Blog-heap o' links from 2005-Aug

Army Pvt. Christopher L. Palmer, 22, of Sacramento, Calif.
died on August 21 near Baylough, Afghanistan, when an improvised explosive device detonated near their HMMWV during patrol operations.

World Without Bordersworldnetdaily.com/ ... 11:30:12Annex Mexico?

Human Rightnewsday.com/ ... 11:24:02acting [NJ] Gov. Richard J. Codey signed legislation Monday banning smoking in dormitories at public and private colleges...

Supernatural Equalitynews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:22:57A Roman Catholic bishop on the Spanish island of Tenerife has ordained a man as a Catholic priest despite the fact that he is married with two children... Bishop of Tenerife said the move was a unique exception within the Spanish Church... ordination was approved by the Pope... Before moving to Spain, he was part of an Anglican delegation to the Vatican in Rome... The bishop says this is not a step towards the abolition of Roman Catholic celibacy... But it is a surprise - especially in Spain, where the Church is particularly conservative and very actively against any softening of existing doctrines...

Only Naturaltoday.reuters.com/ ... 10:44:06The winter hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica appears to have grown from last year but is still smaller than in 2003, when it was at its largest...

Modern Family Lifeap.tbo.com/ ... 10:40:04the California Supreme Court has said gay and lesbian couples who raise children are lawful parents and must provide for their children if they break up... also apply to estranged gay and lesbian couples who used reproductive science to conceive... Being a legal parent "brings with it the benefits as well as the responsibilities," said Justice Joyce Kennard...

US Militaryap.tbo.com/ ... 19:26:59Unlike earlier wars, nearly all Arlington National Cemetery gravestones for troops killed in Iraq or Afghanistan are inscribed with the slogan-like operation names the Pentagon selected to promote public support for the conflicts. Families of fallen soldiers and Marines are being told they have the option to have the government-furnished headstones engraved with "Operation Enduring Freedom" or "Operation Iraqi Freedom" at no extra charge, whether they are buried in Arlington or elsewhere. A mock-up shown to many families includes the operation names... ap.tbo.com/ ... 13:10:29A military intelligence interrogator pleaded guilty Tuesday to dereliction of duty and assault in the abuse of an Afghan detainee who later died. Spc. Glendale C. Walls admitted that he stood by as former Sgt. Selena M. Salcedo lifted a detainee known as Dilawar by his ear and as former Spc. Joshua R. Claus made another detainee roll around on the floor and kiss Walls' boots. Walls also admitted to pushing Dilawar against a wall during the interrogation in which Salcedo abused him. Dilawar's death has led to charges against a number of service members... newsday.com/ ... 10:33:44SAN ANTONIO -- A suspected hacker tapped into a military database containing Social Security numbers and other personal information for 33,000 Air Force officers and some enlisted personnel... about half of the officers in the Air Force... was accessed sometime in May or June, apparently by someone with the password to the Air Force computer system...

Theftap.tbo.com/ ... 18:00:57SAO PAULO, Brazil - Police on Tuesday arrested an Indian of the Cinta Larga tribe as he tried to leave the remote Roosevelt reservation in the Amazon jungle state of Rondonia with 70 diamonds stuffed in his underpants...

Sex can be Dangerousnewsnet5.com/ ... 17:51:28There are 490 female students at Timken High School, and 65 are pregnant, according to a recent report in the Canton Repository. The article reported that some would say that movies, TV, videogames, lazy parents and lax discipline may all be to blame. School officials are not sure what has caused so many pregnancies, but in response to them, the school is launching a three-prong educational program... the non-Canton rate was 7 percent. Canton was 15 percent...

Threatsfoxnews.com/ ... 12:24:28WASHINGTON --Asking for increased vigilance in the wake of the London bombings, the government is warning that terrorists may pose as vagrants to conduct surveillance of buildings and mass transit stations to plot future attacks. "In light of the recent bombings in London, it is crucial that police, fire and emergency medical personnel take notice of their surroundings, and be aware of 'vagrants' who seem out of place or unfamiliar," said the message, distributed via e-mail to some federal employees in Washington by the U.S. Attorney's office...

Under Tyrannyap.tbo.com/ ... 19:25:53MOGADISHU, Somalia - Militias of Islamic courts on Tuesday began pulling down stalls suspected of selling wine, marijuana and other drugs in Somalia's capital, a militia leader and an Islamic court official said. Witnesses said the militiamen also confiscated equipment from two video halls during their effort to enforce sharia - or Islamic law... today.reuters.com/ ... 10:48:14Sister Furong started the craze by posting pictures of herself -- draped back-down over a stone ball, bent at the knees with her chest thrust out suggestively and in other poses -- on Internet bulletin boards of two top Beijing universities to which she had tried but failed to gain entrance. The shots, and accompanying captions and passages she wrote proclaiming her own beauty and talent, became a campus sensation. But when her cult status began to sweep the whole country, Beijing stepped in...

Fun can be Dangerousthescotsman.scotsman.com/ ... 11:24:47A CYCLIST died after a bottle of vodka he was carrying in a bag jammed in his spokes and sent him hurtling to the ground... ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:37:27Fans at Tuesday's Rolling Stones concert will see more security than on opening night, when a woman climbed into the rafters at Fenway Park and fell to the seats below. Twenty-year-old ...was hospitalized with two broken ankles and a broken wrist after she fell 35 to 40 feet Sunday from the rafters above the right-field grandstand... Office Michael McCarthy, a spokesman for the Boston police, said O'Leary was "very belligerent, uncooperative and verbally abusive toward medical staff." "If she had hit someone (when she fell), she would have killed them," he said. "People need to be responsible for their own actions as well..."

Nature is Dangerousap.tbo.com/ ... 17:52:05SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) - A river swollen by days of heavy rain burst its banks in the northern Dominican Republic on Tuesday, washing away two women and leaving two other people missing... ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:20:24CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh - Unusually high tides partially submerged two offshore islands Monday in southeastern Bangladesh, forcing nearly 20,000 residents to flee their flooded homes, a relief official said. No one was hurt or missing. A gradual tidal surge submerged almost two-thirds of Sandwip island under 5 feet... Strong tides also washed away about 100 temporary straw-and-mud huts used by fishermen and salt collectors on Kutubdia Island, near the coastal town of Cox's Bazar... The weather bureau said a depression brewing in the Bay of Bengal and the pull of a full moon were likely causing the high tides...

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 17:57:01TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico - Six people were killed, five shot with high-powered weapons, in three communities in southern Chiapas state, and authorities said Tuesday that drug-traffickers were likely involved... ap.tbo.com/ ... 17:53:39GLENDALE, Ariz. - Two people were killed and another was wounded Tuesday in a shooting at a Wal-Mart parking lot... nbc12.com/ ... 11:15:59An illegal alien, Jose Ramirez, 28, has been arrested and charged with the brutal beating of a 15-year-old girl who allegedly ignored his whistles at a construction site in Spotsylvania County... from El Salvador, allegedly resisted arrest but was finally subdued... facing aggravated malicious wounding charges as well as abduction with intent to defile. Both charges carry a possible life sentence... ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:41:50A U.S. soldier, an American contractor and five Iraqis were killed Tuesday when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device in a city north of Baghdad... cnn.com/ ... 10:12:51Jordan has arrested a Syrian man it calls the "prime suspect" in the rocket attack intended for two U.S. warships that killed a Jordanian soldier, but three other suspects escaped into Iraq...

Mechanical Disasterfinancialexpress.com/ ... 10:12:21Mumbai -- Eleven people died and 27 have been injured and several others are still feared trapped after a residential building on Temkar Road near J J hospital collapsed...

MON 2005-AUG-22

Whoops!ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:09:43"Arab"... The entry, which appeared on thesaurus.com, listed the word as a noun meaning "beggar," and gave 16 pejorative synonyms including "homeless person" and "welfare bum..." Barbara Ann Kipfer, editor of the third edition of Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, said the entry had likely been on the site for years, but never made it into printed versions of the thesaurus. "We're simply going to take it out," she said on Monday. "The last thing you want with a thesaurus is to offend anyone..."

Now That's Funny!angelfire.com/ ... 13:37:49Televangelists are the pro wrestlers of religion.
Did you hear about the Buddhist vacuum cleaner? It comes with no attachments.emmitsburg.net/ ... 12:43:32A: Linoleum blownapart... joecasaletto.com/ ... 12:41:46"Man who stand in front of car get tired."
"Man who stand behind car get exhausted."
"War doesn't determine who is right. War determines who is left..."
many one-liners, many risquecompassrosemusic.com/ ... 12:11:25What was the result of the collision between the mafia limousine and the cement truck? Hardened criminals... hoflin.com/ ... 11:12:10"Outside of a dog, a book is probably man's best friend, and inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."-Groucho Marx... backwoodshome.com/ ... 11:01:24Sometimes... you just need a couple of laughs....

Researching the Obviouskirotv.com/ ... 10:17:56Daughters often follow the lead of their mothers, when it comes to living with a man...

Broadcast is Deadonline.wsj.com/ ... 10:15:39

Hollywood marketers are realizing that network-television advertising, long the lifeblood of their movie campaigns, may not pack the punch it once did... symptomatic of a broader problem in Hollywood. Audiences have caught on to the studios' tactics for making an "event" out of every new movie... two action flicks each of which cost roughly $150 million to make and market and likely will be outgunned in U.S. ticket sales by the tiny nature film "March of the Penguins..." While spending on network TV fell slightly in the past year, TNS Media Intelligence figures show that spending on relatively inexpensive Internet advertising rose. Studios say Internet marketing can be especially effective in reaching a pre-existing audience. For its successful "Batman Begins," Warner Bros. Entertainment unveiled its movie trailer online about a year in advance, using a variety of corporate and fan sites. Among other things, online marketing worked well for Lucasfilm Ltd.'s "Revenge of the Sith," whose trailer first appeared online late last year. The film, which opened this past May, went on to sell more than $375 million of tickets domestically. "Part of what makes the Internet so powerful is appealing to people in the places that they congregate, not necessarily making people come to you," says Dawn Taubin, Warner's marketing chief...

Transportctv.ca/ ... 10:09:22A teenager near Edmonton narrowly escaped serious injury early Thursday morning when a stolen pickup truck crashed into her bedroom... sleeping in a bedroom became trapped underneath the vehicle... may have been rolled up in a mattress by the impact and that's what saved her...

Cascading Weirdnessap.tbo.com/ ... 09:32:48A mysterious patient at a British hospital who did not speak to doctors and nurses for months but loved to play the piano has been discharged... condition of the patient dubbed "Piano Man" had shown a marked improvement and he no longer needed medical treatment... the man finally spoke to staff last week, revealing he was from Germany and had come to Britain after losing his job in Paris... "A nurse went into his room last Friday and said: 'Are you going to speak to us today?' He simply answered: 'Yes, I think I will.'...

Lasting Contributionsnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:38:04Synthesiser pioneer Dr Robert Moog has died at his North Carolina home aged 71... his instruments were used by The Beatles and The Doors among others... built his first electronic instrument - a theremin - aged 14 and made the MiniMoog, "the first compact, easy-to-use synthesiser", in 1964... But it was Walter Carlos' 1968 Grammy award-winning album, Switched-On Bach, which brought Dr Moog to prominence. Carlos played renditions of Johann Sebastian Bach compositions on a Moog analogue synthesiser, making electronic music popular and Dr Moog a household name... the Doors, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles... Brian Eno, Frank Zappa, The Cure, Fatboy Slim and Stereolab... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:24:04The Rev. A. Leon Lowry, a prominent local civil rights leader who once taught Martin Luther King Jr. and led the desegregation of public facilities in Tampa, died Saturday of congestive heart failure. He was 92... 1940s.. he taught theology at Morehouse College and King was one of his students... 1960s.. led peaceful protests at Tampa lunch counters and helped found Tampa's first biracial bank. He became president of the Florida NAACP and in 1976 was the first African-American elected to the Hillsborough County School Board, where he served for 16 years. The Florida Bar awarded him a medal of honor for easing racial tensions and promoting social justice...

1960s - still with usap.tbo.com/ ... 00:34:18"In the first march I went to (opposing Vietnam) there were 10 of us. This is huge," Baez told relatives of fallen U.S. soldiers Sunday before performing a free concert just up the road from the ranch. About 500 people gathered to hear her on a 1-acre lot offered by a landowner who opposes the war. Not far away, protesters continued a camp-out started by grieving mother Cindy Sheehan...

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 19:55:47

Army Sgt. Nathan K. Bouchard, 24, of Wildomar, Calif.

Army Staff Sgt. Jeremy W. Doyle, 24, of Chesterton, Md.

Army Spc. Ray M. Fuhrmann, II, 28, of Novato, Calif.

Army Pfc. Timothy J. Seamans, 20, of Jacksonville, Fla.
died on August 18, 2005, in Samarra, Iraq, where an improvised explosive device detonated near their HMMWV following a mine assessing mission.

Supernaturalexpressindia.com/ ... 10:11:12A waitress in Sweden thought her elderly customer was joking when he offered her his Porsche as a tip, but he kept his word and gave her the keys to the car...

Science Marches Onnnnnntoday.reuters.com/ ... 09:44:20U.S. researchers said on Monday they have created a new human embryonic stem cell by fusing an embryonic stem cell to an ordinary skin cell...

Digital Future is Nownews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:43:35The global music market is now worth $33 billion (£18.3 billion) a year while the online music market accounted for around 5% of all sales in the first half of 2005... Just a handful of legitimate online music stores were in existence two years ago - now there are around 300 different services up and running. Mr Duea says the online music industry will become an "exploding multi-billion dollar space in the next two years"...

Reasons for Repealmtv.com/ ... 00:04:13Illegal substances have become nearly twice as prevalent in high schools in the last three years, according to a new study released Thursday. Sixty-two percent of high school and 28 percent of middle school students report that drugs are used, kept or sold in their schools, up from 44 percent and 19 percent, respectively, in 2002...

9/11 - still with usnydailynews.com/ ... 09:59:23A global network of human rights museums is urging the International Freedom Center to downplay America in its exhibits and programs at Ground Zero... "Think internationally, where America is one of the many nations of the world..."

Threatsdefenselink.mil/ ... 19:54:13The Department of Defense announced today that it released three detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. ...one detainee to Yemen, one ..to Tajikistan, and one ..to Iran. ..included two detainees found no longer to be enemy combatants.. Yemen, and ..Tajikistan. ..one detainee recommended for release ..was released to Iran. ... There are approximately 505 detainees currently at Guantanamo.ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:07:21SEATTLE - Federal agents on Monday arrested a [53yo] man who allegedly threatened to blow up the downtown office of the Department of Veterans Affairs because the agency had denied his claim for benefits... timesonline.co.uk/ ... 10:01:44SCOTLAND YARD believes it has thwarted an Al-Qaeda gas attack aimed at ministers and MPs in parliament. The plot, hatched last year, is understood to have been discovered in coded e-mails on computers seized from terror suspects in Britain and Pakistan... the thwarted plot mentioned in the document involved a gas or chemical “dirty bomb” attack against parliament. “The House of Commons was one of their targets as well as the Tube,”... a military unit — said to have been special forces — recently carried out a secret examination of security at the House of Commons. It is believed that the exercise highlighted the ease with which terrorists could kill dozens of MPs in the debating chamber... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:54:53Russia's Federal Security Service Director Nikolai Patrushev. "The terrorists are striving to obtain access to biological, nuclear and chemical weapons... We record this, and we have such information... Our mission is to deny them such access... " Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev threatened to stage new terrorist attacks and hinted that he might go beyond conventional attacks... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:53:10By 1999, Scheuer was in trouble at the CIA because of his persistence about getting bin Laden. "I think I became too insistent that we were not pursuing this target with enough vigor and with enough risk-taking – an unwillingness to take risks," said Scheuer. "I got relieved of the position I was in. I had a lovely sojourn in the library and then had other sojourns since." His exile ended shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, when he was brought back to the bin Laden unit as a special adviser. Now, he says, the problems are greatly complicated. He also says he fully anticipates bigger attacks on the U.S. – including the probability of a nuclear terrorist attack...

Nature is Dangerouskirotv.com/ ... 10:03:16at a yard sale. "It was a kind of a hard, plastic tube with a screw cap that was labeled smallpox vaccine," Knickle said. "It scared me. All kinds of things went through my head, wondering if this could be meant for some evil purpose in this day and age of bioterrorism." When he shook the package, which bore a label from Connaught Laboratories in Willowdale, Ontario, and an expiration date of 1973, it was evident that something was inside, he said... Medical health officer Dr. Lorna Medd said the "watered-down, cousin-of-smallpox vaccine" would not have been active and posed no health risk. "In 1972 they stopped immunizing children for smallpox," Medd said. "Our supposition is that this vial was somehow not collected from a military office, a health unit or a doctor's office and it just got lost..." ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:34:39Flooding from intense rains swept three young children to their deaths and left another child missing in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz...

Transport Tragedycbsnews.com/ ... 18:00:41The U.S. Coast Guard searched the Florida Straits on Monday after three Cubans rescued at sea said they had been aboard a boat that sank with 31 others aboard. The three were rescued Sunday about 30 miles north of Matanzas, Cuba, by a merchant ship and taken back to Cuba... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:34:08A semitrailer rear-ended a car on the Indiana Toll Road, triggering a chain-reaction crash that left four people dead and seven injured... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:27:33A Cypriot airliner that crashed earlier this month killing 121 people on board lost cabin pressure and ran out of fuel before slamming into a mountain near Athens, according to a preliminary report... also said there were indications the Boeing 737-300's pilot and co-pilot were incapacitated and that a third man - believed to be a flight attendant - had attempted to steer the plane... whose blood was reportedly found in the remains of the cockpit and had received flight training in the past...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spinworldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:56:33An eBay entrepreneur is now hawking a baseball on which he claims the face of Cindy Sheehan has magically appeared. Interestingly, the image on the ball looks like a sad face that could have been drawn with a typical magic marker... Bidding began yesterday at one dollar, and is already up to $25... news.yahoo.com/ ... 09:20:41He and others at "Fort Qualls" have asked for a debate with those at the Crawford [camp]... a member of Gold Star Families for Peace.. said her group would not participate. "We don't want to debate with people who don't understand our point of view."news.yahoo.com/ ... 09:18:00CRAWFORD, Texas - A patriotic camp with a "God Bless Our President!" banner sprung up downtown Saturday, countering the anti-war demonstration started by a fallen soldier's mother two weeks ago near President Bush's ranch. The camp is named "Fort Qualls," in memory of Marine Lance Cpl. Louis Wayne Qualls, 20, who died in Iraq last fall. "If I have to sacrifice my whole family for the sake of our country and world, other countries that want freedom, I'll do that," said the soldier's father, Gary Qualls, a friend of the local business owner who started the pro-Bush camp. He said his 16-year-old son now wants to enlist, and he supports that decision...

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 18:12:15INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) - Authorities found at least five bodies in a Southern California house Monday after a standoff with a man who had barricaded himself inside the home. The dead included adults and children... The barricaded suspect shot himself after an hours-long standoff... ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:11:10BEIRUT, Lebanon - A powerful explosion late Monday rocked a shopping center and hotel in the Zalka neighborhood in north Beirut, injuring at least three people and causing extensive damage... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:35:10A land mine planted by suspected communist rebels killed at least four police officers and injured three others in southern Nepal on Monday... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:25:04U.S. Marines and Afghan forces killed more than 40 suspected militants in an operation against insurgents... aimed at rebels in the eastern Koregnal Valley believed responsible for twin attacks that killed 19 troops in June... in.today.reuters.com/ ... 09:16:18Eleven Pakistani construction workers kidnapped by insurgents in Iraq earlier in the month were released on Monday... military.com/ ... 09:06:0965-year-old Iraqi detainee died Aug. 18 of an apparent heart attack following a house raid south of Iskandariyah. Iraq, the U.S. military reported today... waff.com/ ... 00:35:29Fort Payne Texaco owner... was dragged and then run over Friday when he tried to stop a man from driving off without paying. 54-year-old... died shorty after arriving at the hospital... ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:33:02Former NFL running back Lawrence Phillips, who was wanted by police for domestic violence, was arrested Sunday after allegedly running his car into three teenagers who argued with him during a pickup football game...

SUN 2005-AUG-21

Supernaturaltaipeitimes.com/ ... 16:29:45'Neo-creo:' a hip way to deride the creationists The phrase 'intelligent design' has been used out of context by those who take Genesis literally, which has angered the evolutionist establishment By WILLIAM SAFIRE...

Digital Culturementalis.org/ ... 07:20:46If the mood takes you, you can even replace the Windows desktop with your own version, although I'd suggest we leave that one for a rainy day...

Liberty Workstoday.reuters.com/ ... 05:32:12The Mexican border city of Tijuana, a weekend playground for U.S. visitors, plans to give prostitutes electronic health cards and regulate brothels in an effort to clean up its gritty image...

Rebuildingalertnet.org/ ... 04:35:26Thousands of Sunni Arabs, previously bitterly opposed to taking part in Iraqi politics, registered in the former rebel bastion of Falluja on Sunday to vote on a constitution that is still being drafted...

Violencetoday.reuters.com/ ... 16:37:39Four U.S. soldiers were killed and three wounded in a bomb attack in Afghanistan on Sunday as they were trying to clear militants from an area before an election next month...
Hours later, two U.S. embassy staff were hurt when their vehicle was hit by a blast near the capital... ap.tbo.com/ ... 16:36:52A U.S. soldier was killed Sunday when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb in northern Iraq...

Nature is Dangerousap.tbo.com/ ... 04:57:41

A pride of lions attacked and killed a Japanese woman visiting a Zimbabwe wildlife park... 50-year-old woman was about to leave the park's 49-acre lion enclosure on foot with five people from the Japanese Embassy and park employees when one of the animals attacked... "Other lions, whose number we were not given, also went for the helpless woman and joined in the attack..." not immediately clear what the group was doing on foot inside the enclosure. Previously, visitors have been under strict instructions not to exit their vehicles...

Fun can be Dangerousap.tbo.com/ ... 04:55:31MOUNT VERNON, Ill. - A race car crashed into the stands at a southern Illinois raceway, killing two spectators and injuring six others... driver also was hurt...

Threatsap.tbo.com/ ... 04:54:21The Iraqi government accused Jordan on Sunday of allowing members of Saddam Hussein's family living there to fund a network seeking to destabilize Iraq... haaretzdaily.com/ ... 04:49:20the Jordanian report that Egyptian and Iraqi nationals, along with a Syrian, were arrested ... raises concerns that Jordan, in spite of the excellent record of its intelligence forces, is becoming an arena for Al-Qaida operations...

SAT 2005-AUG-20

Transportsuntimes.com/ ... 23:56:33Chicago.. Dozens of passengers were removed from a San Francisco-bound airplane after the aircraft's wing clipped a metal fence Saturday morning at Midway Airport as it taxied toward a takeoff runway. No one was injured... suntimes.com/ ... 23:55:32An aerial performance by the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds was cut short Saturday after an object fell from a jet during the Chicago Air and Water Show. Six F-16 planes landed safely at the Gary/Chicago Airport in Gary, Ind., after the afternoon incident, and no one was injured... Chicago Police marine units were dispatched to a section of Lake Michigan between Division and North Avenue where authorities believe the item landed...

Digital Culturenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:44:44Police in Japan have arrested a Chinese student over the use of a network of software "bots" to steal items in an online role playing game... for every improvement in bot detection, the bots themselves become more complex and more difficult to spot...

Researching the Obviousnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:40:48People who use the drug speed alter their brain's structure so it may not work as well as it should... Methamphetamine users had bigger brain areas involved in attention, motivation and the control of movement. They also fared worse in tests of brain function...

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 10:53:32

Army 1st Lt. Laura M. Walker, 24, of Texas.

Army Sgt. Robert G. Davis, 23, of Jackson, Mo.
died on August 18, 2005, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when an improvised explosive device detonated underneath their HMMWV during ground assault convoy operations.defenselink.mil/ ... 10:50:47The remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified and are being returned to his family for burial with full military honors.

Air Force Col. Gregg Hartness of Dallas, Texas. Hartness and lst Lt. Allen S. Shepherd, III, while flying over Salavan Province in Laos, their O-2A ‘Skymaster’ was apparently struck by enemy fire and began to spin out of control. Shepherd bailed out and was rescued by an Air Force search and rescue team about nine hours later. He did not see Hartness bail out....

Justice?today.reuters.com/ ... 09:49:42A Mexican citizen must forfeit about $2.75 million in Texas lottery winnings because of his drug-trafficking conviction, a federal appeals court said on Wednesday... A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the trial court judge's ruling that Betancourt bought his share of the ticket with drug proceeds because that was his only apparent source of income... was arrested after making a cocaine delivery shortly after accepting $5.5 million...

Only Naturaltoday.reuters.com/ ... 09:45:27The death toll from extensive floods across Romania over the past four days has risen to 14, with more than 1,200 people evacuated from their collapsing houses...

Science Marches Onnnnnnsciencedaily.com/ ... 09:14:33A University of Texas at Dallas-led research team and an Australian colleague have produced strong, transparent carbon nanotube sheets. The transparent carbon nanotube sheets are stronger than the same-weight steel sheets and have demonstrated applicability for organic light-emitting displays, low-noise electronic sensors, artificial muscles, conducting appliques and broad-band polarized light sources that can be switched in one ten-thousandths of a second... sciencedaily.com/ ... 09:10:54Swiss researchers have successfully demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to control the speed of light in an optical fiber...

Beslan.2004 - still with ustimesonline.co.uk/ ... 22:26:06After almost a year in hospital, one woman tells the story of her decisive moments with hostage-takers...

Under Tyrannytimesonline.co.uk/ ... 22:13:34CHINA has established elite police squads equipped with armoured vehicles and helicopters under orders to quell riots in a country where a protest erupts every seven minutes. The squads are to be stationed in 36 cities, but the largest deployments are in Beijing and Shanghai as the Communist Party asserts its hold on power and gears up for the 2008 Olympic Games... the number of mass protests across China soared to more than 74,000 last year, with 3.76 million people taking part, up from 10,000 incidents a decade ago... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:42:49China... widespread economic reforms and the arrival of the internet might slowly be weakening the government's once tight grip... The country's staggering economic growth has lead to a rising middle class, interested not in old-style state propaganda, but leisure, fashion, celebrities and the outside world... But state censorship has not gone away. If you go too close to sensitive political topics like democracy or Tibet, the penalties are severe...

Sick, Sick, Sicknews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:36:03DC Comics has ordered a New York gallery to remove pictures which show Batman and Robin kissing and embracing... Arts website Artnet was also told to remove the series of semi-naked images of Batman and Robin from its website...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spinhuffingtonpost.com/ ... 09:35:07Cindy Sheehan 08.18.2005 Memo to Drudge... Even after my repeated attempts to keep the focus of my protest on the war, the Drudge Report and others continue to try to make the issue about me. But I am not the issue... [The war aside, the issue of Sheehan is Sheehan... She made this true, even if she doesn't acknowledge her self-generated celebrity....]

Violencedcmilitary.com/ ... 22:11:47Terrorist Abu Zubair, also known as Mohammed Salah Sultan, was killed Friday by Iraqi security forces in an ambush in the northern city of Mosul... suspected of resourcing and facilitating suicide bomber attacks against coalition, Iraqi security forces and Iraqi citizens throughout the country. When Zubair was killed, he was wearing a suicide device consisting of an explosive pack across his stomach armed with pellets... Coalition and Iraqi security forces captured three bomb makers and six foreign fighters, and found and cleared 101 improvised explosive devices during the week ending Friday... ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:04:20Islamic militants killed six hikers in a forest in eastern Algeria... Those who were not killed were briefly abducted. All but one woman were released... The North African nation has been fighting an Islamic insurgency since 1992, when the army canceled nationwide elections to prevent a likely victory by a Muslim fundamentalist party... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:38:32MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) - A bomb detonated by remote control killed at least three police officers in the troubled southern Russian region of Dagestan and wounded several more... edition.cnn.com/ ... 09:09:46Authorities in Jordan say they have found the launcher that fired three Katyusha rockets that targeted but missed two U.S. military ships in the Red Sea port of Aqaba...

FRI 2005-AUG-19

Digital Culturelocal6.com/ ... 17:56:16Two employees at a Florida university with access to computer databanks have been charged with accepting cash -- and one with accepting sex -- in exchange for changing the grades of dozens of students...

Cascading Weirdnessorlandosentinel.com/ ... 17:56:57More than 1,000 visitors came Thursday for a "sneak preview" of human corpses from China encased in silicone, as state regulators backed down from challenging the controversial art exhibit that could be heading to Orlando next year... ap.tbo.com/ ... 17:50:27ELYRIA, Ohio - A man was removed from an Amtrak train for exposing himself and rummaging through other passengers' luggage. Conductors on the train from New York to Chicago alerted police, who discovered the man was carrying thousands of dollars in cash and gold and identification cards from several countries... identified.. as a Canadian.. 49...

