. Now Opera has released the much awaited beta version of its next browser for the Windows platform.ap.tbo.com/ ... 15:59:16NEW YORK - As more of our personal lives go digital, family members, estate attorneys and online service providers are increasingly grappling with what happens to those information bits when their owners die. Sometimes, the question involves e-mail sitting on a distant server; other times, it's about the photos or financial records stored on a password-protected computer.

Transportap.tbo.com/ ... 15:49:21ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Days after violent storms forced cleanup crews to leave a freighter that split apart, a salvage team returned Thursday to find the bow section had sunk, likely spilling another 176,000 gallons of oil near an environmentally sensitive area of Unalaska Island.... Crews still plan to unload more than 80,000 gallons of fuel from tanks in the stern of the Selendang Ayu. But the three biggest tanks - totaling 321,058 gallons of oil - are believed to be ruptured and the fuel inside lost....

Christmas 2004reuters.myway.com/ ... 19:23:55Pope John Paul led the world's one billion Roman Catholics into Christmas Day and said the troubled world needed the message of Jesus more than ever.
"Look upon us, eternal Son of God, who took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. All humanity, with its burden of trials and troubles, stands in need of you... You are born on this night, our divine Redeemer, and, in our journey along the paths of time, you become for us the food of eternal life... May the Holy Land, dear to the faithful of the three great monotheistic religions, be able to see times of prosperity and peaceful co-existence and reciprocal respect among all those who live there...."reuters.com/ ... 15:57:25Looking for a last minute Christmas gift? Think goat! ...pay 24 pounds ($46) for a goat or 10 pounds for a brood of chickens, tell a friend or relative that this is their Christmas present, and it will be sent to a Third World family to provide milk, meat, manure and offspring for trade. ...set up by the international aid agency Oxfam...reuters.com/ ... 15:56:36Dropping its daily diet of stories on crime, corruption and evil wrongdoing, Germany's top-selling Bild newspaper printed only good news in its Christmas issue Friday. "No parking tickets today -- traffic wardens have day off!" the newspaper with 12 million readers wrote.reuters.com/ ... 15:56:12French "Spiderman" Alain Robert, a dare-devil climbing ace, plans to scale the world's tallest skyscraper, Taipei 101, in the Taiwan capital on Christmas Day reuters.com/ ... 15:55:49Trendy, high-tech Roman Catholics... this Christmas... [can] watch Pope John Paul's Christmas Midnight Mass... from wherever they are on the latest generation of cell phones.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 15:27:06Day in pictures -- some interesting Christmas & holiday shots

Whoops!reuters.com/ ... 15:54:28A tiny ivory pomegranate once believed to be the only relic of King Solomon's biblical era Jewish Temple turns out not to be an artifact from the holy shrine, the Israel Museum said on Friday. ...the thumb-sized object is a lot older than believed, dating to the 13th or 14th Century BC, rather than to the 8th Century BC, which scholars say was around the time of Solomon. Researchers then thought the pomegranate was an ornamental top for a priest's scepter, based in part on an inscription which read: "Belonging to the Temple of the Lord (Yahweh), holy to the priests." But... "The object itself dates to the Late Bronze Period but its inscription is not ancient."apnews.myway.com/ ... 15:23:29CHICAGO - A YMCA director has been fired and overnight facility rentals banned after the parents of young children arriving for a morning swim meet clashed with participants in an overnight transgender fashion show and ball....

US Militaryusmc.mil/ ... 15:11:11CAMP TAQADDUM, Iraq -- Although they couldn't be home for the holidays, Marines in Iraq received a timely Christmas gift when David Letterman performed a Christmas Eve edition of "The Late Show with David Letterman" here.

Reasons for Repealnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:29:54The Colombian anti-narcotics police have announced that a record number of drug crops were sprayed during 2004.

Only Naturalreuters.com/ ... 15:28:58An international group of researchers found that 80 percent of men ages 40 to 80 said they had sex within the last year, as did 65 percent of similarly aged women. Moreover, 38 percent of women and 44 percent of men said they had sex more than once per week. Sexual activity was particularly high for men and women in their 40s, but tapered down with increasing age. "The majority of people do report that, if they do have partners, they are involved sexually," Dr. Edward O. Laumann told Reuters Health. Laumann and his team also found that around one-quarter of men reported some type of sexual problem, most commonly early ejaculation and erectile difficulties. Sexual problems were reported most commonly by Asian men. Among women, nearly 40 percent said they experienced an acknowledged problem with sex, most commonly lack of sexual interest, inability to reach orgasm, lack of enjoyment, and lubrication problems. Women in Asia and the Middle East reported the highest proportion of problems.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:29:34Damage consistent with the bends - every diver's nightmare - has been found in the bones of sperm whales.... chronic decompression sickness is not a recent phenomenon in whales... "Natural selection has in the large part solved the problem by developing dive behaviours that allow the animals to manage the problem... Previous research does show that the animals display mid-water stops. At the time it wasn't apparent to anybody why they were stopping - but it fits with this hypothesis."....news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:28:09A "monster" cockroach and other new insects have been discovered in the jungles of Borneo... previously unknown fish and plants.... "In just five weeks, the expedition team discovered numerous new species previously unknown to science.... Who knows what else is out there?"... the area had no special status that might have protected it against illegal mining or logging....

Under Tyrannyap.tbo.com/ ... 15:50:19HAVANA - Shortly after dissidents launched a new magazine, the Cuban government retaliated by confiscating various books and written documents... "It's a clear and direct message of intolerance...."

Threatsreuters.myway.com/ ... 15:24:11U.S. troops were on alert at bases across Iraq on Thursday after concluding that a suicide bomber, probably in Iraqi military uniform, was behind the deadliest strike on Americans since they invaded last year. "I am concerned about ... copycat attacks," said Brigadier General Carter Ham, the U.S. commander in Mosul....washingtonpost.com/ ... 14:53:36Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair last month that there were too few troops in Iraq, according to people familiar with official records of the meeting.cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ ... 14:53:00Donald Rumsfeld in Iraq: "I think the country does understand that we lost 3,000 people on September 11th and the fact that those people were operating in this part of the world ... You've seen the evil up close and personal, you know the danger that this poses. What you're doing is important. I think the American people get it."bloomberg.com/ ... 14:50:14The U.K. government told its central bank to freeze the assets of an organization it suspects of having links with Saad al-Faqih, a Saudi Arabian dissident living in exile in Britain.

Violencenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 15:25:09'I looked into the face of the gunman' Six months ago BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner and his cameraman, Simon Cumbers, were attacked by militants while filming in Saudi Arabia. Cumbers was killed outright. Gardner survived, although he is still in a wheelchair and has to have another major operation. In his first interview about the attack, he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he could remember everything that happened....apnews.myway.com/ ... 14:50:27A gas tanker truck wired with explosives blew up in a west Baghdad neighborhood Friday, wounding 12 people and lighting up the sky with a fireball sfgate.com/ ... 14:49:36A car bomb exploded in a west Baghdad neighborhood Friday night, causing casualties and sparking a large fire abcnews.go.com/ ... 14:48:14TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - Honduras blamed youth gangs on Friday for a gun attack on a public bus that killed 28 people returning from work or Christmas shopping in the latest violent outrage to hit the poor Central American nation. Six children were among the victims....

Aftermathnydailynews.com/ ... 14:49:05The Army general in charge of northern Iraq took "personal responsibility" yesterday for the Mosul mess hall bombing that he said probably was carried out by a terrorist wearing an Iraqi military uniform.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:30:19A quarter of a century after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a former Soviet ambassador and an ex-director of the CIA tell the BBC of the "mistakes" the superpower rivals made to the Afghans' cost.

THU 2004-DEC-23

Extraterrestrialreuters.com/ ... 21:48:55A Russian spaceship blasted off on Friday carrying vital food and water to two astronauts whose supplies have been rationed because they were running so low.

US Election 2004sacbee.com/ ... 13:38:20Reclaiming the issues, Lakoff says, will not be easy, but the left can learn from conservatives when it comes to language. People tend to vote their identity and their values, he argues, often at the expense of self-interest.worldnetdaily.com/ ... 13:36:27Canada is receiving its first influx of Americans fleeing the United States because they are distraught with the re-election of President Bush.worldnetdaily.com/ ... 13:35:35...according to election documents filed in Washington, it wasn't John F. Kerry who apparently ran for president, and was awarded 31 electoral votes from New York.... It was John L. Kerry.

Now That's Funny!reuters.com/ ... 13:27:30New York comedians have had enough of working for peanuts and are threatening to walk out if the city's top stand-up comedy clubs don't raise their wages.

Whoops!reuters.com/ ... 13:23:35HELSINKI - A squad of fire-fighters accidentally set their own sauna ablaze but could not extinguish the fire....

Preternatural Patternsreuters.com/ ... 13:25:12Colombia says it might extradite a feared paramilitary warlord to the United States, even though former outlaw comrades and military intelligence officials say he is dead... "According to the law, Castano may appeal this decision within five days of being notified...."ap.tbo.com/ ... 13:20:45The owner of a popular bowling alley in Greenwich Village said Thursday his company is severing ties with a group tied to the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and is returning its $1.3 million investment.... Arafat invested.. through.. a Ramallah-based holding company owned by the Palestinian Authority... the alley... advertises itself on its Web site as an ideal location for bar and bat mitzvahs for Jewish teens... "We had no idea whatsoever until yesterday,"

Prehistory - still with usnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:16:54An ancient civilisation was flourishing in Peru over 5,000 years ago, making it the oldest known complex society in the Americas... stone pyramids, large ceremonial structures and agriculture, spread over three windy valleys in the Norte Chico region of Peru...

New Year 2005reuters.com/ ... 13:28:28Instead of the usual New Year's resolutions... the Department of Homeland Security is urging Americans to create a family emergency plan for any terror attack.nydailynews.com/ ... 13:12:28NYDN gossip columnist resolves: No More Paris Hilton

Transportreuters.com/ ... 13:28:04Ecologists toured Mexico City taco stands and sushi bars on Wednesday to refuel an old school bus with waste cooking oil that will power the next leg of a green-awareness tour from California to Costa Rica.reuters.com/ ... 13:17:18General Motors Corp. will recall 717,302 minivans because passengers could hurt their arms or wrists when opening a power sliding door...wftv.com/ ... 12:56:41RICHMOND, Va. -- An American Airlines plane preparing for takeoff went off the runway and became stuck in mud Thursday at Richmond International Airport, shutting the two main runways and delaying nearly all incoming flights...

Digital Threatinformationweek.com/ ... 21:49:22Mobile phone security is bad now, but it is only going to get worse, a security firm said Wednesday rcrnews.com/ ... 12:55:28Anti-virus company SimWorks International said it discovered a new virus for mobile phones running the Symbian operating system.

Christmas 2004reuters.com/ ... 13:26:31NICOSIA - ... glum holiday .. Authorities have pulled some brands of nuts, dried fruit, honey and rose water from the market because they are tightening quality controls to comply with European Union standards. .. key ingredients in seasonal delicacies .. cooks fear they will have to ditch what they have baked for Christmas .. "Spit it all out," ran a headline....seacoastonline.com/ ... 13:03:39...Junior High School student... told... to leave the school’s holiday dance on Friday night because the boy was dressed in a Santa Claus costume, which was politically incorrect....nytimes.com/ ... 12:59:59...The United States-Mexico border is broken... And at no time is the stress on the border more visible than the holidays, when immigration and customs officials say they are most overwhelmed.... immigrants head back to Mexico for the holidays, their pickup trucks and vans packed... On the other side, customs agents probe gasoline tanks and dashboards with mirrors on sticks, while drug-sniffing dogs ferret through the upholstery in search of drugs... More than one million Mexicans will go south for the holidays... most.. are illegal immigrants, who in a month's time will pay thousands of dollars to have smugglers sneak them back to their jobs in the United States.... "It's like the salmon going home... Come January, we'll get killed with illegal immigration back from Mexico."news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 03:03:42...man dressed as Santa Claus... handing out sweets in the southern town of Ales [France]... One of the teenagers demanded extra sweets and, when the red-cloaked Santa refused, he and his friends started kicking and pummelling the man... The teenager and his friends, all about 15 years of age, were eventually scared off by passers-by... Father Christmas suffered multiple bruises and has lodged a criminal complaint....washingtonpost.com/ ... 03:01:59WOODSTOCK, Ill.... someone swiped the baby Jesus two weeks ago. Several days earlier, a sign was left at the house asking, "Would Jesus use this much electricity?"... "After they left the sign, we weren't that surprised to see him stolen.... We heard they had some [lost Christ figures] at the police station. Maybe we'll go look down there."timesonline.co.uk/ ... 00:01:41Manufacturing delays, website errors and delivery problems have left thousands of families desperately scrabbling to replace goods ordered on the internet.

US Militaryabcnews.go.com/ ... 21:44:58U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited wounded soldiers and brought holiday greetings on Christmas Eve amid tight security at an air base in northern Iraq where an insurgent's attack killed 14 U.S. troops and eight other people earlier this week.

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 13:41:09

Marine Lance Cpl. Neil D. Petsche, 21, of Lena, Ill., died Dec. 21 due to injuries received in a non-hostile vehicle incident in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. defenselink.mil/ ... 13:40:38

Army Staff Sgt. Donald B. Farmer, 33, of Zion, Ill.

Army Sgt. Berry K. Meza, 23, of League City, Texas
died Dec. 19 in Shuaybah, Kuwait, when a vehicle struck them.

Justice?reuters.com/ ... 13:29:01"I have had time to think, time to write, time to exercise, time to not eat the bad food, and time to walk and contemplate the future." --Martha Stewart ap.tbo.com/ ... 13:22:15A Florida appeals court threw out as "shockingly excessive" a jury's $104 million verdict over a teenager who was left severely brain-damaged after becoming trapped underwater by the suction of a pool drain.

Reasons for Repealcbsnews.com/ ... 13:01:37...[Mexican] city of Villahermosa has adopted a law banning indoor nudity... confident that citizens who catch a glimpse of offenders would report them to police -- though the law also threatens jail for peeping Toms...

Only Naturalguardian.co.uk/ ... 21:48:09Researchers at Harvard University's Dana-Farber cancer institute and the Children's hospital in Boston have identified what happens at the cellular level that eventually leads to hair losing its colour... demise of a type of stem cell in the skin....theaustralian.news.com.au/ ... 21:43:19THE world's biggest earthquake in almost four years has struck 800km off the coast of Tasmania.... “If it happened underneath a population centre in Australia, this would probably have destroyed a whole city...."reuters.com/ ... 13:24:19According to a survey of 1,003 New Yorkers aged 25 to 35 released by American Express on Wednesday, the bookstore chain Barnes & Noble has the best singles scene in the city.mirror.co.uk/ ... 13:14:15A MUM of four was killed by a rare allergy to tomatoes after opening a tin of spaghetti bolognese for her children's tea... wrongly believed she was only affected if tomatoes were raw...sfgate.com/ ... 03:06:59...The first cloned-to-order pet sold in the United States is named Little Nicky, an eight-week-old kitten delivered to a Texas woman saddened by the loss of a cat she had owned for 17 years. The kitten cost its owner $50,000 and was cloned from a beloved cat, named Nicky, that died last year.... "He is identical. His personality is the same... Nicky loved water, which is an unusual characteristic of cats. Little Nicky jumped into my bath...."

Under Tyrannyap.tbo.com/ ... 13:21:52A smiling Fidel Castro walked in public Thursday for the first time since the 78-year-old Cuban leader fell two months ago, and lawmakers attending a year-end National Assembly meeting gave him a standing ovation.... entered the room on the arm of a uniformed school girl....

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 21:50:02The nation's largest lottery winner blamed his granddaughter's recent death on a drug overdose and said he wants the friends he says gave the drugs to her to be put in jail.abcnews.go.com/ ... 21:49:41Nepali soldiers killed 22 Maoist rebels in a fierce gun battle in the west of the country on Thursday, the army said, as a partial blockade of Kathmandu by the rebels reduced traffic to a trickle on two key highways.csmonitor.com/ ... 13:39:45Three US Marines were killed in action in Iraq's volatile western Anbar province on Thursday apnews.myway.com/ ... 13:38:59 U.S. Marines battled insurgents in Fallujah on Thursday with warplanes dropping bombs and tanks shelling suspected guerrilla positions, causing deaths on both sides... Officials said U.S. Marines were killed but would not specify the number. Several insurgents were also killed...ap.tbo.com/ ... 13:23:09Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, acknowledged Thursday the attacker exploited a hole in the defenses .. reviewing security procedures in the wake of the attack, which killed 22 people...news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:14:44Clashes have erupted in the Iraqi city of Falluja as residents began returning for the first time since a major US and Iraqi offensive there.

Rebuildingwpherald.com/ ... 12:56:00More than 140 thousand Palestinians in the West Bank and east Jerusalem are voting Thursday to elect mayors and municipal councils for 26 towns and villages. Palestinian Authority officials said it is the first time since 1976 that West Bank Palestinians are voting in local elections.

Threatsap.tbo.com/ ... 21:50:28The U.S. Coast Guard and the governor on Thursday blamed a ConocoPhillips Co. tanker for creating a 1,000-gallon oil spill that tarnished more than 20 miles of Puget Sound shoreline.worldnetdaily.com/ ... 13:39:29An Israeli-Arab planned to carry out a suicide bombing attack at an American-owned restaurant in Jerusalem together with his 16-year old fiancee shortly after their wedding, Israel's Shin Bet revealed today.wtopnews.com/ ... 03:04:41...Sources at the Transportation Security Administration confirm they're changing the way they conduct pat-downs. Some women have complained bitterly recently that the more thorough pat-downs to check for explosives just went too far - especially in the breast area... examination in that area, and possibly other areas, will be tempered.....