Whoops!newsday.com/ ... 17:59:23

A stalking foray atop a power pole left a lucky feline jolted, frizzled and dazed but otherwise OK after he fell off the 40-foot pole and sparked a fire outside a fire house... "The fire just burned all his hair off." The firefighters believe the cat was on the pole, because a bird's nest was found on top and there was a large black spot where something had touched a relay switch on the 25,000-volt line... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:46:53MELBOURNE, Australia -- ...was 21 when he underwent a sex change operation to become a woman in 1988. By 1996, however, Finch said he was "a mess" and struggling to live life as a woman.. The following year, ..began another round of surgery and reverted to life as a man...may sue the medical team that advised him to have a sex change... claims that the doctors who performed the initial sex change knew he was not a suitable candidate based on a medical report that described his masculinity as above average...

US Militaryworldnetdaily.com/ ... 18:16:26Following nationwide public outcry, a decorated U.S. Marine from Texas will be allowed in-state college tuition [after all]...

OKC Bombing -- still with usworldnetdaily.com/ ... 18:14:19In 2000, the head of the original OKBOMB investigation, Danny Defenbaugh, told an interviewer for a documentary film on the subject: "The FBI will never reopen the case, under any circumstances. Even if McVeigh calls and gives us names," Defenbaugh stated, "we will never reopen it."

2005: FBI Special Agent Gary Johnson made a startling announcement.... the FBI was currently investigating the April 19, 1995, bombing. In the past, Johnson has told the media that the FBI was standing by its original investigation. "It was the most experienced and thorough in our history," he said...

Threatsynetnews.com/ ... 18:05:05Saudi journalist says terror groups should be treated as Nazis, total war should be declared on extremist Islamic Ideology...

Infrastructure Failurenews.ft.com/ ... 17:53:51Some 100m Indonesians were without electricity on Thursday as power outages hit the country's main grid, leaving office workers in Jakarta trapped in elevators and the state-owned power monopoly struggling for an explanation...

Disturbing Family Patternsap.tbo.com/ ... 17:52:46SAN MATEO, Calif. - The bodies of a man, a woman and two teenagers were found in the backyard of a home and police were investigating the case Friday as a triple murder and suicide... neighbors said the couple had been upset over the suicide of a friend who had killed himself four days earlier after separating from his wife and two daughters...

Nature is Dangerousap.tbo.com/ ... 09:47:47STOUGHTON, Wis... Twister in Wisconsin Leaves One Dead, Five Injured, Dozens of Homes Damaged or Destroyed... breitbart.com/ ... 09:42:05ALBANY, N.Y. - Gastrointestinal illness possibly stemming from a state-run water playground has sickened more than 700 people, mostly children and teenagers...

Transport Tragedytoday.reuters.com/ ... 09:39:25The first toxicological tests on victims of a Cyprus airliner crash showed no dangerous levels of carbon monoxide in their blood...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spindrudgereport.com/ ... 18:00:07As you've probably heard by now, my sister and I left the other Gold Star mothers in Crawford last night, after our mother had a stroke. I plan on returning to Camp Casey very soon, but while I'm in Los Angeles please respect that my sister, brother and I are here focusing on our mother, while the moms in Crawford focus on Bush... reuters.myway.com/ ... 09:40:18 China has detained a U.S. citizen on suspicion of spying for ideological foe Taiwan, keeping him under house arrest without charge for nearly three months usatoday.com/ ... 09:38:30[from a USA Today editorial headlined "Cindy Sheehan decamps, leaving very mixed messages," the editorial is mixed, too]
Even though the Iraq war is on its way to claiming 2,000 American lives, it has for the past two and a half years seemed disconnected from the lives of many Americans... Unlike World War II, the whole nation is not involved in the war effort and sacrifices. Unlike in the Vietnam War, when the draft scooped up men from all walks and stations of life, soldiers in Iraq are volunteers who hail largely from small-town and rural America. The human cost of the war is obscured because media access to much of Iraq is difficult, and coverage of the returning dead and wounded is restricted...
[I don't know anybody who hasn't been touched by this war. But... this looks like a complaint about things like the non-drafted army. As for the "coverage," what about what's being positively accomplished? That's what isn't being covered! The press is just numbering the dead and being a mouthpiece for Al Quidy noise and exploits.]

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 09:48:51MOSUL, Iraq - Gunmen seized three members of Iraq's largest Sunni Muslim party Friday and shot them to death hours later in front of a mosque... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:48:18A U.S. Marine and an Afghan soldier were killed during battles with militants in eastern Afghanistan... sfgate.com/ ... 09:31:41Attackers fired at least three rockets from Jordan early Friday, with one narrowly missing a docked U.S. Navy ship and killing a Jordanian soldier... Another rocket fell close to a nearby airport in neighboring Israel... A group linked to al-Qaida claimed responsibility in an Internet statement... One rocket sailed over the bow of the USS Ashland and slammed into a Jordanian army warehouse at the port, killing soldier Ahmed Jamal Saleh...

THU 2005-AUG-18

Digital Culturebartleby.com/ ... 17:07:54er·y·the·ma... Redness of the skin... bartleby.com/ ... 17:01:20telangiectasia... elevated dark red blotches on the skin... (American Heritage Dictionary)64.233.187.104/ ... 12:36:27The authors describe symmetric, well-demarcated, erythematous patches with telangiectases occurring at sites of chronic pressure on the palms in two patients who had been working at a keyboard for prolonged periods for many years. This skin finding was dubbed “computer palms” and the importance of pressure, shear, moisture, and friction between the palms and keyboard were discussed as factors involved in the development of this new occupation-related disease entity.

However, in addition to the keyboard, working with computers typically includes extensive use of a computer mouse. We report a new computer-related occupational dermatosis that we termed mouse fingers. We recently saw a 32-year-old healthy man who presented with a sharply demarcated eruption consisting of erythema, rhagades, and scaling on the palmar side of the first and fifth fingertips of the right hand... We describe that working with a computer mouse can lead to localized eczema on the fingers... coeh.man.ac.uk/ ... 12:30:02Health and Occupation Reporting Network... Cobalt allergy... Health and Occupation Reporting Network... cobalt.. specifically identified... in a plastic keyboard... The possibility of cobalt in the plastic of a computer mouse is in my view worth considering in unilateral palmar eczema... medterms.com/ ... 12:23:49Seborrheic eczema: Yellowish, oily, scaly patches of skin on the scalp, face, and occasionally other parts of the body... ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ ... 12:07:53

Risks and health problems caused by the use of video terminals... VDT use was associated with neuro-visual fatigue, upper extremity MSD, dermatitis, and seborrheic eczema. Computer mouse use and postural risks were significantly associated with health problems. Psychosocial factors were mainly associated with mental problems, psychosomatic disorders, and fatigue...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spinbreitbart.com/ ... 17:30:58Sheehan... mother had a stroke... leaving immediately to be with her 74-year-old mother at a Los Angeles hospital... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:13:26Yesterday, the New York Times reported that State Department analysts had warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 about the dangers of Osama bin Laden's impending move to Afghanistan. Deep in the article, the Times reports that the State Department assessment was "written July 18, 1996." Nowhere in the article does the Times mentioned what happened the day before. What happened on July 17, 1996, is that TWA Flight 800 exploded... A State Department assessment produced on July 18, 1996, was as likely to have been routine as one produced on Sept. 12, 2001... news.yahoo.com/ ... 09:08:48WEST CHESTER, Ohio - The mother of a Marine killed in Iraq urged mourners Wednesday not to let their anger and sadness turn them against the U.S. fight in Iraq... "Honor me in this way..." delivered what she believed would have been her son's own message: "It has been with the greatest pride I have served ... fighting to preserve freedom..." worldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:04:54One Texas family of a fallen Marine became so enraged with Sheehan's use of their son's name on a protest cross, they drove from the town of Spicewood to Crawford to remove it... "It's fine for people to grieve their own way. It aggravates me to see them using other people's names to further their cause..."
Debbie from Indianapolis.. called radio host Rush Limbaugh today to say her own son was wounded in Iraq when his vehicle ran over a land mine twice in one day, and he's now serving his second tour of duty. "I would never dishonor his actions by doing what this woman is doing..."
Lee Miller, who has a long list of family members in the service, wrote the China Daily newspaper to blast Mrs. Sheehan, while at the same time heaping praise on her son, Casey. "He is a better person then you will ever be. So go home and honor his name instead of dragging it in the dirt..."
"You Don't Speak for Me, Cindy" tour, a caravan of military family members who plan to converge on Crawford for a rally Aug. 27... led by Deborah Johns of Northern California Marine Moms, whose son, William, is a Marine serving in Iraq... "I am deeply sorry for Ms. Sheehan's loss; however, Ms. Sheehan's actions are only causing pain to those of us who have loved ones serving in the war against terrorism..."

Culturetoday.reuters.com/ ... 08:30:24Selling life insurance is tough in Mexico, where people live for the moment and scoff at death... hawaiireporter.com/ ... 08:22:20Native Hawaiians Seek Self-governing Body Sen. Akaka Quote: Bill Could Mean Eventual Independence for Hawaiians...

Reasons for Repealtennessean.com/ ... 10:48:02COOKEVILLE, Tenn... [Arrest of two officers], two former law enforcement officers... Four other individuals... part of the undercover sting investigation that alleges police participation in a conspiracy to ferry cocaine and launder hundreds of thousands of dollars... [Although police corruption is more likely with prohibition "crimes" than with hard crimes, another good reason for repeal, nevertheless, corruption is still corruption.]

Extraterrestrialhosted.ap.org/ ... 10:45:02After creating the most detailed analysis yet of what the Milky Way looks like, astronomers say a long bar of stars cuts on an angle through the center of the galaxy... "We've largely been ignorant of this very major structure in our galaxy for all these years..." Billions of galaxies make up the universe and are mostly spiral or elliptical in shape. Galaxies that have stellar bars cut through the center is rare, but not unheard of...

Justice?news.yahoo.com/ ... 09:27:29INDIANAPOLIS - A judge who ordered two Wicca believers to shield their son from their "non-mainstream" faith overstepped his authority, an appeals court said Wednesday in dismissing the order... The parents' appeal said there were about 1 million pagans worldwide in 2002, more than the numbers who practice Sikhism, Taoism and other established religions in the United States...

Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!breitbart.com/ ... 17:42:06A drug that promotes lean muscle growth in cattle may be turning up in heroin on the U.S. East Coast, sickening users and stoking fears of a wave of such poisonings... Clenbuterol... has also been linked to 18 other cases that surfaced in New York and four states along the Atlantic coast around the same time... azstarnet.com/ ... 09:25:52

PHOENIX - Authorities have uncovered a vast marijuana farm in a remote ravine... mile-long field included "thousands and thousands and thousands" of plants... Three [men arrested].. admitted they had been paid to tend the marijuana plants. All were illegal immigrants...

US Militaryworldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:09:54Despite being a Texas native, a registered voter and holder of a state driver's license, a decorated Marine has been denied lower in-state tuition at a community college because he spent too much time out of the state while serving two tours of duty in Iraq...

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 11:32:17

Army Sgt. Michael J. Stokely, 23, of Sharpsburg, Ga., died on Aug. 16, 2005, in Baghdad, Iraq, where an improvised explosive device detonated near his dismounted patrol. Stokely was assigned to the Army National Guard.

Only Naturalnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:26:00A strange 525 million-year-old fossil creature is baffling scientists because it does not fit neatly into any existing animal groups... might have belonged to a now extinct mollusc-like phylum... could represent an early annelid or arthropod... first described in 1979... swissinfo.org/ ... 08:21:36Several children suffering from burns injuries have been healed using skin samples grown from the cells of a miscarried foetus... second and third-degree burns... skin samples were placed on the lesions, which were then bandaged... healing process took just two weeks... several million skin samples could be constructed from just one donation of foetal skin...

Industrial Tragedyap.tbo.com/ ... 20:35:23CRESTLINE, Kan. (AP) - An explosion killed two people and injured three others Thursday at a fireworks storage site...

Theftnbc5i.com/ ... 10:48:55DALLAS... Police... issued a crime alert recently because an unknown number of thieves have targeted the unguarded personal items while the owners' attention is drawn to the [movie] screen...

Digital Threatworldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:20:5325-year-old former AOL employee managed to steal 92 million AOL screen names and sell them to a "spammer..." Yesterday, he was sentenced to 15 months in prison...

9/11 - still with usworldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:12:05the U.S. Navy is using ten tons of steel from the World Trade Center to build a new warship that will help defend the nation from terrorism... The USS New York... scheduled to be commissioned in 2008...

Threatsnews.yahoo.com/ ... 17:37:48An "electronic nappy" used to monitor wetness sparked a bomb alert in a German post office when it arrived in a parcel ticking suspiciously... mosnews.com/ ... 09:22:38[MosNews] Many gunmen who had taken hundreds of schoolchildren and their parents hostage in the South Russian town of Beslan a year ago owe their escape from the school stormed by the security forces to people dressed in police uniforms, a former hostage, Inga Kharebova, told a court where the only hostage-taker detained by the authorities — Nurpasha Kulayev — is currently facing trial... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:10:47two men were arrested near Istanbul trying to sell 173 grams of Russian enriched uranium to undercover Turkish police... [ad, not article]

Disturbing Family Patternsap.tbo.com/ ... 20:33:45KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - A slain little girl, long known only as Precious Doe, was buried Thursday and mourned by the residents and investigators who kept the search for her family and her killers alive for four years. The marble grave marker in a city cemetery bears her picture and more importantly, her name, Erica Michelle Marie Green... identified this spring and her mother and stepfather were charged with murder... today.reuters.com/ ... 08:28:36Huabei Oilfield Co., based in Renqiu, Hebei province, Friday issued a new policy saying divorced laid-off employees could return to work... "Following these rules, laid-off employees just have to have a divorce certificate and they are qualified for re-employment..."

People Dieap.tbo.com/ ... 20:31:56PROVO, Utah - Four friends who disappeared while exploring a cave near Provo were found dead Thursday in a narrow, underwater passageway between its chambers... two women and two men, ages 18 to 28... today.reuters.com/ ... 08:27:14an east German lake near the Polish border... the fish pulled the fishing rod out of the man's hands and dragged it about 100 metres away from shore... The man took off his clothes and swam after the pole... eyewitness said the man reached the rod floating on the surface but then suddenly stopped moving... swam out to help him and pulled the fisherman back to shore, where he was later pronounced dead...

Transport Tragedyap.tbo.com/ ... 08:24:04A fishing boat rescued nine people clinging to buoys and a wooden box, the sole survivors from a boat carrying 113 emigrants bound for the United States that capsized off Colombia's Pacific coast...

Nature is Dangerousbreitbart.com/ ... 17:37:19

MOUND VALLEY, Kan. -- [17-year-old girl] who was posing for her senior high school pictures at an animal sanctuary Thursday... with [a] 7-year-old tiger, which was being restrained by its handler... when the animal attacked [and killed] her... Officers and handlers killed the animal...news.telegraph.co.uk/ ... 10:42:21

lions have a fascination for the Mercedes-built Smart car... the tiniest of tiny cars... slightly bigger than a vacuum cleaner... Compared with most other vehicles it is the closest thing to providing a possible tasty snack: crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside... "This started when a couple of girls went round the enclosure in a Smart car. It is a pretty rare car and the lions took an interest in it. They ran across to get a closer view and the girls panicked. As they put their foot down the lions thought, 'The chase is on.'..." news.telegraph.co.uk/ ... 10:25:05

Increasing numbers of lions are becoming man-eaters, placing lion conservation efforts in jeopardy... since 1990 lions have killed more than 563 Tanzanians in rural areas... old people, nursing mothers, children playing outside their homes and people dragged from their beds... Lions often select smaller dwellings where it is more likely that there will be only one person. People are also often attacked when visiting outdoor lavatories... About 39 per cent of attacks happen during the March-May harvest season, when farmers often sleep in their fields to protect their crop from the pigs. "The lions often follow the pigs in and pull people off the platforms on which they sleep...Once they have figured out that humans are food they will go into houses and drag someone out of bed, whether young mothers or old women asleep..." Analysis suggests... Pig-control strategies, such as protective ditches around fields, offer the best hope for reducing encounters between lions and people. These measures would reduce the need for village farmers to sleep in their fields... timesonline.co.uk/ ... 10:07:45

A fatal attack on a fisherman who was dragged from his canoe by a crocodile has been described as “avoidable” by authorities... pulled into the water as the crocodile lunged at him as he attempted to fight it off with an oar... His wife... swam ashore to safety... rescuers... have yet to find his body... a 400kg (880lb) crocodile that is believed [responsible] had been shot dead... a tour operator, was “flabbergasted” that the couple had ventured on to the water in a canoe past warning signs. “People have fished that river quite often but they’re usually in a 14ft dinghy — much wider, much more stable, and more imposing for the crocodiles,”... ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:23:38More than 300 animals in North Dakota have died from anthrax in what officials call the worst outbreak among livestock in state history. In South Dakota, at least 200 cattle have been killed... Spores that cause anthrax can sit dormant in the ground for as long 100 years... "It just sits there and waits for the right environmental conditions to come around..."

Sick, Sick, Sickbreitbart.com/ ... 17:32:06BTK serial killer Dennis Rader was ordered to serve 10 consecutive life terms Thursday... kansascity.com/ ... 08:10:05A stone-faced and silent BTK Police describe their interrogations and evidence in the 10 slayings that terrorized Wichita... [savage details]

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 20:36:17LUMPKIN, Ga. (AP) - A man on parole opened fire from the steps of this small town's courthouse early Thursday, wounding the police chief, a deputy and a paramedic who was rushing to their aid. The gunman was killed a few hours later after taking two hostages... expatica.com/ ... 09:24:08A Moroccan suspected of involvement in the Madrid train bombings has been arrested in Belgrade... picked up by Serbian police when he presented false Iraqi identity papers during a routine check... forbes.com/ ... 08:18:12Two US soldiers were killed and two others were wounded when a homemade bomb struck their armoured vehicle in southern Afghanistan... breakingnews.iol.ie/ ... 08:17:56Saudi security forces battled suspected al-Qaida militants across the kingdom today, killing four wanted extremists in the capital and clashing with armed men in the holy city of Medina... at least one suspected militant was arrested in Riyadh and an unspecified number were detained in Medina... telegraphindia.com/ ... 00:19:40A wave of fear struck Bangladesh this morning as over 500 crude bombs exploded almost simultaneously across towns and cities, killing two persons and injuring about 140... targeted government offices, courts, press clubs and universities in Dhaka and 63 of the country’s 64 district headquarters... Leaflets left at blast sites... “It is time to implement Islamic law… there is no future with man-made law...We are warning Bush and Blair to abandon occupation of Muslim countries. NGOs are warned to stop anti-Islamic activities… else they will be completely uprooted.”... [Mass-murdering madmen talking about "law" as if they had a clue!]

WED 2005-AUG-17

Print is Deadlaweekly.com/ ... 18:59:45Every major movie studio is rethinking its reliably humongous display ad buys in those papers because those newsosaur readers are, to quote one mogul, “older and elitist” compared to younger, low-brow filmgoers — so it makes no sense to waste the dough... at least two Hollywood movie studios have decided to drastically cut their newspaper display ads as soon as possible...

Why People Go Carnivoreboston.com/ ... 18:38:35[NEED A CHICKEN?] More than 700 aging chickens have been plucked from the jaws of death. A Vacaville animal sanctuary and several humane societies saved the old cluckers from slaughter after the new owner of a former egg farm reported not knowing what to do with the birds he inadvertently purchased along with the property. Rescuers hope to find good homes for the hens, which are past their egg-laying primes...

Now That's Funny!chinadaily.com.cn/ ... 15:34:20China paper takes WorldNetDaily Sheehan story Beijing unilaterally launches new content-sharing agreement...

Digital Culturewiki.photoblogs.org/ ... 13:22:47Photoblog vs Moblog... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:33:33We need to stop thinking at the application level if we're going to build a wired world, reckons technology analyst Bill Thompson... a two-year research project looking at how geographic information systems and mobile technologies could be used to help people and communities share information... built a system which lets you write notes that are associated with a particular point in space like a building or street junction. Anyone with a suitably-equipped mobile phone can read the tags when they are in the right place... point was to experiment with place-based authoring in public spaces... much of the serious thinking about the future of computing is shaped by two core ideas: free and open... Free software... and open everything, from source code to scientific research to government departments... see public authoring as... something which ties in closely with the ongoing discussion about blogging and citizen journalism... In the networked world, standalone software doesn't exist... We need standard programming interfaces and data definitions... The danger here is... that we won't be able to cope with the complexity of interactions that these links create and will see a combinatorial explosion of possibilities that will overwhelm us... ... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:57:19The first thing that strikes most people about Wikipedia, if they think about it at all, is a fear: if an idiot like me can get into this thing, might it not be full of mistakes, or at least mediocre drivel?.. Bloggers have covered this topic well... an encyclopaedia that doesn't have to worry about how many pages it has... An enormous reference work that you neither have to buy, nor have to lug home the 680,000 articles is one thing, but the Wikimedia Foundation is moving into areas such as news and a dictionary, and similar principles were behind the development of some of the most important software on the planet...

Whoops!breitbart.com/ ... 19:03:22After eating at a Jersey shore restaurant, Elliott Stein and his girlfriend were handed a bill that said "Jew Couple" near the bottom, as a table identifier used by the waitstaff... The server... is no longer working at the restaurant... a spokesman for the restaurant.. said it had been the waitstaff's practice to use descriptions of diners to identify them on checks, instead of using the number of their table....boston.com/ ... 18:39:23FORT SMITH, Ark. --Police say a man who broke into a car severed his left wrist on some shards of glass, then kicked in a door to the car owner's home and asked for help... sg.news.yahoo.com/ ... 13:20:08Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged that he was absent-minded after forgetting to bless the hundreds of pilgrims who attended his weekly audience at his Castel Gandolfo summer residence... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:36:17Two men who tried to steal gasoline from a construction company instead filled the tank of their car with off-road-grade diesel fuel Sunday...

Culturetoday.reuters.com/ ... 09:54:26A replica Viking ship made of 15 million ice cream sticks is to be launched in Amsterdam on Tuesday by a former Hollywood stuntman who hopes eventually to sail it across the Atlantic... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:39:38The American Beverage Association is recommending limiting the availability of soft drinks in schools across the country, a move that comes amid increased pressure to curb the epidemic of childhood obesity... money.cnn.com/ ... 09:13:58Gas prices around the world... The main factor in price disparities between countries is government policy...
Amsterdam $6.48... Oslo $6.27... Milan $5.96...

Only Naturalnews.independent.co.uk/ ... 15:34:55Britain's only native squirrel is facing extinction and the Government is backing a policy dubbed "squirrel apartheid" to separate the red squirrel from his larger grey American cousin...

Supernaturalworldnetdaily.com/ ... 15:32:07first-time skydiver... 3,500-foot plunge... attempting a static line jump in which the skydiver is attached to the plane with a tether that automatically pulls the rip cord... immediately began spinning in circles at a speed of about 50 miles per hour, preventing him from controlling the chute... failed to open properly... "I said, 'OK, well, I trust you, I believe in you, and if there's any way, I'd love to see my family again, so help me out here...' And I just felt – I got to say, I just felt like the biggest hug in the world and just this warm embrace. It was the most amazing thing ever. And at that point, I thought, either way, this is going to turn out good, so, and here I am. I don't know how..." came away with only a broken leg, broken jaw and some internal injuries... officials say, he hit a soft patch of ground...

US Militarydefenselink.mil/ ... 13:11:55This 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 Marine Corps and Coast Guard numbers decreased. The net collective result is 648 more reservists mobilized than last week. At any given time, services may mobilize some units and individuals while demobilizing others, making it possible for these figures to either increase or decrease. Total number currently on active duty in support of the partial mobilization for the Army National Guard and Army Reserve is 118,443; Navy Reserve, 4,114; Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve, 10,074; Marine Corps Reserve, 8,864; and the Coast Guard Reserve, 543. This brings the total National Guard and Reserve personnel, who have been mobilized, to 142,038, including both units and individual augmentees.ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:39:02TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. - A man serving probation in a fraud case has been charged with deserting the Marine Corps 40 years ago to avoid being sent to Vietnam... left his unit in California in 1965 at age 24... arrested Tuesday... charged with desertion...

Justice?voanews.com/ ... 09:29:04Militant Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir and 17 of those involved in the 2002 terrorist bombings in Bali have had their prison sentences reduced to mark Indonesia's Independence Day... cut four-and-a-half months from the 30-month prison sentence that Abu Bakar Bashir received for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, including many foreign tourists...

Reasons for Repealtoday.reuters.com/ ... 09:47:33

a herd of Russian cows... will be fed confiscated marijuana over the cold months... after they were forced to destroy the sunflowers and maize crops that the 40 tonnes of marijuana had been planted among... "There is simply no other way out. You see, the fields are planted with feed crops and if we remove it all the cows will have nothing to eat. I don't know what the milk will be like after this..." ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:31:16ust when Oklahoma finally found a way to put its homegrown methamphetamine labs out of business, drug agents began finding more meth from Mexican cartels on the street... ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:16:51Six people discovered dead or dying in lower Manhattan over the last week may have been killed by the same bad batch of heroin...

Human Rightap.tbo.com/ ... 00:15:30Attorneys for 21 gay couples and Gov. Jennifer Granholm asked a judge Tuesday to rule that Michigan's constitution does not prevent governments and universities from providing health insurance and other benefits to partners of gay employees...

World Without Bordersap.tbo.com/ ... 00:15:04Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman secured a deal Tuesday for his state to export $17 million in agricultural goods to communist Cuba, starting with the first U.S. shipment of great northern beans to the island since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959...

Theftboston.com/ ... 18:41:45A former Oakland man has been sentenced to five years in prison for wire fraud after he persuaded people to invest more than $650,000 in the fake bank he ran out of his apartment, the U.S. Attorney's office announced Monday...

Natural Threathosted.ap.org/ ... 13:16:56Water containing small amounts of radiation spilled out of spent fuel storage pools at two nuclear power plants in northern Japan when a powerful magnitude-7.2 earthquake shook the region... did not leak radiation outside the compounds and workers were not exposed... Water in spent fuel storage pools splashed against the walls during the quake, and some entered wall-mounted ventilation duct openings... leakage has now been cleaned up... [THIS time...]

Sick, Sick, Sicktoday.reuters.com/ ... 09:48:52the family of one of the victims of last year's tsunami disaster received a hoax e-mail claiming their relative had been found alive in a Thai hospital... purporting to come from a non-governmental organization called "Missing Tsunami Victims..." did not overtly request money.. police suspect that fraud might be the motive...

Digital Threattoday.reuters.com/ ... 09:46:18Computer worms... are starting to attack each other... "We seem to have a botwar on our hands... There appear to be three different virus-writing gangs turning out new worms at an alarming rate, as if they were competing to build the biggest network of infected machines... The latest variants of Bozori even remove competing viruses like Zotob from the infected machines..." today.reuters.com/ ... 09:43:31universities across the United States are finding themselves on the front lines of the battle against identity theft... huge databases... Nearly half of the publicized incidents of data breach since January occurred at universities...

Police Riotboston.com/ ... 18:40:19RICHMOND, Calif... security camera showed at least six Richmond police officers pouring cold beverages behind the counter of a closed cookie shop while searching for a gunman at a mall... management of the Mrs. Fields Original Cookies store at Hilltop Mall reported the incident after a security camera captured officers on July 15 helping themselves to icy beverages from dispensers... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:37:30A man who was hit with a Taser gun after police accused him of stealing a salad from Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant has... agreed to drop his $500,000 civil-rights lawsuit in exchange for prosecutors dropping five of six charges filed against him. He pleaded no contest to disturbing the peace... Police used a Taser on Gale in front of his children in February after employees accused him of trying to eat at the salad bar without paying. The investigation concluded that Gale did pay for the salad... used the wrong type of plate to fill up at the salad bar and refused to provide a receipt that showed he had paid...

9/11 - still with ustoday.reuters.com/ ... 09:44:44As America nears the fourth anniversary of the bloodiest attacks on its soil, filmmakers and TV producers are clamoring to dramatize events surrounding the suicide hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people and ignited the U.S. war on terrorism... nytimes.com/ ... 09:30:28A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly. The officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the bureau... lawyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States...

Transport Tragedyap.tbo.com/ ... 09:33:38A 5-year-old boy who was aboard the Cypriot airliner that crashed in Greece was still alive after the plane slammed into a mountainous area north of Athens, a coroner said Wednesday... suffered extensive injuries to his head and body.. would have been unlikely to have survived... "The one sure fact is that the passengers were alive when the plane crashed..." alertnet.org/ ... 09:26:37Spanish investigators suspect an accident rather than an attack caused the military helicopter crash in Afghanistan that killed all 17 Spanish soldiers on board... armed forces still were not completely ruling out that the helicopter may have been shot down...

Rebuildingscrappleface.com/ ... 09:16:16As the midnight deadline approached, debate in the Assembly focused on whether to attribute the incomplete assignment to a recent three-day sandstorm, the hungry dog or the fact that the Baghdad library had loaned out a key historical reference book, making it impossible to complete the constitutional footnotes in a timely fashion. A motion to offer the excuse "we overslept" was defeated by a narrow margin, as was a resolution blaming the delay on an empty inkjet cartridge...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spinwashingtonpost.com/ ... 13:19:46A file folder containing papers from Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr.'s work on affirmative action more than 20 years ago disappeared from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library after its review by two lawyers from the White House and the Justice Department in July, according to officials at the library and the National Archives and Records Administration. Archivists said the lawyers returned the file but it now cannot be located. No duplicates of the folder's contents were made before the lawyers' review. Although one of the lawyers has assisted in the Archives' attempt to reconstruct its contents from other files, officials have no way of independently verifying their effort was successful... today.reuters.com/ ... 09:54:06Afghanistan is looking for a new national anthem... today.reuters.com/ ... 09:50:02Few can denounce the "imperialist ogre" or "kingpin of evil" as well as the writers at North Korea's official news agency, and a California graphic artist is now cataloging their rhetorical masterpieces on a Web site... www.nk-news.net... "over 50 megabytes of hard-core Stalinist propaganda ... each article written in the unique and indelible style of the KCNA..." americandaily.com/ ... 09:14:33On April 4, 2004, Army Specialist Casey Sheehan died for his country and for what he believed. After enlisting in the Army in 2000, Casey Sheehan reenlisted for a second tour knowing full well that he could be sent to fight in Iraq. In late March, 2004, he was stationed with the 82nd Field Artillery Regiment as a mechanic. Despite the fact Sheehan was in a noncombatant position with the Army, in his first week on base, Sheehan volunteered to go on a dangerous mission into the heart of the Iraqi insurgency in Sadr City and was killed in action...

Disturbing Family Patternswashtimes.com/ ... 09:30:52Single-adult households have displaced two-parent families with children as the most common kind of U.S. household... ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:19:11MACON, Ga. - A woman was charged Tuesday with leaving her newborn baby in a Wal-Mart bathroom toilet, covered in trash and tissue paper. The child survived... Georgia has a law letting a mother leave a newborn at any medical facility within a week of birth without fear of prosecution...

Nature is Dangerousap.tbo.com/ ... 00:18:14A lightning strike amid a drenching rainstorm Tuesday sent 19 Fort Benning soldiers to the hospital. Most of the soldiers were treated at Martin Army Community Hospital and released, although four remained hospitalized overnight for observation... were injured even after they spread out as a precaution against lightning... "They had them ground their equipment so they weren't holding weapons.. They did all the right things..."

Threatsopinionjournal.com/ ... 13:18:40The Senate is poised to sanction the creation of a racially exclusive government by and for Native Hawaiians who satisfy a blood test. The new race-based sovereign that would be summoned into being by the so-called Akaka Bill would operate outside the U.S. Constitution and the nation's most cherished civil rights statutes. Indeed, the champions of the proposed legislation boast that the new Native Hawaiian entity could secede from the Union like the Confederacy, but without the necessity of shelling Fort Sumter. The Akaka Bill classifies citizens by race, defying the express provisions of the 14th Amendment. It also rests on a betrayal of express commitments made by its sponsors a decade ago, and asserts as true many false statements about the history of Hawaii. It should be defeated... ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:16:32LOS ANGELES - A Pakistani citizen has been arrested following an investigation into a possible plot to attack the Israeli Consulate, California National Guard facilities and other targets...

Violencevoanews.com/ ... 18:56:54Despite Wednesday's violence including a lethal attack by an Israeli settler in the West Bank, U.S. officials are hopeful the withdrawal will go forward and improve the political climate in the region. The settler attack killed three Palestinians and wounded two others and came in the midst of emotional scenes in Gaza, as Israeli troops forcibly evicted settlers there... suntimes.com/ ... 15:20:36Three car bombs exploded near a bus station and hospital in Baghdad Wednesday, killing at least 43 people and wounding 89... A suicide car bomber targeting policemen detonated his vehicle outside the Nahda bus station in central Baghdad, one of the city's major transit points... A second car exploded in the open-air station's parking lot near buses that carry passengers to Amarah and Basra, Shiite-dominated cities in southern Iraq... About 30 minutes later, a suicide bomber exploded his vehicle near the Kindi Hospital as many of the wounded were arriving for treatment... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:34:23DHAKA, Bangladesh... Dozens of small bomb blasts... killed at least one person, wounded at least 44... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:32:10TAIZE, France - Brother Roger, the 90-year-old founder of a religious community dedicated to ecumenicism and peace, was stabbed to death by a woman at an evening prayer service attended by 2,500 people... Brother Roger founded the Taize religious community in 1940 emphasizing the need for all Christians to come together in peace, love and reconciliation... voanews.com/ ... 09:28:37Cities and towns across Bangladesh were rocked by dozens of near simultaneous bomb blasts Wednesday, injuring some 40 people and triggering widespread panic. Officials say small bombs exploded at government buildings, courts and other key installations in at least 13 cities, including the capital, Dhaka, and the southern port city of Chittagong... Police say they have arrested at least six people... police say they suspect the bombing were carried out by a banned Islamic group - Jamatul Mujahedin Bangladesh - whose leaflets were found at some of the blast sites... called for the establishment of Islamic rule in Bangladesh, a predominantly Muslim country with a secular constitution... ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:14:36ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Authorities have charged a former Marine marksman with shooting down a sheriff's helicopter...

TUE 2005-AUG-16

US Executive Branchnews.yahoo.com/ ... 23:24:15Armstrong, 33, a cancer survivor who has won seven straight Tour de France competitions, will ride with Bush, 59, on the 1,600-acre (650-hectare) ranch on Saturday. "The president has said that Lance is an incredible inspiration to people from all walks of life, that he's a true American champion, so I think they'll enjoy their visit on Saturday..."

Whoops!boston.com/ ... 13:53:33A home invasion was solved by a phone's redial button when an accused burglar in this west Georgia town allegedly used the phone to call his mother for a ride after breaking in...

Preternatural Patternstoday.reuters.com/ ... 10:54:37UK police said Monday they were searching for a man wearing just a diaper, who approaches women late at night and asks: "Are there any baby changing facilities around here?.."

US Militarydefenselink.mil/ ... 23:16:18U.S. Department of Defense - Israeli Ministry of Defense Joint Press Statement
The strategic alliance between the United States and Israel reflects common understandings of the global security environment. In this cooperative relationship, the United States and Israel share information and consult on possible threats to U.S. and Israeli defense interests. The U.S. Department of Defense and the Israeli Ministry of Defense have signed an understanding that is designed to remedy problems of the past that seriously affected the technology security relationship between their defense establishments and which begins to restore confidence in the technology security area. In the coming months additional steps will be taken to restore confidence fully. The signing of this understanding underscores the commitment of the U.S. and Israel to work together to address global security challenges. Cooperation between the U.S. and Israel is important to the security of the Middle East and we expect that cooperation to continue.

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 23:18:16

Army Spc. Jose L. Ruiz, 28, of Brentwood, N.Y., died on August 15, 2005, in Mosul, Iraq, when he was conducting security operations and enemy forces using small arms fire drove by his position in a civilian vehicle.defenselink.mil/ ... 23:17:29

Army Sgt. Thomas J. Strickland, 27, of Douglasville, Ga.

Army Spc. Joshua P. Dingler, 19, of Hiram, Ga.

Army Sgt. Paul A. Saylor, 21, of Norcross, Ga.
died on August 15, 2005, in Al Mahmudiyah, Iraq, when their HMMWV accidentally rolled over into a canal.defenselink.mil/ ... 12:59:39

Army Staff Sgt. Asbury F. Hawn, II, 35, of Lebanon, Tenn.

Army Spc. Gary L. Reese, Jr., 22, of Ashland City, Tenn.

Army Sgt. Shannon D. Taylor, 30, of Smithville, Tenn.
died on Aug. 14, 2005, in Tuz, Iraq, of injuries sustained on Aug. 13, 2005, in Tuz, Iraq, where they were conducting a mounted patrol. Their HMMWV came under attack by enemy forces using rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire.

Extraterrestrialnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:52:06The Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev... current commander of the International Space Station... has broken the record for the most cumulative time in space - clocking up 748 days in orbit on Tuesday...

Science Marches Onnnnnnnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 16:40:27The world's first pure nerve stem cells made from human embryonic stem cells has been created by scientists at the Universities of Edinburgh and Milan... mobiledia.com/ ... 10:37:46Physicists in Singapore have succeeded in creating the first paper battery that generates electricity from urine...

Only Naturalmsnbc.msn.com/ ... 00:00:47pain-sensing nerves respond to the sulfur-based chemicals in garlic... the same mechanism the body uses to react to the sharpness of chili peppers and hot mustards like wasabi...

Violencethepittsburghchannel.com/ ... 16:42:01PITTSBURGH -- A man pleaded guilty to charges he drugged and sexually assaulted seven women and photographed and videotaped the attacks... worldtribune.com/ ... 16:39:55BAGHDAD — Al Qaida has deployed bombs laced with toxins in an attempt to increase the lethality of attacks in Iraq. On Aug. 9, the U.S.-led coalition found a suspected chemicals factory in Mosul with 1,500 gallons of chemicals. A statement by the Multi-National Force said the facility was used to develop the bombs mixed with toxins...
U.S. military sources said Iraq has killed a senior aide of Al Qaida network leader Abu Mussib Al Zarqawi... Mohammed Saleh Sultan was killed in an ambush in Mosul on Aug. 12...

London 2005-Julyitv.com/ ... 16:41:30The crucial mistake that ultimately led to his death was made at 9.30am when Jean Charles left his flat in Scotia Road, South London. Surveillance officers wrongly believed he could have been Hussain Osman, one of the prime suspects, or another terrorist suspect... timesonline.co.uk/ ... 16:38:13The Brazilian electrician mistakenly killed by police in the aftermath of the second London bombings was being restrained by an officer before he was shot eight times as he was sitting on a Tube train... did not run away from police... was wearing only a denim jacket... did not realise anyone was following him... used his season ticket and did not vault the barrier... only began to run when he saw a train pull into the station and as many commuters do he quickened his pace to catch it... took his seat... was shot at virtually point blank range as he was still in his seat... shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder...

People Dienews.telegraph.co.uk/ ... 11:32:29three-year-old girl... died on a beach after she was trapped in a 5 ft hole dug in the sand... the walls of the pit collapsed as she played with her five-year-old brother... stepfather.. pulled [the boy] out but was unable to rescue [her]. Lifeguards, coastguards, firefighters and paramedics also tried in vain... [she] was buried for 30 minutes... Rescuer: "I kept digging and digging, but the sand kept coming back, falling in. I was frantic. Other people tried to dig, but it was just no good..."

Sex can be Dangerousnews.telegraph.co.uk/ ... 11:29:45A married primary school teacher was jailed for 15 months yesterday after admitting an affair with a 14-year-old boy... husband found the schoolboy hiding in a wardrobe at their home... According to her victim's parents, the "plain little woman" left their son's life in ruins...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spinwashingtonpost.com/ ... 23:31:26On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Sheehan announced plans to move the camp from the drainage ditches next to the winding road about two miles from Bush's 1,600-acre spread to a field on a ranch offered by one of Bush's neighbors. The new camp would be about a mile from the president's ranch. All that would be left behind at the original site would be three tents and hundreds of white wooden crosses bearing the names of troops killed in Iraq. The move followed complaints by about 60 of Bush's neighbors, who petitioned McLennan County officials to expand a no-parking zone around the camp, in an effort to avert the traffic tie-ups that have become commonplace as the protest has grown... alertnet.org/ ... 16:33:58Some 800 white wooden crosses, bearing the names of soldiers killed in Iraq like her son, have lined the road near the area where Sheehan has pitched a tent. Witnesses said they saw a truck dragging a pipe and chains drive over some of the crosses on Monday night. Larry Northern, 46, of nearby Waco, Texas, was arrested and charged with criminal mischief... nytimes.com/ ... 11:25:26"Other editors said they get calls from readers who are hearing stories from returning troops of the good things they have accomplished while there, and readers find that at odds with the generally gloomy portrayal in the papers of what's going on in Iraq..." editors realized that some questions were impossible to answer. For example, she said, the editors understood that it was much easier to add up the number of dead than to determine how many hospitals received power on a particular day or how many schools were built... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 11:18:13

Pres Bush kisses Cindy Sheehan 2004-Jun-18... The photos were originally posted on a Sheehan family website featuring a large number of photos, but the images including President Bush posing with the family have since been removed from the original page, though they are still available in cached Google versions...

Threatstoday.reuters.com/ ... 10:53:44The United States has issued a tender for up to 80 million doses of a smallpox vaccine to guard against terrorist attack, worth over $1 billion, vaccine-makers said on Tuesday...

Police Riotap.tbo.com/ ... 10:50:53CINCINNATI - The city agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by a woman whose 5-year-old son was handcuffed by police after a fight on a school bus... The boy needed therapy, has switched schools and no longer rides a bus operated by the Petermann Bus Co... officers... were later reprimanded for violating policy...

Digital Threatcnn.com/ ... 23:22:25A fast-moving computer worm Tuesday attacked computer systems using Microsoft operating systems, shutting down computers in the United States, Germany and Asia... offices on Capitol Hill... including CNN, ABC and The New York Times. The Caterpillar Co. in Peoria, Illinois, reportedly also had problems... administrative office at San Francisco International Airport... affects primarily Windows 2000, it also can affect some early versions of Microsoft XP... news.zdnet.com/ ... 10:28:47As of Monday morning on the West Coast, the original Zotob.A had infected about 50 computers worldwide, and the first variant, Zotob.B, had compromised about 1,000 systems... While early reports on Zotob suggested it was spreading rapidly, the impact of the worm has actually been restricted because it targets PCs running Windows 2000... poses no threat to computers running the newer Windows XP and Windows Server 2003...

Transport Tragedyap.tbo.com/ ... 10:48:07Officials on Tuesday said they had found only the exterior container of the cockpit voice recorder from a Cypriot airliner crash that killed 121 people... Autopsies on the bodies of 20 people on board, including one flight attendant, show they were alive when the plane went down... bloomberg.com/ ... 10:18:56A Colombian airliner with 152 people on board crashed in a mountainous region in western Venezuela

MON 2005-AUG-15

Sex -- always attractivemsnbc.msn.com/ ... 23:57:39the teen fiction section, where the trend is now more “Sex and the City” than “Nancy Drew.”... Racy novels are being snatched off the bookshelves by young girls... has some experts concerned... father has sex with his daughter... teens make plans for an oral sex party... student-teacher affair... publishing’s fastest-growing segment... 13-year-olds are devouring the “Gossip Girl” series, stories of rich kids with access to money, drugs and sex... Experts say books like these are gratuitous — even dangerous — and parents need to know that...

Transportfoxnews.com/ ... 23:32:47English police shut down a major highway Friday — to retrieve a child's... stuffed tiger [which] flew out of the open sunroof... landed in the central median, right in the middle of six lanes of speeding traffic... officers to set up a rolling roadblock, which gave [one officer] space to dart out of his patrol car and pick up the doll...

Why People Go Carnivorefoxnews.com/ ... 10:27:18

PETA is condemning a sushi fundraiser for the Florida Aquarium in Tampa, which is to be held at the aquarium...

Digital Cultureabcnews.go.com/ ... 23:47:59A provider of Internet phone calls is challenging new Federal Communication Commission rules requiring the company to ensure reliable 911 emergency call service... "the 120-day requirement imposed by the FCC is arbitrary and capricious and without support in the record..." forbes.com/ ... 17:06:24For the first time since its November 2004 release, the superfast Firefox lost share of total online use... news.yahoo.com/ ... 10:20:10Typing on a Das Keyboard is a lot like typing on any other computer keyboard — except the keys are blank... [unmentioned in the article, this would be good for folks converting from Qwerty to Dvorak layout]

Whoops!ananova.com/ ... 10:11:46Italian postman... filled his home with thousands of letters... almost every room at the home.. jammed with sacks full of letters... thousands more stuffed in the boot and under the seats of his car, and even in the garden shed. Locals had complained that none of them had received a single letter or package through the post since March... "It appears he was just plain lazy and couldn't be bothered to deliver the letters..."

Supernaturaleitb24.com/ ... 08:37:57Pope Benedict XVI has backed the display of crucifixes in public buildings, saying that God should be present in public life...

Print is Deadpoynter.org/ ... 07:57:38Over the past ten years the newsroom of Nytimes.com and the newsroom on 43rd Street have been partners at a distance -- separated administratively, culturally, geographically and financially... all of us appreciate that one of the biggest long-term challenges facing our craft is to invent a digital journalism... We have concluded that our best chance of meeting that challenge is to integrate the two newsrooms into one...

US Militarymsnbc.msn.com/ ... 23:59:03A Navy plane skidded to a safe landing Monday after circling Norfolk Naval Station for two hours because its landing gear would not deploy...

Only Naturalabcnews.go.com/ ... 23:53:10

Los Angeles lake... a giant crocodile-like caiman... Since a gardener spotted it last Friday, people have tried to glimpse the 200-pound reptile... boston.com/ ... 22:53:30BIG SANDY, Mont. --Thousands of quarter-sized toads have invaded this north-central Montana farming community, causing slippery streets and raising the entrepreneurial spirits of some... "Poor little toads... Everyone keeps running them over. They have nowhere to go..." Some are collecting the toads with plans to sell them to pet stores. Others are talking about trying them out as fish bait...

Justice?msnbc.msn.com/ ... 00:00:03The only woman ever executed in Georgia’s electric chair is being granted a posthumous pardon, 60 years after the black maid was put to death for killing a white man she claimed held her in slavery and threatened her life... was sentenced to die following a one-day trial before an all-white, all-male jury in Georgia... “I believe she’s somewhere around God’s throne and can look down and smile,” said Baker’s grandnephew Roosevelt Curry, who has led the family’s effort to clear her name... boston.com/ ... 22:52:03The Nebraska Commission on Judicial Qualifications has publicly reprimanded Douglas County Judge John Huber for snide comments he made from the bench. The commission said in one case, Huber made a litigant cry and, after the case was resolved, told her, "Stop it. Grow up. That doesn't make me feel bad for you in any way..."

Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!sfgate.com/ ... 22:44:35

Sweeney said that as the proprietor of the store, the man had a right to inspect customers' goods in order to ensure they weren't dangerous or illegal before shipping them. Officers from the Special Enforcement Unit opened the stuffed animal and found a ball consisting of 30 feet of cellophane layered with yellow mustard and powdered carpet deodorizer surrounding a heat-sealed package of marijuana, according to police. Police said such packaging commonly is used by drug dealers to put drug detection dogs off the scent...

Digital Future is Nowcbsnews.com/ ... 23:41:42Broadband over Power Lines (BPL), with investments from big-name companies including Google and IBM, is beginning to move beyond small trial projects to deploying systems for large communities... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 22:28:26Japanese researchers have developed a flexible artificial skin that could give robots a humanlike sense of touch...

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 16:38:06

Army Spc. Toccara R. Green, 23, of Rosedale, Md., died on Aug. 14, 2005, in Al Asad, Iraq, where multiple improvised explosive devices detonated near her unit during convoy operations.defenselink.mil/ ... 16:37:00

Army Spc. Rusty W. Bell, 21, of Pocahontas, Ark., died on Aug. 12, 2005, in Taji, Iraq, of non-combat related injuries.defenselink.mil/ ... 16:36:18

Army Spc. Brian K. Derks, 21, of White Cloud, Michigan, died on Aug. 13, 2005, in Baghdad, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated while he was on mounted patrol.defenselink.mil/ ... 16:35:36

Army 1st Lt. David L. Giaimo, 24, of Waukegan, Ill., died Aug. 12, 2005, in Tikrit, Iraq, where his HMMWV hit a land mine.defenselink.mil/ ... 16:32:52

Army Capt. Jeremy A. Chandler, 30, of Clarksville, Tenn., died Aug. 11 in Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan, while he was conducting training operations at Forward Operating Base Ripley.

Natural Threatpopsci.com/ ... 10:16:28

The banana as we know it is on a crash course toward extinction. For scientists, the battle to resuscitate the world’s favorite fruit has begun—a race against time that just may be too late to win... A global effort is now under way to save the fruit—an effort defined by two opposing visions of how best to address the looming crisis... On one side are traditional banana growers... trying to create a replacement plant... On the other side are bioengineers...

Reasons for Repealnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:47:07A mayor in breakaway Somaliland is trying to cut down on the problems caused by khat, a mild stimulant, by moving dealers to the outskirts of the city... Dealers, however, say there is no point trying to restrict their activities... Khat is a natural amphetamine derived from the leaves of the catha edilus plant... Addicts - mostly men - will spend all their money on the drug, while their children have nothing to eat. And khat is also blamed for the small plastic bags which litter the city... Single mother-of-three Amina Derie has been selling khat for three years and is unrepentant. She says the trade allows her to buy food for her children. "I even pay their school fees through it. Thanks to God, I am comfortable," she said with a knowing smile...

Nature is Dangerousmsnbc.msn.com/ ... 23:55:29earthquake... preliminary magnitude of 6.8 struck the northeast coast of Japan... [USGS at this point says 7.2] shaking buildings nearly 200 miles away in Tokyo... Eighty people were injured when the roof of an indoor pool collapsed in the coastal city of Sendai... None.. critical... two people injured in the neighboring prefecture of Iwata... A 4-inch tsunami reached the Japanese shore about 15 minutes after the quake struck... no major damage immediately reported... cbsnews.com/ ... 23:46:04According to the National Weather Service, the odds of getting struck by lightning are one in 700,000. But for Carl Mize, the odds are much greater. Mize, a University of Oklahoma physical plant worker, has been struck four times, most recently earlier this month... "I have a hole in my tennis shoe..."
"I enjoy being outside. It's all right. I just need to stay in when the clouds are around..." ctv.ca/ ... 22:26:52A magnitude-6.8 earthquake hit northern Japan on Tuesday, triggering a tsunami warning for a stretch of the country's Pacific coast and shaking buildings some 320 kilometres away in Tokyo... Many people were reported injured in the coastal city of Sendai... The quake was centred about 20 kilometres beneath the ocean off the coast of Miyagi prefecture in northeastern Japan... hit around 11:46 a.m. local time... U.S. Geological Survey registered the quake with a 7 magnitude... ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:44:36

MISSION VIEJO, Calif... Saddleback College's stage production of the musical "Babes in Arms..." Thousands of bees invaded an early matinee... stinging the lead actress and forcing cancellation of the 16-show run after just three performances...

Disturbing Family Patternsexaminer-enterprise.com/ ... 08:57:44A Bartlesville woman remains in the Washington County Jail after her arrest for allegedly abusing her 8-year-old developmentally disabled daughter... 8-year-old female... had injuries that were sustained during "whippings" given by her mother... The girl told officers that her mother had spanked her with a belt on Monday and on the previous evening. She said that she had gotten into trouble because she had taken a piece of chicken into her bedroom and because she had drawn a heart on a heart that belonged to her and her sister. The girl said that her mother had threatened to cut her hands off on a previous date and that she had made her 9-year-old sister get a knife from the kitchen and bring it to her. She said that after her sister brought her mother a knife she was told to put her hands on a table in the bedroom so that her hands could be cut off. She said that her mother then told her sister to leave the room...

Violencereuters.myway.com/ ... 22:28:47At least 30 inmates were killed on Monday when rival Guatemalan gang members attacked each other with knives, firearms and grenades at prisons throughout the country... news.xinhuanet.com/ ... 17:17:16A car bomb killed a boy and injured 11 people Monday in Chechnya's regional capital of Grozny... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 10:03:44Israel's evacuation of Jewish communities from Gaza and parts of Samaria officially began tonight with the complete closing of the Gaza Strip just a few moments ago, while residents here blocked army vehicles headed toward their communities, and Hamas fired mortars and shot at soldiers... ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:44:53Fighting across southern Afghanistan has left at least 28 suspected Taliban rebels dead... ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:42:22ATLANTA - A man fatally shot his wife in her hospital room and then killed himself Monday morning... no other details... ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:40:17EL-ARISH, Egypt - An explosion at an airport wounded two Canadian members of a multinational force near the unit's base in northeast Sinai on Monday...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spinthesmokinggun.com/ ... 22:31:03The next well-wisher approaching Cindy Sheehan at her tent encampment outside President George W. Bush's Texas vacation home may actually be a process server. That's because the California woman's husband--in a curious bit of timing--filed for divorce Friday afternoon... Sheehan told Reuters, "If it's such a noble cause, why aren't his daughters over there?.." au.news.yahoo.com/ ... 08:39:48CNN founder Ted Turner arrived in the North Korean capital Pyongyang... [No word yet whether he's been photographed sitting in the chair of an anti-aircraft gun....]washtimes.com/ ... 08:39:10Howard Dean... still doesn't think the Iraqis are better off with dictator Saddam Hussein out of power and in prison... "It looks like today, and this could change, as of today it looks like women will be worse off in Iraq than they were when Saddam Hussein was president of Iraq..."

Transport Tragedytoday.reuters.com/ ... 17:22:12"Until now I have done an autopsy on six bodies and first evidence is that when they were killed they had circulation in their heart and lungs," Greek Chief Coroner Philippos Koutsaftis told reporters in Athens. "That does not mean that they were conscious but that they had breath and circulation. They had circulation and heartbeat so they were alive..." alertnet.org/ ... 17:01:35"The man did not receive any message from the plane and has been charged with spreading false information," a police spokesman said... cbsnews.com/ ... 08:50:48a contaminated oxygen supply could have knocked out the crew, which would cause the plane to go on autopilot... news24.com/ ... 08:49:08a passenger sent a text message to a cousin saying: "We're cold, the pilot is blue. We're going to die. Farewell..." the plane's second "black box" containing recordings of the pilots' cockpit conversations had been discovered but that it was in a "very bad state"... ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:40:5621 children on board... officials had originally said there were 48 children on the plane. No explanation for the discrepancy was given... today.reuters.co.uk/ ... 08:34:34Most of the bodies recovered from a Cypriot plane that crashed near Athens with 121 people on board were frozen solid, a Greek official said, suggesting the airliner was a flying tomb before it plunged to earth... Rescue workers... found the plane's black box flight recorders... a family of four Armenians living in Cyprus, 12 Greeks and 104 Cypriots were killed in the crash. There were 17 children under the age of 16 on board, the youngest aged 4...

Threatstimesonline.co.uk/ ... 10:06:15POLICE admitted last night that they are no nearer to finding a mastermind behind the July 7 bombings as Scotland Yard faced a new threat from terrorists driving hijacked fuel tankers into petrol stations... “The fact that we had two attacks makes the possibility of a third attack more likely, not less likely.”... US agents would not say how they had discovered details of the plot to hijack fuel tankers, a favoured terrorist tactic in the Middle East. British police are understood to have foiled a number of plots involving lorry bombs, including one on London pubs and nightclubs last year... Transport experts have called for closer monitoring of tankers on the road and companies are examining technology to allow vehicles to be shut down if they are hijacked... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 08:08:42'UFO cult' infiltrated Filmmaker secretly documents Raelians to expose 'brainwashing, sexual coercion'...

Digital Threatnews.zdnet.com/ ... 08:36:39A new Internet worm has been detected that can infect Microsoft's Windows platforms faster than previous computer worms... exploits security holes in Microsoft's Windows 95, 98, ME, NE, 2000 and XP platforms and can give computer attackers remote access to affected systems... The latest virus drops a copy of itself into the Windows system folder as BOTZOR.EXE and modifies the system's host file in the infected user's computer to prevent the user getting online assistance from antivirus web sites... news.com.com/ ... 08:00:43

What Google knows about you • Gmail • Cookies • Desktop Search • Web Accelerator [heh... I Google constantly and don't use any of those things]The fear, of course, is that hackers, zealous government investigators, or even a Google insider who falls short of the company's ethics standards could abuse that information. Google, some worry, is amassing a tempting record of personal information, and the onus is on the Mountain View, Calif., company to keep that information under wraps...

SUN 2005-AUG-14

Culturerogerebert.suntimes.com/ ... 17:54:39Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (R)... Ebert: Zero stars... aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience...

Cascading Weirdnessnypost.com/ ... 17:50:10The man accusing his wife of having a torrid affair with St. Patrick's Cathedral rector Eugene Clark has fibbed about his work history, quit a job as a cop after three days, sued NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, and gotten hauled into court on charges he swiped a toaster... [sign-in req]

Bill Clinton - still with usap.tbo.com/ ... 14:37:58

"The Bill Clinton Collection: Selections from the Clinton Music Room..." John Coltrane... Miles Davis... Judy Collins...