WED 2004-DEC-22

Preternatural Patternsreuters.com/ ... 12:18:28MADRID - A town called "Luck" lived up to its name on Wednesday, turning up the winning ticket in Spain's Christmas lottery, one of the world's biggest prizes known as El Gordo (The Fat One).... a prize of 390 million euros ($522.1 million) was sold at a lottery office called The Golden Witch (La Bruixa D'Or) in the town of Sort, which in the Catalan language means "luck."...

Christmas 2004reuters.com/ ... 12:15:11The miniature train company Marklin is packing a condom alongside a blue freight car emblazoned with the name of Blausiegel, a German condom maker.wral.com/ ... 12:11:46FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- It's described as a "sensitive item," and because no one can find it, about 130 82nd Airborne Division soldiers are being confined in their unit area for a week. Military officials won't describe the item that's missing until the investigation is complete.... Family members are complaining that the restriction order has affected their holiday plans to be with the soldiers.wftv.com/ ... 12:10:07SHAMOKIN, Pa. -- ...A 17-year-old is accused of firing a pellet gun from a second-story window, hitting a man dressed as Santa Claus on Monday night....

Extraterrestrialreuters.com/ ... 12:19:44An unexplained phenomenon akin to a space-borne car wash has boosted the performance of one of the two U.S. rovers probing the surface of Mars... something -- or someone -- had regularly cleaned layers of dust from the solar panels of the Mars Opportunity vehicle while it was closed down during the Martian night.... had boosted the panels' power output close to their maximum 900 watt-hours per day after at one stage dropping to 500 watt-hours because of the heavy Martian dirt..... "These exciting and unexplained cleaning events have kept Opportunity in really great shape..."space.com/ ... 12:09:10Astronomers spotted an asteroid this week after it had flown past Earth on a course that took it so close to the planet it was below the orbits of some satellites.

Whoops!reuters.com/ ... 02:45:57A man has escaped from a Swedish jail after switching clothes with his identical twin brother

Supernaturalhome.businesswire.com/ ... 02:38:13A national survey of 1,100 physicians, conducted by HCD Research and the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies of The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City over the past weekend, found that 74% of doctors believe that miracles have occurred in the past and 73% believe that can occur today.

Yeah, Sure!worldtribune.com/ ... 02:36:42North Korea has expelled 27 foreigners it said tested positive for HIV and claimed the country remains free of AIDS. North Korea is "the only country on the earth that has no AIDS-related patients," South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported quoting North Korea's Pyongyang Time. Yonhap reported the magazine in Pyongyang carried an interview with Han Kyong-Ho, director of Pyongyang's Central Hygienic and Anti-Epizootic Center in its Dec. 4 issue.

Reasons for Repealap.tbo.com/ ... 12:14:14SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Officials Tuesday abruptly postponed a driver's license test for a medical marijuana user with a case before the U.S. Supreme Court after her lawyer claimed she was being unfairly targeted for review....

Only Naturalreuters.com/ ... 12:20:54WWF: "Santa's workshop is in dire straits. The platform for the workshop is melting.... Santa may have to move from the North Pole within our children's lifetimes...."reuters.com/ ... 12:15:50There are now more dogs and cats in Italian homes than children.ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:14:30HARVARD, Ill. - Although experts determined that botulism is behind the deaths of about half a farmer's dairy herd, they have not determined how it ended up on his farm.klastv.com/ ... 02:45:37A rare and dangerous form of pneumonia has stricken U.S. soldiers in Iraq at an unusually high rate. There seems to be no explanation for the unusual cluster, which included two deaths, except for one salient fact -- all of the patients were smokers, and nearly all of them were new to the habit. But even that is not enough to account for the grouping, which appears to be the first of its kind.earthtimes.org/ ... 02:35:13....at least three dozen baby galaxies that are believed to be in existence since the last 10 billion years. The search puts to rest the astronomers belief that only small new galaxies were being formed by the aging universe....dispatch.co.za/ ... 02:33:23...She is believed to be the smallest baby in the world ever to survive.... The little girl... whose parents came from Hyderabad, India, weighed 243,8 grams when she was delivered on September 19... She was 24,765cm long at birth, or about half the length of a full-term baby....

Aftermathlatimes.com/ ... 02:36:03For the first time, a major U.S. contractor has dropped out of the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild Iraq... Contrack International Inc., the leader of a partnership that won one of 12 major reconstruction contracts awarded this year, cited skyrocketing security costs....

Violenceabcnews.go.com/ ... 12:08:45New evidence shows the bombing of a U.S. military mess tent in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday... was a suicide attack... Early reports indicated that the massive explosion might have been the result of a rocket attack.... another message posted on a Web site, allegedly by Ansar al-Sunnah, [said] the suicide bomber was a 24-year-old man from Mosul who worked at the base for two months and had provided information about the base to the group....reuters.com/ ... 12:07:19Three Palestinians and an Israeli were shot dead in separate incidents of an upsurge of violence in Gaza and the West Bank on Wednesday bloomberg.com/ ... 12:06:32A curfew of 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. was imposed on the Iraqi city of Mosul following yesterday's attack on a mess tent at the U.S. military base there that killed at least 22 people, including 14 U.S. soldiers news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 02:45:00More than £20m may have been stolen in a raid at a bank's headquarters in Belfast... The families of two Northern Bank executives were held hostage for 24 hours....news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 02:44:32President George W Bush has said he is confident that democracy will prevail in Iraq and that continuing violence will not derail next month's elections.ap.tbo.com/ ... 02:44:18 Worried about recent artillery attacks on American mess halls in Iraq, the U.S. military was just days away from completing a reinforced dining area at the camp editorandpublisher.com/ ... 02:43:35At latest count, the rocket attack had killed at least 24 and wounded 64 in a dining-hall tent inside a U.S. military compound. local6.com/ ... 02:37:45WHITELAND, Ind. -- A 72-year-old minister died Tuesday, two days after being attacked and choked in front of the altar by a man who called him "the devil...." The two men had known each other for some 20 years, with the minister presiding at [the attacker's] wedding....boston.com/ ... 02:32:06The Army of Ansar al-Sunnah, which claimed to be behind yesterday's deadly rocket attack on a US-Iraqi base near Mosul, is one of the most feared extremist groups operating in Iraq, having taken responsibility for several major attacks and the killings of foreign hostages.

TUE 2004-DEC-21

Preternatural Patternsnews.yahoo.com/ ... 11:44:43Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites), who openly backed Viktor Yushchenko's rival for president of the Ukraine, said in an abrupt reversal Tuesday that he could work with an administration headed by the pro-Western candidate.ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:43:20The 17-year-old granddaughter of the nation's largest lottery winner was found dead near her boyfriend's home, her body wrapped in a sheet and plastic tarp.... last seen alive Dec. 4. She was reported missing five days later by Jack Whittaker, who won a $314.9 million jackpot on Christmas Day 2002 but has battled legal and other problems since then... Authorities said there were no obvious signs of violence, and they would not comment on whether drugs were involved....

Netsurf Flotsamap.tbo.com/ ... 11:38:49A dispute with Arkansas' attorney general over claims made about its police cars has led Ford Motor Co. to suspend delivery of its Crown Victoria Police Interceptors to Arkansas agencies.

Digital Consequencesweblog.infoworld.com/ ... 00:36:26A handful of researchers at Rice University uncovered a security flaw in Google's Desktop Search offering that could allow attackers to view small portions of personal search results. The researchers reported the glitch to Google last month, and Google has since fixed the problem with an update that is being distributed through an auto-update feature, according to Google officials.news.com.com/ ... 00:36:00Walmart.com and Linspire on Monday unveiled a Linux-based laptop priced at $498.reuters.co.uk/ ... 00:34:40 Radio waves from mobile phones harm body cells and damage DNA in laboratory conditions

Reasons for Repealap.tbo.com/ ... 11:35:13Youth smoking and drug abuse declined again this year, concludes a federal study that also found marked progress over the last decade in persuading teens to avoid cigarettes and illicit substances.

Violencewjla.com/ ... 11:46:22The Pentagon is investigating new allegations by a civil liberties group that military interrogators at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay posed as FBI agents while using abusive techniques to question detainees. The American Civil Liberties Union released e-mails that showed FBI officials disapproved of the practice and suggested the military interrogators posed as FBI agents in part to take advantage of the rapport the FBI had established with some detainees at the prison.thisislondon.com/ ... 11:45:46Tony Blair made a surprise visit to Baghdad today for talks with the Iraqi prime minister.ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:40:03The base, also known as the al-Ghizlani military camp, is used by both U.S. troops and the interim Iraqi government's security forces The identities of the casualties were not known.... The Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on the Internet. It said the attack was a "martyrdom operation" targeting a mess hall in the al-Ghizlani camp. Ansar al-Sunna is believed to be a fundamentalist group that wants to turn Iraq into an Islamic state like Afghanistan's former Taliban regime. The Sunni Muslim group claimed responsibility for beheading 12 Nepalese hostages and other recent attacks in Mosul....ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:37:52"I can't hear! I can't hear!" one female soldier cried as a friend hugged her.... The 276th, with about 500 troops, had made it a year without losing a soldier and is preparing to return home in about a month. "We almost made it. We almost made it to the end without getting somebody killed," Otto said glumly.... Insurgents have fired mortars at the chow hall more than 30 times this year....reuters.com/ ... 11:34:54A mortar and rocket attack on a U.S. military dining hall killed 22 people and wounded more than 50 in Iraq's northern city of Mosul on Tuesday in one of the deadliest attacks on U.S. forces since the war began.

Aftermathnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 00:35:45Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan on 24 December, 1979, sparking a war that would last a decade. Twenty-five years on, the BBC asked people on both sides to look back on a conflict which marked their lives.realcities.com/ ... 00:34:15Harsh interrogation methods of Iraqi prisoners went "beyond the bounds of standard FBI practice," the FBI's top official in Iraq said in a memo released Monday.

MON 2004-DEC-20

US Election 2004foxnews.com/ ... 12:32:19Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi... says it was his decision to give up weapons of mass destruction that pushed President Bush into the winning column

Extraterrestrialworldnetdaily.com/ ... 12:09:33citizens of Indonesia, China and Australia have all reported seeing unidentified flying objects.

Christmas 2004foxnews.com/ ... 12:29:33On a daily basis, Americans claim they are twice as likely to say "I love you" as to say a curse word, and six times more likely to say a prayer than to take a drink, according to a FOX News poll released Friday.... What tops the list of things people do several times each day? Telling someone they love him or her....worldnetdaily.com/ ... 12:07:47a toddler, age 2 1/2... with... "a history of recurrent right lower lobe pneumonia from the age of 10 months, beginning a few months after his first Christmas..." otherwise healthy... doctors found a "foreign body" looking conspicuously like a small sprig of an evergreen tree...

Preternatural Patternsreuters.com/ ... 11:38:33Topless dancers in San Antonio will have a little more to wear after the city council on Friday ordered them to carry permits while performing.msnbc.msn.com/ ... 11:34:05In the campaign's final days... President George W. Bush's press plane... The journalists were convinced Bush would lose.... reporters plugged the latest poll numbers into electoral math calculators on the Web. Kerry came out ahead every time....drudgereport.com/ ... 11:31:32...The animated sketch left one senior production source stunned and outraged, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. "Would we have done this to [John] Belushi? [Chris] Farley?" the source said on Sunday from New York. The source asked not to be identified fearing retribution from SNL's executive producer Lorne Michaels. "We've had more fu**ing drug addicts on this show through the years... more tragedy. I have lost count. Did we ever have some laughs about Robert Downey Jr.'s serious drug addiction?" The crass montage which aired on NBC featured Limbaugh vomiting from drugs on a bathroom floor, in an apparent overdose.....

Digital Consequencesfoxnews.com/ ... 12:27:11...All the while, he was, and remains, in a dissociative fugue, a psychiatric condition similar to amnesia in which an individual blocks out his own identity, usually as a reaction to stress.... left his wallet at home... had no clue to his true identity..... in a small Iowa town, he sought the aid of a psychiatrist and a Roman Catholic priest. Together, they went to the public library and decided to search the Internet for reports of missing persons.....news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:38:13Police in India are questioning a schoolboy in connection with the filming and sale of video clips of a sexual act in a leading Delhi school... boy, 17... head of an auction website was held after the sale of CDs showing the act between two students... in India... shows of public intimacy such as holding hands are frowned upon.... Transmitting or selling pornography is illegal in India, but possessing or viewing it in private is not....allegedly recorded a sexual act between himself and a 16-year-old schoolgirl on his mobile phone. The pictures were then circulated across India and abroad....forbes.com/ ... 11:27:32there are excellent alternatives to the iPod that may not hit your pocketbook quite as hard, and in some ways they may be superior to the iPod.

WW2 - still with usreuters.com/ ... 11:26:54The U.S. government has agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by Hungarian Jews for a trainload of gold, jewelry and other property stolen by the Nazis and then seized by the U.S. army but not returned to its owners, lawyers said on Monday.

Reasons for Repealfoxnews.com/ ... 12:31:06U.S., Afghan governments disagree on how to eradicate poppy fields [[HOW? Don't try to eradicate the market. Change it! REPEAL! REPEAL! REPEAL! -rad]]reuters.com/ ... 11:39:19More than 80 percent of Dutch children aged between nine and 15 say they have tried alcohol and on average start drinking at the age of 12

Aftermathnews.bostonherald.com/ ... 11:28:07President Bush pointedly acknowledged today that U.S.-trained Iraqi troops are not ready to take over their country's security, and cautioned that next month's elections there are only the beginning of a long process toward democracy.

Violencenewsobserver.com/ ... 11:30:11A North Carolina National Guard member thought to be the first U.S. soldier convicted of murdering an Iraqi said he "snapped" and shot the 17-year-old boy after they had consensual sex, according to court-martial records released this week.... The "gay panic" motive was the third that Merida offered. He first told investigators that Zaggam demanded money at gunpoint. Later, he said he killed Zaggam because the boy forced him to have sex....guardian.co.uk/ ... 11:26:30A bomb exploded at a police checkpoint in the Shiite holy city of Karbala on Monday, damaging surrounding buildings but causing no casualties. Police said they cordoned off the area and arrested the attacker.

SUN 2004-DEC-19

Extraterrestrialnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:08:38Reports of unexplained explosions caused alarm on Sunday morning in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta... may have been made by... an extra-terrestrial phenomenon - a large meteor breaking up in the atmosphere....

Whoops!cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ ... 14:07:31An Italian tourist aboard a flight from Sydney to Vienna caused an international security alert after he sent a joke text message from his cell phone to his wife claiming his plane had been hijacked by terrorists

Preternatural Patternsnydailynews.com/ ... 14:05:20...three weeks after a man leaped off the observation deck of the Empire State Building, his absence has gone unnoticed by the world at large and he is still known to police simply as No. 6071. His identity and the personal demons that drove him to suicide are still a mystery....

US Executive Branchtime.com/ ... 14:02:57 cover

“For sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively), for reshaping the rules of politics to fit his ten-gallon-hat leadership style and for persuading a majority of voters this time around that he deserved to be in the White House for another four years, we name George W. Bush as TIME’s Person of the Year for 2004,” writes managing editor Jim Kelly in a letter to readers.

Christmas 2004healthtalk.ca/ ... 14:01:09Johnnie Carl, 57, the conductor of the Crystal Cathedral Orchestra committed suicide Friday at the landmark glass and steel church after a nine-hour standoff that began just before congregants prepared for a Christmas pageant.

Transportnbc4.tv/ ... 14:05:39A small plane crashed Sunday morning into a radio station tower, killing two people aboard and temporarily knocking the station off the air seattlepi.nwsource.com/ ... 14:00:25A British tourist visiting central Florida with his family drove a minivan into the path of a gas tanker truck as he headed to a grocery store, killing himself and two other passengers, authorities said. Four children in the minivan also were injured.

Digital Consequencesnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:09:15...the sheer demand for downloading is forcing record labels, and now movie companies, to work with online retailers to offer legitimate alternatives....nydailynews.com/ ... 13:59:15...Early Friday morning, as frantic news reports aired about the horrific baby snatching, the regulars on the Ratter Chatter site realized the victim was one of their own.... One chatter figured out that the Internet address for Fischer traced back to Kansas - where the baby was eventually recovered at Montgomery's home....

Human Rightap.tbo.com/ ... 14:11:02Deep in the Bible Belt, Oklahoma Gays Emerge From Election Dismayed but Determined... 76 percent support for a constitutional ban on gay marriage... Only Mississippi's amendment won a higher portion of votes - 86 percent.... two lesbian couples... file a lawsuit against the state and federal laws that deny recognition to same-sex unions....

Violencewashingtonpost.com/ ... 14:26:28Their killings produced only a few headlines, but across the country in the last decade, hundreds of pregnant women and new mothers have been slain.voanews.com/ ... 13:54:27Two car bombs exploded within hours of each other in two Iraqi cities holy to Shi'ite Muslims. A blast in the city of Karbala killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 30 others. Another car bomb exploded in later Najaf, killing at least 45 people and wounding more than 60.

SAT 2004-DEC-18

Digital Consequencesreuters.com/ ... 19:13:57 "I would not be surprised at all, as more people start to look into this, if five or 10 years down the line that diamond would be a common material in a computer." ... "You can operate a diamond-based transistor at higher temperatures than you could a silicon-based transistor." ... "The initial cost is huge... Once it works, your cost per unit drops."

Whoops!news.independent.co.uk/ ... 19:06:17"...it was awful. I injected my lips to give them more volume ... I injected them with some chemical substance. It was a folly I will not repeat. I should have had it done by a doctor. I'll remember that in future...."

Beatles - still with usgigwise.com/ ... 14:35:26The Gibson SG guitar that was used by The Beatles in the recording of 'Revolver' and 'The White Album' has been sold at auction for £294,000 in New York.