US Executive Branchap.tbo.com/ ... 14:32:20After a six-month search, First Lady Laura Bush announced Sunday that the new head chef at the White House will be Cristeta Comerford - the first woman to take the top spot in the executive kitchen...

Digital Culturenytimes.com/ ... 22:59:19

...the size of the Web came under intense debate last week after Yahoo announced at an Internet search engine conference in Santa Clara, Calif., that its search engine index - an accounting of the number of documents that can be located from its databases - had reached 19.2 billion. Because the number was more than twice as large as the number of documents (8.1 billion) currently reported by Google, Yahoo's fierce competitor and Silicon Valley neighbor, the announcement - actually a brief mention in a Yahoo company Web log - set off a spat. Google questioned the way its rival was counting its numbers... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:14:17

Samsung's "slim" CRT, which began rolling off a Tijuana assembly line in April, is an effort to stall the technology's anticipated demise...

Transportnews.independent.co.uk/ ... 09:12:40

British Airways may be flying from Heathrow again, but last night 10,000 bags were yet to be restored to their owners...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spinfoxnews.com/ ... 22:49:27Larry Mattlage created quite a stir earlier in the day when he fired his shotgun over his property. The Crawford rancher told reporters he was practicing for dove season. Mattlage expressed frustration about the ongoing anti-war protest taking place near his property, and said other neighbors are also getting aggravated by all of the protest activity on their quiet country road... "You want something like this in your backyard? Huh, or your front yard? This is our yard right here. We just happen to, in Texas, have a bigger yard than they do in Maryland... I mean, would you like somebody invading your house for a long time and blocking your view and blocking your road? I wake up every morning [with] this crowd, and I go to bed every night with this campground down here on a public road, which I'm paying taxes to, the middle of this road..." sfgate.com/ ... 09:27:39"As you might expect, I've been dealing with nonstop e-mails from people who either saw both versions and want to know what happened, or saw the gay spouse one and have strong opinions about it," the cartoonist, Dan Piraro, wrote... He said his editor at King Features Syndicate... mentioned to him that he'd been getting a lot of complaints from editors about the cartoonist's left-leaning politics, and that running the cartoon could result in some cancellations. Piraro said he had changed the text... "We didn't find anything offensive about the original Bizarro cartoon," said David Wiegand, The Chronicle's executive Datebook editor. "In fact, when I saw the 'sanitized' version, I have to say, it didn't make a lot of sense to me, and I didn't think it had the usual Bizarro edge..." drudgereport.com/ ... 09:09:24Anti-war protestor Cindy Sheehan... is calling for Bush's "impeachment," and for Israel to get out of Palestine!.. "You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism..." says defiantly: "My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don't owe you a penny... chron.com/ ... 09:07:54Crawford TX... hundreds of people with conflicting opinions about the war in Iraq descended Saturday on a road leading to the Western White House... 250-plus Bush supporters stood in the blazing sun for a few hours in a ditch across the street from the campsite. Most waved American flags and held signs, including "Help! I'm surrounded by America hating idiots!" and "Thank you, Mr. President..."

Rebuildingap.tbo.com/ ... 14:38:41BAGHDAD, Iraq - The capital's Sadr City section was once a hotbed of Shiite Muslim unrest, but it has become one of the brightest successes for the U.S. security effort. So far this year, there has been only one car bombing in the neighborhood, and only one American soldier has been killed...

Human Rightwashingtonpost.com/ ... 14:29:30A San Francisco man who says he was devastated after he was identified as gay on a national Spanish-language radio show will be paid $270,000 by Univision Radio, an arbitrator has ruled... Hernandez worked for the local station that broadcast the show, and sold advertising for the program. He said he was so depressed by the incident that he could no longer work. "It's a nightmare," Hernandez said. "How do you live with such an embarrassment in your life? How do you live when someone makes your life so insignificant?.."

Nature is Dangerousap.tbo.com/ ... 23:01:16IDAHO SPRINGS, Colo. - Engineers and geologists were trying to stabilize the side of a mountain Sunday after three rock slides in less than 24 hours spilled onto an interstate. The slides backed up traffic on Interstate 70 and forced a five-mile shutdown of the state's main east-west highway for several hours... ap.tbo.com/ ... 14:36:38magnitude 5.3 quake that hit Yunnan province... southern China... on Saturday afternoon... injuring 26 people... damaged reservoirs, highways and telecommunications networks... undetermined number of people were left homeless... iht.com/ ... 14:26:40Mumbai: The toll of people succumbing to water-borne diseases reached 157 on Saturday morning, with 68 deaths recorded in Mumbai and adjoining Thane district in the past 24 hours... On Saturday 1,049 patients were admitted to state and civic-run hospitals. These figures do not include patients from private hospitals, whose numbers have not been added to the tally... The Indian Medical Association (IMA), meanwhile, has called for a ban on all roadside eateries to prevent the spread of water-borne infections...

Only Naturalnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:17:30Greenland's ice is melting rapidly. In some places, glacial levels have been falling by 10 metres a year and ultimately contributing to rising sea levels... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:15:23

Bees prefer floral paintings - even if they have never seen flowers before...

Transport Futureapnews.myway.com/ ... 09:10:35Experimental Hybrid Cars Get Up to 250 Mpg...

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 23:00:51An American anthropology professor on a research trip to Brazil was killed Saturday while he was being robbed in a small rain forest town near the Amazon River... washingtonpost.com/ ... 23:00:28LAWRENCE, Mass. -- A veteran recently named "Marine of the Year" for his service in Iraq was charged with attempted murder after firing a shotgun from his apartment window as a group of noisy revelers stood outside a nightclub... Two people were hit by bullet fragments and suffered minor injuries... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:39:02Villagers in mid-western Nepal have killed five suspected Maoists after rebels allegedly kidnapped a villager. The killings of three women and two men took place at Laxmanpur village in Banke district on Saturday... ap.tbo.com/ ... 14:35:30COLLEGE PARK, Ga. - A man was shot by police twice in the same shoulder at two different times on the same night... ap.tbo.com/ ... 14:33:44Thirty bodies were found Sunday in a grave south of Baghdad... The grave.. estimated [to be] 10 to 14 days old, included the bodies of two women. Al-Maamuri did not identify the dead or say how they were killed...

Sick, Sick, Sickstuff.co.nz/ ... 09:12:22

A man faced an Australian court yesterday charged with having sexual relations with a rabbit and the sadistic killing of 17 other rabbits whose carcasses were found dumped in a lane...

Threatsap.tbo.com/ ... 17:44:31Three maritime police drowned to death on Sunday along the Panama Canal while participating in terrorism-preparedness exercises involving several other countries... theconservativevoice.com/ ... 14:48:14In the midst of our desire to see a happy outcome in Iraq, we must never lose sight of the ability of Arabs to reject every opportunity to join the modern community of nations... Bahram Saleh, a Kurdish leader, has said, "Iraq is the nexus where many issues are coming together--Islam versus democracy, the West versus the axis of evil, Arab nationalism versus some different types of political culture. If the Americans succeed here, this will be a monumental blow to everything the terrorists stand for." ... The present post-Saddam Iraq is a Humpty Dumpty sitting on the narrow edge of a proposed new constitution in a place where the rule of law has never really existed, let alone notions that include the equal status of women or even the concept of private property... today.reuters.com/ ... 14:39:24An Iranian-backed network of insurgents in Iraq is responsible for a new type of lethal roadside bomb, part of plans by Tehran to influence its neighbor that began even before the U.S. invasion, Time magazine reported on Sunday... dailytimes.com.pk/ ... 09:25:26KABUL: A top Taliban commander and dozens of his men have surrendered to the Afghan government as part of an arms-for-amnesty scheme... washingtonpost.com/ ... 09:25:09U.S. troops raiding a warehouse in the northern city of Mosul uncovered a suspected chemical weapons factory containing 1,500 gallons of chemicals believed destined for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians... lab was new, dating from some time after the U.S.-led invasion... lab was the biggest found so far in Iraq... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:15:02Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf and PM Shaukat Aziz have issued pledges on the country's independence day to defeat terrorism and extremists... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:14:36Iran's new president nominated a Cabinet on Sunday that has hard-liners in all key ministries and is likely to lead to more confrontation in the country's dispute with the Washington and Europe over its nuclear program... guardian.co.uk/ ... 09:08:29A top Iranian nuclear official on Sunday called for negotiations with Europe on its uranium enrichment plans but said Iran will never again suspend its conversion of uranium ore into gas... iranmania.com/ ... 09:08:13Iran on Sunday warned the United States that any use of force over its nuclear programme would be a "mistake," and told Europe that its attitude would help determine whether it resumes uranium enrichment...

Transport Tragedyreuters.myway.com/ ... 22:58:35Reuters photographer Yannis Behrakis reported from the crash site that dozens of bodies were still strapped into their seats, some with the remnants of oxygen masks over their faces. "Two charred bodies were still hugging each other," he said... apnews.myway.com/ ... 22:57:06A man whose cousin was a passenger told Greece's Alpha television he received a cell-phone text message minutes before the crash. "He told me the pilots were unconscious. ... He said: "Farewell, cousin, here we're frozen..." There were 48 children aboard, mostly Greek Cypriots... On Cyprus, several callers to radio and television programs said they experienced severe air-conditioning problems on Helios jets in recent months. Some said the cabin was freezing and the crew provided blankets; others said it became unbearably hot... theherald.co.uk/ ... 22:53:41FLIGHT 522 was flying pilotless, possibly for as long as 90 minutes, before it crashed near Athens yesterday, killing all 121 people on board... timesonline.co.uk/ ... 17:36:27Most of the 115 passengers were Greek Cypriots but the total included an unknown number of foreigners. There were six crew.
One passenger sent a relative a text message minutes before the crash, saying the pilots were unconscious and adding: “Farewell, cousin. Here, we’re frozen.”... alertnet.org/ ... 14:22:22Airline experts were at a loss to explain how a Cypriot plane carrying 121 people could have crashed on Sunday after apparently losing cabin pressure or oxygen but said it was likely to be a combination of factors... "A loss of pressurisation in the cabin is in itself a rare event but to go as far as it incapacitates the pilot is hugely rare..." Two Greek F-16 fighter jets were scrambled after the plane lost contact with the tower at Athens international airport. One of the jet pilots said he could not see the captain in the cockpit and his co-pilot appeared to be slumped in his seat... media report said one passenger had sent a text message shortly before the crash saying the plane was freezing... news24.com/ ... 09:05:14Greek police suspect that the crash of a Cypriot airliner with 121 people on board near Athens was caused by a sudden failure of the air conditioning system... The pilot mentioned a problem with the system when he spoke to the Athens control tower before contact was lost... The flight which originated in Larnaca, Cyprus was bound for Prague in the Czech Republic... news24.com/ ... 09:04:12Helios Airways of Cyprus said it was "unclear" what caused the crash of its airliner in Greece on Sunday with 121 people on board...

SAT 2005-AUG-13

Lasting Contributionsap.tbo.com/ ... 22:41:41Lyle "Spud" Murphy, a prolific Hollywood composer and arranger best known for developing a composing system widely used by professional musicians, has died. He was 96...

transformed the children's song "Three Blind Mice" into the theme for the Three Stooges show...

Open Source is Comingsfgate.com/ ... 20:32:59While Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod may be the hottest portable music player on the market, the firm's rival, Microsoft, may have the final say on who owns some key technology behind the product. That's because Microsoft beat Apple to the punch by five months in filing a patent application for some key elements of the popular music player, including the song menu software...

WW2 - still with usap.tbo.com/ ... 16:05:42By JOHN RODERICK AP Special Correspondent For me, World War II ended with bullets and pate de foie gras. I suppose I have Gen. Douglas MacArthur to thank for that... [A different perspective on VJ day...]

Whoops!boston.com/ ... 23:28:42Bartender Brandy Tuczynski knew the $100 bill a customer gave her was fake when she held it up to the light and saw Abraham Lincoln's face instead of Benjamin Franklin's on the watermark... ap.tbo.com/ ... 16:02:17People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is reconsidering a campaign linking images of animal abuse with those of slavery after complaints from civil rights groups and others... theaustralian.news.com.au/ ... 15:02:18TWO longtime friends, neither gay, who recently announced plans to get married to take advantage of Canada's tax rules that give couples preferrential treatment have called off their nuptials... "We pissed off the entire lunatic fringe..."

Supernaturalnewsday.com/ ... 15:01:00Twelve-year-old Geoffrey Little found just about the last thing he expected to on the floor of a parking garage at Los Angeles International Airport. His mother, Lisa Lyne, passed right by the billfold containing $19,900 in $100 bills on June 16. On Tuesday night, the Hermosa Beach City Council presented Geoffrey with a certificate, police T-shirts and a standing ovation for turning the money over to authorities... who released it to the owner the next weekend...

History - still with usbiblicalrecorder.org/ ... 14:59:51Israeli and American archaeologists have discovered what they term a "monumental rock-hewn water system" near Jerusalem dating back to the eighth century B.C... "Never before has such a massive water system been found isolated in the countryside without a town or city attached to it..."

Sex -- always attractivebigmattress.com/ ... 10:19:07penis size (pic -- rated G)

It's All in Your Mindnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:09:07Fifty finalists from 16 nations are due to battle for the title of 2005 World Memory Champion... Mr Pridmore currently holds several records including memorising a pack of cards in 32.13 seconds...

Beatles - still with usnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:07:53A musical about ex-Beatle John Lennon is making its Broadway debut after being delayed by poor reviews... "a musical biography, a concert and a celebration all in one"... Lennon... depicts Lennon at various stages in his life and casts a black actor as Sir Paul McCartney. It features 28 Lennon songs, including two unpublished tracks - India, India and I Don't Want To Lose You...
Yoko: "It is definitely John's story - from Liverpool 1940 to New York 1980. I am the B-side, and that's how it should be... All the songs are sung so well, and the show is so funny, I keep laughing until that moment of John's passing... Of course, that's when people start crying. I can't help getting choked up, too..."

Digital Cultureapnews.myway.com/ ... 10:01:57Google Inc. has halted its efforts to scan copyrighted books from some of the nation's largest university libraries so the material can be indexed in its leading Internet search engine... effective until November... apnews.myway.com/ ... 10:01:29People on cell phones talk too loud, they use them at inappropriate times, and they just don't seem to care if they are bothering anyone. The horror stories are famous too. Cell phones at funerals. Cell phones at weddings. Cell phones in class. And of course, cell phones in restaurants... Miss Manners, has a simple explanation for Americans' fascination with these flashing, buzzing, chiming gadgets. "It's like children getting new toys... But the excitement is over. People should be over it..." Washington's Metrorail system has put up signs discouraging inconsiderate talkers. "Yes, we're all very interested in what you're having for dinner tonight..."

Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:39:47A Fort Bliss soldier has pleaded guilty to smuggling cocaine into the United States from Colombia using military aircraft... will spend five years in prison with a reduction in rank to private and a bad-conduct discharge...

Science Marches Onnnnnnfoodingredientsfirst.com/ ... 20:32:10The completed rice genome sequence, which reveals some 37,500 genes on the 12 chromosomes of rice, provides the raw material for many studies aimed at improving the agricultural yield of the world's most important food source... The agricultural yield of rice will need to be increased by some 30% over the next two decades to meet projected increased demands. Members of a 10-nation International Rice Genome Sequencing Project now report a highly accurate or "finished" map-based DNA sequence of the entire rice genome...

US Militaryap.tbo.com/ ... 16:07:32KANDAGAL, Afghanistan - Frustrated with the limitations of using its fleet of modern Humvee four-wheel-drives in rugged mountains with few roads, a battalion of U.S. Marines has enlisted a mode of transport used for centuries by Afghan villagers - donkeys. About 30 of the animals have been rented from local farmers to haul food and bottled water to hundreds of Afghan and U.S. troops on a two-week operation to battle militants deep in remote mountains in eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province...

Reasons for Repealcnn.com/ ... 14:58:06New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson declared a state of emergency Friday in four counties along the Mexican border that he said have been "devastated" by crimes such as the smuggling of drugs and illegal immigrants...

Human Rightaftenposten.no/ ... 15:04:47Nudists at open beach Huk in Oslo are being increasingly harassed by photographers, flashers and vulgar requests and police have had to respond several times this summer... khon.com/ ... 14:50:31The communications director of.. NARAL.. announced Friday that he was resigning immediately, following an announcement by the organization that it would pull an inflammatory TV ad about Supreme Court nominee John Roberts... The commercial blasts Roberts, linking him with violent anti-abortion protesters because of the anti-abortion briefs he worked on as a government lawyer. "We regret that many people have misconstrued our recent advertisement about Mr. Roberts' record," Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, wrote in a letter Thursday to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who had urged the group to withdraw the ad. "Unfortunately, the debate over that advertisement has become a distraction from the serious discussion we hoped to have with the American public..."

Only Naturalboston.com/ ... 23:28:26

O'FALLON, Mo. --A 9-foot albino Burmese python has arrived at its new home after startling a United Parcel Service driver who found it curled up among packages in his truck last week... 31-pound snake was prodded into a cloth mailbag... boston.com/ ... 23:26:55

DOTHAN, Ala... A typical early morning trip to the post office turned into a frightening experience for a Dothan ENT employee when she found a live corn snake hiding under the mail... "In my 33 years working with the postal service, I thought I had seen just about everything, but I've never seen or heard of anything like this happening before," postal employee Steve Simmons said. He said he did not know how the snake got into the post office box but speculated that it came from outside, seeking a warm, dry place. He said he does not believe it was a prank... today.reuters.com/ ... 10:18:24Several supposedly extinct birds have recently been "rediscovered," raising hopes that others not seen for ages may still be taking to the skies... Nigel Collar of UK-based conservation group BirdLife International: "We think we've explored the planet when we haven't. We have this assumption that we know it all but we don't..." the New Zealand storm petrel.. positively sighted in 2003.. was previously only known from fossil material and three 19th century specimens... Despite the new finds, BirdLife says the overall situation of the world's birds is worsening... more than a fifth of the planet's bird species faced extinction as humans ventured further into their habitats and introduced alien predators... apnews.myway.com/ ... 10:00:16WHISKEYTOWN, Calif... nearly 400-foot waterfall that park officials recently discovered in a remote corner of the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area... roaring water that tumbles three tiers before pouring neatly into Crystal Creek. That such a spectacle should evade even park officials for nearly 40 years is remarkable... "It wasn't on a map, no one on the trail crew knew about it. People who been here 27 years had never seen it..."

Missingboston.com/ ... 23:25:26A man thought to have disappeared while hiking in southwestern Utah has been traced to Australia...

Transport Tragedyap.tbo.com/ ... 22:45:10ERIE, Pa. - A small plane attempting to land Saturday night crashed about a half-mile short of the runway at Erie International Airport, killing three people and injuring a fourth... The pilot had apparently stopped to get gas in Jamestown, N.Y., but was unable to do so... "My assumption is, they ran out of gas..."

9/11 - still with usnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:45:51It was the first time in my life that I ever felt that an incident beat us. You know, we go into an incident to control it... and here we are going into an incident that... has actually pushed us back and chased us away and we're leaving behind our wounded, we were leaving behind who knows what, we're leaving equipment, we're abandoning equipment... We were just trudging out through the dust like just a defeated army. That's how I felt...

Supernatural Threatsdawn.com/ ... 14:56:07The US Presbyterian Church has threatened to divest from five American giant corporations, accusing them of supporting and helping maintain the Israeli occupation of Palestine... Caterpillar.. Motorola.. United Technologies.. ITT.. Citigroup..

Household Threatstoday.reuters.com/ ... 10:14:36capsules containing liquid washing detergent... "Kids may instinctively grasp and squeeze these gel-liquid tablets, which can burst relatively easily in the hand, and thus splash the caustic contents in the eyes..." six cases of severe eye injuries in young children... ranged in age from 18 months to 3 years old...

Digital Threatpalmbeachpost.com/ ... 14:54:04Imagine a virtual "thumbprint" that attaches your time and place of birth to your photo and iris scans — one of millions collected, warehoused and monitored by the watchful eye of Big Brother... No government has tried it out on a large scale, but Florida might become the first... A defense contractor has proposed that the state assign a "digital birth certificate" to each of its 16 million residents, in what some experts say is the best way to protect privacy and others fear is an entrée into a dystopian future. "It is as Orwellian as you imagine it to be, and should be frightening," said Oscar Gandy, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications who specializes in technology and public policy... today.reuters.com/ ... 10:10:44A Florida man who ran a bulk e-mail company was convicted on Friday of stealing more than 1.5 billion data files from Acxiom Corp. in what federal officials said was one of the largest recorded cases of data theft... jury found him guilty on 120 counts of theft by computer, two counts of fraud and one count of obstruction of justice...

Nature is Dangeroustoday.reuters.com/ ... 10:12:24Idaho officials said on Friday an initial test has indicated one case of naturally occurring Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and they are investigating five other suspected cases, but said none are believed to be caused by eating infected animals... CJD is a rare brain-wasting disease in humans that usually affects older people in their 60s or 70s. It is not the same as the human form of mad cow disease, which is known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease and is linked to eating beef from infected cattle... Naturally occurring CJD is found at a rate of about one case per 1 million population annually... Yet in a state with only 1.4 million people the fact that Idaho has so many suspected cases of the rare disease has sparked concern... Investigators so far have not been able to pinpoint anything that may have caused the disease... ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:02:53TUCSON, Ariz. - An 83-year-old woman is recovering after being stung 400 times by bees... coming from the wall of a storage building outside her home... handyman sprayed her with water from a hose until the bees turned on him. He ran and called 911... She was out of intensive care and in fair condition Friday night... washingtonpost.com/ ... 09:58:05WRIGHT, Wyo. -- A tornado struck a mobile home park with little warning, killing two people and injuring about a dozen others... Three people remained missing late Friday night... coal-mining town of 1,400 people about 100 miles northeast of Casper... residents had about five minutes warning of the approaching storm... "I talked to one couple and they can remember flying through the air and screaming at each other... And then they woke up... "

Threatstimesonline.co.uk/ ... 20:48:15AMERICAN intelligence chiefs have warned that Al-Qaeda terrorists are plotting to drive hijacked fuel tankers into petrol stations in an effort to cause mass casualties in London and US cities in the next few weeks... The leaked warning, contained in a bulletin issued by the US Department for Homeland Security last week, says the attacks aim to create catastrophic damage at about the time of the fourth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington...
"Al-Qaeda leaders plan to employ various types of fuel trucks as vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED) in an effort to cause mass casualties in the US (and London), prior to September 19. Attacks are planned specifically for New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. It is unclear whether the attacks will occur simultaneously or be spread over a period of time. The stated goal is the collapse of the US economy.”... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 15:15:05harbonneau is deliberately misleading you about a) what the IAEA "found" back in 2002, b) why the IAEA seals were in place, c) what the Iranians did last week, and last – but most important – d) what constitutes a "breaking" of the NPT. Bush-Cheney officials have repeatedly charged that the Iranians have broken the NPT and that they are seeking to manufacture or "otherwise acquire" nuclear weapons. But, if the Iranians were breaking the NPT, who would be in the best position to know? The Bush-Cheney officials who made similar charges about Iraq? Neo-crazy media sycophants like Charbonneau?.. ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:05:46For the first time in a decade, the founders and top political leaders of Hamas gathered on the same stage Saturday, vowing to go on fighting Israel and claiming victory for its impending withdrawal from the Gaza Strip... In a direct challenge to the Palestinian Authority, the militant groups' top brass said it rejects the idea of a sole decision-making body for the area and insists it has the right to possess weapons... alertnet.org/ ... 09:56:27German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder rejected the threat of military force against Iran on Saturday... voanews.com/ ... 09:56:01President Bush says he would consider using force to press Iran to give up its nuclear program, but only as a last resort...

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 22:44:12Several Israeli soldiers were hurt by friendly fire in the Gaza Strip early Sunday... Circumstances of the incident were unclear. The witnesses said Palestinians opened fire on an Israeli force near the settlement of Kfar Darom, and the soldiers fired back. Either a shell fired by an Israeli tank hit other soldiers, or the tank ran them down... ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:43:16ALBUQUERQUE - A retired state district judge and his wife were found dead in their Albuquerque home in what police said Saturday appeared to be a murder-suicide... ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:39:03ISTANBUL, Turkey - A roadside bomb exploded in southeast Turkey on Saturday moments after the convoy of local governor passed, in what appeared to be an attack by Kurdish rebels... timesonline.co.uk/ ... 15:04:26Britain... A VIOLENT criminal robbed and assaulted an elderly woman for the second time after being released at the earliest possible opportunity from prison... Williamina Lister, 90, died four days after the vicious attack... at her home... He had been serving a ten-year sentence imposed in 1999 for a series of assaults and robberies on elderly people, including Mrs Lister... washingtonpost.com/ ... 09:55:25The father of a woman accused of killing a corrections officer to free her inmate husband said he suspected the couple might be planning an escape and asked a Utah probation officer to alert authorities in Tennessee. However, the information never reached Tennessee... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:55:04Foreign political leaders have been offering their reaction to the assassination of Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar in a gun attack in the capital Colombo...

FRI 2005-AUG-12

Yuck!ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:14:20LOWVILLE, N.Y. - Three million gallons of liquid manure spilled from a dairy farm and into a nearby river, creating a smelly flow that was blamed for the deaths of thousands of fish... The toxic tide had traveled some 20 miles on the Black River by Friday and was expected to flow past Watertown, a city of 25,000, which shut off its water intake...

Music industry is deadap.tbo.com/ ... 23:11:14Music copied onto blank recordable CDs is becoming a bigger threat to the bottom line of record stores and music labels than online file-sharing, the head of the recording industry's trade group said Friday...

Unclear on the Concepttoday.reuters.com/ ... 09:57:09Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said on Friday he was astonished at the unanimity of a call by the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog for Iran to halt enrichment activities, calling it a cruel decision...

WW2 - still with usnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:53:05In pictures: World War II in the Pacific... (includes photo of the famous Times Square kiss)... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:46:10The photograph of the exuberant kiss by a sailor on the lips of a surprised nurse in Times Square remains, 60 years later, an iconic image of the day World War II ended. "It was a very long kiss," Edith Cullen Shain, who says she is the nurse in the photo, recalled Thursday. "It was like a dance step, the way he laid me over in his arms." Shain said she closed her eyes and never looked at the sailor. "I just got lost in the moment," said Shain, now an 87-year-old great-grandmother from Santa Monica, Calif. To Shain's delight, a life-size color sculpture by J. Seward Johnson based on the photograph was unveiled Thursday in bustling Times Square. It will be displayed through Monday... "I let him kiss me because he had been in war and he fought for me," Shain said of the sailor. "I only wish now I had had a conversation with him or asked his name..." the sailor's identity remains a mystery...

Whoops!today.reuters.com/ ... 10:03:09A French fireman, a favorite of journalists reporting on forest fires in southern France, admitted to starting seven of them Thursday... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:43:56COLUMBUS, Miss. - It wasn't hard for police to track down the man they say robbed a Trustmark Bank this week - the suspect apparently left his wallet and identification at the scene of the crime...

Preternatural Patternssuntimes.com/ ... 23:56:34Some Chicago businesses post "Se Habla Espanol" signs to boast about their Spanish-speaking employees. But two hair stylists said in a federal lawsuit Thursday that their former bosses at Supercuts posted a different sign: "Speaking a language other than English is not only disrespectful, it's also prohibited." Stylists say the notice was put up in 2003, directed at employees as Supercuts managers allegedly barred them from speaking Spanish anywhere at work -- including in the break room or other places outside the earshot of customers. Supercuts says there is no such ban... today.reuters.com/ ... 10:04:33Australian Shane Willmott is training three mice... to surf small waves on tiny mouse-size surf boards at beaches on the country's Gold Coast... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:43:38HOUMA, La. - A mail carrier got bitten - by a barking man... ran barking from a house and bit the letter carrier on the shoulder... said he bit the carrier as a joke, and has no history of criminal activity or mental illness... was arrested and charged with simple battery...

Passingap.tbo.com/ ... 09:40:56CHICAGO - Negro Leagues star Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe, believed to be the oldest former professional baseball player, died Thursday. He was 103...

Transportapnews.myway.com/ ... 09:36:44At least 70,000 travelers were left stranded Friday as British Airways canceled all flights to and from Heathrow Airport after catering staff, baggage handlers and other ground crew walked off the job in wildcat strikes at the height of the summer tourism season...

Prehistory - still with usnews.nationalgeographic.com/ ... 09:32:31To record information, the ancient Inca used enigmatic devices called khipus, mop-like textiles. Made from cotton or animal hair, the objects consisted of multiple knotted strings hanging vertically from a single horizontal string. Khipus were probably used for more than just recording numbers. Some experts say they may have been a medium for recording historical information—possibly as a form of writing. Now a new study shows that khipus were used as documents in a sophisticated accounting system passed up through the Inca bureaucracy...

Doors of Perceptionskepdic.com/ ... 09:14:30Pareidolia is a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct. For example, in the discolorations of a burnt tortilla one sees the face of Jesus Christ. Or one sees the image of Mother Teresa or Ronald Reagan in a cinnamon bun or a man in the moon... Under clinical circumstances, some psychologists encourage pareidolia as a means to understanding a patient, e.g., the Rorschach ink blot test. Astronomer Carl Sagan claimed that the human tendency to see faces in tortillas, clouds, cinnamon buns, and the like is an evolutionary trait... Most people recognize illusions for what they are, but some become fixated on the reality of their perception and turn an illusion into a delusion...

Extraterrestrialnasa.gov/ ... 09:29:51NASA's Multipurpose Mars Mission Successfully Launched... A seven-month flight to Mars began this morning for NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It will inspect the red planet in fine detail and assist future landers... msss.com/ ... 09:11:36Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera Highest-Resolution View of "Face on Mars..." [Wow! Look! Under the right light and resolution, it looks just like a natural geologic formation!]badastronomy.com/ ... 09:10:37The Universe is wonderful enough without having to make up nonsense about it... badastronomy.com

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 23:05:03

Army Spc. Anthony N. Kalladeen, 26, of Purchase, N.Y.

Army Pfc. Hernando Rios, 29, of Queens, N.Y.
died on Aug. 8 in Baghdad, Iraq from injuries sustained on Aug. 7, when their HMMWV was struck by two improvised explosive devices and they received small arms fire.defenselink.mil/ ... 22:50:05

Army Sgt. Edward R. Heselton, 23, of Easley, S.C., died on Aug. 11, in Orgun-E, Afghanistan, when ordnance exploded near the vehicle he was driving as his unit performed a route clearing mission.defenselink.mil/ ... 22:46:36

Army Staff Sgt. Ryan S. Ostrom, 25, of Liberty, Pa., died on Aug. 9 in Taqaddum, Iraq, from injuries sustained from enemy small arms fire earlier in Habbaniya, Iraq.defenselink.mil/ ... 22:45:59

Army Spc. Miguel Carrasquillo, 25, of River Grove, Ill., died on Aug. 9 in Baghdad, Iraq, when a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated near his military vehicle.defenselink.mil/ ... 22:44:57

Marine Lance Cpl. Evenor C. Herrera, 22, of Gypsum, Colo., died Aug. 10 from wounds received from the detonation of an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations near Ar Ramadi, Iraq.defenselink.mil/ ... 22:40:37

Army Pfc. Nathaniel E. Detample, 19, of Morrisville, Pa.

Army Spc. John Kulick, 35, of Harleysville, Pa.

Army Spc. Gennaro Pellegrini Jr., 31, of Philadelphia, Pa.

Army Sgt. Francis J. Straub Jr., 24, of Philadelphia, Pa
died on Aug. 9, 2005, in Bayji, Iraq, where a mine exploded and enemy forces attacked using small arms fire. The attack occurred while the soldiers were investigating a rocket-propelled grenade incident.defenselink.mil/ ... 22:38:13

Army Spc. Christopher M. Katzenberger, 25, of St. Louis, Mo., died on Aug. 9, 2005, in Bagram, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained earlier that day in Ghazni, Afghanistan, where an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during convoy operations.defenselink.mil/ ... 22:36:17

Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael A. Benson, 40, of Winona, Minn., died on Aug. 10 at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Md., of injuries sustained on Aug. 2 in Baghdad, Iraq, where a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device struck his convoy.defenselink.mil/ ... 22:16:36

Army Casualty Staff Sgt. Christopher M. Falkel, 22, of Highlands Ranch, Colo., died on Aug. 8, 2005, in Deh Afghan, Afghanistan, when his unit was conducting combat operations and was engaged by enemy forces using small arms fire.

US Militarydefenselink.mil/ ... 22:48:39 Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper will retire after 39 years of service at a ceremony at Andrews AFB Md. Sept. 2. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, currently serving as Air Force vice chief of staff, will be sworn in as the eighteenth Air Force chief of staff. The ceremony will air live on the Pentagon Channel and through streaming video on Air Force Link www.af.mil.defenselink.mil/ ... 17:53:32The Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force met or exceeded their active duty recruiting goals in July. All services met or exceeded their overall retention goals for July and are projected to meet their retention goals for the current fiscal year. Two of the six reserve components, the Marine Corps Reserve and Air Force Reserve, met their July recruiting goals. Losses in all reserve components in June were within acceptable limits. Indications are that trend will continue into July.

Only Naturalcbc.ca/ ... 23:55:56Two teenagers [females, 15 &13] performed a caesarean section on a dead cat they found along a New Brunswick road, saving two of four kittens... [amazing & more to the story]news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:02:31The decay of a nucleus is described in terms of "transit states": the series of change it has been through to get to its current situation. The probability of someone having been in two relationships, for example, is the same as that of a nucleus decaying twice. "We had an inkling that it might be the same because we saw similarities..." today.reuters.com/ ... 10:00:17Scientists have tracked a tagged polar bear swimming at least 74 km in just one day -- and maybe up to 100 km -- providing the first conclusive proof the bears can cover such giant distances in the water...

Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!today.reuters.com/ ... 10:03:52

Mexican drug gangs are increasingly using tourist charter buses to smuggle large quantities of marijuana into southern California... Since January... agents have seized 10 buses crammed with marijuana at the San Ysidro, California, crossing between Tijuana and the United States, up from three in the whole of 2004... "The only thing we know for sure is that there are a lot of spaces on a bus to hide large quantities of drugs..." ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:49:23The Colombian army said Friday it seized US$40 million (euro32 million) worth of cocaine belonging to leftist guerrillas that was hidden in a cove on the outskirts of a city near Venezuela's border...

Justice?ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:11:48A judge ordered a death sentence Friday for a man convicted of gunning down six members of his girlfriend's family at their rural home, a ruling that rejected the jury's recommendation of life in prison without parole... guardian.co.uk/ ... 09:39:28Whitney Irving, a student at Westside Middle School, was shot in the back but survived the attack. Although she has since graduated from high school, married and had a child, the attack remains a part of her everyday life. "A lot of people are really scared to this very day and we have not forgotten anything..."
Mitchell Wright, whose wife Shannon was the teacher who was killed, said he has tried to explain Johnson's release to his son, who was two at the time of his mother's death. "He's told me, 'I don't think it's right he gets to go home to his momma and I only get to see my momma on videos'..."
The Jonesboro shooting was the first major schoolyard assault in which teenagers attacked their classmates. Less than a year later 13 died, along with two young gunmen, at Columbine High School, Colorado... katv.com/ ... 09:28:34(Mitchell Wright, husband of victim) "Seven years is a very short time, especially when you can shoot 15 people, kill 5, take away their lives, its just not justice." Because of Arkansas law, in 1998, the state could only hold juvenile offenders until the age of 18. However, both Johnson and Golden were kept for an additional three years because of weapons laws. Since then, legislation has been passed enabling the state to hold juvenile offenders. In the meantime, Mitchell Johnson walks free...

Sick, Sick, Sicklocal6.com/ ... 23:48:42A patient at a Tacoma, Wash., hospital is in police custody Friday for allegedly spraying nurses with his HIV-infected blood when he became angry with them...

Transport Tragedyap.tbo.com/ ... 23:10:27History's Worst Single Airplane Disaster... Japan Airlines' president climbed up to the remote, mountainous site of history's worst single airplane disaster on Friday in a ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of a JAL Boeing jumbo jet crash that killed 520 people... The jet was en route from Tokyo to Osaka when it lost its vertical tail section and crashed into a steep, forested mountainside in central Gunma prefecture (state), about 70 miles northwest of the capital. All but four people on board were killed...

Prison Sucksnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:03:05Over half the prisons in England and Wales are officially overcrowded, a penal reform group claimed as prison numbers reached an all-time high...

9/11 - still with usfoxnews.com/ ... 22:56:40Excerpts of more than 500 firefighters' oral histories of their experiences on Sept. 11, 2001, released Friday along with more than 15 hours of radio transmissions...

Theftap.tbo.com/ ... 23:13:17SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) - Police detained four men in connection with one of the world's biggest heists and recovered more than $2 million of the $70 million stolen from Brazil's Central Bank... The recovered cash was found hidden in three pickup trucks that were on a vehicle transporter truck located several hundred miles from the ransacked Central Bank vault in the northeastern city of Fortaleza... "We still have to inspect eight cars on the transporter and we think more cash will be found..." today.reuters.com/ ... 10:02:09Police said on Thursday they had detained two men in connection with Brazil's biggest bank robbery after stopping a truck loaded with cars they believe were purchased by the newly rich thieves... Police also found one million reais in packets hidden in the front seat of one of the cars. "All the other cars that were on the transporter will [be] checked..."

Violencemanoramaonline.com/ ... 22:58:43Colombo: Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga has imposed a state of emergency to deal with the aftermath of the assassination of her Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar Presidential spokesman Eric Fernando said the emergency will go into effect from Saturday... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:48:47A suspected Taliban rebel leader died in recent heavy fighting in eastern Afghanistan... Qari Amadullah, believed to have led up to 50 Taliban militants armed with rockets and rocket-propelled grenades, died in a firefight Tuesday with Afghan and U.S. forces near the city of Wazikwa in Paktika province... Five other militants were killed and three U.S. soldiers were wounded during the clash...
an American soldier was reported killed in a training accident... two others were wounded...
A bomb exploded at a market in the southern city of Kandahar, wounding a child and three adults and damaging several shops...

Rebuildingap.tbo.com/ ... 09:44:22Sunni Arab leaders on Friday rejected calls for a Shiite federal region to be enshrined in the constitution, saying the proposal would fracture Iraq along religious and ethnic lines. The dispute threatens to delay completion of the charter by a Monday deadline...

Threatstelegraph.co.uk/ ... 23:51:16While the problems facing air strikes are significant, Israel's military nevertheless believes it has the means to cause serious damage to the Iranian nuclear capability. Israel's cruise missiles, launched from planes or submarines, give the country a capability that it did not have in 1981 when it attacked the Iraqi reactor with a conventional bombing sortie. "It's a bit more challenging in Iran but the military option remains a real one," said David Ivri, a retired Israeli air force officer who commanded Operation Opera, the attack on Iraq's reactor. "After all, the aim would not be to neutralise the Iranian nuclear programme. That would be impossible. But what we could do is delay it considerably. "That was our aim in Iraq and that is what we achieved - a very long delay.''... nytimes.com/ ... 09:37:32A group of F.B.I. counterterrorism analysts warned this week of possible terrorist attacks in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago around Sept. 11... terrorists might seek to steal fuel tanker trucks in order to inflict "mass casualties" by staging an anniversary attack...

Natural Threatmedicalnewstoday.com/ ... 09:36:13US scientists have tested a new therapeutic approach that could help eliminate dormant HIV infection that current treatments miss. The researchers report these preliminary findings in a proof-of-concept study in this week's issue of THE LANCET...

THU 2005-AUG-11

Extraterrestrialtoday.reuters.com/ ... 18:54:43For those who have never seen the original "Star Wars" trilogy and can't face six hours staring at a screen, a one-man show in New York recounts the whole story in under an hour. Charles Ross, a 31-year-old actor from Canada who's seen "Star Wars" 400 times, admits his show may be a surreal experience for anybody who does not know the three classic George Lucas films as well as he does...

Transport Tragedytoday.reuters.com/ ... 18:53:38The number of pedestrians in Sao Paulo killed by vehicles has topped the number of driver and passenger fatalities for the first time, officials in Brazil's biggest city said on Wednesday...

Alcohol Was Involvedtoday.reuters.com/ ... 18:53:07Monks at a Belgian abbey have been forced to stop selling their famous beer after it was voted the best in the world and was promptly sold out. The abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren in western Belgium is home to some 30 Cistercian and Trappist monks who lead a life of seclusion, prayer, manual labor -- and beer-brewing... the abbey has no intention of boosting its capacity to satisfy market demand. "We are not brewers, we are monks. We brew beer to be able to afford being monks," the father abbot said on the abbey's Web site. Monk Mark Bode told De Morgen daily: "Outsiders don't understand why we are not raising production. But for us life in the abbey comes first, not the brewery..."

Broadcast is Deadnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:51:41The death of Dallas actress Barbara Bel Geddes has revived memories of what made the all-conquering US soap opera such a success in its heyday...

Supernaturalisraelnationalnews.com/ ... 10:40:21More than a quarter million people attended a massive prayer rally at the Western Wall Wednesday to beg their Heavenly Father to have mercy and annul the expulsion decree. The mass prayer was the largest gathering of people in Jerusalem's Old City since its liberation in following the Six Day War in 1967 and the largest prayer in the area since the destruction of the Second Temple...

Whoops!worldnetdaily.com/ ... 10:34:27An officer in the U.S. Air Force is in hot water after admitting to vandalizing cars with pro-Bush bumper stickers at Denver International Airport...

Digital Culturenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:03:54A court had earlier ordered authorities in south Delhi to offer a reward of $45 to anyone delivering a stray cow. The authorities then sell the cow to a new owner but they are concerned people might take advantage by bringing back the same cow for the reward. A $11 microchip in the cow's gut will now show a cow already brought in... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:03:08Almost two-thirds of digital files being swapped on file-sharing networks is video... A surprising figure... was that 12.3% of files were in the open source audio format, OGG. The OGG format is patent and royalty free, and is supported on most media players...

Passingap.tbo.com/ ... 09:58:17Matthew McGrory, the deep-voiced 7-foot-plus actor who moved from appearances on Howard Stern's radio show to a high-profile role as a gentle giant in the movie "Big Fish," died Tuesday. He was 32... wore size 29 1/2 shoes, played a human Sasquatch in 2001's "Bubble Boy," an alien in "Men In Black II" (2002)... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:55:28Author Judith Rossner, whose hugely successful novel "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" was made into a movie starring Diane Keaton, has died, her family said Wednesday. She was 70...

Preternatural Patternsfoxnews.com/ ... 19:21:51[Man, 64] persuaded a buddy [70] to give him a ride to a bank "I got a 10:30 doctor's appointment.. And we can go to the bank."— which, according to police, [he] promptly robbed...
"So we start coming home ... and there was four or five police cars behind me.. I ask Nick, 'Did something happen?' and he didn't say nothing..." drudgereport.com/ ... 09:51:24A dozen firemen were required to lift a 440-pound man out of his home in a small village in northern France to take him to hospital for emergency treatment...

Libertarianism Worksthecouriermail.news.com.au/ ... 10:42:37Escort services working from brothels could be legalised in Queensland as part of reforms to the prostitution industry... "If we can ensure the appropriate checks and balances are in place to protect public safety and health and to ensure that there is no criminality involved, then we will seriously consider that in a very restricted form..." washtimes.com/ ... 09:50:59Detroit is the most liberal U.S. city while Provo, Utah, is the most conservative...

We're All Individualsapnews.myway.com/ ... 09:48:49Texas has become the fourth state to have a non-white majority population... 50.2 percent of Texans are now minorities...

US Judicial Branchworldnetdaily.com/ ... 10:33:26Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer says not all rulings from America's highest court are correct, admitting judges don't have "some great special insight," and he defends the practice of studying courts in foreign countries to help decide cases in the United States... During the conference, Breyer also defended the increasing practice of the U.S. Supreme Court examining laws and rulings in foreign nations to help come to conclusions here, admitting, "It has hit a political nerve." "We're not bound by any foreign law," Breyer said, "but this is a world in which more and more countries have come to have democratic systems of government with documents like our Constitution that protect things like free expression. And there are judges, and the judges have a job somewhat similar to mine, and so why not sometimes, on unusual occasions probably, look and see what they said if it's relevant. Maybe we can learn something. I mean they're human beings, too..." en.wikipedia.org/ ... 09:32:05John G. Roberts, Jr. from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia...

Only Naturalap.tbo.com/ ... 18:44:12How does a flower know when to, well, flower?.. Scientists have long known that it is the amount of sunshine that makes the difference, now they have figured out how the leaves signal the flowers to form... A gene called FT in the leaves, discovered in the 1990s, is crucial to the process, but questions remained about how it delivered the message. The researchers have now found a protein called FD, which occurs in the tips of branches, that causes bunches of plant stem cells to form flower buds... "Only when FT and FD join forces in the same cell can they be active..." [See? FT and FD = FTD!]livescience.com/ ... 12:46:16When people see violent or erotic images, they fail to process whatever they see next... Scientists are calling the effect "attentional rubbernecking..."

Resurrectionhaaretz.com/ ... 10:51:0918-year-old... Mohammed Ashkar.. accidently touched a high-tension wire while he was working on a roof in the town of Yarka ten days ago. He received a powerful electric shock and was thrown a considerable distance... intensive-care team found Ashkar without pulse or respiration, and with serious injuries to his arms and legs... immediately began life-saving procedures and managed to restart Ashkar's heart... "It's very exciting to see a person who was thought dead come back to new life. When we got to him, this guy was done for..."

Zero Wasteiol.co.za/ ... 10:44:26Australian scientists have developed a technique to use waste plastic in steel making, a process that could have implications for recycling scrap metal that accounts for 40 percent of steel production...

Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!duluthsuperior.com/ ... 10:45:25The forests and waterways of Minnesota's far northern border are part of an emerging pipeline from pot growers in Canada to customers in the Twin Cities, Chicago and Detroit... bradenton.com/ ... 10:41:47A drug war is ripping apart northern Mexico, but you won't find many details about who's behind it in the local newspapers. Journalists - after their colleagues have been killed, kidnapped and threatened with death - have stopped investigating organized crime...

Justice?abcnews.go.com/ ... 10:38:14Mitchell Johnson, one of two people convicted in the 1998 Jonesboro, Ark., schoolyard shootings that left five people dead, is set to be released from federal custody today. Gretchen Woodard, Johnson's mother, told a local newspaper her son will not move back to Arkansas after he leaving a federal detention center near Memphis, Tenn. She said Johnson wants to become a minister... When Johnson was 13, he and his friend, Andrew Golden, then 11, stole rifles from Golden's grandfather on March 24, 1998. The boys, dressed in camouflage, hid in the woods behind the school until lunchtime, when Golden ran inside to pull the fire alarm. They opened fire as classmates and teachers filed out of the buildings, killing four students and one teacher. The state had no way to hold Johnson past his 18th birthday because of a since-closed loophole in Arkansas' juvenile justice system. Federal prosecutors have used weapons laws to keep Johnson and Andrew Golden locked up until age 21. Golden is scheduled to be released in 2007...

Not So Naturalap.tbo.com/ ... 19:42:11PepsiCo Inc. has agreed to change the labels on its Tropicana Peach Papaya and Strawberry Melon drinks, settling a lawsuit that claimed the products' "real fruit juice" descriptions were misleading. The "real fruit juice" claim referred to pear juice from concentrate, not to peach and papaya or strawberry and melon juices, which were represented by flavorings. The new labels will call the products "flavored juice drink/from concentrate with other natural flavors..."

Natural Threatfoxnews.com/ ... 19:39:18One in six U.S. high school students reports having asthma, and a third of them note having an asthma episode or attack in the past year...

Liberty Worksfoxnews.com/ ... 19:38:51Iraq’s new free press has advanced, despite the growing pains that have accompanied the industry in a country that previously had been denied cell phones, Internet access and satellite television. That free press is now poised to take a giant leap forward, as the Iraqis Tuesday assume control of theInternational Press Center (search) (IPC) in Baghdad. The question foremost in the minds of many who care about democracy there is: Can a free press there survive?..

Supernatural Threatsfoxnews.com/ ... 19:23:01in two key instances this year, leaders of the religious right have taken such extreme positions that they may jeopardize the long-term power of their own movement. Those two issues are federal government intervention in the Terry Schiavo case and the debate over the use of embryonic stem cells for medical research. In both cases, leaders of the religious right are out of step with the views of many people of faith in this country... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:47:17Never before has an Israeli government relinquished what the religious population universally regards as holy land, promised to the Jews by God. The move challenges core religious beliefs, leaving many Orthodox Jews - soldiers among them - in spiritual turmoil and clamouring for guidance as to how to respond. The answer could determine whether or not the disengagement is carried out amid rebellion in the army and public unrest. "No doubt this is one of the most critical questions which the Israeli population has ever faced since the establishment of the state in 1948," Hebrew University law professor Eliav Shochetman told the BBC News website...

Sex can be Dangerousnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:48:05Swedish detectives could soon have a new weapon in their armoury when investigating rapes - a police dog trained to sniff out sperm... newsday.com/ ... 18:08:58A 79-year-old monsignor named as "the other man" in a Westchester County divorce case resigned Thursday as rector of St. Patrick's Cathedral... despite... denials that he has been carrying on an affair with his 46-year-old private secretary...

Sick, Sick, Sicknews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:51:56Poland has complained about a video clip on a Dutch website portraying the Auschwitz death camp as a rave party... mg.co.za/ ... 18:07:44A Hong Kong official said one of the territory's tiny islands could make a killing with a novel theme park based on its unsavoury reputation as a suicide spot... news.scotsman.com/ ... 10:41:03AN American journalist who was shot dead in Basra last week was executed by Shiite extremists who knew he was intending to marry his Muslim interpreter...

Nature is Dangerousnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:00:19The world's largest frozen peat bog is melting, which could speed the rate of global warming... The huge expanse of western Siberia is thawing for the first time since its formation, 11,000 years ago. The area, which is the size of France and Germany combined, could release billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This could potentially act as a tipping point, causing global warming to snowball... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:57:06A 7-year-old girl died in a flash flood that ripped her out of the grasp of a would-be rescuer as her family...
Elsewhere in central Arizona, a man died when he tried to drive his pickup truck across a flooded river bed near New River, north of Phoenix...
Lightning damaged 12 homes in Mesa, on Phoenix's east side...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spinap.tbo.com/ ... 18:42:38Bush said he had "heard the voices of those saying, 'Pull out now.'" And he said, "I've thought about their cry and their sincere desire to reduce the loss of life by pulling our troops out. I just strongly disagree. Pulling the troops out would send a terrible signal to the enemy... I sympathize with Mrs. Sheehan... She feels strongly about her position. She has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America. She has a right to her position. And I've thought long and hard about her position. I've heard her position from others, which is, 'Get out of Iraq now.' And it would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace in the long run if we were to do so..."news.yahoo.com/ ... 18:38:23For as long as records exist, the Perseid meteor showers have always been strong. This summer's Perseid shower will be exceptional. The moon is mostly out of the way later in the night, and higher-than-normal activity rates are expected over the United States... It has spewed dust for at least 5,000 years and most likely thirty times longer. It has built a massive meteoroid stream, most of which is located just outside of Earth's orbit. Earth passes through the outer regions of that stream in July, and hits the center on August 12. At that time, the annual Perseid shower peaks at 80 meteors per hour under ideal circumstances (no clouds or moon, dark sky, stars of magnitude +6.5 just visible)... editorandpublisher.com/ ... 18:10:33Ted Rall has offered a "retraction" of his Aug. 4 cartoon that cited a 9,000 figure -- rather than the commonly used 1,800-plus -- for the number of American soldiers who have died in the Iraq war... "The battery in my BS detector must have been running low last week...." [See "US Military" section for Aug 8 for different articles on troop losses; the blogheaper was inspired to do this research by Rall's Aug-8 cartoon.]drudgereport.com/ ... 18:07:05The Sheehan Family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq War and we have been silently, respectfully grieving. We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the the expense of her son's good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan Family supports the troops, our country, and our President, silently, with prayer and respect. Sincerely, Casey Sheehan's grandparents, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins... timesonline.co.uk/ ... 18:05:01She has been camping on a patch of grass about a mile from the ranch, where she intends to stay until Mr Bush heads back to Washington at the end of this month or consents to talk with her. “Camp Casey”, as she calls it, has grown to about 50 people, including other bereaved military families, and there are predictions that numbers will swell to 1,000 this weekend... washingtonpost.com/ ... 09:52:38The Rolling Stones' upcoming album contains a song seemingly critical of President Bush, but Mick Jagger denies it's directed at him...

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 18:44:53PINE LAKE, Ga. - Police surrounded a post office in suburban Atlanta on Thursday after a man fatally shot a police officer and ran inside. At least a dozen squad cars could be seen from television helicopter footage outside the building. Police were unsure if the gunman was still inside the post office after the late afternoon shooting... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:59:21BBC News visited a Virginia farming community where the death of a local teenager put a face on a conflict thousands of miles away... Stuarts Draft is the kind of place where everybody knows your name, and where life moves at a slower pace than the big cities. But the tranquillity of this Virginia farming community was shattered by the news in January that one of its own had died in Iraq... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:56:06Gunmen kidnapped a senior Iraqi Interior Ministry official Wednesday... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:55:49Four American soldiers were killed when insurgents attacked their patrol in a northern Iraqi city, and a car bomb targeting a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol in Baghdad killed seven people, including one U.S. soldier... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:46:45At least four Afghan civilians were killed and many more wounded in a US bombing raid in the southern province of Zabul, locals and officials say... The US said one of its soldiers and "at least 16 enemy forces" were killed in fighting in the area on Monday... US forces said on Thursday that another US soldier and six militants had died in fighting in Paktika province...

Threatsnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:58:49Ten foreign nationals who the Home Office says pose a threat to national security have been detained in the UK, pending deportation... Jordanian cleric Abu Qatada and at least two others previously detained in Belmarsh Prison without charge are believed to be among those arrested... today.reuters.co.uk/ ... 09:47:55Pakistan tested its first nuclear-capable, ground-launched cruise missile on Thursday without informing rival India in advance... Nuclear rivals Pakistan and India reached an agreement last week to inform each other about missile tests but Sultan said India was not told about Thursday's test as the accord did not cover the Babur missile... The Babur is a terrain-hugging missile that can avoid radar detection and strike with pinpoint accuracy... ynetnews.com/ ... 09:45:36A suspected al-Qaeda terrorist... Syrian national known as "Luia Sakra..." appeared before a Turkish court Thursday boasting he planned to attack Israeli ships in Turkish ports... was apprehended in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir on Sunday as he attempted to board a plane for Istanbul... Also Wednesday, judges ordered the arrest of another Syrian national... Sakra, considered an expert bomb maker, had undergone plastic surgery and was attempting to fly to Istanbul under an assumed name for a second operation...

Disturbing Family Patternswashingtonpost.com/ ... 09:54:04woke from his triple bypass heart operation earlier this year, his complicated marital affairs took a turn for a worse. All three of his spouses had turned up at the same time, despite his efforts to stagger their visits... upon realizing that something was amiss, the wives held a meeting in the parking lot, and learned that they were all married to the same man... confessed to bigamy, an illegal offense in Britain... today.reuters.com/ ... 09:42:50Perhaps one out of every 25 dads could unknowingly be raising another man's child, a finding that has huge health and social implications... Exposing so-called paternal discrepancy... could lead to family violence and the breakup of many families. On the other hand, leaving paternal discrepancy hidden means having the wrong genetic information, which could have health consequences... becoming pregnant at a younger age, low socioeconomic status, and being in a long-term relationship rather than being married seem to be linked to greater likelihood of paternal discrepancy... "Modern genetic techniques continue to open a Pandora's box on hitherto hidden aspects of human sexual behavior..."

WED 2005-AUG-10

Culturetoday.reuters.com/ ... 22:36:15at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay... prison librarian said on Tuesday... "Harry Potter is a popular title among some of the detainee population... We have Harry Potter in four languages, English, French, Farsi and Russian. We have it on order in Arabic. We do not have books 5 and 6 in the series, at this time. We have had several detainees read the series...One prisoner has requested the movies... " today.reuters.com/ ... 22:32:02Do chuggers bother you when you want to rock up to a restaurant with your cockapoo to hoover a supersized ruby murray? Confused? Then you need to refer to the new Oxford Dictionary of English to understand a host of new words that appear for the first time in its latest edition...

Entrepreneuial Spirittoday.reuters.com/ ... 22:31:45Swedish drivers who register with the Bisso company at the Web site www.bisso.se and pay an annual fee of 850 crowns ($112) are covered against three speeding tickets a year, as long as they are not more than 30 km an hour (19 miles an hour) above the limit. For an extra fee, drivers can buy cover against parking fines...

Zero Wasteecologycenter.org/ ... 13:47:59RECYCLING? ...And Zero Waste Alternatives... ecologycenter.org/ ... 13:47:23Seven Misconceptions about Plastic and Plastic Recycling... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:47:07Why can't we recycle all this plastic? By Megan Lane BBC News Online... ciwmb.ca.gov/ ... 13:46:45Recycled Plastic Lumber... google.com/ ... 13:46:26Google search on "plastic recycling"

Whoops!today.reuters.com/ ... 22:32:24One of Britain's most highly-rated new pop bands stormed out of their debut performance on BBC TV show "Top of the Pops" after a presenter allegedly described them as "fat..." washingtonpost.com/ ... 22:11:55A Los Alamos National Laboratory worker was placed on leave pending an investigation after two other employees inhaled corrosive acid fumes but managers weren't notified until weeks later... sports.myway.com/ ... 22:11:39A fan who plunged from the upper deck at Yankee Stadium onto the screen behind home plate during Tuesday night's game between New York and the Chicago White Sox was released from the hospital into police custody Wednesday... plummeted about 40 feet onto the large net... montereyherald.com/ ... 09:55:35California's fleet of state-owned vehicles swelled to 70,000 last year, but officials in an aggressive new asset-management push have so far been able to pinpoint only about 40,000... [Eh... give or take 30,000 vehicles... "close enough for government work..."]