Viet Nam War - still with usap.tbo.com/ ... 14:34:51Dioxin Compensation for Vietnam Veterans Still Costing Billions

Future is Nownews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:31:34Researchers at Rockefeller University in the US have made the first tentative steps towards creating a form of artificial life. Their creations, small synthetic vesicles that can process (express) genes, resemble a crude kind of biological cell.... The soft cell walls are made of fat molecules taken from egg white. The cell contents are an extract of the common gut bug E. coli, stripped of all its genetic material....

Christmas 2004ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:42:28Christmas 2004 Digital Consequences Whoops!
A weekly newspaper in eastern Kentucky has apologized for mistakenly printing sexually explicit Christmas jokes... someone on the staff had been reading the jokes on the Internet and that they had inadvertently made their way into the newspaper....

Preternatural Patternsnews-leader.com/ ... 01:50:56...Melvern, Kan. woman... accused of strangling... another woman and taking a baby from her womb... Thursday... in [victim's] Skidmore Mo home... baby was found in good health Friday.... confessed to the killing and admitted removing the baby... lied to her husband about giving birth....thesmokinggun.com/ ... 01:40:30A lawyer who recently bought a $7.95 million Pacific Palisades home from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver is suing California's first couple, claiming that they hid damage to the estate's pool and tennis court, as well as a mold problem in the screening room. Now you know what blindingly rich people squabble over.....

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 15:14:38

Marine Lance Cpl. Franklin A. Sweger, 24, of San Antonio, Texas, died Dec. 16 as a result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. defenselink.mil/ ... 15:14:09

Army Spc. Victor A. Martinez, 21, from Bronx, N.Y., died Dec. 14 south of Baghdad, Iraq, from a gunshot wound.

Only Naturalnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 01:47:12A freak hurricane-force wind has struck the French capital Paris and much of the country's north, killing at least six people, say the emergency services. Tens of thousands of homes have been left without electricity.

Rebuildingcnn.com/ ... 14:35:44The Bush administration formally canceled Iraq's $4.1 billion debt to the United States on Friday and urged others to do the same to help the country rebuild.

Under Tyrannynews.xinhuanet.com/ ... 14:35:08The Russian Foreign Ministry on Saturday reiterated that it is against "Taiwan independence", confirming its consistent support for the one-China policy.

Threatsnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 15:13:47The UN has suspended two peacekeepers serving in Burundi following allegations of sexual misconduct.... The latest allegations come on top of a probe into charges of rape, paedophilia and prostitution involving UN troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo....worldnetdaily.com/ ... 15:12:03The U.S. Defense Department reportedly has completed simulated war games to determine the feasibility of destroying Iran's nuclear weapons program.seacoastonline.com/ ... 15:11:45Officials at both the state Bureau of Emergency Management and Seabrook Station say they are aware of intelligence information about an alleged Iranian plot to crash commercial airliners into the N.H. nuclear power plant. However, spokesmen for both organizations discounted those reports.ap.tbo.com/ ... 14:33:48Bin Laden Says He's Aiming at U.S. Economy; Analysts Say Only U.S. Mistakes Can Bring Serious Damage azcentral.com/ ... 01:47:32After the Pentagon's national missile defense system failed a key test this week, the Bush administration has dropped its plans to activate the system by the end of the year.

Violenceabcnews.go.com/ ... 18:59:03"You read about this stuff," she said. "It blows you away when it's here. This stuff is supposed to be in New York City or Los Angeles."reuters.com/ ... 14:31:52Insurgents have launched attacks on election offices in northern Iraq, killing two people and wounding nine six weeks before Iraqis are due to go to the polls.cbc.ca/ ... 14:28:51A Briton released from the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, told Europe's top human rights body Friday he was beaten, shackled, kept in a cramped cage and fed rotten food as part of "systematic abuse" in custody.abcnews.go.com/ ... 14:27:45Israeli troops killed three Palestinians Saturday, the second day of an Israeli raid in the Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza, witnesses and hospital officials said. In all, 11 Palestinians, including at least seven militants, have been killed and 31 others have been wounded since Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered the camp Friday.reuters.com/ ... 01:45:21Gunmen attacked a car in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Friday, killing three men who appeared to be three foreigners and their Iraqi driver before cutting off the head of one in a daylight attack.

FRI 2004-DEC-17

Preternatural Patternsreuters.com/ ... 16:41:29...new apartment building in the Brazilian city of Curitiba... Each floor in the 11-story building can revolve independently 360 degrees to the left or to the right... "This is the only building in the world in which each apartment can spin individually"...

Supernaturalreuters.com/ ... 16:40:08Colombian police seized 292 voodoo dolls but were reluctant to inspect the black, hand-sized talismans for fear of witchcraft.

1960s - still with usapnews.myway.com/ ... 12:40:19Lisa Marie Presley is keeping Graceland but selling the bulk of the Elvis estate, including rights to her father's name and image, in a deal worth approximately $100 million.

Digital Consequencesweblog.infoworld.com/ ... 12:39:04So why the sudden flood of vendor development and, so it seems, end-user love for desktop search?... If all this were just about improving the user's ability to find files on their system, maybe Microsoft long ago would have bettered its paltry search functions in Windows....

But when Google and Microsoft get itchy about something at the same time there has to be more to it.

Only Naturalreuters.com/ ... 16:41:59An 82-year-old Chinese Nobel physicist has popped the question to a 28-year-old student whom he described as his last gift from God

Reasons for Repealhealth.telegraph.co.uk/ ... 16:38:29Teenage girls in Britain are binge drinking more than boys... More than a quarter of girls in the 15- to 16-year-old age group admitted to binge drinking....news.yahoo.com/ ... 16:37:54...48 percent of British men and 31 percent of women aged 19 to 24 admit to having been blind drunk at least twice a month during the past year...

Violencereuters.com/ ... 16:39:20An Israeli missile strike destroyed two buildings in Gaza City on Friday... said Hamas militants had been making bombs and rockets inside the structures to use in anti-Israeli attacks. Witnesses said one building was a car garage and the other a metal foundry....apnews.myway.com/ ... 16:36:25SKIDMORE, Mo. - A baby girl who apparently was cut from her mother's womb was found... found in Kansas... in good health Friday, a day after the slaying reuters.com/ ... 12:41:17Three Afghan prison guards and two prisoners were killed in a jail break attempt by al Qaeda inmates Friday and a shoot-out was going on between police and another two, the chief of Kabul's Pul-i-Charki prison told Reuters.

THU 2004-DEC-16

Whoops!foxnews.com/ ... 20:25:44New Jersey casino regulators fined Caesars Atlantic City Hotel Casino (search) $80,000 Wednesday... On three occasions in 2000 and 2001, Caesars surveillance camera operators "recorded footage of selected parts of the anatomy of several females," in violation of statutes governing the use of clandestine surveillance by casinos....iol.co.za/ ... 20:22:42The 35-year-old thief, posing as a beggar looking for a place to stay at a Zagreb monastery, broke into an office and stole almost R17 000... But [two] monks..used karate to first fend off his attacks and then force him to the ground where they held him until police arrived.....apnews.myway.com/ ... 20:17:52A nanny left a year-old toddler home alone while she went Christmas shopping in the family Mercedes, not expecting the little girl's mother to pop into the house while she was out

Let It Go Already!ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:02:43The challenge was backed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Cliff Arnebeck, a Columbus attorney for the Massachusetts-based Alliance for Democracy, who accused Bush's campaign of "high-tech vote stealing."

Supernaturalreuters.com/ ... 10:56:27The family of a man who died in a car crash a few years after stealing the bell of an Orthodox church in southern Albania has returned the bell saying the theft doomed the robber.

WW2 - still with usnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:01:30The German counter-offensive, now known as the Battle of the Bulge, begins 1944-Dec-17 cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ ... 10:33:35An artist who depicted Adolf Hitler as a pop art-style cartoon figure at an exhibition near the former Dachau concentration camp said Thursday he would close the 2-week-old show due to public outrage.

Digital Consequencesap.tbo.com/ ... 20:01:44A second defendant was sentenced Thursday to more than two years in federal prison for his role in a scheme to hack into the Lowe's national computer system to steal credit card information.thesmokinggun.com/ ... 10:29:17Until the killjoys at Missouri's Department of Corrections stepped in earlier this month, inmates at the maximum security Jefferson City Correctional Center were able to pass their time playing violent video games like "Hitman: Contracts," "Max Payne," and "Grand Theft Auto."freep.com/ ... 10:24:07Here's what you will _ and won't _ be able to see when searching for library books on Google news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 02:39:24These young people are producing a website, complete with articles in both Thai and English, as well as audio and video footage, quizzes and chatrooms.... dedicated to issues which matter most to the hill tribe communities - arguably the poorest and most discriminated minority group in Thailand.

The young producers of the website - the Virtual Hilltribe Museum - hope that by mixing modern tec

Christmas 2004komo4.com/ ... 20:03:19Sidney and Jennifer Stock are atheists. They asked the city council to remove the tree because it represents Christmas, which is a Christian holiday. Stock says city hall should: "Act as a place where everybody feels welcome. It is impossible for everybody's religious belief to be displayed and non-religious belief to be displayed, so therefore, no religious beliefs be displayed." The courts already sided with the city on this one....ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:10:32MUSTANG, Okla. - Voters incensed over a superintendent's decision to remove a Nativity scene from an elementary school Christmas program took out their anger at the ballot box, helping to defeat bond measures worth nearly $11 million.

Reasons for Repealreuters.com/ ... 10:57:24A routine traffic stop turned into a drug bust when Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers found 610 pounds of marijuana stashed in four coffins.

Only Naturalnewscientist.com/ ... 20:23:50recent "extraordinary" behaviour of... Mount St Helens in the US, may mean it is preparing for a dramatic eruption, geologists warned on Tuesday.....news.com.au/ ... 19:55:37"I could see these two huge fins come out of the water... It was just ferocious. One minute he was on the surfboard and he tried to beat it off and the next there was just a pool of blood. It was over in three seconds. He didn't stand a chance - he was just gone....."news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:37:33Two Great White Sharks have killed a teenage surfer off a popular beach in southern Australia.

Freedomapnews.myway.com/ ... 10:27:56Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko said Thursday that he was sure he was poisoned by the Ukrainian government and believes it most likely happened at a... Sept. 5 dinner with the head of the Ukrainian security service, Ihor Smeshko, and his deputy, Volodymyr Satsyuk... "That was the only place where no one from my team was present and no precautions were taken concerning the food... It was a project of political murder, prepared by the authorities."

US Militarycsmonitor.com/ ... 10:31:45The pattern of discontent in US ranks... Evidence includes numbers of deserters (reportedly in the thousands), resignations of reserve officers, lawsuits by those whose duty period has been involuntarily extended, and a refusal to go on dangerous missions without proper equipment....defenselink.mil/ ... 02:40:44This week, the Army, Air Force and Navy announced an increase in the number of reservists on active duty in support of the partial mobilization, while the Marines had a decrease and the Coast Guard number remained the same. The net collective result is 713 more reservists mobilized than last week.

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 02:42:01

Marine Cpl. Michael D. Anderson, 21, of Modesto, Calif., died Dec. 14 as result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. defenselink.mil/ ... 02:41:39

Army Sgt. Tina S. Time, 22, from Tucson, Ariz., died Dec. 13 near Cedar, Iraq, when she was involved in a vehicle accident. defenselink.mil/ ... 02:40:00

Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua W. Dickinson, 25, of New Port Richey, Fla., died Dec. 12 as result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.

Aftermatholympics.reuters.com/ ... 10:25:09Saddam Hussein met with a lawyer on Thursday for the first time since he was arrested

Threatsreuters.com/ ... 10:59:17Jimmy Walter has spent more than $3 million promoting a conspiracy theory the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States were "an inside job" and he is offering more cash to anyone who proves him wrong. The millionaire activist is so convinced of a government cover-up he is offering a $100,000 reward to any engineering student who can prove the World Trade Center buildings crashed the way the government says.... "I am a patriot fighting the real traitors who are destroying our democracy. I resent it when they call me delusional," he said.turkishpress.com/ ... 10:21:44Osama bin Laden called on his fighters to focus their attacks on oil sites in the Gulf and Iraq while urging Saudi leaders to give up power or face a popular uprising

Violenceroadie.net/ ... 19:54:03Roadie (and other) Heroes at the DamagePlan Shootings, Columbus, Ohio, Dec 8, 2004.story.news.yahoo.com/ ... 10:26:13Today, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich will formally propose the nation's first statewide legislation to regulate the sale and rental of [adult-themed video] games ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:10:08Paramedics... stopped to tend to... man... on the side of a road.... became unruly... was still belligerent when police arrived... officer used her stun gun... was alive when he was taken into custody... died at a hospital...ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:08:06CALDWELL, Ohio - A man cried and apologized Wednesday as a judge sentenced him to die for raping his girlfriend's 7-year-old daughter, beating her... considered taking her to a hospital. Instead... stuffed her in the well about a mile away and threw rocks at her until she stopped screaming... evidence of past physical and sexual abuse....ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:04:30SALT LAKE CITY - A man pleaded guilty Wednesday to hijacking a Greyhound bus in Utah with the goal of taking it hundreds of miles to Nebraska to run over his estranged wife's trailer home.reuters.com/ ... 00:03:01Iraq - A bomb near a Shi'ite shrine killed eight people... wounded 32 -- one of them a senior Shi'ite cleric, Sheikh Abdul Mehdi al-Karbalai, a close follower of Iraq's top cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Aides said Karbalai was the target.....
Samarra -- insurgents overran a police station and seized weapons....

WED 2004-DEC-15

US Executive Branchnytimes.com/ ... 23:56:52"We are not going to discuss the nanny any further..."

Let It Go Already!centredaily.com/ ... 02:56:07 A Democratic city councilman has demanded that a baker remove photos of President Bush from his stand in Lancaster's venerable farmers' market, saying the city needs a "healing period" following the bitterly contested presidential election.

Whoops!wnbc.com/ ... 15:42:02Baggage screeners at Newark Liberty International Airport spotted -- and then lost -- a fake bomb planted in luggage by a supervisor during a training exercise. Despite an hours-long search Tuesday night, the bag, containing a fake bomb complete with wires, a detonator and a clock, made it onto an Amsterdam-bound flight. It was recovered by airport security officials in Amsterdam when the flight landed several hours later.heraldsun.news.com.au/ ... 15:36:41Gardeners hired by Melbourne City Council intended to arrange the purple and white pot plants into neat geometric shapes. But they left six 3m garden beds along Swanston St displaying large Nazi symbols.... in a week of major Jewish celebrations....news.yahoo.com/ ... 02:08:18SAN JOSE, Costa Rica... A startled taxi driver shot and wounded a jokester wearing a plastic mask of the al-Qaida leader... Osama bin Laden

Preternatural Patternsdrudgereport.com/ ... 23:59:40Even Hollywood liberals were left reeling after Chevy Chase's potty-mouthed Bush-bashing Tuesday night at the Kennedy Center sify.com/ ... 23:57:35American doctors have called for mandatory testing of all imported Ayurvedic health products into the United States after discovering potentially toxic amounts of heavy metals in some of them.washingtonpost.com/ ... 02:07:32The Pizza Hut is shuttered, its neon sign collecting dust on the floor. But knocking down the Golden Arches has proved far more difficult for Toby Cosgrove, the new head of the Cleveland Clinic.

Digital Consequencesnews.yahoo.com/ ... 15:36:58One of three Michigan men who hacked into the national computer system of Lowe's hardware stores and tried to steal customers' credit card information was sentenced Wednesday to nine years in federal prison.ap.tbo.com/ ... 02:11:20Farmers Wonder About Their Future as Technology Increasingly Takes Over Their Tasks news.ft.com/ ... 02:06:10BitTorrent is the most popular of a new type of P2P software that relies on relay servers to seek out computers that are sharing particular files. The software assembles complete files from chunks of data drawn from those computers. The ability to piece together files from multiple computers has made it nearly impossible for content providers to sabotage the network by uploading corrupted or truncated files.

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 03:00:04

Marine Lance Cpl. Jeffery S. Blanton, 23, of Fayetteville, Ga., died Dec. 12 as a result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. defenselink.mil/ ... 02:59:38

Marine Pfc. Brent T. Vroman, 21, of Oshkosh, Wis., died Dec. 13 from wounds received as a result of enemy action in Babil Province, Iraq.defenselink.mil/ ... 02:59:01

Sgt. Jeffrey L. Kirk, 24, of Baton Rouge, La., died Dec. 12 as result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.defenselink.mil/ ... 02:58:27

Marine Cpl. Jason S. Clairday, 21, of Camp Fulton, Ark.

Marine Cpl. Ian W. Stewart, 21, of Lake Hughes, Calif. died Dec. 12 as result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq

MarineLance Cpl. Richard D. Warner, 22, of Waukesha, Wis.
died Dec 13 from wounds received as a result of enemy action in Babil Province, Iraq.

Only Naturallivescience.com/ ... 15:34:03An unusually smooth and swiftly growing lava dome within the crater of Washington state's Mount St. Helens volcano is an extraordinary and perplexing event with an unknown outcome... Scientists have never watched such a natural construction project unfold and in such detail.... if the dome continues to rise, it could eventually collapse, causing magma and ice to mix and releasing a large ash cloud up to 40,000 feet (12 kilometers), an event that would affect airline travel in the region and possibly populated areas downwind....cnsnews.com/ ... 02:55:28A researcher who predicts a rapid melt in the Arctic region presented his findings to participants at the United Nations climate change conference here on Monday, but many conference participants questioned the validity of the science used in the study.reuters.com/ ... 02:09:47Civil rights groups sued a Pennsylvania school district on Tuesday to block teaching of "intelligent design," an alternative to evolution that contends nature was created by an all-powerful being.