Preternatural Patternswndu.com/ ... 09:53:17Roseland, IN... In Roseland, the Knights Inn was ticketed for a roadside sign that offers support to the troops, and discount rooms for active military personnel... [Article gives no clue exactly WHY he was ticketed... sign obstructing traffic view? What? Doens't appear offhand to have anything to do with the sign's message....]

Supernatural Threatssuntimes.com/ ... 09:47:21Residents of a Westmont public housing complex for seniors said in a federal lawsuit filed Monday that they were coerced and harassed by management into practicing Christianity and pressured to attend Bible study classes... also alleges the complex only invites low-income Chinese tenants and discriminates against any other potential residents... Elderly non-Christian residents... are barred from using common rooms for anything non-Christian, including card playing... Plaintiffs... say they hid in their apartment bathrooms with the lights off every Wednesday so they wouldn't be forced to attend Bible classes...

Supernaturalworldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:40:38New Zealand... Bush's image is featured in commercials for Hell Pizza Deliveries, with several slogans that include "Hell: Too Good For Some Evil Bastards," and "Even Hell Has Its Standards." The company responsible has a devilish theme throughout its website, including 666, the biblical number of the beast, as part of its phone number, and pitches such as "Putting the vice in service, Hell prides itself on damned good food and great service..." [So... if the Devils are against Bush, then he must be on the side of the Angels?..]

Digital Culturenews.yahoo.com/ ... 14:00:56Yahoo Inc. says its search engine indexes more than 20.8 billion items, which is nearly twice as much as online search leader Google Inc... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:24:26A 20-year-old whose lawyers claimed the video game "Grand Theft Auto" and childhood abuse caused him to kill three small-town police officers was convicted Tuesday of capital murder...

US Election 2008ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:23:52Jeanine Pirro's campaign Web site announcing her bid to challenge Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton features more than 100 photos - none of which include her husband... a lawyer-lobbyist who spent 11 months in federal prison on a tax fraud conviction... also isn't mentioned in his wife's biography posted on the Web site...

Lasting Contributionsap.tbo.com/ ... 09:20:36Bill Dailey, who is credited with helping build Branson into today's entertainment mecca, died of pancreatic cancer Friday, his friends said. He was 76...

Extraterrestrialspace.com/ ... 13:58:32An asteroid known to astronomers for more than a century has now been found to harbor two small satellites. It is the first asteroid trio ever discovered. And there may be more than three...

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 10:53:03

Marine Staff Sgt. Ramon E. Gonzales Cordova, 30, of Davie, Fla., died Aug. 8 as a result of enemy small-arms fire while conducting combat operations in Ar Ramadi, Iraq. defenselink.mil/ ... 10:49:58

Army Sgt. Jonathon C. Haggin, 26, of Kingsland, Ga., died on July 30, 2005 in Baghdad, Iraq, where an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV while he was on patrol. Three other soldiers whose names were announced on August 5, 2005, were also killed in this incident.defenselink.mil/ ... 10:49:21

Army Sgt. Brahim J. Jeffcoat, 25, of Philadelphia, Pa.

Army Spc. Kurt E. Krout, 43, of Spinnerstown, Pa.
died on August 6, 2005, near Balad, Iraq, where they were conducting convoy operations when an improvised explosive device detonated near their HMMWV.defenselink.mil/ ... 10:48:00The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today the identification of the remains of 12 U.S. servicemen missing in action from the Vietnam War. Five of those identified are being returned to their families for burial, and the remaining seven will be buried as a group in Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington, D.C.

Marine Cpl. Gerald E. King, of Knoxville, Tenn.

Marine Lance Cpl. Joseph F. Cook, of Foxboro, Mass.

Marine Lance Cpl. Raymond T. Heyne, of Mason, Wis.

Marine Lance Cpl. Donald W. Mitchell, of Princeton, Ky.

Marine Lance Cpl. Thomas W. Fritsch, of Cromwell, Conn.
Additional group remains are those of:

Marine Pfc. Thomas J. Blackman, of Racine, Wis.

Marine Pfc. Paul S. Czerwonka, of Stoughton, Mass.

Marine Pfc. Barry L. Hempel, of Garden Grove, Calif.

Marine Pfc. Robert C. Lopez, of Albuquerque, N.M.

Marine Pfc. William D. McGonigle, of Wichita, Kan.

Marine Lance Cpl. James R. Sargent, of Anawalt, W. Va.
Additionally, the remains of

Army Sgt. Glenn E. Miller, of Oakland, Calif. will be included in the group burial.
The Marines were part of an artillery platoon airlifted to provide support to the 11th Mobile Strike Force, which was under threat of attack from North Vietnamese forces near Kham Duc in South Vietnam. On May 9, 1968, the Strike Force had been directed to reconnoiter an area known as Little Ngok Tavak Hill near the Laos-Vietnam border, in the Kham Duc Province. Their base came under attack by North Vietnamese Army troops, and after a 10-hour battle, all of the survivors were able to withdraw from the area...

Be Positivethescotsman.scotsman.com/ ... 09:59:39WHEN it comes to being nasty we are rarely lost for words, according to a new dictionary that shows there are almost ten times as many insulting expressions as there are complimentary ones...

US Militarydefenselink.mil/ ... 10:51:51This week, the Army and Navy announced an increase in the number of reservists on active duty in support of the partial mobilization, while the Air Force and Marine Corps number decreased and the Coast Guard number remained the same. The net collective result is 2,172 more reservists mobilized than last week... edition.cnn.com/ ... 09:51:19In an extraordinary move, the Army sacked a four-star general... a Vietnam veteran, ranked third in seniority among the Army's 11 four-star generals... who was the subject of a Defense Department investigation into alleged sexual misconduct... The Army announced no specific allegation... a senior official said it involved unspecified sexual misconduct...

Only Naturalsciencedaily.com/ ... 22:47:35New discoveries about the timing and speed of gigantic, 6500-foot (2-km) thick lava flows that poured out of the ground 65 million years ago could shift the blame for killing the dinosaurs... The Deccan Traps of India are one of Earth's largest lava flows ever, with the potential of having wreaked havoc with the climate of the Earth - if they erupted and released climate-changing gases quickly enough... today.reuters.com/ ... 22:33:17A Japanese man aged 104 and his 103-year-old wife plan to claim the title of world's oldest married couple after hearing it had been awarded to two Americans... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:28:42At least 10 people have drowned and dozens are missing in north-east Iran after heavy rain caused flash floods... cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ ... 09:10:17Unusually high concentrations of jellyfish have appeared along Spain's Mediterranean coast this summer, to the discomfort of thousands of tourists... Red Cross said its lifeguards had treated almost 11,000 people for stings on beaches so far this season...

People Dieap.tbo.com/ ... 22:17:13OCEAN TOWNSHIP, N.J... An 8-year-old girl died and three others were injured Wednesday when an oak tree crashed down on them during a first-aid class at a Boy Scout camp... the 31-foot tree snapped and crashed through a tarp over a picnic table, landing on the girl's head... The girls were among a group of 17 children on a weeklong "Learning For Life" program... ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:15:56COSTA MESA, Calif. - A woman jumped to her death from a Hummer limousine as it was driving down an interstate Wednesday in what appeared to be a suicide... the woman and four other passengers left a party... the passengers had been drinking but it wasn't known if the woman was intoxicated... boston.com/ ... 14:00:01TEWKSBURY -- A 14-year-old Medford girl died yesterday after a stunt went wrong at cheerleading practice... upcoming ninth-grader at Medford Vocational-Technical High School, died after being thrown in the air and landing chest down in the arms of fellow cheerleaders...

Disturbing Family Patternsap.tbo.com/ ... 22:14:58A Massachusetts resident killed his wife and 10-year-old stepdaughter during a vacation in his native Puerto Rico... Another stepdaughter, 12-year-old Millie Vilkisius, was hospitalized with cuts and bruises to her head and fingers... attacked the three during an argument with his wife... The couple had three younger children from their own marriage... thescotsman.scotsman.com/ ... 09:58:26A MOTHER who left her three young children with a schoolgirl babysitter while she enjoyed a two-week holiday in Turkey is facing jail after she admitted to wilfully neglecting them...

Digital Threatwired.com/ ... 09:56:05The British government is preparing to test new high-tech license plates containing microchips capable of transmitting unique vehicle identification numbers and other data to readers more than 300 feet away... Officials in the United States say they'll be closely watching the British trial...

Under Tyrannynews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:54:28A Punch and Judy man has been banned from using Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden puppets in his Kent seaside show... Council officials said they received complaints from concerned parents... Mr Punch dispatched the baddies in time-honoured fashion by bashing them with his stick and Mr Witts said most of the audience enjoyed the joke. Punch and Judy has traditionally poked fun at contemporary figures... "They used to have Mussolini in the show - they had Hitler in the show - that is the secret of Punch and Judy, it is topical," said Mr Witts...

Sick, Sick, Sickapnews.myway.com/ ... 13:58:00A purported al-Qaida-made video shows militants in Afghanistan - including Europeans, Arabs and others - preparing to attack U.S. troops and showing off what they said was a U.S. military laptop. The video, parts of which have been shown by Al-Arabiya television, including a segment aired Tuesday, features interviews with a masked man yelling "As you bomb us, you will be bombed!" and shows a group of men packing explosives into bombs... heraldsun.news.com.au/ ... 09:59:11VICTORIA... THE bodies of a dozen decapitated kangaroos have been found at a suburban golf course... newsday.com/ ... 09:45:30A Chinese artist who grafted the head of a human fetus onto the body of a bird has defended his work as art after a Swiss museum withdrew the piece from an exhibit...

Threatstoday.reuters.com/ ... 22:30:52Quick-footed criminals hoping to avoid the debilitating shock of a police stun gun could soon be facing a more exacting foe -- the electric bullet... Homeland Security is seeking alternatives with broader uses like light lasers or guns firing electric bullets to combat all manner of felon... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 22:27:22It is only a matter of time before London's financial centre is attacked by terrorists, police believe... ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:19:48OKLAHOMA CITY - Federal agents arrested a 24-year-old man at an Oklahoma airport Wednesday after finding what appeared to be an explosive device in his bag... could face charges related to possessing an explosive device at an airport... had no known connection to any terrorist groups... news.yahoo.com/ ... 13:57:26Turkish police have detained 10 people suspected of links to the Al-Qaeda extremist network and of plotting attacks on Israeli cruise ships in southern Turkey... local6.com/ ... 13:56:26ORLANDO, Fla... When the bus came to its last stop at the Centroplex parking garage, a passenger on the bus brought the package to the driver. When the driver saw that Osama bin Laden was written on the package, he called 911, Local 6 News reported. Firefighters and police aggressively moved into the area and checked the package, according to the report. Several streets in the downtown area were closed. The package was packed with flyers but police did not say what the flyers said... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:45:11Not only is Starbucks sponsoring "Pride" week, but an event that places innocent children in the middle of sexually explicit materials ... and registered child molesters will be there running the show?.. worldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:41:02U.S. troops in Iraq have seized documents suggesting al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is planning to enter Iraq during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan...

Mechanical Disasterap.tbo.com/ ... 09:10:49ROMULUS, Mich. - A series of explosions rocked a Detroit-area chemical plant, causing a fire that sent plumes of black smoke into the air and prompting hundreds of residents to evacuate their homes. Authorities said no injuries were reported...

Sex can be Dangerousasia.news.yahoo.com/ ... 09:09:35Islamic militants threatened to kill him for it, but Abu Mustafa says it was the only way he knew to make a living in the chaos that is Baghdad today. The pornographic video salesman is among many traders caught between two faces of the new Iraq, one liberated from the state censorship of Saddam Hussein, the other gripped by religious zeal...

Violencefoxnews.com/ ... 22:41:12Authorities on Wednesday captured a fugitive couple who had been on the run after pulling off a bold escape outside a Tennessee courthouse that left an officer dead... without incident at an America's Best Value Inn in Columbus, Ohio... You are left grappling for answers and trying to figure it out. What was she thinking?.." ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:21:40ERIE, Pa. - FBI agents have seized shoes and letters written by a convicted rapist as they investigate the bizarre 2003 bombing death of a pizza deliveryman... searching for clues to who wrote a nine-page letter that directed pizza deliveryman Brian Wells to rob a bank in two years ago. Stockton was living in the area at the time... ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:18:51MILWAUKEE - Investigators discovered two sets of human remains buried beneath concrete slabs behind a home and were deciding whether to excavate more of the yard... too soon to say how long the adult bones had been there... found Monday by construction workers the homeowner had hired to dig out a concrete slab in the backyard of the newly renovated home... house had been gutted by a suspicious fire about a year ago... ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:17:31PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Police stormed a volatile slum in the capital Wednesday in an attack on well-armed gangs that witnesses said left at least five people dead - including a pregnant woman and a teenage boy... ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:13:51A female police officer was shot to death by assailants and a woman identified as an a former municipal officer was wounded in the violence-plagued border city of Nuevo Laredo on Wednesday... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:14:49ALBUQUERQUE - A sheriff's department helicopter that crashed behind a home in Albuquerque during the weekend was brought down by gunfire... Both the civilian pilot and the deputy on board... survived with minor injuries... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:11:18Four U.S. soldiers were killed and six others wounded when insurgents attacked their patrol in a northern Iraqi city, while a car bomb targeting a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol in Baghdad killed seven people... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:09:10Suspected Taleban militants have killed an Afghan woman they accused of spying for the Americans...

Transport Tragedyap.tbo.com/ ... 22:13:14A truck carrying 35,500 pounds of explosives crashed and exploded Wednesday, leaving a huge crater in a Utah highway and injuring at least four people... It wasn't immediately clear why the truck crashed... the truck was "pretty much vaporized" in the explosion and both lanes of Highway 6 in Spanish Fork Canyon, about 60 miles south of Salt Lake City, were gutted by the blast... eitb24.com/ ... 09:08:23A helicopter carrying two pilots and 12 passengers crashed in the Baltic Sea off the coast from the Estonian capital Talinn on Wednesday... on a scheduled commercial flight from Tallinn to Helsinki, Finland...

TUE 2005-AUG-09

Culturemailtribune.com/ ... 13:44:03CENTRAL POINT — Wal-Mart’s challenge of a state Land Use Board of Appeals decision backing the city’s denial of a 207,000-square-foot supercenter has been thrown out because of incorrect postage... news.telegraph.co.uk/ ... 13:36:32Britain's first "crustless bread", a sliced loaf that stays white all the way through, was unveiled yesterday...

Why People Go Vegantheaustralian.news.com.au/ ... 13:15:39What started as a light-hearted attempt to portray the vegan lifestyle has turned into a TV phenomenon. After only five episodes on a Californian cable channel, the Vegan Vixens are attracting national attention. One New York newspaper dubbed them "the soy of sex"... "Party with the world's sexiest vegan girls while they arouse your senses and put you under their spell," promises a trailer for the series. "It's like no other show you've ever seen..."

Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!today.reuters.com/ ... 17:20:44It may be the effects of a hot real estate market in Toronto, but illegal marijuana growers appear to be looking at low-cost northern Ontario land as a way to cut costs, Canadian police said on Monday... news.yahoo.com/ ... 13:21:39An energy bill President Bush signed into law Monday would start daylight time three weeks earlier and end it a week later as an energy-saving measure. And that has technologists worried about software and gadgets that now compensate for daylight time based on a schedule unchanged since 1987... [NOOOOOO!!!! REPEAL DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME FOREVER!]

Science Marches Onnnnnnwashingtonpost.com/ ... 13:20:27Eric Stroud, a research chemist who heads the Oak Ridge, N.J.-based company Shark Defense... has determined that a synthetic liquid replicating the scent of rotting sharks prompts them to flee when it is released into the water...

Privatize! Privatize! Privatize!headlines.agapepress.org/ ... 13:09:06A judge has tossed out a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging prayers at school board meetings in Delaware. The lawsuit was filed against members of the Indian River School District Board of Education, a group that regularly opens its business meetings with prayer... [The solution is not prayers and the solution is not not prayers. The solution is not public schools!]

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 12:22:23

Marine Lance Cpl. Chase J. Comley, 21, of Lexington, Ky., died Aug. 6 as a result of an explosion from a suicide, vehicle-borne, improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations against enemy forces near Al Amiriyah, Iraq. defenselink.mil/ ... 12:22:03

Army Pfc. Seferino J. Reyna, 20, of Phoenix, Ariz., died on Aug. 7, 2005, in Taji, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his military vehicle.

US Militarytoday.reuters.com/ ... 12:19:14The four-star general who headed the U.S. Army's training program has been relieved of his duties for unspecified "personal misconduct" after a probe by criminal investigators...

Only Naturaltimesonline.co.uk/ ... 13:36:01ELDERLY people tend to die in their sleep because their brains forget to tell their bodies to breathe... news.yahoo.com/ ... 10:42:20BAGHDAD - Thousands of people were left suffocating as a massive sandstorm brought life in the war-torn Iraqi capital to a virtual standstill. Nearly 1,000 cases of suffocation were reported at the city's Yarmuk Hospital which saw one 60-year-old woman die...

Extraterrestrialzwire.com/ ... 13:33:54North Bergen NJ... since the initial sighting in 1975, there have been a total of 700 sightings or incidents involving North Bergen residents over the last 30 years... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:41:44"Congratulations on a truly spectacular test flight," astronaut Ken Ham at Mission Control in Houston told the Discovery crew as the shuttle stopped on the runway at the Edwards Air Force Base. "Welcome home, friends." "We're happy to be back and we congratulate the whole team for a job well done," Commander Eileen Collins replied, to cheers from Nasa personnel at the base...

Sick, Sick, Sicktoday.reuters.com/ ... 17:18:59New York radio station WQHT has agreed to pay $240,000 to New York State authorities after it sponsored "smackfest" contests in which young women took turns slapping each other for a chance to win concert tickets and cash...

Digital Threattoday.reuters.com/ ... 17:12:49A South Korean man who played computer games for 50 hours almost non-stop died of heart failure minutes after finishing his mammoth session in an Internet cafe... had been playing on-line battle simulation games... planted himself in front of a computer monitor to play on-line games on Aug. 3... only left the spot over the next three days to go to the toilet and take brief naps on a makeshift bed... "We presume the cause of death was heart failure stemming from exhaustion..." had recently quit his job to spend more time playing games... mother asked his former colleagues to find him. When they reached the cafe, Lee said he would finish the game and then go home... He died a few minutes later...

Transport Rescuenews.yahoo.com/ ... 17:08:17PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMTCHATSKI, Russia (AFP) - Without an anonymous phone call by a tearful woman to a local radio station, the world may have heard too late about the Russian submarine stranded in the Pacific to save its seven crew, the journalist who took the call claimed... phone rang... about 24 hours after the AS-28 mini-sub became trapped... "A woman called in tears. She was saying that a mini-sub had got stuck with seven men aboard in the Bay of Berezovaya..." said she had got the news from "someone" in the military. "She saved these lads. A monument should be raised to her. If she had not called it would have remained a secret, I'm sure..."

People Dienews.telegraph.co.uk/ ... 13:18:29Two retired sisters were trapped for four days beneath a fold-up bed before suffocating in a Spanish holiday apartment... It is believed that as they pulled down the heavy wooden bed frame it came free from its wall mountings and fell on top of them...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spinworldnetdaily.com/ ... 13:06:48An online animated video sponsored by Planned Parenthood's San Francisco-area branch features a superhero character drowning an abstinence promoter in a trash can and blasting into oblivion several pro-life picketers protesting in front of one of the organization's facilities...

Threatscsmonitor.com/ ... 17:04:50To some voters, she is a ruthless Machiavelli-in-a-pantsuit who will do anything to resume residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. To others, she is the brilliant and inspiring golden girl, poised to make history as America's first female president... thescotsman.scotsman.com/ ... 13:16:14A BRITISH-BORN al-Qaeda suspect appeared in court yesterday accused of trying to set up a terrorist training camp in the United States... in Bly, Oregon, between 1999 and 2000, aimed at training men to fight in Afghanistan... timesonline.co.uk/ ... 13:12:53A BRITISH cow that died in an Oxfordshire field in 1937 has emerged as the source of Saddam Hussain’s “weapons of mass destruction” programme that led to the Iraq war... An ear from the cow was sent to an English laboratory, where scientists discovered anthrax spores that were later used in secret biological warfare tests by Winston Churchill. The culture was sent to the United States, which exported samples to Iraq during Saddam’s war against Iran in the 1980s. Inspectors have found that this batch of anthrax was the dictator’s choice in his attempts to create biological weapons... “(Saddam) obviously at one point had a programme because he was buying the laboratory’s cultures to underwrite a programme. Why would he want peaceful research with Vollum? Come on!”... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 13:04:41major breakthroughs in the ability of the government to locate rogue nukes may be five years away... [link is ad]

Disturbing Family Patternsboston.com/ ... 12:26:16[Mother] didn't call a doctor.. when her daughter botched an attempt to pierce her own belly button and a life-threatening infection set in... when the girl, in excruciating pain, took to the living room couch three weeks ago and basically stopped eating or moving.. when her daughter lost control of her bowels; instead.. put her 13-year-old in diapers... Last week, paramedics found her daughter, a tall girl wasted away to about 75 pounds, lying on the living room couch wearing a diaper, despondent, and with no detectable blood pressure. Doctors diagnosed her with sepsis, a bloodstream infection that would have caused ''incredible pain" within 24 hours of onset. ..she could have been sick for as long as four weeks...

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 17:10:32GROZNY, Russia (AP) - Gunmen sprayed bullets at a car Tuesday in the capital of Chechnya, killing one person, wounding a child in the head, and setting the vehicle ablaze. Three members of a special Chechen security force were believed to have been in the car, said a police official, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of angering the force... olympics.reuters.com/ ... 17:06:23A former prison nurse opened fire on guards escorting her shackled husband from a Tennessee courthouse on Tuesday, killing one guard and escaping with her husband in a sport utility vehicle... [husband] was in court to be tried on an outstanding burglary charge. He had served two years of a 35-year sentence for robbery and assault convictions... newsday.com/ ... 13:16:54U.S. Marines discovered a car bomb factory Monday in a western Iraqi town near where 20 members of the American unit were killed last week... Six vehicles rigged with explosives were found... also found five roadside bombs Monday on a road in Haqlaniyah... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:18:31Nepal's military says it has found the bodies of 40 soldiers killed in fighting with Maoist rebels in the remote western district of Kalikot. The rebels said they lost 26 men in the attack on an army camp late on Sunday... ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:16:51One U.S. service member and at least 16 suspected Taliban rebels were killed in fighting in southern Afghanistan...

Police Riotap.tbo.com/ ... 12:15:54Two Ciudad Juarez police officers were charged Monday with the rape of a U.S. tourist... a 24-year-old tourist from El Paso, Texas... woman told investigators the officers stopped her and her husband as they were getting out of a night club and arrested him for drinking in public. When she offered them a $50-dollar bribe to let her husband go, the officers put her in their patrol truck and raped her...

Prison Suckslatimes.com/ ... 10:40:36The largest riot at San Quentin State Prison in 23 years left 42 inmates injured Monday, three of them seriously enough that they were sent to outside hospitals... fight broke out between white and Latino inmates... as many as 80 inmates in several buildings were involved...

MON 2005-AUG-08

Transportsuntimes.com/ ... 23:24:05Two United Airlines planes that were carrying more than 100 passengers each were taken out of service Monday after their wings touched while on the ground at O'Hare International Airport...

WW2 - still with usap.tbo.com/ ... 23:21:06Tibbets left the Air Force as a brigadier general in 1966. In the 1970s, he and his wife moved to Columbus, where Tibbets became president of an executive jet-taxi service. He retired in 1985, and has faced declining health, including two fractured vertebrae in the past few months. Acknowledging his mortality, he says he wants his ashes scattered over the English Channel, where he loved to fly during the war. In late 2003, a fully restored Enola Gay went on display in a companion building to the air and space museum in Virginia. "I wanted to climb in and fly it," Tibbets said...

But is it Art?news.yahoo.com/ ... 16:48:40When the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan destroyed two 1,600-year-old Buddha statues lining Bamiyan Valley's soaring cliffs, the world shook with shock at the demise of such huge archaeological treasures. Now, artist Hiro Yamagata plans to commemorate the towering Buddhas by projecting multicolored laser images onto the clay cliffsides where the figures once stood. "I'm doing a fine art piece. That's my purpose — not for human rights, or for supporting religion or a political statement," said the 58-year-old artist, whose other laser works include a permanent display at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain...

Oh! The Irony!news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:14:26The Space Shuttle crew have been warning of the destruction of the Earth's environment. But what damage does it do to get a shuttle in space in the first place?.. Hydrochloric acid formed in this launch cloud leads to acidic deposits in the surrounding area, a phenomenon which may also be observed some distance away if exhausts are carried on prevailing winds... some cumulative effects of launches in the nearby area are "reduction in the number of plant species present and reduction in total cover". The manual also pointed out that acid deposits from the launch cloud can also impact nearby water lagoons and their wildlife...

Whoops!today.reuters.com/ ... 11:11:12A Macedonian man left his wife at an Italian service station and only realized he had driven off without her six hours later... told police he hadn't missed his wife because she always sat in the back of the car with their daughter...

Preternatural Patternsabclocal.go.com/ ... 11:58:28has had some rough times... He lost his leg in a train accident twenty years ago, and now, he's been beaten by his own prosthetic leg...he and his girlfriend... got into an argument... says she started beating him in the face and head several times with one of his spare prosthetic legs. He tried to get away, but says she followed him out the door, still hitting him with the leg... "Probably because I won't commit... I'm not sure..." ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:08:29ANN ARBOR, Mich... A man who left an accident scene was tracked down with the help of some cheerleaders who witnessed the crash and turned his license plate number into a cheer...

US Election 2008washingtonpost.com/ ... 10:58:36Jeanine Pirro, a high-profile prosecutor from the New York City area: "I am running against Hillary Clinton because New York state deserves a senator who will give her all to the people of New York for a full term, who will not miss votes to campaign in (presidential) primaries... When Mrs. Clinton first came to us and said she wanted to be a New Yorker, she asked New York to put out a welcome mat and we did," the Westchester County district attorney added. "But now she wants us to re-elect her even though she won't promise to serve out her term and wants to use us as a springboard to the presidency. She's asking us to become her doormat. I believe we deserve better..."

Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!theglobeandmail.com/ ... 16:56:44Police have seized more than 18,000 marijuana plants from a Northern Ontario community located just south of where one of Canada's largest pot busts went down last month. It is alleged some of the plants discovered in the latest outdoor grow-op bust were more than a metre tall. Police have arrested two 39-year-old men, both of whom are from the Toronto area... suntimes.com/ ... 16:54:59As the 2005 Chrysler minivan crawled down 26th Street, its driver lowered a window. Out wafted a scent that was unmistakable: marijuana. Unfortunately for the man behind the wheel, the smell didn't go unnoticed . . . by a nearby squad car. Police pulled over the minivan Saturday on West 26th and made quite a large discovery: roughly 355 pounds of marijuana with an estimated street value of nearly $1 million... also was cited for having a fictitious driver's license. It showed an expiration date of 2048...
[Repeal prohibition... but there might still be "stupidity laws..."]

US Militaryforbes.com/ ... 13:23:51Military doctors are fighting to contain an outbreak of a potentially deadly drug-resistant bacteria that apparently originated in the Iraqi soil. So far at least 280 people, mostly soldiers returning from the battlefield, have been infected, a number of whom contracted the illness while in U.S. military hospitals... democracynow.org/ ... 12:47:23new Pentagon data puts the number of U.S. casualties since the beginning of the Iraq invasion - including troops killed, wounded or evacuated due to injury or illness – at over 9,000, a significant increase over earlier estimates... figure includes troops killed, wounded or evacuated due to injury or illness...
MARK BENJAMIN:... It's not that the Pentagon as far as I can tell is making any effort to hide the figures. They're also not making any effort to publicize the figures. It's up to reporters frankly to ask the right questions and ask them repeatedly until they get the answers...

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 23:11:47

Army Sgt. 1st Class Robert V. Derenda, 42, of Ledbetter, Ky.

Army Sgt. 1st Class Brett E. Walden, 40, of Fort Walton Beach, Fla.
died on August 5, 2005, in Rubiah, Iraq, when a civilian fuel truck collided with their HMMWV while performing a convoy mission... defenselink.mil/ ... 23:10:42

Marine Gunnery Sgt. Terry W. Ball Jr., 36, of East Peoria, Ill., died Aug. 5 from wounds received as a result of an explosion while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Karmah, Iraq, on June 12... defenselink.mil/ ... 12:32:36

Army Pvt. 1st Class Damian J. Garza, 19, of Odessa, Texas.

Army Pvt. John M. Henderson Jr., 21, of Columbus, Ga.
died on Aug. 4, in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, when their vehicle left the road and went into a river.defenselink.mil/ ... 12:31:46

Army Pvt. 1st Class Nils G. Thompson, 19, of Confluence, Pa., died Aug. 4, in Mosul, Iraq, when he was struck by enemy fire while on a routine patrol at an Iraqi police station. defenselink.mil/ ... 12:31:14

Marine Gunnery Sgt. Theodore Clark Jr., 31, of Emporia, Va., died Aug 4 when the vehicle in which he was a passenger was struck by an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations near Gardez, Afghanistan. defenselink.mil/ ... 12:30:48

Army Sgt. 1st Class Victor A. Anderson, 39, of Ellaville, Ga.

Army Staff Sgt. David R. Jones Sr., 45, of Augusta, Ga.

Army Sgt. Ronnie L. Shelley Sr., 34, of Valdosta, Ga.
died on July 30 in Baghdad, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near their HMMWV while they were on patrol. Final identification of a fourth soldier who was killed in the same incident is forthcoming.defenselink.mil/ ... 12:29:30

Army Spc. Jerry L. Ganey Jr., 29, of Folkston, Ga.

Army Spc. Mathew V. Gibbs, 21, of Ambrose, Ga.

Army Sgt. 1st Class Charles H. Warren, 36, of Duluth, Ga.
died on Aug. 3, in Baghdad, Iraq, when a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated near their armored personnel carrier. defenselink.mil/ ... 12:28:34

Marine Staff Sgt. Chad J. Simon, 32, of Madison, Wis., died Aug. 4, while under hospice care in Madison, Wis., from wounds he received on Nov. 8, 2004 from an explosion while conducting combat operations in Babil Province, Iraq... defenselink.mil/ ... 12:27:39

Marine Lance Cpl. Christopher J. Dyer, 19, of Cincinnati, Ohio, died Aug 3 when the amphibious assault vehicle in which he was a passenger was hit by an improvised explosive device...

Science Marches Onnnnnnnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:53:27via scans of their brains... Teams at University College London and University of California in LA could tell what images people were looking at or what sounds they were listening to... such research might help paralysed people communicate, using a "thought-reading" computer... study's findings proved the principle that fMRI scans could "read thoughts", but he said it was a very long way from creating a machine which could read anyone's mind...

Sexual Equality??telegraph.co.uk/ ... 11:45:03The Church of England's crisis over homosexuality deepened yesterday after gay clergy said that they would defy their bishops ... that they had no intention of assuring their bishops that they will be sexually abstinent when they "marry" their partners... [big duh!]ottawasun.com/ ... 11:44:08Two straight men.. both of whom were previously married and both of whom are looking for a good woman to love... have decided to take the plunge and try out the new same-sex marriage legislation... "There are significant tax implications that we don't think the government has thought through..." worldnetdaily.com/ ... 11:37:33male nurse fed up with comments such as "men are jerks" and "men are idiots" is fighting back, suing his employers in federal court for allegedly being sexually harassed on the basis of gender... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:10:27A hotel is to open a wing which will be available to women only. Males will be banned from the 68 rooms of the new section of the five-star Grange City Hotel in central London. Even room service staff will be female... rooms would contain "female-friendly" features such as illuminated wardrobes, a backlit make-up mirror and extra-powerful hairdryer...

World Without Bordersnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 01:04:18On the 60th anniversary of the United States becoming one of the first nations to ratify the UN Charter, the BBC considers the tension in their recent relations... The name "United Nations" was first coined by President Franklin D Roosevelt during the Second World War when 26 nations pledged to continue fighting together against the Axis powers... American affection for the organisation though has slowly been ebbing away...

Extraterrestrialnasa.gov/ ... 10:45:58Due to low clouds at the Kennedy Space Center landing site, Mission Control Houston has waved off both landing opportunities for Space Shuttle Discovery today. STS-114 Commander Eileen Collins and the rest of the crew aboard Space Shuttle Discovery will return the orbiter to normal flight operations for another day. The next opportunity is at 5:07 a.m. EDT Tuesday... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 01:03:07Crew members were upbeat, saying the spacecraft was in "great shape" for its scheduled landing in Florida...

Sex can be Dangerousnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:25:23A 15-year-old schoolgirl who only found she had HIV when she became pregnant has given birth at a hospital in Swansea... the baby has so far tested negative but needs another test in three months... "If she hadn't become pregnant she would not have known that she was HIV positive. In young people it takes 10 to 15 years before symptoms appear. If we know that a woman is HIV positive before the baby is born there is a very high chance - 99% - that the child will be OK..."

Theftap.tbo.com/ ... 23:23:47SAO PAULO, Brazil - Thieves tunneled nearly 300 feet to a Central Bank vault in northeastern Brazil and stole about $65 million... built a 13-foot deep, 262-foot-long tunnel from a house near the bank... tunnel had electric lights and walls reinforced with wood panels and lined with plastic sheeting... cameras and motion detectors inside the vault did not function...

People Dieap.tbo.com/ ... 23:21:55Peter Jennings, the urbane Canadian-born broadcaster who delivered the nightly news to Americans over five decades, during which he became the face of ABC News, died Sunday. He was 67...

Untied Nationsap.tbo.com/ ... 23:21:31A former United Nations procurement officer was indicted and pleaded guilty Monday to soliciting a bribe under the oil-for-food program, making him the first U.N. official to face criminal charges in connection with the scandal-tainted operation...

London 2005-Julytimesonline.co.uk/ ... 12:03:29While London reeled under attack, the teachers of extremism were celebrating — and a Sunday Times reporter was recording every word... DURING a two-month undercover investigation The Sunday Times has amassed hours of taped evidence and pages of transcripts which show how Bakri and his acolytes promote hatred of “non-believers” and “egg” their followers on to commit acts of violence, including suicide bombings... Integration with British society is scorned, as is any form of democratic process. Followers are encouraged to exploit the benefits system. They avoid jobs which could bring them into contact with western women or might lead them to contribute to the economy of a nation they are taught to despise...

Violencejpost.com/ ... 16:57:17In the first operation of its kind in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian security forces on Monday freed two United Nations foreign aid workers shortly after they were kidnapped by Fatah militiamen in Khan Yunis... ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:07:14COLUMBUS, Ohio - The mentally ill man who admitted to a series of highway shootings that terrorized central Ohio has agreed to drop his insanity defense and plead guilty... faces decades in prison for the shootings... [Judge] said he will recommend that McCoy be ordered to serve his sentence in a prison mental health wing so he can be treated for his paranoid schizophrenia...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spinunknownnews.net/ ... 12:43:24Casualties in Afghanistan & Iraq... AT LEAST 67,638 KILLED, 172,000 SERIOUSLY INJURED... 29,642 people have been killed and 75,245 injured, in all terrorist attacks worldwide since 1968... wsws.org/ ... 12:42:21The Bush administration is deliberately concealing from the American people the number and condition of US military personnel who have been wounded in Iraq... Estimates on the number of US soldiers, sailors and Marines medically evacuated from Iraq by the end of 2003 because of battlefield wounds, illness or other reasons range from 11,000 to 22,000... Once back in the US, the injured are stored in dozens of military medical facilities around the country, their existence virtually ignored by the administration, their plight largely unreported by the media... drudgereport.com/ ... 10:50:30Cindy Sheehan, 48, of Vacaville, Calif... mother of a fallen U.S. soldier who is holding a roadside peace vigil near President Bush's ranch...
after visit with the president at Fort Lewis near Seattle on June 24, 2004: 'I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis... I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith... the president gave us... the gift of happiness, of being together...
2005: Every time we tried to talk about Casey and how much we missed him, he would change the subject. And he acted like it was a party...

Nature is Dangerouskomotv.com/ ... 10:43:37POMEROY, WASH. - Wildfire managers around the state are looking for ways to help the School fire near here, which has grown to some 32,000 acres, forced the evacuation of about 175 homes and burned about three dozen buildings...

Mechanical Disastersun-sentinel.com/ ... 11:46:42The operator of a Florida nuclear plant appears to have shipped radioactive waste to ordinary landfills, municipal sewage treatment plants and some unknown locations in the 1970s and early 1980s... "It's a 23-year-old event," said Rachel Scott, the spokeswoman... ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:05:29SANTIAGO, Chile - A gas explosion in a coal mine in southern Chile on Monday killed three miners and injured at least 40 others... ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:51:58A coal mine flooded in southern China, trapping 102 miners more than 1,000 feet underground as rescuers on Monday used water pumps in an effort to reach them... 1,378 feet underground...

SUN 2005-AUG-07

Sex -- always attractiveananova.com/ ... 01:45:27Teri Hatcher has revealed she likes to sneak men back to her camper van after a date... admitted she was celibate for months after her ten-year marriage... But she admits she's making up for lost time... "I've had that battered VW van for years. I think it's sexy and hot to get to grips with a guy in my passion wagon..."

Whoops!ananova.com/ ... 01:44:24woman has dumped her fiance and is going to marry her wedding planner... ananova.com/ ... 01:43:19A man survived after shooting himself in the heart with a nail gun... came within 1MM of dying... Doctors said he would have bled to death if he had pulled out the nail. The wound would have been fatal if the nail had not hit hard scar tissue built up from an illness 30 years earlier...

Alcohol Was Involvedlocal6.com/ ... 00:25:47BRENTWOOD, N.H. -- Emergency workers helped a New Hampshire man out of a difficult situation over the weekend after a friend apparently locked a padlock around his testicles... had the padlock around his testicles for two weeks... a friend put the lock on while he was drunk and passed out. When he woke up, the friend was gone... tried to remove the lock with a hacksaw because the key had broken off in the lock...

Culturenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 00:13:06An English mansion, which is on the market for more than £70m, has been named as the most expensive property in the world... 103 rooms... 58-acre estate... guest accommodation away from the main building, a private helipad and five swimming pools... neighbours included the Queen at Windsor Castle and Sir Elton John...

WW2 - still with usdailytimes.com.pk/ ... 00:03:34The US atomic bombings and the Soviet Union’s entry into World War II that led to Japan’s surrender were “God’s gifts,” the Japanese navy minister at that time was quoted saying in documents released Friday by the National Security Archive...

Only Naturalananova.com/ ... 01:42:29Bears have been extinct in Switzerland for more than 100 years until one was spotted last week that is believed to have migrated into the country from neighbouring Italy. Hikers have been told that they should sing as they go to make sure the bear is not taken by surprise... local10.com/ ... 00:24:35BOCA RATON, Fla. -- A California man on vacation in South Florida landed a 12-foot long, 700-pound Mako shark off Boca Raton Wednesday morning... today.qeuters.com/ ... 00:14:02Friends of the Chicago River, an environmental group, cut the ribbon on Saturday on the city's first "fish hotel," off the Michigan Avenue bridge at the south end of the city's Magnificent Mile shopping district. The hotel is actually a series of small gardens -- some floating and others submerged -- densely planted with wetland vegetation that should be more inviting to urban fish species than the river's bare, steel walls...

Fun can be Dangerousap.tbo.com/ ... 21:02:52A British teenager who almost died after a Walt Disney World ride last month was flown home during the weekend, still in critical condition after suffering cardiac arrest... said she felt nauseated and dizzy after leaving Disney World-MGM Studios' "The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror" on June 12, and she later collapsed... Riders are placed in an elevator that shoots up 13 stories and then plummets back twice... stable but critical condition...

Threatsap.tbo.com/ ... 20:51:18Two Egyptians were detained at an airport in the Caribbean resort of Cancun after one appeared on a U.S. travel-restriction list...

Police Riotsuntimes.com/ ... 00:42:09The August newsletter for the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 7 said, "When you respond to . . . a shoplifter call at [J.C. Penney] or Target department stores you should be aware that their security rooms are videotaped. On two occasions these stores have sent copies of the videotapes to the department and officers are now facing discipline because of their actions. These stores are not your friends..."

Transport Rescueap.tbo.com/ ... 20:58:27"It was cold, cold, very cold. I can't even describe it," one crew member.. said as the sailors walked ashore with dazed looks and bloodshot eyes.... The men had worn thermal suits... were told to lie flat and breathe as lightly as possible...
submarine's commander Lt. Vyacheslav Milashevsky's wife, Yelena: "I was happy. I cried from happiness. I danced..."
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov: "We have seen in deeds, not in words, what the brotherhood of the sea means..."
British Royal Navy Commander Ian Riches: "It was a difficult operation, but we enjoyed doing it... The team are over the moon that we have got these guys out alive..."
Some naval officials had said the submarine ...got caught on an underwater antenna... Riches, the British commander, said the vessel had become tangled in fishing nets, as had been originally reported... "The submarine was caught very firm into the fishing nets and had driven into them so that they were very tight and they actually looked and behaved like steel wires, so it was very, very difficult to cut through with cutting implements..." news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 00:17:06The seven-man crew, who had faced low temperatures and dwindling oxygen, are all alive and were able to climb out of their submarine unaided... ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:11:26Seven submarine crew members trapped for nearly three days under the Pacific Ocean were rescued Sunday after a British remote-controlled vehicle cut away the undersea cables that had snarled the vessel...

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 20:59:44MOUNTAIN, Wis. - A woman and her parents were shot to death inside a camper in northeastern Wisconsin, and the woman's estranged husband was in custody Sunday... ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:59:00Insurgent violence aimed at derailing Iraq's political efforts killed three more American servicemen and at least 13 Iraqi civilians and government employees across the country... editorandpublisher.com/ ... 18:48:18one American has killed another in a dispute over the Iraq war... at Floyd County flea market on Thursday, when two friends, who were firearms vendors there, drew guns after quarreling about the war... [man], 65, of Martin, who backs the war, shot and killed [man], 56, of Manchester, who opposed it... ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:47:32A bicycle bomb left by suspected guerrillas exploded next to a church, killing one woman and injuring at least a dozen people in northeast Colombia near the Venezuela border... bomb was detonated in front of the Arauca Cathedral just as two police officers were passing by on a motorcycle... The officers were among the injured... The woman killed was a street vendor, as were most of the injured victims... ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:09:29CAPE CORAL, Fla. - Campers discovered the burned body of a missing 17-year-old honor student in an abandoned refrigerator Saturday, and authorities said a teenage acquaintance and another man had confessed to killing her... was last seen alive on July 21 when she dropped off two friends after a night at the movies. Her car was later found torched in a field, but it wasn't until Saturday that her body was found... breakingnews.iol.ie/ ... 00:05:34A gloating rapist called his teenage victim’s mother on a stolen mobile phone to tell her about the depraved attack... in west Belfast... A second thug used a metal bar to batter three boys she was with and stop them rescuing her...

SAT 2005-AUG-06

Nudity can be Unappetizingabcnews.go.com/ ... 18:24:24A man swimming in the buff along the shoreline is causing a stir where tourists stroll along the waterfront and dine in restaurants overlooking San Francisco Bay... police... "We don't get many naked-people-swiming-in-the-bay calls... We want to inform him of the calls from the public and get his side of the story. Right now, no laws have been broken, but we are still investigating..."

Transporttoday.reuters.com/ ... 15:07:22A fire in the Paris Metro on Saturday caused light injuries to about 15 people, most of whom suffered from smoke inhalation... probably caused by a short-circuit...

Supernatural Threatstoday.reuters.com/ ... 15:02:26A leading Republican senator allied with the religious right differed on Thursday with President Bush's support for teaching an alternative to the theory of evolution known as "intelligent design." Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, a possible 2008 presidential contender who faces a tough re-election fight next year in Pennsylvania, said intelligent design, which is backed by many religious conservatives, lacked scientific credibility and should not be taught in science classes...

Digital Cultureabcnews.go.com/ ... 18:22:49As part of an experiment in telemedicine... a robot... 200-pound device — which is wheeled and has a camera and screen on top... allows him to have two-way conversations with patients... Robotics are moving into the operating room, as well... automated scrub nurse... responds to voice commands, hands the surgeon medical instruments during the surgery, and keeps track of them to reduce mistakes... "It doesn't make me a better doctor... It makes me a more available doctor. If that's better, great..." abcnews.go.com/ ... 18:19:02Using Virtual Reality to Relive 9/11 Helps New York Fire Captain Overcome Crippling Anxiety... King was the battalion chief in charge of safety for the New York Fire Department on the morning when 343 firefighters died in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. King, who was friendly with nearly half the fire department victims, barely escaped the north tower. His right knee was shattered. The injured joint slowly healed. His shattered psyche took longer... "I didn't want to even stand next to any high rise building as long as I lived," said King, 57, a second-generation fireman with a son now working for the department. "I didn't even want to go over a bridge..." he didn't get better until he tried virtual reality... ap.tbo.com/ ... 15:06:28Festac Town, a district of Lagos where the scammers ply their schemes, has become notorious for "419 scams," named for the section of the Nigerian penal code that outlaws them. In Festac Town, an entire community of scammers overnights on the Internet. By day they flaunt their smart clothes and cars and hang around the Internet cafes, trading stories about successful cons and near misses, and hatching new plots. Festac Town is where communication specialists operating underground sell foreign telephone lines over which a scammer can purport to be calling from any city in the world. Here lurk master forgers and purveyors of such software as "e-mail extractors," which can harvest e-mail addresses by the million... itweek.co.uk/ ... 10:04:0739-year-old, from Wood Green in north London, is accused of hacking 97 US military computers between February 2001 and March 2002, causing damage estimated at $700,000 (£370,000)... says he will fight extradition to the US, and denies knowingly or intentionally causing any damage. He has also called for consistent global computer crime legislation... 'I honestly hope that someone on a 56k modem is not capable of that kind of damage. I am sickened by these accusations. I did not knowingly delete or damage anything. I wanted to keep my presence secret and go undetected... My only explanation for the estimated damages is that the US government is talking about how much it has spent rebuilding machines, removing software and ensuring they can't be accessed again.'... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:51:17A manuscript containing the oldest known Biblical New Testament in the world is set to enter the digital age and become accessible online... Codex Sinaiticus, believed originally to have been one of 50 copies of the scriptures commissioned by Roman Emperor Constantine after he converted to Christianity... The original document is so precious that it has only been seen by four scholars in the last 20 years...

US Election 2004today.reuters.com/ ... 09:05:05Americans unhappy about the result of last November's presidential election have decided to stay at home after all... In the days after President Bush won a second term, the number of U.S. citizens visiting Canada's main immigration Web site shot up sixfold... But official statistics show the number of Americans actually applying to live permanently in Canada fell in the six months after the election...

WW2 - still with usvoanews.com/ ... 12:26:36a B-29 bomber carrying a single weapon changed, perhaps forever, the way we think about war and peace...
Paul Tibbets: "It is the principle that we wanted to save lives. And I've had Japanese since [the end of World War II] tell me that we saved their lives, too, because the invasion would have been nothing but bloodshed. It would have been terrible..."
political scientist Kenneth Waltz of Columbia University: "...if the Japanese had accepted 200,000 deaths in Okinawa and 100,000 deaths by firebombing in Tokyo without surrendering, what were we to do?.."
As the world enters what's often called a "second nuclear age", an era marked not by a superpower standoff, but by weapons proliferation and the threat of a rogue state or terrorist attack, many analysts say the United States should be prepared to use atomic weapons again, either in response to an attack or as part of a pre-emptive strike... thewbalchannel.com/ ... 09:44:40A recent joint poll by The Associated Press and Kyodo News agency found... 68 percent of Americans but only 20 percent of Japanese believed nuclear weapons were needed to end the war quickly... On both sides of the Pacific, however, older respondents were more likely to believe the bomb was unavoidable, while younger people tended to be more questioning... edition.cnn.com/ ... 08:55:42Hundreds of doves were released in Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima Saturday as tens of thousands of people gathered 60 years after the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the city, killing nearly half of its residents... news.yahoo.com/ ... 08:55:23With prayers and flowers, residents of Hiroshima began marking the 60th anniversary of the world's first nuclear bombing which claimed more than 140,000 lives. A bell was tolled at 8:15 am (2315 GMT Friday) and the city observed a minute of silence, the exact moment that a US bomb obliterated the city in 1945...

Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:35:02Police seized more than a ton of Colombian cocaine bound for Portugal, the biggest drug bust ever in Brazil's largest port...

Cryptozoologyaftenposten.no/ ... 09:54:44Monster hunter Jan-Ove Sundberg continues his search for proof of famous sea serpents and once again claims that he has evidence for the presence of Selma, the beast reputed to live in Norway's Lake Seljord...

Human Rightajc.com/ ... 09:53:31When she got pregnant, the joy she wanted to share with her employer quickly turned sour when, she said, her boss demanded that she get an abortion or risk losing her job... "The guys and I do not even hire single mothers because of the problems. I know you have some great delusion that you will be a great mother, but you won't — you can't even take care of your dog..."

World Without Bordersthelocal.se/ ... 09:46:20Sweden is to suspend all deportations of gay asylum seekers to Iran, following the recent executions of two 18-year old men, who some claim were killed for having had homosexual sex...

Supernaturalmacleans.ca/ ... 09:45:00Take a Muslim cabbie from New York City, a Jewish businessman from Montreal and a forgotten suitcase containing valuable diamonds and precious stones and what do you get? One honest taxi driver and one relieved jewelry dealer...

Communication Breakdownsciencedaily.com/ ... 08:57:04If someone told you to "put the apple in the basket on the table," what would you do? Depending on how many apples and baskets are in your kitchen, it might not be clear. Would you move the apple in the basket to the table, or move the apple to the basket on the table? Had the speaker included the word "that's" after the word "apple," it would have eliminated any confusion... But people often fail to avoid such ambiguities when they speak. Previous research has shown that speakers choose their sentences based, in part, on how easy those sentences are to produce for themselves while not taking ease of comprehension into account. An ambiguous phrase is often easier to construct than an unambiguous one, so some people will speak ambiguously even if they are likely to be misunderstood...

Mechanical Disasterap.tbo.com/ ... 15:05:10TOLUCA, Mexico - A truck loaded with fireworks in a religious procession exploded on Saturday, leaving seven people dead and four severely injured outside Otumba, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) northeast of Mexico City... Two children were among the seven killed in the explosion. More than a dozen people with minor injuries were treated on the highway where the explosion took place...

Under Tyrannynews.independent.co.uk/ ... 09:45:59Historic Mecca, the cradle of Islam, is being buried in an unprecedented onslaught by religious zealots. Almost all of the rich and multi-layered history of the holy city is gone... 95 per cent of millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades... Now the actual birthplace of the Prophet Mohamed is facing the bulldozers, with the connivance of Saudi religious authorities whose hardline interpretation of Islam is compelling them to wipe out their own heritage... It is the same oil-rich orthodoxy that pumped money into the Taliban as they prepared to detonate the Bamiyan buddhas in 2000. And the same doctrine - violently opposed to all forms of idolatry - that this week decreed that the Saudis' own king be buried in an unmarked desert grave...

Sex can be Dangerousabcnews.go.com/ ... 18:24:50For years, Howard White has advertised his strip club near Los Angeles International Airport with a not too subtle marquee reading "Live Nude Nude Nudes." But some tourists and nearby businesses say White has gone too far with his latest pitch for the Century Lounge: a freshly posted sign proclaiming "Vaginas R' Us..." bostonmagazine.com/ ... 09:39:24The journalism student whose professor lost his job for describing her as "incredibly hot" with a "bitchin' bod" has dropped the class... a former Boston Herald sportswriter who started work last month as an adjunct member of the faculty at Boston University, was fired after posting on his blog that one of the women in his class of six was so "incredibly hot" that "it was all I could do to remember the other five students..." today.reuters.com/ ... 09:03:41A business executive was sentenced on Thursday to seven years in prison for sexually assaulting a sleeping woman seated next to him on a Delta Air Lines flight from Dallas to Boston...

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 12:30:54U.S. and Iraqi troops repelled a series of coordinated insurgent attacks in southern Baghdad, killing six rebels and capturing 12... There were no U.S. casualties... a suicide attacker drove a truck loaded with explosives into a nearby Iraqi army checkpoint, killing an Iraqi soldier... A suicide car bomber tried to attack another Iraqi position in the area, but a U.S. tank fired and hit the car, killing the driver and causing the car bomb to explode prematurely, the U.S. command said. Iraqi police said three bystanders were wounded... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:37:01Two Christian men showing the "Jesus" film were killed in Faridpur, Bangladesh... The two men had spent the last eight months providing health awareness programs to locals and showing the "Jesus" film... today.reuters.com/ ... 08:59:09Two U.S. servicemen were drowned and two escaped when their Humvee slid into a flood-swollen river while on patrol in eastern Afghanistan...

Threatscanada.com/ ... 15:19:06The Americans hurried to roll out the Nagasaki bomb, wanting to give an impression of continued, massive and irresistible destruction. The third bomb would be ready to fall by August 17. But on August 15 the Emperor announced the surrender...
There are two fuels for an atomic bomb: highly enriched uranium (HEU), which was used on Hiroshima, and weapons-grade plutonium, which was used on Nagasaki... HEU is the most dangerous explosive material in existence and the prospect of its falling into the wrong hands is appalling... The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) came into existence to allow nuclear power and to stop the spread of atomic weapons. Technically, this is very simple to do: have an outright and worldwide ban on any uranium enrichment above 10% (weapons need above 80%) and the same ban on weapons-grade plutonium. The problem is political...
In the history of human sorrow, the atomic bombs on Japan must be ranked large but by no means largest. More people were killed in the conventional bombing of Germany and Tokyo. More than twice as many were killed with machetes and clubs in Rwanda in 1994... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:36:22Osama bin Laden is alive and well and living in the valley of Dir within the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. He has been there since he escaped from Tora Bora in December 2001... ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:58:51TOLEDO, Ill. - A man is accused of sending an e-mail bomb threat to the headquarters of an Islamic civil rights group...

Transport Tragedyap.tbo.com/ ... 12:34:43A bus collided head-on with a flatbed truck in southeastern Brazil, killing nine people and injuring 13 others... flipped over, crashed with an oncoming truck and rolled down a hill... drivers of both vehicles were killed immediately... Six passengers also were killed, and another died on the way to the hospital... eight were hospitalized in serious condition... bloomberg.com/ ... 12:21:16Rescue teams striving to save the crew of a mini-Russian submarine trapped underwater with a dwindling air supply, have looped cables around a surveillance system it is entangled with to try and raise the vessel... vessel is snagged by an underwater antenna that forms part of an electronic coastal surveillance system... antenna is attached to an anchor weighing 60 metric tons, which rescuers are preparing to blow up... An operation taking one to four hours would then begin later today to lift the sub from a depth of about 625 feet (190 meters)... today.reuters.co.uk/ ... 12:17:55Fourteen people died and 20 were injured on Saturday when their Tunisair-operated flight from Italy to Tunisia made an emergency landing in the sea off Sicily after reporting a technical fault... mosnews.com/ ... 08:59:31A rescue operation in the Berezovaya cove near Kamchatka peninsula, aimed at saving the seven Russian Navy crewmembers, trapped on board the AS-28 mini-submarine, will be started at 8pm Moscow time (5pm GMT), Russian Navy Headquaters said in a statement... ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:57:59SOMIS, Calif. - An Amtrak train collided with a dump truck crossing the tracks in southern California, injuring 20 people, two of them seriously...

Natural Threatseattlepi.nwsource.com/ ... 08:54:33TULSA, Okla. -- Two children died Friday after being infected with a rare parasite associated with swimming in stagnant water... boys, ages 9 and 7, did not know each other but were both believed to have been swimming in area ponds before contracting Naegleria, an amoeba that enters the body through the nose and can cause a deadly inflammation of the brain... Of the 200 known cases of Naegleria in the past 40 years, only two people have survived...

FRI 2005-AUG-05

Supernatural Threatsworldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:30:27Any doubt about what they're really up to was resolved by of Dover (Pa.) school board member William Buckingham, arguing for forcing intelligent design into local schools. "Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross," he told the board. "Can't someone take a stand for him?" Well, yes, but not in science class... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:28:20"Government-sponsored religion should be taught in all public schools." It's an edict you expect from an ayatollah of Iran – the kind of top-down, force-fed religion from which Americans traditionally recoil. This time, however, the edict came from the president of the United States. Which makes it all the more shocking, and all the more repulsive...

History - still with usguardian.co.uk/ ... 09:27:01An oak door in Westminster Abbey, rumoured to be covered in human skin, is the oldest in Britain, archeologists have revealed... made in the mid-11th century, when William the Conqueror was a young man, and installed in the 1050s, during the reign of Edward the Confessor. This makes it the only remaining Anglo-Saxon door in Britain... recent tests show that the skin is cowhide... only survived for so long because it was indoors and in constant use... Simon Thurley, chief executive of English Heritage, said: "It is incredible to think that, when the door was made, the Norman conquest had not yet happened and William of Normandy was still a young man of about 20 years old..."