Threatscnn.netscape.cnn.com/ ... 23:58:21President Bush has ordered plans for temporarily disabling the U.S. network of global positioning satellites during a national crisis to prevent terrorists from using the navigational technology www3.cjad.com/ ... 23:57:19Indonesian authorities on Thursday ordered a countrywide security crackdown after several foreign governments warned that terrorists were preparing to launch attacks against Western targets ahead of Christmas.abcnews.go.com/ ... 23:54:13Two armed Albanian hijackers surrendered and released their hostages early Thursday, 18 hours after seizing a bus in an Athens suburb and threatening to blow it up if authorities did not pay a ransom.worldtribune.com/ ... 15:42:25The only son of one of North Korea's top generals has defected with his family and is in the hands of U.S. intelligence officials, according to secret reports from the Japan Defense Agency. the.honoluluadvertiser.com/ ... 13:30:19Hawaii - ...waves today expected to tower as high as 50 feet....usatoday.com/ ... 13:25:51Terrorists are ready to carry out an attack in Indonesia, possibly targeting a Hilton hotel, Australia said Wednesday, and Britain warned of an increased threat of terror attacks in Indonesia during the Christmas holidays.worldnetdaily.com/ ... 02:55:10Official Hamas websites being hosted in the United States were shut down yesterday following inquiries by WorldNetDaily for an article about the terror group's online activities in Western countries.ap.tbo.com/ ... 02:12:34SEATTLE - A ferry terminal was closed during evening rush hour Tuesday after a man was seen dumping a backpack into a garbage can on a boat that had just docked, but a bomb squad determined the backpack contained only a thermos.reuters.com/ ... 02:10:24The first test in nearly two years of a multibillion-dollar U.S. anti-missile shield failed on Wednesday when the interceptor missile shut down on its launch pad in the central Pacific

Aftermathreuters.com/ ... 02:09:09Ali Hassan al-Majid, one of Saddam Hussein's closest aides and better known as "Chemical Ali," will be the first of Saddam's top deputies to be tried

Rebuildingnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 02:08:55Political parties in Iraq begin their first official day of campaigning for national elections on Wednesday.

Violenceabcnews.go.com/ ... 23:54:30Two armed Albanian hijackers surrendered and released their hostages early Thursday, 18 hours after seizing a bus in an Athens suburb and threatening to blow it up if authorities did not pay a ransom.reuters.myway.com/ ... 15:38:34Air Force Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, deputy chief of the U.S. Central Command: "They have had a growing understanding that where they can affect us is in the logistics flow... They have gotten more effective in using IEDs [improvised explosive devices]... He (the insurgency) is becoming more effective... They may use doorbells today to blow these things up. They may use remote controls from toys tomorrow. And as we adapt, they adapt...."news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 15:31:44At least seven people have been killed and 30 injured in a bomb explosion in Iraq's holy city of Karbala.ap.tbo.com/ ... 15:29:06Day after day, locked in a cement room somewhere in Iraq, the hooded men beat him. They told him he would be beheaded. "Ameriqi!" they shouted, even though he comes from this poor Sri Lankan fishing village.ap.tbo.com/ ... 02:11:48 Shootouts erupted between residents of a slum outside Haiti's capital and U.N. troops after hundreds of international peacekeepers stormed the stronghold of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in an attempt to control flashpoints of violence.reuters.com/ ... 02:10:40 A Turkish engineer abducted by a militant gang in eastern Afghanistan was found dead on Wednesday, a witness who saw the body being carried down from a mountainside told Reuters.nbc4.tv/ ... 02:08:35The Louisiana Supreme Court has given a judge a six-month suspension for wearing blackface makeup, handcuffs and a jail jumpsuit to a Halloween party.olympics.reuters.com/ ... 02:06:36A huge explosion rocked the southern Afghanistan city of Kandahar on Wednesday and at least three Afghan soldiers were wounded reuters.co.uk/ ... 02:04:46Two gunmen who have hijacked a Greek bus carrying 26 passengers want to go to Athens airport to leave the country, the head of the bus company says.

TUE 2004-DEC-14

Extraterrestrialnews24.com/ ... 12:22:08An unidentified flying object, or UFO, passed across the large north-western Chinese city of Lanzhou and apparently exploded in the suburbs

Sex can be Dangerousreuters.com/ ... 12:07:41China has pulled the plug on a new late-night television show about sex two weeks before the first episode was scheduled to air.reuters.com/ ... 12:06:53American author and journalist Tom Wolfe won one of the world's most dreaded literary accolades on Monday -- the British prize for bad sex in fiction.... "Slither slither slither slither went the tongue...."

Digital Consequencesap.tbo.com/ ... 11:59:57Blockbuster Inc., the nation's biggest movie rental company, says it will eliminate late fees on games and movies as of Jan. 1 - but if you keep them too long, you buy them.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:53:38The libraries of five of the world's most important academic institutions are to be digitised by Google... The full libraries of Michigan and Stanford universities, as well as archives at Harvard, Oxford and the New York Public Library are included....

Prehistory - still with usnews.telegraph.co.uk/ ... 12:23:25...following a 20-year re-examination of historical records and uncovering new evidence, Vassil Dobrev, a French Egyptologist, claims to have proved that the largest single stone statue on Earth is the work of a forgotten pharaoh....news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:52:49One of the first stormtrooper helmets made for Star Wars creator George Lucas goes on sale on Tuesday at Christie's auction house in London. The helmet, bought at a car boot sale for £40, may fetch up to £7,000... one of six made for Mr Lucas to pitch his film idea...

Preternatural Patternscnsnews.com/ ... 12:18:48"The Kyoto Protocol is a treaty about nothing. It's the Seinfeld conference," declared Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the free market environmental group Competitive Enterprise Institute.local6.com/ ... 12:12:43A controversial new billboard where God is apparently used to sell burritos and tacos for a local restaurant is raising eyebrows in Orlando's religious community ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:03:24Twin Sisters Both Deliver Sets of Twin Boys on Same Day [scheduled Caesarean]ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:59:40Four people paralyzed by botulism were injected with large doses of a raw, unapproved botulinum toxin that their anti-wrinkle treatment clinic had bought from a California laboratory....local6.com/ ... 11:47:07A Gainesville man is charged with animal cruelty after authorities said he bit his Jack Russell terrier as punishment... told officers he bit his dog, Lady, because she had defecated in the house and that he routinely bit her as punishment.

Transportusatoday.com/ ... 11:45:51Two passenger trains collided head-on in northern India Tuesday, killing at least 27 people and injuring 36... blaming the accident on communications problems between stations...sfgate.com/ ... 11:45:11an oil and fuel spill from a freighter that broke in two when it ran aground off Alaska's coast probably amounted to thousands of gallons less than had been feared.

US Election 2004fairvote.org/ ... 12:17:27States and how they control Electors [from anti-Electoral College site fairvote.org]wcco.com/ ... 12:15:45An unknown Minnesota Democrat earned a footnote in history Monday by casting one of the state's 10 Electoral College votes for John Edwards, the Democratic vice presidential running mate for John Kerry. ...apparently gives Minnesota its first ever "faithless elector," the dubious name for Electoral College members who snub the candidate who won the state's popular vote in the general election. Kerry, who beat President Bush in Minnesota but lost overall, wound up with nine of the state's electoral votes.... Minnesota is not among the states where political parties require their electors to take formal pledges that they'll back the ticket. In some states, electors can be hit with fines and misdemeanor charges for bucking the popular vote....denverpost.com/ ... 11:39:13"This just isn't some old tradition left over from the 18th century. It's a process that's central to the American federalist system It preserves the power and influence among the states, and it reminds us that states, in fact, matter." --Republican Gov. Bill Owens lauding the Electoral College. George Bush was elected President on Monday.

Reasons for Repealnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:53:59America's privatised military machine is at the heart of the war on drugs in Colombia. Defence corporations hired by the US government enjoy extremely lucrative contracts, but who is responsible when something goes wrong?

Only Naturalthisislondon.co.uk/ ... 12:21:43He was named after UN Secretary General and Nobel Peace Prize winner Kofi Annan - but Kofi the cat is hardly living up to his epithet. The five-year-old bengal is accused of fighting every cat in his London suburb, killing one and leaving two others so traumatised they had to be put down.news.yahoo.com/ ... 12:20:58By the time spear fisherman Ignacio Siberio realized his boat had drifted away in the chilly waters off the Florida Keys, it was too late to signal for help. Instead, the 80-year-old who dives nearly every weekend called on his instincts, mustering all his mental and physical strength to move his legs underwater to prevent hypothermia..... "You have to concentrate mentally in an extraordinary way so that you don't get to the point that the cold, the danger, and the fact you are helpless make you quit. When you quit, it's over."news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:53:07Tens of thousands of Antarctic penguin chicks could starve because an iceberg is blocking their parents' access to coastal feeding grounds healthtalk.ca/ ... 11:46:19A new study suggests that people under high pressure to meet deadlines at work are six times more likely to suffer a heart attack in the 24 hours following the high pressure event.

US Military Casualtiesap.tbo.com/ ... 12:02:54

Rund was a freshman at Columbine High School when two students killed 13 people there was killed in action in Iraq defenselink.mil/ ... 11:36:37

Marine Lance Cpl. Gregory P. Rund, 21, of Littleton, Colo.
died Dec. 11 due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.

Marine Staff Sgt. Melvin L. Blazer, 38, of Moore, Okla.

Marine Lance Cpl. Hilario F. Lopez, 22, of Ingleside, Texas
died Dec. 12 due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.defenselink.mil/ ... 11:34:27

Army Pfc. Joshua A. Ramsey, 19, from Defiance, Ohio, died Dec. 12 in Baghdad, Iraq, from non-combat related injuries.

Threatsreuters.com/ ... 11:55:07 Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said his people should drop their weapons in the struggle for a state

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 11:58:58Japan said last week that tests on remains that Pyongyang claimed belonged to Megumi Yokota, who was 13 when she was abducted in 1977, showed that they were actually those of two other people.... North Korea on Tuesday accused Japan of doctoring the DNA analysis....reuters.com/ ... 11:54:37 Laborers digging on a construction site in northern Iraq uncovered human skulls and bones on Tuesday, which interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said were part of a mass grave believed to contain some 500 bodies.

Aftermathnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:51:28The trials of former members of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime will begin as early as next week

MON 2004-DEC-13

Whoops!reuters.com/ ... 23:39:43An 81-year-old German dropped his trousers and lost his wallet when two young women asked him to join them in a nude photo shoot but they fled with his belongings as he stripped seattlepi.nwsource.com/ ... 23:36:31A Moses Lake man is home recovering after a 2 1/8-inch nail - misfired from a nail gun - was removed from his chest. ... "Every time his heart would beat, it would move"... "I told him that I thought the nail might be in his heart," said Dr.... "He said, 'Sweet. Can I go snowboarding tomorrow?'"news.com.au/ ... 23:35:11A FRENCHMAN heading back to his car parked in the street had the vehicle blow up in his face when he used his electronic key to unlock the doors at a distance... apparently caused by a spark from the security system igniting gas cylinders the man had in his boot, one of which apparently had a leak....komotv.com/ ... 23:34:33Several parents are outraged that preschoolers at Northeast Tacoma Elementary School ate dog food in class. Parents say teaching assistant Terry Atkinson let a role-playing exercise go too far on Monday.

Preternatural Patternsreuters.com/ ... 23:39:21International terrorism charges and allegations of ties to al Qaeda might be enough to scare away some cellmates, in some countries. But Italian mobsters jailed on the island of Sardinia, apparently outraged by terrorism, beat up an Algerian terror suspect and threatened to kill him unless he got himself transferred to a new prison. The same threat was made against at least one other Algerian inmate.newsday.com/ ... 23:37:30Meet Ahmed Ibrahim, a 50-year-old Egyptian immigrant who sets up blind dates for his single passengers through a free, impromptu matchmaking service he runs out of his yellow cab. He said he finds mates, or at least dates, for about eight people a week... New York is a very tough city for dating," Ibrahim mused while driving through the West Village recently. "I have heard a lot of crying in this cab, a lot of fighting and a lot of broken hearts... Sometimes great people were just missing each other by minutes; one would get in my cab just as another had gotten out...."worldnetdaily.com/ ... 23:23:01Local school officials in a suburb of Houston, Texas, are investigating how it was possible that a school police officer handed out calendars to students that featured explicit details on satanic and sexual rituals for every day of the month.ap.tbo.com/ ... 15:50:15The world's first glimpse of Jack Whittaker, winner of the richest undivided lottery jackpot in U.S. history, was of a boisterous, happy-go-lucky guy in a big cowboy hat who loved his family, work and God and promised to share his good fortune with the church and the poor. Two years later, the picture the public is seeing now is a mug shot of a haggard, somber Whittaker..... "It just goes to show money can't always buy happiness."...

US Executive Branchnydailynews.com/ ... 15:47:28Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik conducted two extramarital affairs simultaneously, using a secret Battery Park City apartment for the passionate liaisons, the Daily News has learned.

Digital Consequencesnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 01:14:32The rise and rise of file-sharing

US Militarymarionstar.com/ ... 23:32:59Dr. John Caulfield thought it had to be a mistake when the Army asked him to return to active duty. After all, he's 70 years old and had already retired - twice. He left the Army in 1980 and private practice two years ago. "My first reaction was disbelief," Caulfield said. "It never occurred to me that they would call a 70-year-old."

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 23:42:03

Army Spc. Robert W. Hoyt, 21, of Ashford, Conn., died Dec. 11 in Baghdad, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV while conducting convoy operations.defenselink.mil/ ... 23:41:40

Army Staff Sgt. Marvin L. Trost III, 28, of Goshen, Ind.

Army Spc. Edwin W. Roodhouse, 36, of San Jose, Calif.
died Dec. 5 in Habbaniyah, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near their HMMWV.defenselink.mil/ ... 15:47:05

Army 1st Lt. Andrew C. Shields, 25, of Campobello, S.C.

Army Chief Warrant Officer Patrick D. Leach, 39, of Rock Hill, S.C.
died December 9 in Mosul, Iraq after being involved in an Apache helicopter accident.

Only Naturalreuters.com/ ... 23:39:59Relieved conservationists have recaptured a young hippopotamus that spent almost 10 months on the run near Cape Town after fleeing a nature reserve where it was being bullied by an older dominant male.theaustralian.news.com.au/ ... 23:38:07The man, identified only as "patient X", has suffered two strokes which damaged the brain areas that process visual signals, leaving him completely blind. However his eyes and optic nerves are intact, and brain scans showed that he appeared to somehow use a part of the brain not usually used for sight to process visual signals linked to some emotions.sun-sentinel.com/ ... 23:34:06Police are investigating a woman who strangled a neighbor's Rottweiler after it attacked her Yorkshire terrier.nbc6.net/ ... 23:30:19Doctors in Ohio have removed a 66-pound tumor from a woman who said she now feels as if a long pregnancy is over.ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:15:25An 80-year-old diver spent 18 hours holding on to a buoy in the cold, rough waters of the Atlantic Ocean before a relative found him Sunday, ending an exhaustive search off the Florida Keys.

Threatscsmonitor.com/ ... 23:40:54Some Afghan fighters talk of being duped by bin Laden and pledge to work for his capture.

Under Tyrannynytimes.com/ ... 23:30:03The Chinese police on Monday afternoon detained three leading intellectuals who have been critical of the government, apparently stepping up a campaign to silence public dissent.

Justice?ap.tbo.com/ ... 15:55:54The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a Florida death row inmate should not get a new trial even though his lawyer conceded the man's guilt without his consent.
[And]... rejected an appeal from Texas death row inmate... even though one justice declared that Kunkle's sentence clearly violated the Constitution.ap.tbo.com/ ... 15:52:58The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police have authority to arrest suspects on charges that later fall apart, so long as officers had a second, valid reason for the detention.

Rebuildingwashtimes.com/ ... 15:48:10FALLUJAH, Iraq — Marines yesterday cleared bodies from buildings at the scene of their biggest battle since the fall of Baghdad, securing this former insurgent stronghold for the return of thousands of civilians and upcoming elections. But six weeks before the historic vote, a U.S. official said, fewer than 1 percent of eligible Iraqis have responded to a voter-registration drive, forcing authorities to look for other ways to build up voter lists.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 01:13:44Iraq's interim President, Ghazi al-Yawar, says Britain and the US made a huge mistake dismantling the Iraqi army after they had toppled Saddam Hussein.

Violencesacbee.com/ ... 23:40:32Gary Webb, a prize-winning investigative journalist whose star-crossed career was capped with a controversial newspaper series linking the CIA to the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles, died Friday of self-inflicted gunshot wounds ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:32:15NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania - Hostage takers seized two members of a Middle Eastern prince's entourage during a bird-hunting trip in West Africa and are demanding a $2 million ransom news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:31:06At least seven people have been killed and 19 injured in a suicide bomb attack... as he waited to be searched at a military checkpoint used by contractors and Iraqis entering the government and diplomatic compound known as the Green Zone on Monday....reuters.com/ ... 23:29:43Syria blamed Israel's Mossad intelligence service for a bombing in Damascus on Monday which a Palestinian source in Beirut said was a failed attempt to kill a member of the militant Hamas group. Three people were slightly hurt....apnews.myway.com/ ... 15:47:44Gen. Augusto Pinochet was indicted Monday for the kidnapping of nine dissidents and the killing of one of them during his 1973-90 regime, and the former dictator was placed under house arrest.ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:15:05Eight U.S. Marines were killed in two separate incidents in Iraq's restive Anbar province reuters.com/ ... 01:10:56A suicide car bomber attacked a U.S. military checkpoint at an entrance to Baghdad's Green Zone government and diplomatic compound Monday, a year to the day after U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein. There were no immediate reports of casualties.....

SUN 2004-DEC-12

Digital Consequencesap.tbo.com/ ... 18:32:47AOL is abandoning its strategy of exclusivity and will free much of its music, sports and other programming to non-subscribers in hopes of boosting ad sales.

Digital Threatfoxnews.com/ ... 00:39:35A biometric identification card being tested at 34 of the nation's ports of entry may become the government-worker identification card of the future. But some groups are wary of the tamper-proof credential, saying users' privacy must be protected. Others say the card may not go far enough.

Sex can be Dangerousuk.news.yahoo.com/ ... 23:31:42China will soon host the finals of the country's first beauty contest in which every contestant has gone under the knife. Twenty "man-made" beauties will parade their surgical nips and tucks next Saturday in the hope of taking home the country's first Miss Artificial Beauty crown.target.com/ ... 23:31:17Blue Q Chastity Underwear from Target

Only Naturalnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:31:16In the 1920s and 30s, tuberculosis sufferers flocked to mountaintop clinics in the Swiss resort of Davos for the pure air. But today, with TB less of a threat, the clinics are closing down.firstcoastnews.com/ ... 18:30:08Little Juliana is missing 30 - 40 percent of the bones in her face... "She has no upper jaw, no cheek bones, no eye sockets, and she's missing the corner of her ear...." Her birth defect is called Treacher Collins Syndrome. Doctors say it's the worst case they've ever seen.... "I just wish people would ask questions. Don't just stare," says [Mother] Tammy. "I guess the most hurtful thing came not long ago, a little girl said she was disgusting." Donations can be made at ANY Vystar Credit Union to Juliana Wetmore at member number 2102465.
Direct donations can be sent to:
Juliana Wetmore
3018 Hickory Glenn Dr.
Orange Park, FL 32065

Freedomabcnews.go.com/ ... 18:27:33A Ukrainian presidential candidate's chief of staff believes "Soviet Union … sort of KGB experts" were behind a plot to poison his candidate, the aide told ABC News' "Good Morning America" today.

Threatsnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:30:38Spectators were evacuated from Real Madrid's Bernabeu stadium on Sunday following a bomb scare during the game between the hosts and Real Sociedad.

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 18:32:17A bomb exploded in a market packed with Christmas shoppers Sunday, killing at least 15 people and shattering a monthslong lull in terror attacks in the volatile southern Philippines reuters.com/ ... 18:31:48Israeli helicopter gunships fired around six missiles at targets in Gaza City early on Monday... One of the targets was a metal foundry. The identities of the targets were not immediately known...bloomberg.com/ ... 18:27:00Four Israeli soldiers were killed and nine others wounded when Palestinian gunmen set off explosives in a tunnel they burrowed underneath an army post just outside the Gaza Strip border crossing to Egypt... "This was a large-scale attack on an outpost just outside an international crossing that Palestinian civilians use to get into Egypt... It was a very large blast. It leveled the outpost and caused damage in the adjacent army base.''...

SAT 2004-DEC-11

Future is Nowscienceblog.com/ ... 20:21:06California Institute of Technology computer scientists have succeeded in building a DNA crystal that computes as it grows. As the computation proceeds, it creates a triangular fractal pattern in the DNA crystal.

Yuck!news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 19:55:21Verona's authorities are slapping a ban on Romeos leaving written love notes near a balcony made famous by Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. They say the scribbled messages are being fixed on by chewing gum - making a mess of the 13th century walls.

Transport11alive.com/ ... 20:19:23A family in Lithonia, Ga., is very thankful for the good Samaritan who sprang into action when their SUV overturned into a Florida canal. On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Vicki Ragins, a 57-year-old grandmother, rescued the family despite her own fears about the water.ap.tbo.com/ ... 13:32:53A man suffered a fatal heart attack while refueling a ferry, resulting in a spill that dumped nearly 2,000 gallons of diesel fuel into Hyannis Harbor on Saturday morning

US Executive Branchap.tbo.com/ ... 13:28:26Bernard Kerik apologized to President Bush on Saturday after questions about the immigration status of a housekeeper-nanny he employed led the former New York City police commissioner to withdraw his nomination as homeland security chief.

Digital Consequencesnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:26:22Ways of ensuring that parents know which video games are suitable for children are to be considered by the games industry.

Justice?news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:26:01The parents of a 13-year-old girl are suing US supermarket giant Wal-Mart over a CD by rock group Evanescence that contains swear words.

Only Naturalnature.com/ ... 20:22:03Cognitive scientists have discovered that tamarin monkeys have no taste for the consonant tones that mostly make up music, suggesting that musicality may be restricted to humans alone.newscientist.com/ ... 20:21:31A lone whale with a voice unlike any other has been wandering the Pacific for the past 12 years.

Reasons for Repealazcentral.com/ ... 20:16:31The Supreme Court sided Friday with a New Mexico church that wants to use hallucinogenic tea as part of its services this Christmas. Justices lifted a temporary stay that the government had won last week. The Bush administration contends the hoasca tea is illegal and dangerous.

Freedomtelegraph.co.uk/ ... 19:52:03A near-lethal dose of dioxin, possibly slipped into a bowl of soup, was the cause of the mysterious illness suffered by Viktor Yushchenko ejnet.org/ ... 13:34:22Dioxin homepage reuters.com/ ... 13:26:56Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned by dioxin during Ukraine's presidential election campaign, his Austrian doctors said on Saturday

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 00:03:18

Marine Pfc. Christopher S. Adlesperger, 20, of Albuquerque, N.M. died Dec. 9 as result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.defenselink.mil/ ... 00:03:00

Marine Cpl. Kyle J. Renehan, 21, of Oxford, Pa., died Dec. 9 in Kaiserslautern, Germany, from injuries received on Nov. 29 as result of enemy action in Babil Province, Iraq. defenselink.mil/ ... 00:02:38

Army Sgt. Arthur C. Williams, IV, 31, of Edgewater, Fla., died Dec. 8 in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, when his unit was conducting a dismounted patrol and was attacked by small arms fire. defenselink.mil/ ... 00:02:16

Army Capt. Mark N. Stubenhofer, 30, of Springfield, Va., died Dec. 7 in Baghdad, Iraq, when his unit was conducting dismounted operations and was attacked by small arms fire.defenselink.mil/ ... 00:01:42

Army Sgt. 1st Class Todd C. Gibbs, 37, of Angelina, Texas, died Dec. 7 in Khalidiyah, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated while his unit was on a dismounted patrol.

US Militarycsmonitor.com/ ... 00:00:48A Marine company and a month in Fallujah

Don't Give Them Ideasdailytimes.com.pk/ ... 20:10:49Al Qaeda could stage a seaborne attack within the next 12 months, in a tactical strategy to drive maritime shipping costs and travel times to record highs, a British private defence firm said on Friday. ...“spectacular – a big bang to get people’s attention”...

Under Tyrannyworldnetdaily.com/ ... 20:09:33Amid an intense crackdown on China's house churches, authorities arrested one of the country's top Christian leaders, the author of a bold manifesto delivered to the communist regime.

Violencenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 19:54:41At least two people have been killed and 18 others injured in an explosion at a concert by an Indian Bollywood star in Colombo. Police said a hand-grenade ripped through the front stands as Shahrukh Khan ended his performance on Saturday. ... Buddhist Monks objected to the event being staged on the anniversary of the death of a popular monk....reuters.com/ ... 19:52:31 A U.S. aircraft dropped a half-ton(500 lb) bomb on the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Saturday after guerrillas attacked a U.S. patrol that was trying to capture an insurgent arms dump... "unknown number of enemy casualties" and eight soldiers were slightly wounded...

Threats11alive.com/ ... 20:20:03Several students at a private McDonough, Ga., school not only knew a classmate brought a bomb to the school... No student said anything about the explosive to an adult and, even more disturbing they said, the bomb could have exploded at any time. Police were only alerted Thursday when a teacher spotted bomb-making components in the suspect's backpack....worldnetdaily.com/ ... 20:11:49A once-secret, 181-page al-Qaida training manual obtained by Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin shows Osama bin Laden's terrorist network has been focused on seaports as top-level targets for more than two years.... in response to a warning from Washington that members of al-Qaida could be aboard a ship due in South Korea, Seoul reportedly is boosting security at one of its main ports....csmonitor.com/ ... 00:01:17What it will take to terror-proof border? -- New reforms mandate 10,000 additional agents, but experts point to broader, endemic problems.

FRI 2004-DEC-10

AmerIndian Wars - Still With Usap.tbo.com/ ... 23:57:46Chief Leschi of the Nisqually Indian tribe was exonerated by a historical court Friday, nearly a century and a half after he was hanged for the death of a militia soldier in what is now Washington state.

US Executive Branchnews.xinhuanet.com/ ... 23:52:04Former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, named by US President George W. Bush as homeland security secretary, has withdrawn his name from consideration... "for personal reasons..."

History - still with usreuters.com/ ... 13:47:32A medieval limestone slab which for years was used as a gravestone for a dead cat called Winkle fetched more than 200,000 pounds ($383,200) at auction on Friday. The stone has a carved image of St Peter on it and dates from the early 10th century.

Runs in the Family?reuters.com/ ... 13:43:47 U.S. federal prosecutors charged a man on Thursday with embezzling more than $10 million from a company where he was chief financial officer, one year after his bookkeeper mother was convicted of stealing $1.3 million from a synagogue.

Future is Nownews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:30:34

Political Rivalriesthecrimson.com/ ... 13:23:41In the first month since he arrived in Cambridge to assume a tenured post at the Law School, Professor Jack L. Goldsmith has received a frosty welcome from a small faction of faculty who have questioned his scholarship and called for an investigation into his work as a Bush administration official.

Digital Consequencestechnewsworld.com/ ... 13:02:23Adding weight to the notion that two high-definition DVD formats may co-exist, leading manufacturer Thomson today announced that it would manufacture HD DVD-compatible discs as well as Blu-ray versions in its Technicolor division.

Transportnews.xinhuanet.com/ ... 13:05:08A US aircraft with both US and Vietnamese officials, business people and ordinary persons on board landed [in HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam -- first commercial US airline] in nearly three decades since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.abcnews.go.com/ ... 13:00:23A major spill of dense, viscous fuel from a freighter that ran aground was menacing sensitive wildlife habitat in the Aleutian Islands, but finding the six crew members lost at sea was the priority despite their diminishing odds for survival.... photo: two halfs of the Malaysian cargo ship Selendang Ayu sit on the rocks about 400-500 yards offshore...

Whoops!thisislondon.com/ ... 12:44:12A drunken soldier sparked a security alert when he left a regimental party dressed as an Arab suicide bomber

Christmas 2004ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:59:05 A man dressed as Santa Claus was charged with assault Friday, accused of using a board to strike a 74-year-old woman in the face and head reuters.com/ ... 13:43:05A jailed cocaine dealer is working as Santa Claus on day release from a British prison.reuters.com/ ... 13:38:46...Don't dance on tables at the office Christmas party and resist the temptation to photocopy body parts in a drunken attempt to amuse colleagues. That is the message from Britain's Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents...thisislondon.com/ ... 12:43:03Police called to a mass brawl found an army of Santas punching and kicking each other. Officers had to use batons and CS spray to quell the fight in the centre of Newtown, Powys. Four were hurt and there were five arrests. The battle of the Santas followed a 21/2-mile charity run involving more than 4,000 people dressed as Father Christmas. Some of them are believed to have overindulged in alcohol after crossing the finishing line....

Extraterrestrialnytimes.com/ ... 12:30:19Supplies of food and water on the [International Space] station have fallen so low that if a Russian cargo vessel scheduled to arrive on Dec. 25 has a mishap or is significantly delayed, the astronauts, one American and one Russian, will have to abandon the station and return home months ahead of schedule

Preternatural Patternsworldnetdaily.com/ ... 23:55:55X-ray shows nail in skull -- Man endured headache for 4 years before having it removed reuters.com/ ... 13:42:02A top municipal official in Phoenix died in a bizarre incident that saw him crawl out of his fast-moving vehicle, stand atop its roof and extend his arms outward before tumbling off... wife... [he] was battling the fallout from a relapse of a tropical disease....boston.com/ ... 12:40:37When Army Sergeant Dennis Edwards spoke at Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School last month, 100 students listened in rapt silence as he told chilling tales of battlefield horror in Iraq and criticized President Bush's motives for going to war. Edwards, 23, a Barnstable High School graduate, said he and two other soldiers shot and killed a 10-year-old boy in Iraq who pretended to be wounded and suddenly fired an AK-47 rifle. The boy was found to have explosives attached to his body, Edwards told the stunned audience. Now, Edwards has admitted to his superiors in the elite 82d Airborne Division that the story about the shooting was a lie news.yahoo.com/ ... 12:31:16Liberal powerhouse MoveOn has a message for the "professional election losers" who run the Democratic Party: "We bought it, we own it, we're going to take it back."abcnews.go.com/ ... 03:46:15British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence

Human Rightworldnetdaily.com/ ... 23:53:52In a decision hailed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled concerned parents cannot eavesdrop on their childrens' telephone conversations.

Sex can be Dangerousreuters.com/ ... 13:39:56Hundreds of virgins gathered in the Ugandan capital Friday to meet the country's first lady and renew their pledges to abstain from premarital sex. "Well, we say we are crazy. We are crazy about Jesus, because he is our redeemer and our shield," he said to loud applause from the crowd and from First Lady Janet Museveni. Many of the group, most of them in their late teens, waved colorful banners carrying messages like "Abstinence is safe and healthy" and "Condoms are completely not effective."ap.tbo.com/ ... 13:37:49WASHINGTON - Fewer teens are engaging in sexual activity than in the past, and those that do are more likely to use contraceptives, the government said Friday.

Freedomworldatlas.com/ ... 13:11:36Map of the Ukraine slate.msn.com/ ... 13:06:29How, exactly, are Yanukovych's supporters alleged to have fixed the election?... Given the extent of the fraud described by witnesses, a better question might be, "How didn't Yanukovych's supporters try to fix the election?"

Reasons for Repealreuters.com/ ... 13:45:14Lithuanian border guards have unearthed a three-kilometer (2-mile) pipeline for smuggling in moonshine liquor from neighboring Belarus... fourth such pipeline discovered in the last two years... Moonshine vodka from Belarus is sold on the black market in Lithuania, undercutting prices of legitimate alcohol that have risen sharply since the Baltic nation joined the European Union in May.xposed.com/ ... 03:45:26In the wake of recent violence on and around the Champs-Elysees, a district mayor is pressing police to ban nighttime alcohol sales at convenience stores in the neighborhood around Paris' famous main avenue.

US Militaryap.tbo.com/ ... 23:58:07A U.S. soldier pleaded guilty Friday to killing a severely wounded Iraqi teenager in what investigators say may have been a mercy killing kwtx.com/ ... 23:55:23Spc. Robert Loria of Middletown, New York, who lost his arm in Iraq, was stuck at Fort Hood and in hock to the Army for nearly $1,800 for travel expenses to a hospital and lost equipment. Several New York lawmakers ...interceded... Fort Hood released a statement late Friday afternoon indicating the problem has been resolved. “Through a variety of financial procedures... Spc. Loria’s outstanding debts have been resolved.”cbc.ca/ ... 13:01:29A U.S. marine who claimed he was abducted by anti-coalition forces after he went missing from his unit in Iraq has been charged with desertion.news.yahoo.com/ ... 12:41:27Except, as it turns out, the question wasn't authentic. It was planted by Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Edward Lee Pitts, who is embedded with the 278th Regimental Combat Team. In a memo to his paper -- and posted by the Drudge Report -- he admits to working "on questions to ask Rumsfeld" with the GIs. What was portrayed as soldiers' genuine anger was, in fact, a staged media event. Indeed, only one "tough question" was posed to Rumsfeld -- Pitts'. Others, respectfully, asked about armor. But it wasn't the "grilling" newspapers reported. And the questions were asked only because Rumsfeld was man enough to tell the assembled GIs to do so....recordonline.com/ ... 12:37:36He lost his arm serving his country in Iraq. Now this wounded soldier is being discharged from his company in Fort Hood, Texas, without enough gas money to get home. In fact, the Army says 27-year-old Spc. Robert Loria owes it close to $2,000, and confiscated his last paycheck.mediainfo.com/ ... 12:31:04"I think he was doing what he felt he was embedded to do: tell the stories of the soldiers of this unit," said Tom Griscom, editor and publisher of the paper. But he criticized the embed's story about the incident, which did not mention the reporter's connection to the soldier who asked the question.whnt19.com/ ... 03:38:35The National Guardsman who asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a bold question about armor on war vehicles did so after consulting with a Tennessee newspaper reporter

Threatsap.tbo.com/ ... 23:57:15Pakistani security forces have arrested the head of a militant Islamic group that kidnapped three U.N. workers in Afghanistan expatica.com/ ... 23:56:56 Justice authorities arrested a Moroccan man last month after receiving a tip-off that Islamic extremists were allegedly planning an attack on the Red Light District in Amsterdam

Aftermaththisislondon.com/ ... 13:12:34Iraqi judges and prosecutors chosen to try Saddam Hussein are "nowhere near ready", according to western officials who saw them at a secret training session in London.

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 23:58:49A shelter for women and girls forced into the sex trade temporarily shut its doors Friday after gunmen kidnapped 92 of its occupants and made death threats against the staff....ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:58:28The man who gunned down former Pantera guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott during a concert was an obsessed fan of Abbott's former band and alarmed people with his bizarre behavior, a one-time friend said Friday.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:35:07A UK magazine printed an interview two weeks before former Pantera guitarist Darrell Abbott was shot and killed, saying he should be "severely beaten"....news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:33:10A Palestinian girl has been killed by Israeli fire in Gaza, officials say.voanews.com/ ... 13:12:17An apparent terrorist bombing in southwestern Pakistan has killed at least nine people and injured a dozen others.wcpo.com/ ... 12:58:13At least two theories have surfaced in regards to the motive behind a Columbus nightclub shooting.reuters.myway.com/ ... 12:43:44The wife of Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko said on Friday she tasted poison on his lips when she kissed him, and blamed the poisoning for disfiguring her husband's face.thesmokinggun.com/ ... 12:32:57...39-year-old Oklahoma inmate ...charged with the pork chop assault of a fellow resident of the Lexington Correctional Center....apnews.myway.com/ ... 12:32:28Houston ... Police said the manager offered to reheat [complaining customer's] sandwich or make him a new one when he complained. Authorities allege he instead demanded a refund, threw the sandwich at the manager, then threatened to kill her and blow up the restaurant.apnews.myway.com/ ... 03:44:26gunman [who] opened fire on the band and crowd, killing top heavy metal guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott... has a minor police record in Marysville... tall, physically imposing ...hung out at Bears Den Tattoo Studio, staring at people and trying to get them to talk about music and bands... "He's not wanted... The most pointless conversations."

THU 2004-DEC-09

Christmas 2004reuters.com/ ... 13:14:17An Italian school's substitution of a Nativity play with Little Red Riding Hood so as not to offend Muslim children has raised the Vatican's ire and sparked debate on how much traditions should change to accommodate immigrants.

US Executive Branchnydailynews.com/ ... 12:23:36Kerik's bully history guardian.co.uk/ ... 12:22:07The department of homeland security is a bureaucratic Byzantium consisting of 22 agencies with a huge budget exceeding $40bn. Bernard Kerik's appointment was suggested to Bush by Giuliani. With this favour, Kerik's meteoric career has reached its zenith. The high school dropout Kerik fathered an illegitimate daughter in Korea, whom he refused to acknowledge and support. He became a bodyguard for Saudi royals and then a New York narcotics cop. In 1993, he was tapped as Giuliani's chauffeur and bodyguard.

Digital Consequencesnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:22:11Hi-tech "peeping Toms" could be sent to jail under proposals put forward by the New Zealand government. It has decided to clamp down on photography and filming making it an offence to make, publish and possess so-called "up skirt" images and other voyeuristic recordings...news.ft.com/ ... 12:05:43Thursday...announcement... Walt Disney would launch titles on the Blu-ray Disc format promoted by Sony and Matsushita.... Disney's move divides the allegiance of Hollywood studios in half, with Disney, Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM and possibly 20th Century Fox supporting the Blu-ray format, while Paramount, Universal, Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema have committed to a rival format, known as HD-DVD.

Future is Nownews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 02:42:47A third of people on the planet will be learning English in the next decade... it becomes a truly "world language"....Chinese, Arabic and Spanish are also going to be key international languages....

Preternatural Patternsreuters.com/ ... 02:28:38Asked whether next year they would prefer more money, more regular sex or extra free time, 62 percent of the 1,000 Germans polled opted for cash, compared with just six percent choosing sex. Twenty-six percent plumped for free time.

Transportreuters.com/ ... 13:20:54..German couple ...after a 275-mile car journey... discover.. 6-week-old kitten... cowering next to the engine of their car...ap.tbo.com/ ... 02:25:34A commuter van from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory tumbled 200 feet off a twisting mountain road Wednesday, killing three people and injuring seven, two critically

Whoops!reuters.com/ ... 02:27:29A Christmas campaign for an "immaculate contraception" morning-after birth control pill has been scrapped by a drug company in Britain after causing offence on religious grounds.ap.tbo.com/ ... 02:24:23An uncertified high school driving instructor previously convicted of drunken driving was arrested after his vehicle ran off the road as he was headed to teach a driving class

Digital Threatnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 02:43:25The growing popularity of online gaming could spell problems for net service firms reuters.com/ ... 02:21:32Teenagers and young men should keep their laptops off their laps because they could damage fertility...

Currentapnews.myway.com/ ... 02:18:43"American Bandstand" icon Dick Clark was hospitalized this week after suffering a mild stroke.

Why people go veganap.tbo.com/ ... 02:22:56Owners of the world's biggest kosher slaughterhouse say they will make changes to their slaughtering process after being accused of inhumane treatment of cattle by an animal rights group... giving rabbis who perform the slaughtering ritual a stun gun to knock steers unconscious if they continue to thrash about and try to stand after their throats have been slit... In such cases, the animal will be removed from the kosher processing line as not kosher...

Haven't YOU always wanted to?news.yahoo.com/ ... 02:18:25Parents Go on Strike, Move to Front Yard

Reasons for Repealreuters.com/ ... 13:15:35Police in the Brazilian capital said two teenagers were spotted selling Santa dolls at the entrance of a municipal school next to a slum not far from the city center. The dolls opened up like Easter eggs, each containing sweets and a small plastic bag of marijuana....thisislondon.com/ ... 12:14:54LONDON -- Drug-driving may be more of a problem than drink-driving, it is claimed, after more than half of the motorists killed in accidents in one police area were found to have taken drugs

Only Naturalnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:22:26The authorities in Malaysia have closed down a brothel that was operating from a disused pigsty.reuters.com/ ... 13:21:10Comic book hero Tintin never aged during his 50-year career because the repeated blows he took to the head triggered a growth hormone deficiency, according to an analysis in the Christmas edition of a Canadian medical journal.sci-tech-today.com/ ... 12:06:59The chicken genome contains significantly less DNA than the human genome but about the same number of genes... the chicken has about 20,000 to 23,000 genes in its 1 billion DNA base pairs, compared with the human count of 20,000 to 25,000 genes in 2.8 billion DNA base pairs... The difference in the total amount of DNA reflects a substantial reduction in DNA repeats and duplications as well as fewer pseudogenes in the chicken genome....reuters.com/ ... 02:46:06Smokers performed significantly worse in five different cognitive tests than did both former smokers and those who had never smoked... could be that smoking subjects the vital organs, including the brain, to oxidative stress...news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 02:41:21Rescuers have pulled at least four survivors from a building which collapsed in floods that hit the Philippines 10 days ago... were very weak and "white as ash", after surviving on water dripping from the ceiling....

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 02:30:31

Marine Cpl. In C. Kim, 23, of Warren, Mich., died Dec. 7 as result of a non-hostile vehicle incident in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. defenselink.mil/ ... 02:30:16

Army Pfc. Andrew M. Ward, 25, of Kirkland, Wash., died Dec. 5 in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, when his unit was attacked by enemy forces using small arms fire. defenselink.mil/ ... 02:30:01

Army Cpl. Joseph O. Behnke, 45, of Brooklyn, New York, died Dec. 4 in Baghdad, Iraq, when he was in a vehicle accident.defenselink.mil/ ... 02:29:44

Army Staff Sgt. Kyle A. Eggers, 27, of Euless, Texas, died Dec. 5 in Habbaniyah, Iraq, when his vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device.

Human Rightap.tbo.com/ ... 02:26:59A woman who lost custody of a daughter born during a now-dissolved civil union granted in Vermont has appealed a court decision that gives Virginia jurisdiction in the legal battle.

Justice?reuters.com/ ... 13:12:29A Norwegian court has acquitted a man accused of raping a sleeping woman after he said he was also asleep at the time... three-judge panel ...acquitted him by a 2-1 margin because of doubts about whether he had been conscious... [defense lawyer] declined to speculate about how the man, who had been drinking, could have had sex in his sleep, apparently after undressing the woman. But he said an ex-partner of the man had testified by telephone that similar things had happened to her.sfgate.com/ ... 02:48:51Since it was reinstated by the state [of California] in 1977, a total of 629 criminals have been sentenced to die, according to Reuters. Between then and now, only 10 of these criminals have been executed. In other words, just 1.6 percent of criminals condemned to death have had their sentence carried out.ap.tbo.com/ ... 02:26:36...Supreme Court on Wednesday... justices considering whether the government can force farmers to pay for ad campaigns... ruling could jeopardize more than 100 federal and state campaigns for other products - eggs, mangoes, popcorn and even alligators.

US Militarydrudgereport.com/ ... 12:13:51Rumsfeld Set Up, Reporter planted questions with soldier defenselink.mil/ ... 02:30:42 This week, the Army announced an increase in the number of reservists on active duty in support of the partial mobilization, while the Air Force, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard had a decrease. The net collective result is 1,588 more reservists mobilized than last week.reuters.com/ ... 02:20:17Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday faced open criticism from his own U.S. troops, who complained about inadequate armor for Iraq and questioned a policy that stops them from leaving the military when their voluntary term ends.

Under Tyrannyreuters.com/ ... 13:19:27Nike said in a statement: "Nike expresses a deep apology to Chinese consumers for their concerns about LeBron James in the 'Chamber of Fear' advertisements... The idea of the advertisement came from Hong Kong's Kung fu movies of the 1970s. Nike hoped it could encourage Asia youth to face their fears in basketball." ...China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television Monday ordered stations nationwide to stop broadcasts ... [said ad] aroused "strong public indignation" by violating rules that stipulated "all ads broadcast on television should protect national dignity and interests and respect the motherland's traditional culture."
[Ad:] James, 19, a forward for the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team, makes easy work of animated enemies including a white-haired kung fu master, two women in traditional Chinese garb and the pair of dragons as he ascends the video game-like levels of the "Chamber."

Rebuildingnews.xinhuanet.com/ ... 02:38:07Japan's cabinet decided Thursday to extend the Self-Defense Forces' (SDF) humanitarian assistance operation in Iraq by one year until Dec. 14, 2005.reuters.myway.com/ ... 02:19:59President Bush on Wednesday resumed direct assistance to the Palestinian Authority... But the White House imposed restrictions on the $20 million in direct aid approved by Bush: the authority will use it to pay Palestinian utility bills owed to Israeli companies...

Violenceiafrica.com/ ... 12:04:41...the Pentagon revealed that four US special forces soldiers have been punished for unauthorised use of Taser electric stun guns on prisoners...nbc4i.com/ ... 02:39:54At least five people died and two others were wounded after a shooting at a Columbus nightclub on Wednesday night... Two members of the heavy metal band Damageplan were reportedly shot and killed, including Dimebag Darrell, formerly with the band Pantera... other band member's name was not released... alleged gunman also died at the scene... unclear who shot the alleged gunman....ap.tbo.com/ ... 02:24:01A former U.S. Marine in Iraq, testifying Wednesday at a hearing for an American military deserter seeking asylum in Canada, said several men in his unit were "psychopaths" who enjoyed killing unarmed Iraqi civilians who posed no threat.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 02:15:29Doctors at the Austrian clinic that treated Ukraine’s opposition leader confirm there was a plot to kill... Viktor Yushchenko...apnews.myway.com/ ... 02:04:56U.S. special forces accused of abusing prisoners in Iraq threatened Defense Intelligence Agency personnel who saw the mistreatment... monitored e-mails sent by defense personnel and ordered them "not to talk to anyone" in the United States about what they saw... confiscated photos of a prisoner who had been punched in the face....

TUE 2004-DEC-07

History - still with usexaminer-enterprise.com/ ... 13:13:31The "old cement plant" located east of Dewey is slated for demolition over the next several weeks

Digital Consequencesreuters.com/ ... 12:46:31 $999 offer of unlimited Internet-based telephone service for life.ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:45:18Police said Monday they are no longer investigating three people who won $2.5 million playing roulette, possibly by using technology to outsmart the table. ...a laser scanner built into a mobile phone ... could have been used to measure the speed of the roulette ball when released by the croupier and the declining orbit of the wheel. A computer could, with such data, have calculated which section of numbers the ball would land on before sending this information back to the phone....

Don't Give Them Ideasyubanet.com/ ... 12:28:01...In order to help terrorists learn precisely how to taint America's food supply, Mr. Thompson said, helpful food-contamination tips would be posted online at the Health and Human Services website....

WW2 - still with usstory.news.yahoo.com/ ... 12:25:10[Picture] Paul Goodyear, 86, of Casa Grande, Ariz., shows where he was stationed as a signalman aboard the USS Oklahoma mlive.com/ ... 12:24:05For more than 60 years, Anthony Czarnecki Sr. lived with the fact that his brother, Stanley, perished without him on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. They were both assigned to the ill-fated ship on Dec. 7, 1941, but Anthony Czarnecki, who died in January, was in Honolulu on a weekend break when Japanese armed forces surprised U.S. troops stationed there, destroying and sinking a number of ships, including the Arizona. "I think it bothered him his whole life that his brother went down when he was on shore leave," said his son, David, who lives in Jackson. "I think he felt like he let his brother and his shipmates down." The brothers were reunited in death this fall when Anthony Czarnecki's ashes were laid to rest in the sunken remains of the Arizona.

Preternatural Patternsboston.com/ ... 20:54:29The Pennsylvania attorney general's office Monday sued an online university for allegedly selling bogus academic degrees -- including an MBA awarded to a cat.boston.com/ ... 20:54:14NEW ORLEANS -- An 8-year-old girl was suspended for nine days for bringing to school what appeared to be about 30 "Jell-O shots" -- though it was unclear whether they contained alcohol.reuters.com/ ... 12:55:26Nine out of 10 Chinese calling into a suicide-prevention hotline in the capital Beijing are getting the busy tone... nationwide four people were killing themselves every minute.....reuters.com/ ... 12:55:03"I'm Colin Luther Powell
Public service is my thing
Don't do it for the ring
Don't do it for the bling."
-Secretary of State COLIN POWELL, making his debut as a rapper at the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington.reuters.com/ ... 12:51:30...Massa Marittima mural ...Tuscany... look closely at the spidery tree that dominates the center of the painting... Its branches are covered in penises.... of different shapes and sizes, complete with testicles. ...dates from the 13th century... discovered during renovation work four years ago.... "It's a very clear political poster...."reuters.com/ ... 12:46:01South Korea has shelved a plan to replace the English word for condom with a Korean word after a string of complaints from people with identical or similar sounding names. .. in South Korea... only 10 percent of people use condoms when having sex....local6.com/ ... 12:40:07...Recent complaints of a foul odor inside the R & R Limited public parking garage in Orange County prompted the building's manager to set up a video camera inside an elevator. When the manager and police checked the videotapes, Orange County Sheriff's Deputy Carl Brown was shown urinating in the corner of the elevator....forbes.com/ ... 03:43:09Experiments with the brain cells of rats show that contact with an ingredient found in shampoos, hand lotions and paint causes neurons to die. .. methylisothiazolinone ...

US Militaryreuters.com/ ... 14:58:04President Bush sought on Tuesday to boost the morale of U.S. troops facing extended deployments in Iraq by promising to train Iraqi forces to replace them but acknowledged only mixed results so far.

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 13:17:35

Army Sgt. Michael L. Boatright, 24, of Whitesboro, Texas died Dec. 4 in Baghdad, Iraq, when he was struck by an improvised explosive device. defenselink.mil/ ... 13:17:18

Army Sgt. Cari A. Gasiewicz, 28, of Depew, N.Y., died Dec. 4 in Baqubah, Iraq, when two improvised explosive devices detonated near her convoy. defenselink.mil/ ... 13:17:02

Army Staff Sgt. Henry E. Irizarry, 38, of Bronx, New York, died Dec. 3 in Taji, Iraq, when his unit was on patrol and an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV. defenselink.mil/ ... 13:16:41

Army Staff Sgt. Salamo J. Tuialuuluu, 23, of Pago Pago, American Samoa.

Army Sgt. David A. Mitts, 24, of Hammond, Ore.
died Dec. 4 in Mosul, Iraq, when their Stryker military vehicle received enemy fire during convoy operations defenselink.mil/ ... 13:15:52

Army Spc. David P. Mahlenbrock, 20, of Maple Shade, N.J., died Dec. 3 in Kirkuk, Iraq, when he was clearing a route and an improvised explosive device detonated. defenselink.mil/ ... 13:15:28

Marine Cpl. Binh N. Le, 20, of Alexandria, Va.

Marine Cpl. Matthew A. Wyatt, 21, of Millstadt, Ill.
died Dec. 3 from injuries received as result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.

Human Rightworldnetdaily.com/ ... 13:10:27Muslim extremists have allegedly abducted a Coptic priest's wife in Egypt and forced her to convert to Islam, prompting demonstrations today by thousands of Christian Copts in various parts of the nation against what they say is the government's failure to protect them against anti-Christian crimes.

Reasons for Repealreuters.com/ ... 12:53:22"Because of my age, I can't party with the big guys anyway. I haven't seriously smoked pot in years." --TOMMY CHONG, 66, who is taking a role in the off-Broadway show "The Marijuana-Logues" after serving nine months in prison for selling a bong....

Freedommediaweek.com/ ... 12:35:20Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell laid some startling statistics... indecency complaints had soared dramatically to more than 240,000 in the previous year.... up from roughly 14,000 in 2002, and from fewer than 350 in each of the two previous years.... “a dramatic rise in public concern and outrage..." According to a new FCC estimate obtained by Mediaweek, nearly all indecency complaints in 2003—99.8 percent—were filed by the Parents Television Council, an activist group.

Only Naturalsfgate.com/ ... 20:55:13Lydia has a rare genetic disorder called xeroderma pigmentosum, or XP. Children with XP can't tolerate the ultraviolet radiation in sunlight. Even a few minutes of sun can cause cell damage that inevitably turns to cancer. Only about 1 child in 1 million has XP. Yet Lydia is one of 26 children in her village -- including four of her own siblings already dead -- to develop the nightmarish tumors and lesions of untreated XP. These children form one of the most unusual -- and most neglected -- disease clusters in the world....reuters.com/ ... 12:54:14...the earliest evidence of winemaking from pottery shards dating from 7,000 BC in northern China....reuters.com/ ... 12:46:59Giant coca plants said to resist herbicides and yield eight times more cocaine may be due to extra fertilizer, not a drug cartel's genetic modification program, a scientist said on Tuesday.heraldsun.news.com.au/ ... 12:29:26Dozens of seats on the world's most luxurious cruise liner have collapsed under the weight of obese American passengers.

Rebuildingap.tbo.com/ ... 12:56:11Karzai Sworn in as First Democratically Elected Afghan President

Threatsthenewamerican.com/ ... 23:23:39What Happened to Flight 007? [The New American - August 29, 1988]... the amount and the nature of the debris supports the contrary conclusion that the aircraft did not hurtle to a watery grave...reuters.com/ ... 14:57:40U.S. troops captured a number of key figures involved in what they described as "transnational terrorism" in Baghdad, the U.S. military said Tuesday... It was not clear what was meant by "transnational."..worldnetdaily.com/ ... 13:09:28...Pressed by concerns about racial profiling when it was introduced in 1997, the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System intentionally left out a passenger's national origin, religion, race or sex in assessing the risk that an individual passenger might be a terrorist. Consequently, the system employed random hits "to ensure that airline screeners would devote as much time searching Lutheran matrons from Minnesota as young men from Saudi Arabia...."nytimes.com/ ... 12:32:21A classified cable sent by the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief in Baghdad has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon

Aftermathedition.cnn.com/ ... 12:25:30A 62-year-old Dutchman will be charged for war crimes and as an accomplice to genocide for supplying lethal chemicals to Saddam Hussein's regime

Violencereuters.com/ ... 14:56:50Gunmen bombed two churches in the tense Iraqi city of Mosul Tuesday apnews.myway.com/ ... 13:11:06U.S. troops have captured 34 Iraqis, including 10 wanted for making explosive devices to attack coalition forces, the military said Tuesday.
South of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed three Iraqi National Guardsmen.swissinfo.org/ ... 12:19:21GAZA - ...Hamas gunmen detonated a bomb hidden in a chicken coop that Israeli troops were searching and opened fire, killing one soldier and wounding four. Israeli forces killed two of the attackers and two Islamic Jihad militants....reuters.com/ ... 12:18:26JEDDAH, Saudi Arabian - "It's clear that some of these people have been looking at our procedures... They clearly understood how our cars entered the compound and in my view had scoped it out."reuters.com/ ... 03:43:41MADRID - The Basque separatist group ETA set off bombs in seven cities across Spain Monday, slightly wounding five people reuters.com/ ... 03:41:30JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia - Militants stormed the heavily fortified U.S. consulate in Jeddah in a brazen raid Monday and 12 people died in gunbattles before security forces regained control.

MON 2004-DEC-06

History - still with usthescotsman.scotsman.com/ ... 00:58:09ARCHAEOLOGISTS believe they may be just yards away from finding the grave of the record-breaking aviator Amelia Earhart... on the Pacific island of Tinian...

Preternatural Patternsswissinfo.org/ ... 01:01:09The Wenger company of Delémont has dared to change the shape of one of Switzerland’s national symbols – the Swiss Army knife.canoe.ca/ ... 00:56:52Reports that an irate hockey mom lifted her blouse, revealed her bra, and taunted fans of the opposing team by shaking her breasts -- at her 11-year-old's hockey game -- has the president of the league "aghast,"...

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 01:02:09

Army Pfc. George D. Harrison, 22, of Knoxville, Tenn., died December 2 in Mosul, Iraq, when his HMMWV was attacked by enemy forces using small arms fire.

Only Naturalnewpaper.asia1.com.sg/ ... 01:00:39FOR two nights every year, thousands gather along the banks of the Mekong River to watch a strange phenomena the Thais call the Naga fireballs. The pinkish glowing balls, the size of chicken eggs, apparently emerge noiselessly from the river's surface, rise in straight-lined succession before disappearing in the thin night air.news.telegraph.co.uk/ ... 00:59:44A British woman who was left paralysed by a riding accident has regained some movement after taking part in a pioneering trial in which stem cells were transplanted from her nose into her spine... "I can crawl around the floor. I am quite balanced now and I can actually lift each leg and move it forward."...

Violencecsmonitor.com/ ... 01:01:28A remote-controlled roadside bomb blew up an army patrol car in a pre-dawn attack Sunday in disputed Kashmir, killing an Indian army major and 10 other soldiers

Justice?sun-sentinel.com/ ... 00:56:28After being directed to Courtroom 1B, the six men and five women waited Friday for a judge to hear their cases.... By the time the 11 finally discovered that they had been misdirected by court personnel and asked to appear before the judge to explain what had happened, he would not see them and ordered their arrests.

Threatsworldnetdaily.com/ ... 00:54:25Tehran has bought massive amounts of beryllium, a metal vital to the process of initiating the chain reactions needed to create nuclear weapon, according to a report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin

SUN 2004-DEC-05

Mechanical Disasterap.tbo.com/ ... 21:50:16ELY, Nev. - Two men doing maintenance work on the shovel of a large excavator were killed Sunday when the shovel's lid fell and crushed them at an open-pit copper mine near this remote east-central Nevada town.

WW2 - still with usap.tbo.com/ ... 17:46:52More than 120,000 Japanese-Americans were ordered into internment camps during World War II, but despite their large numbers, few in the territory of Hawaii were forced to leave their homes. Filmmaker Tom Coffman is working on a documentary that explains why

Digital Consequencesnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 21:48:00Musicians are embracing the internet as a way of reaching new fans and selling more music, a survey has found.jsonline.com/ ... 17:43:49With electrodes implanted directly on their brains, two Madison patients were able to control a computer cursor and play a basic video game just by thinking about it.

Whoops!wftv.com/ ... 17:43:27CALLAWAY, Fla. A Panhandle couple is under arrest after notifying police Thursday that their quarter-pound stash of marijuana was stolen and that they needed the weed back, because they were going to later sell it.

Preternatural Patternsnews.yahoo.com/ ... 17:42:49Brazilian-born striker Cristiano de Lima Junior playing for a domestic Indian club died on the field after scoring the winning goal for his team... "After scoring the goal he had a collision with the goalkeeper. Then he fell to the ground,"...

Peace 3000cbsnews.com/ ... 17:40:39Millions of folded paper cranes fluttered down from warplanes in the skies over southern Thailand Sunday as the air force completed a mission of peace aimed at expressing the nation's hope for an end to separatist violence in the Muslim-dominated region. The gesture, however, failed to damp the unrest, with police saying they defused a 22-pound bomb Sunday on a crowded road where many people were waiting to gather the paper birds.

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 17:45:33Gunmen ambushed a bus carrying unarmed Iraqis to work at a U.S. ammo dump near Tikrit on Sunday, killing 17 and raising the toll from three days of intensified and bloody insurgent attacks to at least 70 Iraqi dead and dozens wounded.nytimes.com/ ... 17:39:45Insurgents opened fire on a bus full of civilians and drove a car bomb into a national guard checkpoint in northern Iraq this morning, killing 20 Iraqis....

Threatsap.tbo.com/ ... 17:46:30French police on Sunday ended their practice of hiding plastic explosives in air passengers' luggage to train bomb-sniffing dogs after one such bag got lost, possibly ending up on a flight out of Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport.ap.tbo.com/ ... 17:44:29CONNANTRAY-VAUREFROY, France - A soldier, angry about being forced to retire, was holed up in an army depot with 60 tons of explosives Sunday, threatening to blow it up. About 400 residents were evacuated from nearby villages.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 17:42:19Plastic explosives were mistakenly loaded onto a plane at a Paris airport after security officials lost track of it during an exercise... The bag ended up on one of 90 flights leaving at the time, and police are now trying to track it down... They stress the explosive is "no more dangerous than a bar of chocolate"...boston.com/ ... 17:41:32The US military is drawing up plans to keep insurgents from regaining control of this battle-scarred city, but returning residents may find that the measures make Fallujah look more like a police state than the democracy they have been promised. Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned. Marine commanders working in unheated, war-damaged downtown buildings are hammering out the details of their paradoxical task: Bring back the 300,000 residents in ctv.ca/ ... 17:38:48Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said he doesn't know where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is, but he also doesn't think he is in control of the terrorist network.

SAT 2004-DEC-04

Digital Consequencesprofindpages.com/ ... 23:31:11After just four days, Lyco Europe have cancelled its spam-fighting screensaver. Although close on 100,000 people downloaded the free screensaver, it received a great deal of criticism. Many believed it lowered itself to the tactics of the spammers themselves and could have caused more problems than it solved.....

History - still with usap.tbo.com/ ... 15:08:55'I Understand I Am a Symbol, but I Have Never Gotten Used to Being a Public Person.' A review of 91-year-old Rosa Parks' life reveals a complex woman living through tumultuous times and quietly leaving her mark....
At 91, Parks has dementia and cannot explain for herself why she became embroiled in two suits involving the hip-hop duo OutKast and their record company, BMG. At issue is a song about the entertainment industry that has no connection to Parks, though it is titled "Rosa Parks" and its chorus goes, "Ah, ha, hush that fuss, everybody move to the back of the bus." Lawyers for Parks argue her name was wrongly used; they seek a total of $5 billion....

Don't Give Them Ideasap.tbo.com/ ... 15:06:37President Bush played down on Saturday a stark warning from his resigning health chief that the nation's food supply is largely unprotected from terror attack. "We're a large country, with all kinds of avenues where somebody could inflict harm...."

Digital Threatnews.com.com/ ... 15:05:20MSN Spaces, Microsoft's new blogging service, has sparked a new game for some of its users: trying to circumvent its censorship controls... all of the most obvious profanities fell foul of Microsoft's electronic sentries.... tricky titles that resembled innocuous terms...cleared Microsoft's censorship filters.... illustrates the tensions between the traditionally free and open world of blogging and the more corporate approach of a software giant like Microsoft. "If you can't speak freely on a blog, what's the point of having one?" ...MSN Spaces forces new users to grant Microsoft permission to "use, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, modify, translate and reformat" their blog postings.

Only Naturalworldnetdaily.com/ ... 15:21:48In Battle Creek, Mich., 14 women of St. Thomas Episcopal Church – between ages 55 and 82 – actually bared their breasts to raise money for breast cancer research.reuters.com/ ... 03:31:22Sun exposure apparently has a protective effect against the development non-Hodgkin's lymphoma reuters.com/ ... 03:30:20New research provides further evidence that substances in kale, spinach and other green vegetables help protect aging eyes from cataracts.

Under Tyrannyap.tbo.com/ ... 15:10:55Awash in Dialects, China Relies on Mandarin as Common Tongue - but How Common Is It? --... the central government up north in Beijing, which for decades has promoted standard Mandarin as the only Chinese language worthy of the airwaves. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has ordered an end to broadcasting in dialect, saying kids should be raised in a "favorable linguistic environment."

Threatsworldnetdaily.com/ ... 15:21:20The primary reason MAD worked is because it was simple and unambiguous. Both sides let the other side know in no uncertain terms that a nuclear first strike would be followed immediately by an overwhelming nuclear counter-strike destroying the heartland, culture and society of the attacker. This was a price even the most evil 20th century dictators would not even contemplate. We now have a new enemy, Islamic terrorism, hellbent to either enslave or destroy us.... I propose that the U.S. immediately adopt and publish the following nuclear doctrine: In the event of a WMD attack by terrorists on the U.S. homeland or U.S. military facilities overseas, the U.S will immediately and without discussion use its immense nuclear weapons capabilities to destroy the 100 largest Islamic cities on earth, regardless of state, and destroy all of the military facilities of Islamic-dominated states. This will include all of the capitals and....canadaeast.com/ ... 15:18:17Russia may use cruise missiles and strategic bombers in preventive strikes against terrorists outside its borders, the commander of Russia's air force said Friday.abcnews.go.com/ ... 15:17:52Pakistan has broken the back of al Qaeda forces by capturing its "big wigs" even if Osama bin Laden is still at large, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said on Friday.ap.tbo.com/ ... 15:11:38Authorities searched an Air France airliner at Los Angeles International Airport early Saturday for explosives that disappeared during a French police training exercise at an airport outside Paris... No explosives were found....ap.tbo.com/ ... 15:09:53Fallujah... U.S. and Iraqi authorities probably will have a tough time winning over the city's 300,000 people....washingtontimes.com/ ... 15:05:40Three Iraqis accused of planning an attack on Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who is visiting Germany, have been arrested by German police.

Violencenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:32:05At least nine Indian soldiers have been killed, when suspected Islamic militants set off a landmine in Indian-administered Kashmir.washingtonpost.com/ ... 15:03:07In simultaneous blasts, insurgents detonated two car bombs Saturday at a police station near the fortified headquarters of the U.S. Embassy and interim Iraqi government, killing at least seven people and wounding more than 50...
The U.S. military, meanwhile, reported the deaths of four more U.S. troops from roadside bombs in Baghdad and near Baqubah Saturday and a suicide car bombing Friday that targeted a U.S. outpost on the Iraqi-Jordanian border....reuters.com/ ... 03:28:24A suspected suicide car bomb detonated outside a police station beside the protected Green Zone in Baghdad on Saturday... an initial two dead and 35 wounded from the blast but said numbers could rise....

FRI 2004-DEC-03

Korean War - still with usap.tbo.com/ ... 23:43:46Army Deserter to Make New Life on Remote Japanese Island Where His Wife Grew Up

Mechanical Disasterap.tbo.com/ ... 23:43:09HOUSTON - An explosion at a chemical plant Friday that could be heard 20 miles away caused a large fire and sent up massive clouds of smoke. No injuries were reported.

Transportap.tbo.com/ ... 23:45:38NEW YORK - Two people have filed suit against an animal trainer and a circus after a tiger escaped from its cage last year and caused a multi-car accident they claim left them with back injuries.ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:42:48Two buses collided head-on along a mountain highway in western Guatemala late Friday, and one toppled into a nearby ravine, killing 21 people and injuring at least 20

Whoops!money.cnn.com/ ... 15:27:18Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, already taking heat for accidentally faxing customers' financial information to a U.S. scrapyard, apologized on Wednesday after one of its cash machines... Instead of distributing C$20 bills... spat out colorful bills used as incentives at Canadian Tire Corp. hardware stores....

Rather Embarrassedwashingtontimes.com/ ... 15:04:13The BBC admitted Friday it was tricked into reporting that a U.S. company accepted responsibility for the world's worst industrial accident.

WW2 - still with usap.tbo.com/ ... 23:43:29Army Deserter to Make New Life on Remote Japanese Island Where His Wife Grew Up news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:58:48A retired Italian doctor has revealed for the first time how he invented a fictitious disease which fooled the Nazis during World War II. The trick of prescribing Jews with a mysterious illness terrified the Nazis and saved 45 Roman Jews. Dr Vittorio Sacerdoti has told his remarkable tale on the 60th anniversary of liberation of Rome....

Preternatural Patternsap.tbo.com/ ... 23:45:14SOUTH HAVEN, Mich. - A [36yo] teacher and a 14-year-old former female student whom she is accused of sexually assaulting participated in witchcraft together and even "wed" in a pagan ritual, police said.abcnews.go.com/ ... 15:26:00Walter Cavanagh owns 1,497 valid credit cards (he assumes a card is valid until he hears otherwise) with a potential credit line of about $1.7 million.reuters.com/ ... 12:17:46Animal lovers and lawmakers face a dog and cat fight over how many pets residents may own at the same time in the small Utah town of Provo, officials said on Wednesday. The current law allows residents to own up to two dogs or two cats at the same time but not a dog and cat together.reuters.com/ ... 12:16:45New York's historic Algonquin Hotel... landmark hotel, where famed wit Dorothy Parker and fellow literary lights at the Round Table imbibed, offers a $10,000 martini, complete with a loose diamond at the bottom....reuters.com/ ... 12:15:43A school bus driver who chatted about stem cell research with her pupils was fired for inappropriate behavior reuters.com/ ... 12:12:50Italy's first "shelter" for divorced dads will open in the northern city of Bolzano on Saturday as fathers step up the fight for their rights in a country long dominated by the Italian "mamma."reuters.com/ ... 12:12:34The computer term "master/slave," which was banned as racially offensive by a Los Angeles County purchasing department, was named the most politically incorrect term of the year on Thursday.

Christmas 2004reuters.com/ ... 12:15:01Sydney Mayor Clover Moore has been cast as the Grinch who stole Christmas after decorating her city's town hall with just one meager Christmas tree out of fear of offending non-Christians reuters.com/ ... 12:12:11A Father Christmas will have a webcam in his grotto to overcome parents' concerns after a number of high-profile pedophile cases in Britain in the past few years. The St Elli shopping center in Llanelli, south Wales, said children taking part in the traditional Christmas ritual of telling Santa their gift wishes would also sit beside him rather than on his knee.

Digital Consequencesreuters.com/ ... 23:42:27IBM is reportedly in talks to sell its personal computer business in a deal that could be worth up to $2 billion and would cap a gradual withdrawal from the business it helped to pioneer in 1981.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 15:00:43The number of Europeans with broadband has exploded over the past 12 months, with the web eating into TV viewing habits ap.tbo.com/ ... 14:53:16The Supreme Court said Friday it will consider whether Internet providers should be allowed to sell their high-speed service over the cable television system... At issue is whether cable-based broadband is a "telecommunications service" that makes it subject to the same FCC rules that phone companies must adhere to - such as allowing access to independent Internet providers...reuters.com/ ... 12:07:06Police questioned 350 South Korean students Friday and more were under suspicion in a widening probe into cheating that has uncovered a link between two national obsessions -- education and mobile phones.

Sick, Sick, Sickapnews.myway.com/ ... 12:02:00More than 40 percent of Americans take at least one prescription drug and one-in-six takes at least three

US Executive Branchseattletimes.nwsource.com/ ... 11:58:36President Bush yesterday nominated Bernard Kerik, the New York police commissioner during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to take over the Department of Homeland Security from Tom Ridge

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 23:47:31

Marine Cpl. Bryan S. Wilson, 22, of Otterbein, Ind., died Dec. 1 as result of a non-hostile vehicle incident in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.defenselink.mil/ ... 15:36:11

Army Spc. Isaac E. Diaz, 26, of Rio Hondo, Texas, died Dec. 1 in Sharona, Afghanistan, when his military vehicle rolled over. defenselink.mil/ ... 15:35:50

Army Spc. David M. Fisher, 21, of Green Island, N.Y., died Dec. 1 in Baghdad, Iraq, when his unit was on patrol and the HMWWV in which he was riding rolled over.defenselink.mil/ ... 15:35:32

Army Spc. Erik W. Hayes, 24, of Cascade, Md., died Nov. 29 in Al Miqdadiyah, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his military vehicle.defenselink.mil/ ... 15:35:15

Army Spc. Daryl A. Davis, 20, of Orlando, Fla., died Nov. 29 in Iraq when his HMWWV was involved in a traffic accident.defenselink.mil/ ... 15:34:58

Marine Cpl Zachary A. Kolda, 23, of Corpus Christi, Texas, died Dec. 1 as result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.defenselink.mil/ ... 15:34:40

Marine Gunnery Sgt. Javier Obleas-Prado Pena, 36, of Falls Church, Va., died Dec. 1 at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, from injuries received Nov. 25, as result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.defenselink.mil/ ... 15:34:15

Army Sgt. Pablo A. Calderon, 26, of Brooklyn, N.Y.

Army Sgt. Jose Guereca, Jr., 24, of Missouri City, Texas
died Nov. 30 in Fallujah, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near their military vehicle.defenselink.mil/ ... 15:33:39

Army Spc. Sergio R. Diazvarela, 21, of Lomita, Calif., died Nov. 24 in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his dismounted patrol.defenselink.mil/ ... 15:32:46

Army Lt. Col. Michael J. McMahon, 41, of Connecticut

Army Chief Warrant Officer Travis W. Grogan, 31, of Virginia Beach, Va.

Army Spc. Harley D. R. Miller, 21, of Spokane, Wash.
died Nov. 27 in Bamian, Afghanistan, when their contract aircraft crashed.defenselink.mil/ ... 15:31:20

Army Sgt. Christian P. Engeldrum, 39, of Bronx, N.Y.

Army Pfc. Wilfredo F. Urbina, 29, of Baldwin, N.Y.
died Nov. 29 in Baghdad, Iraq, when their military vehicle struck an improvised explosive device.

US Militaryreuters.com/ ... 14:57:56The U.S. military kicked off a buildup of forces in Iraq by 12,000 troops on Friday as 82nd Airborne Division soldiers began leaving Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to boost security for Jan. 30 Iraqi elections.

Human Rightapnews.myway.com/ ... 12:05:29A jury made up of United Methodist Church clergy convicted a lesbian minister Thursday of violating church law by openly living with her partner in a committed relationship. ...could be defrocked as a result of the ruling.... the presiding judge... excluded expert testimony from six defense witnesses who believe the church's gay clergy ban violates its own legal principles....

Only Naturalapnews.myway.com/ ... 23:41:28Dogs with paralyzed hind legs regained the ability to walk after getting a shot of a chemical cousin of antifreeze that helped repair nerve cells in their damaged spinal cords apnews.myway.com/ ... 15:03:13Flash floods and landslides triggered by back-to-back storms that lashed the northeastern Philippines had killed more than 600 people by Friday, with nearly 400 still missing... Some 170,000 have fled their homes for higher ground.... entire provinces facing the Pacific Ocean... a sea of chocolate-brown mud littered with bodies, uprooted trees, collapsed homes and bridges....ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:11:08America's oldest person, a 114-year-old woman who voted in every election since women earned the right in 1920 and had the thinnest file in her doctor's office, has died. Said her daughter, Julie Johnson, "She just wore out... She was still very sharp up until a few months ago." ...shortly before her death she said: "Dying is hard, but everyone has to do it, and I hope I do it well."nytimes.com/ ... 11:59:26Nearly a thousand people are dead or missing in flash floods and landslides that have devastated a large section of the northern Philippines... set off by a storm that hit the northeast part of the Philippines early this week. A new typhoon entered the country today, hampering search and rescue efforts in areas earlier destroyed by the storm....

Look Who's Talking!news.yahoo.com/ ... 23:41:13Russian President Vladimir Putin... [says] Washington... seeks a "dictatorship of international affairs."

Don't Give Them Ideasworldnetdaily.com/ ... 23:39:34"For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do." -Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, announcing his resignation today

Rebuildingdefenselink.mil/ ... 15:36:42The Iraq Project and Contracting Office (PCO) with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced today that the U.S. government has surpassed the 1,000 construction start mark one month ahead of their year-end goal. The reconstruction team has delivered 1,051 construction starts to-date.

Threatsnewsday.com/ ... 23:39:55Shopping mall security guards in the U.S. are being taught to spot suicide bombers interestalert.com/ ... 15:01:49NEW DELHI, Dec. 3 -- The silverware used by Russian President Vladimir Putin during his ongoing visit to India reportedly is being disinfected with copious amounts of vodka.... part of the elaborate security arrangements for Putin who is under threat from Chechen Islamic rebels....reuters.com/ ... 14:57:12A Lufthansa plane heading to the United States from Germany made an unscheduled landing in Ireland Friday after the airline received a call saying there was a suspect device on board... As one of the last land stops before planes from Europe reach the U.S. coast, Ireland is often the venue for diverted planes....

Doomed to repeat itreuters.com/ ... 12:13:44Nearly half of Britons in a poll said they had never heard of Auschwitz

Violencecsmonitor.com/ ... 23:46:54In Fallujah, US forces are going through 50,000 houses one by one. But Iraqi insurgents are coming back.ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:46:36OKLAHOMA CITY - A prominent criminal defense attorney was shot and kidnapped from his home by four people, then escaped when the suspects took him to a bank to withdraw money.ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:46:07Roadside bombs in Baghdad and Kirkuk killed two American soldiers and wounded five others apnews.myway.com/ ... 23:40:17The U.S. military has launched a criminal investigation into photographs that appear to show Navy SEALs in Iraq sitting on hooded and handcuffed detainees, and photos of what appear to be bloodied prisoners, one with a gun to his head.reuters.com/ ... 14:56:23Four explosions were reported at petrol stations in the Madrid area on Friday, Spanish radio stations said, following a phone warning in the name of the armed Basque separatist group ETA to a Basque newspaper... blasts were small and no casualties were reported..ap.tbo.com/ ... 14:55:44PHILADELPHIA - A woman and her preschool-age daughter were found safe Friday, hours after they were kidnapped during a possible attempt to collect a debt.... Four suspects were in custody.ap.tbo.com/ ... 14:55:19WICHITA, Kan. - A man whose arrest sparked speculation of a link to the decades-old BTK serial killings case was released on bond after a court appearance on two unrelated misdemeanor counts... BTK case... involves a mysterious serial killer who had been silent for years before resurfacing in March with letters to police and news media....reuters.com/ ... 12:15:28SARAJEVO - Thieves masquerading as NATO soldiers stole a million euros ($1.3 million) from a Bosnian security van on the last day of the alliance's peace mission in the country on Wednesday.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:06:40At least 20 people have been killed, including six policemen, in two attacks in the Iraqi capital...
a suspected car bomb is believed to have killed at least 14 people in Baghdad's northern neighbourhood of Adhamiya...
shortly after a police station in the south-west of the city was stormed by gunmen. The rebels reportedly seized weapons and freed prisoners in an attack that left at least six policemen dead....

Psychogangsworldnetdaily.com/ ... 15:25:34"Many of the 33 designated foreign terrorist organizations and other nonstate actors worldwide have expressed interest in using chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons...."worldnetdaily.com/ ... 15:24:37Yousef was on a mission. According to Lance, he needed to arrange for the destruction of an American commercial airliner during the course of his trial in order to demand a mistrial.... At the precise time in the trial when Yousef needed a mistrial declared – July 17, National Liberation Day in Saddam's Iraq – TWA Flight 800 blew up off the coast of Long Island, compelling circumstantial evidence that Yousef succeeded in plotting the downing of a commercial plane using a telephone provided by the Justice Department and FBI....cbc.ca/ ... 12:03:02TEHRAN, Iran - Some 200 masked young men and women gathered at a Tehran cemetery Thursday to pledge their willingness to carry out suicide bomb attacks against Americans in Iraq and Israelis.

Extraterrestrial Threattimesonline.co.uk/ ... 12:00:56EARTH must take precautions to avoid contamination from lifeforms that must now be presumed to exist on Mars, leading scientists gave warning yesterday.

Digital Threatwashingtontimes.com/ ... 12:00:15Former CIA Director George J. Tenet yesterday called for new security measures to guard against attacks on the United States that use the Internet, which he called "a potential Achilles' heel."
"I know that these actions will be controversial in this age when we still think the Internet is a free and open society with no control or accountability," he told an information-technology security conference in Washington, "but ultimately the Wild West must give way to governance and control."

WED 2004-DEC-01

Digital Consequencesnews.com.au/ ... 23:03:41MICROSOFT has issued an out-of-schedule critical patch for its Internet Explorer web browser, plugging a security hole that could allow a hacker to take control of a PC... "If a user is logged on with administrative privileges, an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system, including installing programs; viewing, changing, or deleting data; or creating new accounts with full privileges,"..technewsworld.com/ ... 17:20:56Hewlett-Packard has worked out the bugs in software it says will slow down the spread of worms and viruses within servers. Virus Throttler -- which HP had said it was shelving back in August because it was having trouble integrating it with Microsoft Windows server software -- is now back... HP... said it solved the problem by creating access through a network driver....

Yeah, Sure!timesonline.co.uk/ ... 14:16:09Cannabis use once or twice a week almost doubles the risk of suffering psychotic symptoms in later life

1960s - still with usnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:11:19a growing band of older people are turning the tables, embracing music's youthful culture with a vengeance. ..."wrinkly rockers"...reuters.com/ ... 14:13:06"Having had children, and now grandchildren, it all sounded like a great idea." --Rocker ROGER DALTREY, whose onstage charisma powered The Who to fame in the 1960s and '70s, on his first video/DVD for tiny tots.

Transportap.tbo.com/ ... 14:01:39ST. LOUIS - A small charter jet crashed on an island in the Missouri River, killing the charter company's chief executive and a second man

Sex can be Dangerousreuters.com/ ... 14:00:32A rise in new cases of AIDS and HIV infection among gay and bisexual men in many U.S. states... has given support for concerns the disease is resurgent in the country....

Christmas 2004worldnetdaily.com/ ... 13:56:08Immortalized in a 1947 Christmas movie classic, Macy's is now the focus of a boycott campaign protesting the department-store chain's replacement of "Merry Christmas" with politically correct greetings... "It's the height of hypocrisy for a corporation to make tens of millions of dollars selling Christmas presents, yet coldly refuse to acknowledge Christmas..."

Preternatural Patternswashingtonpost.com/ ... 23:05:59Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found.reuters.com/ ... 14:12:17The Optimist Club of Quakertown, Pennsylvania, is disbanding after 24 years, citing lack of interest.wftv.com/ ... 13:54:47Miami-Dade County animal control officers and homicide investigators are investigating the death of a woman found dead inside her home, surrounded by ...about 30 about cats, three dogs, two birds and three dead ducks inside the house.... All the animals were extremely dirty and some of the dogs and birds were sickly....

Whoopsreuters.com/ ... 14:10:12A Washington state man who placed a lava lamp on a hot stove died when the lamp exploded and a glass shard pierced his heart... was probably standing in front of the lamp when it exploded, then stumbled into his bedroom and died...abcnews.go.com/ ... 00:04:10A man who botched the castration of a transgendered woman... born with nonfunctioning male genitals and has lived as a woman since age 9... will spend the next three years on probation... thought he could do it because of his experience castrating animals on a farm....

Human Rightreuters.com/ ... 23:04:10A Methodist minister was tried by an ecclesiastical court on Wednesday for being a practicing homosexual and said she believes God created her as a lesbian but she does not expect to keep her job.

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 14:03:08

Army Sgt. Michael A. Smith, 24, of Camden, Ark., died Nov. 26 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., from injuries sustained in Baghdad, Iraq, on Nov. 7 when he was attacked by enemy forces using small arms fire.defenselink.mil/ ... 14:02:44

Marine Lance Cpl. Blake A. Magaoay, 20, of Pearl City, Hawaii, died Nov. 29 as a result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.

US Militarysanangelostandardtimes.com/ ... 23:06:29 Government health officials are urging stronger infection control procedures in military hospitals following a number of infections among troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.wired.com/ ... 17:19:22

...the Army is prepping its squad of robotic vehicles for a new set of assignments. And this time, they'll be carrying guns. As early as March or April, 18 units of the Talon -- a model armed with automatic weapons -- are scheduled to report for duty in Iraq....defenselink.mil/ ... 14:03:20This week, the Army and Air Force announced an increase in the number of reservists on active duty in support of the partial mobilization, while the Navy and Marines had a decrease. The Coast Guard number remained unchanged. The net collective result is 659 more reservists mobilized than last week.reuters.com/ ... 13:50:33The U.S. military will temporarily boost its troop strength in Iraq to about 150,000 from a current level of 138,000 to provide extra security for Iraqi elections set for Jan. 30

Reasons for Repealstory.news.yahoo.com/ ... 18:32:48A hard case may lead to a revival of a key principle of constitutional government: Congress has only limited powers over the states.springfield.news-leader.com/ ... 18:32:13Medical marijuana should get OK -- If court won't do it, U.S. regulators should. --Springfield MO News-Leader editorial turkishpress.com/ ... 18:31:34US Supreme Court appears split over marijuana use registerguard.com/ ... 17:23:18Supreme Court should let states regulate pot -Eugene OR Register-Guard seattletimes.nwsource.com/ ... 14:15:51The right answer is to leave it to the states. --Seattle Times editorial nationalreview.com/ ... 14:15:26At stake is more than California’s effort to legalize the medical use of marijuana. A decision for the federal government could send federalism and the constitutional doctrine of enumerated powers up in smoke.news.yahoo.com/ ... 13:53:45Doctors on a turbulence-free flight performed surgery 19,000 feet above the jungles of Colombia on the inaugural outing of the military's "Air Hospital," the country's new effort to save the lives of troops wounded in its war against Marxist insurgents.abcnews.go.com/ ... 00:02:24A joke a man played on his mom went to pot. A 22-year-old man walked into a gas station on Sunday and told the clerk that he had a gun. The clerk wasn't worried because she was his mother. According to a police account, another customer overheard the man and, not knowing it was a joke, called authorities. Upon arriving at the station, officers found the prankster and a friend in the parking lot. The officers smelled marijuana, and a search turned up a quarter-pound of pot and hundreds of dollars in cash. The men were arrested for drug possession.....

Only Naturalap.tbo.com/ ... 23:13:48Wind gusting to 60 mph knocked out power to thousands, damaged buildings and felled trees across the Northeast on Wednesday... killed a 50-year-old farm worker in suburban Philadelphia when he was struck by a falling tree...ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:12:24A powerful aftershock Wednesday killed a man in the Papuan town of Nabire as he repaired damage to his house from a major earthquake which killed 30 people five days ago.reuters.com/ ... 14:11:33British scientists seeking to protect the environment have designed a biodegradable mobile phone cover that breaks down in soil when discarded and sprouts a flower from a seed embedded inside the case.abcnews.go.com/ ... 00:01:39The government has found traces of a rocket fuel chemical in organic milk in Maryland, green leaf lettuce grown in Arizona and bottled spring water from Texas and California. What's not clear is the significance of the data... FDA continues to recommend that consumers eat a balanced diet, choosing a variety of foods that are low in trans fat and saturated fat, and rich in high-fiber grains, fruits and vegetables." (WHAT IS A ROCKET FUEL CHEMICAL DOING IN ANYTHING?)

Threatsabcnews.go.com/ ... 17:21:19A feared "assassination attempt" on Serbian President Boris Tadic was actually a case of road rage against the behavior of his motor convoy worldnetdaily.com/ ... 14:09:22Iran does not want a clash with the United States. And unlike Milosevic and Saddam, neither of whom wanted a war, either, Iran is determined not to give the neoconservatives the pretext to launch one. --Pat Buchanan

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 23:12:48DETROIT - A man was charged Wednesday with the drive-by shooting death of a 7-year-old girl. Police said the bloodshed was the result of a dispute between two families over a missing video game.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:11:56What is life like for ordinary Iraqis and others caught up in events? We are publishing a range of accounts here from people inside Iraq about how they, their families and friends live day to day and what the bigger events in the headlines mean to them.news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:10:47Forgotten hero of Bhopal's tragedy -- Twenty years after the toxic gas leak at Bhopal in central India, BBC News reports on how casualties could have been much worse.reuters.com/ ... 14:10:47DOUAI, France - A man who blinded his wife in a failed murder and suicide attempt won a suspended five-year sentence on Tuesday after his spouse publicly forgave him and begged the court to acquit him.news.com.au/ ... 13:56:42Fresh doubts have emerged over the fate of a British aid worker taken hostage in Iraq in October after tests revealed the mutilated body of a Western woman found a fortnight ago was not Margaret Hassan.news.yahoo.com/ ... 13:53:25PR Meets Psy-Ops in War on Terror... a broad effort underway within the Bush administration to use information to its advantage in the war on terrorism.... "The movement of information has gone from the public affairs world to the psychological operations world," one senior defense official said. "What's at stake is the credibility of people in uniform."