1960s - still with usnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:37:10Bob Dylan's song Like a Rolling Stone has topped a poll of rock and film stars to find the music, movies, TV shows and books that changed the world... Ex-Beatle Sir Paul picked Heartbreak Hotel as his number one choice...

Whoops!alertnet.org/ ... 09:18:52A bid by Mexican police to polish their image backfired after youngsters at a police summer camp were filmed chanting that they had killed their dads and tossed their sisters into ditches... children as young as 6 were taught to belt out the lurid marching song at an elite federal police youth camp... Mexico's police are struggling to shake off an enduring reputation for brutality and corruption, with some units routinely linked to kidnap and drug trafficking gangs by investigators... ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:36:34A businesswoman in faraway Montana was swamped with anguished calls after a letter informing 339,000 Medicaid recipients of service cuts wrongly listed her phone number for a help line for the hearing impaired...

Culturefoxnews.com/ ... 13:04:33The Boy Scouts should cease to accept tax-funding and cut all official ties to government agencies. The Boy Scouts should live up to its self-declared status as a private organization. This would also be living up to the Boy Scouts' principles: it is the honest and honorable thing to do... rogerebert.suntimes.com/ ... 09:08:01Ebert: "The Dukes of Hazzard" is a comedy about two cousins who are closer'n brothers, and their car, which is smarter'n they are... still another TV program I have never ever seen. As this list grows, it provides more and more clues about why I am so smart and cheerful...
The movie stars Johnny Knoxville, from "Jackass," Seann William Scott, from "American Wedding," and Jessica Simpson, from Mars... [Movie may suck, but Ebert's review is worth the read!]chicagotribune.com/ ... 08:31:00My friends and I could always tell who the "Hazzard" fans were at school because they created a drool puddle near the fire exit. Whenever anyone used the word "special," they would look up like dogs responding to a high-pitched noise. So, I'm not sure what there is to evaluate in "Hazzard" or how to compare it on any scale to any other movie. I expected it to suck. It did suck. I'm not shocked, and I doubt anyone else is either. So what's a reviewer supposed to do?.. even discussing it makes me feel like I'm soiling myself...

Transportnews.scotsman.com/ ... 08:27:31RESCUERS today faced a race against time to reach a Russian mini-submarine with seven sailors on board which was trapped on the sea floor. The vessel has become caught in an unidentified object, 625ft below the surface off the Kamchatka Peninsula on Russia's Pacific Coast... conflicting reports saying there was enough oxygen to last between one and five days... appeared to be caught on a cable or a fishnet...

Extraterrestrialap.tbo.com/ ... 18:36:50The space shuttle made a long overdue trash pickup at the international space station on Friday - the first one in 2 1/2 years... a giant garbage can holding 5,000 pounds of broken machines, discarded equipment, empty food cartons and other junk into the shuttle's cargo hold... one of the last chores before the shuttle pulls away from the station after more than a week of linked flight...

Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!timesonline.co.uk/ ... 09:23:00THE rivers of Italy are flowing with cocaine... The biggest river, the Po, carries the equivalent of about 4kg (8lb 13oz) of the drug a day, with a street value of about £20,000... Cocaine users among the five million people who live in the Po River basin in northern Italy consume the drug and excrete its metabolic by-product, benzoylecgonine... calculated that for every 1,000 young adults in the catchment area, about 30 must be taking a daily dose of 100 milligrams of cocaine, which greatly exceeds official national figures for cocaine use...

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 09:02:17

Marine Lance Cpl. Adam J. Strain, 20, of Smartsville, Calif., died Aug 3 as result of enemy small arms fire while conducting combat operations in Ar Ramadi, Iraq.

Digital Future is Nownews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:40:08how technology is aiding the secret liaisons of young men and women in the conservative culture of the United Arab Emirates...

World Without Bordersnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:38:59Secretive "guerrilla" artist Banksy has decorated Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side... One depicts a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side...

Only Naturalnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:02:06Fine combing of wet hair is far more effective than pharmacy-bought chemical lotions for eliminating head lice, say researchers... People who used wet combing were four times more likely to rid themselves of head lice than those who used insecticide products... Head lice have developed resistance to common over the counter products... cbsnews.com/ ... 09:21:20For 20 years, Sarah Scantlin was seemingly unaware of the world around her after she was hit by a drunk driver in an accident that sent her into a comatose state in September of 1984. Then in February, she shocked her parents and doctors when she began to speak... accident occurred when Scantlin was crossing the street in her hometown of Hutchinson, Kan... people like Scantlin rarely awake from such an injury... speech is still limited... throughout her 20-year coma, she could see, hear, and understand what was going on around her. Shortly after she awoke, her father asked what she knew about events that had occurred years earlier. "Sarah, what's 9/11?" her father asks. She responds, "Bad… fire… airplanes… building… hurt people..." news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:31:58A US firm is looking to commercialise breast milk by selling it to hospitals for the treatment of sick babies...

Rebuildingap.tbo.com/ ... 18:34:58The Internet's key oversight agency has quietly authorized Iraq's new government to manage its own domain name, allowing for the restoration of Internet addresses ending in ".iq..."

People Diesky.com/ ... 14:26:10A man filmed himself jumping to his death on his mobile video phone and beamed the live images to his horrified girlfriend... jumped from the Humber Bridge after a New Year's Eve row... couple had got engaged on Christmas Day... Miss Smith told the hearing her fiancee was not drunk but had been in a "strange mood" at the party and was "looking for an argument over the silliest of things"... had threatened to jump from the bridge following the sudden death of his dad in 1997 but was stopped by his mother...

Prison Sucksthestandard.com.hk/ ... 13:02:29The Bush administration is negotiating the transfer of nearly 70 percent of the detainees at the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to three countries as part of a plan to share the burden of keeping suspected terrorists behind bars...

Transport Tragedycbc.ca/ ... 12:53:26VLADIVOSTOK, Russia - A Russian rescue vessel managed to hook a cable onto a disabled mini-submarine and was towing it to shallower waters, the commander of the Pacific Fleet was quoted as saying Friday... ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:35:39RENTON, Wash. (AP) - Two small planes collided over a busy highway in this Seattle suburb, with one smashing through the roof of an empty school, killing both people aboard... The second plane landed safely...

Violencedefenselink.mil/ ... 13:00:41Two U.S. servicemembers drowned after their Humvee slid into the Kunar River northeast of Jalalabad, Afghanistan, Aug. 4... hollywood.com/ ... 09:24:36The first wife of Robert Blake has claimed the actor tried to have her and her new boyfriend killed following their separation in the 1970s... allegedly planned to blame the killings on followers of Charles Manson... Kerr Blake and Railsback were then filming the 1976 TV movie Helter Skelter, about the Manson 'family'... ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:35:54About 1,000 U.S. Marines and Iraqi forces launched attacks in western Iraq in an operation aimed at disrupting insurgents and foreign fighters in the Euphrates River valley... ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:33:42About 40 police officers were injured trying to break up a five-hour riot by Protestant militants who burned 10 cars and a double-decker bus in Belfast... rioters threw scores of gasoline bombs and at least one homemade grenade and tried to drive one hijacked vehicle into police lines...

Threatsap.tbo.com/ ... 18:35:37A note found in a Southwest Airlines seat pocket claiming a bomb was on the plane prompted a landing and evacuation of 136 passengers... thestar.com.my/ ... 18:34:03The carnage wrought by the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years ago demonstrates the need to eliminate nuclear weapons for the sake of human survival, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday... "It has always been hoped that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki stand as constant reminders of why preventing the further use and proliferation of such weapons -- and why nuclear disarmament leading to a nuclear weapon-free world -- is of utmost importance for the survival of humankind and planet Earth..." foxnews.com/ ... 11:18:54postal workers in a sorting center in the northwestern suburb of Bonneuil-en-France took no chances when they noticed the strange envelope from Sri Lanka with the powder inside... police were called... six employees who had been exposed to the powder were subjected to medical examinations. The powder.. was eventually found to contain.. elephant excrement. ..was addressed to a Paris-based immigrant from Sri Lanka who apparently used the pachydermal poo for traditional religious rites... news.yahoo.com/ ... 09:17:45Americans in the Middle East and North Africa were warned Thursday they may be targets of terrorists using biological weapons as well as conventional arms... Seaborne vessels traveling in the southern Red Sea are among the possible targets... extremists may be planning to carry out attacks against Westerners and oil workers on the Arabian Peninsula... nytimes.com/ ... 01:22:09A Maryland man was arrested yesterday and accused of conspiring to aid terrorism by training to become a jihadist fighter in camps in Pakistan...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spinthemorningsun.com/ ... 01:21:22In one hand, you've got an orange (evolution). In the other, you've got an apple (Intelligent Design). If you engage in a broad discussion about fruit (why we exist), it's proper to weigh the two. If you're talking about citrus fruits (science), you steer clear of apples. Why? The apple isn't a citrus fruit. It's a fine fruit - it's kept many a doctor away, and knowledge of how to pie it made mom all-American - it's just not a member of the citrus family. The president, however, looked at both and said, "I think this apple just might be citrus fruit..."

THU 2005-AUG-04

Lasting Contributionsboston.com/ ... 23:14:36when Gerry Thomas, the Paradise Valley retiree often credited with inventing the TV Dinner, died last month, it was widely reported as the passing of the man behind a piece of 20th century Americana. Since then, though, questions have been raised about whether the 83-year-old former Swanson salesman and marketing executive -- and member of the Frozen Food Industry Hall of Fame -- got too much credit... On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times published an editorial calling Thomas "a charlatan." The editorial was based on a 2003 article in which Swanson heirs and a Swanson employee of the era denied Thomas was the inventor of the TV Dinner... Thomas himself claimed he came up with the idea for the three-compartment tray, coined the "TV Dinner" name and developed the packaging...

What Th'...?moviehole.net/ ... 21:44:10Moviehole: And on the fitness side? Can you be a role model?
Jessica Simpson: Yeah, definitely, because I’m au natural...

Researching the Obvioussciencedaily.com/ ... 16:47:43Threaten a man's masculinity, and he will assume more macho attitudes, according to a study by a Cornell University researcher... "I found that if you made men more insecure about their masculinity, they displayed more homophobic attitudes, tended to support the Iraq war more and would be more willing to purchase an SUV over another type of vehicle," said Robb Willer, a sociology doctoral candidate...

Digital Consequencesnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:52:55An estimated two million of the 18 million mobiles sold last year in the UK could have been faulty...

Unclear on the Conceptnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:51:25Osama Bin Laden's lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahri has warned London will face more attacks because of Tony Blair's foreign policy decisions... ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:51:14A hip-hop radio station said Wednesday it has fired two of its radio personalities after an on-air discussion last month of ways to fight police officers...

Too Little Too Latenydailynews.com/ ... 10:41:08Two jurors who acquitted Michael Jackson of child molestation charges now say they think the pop star was guilty - and they are penning tell-all books about the jury's deliberations...

Supernaturalap.tbo.com/ ... 02:45:16As terrified passengers fled the burning Air France jet, Guy Ledez stood atop a muddy ravine, pulling survivors from the wreckage. He then ran on board the burning wreckage of Flight 358 to make sure no one was left behind. The 37-year-old airport rental car manager says he didn't have time to stop and think of danger when he witnessed the crash during a routine Tuesday afternoon... he was driving along the airport road... "I looked down and there's just a sea of people trying to get up," he said. "I had two babies passed to me." He and another bystander - whose name he never learned - pulled survivors to safety and then went down to help some elderly passengers up the ravine...

WW2 - still with usap.tbo.com/ ... 02:41:46In two years of submarine combat duty, U.S. naval officer Thomas O. Paine thought he had seen the worst of World War II. Then he saw what atomic bombs did to the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "I'll just say that no description seems ample to describe the power that was unleashed," the 24-year-old wrote to his parents... "It is beyond belief almost, and makes what we did to Germany and Tokyo and Sasebo and Agana at Guam as nothing..."

Transportap.tbo.com/ ... 02:46:07A woman was arrested Wednesday for attempting to open an airplane exit door while the plane was still in the air... 52-year-old woman from Dania Beach, Fla... Police were investigating whether alcohol and prescription medication were involved... ap.tbo.com/ ... 02:35:36PHILADELPHIA - Many Amtrak and commuter trains were stopped Wednesday night when a commuter train snapped an electric line, cutting off power to the trains...

Broadcast is Deadwashingtonpost.com/ ... 19:14:41CNN suspended commentator Robert Novak indefinitely after he swore and walked off the set Thursday during a debate with Democratic operative James Carville... "We've asked Mr. Novak to take some time off..." sg.news.yahoo.com/ ... 00:27:00Broadband Internet surfers in North America watch two fewer hours of television per week than do those without Internet access, while those using a dial-up connection watch 1.5 fewer hours of TV...

Digital Future is Nowsciencedaily.com/ ... 16:46:34One of the biggest obstacles facing computer systems today is the problem of memory latency, the time a computer must wait to access the data stored in memory despite faster processor speeds. Two demonstrators reveal that optoelectronics may offer solutions... "We were able to take the signals from a fibre and push them into a high-bandwidth free-space optical connection, one which is capable of addressing many electronic processors simultaneously. So the latency is as low as you can get -- essentially we're working at light speed with many thousands of channels." The key achievement of HOLMS, believes Snowdon, was the project's success in integrating fibre-optics with free-space technologies and optical PCBs -- to form a powerful three-part optoelectronic interface...

Extraterrestrialnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 16:39:53Hopes of finding hydrocarbon oceans on Saturn's smoggy moon, Titan, appear to be dashed... an extensive search for tell-tale infrared reflections has now revealed no sign of lakes or seas on Titan... the flat surfaces previously spotted on Titan are more likely to be solid and dry... However, the latest observations were focused entirely on Titan's southern hemisphere. It is just possible the northern region may still contain pools of liquid organic material...

World Without Borderswashingtonpost.com/ ... 16:18:36CONCORD, N.H. -- A small-town police force that drew attention for using trespassing charges to arrest illegal immigrants has dropped its case against one man...

Only Naturalboston.com/ ... 23:15:01CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. --A family found a surprising guest in their fish pond -- a 2 1/2-foot alligator... mosnews.com/ ... 16:21:11A group of researchers in Russia claim they have solved the mystery of crop circles... plants bend as a result of microwave emissions caused by lightning strikes... ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:44:06Authorities said the heavy, elevated structure, open on one side, was the safest place the Scouts could have been during the storm. "From what we can tell, it appears the lightning hit a tree next to us, came down and came out of the tree and just into some nails that were driven into the cabin to hold the logs together..."

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 21:53:46

Marine Lance Cpl. Timothy M. Bell Jr., 22, of West Chesterfield, Ohio

Marine Lance Cpl. Eric J. Bernholtz, 23, of Grove City, Ohio

Marine Lance Cpl. Nicholas William B. Bloem, 20, of Belgrade, Mont.

Marine Sgt. Bradley J. Harper, 25, of Dresden, Ohio

Marine Sgt. Justin F. Hoffman, 27, of Delaware, Ohio

Marine Cpl. David Kenneth J. Kreuter, 26, of Cincinnati, Ohio

Marine Cpl. David S. Stewart, 24, of Bogalusa, La.
died August 3 when their Amphibious Assault Vehicle was attacked by an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations south of Haditha, Iraq. defenselink.mil/ ... 21:52:16

Marine Lance Cpl. Michael J. Cifuentes, 25, of Fairfield, Ohio

Marine Lance Cpl. Grant B. Fraser, 22, of Anchorage, Alaska

Marine Lance Cpl. Aaron H. Reed, 21, of Chillicothe, Ohio

Marine Lance Cpl. Edward A. Schroeder II, 23, of Columbus, Ohio

Marine Lance Cpl. Kevin G. Waruinge, 22, of Tampa, Fla.

Marine Lance Cpl. William B. Wightman, 22, of Sabina, Ohio
died Aug. 3 when their Amphibious Assault Vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device during combat operations south of Haditha, Iraq.defenselink.mil/ ... 21:50:50

Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Thomas C. Hull, 41, of Princeton, Ill., died Aug. 2 on board the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz in the Arabian Gulf after being medically evacuated to the carrier for a non-combat related incident.defenselink.mil/ ... 00:49:23

Army Staff Sgt. James D. McNaughton, 27, of Middle Village, N.Y., died August 2 in Baghdad, Iraq, where he was struck by sniper fire while he was in a guard tower.defenselink.mil/ ... 00:49:01

Marine Cpl. Jeffrey A. Boskovitch, 25, of Seven Hills, Ohio

Marine Lance Cpl. Roger D. Castleberry Jr., 26, of Austin, Texas

Marine Sgt. David J. Coullard, 32, of Glastonbury, Conn.

Marine Lance Cpl. Daniel N. Deyarmin Jr., 22, of Tallmadge, Ohio

Marine Lance Cpl. Brian P. Montgomery, 26, of Willoughby, Ohio

Marine Sgt. Nathaniel S. Rock, 26, of Toronto, Ohio
died Aug. 1 as result of enemy small-arms fire while conducting dismounted operations outside Haditha, Iraq.

Science Marches Onnnnnndrudgereport.com/ ... 19:16:51BRITISH scientists are developing a revolutionary vaccine that works against all types of flu... nytimes.com/ ... 00:24:06South Korean researchers are reporting today that they have cloned what scientists deem the most difficult animal, the dog. The group worked for nearly three years, seven days a week, 365 days a year and used 1,095 eggs from 122 dogs before finally succeeding with the birth of a cloned male Afghan hound. The surrogate mother was a yellow Labrador retriever...

Opposing Tyrannywashtimes.com/ ... 16:20:44Alabama yesterday became the first state to enact new protections against local-government seizure of property allowed under a Supreme Court ruling that has triggered an explosive grass-roots counteroffensive across the country...

Sex can be Dangerousboston.com/ ... 23:17:43SPENCER, Iowa --A man who police say showed up at a sandwich shop wearing nothing but a ski mask will face several charges once he's released from the hospital... doesn't believed Kout intended to rob the restaurant. He wasn't armed, the chief said. "I'm not sure what he would rob it with..." boston.com/ ... 23:17:13Police arrested a New Jersey police officer on an indecent exposure charge after people complained the man was standing naked in front of his hotel room window... was attempting to 'show off' by flexing as he stood naked in front of the window in order to attract the attention of the people on the sidewalk in front of the hotel... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:54:20Increasingly raunchy female singers have caused controversy in Egypt... as popular female stars reveal more and more flesh, controversy has inevitably grown in Egypt's mainly Muslim society... "If the video clip doesn't have some kind of strip dancing it won't get popular - but not every one likes to watch this. "When a couple of friends discuss the clips, they watch and enjoy them, but then they start to say: 'This not singing - it's covered up pornography.'..."

Mechanical Disasternytimes.com/ ... 19:12:37A 7-year-old boy from Connecticut was killed yesterday when he got stuck in a conveyor belt propelling a water ride at the Playland Amusement Park in Rye, N.Y... police said they believed the boy had somehow gotten out of the front or back of the boat near the start of the ride... ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:46:46A rock fall at a southeastern Kentucky coal mine killed two miners... Harlan County... No other people were injured...

Family Patternsap.tbo.com/ ... 02:35:14In a case that outraged women's rights groups and prompted a change in state law, an appeals court has sided with a judge who voided a woman's divorce because she was pregnant...

Nature is Dangerouswashingtonpost.com/ ... 00:28:11SALT LAKE CITY -- A bolt of lightning killed a 15-year-old Boy Scout and injured three others while they slept in a log shelter during a violent storm... [hard year for scouts!]

Threatstoday.reuters.com/ ... 10:54:54Jordan has arrested 17 militants linked to the al Qaeda network in Iraq and an affiliated Saudi group who were plotting to attack U.S. military personnel in the kingdom, security sources said on Thursday... wnbc.com/ ... 00:26:46The suicide bombers cooked up their explosives using mundane items like hydrogen peroxide. They stored them in a fancy commercial refrigerator that was out of place in their grimy flat. And cell phones likely were used to set them off... Those details from the July 7 London bombing emerged on Wednesday at an unusually wide-ranging briefing given by the New York Police Department to city business leaders... "We know those same types of organizations that they're affiliated with are very much present in New York City... That's something we're studying very, very carefully. ... This could happen here..."

Violencenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 16:37:37An Israeli soldier who shot dead four people on a bus in an Israeli Arab town has been lynched by a crowd. The 19-year-old, who is believed to have deserted in protest against the Gaza pullout this month, opened fire as the bus passed through Shfaram... ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:49:47A convicted sex offender accused of murdering three people in Idaho and killing one of the two children authorities said he abducted from the home is now being investigated in the 1997 kidnapping death of a 10-year-old California boy... linked by a single fingerprint to the scene of the killing... ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:42:40Unidentified gunmen attacked an Iraqi army patrol Thursday in a town north of Baghdad, killing four Iraqi troops... ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:42:18NATO-led international troops will be ready to assume responsibility for security across all of Afghanistan by the end of next year, freeing up thousands of American forces, a top NATO general said Thursday... ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:41:56An American Marine was killed in action during operations... in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:33:54An 11-year-old US girl has been spared a felony trial for throwing a stone at boys pelting her with water balloons... was given informal probation and ordered to talk through what happened with the boy she injured, in a deal agreed by lawyers... She spent five days in detention and a month under house arrest... Police in California said it had been a serious assault, but others said it was no way to treat a childish crime... ap.tbo.com/ ... 02:38:20A man whose wife disappeared in 1996 was arrested on charges of second-degree murder Wednesday after he was flown out of Mexico with FBI agents... also was charged with abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. Authorities declined to say Wednesday whether that indicated they had located Janet Levine March's body... washingtonpost.com/ ... 00:27:15A man lifting his infant daughter out of his car was killed in an apparent case of road rage by a motorist "who obviously exploded" and shot him four times at close range in front of dozens of witnesses... csmonitor.com/ ... 00:23:00In three articles for this newspaper over the past month, Steven Vincent deftly captured the criminal-induced confusion of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, the jockeying for power between rival militias within government departments, and the growing use of political assassination that foreshadowed his own murder Tuesday...

Under Tyrannynews.scotsman.com/ ... 00:22:25A military junta overthrew Mauritania's president, saying it would temporarily rule this oil-rich Islamic nation that had looked increasingly to the West amid alleged threats from al Qaida linked militants. Other African leaders were quick to condemn the coup, declaring the days of autocracy and military rule must give way to democracy across the continent...

WED 2005-AUG-03

Whoops!today.reuters.com/ ... 12:44:36Masked robbers stole three worthless copies of pictures by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch from an Oslo hotel Wednesday... thekansascitychannel.com/ ... 10:51:57LAWRENCE, Kan. -- A Lawrence woman who had her possessions stolen blames the city's newspaper... printed a mistake in a street address, causing her apartment to be cleaned out by thieves... saw strangers loading up her belongings into their vehicle. When she asked what they were doing, they showed her a classified ad in the newspaper. The public notice stated that all things at 1319 Tennessee St., Apt. 3 would be thrown away if unclaimed... her TV, DVD player, movies, furniture and a 7-week-old kitten had already been taken from her apartment...

WW2 - still with useditorandpublisher.com/ ... 10:48:35In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan almost 60 years ago, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for many years all but a handful of newspaper photographs were seized or prohibited. The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades. The full story of this atomic cover-up is told fully for the first time today at E&P Online...

Penny Antewashtimes.com/ ... 10:06:35A man who tried to get even by paying a traffic ticket with $120 in pennies got upstaged by a North Dakota judge who made him stay until they were counted... Judge: "If the person is mad at the cop, why take it out on court administration? They're punishing the wrong people..."

Extraterrestrialseacoastonline.com/ ... 10:56:26It’s happened again. An East Kingston resident said she saw a "silver-cigar" shaped object in a daytime sky last week. This time it was a homemaker... allegedly happened about noon on Monday, July 25... described it as a pill shape, because it had rounded ends and was longer than it was wide... Dark spots lined the object, which she said appeared to be windows...

US Militarydefenselink.mil/ ... 10:22:01This 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 Marine Corps number decreased and the Coast Guard number remained the same. The net collective result is 1,680 more reservists mobilized than last week...

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 10:20:53

Marine Sgt. James R. Graham III, 25, of Coweta, Okla., died August 1 as result of a suicide, vehicle-born, improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations near Hit, Iraq.

Only Naturalnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:11:37Organic farms are better for wildlife than those run conventionally... organic farms were found to contain 85% more plant species, 33% more bats, 17% more spiders and 5% more birds... [um... duh... hence the meaning of "organic..."]ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:09:18HOBART, Ind... was walking to get the paper when she noticed the snake... in her mother's yard on Tuesday... an 8-foot-long Burmese python... neighbors... grabbed the snake's tail and pulled it out from under the tree, then grabbed it by the back of the head... grabbed the snake's tail and the two men held on... kept the snake's mouth closed and stroked its head to try to keep it calm... today.reuters.com/ ... 09:19:10A 26-year-old brain dead pregnant woman kept on life support for almost three months at a Virginia hospital gave birth to a baby girl on Tuesday... delivered by caesarean section, weighed one pound and 13 ounces... The mother... suffered a stroke on May 7 in the 17th week of her pregnancy due to an aggressive melanoma and was brain dead...

Under Tyrannytoday.reuters.com/ ... 12:46:08Chechnya's Moscow-backed government has banned slot machines because they break the rules of Islam...

Sex can be Dangeroustoday.reuters.com/ ... 12:43:41A court in Germany convicted a man for fraud after he racked up huge phone bills phoning a sex hotline from work and split the proceeds with a woman working at the service...

Police Riotsuntimes.com/ ... 10:55:19KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A 67-year-old grandmother who was shocked with a Taser stun gun after she honked her car horn at a police cruiser has been given a year's probation for sparking a quarrel with officers...

Sick, Sick, Sickthetowntalk.com/ ... 10:53:41An Alexandria woman accused of shoplifting in the Rite Aid drugstore on MacArthur Drive has been charged with a felony after police say she bit a store employee in an effort to pass along the AIDS virus... told officers Monday the employee "needs to catch this and die along with me..." timesunion.com/ ... 10:53:15State health officials have revoked the license of a Clifton Park obstetrician/gynecologist who had sex in a St. Peter's Hospital waiting room and who induced another woman's labor so her delivery wouldn't disrupt his vacation plans...

Threatski4u.com/ ... 10:13:12WHAT TO DO IF A NUCLEAR DISASTER IS IMMINENT!

Digital Threatnews.yahoo.com/ ... 10:50:03Cyber-terrorists are attempting to penetrate government networks using the same methods as Internet hackers and many nations are vulnerable to the threat, a US State Department official said... businessweek.com/ ... 10:49:37Artificial noses that sniff explosives, cameras that I.D. you by your ears, chips that analyze the halo of heat you emit. More scrutiny lies ahead... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:10:41Net criminals and hackers are increasingly targeting their attacks at specific organisations, research shows. Worse hit, according to a worldwide survey by IBM, are government departments, financial services, manufacturing and healthcare. Of the 237 million security attacks in the first half of 2005, 137 million were aimed at these four areas...

Extraterrestrial Threatbloomberg.com/ ... 10:00:13Two astronauts left Discovery for a seven-hour spacewalk during which they'll install experiments and equipment and remove cloth protruding from the shuttle's heat shield to allay concern that the material may cause the craft to overheat when it returns to Earth next week...

Violenceafricasia.com/ ... 10:02:10A US freelance journalist was killed by unknown gunmen Tuesday in the southern Iraqi city of Basra... Steven Vincent and his Iraqi translator were kidnapped Tuesday evening... "Both were later shot, but Vincent was killed, while the girl (translator) is alive..." had been in Basra for the last two months... worked for the Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times and had also written a book on Iraq called "The Red Zone..." today.reuters.co.uk/ ... 09:58:57A roadside bomb explosion tore through a U.S. assault vehicle in Iraq on Wednesday, killing 14 American Marines and a civilian interpreter...

TUE 2005-AUG-02

Why People Go Veganboston.com/ ... 20:16:13Russians are among the world's greatest lovers of kangaroos -- particularly in sausages...

Alcohol Was Involvedboston.com/ ... 20:10:57IOWA CITY, Iowa --A man who chased his neighbors with a 2-foot sword while naked last winter pleaded guilty to a charge of assault with a dangerous weapon...

Preternatural Patternsap.tbo.com/ ... 16:27:24PARIS - Authorities discovered the remains of more than 350 stillborn babies and fetuses kept illegally in a hospital morgue, some for two decades... Some of the babies had died in 1985... today.reuters.com/ ... 12:32:14A jailed businessman who is accused of bribing some of Mexico City's most powerful politicians sewed his lips shut Monday to protest the criminal charges against him...

Yeah, Sure!today.reuters.com/ ... 12:30:40The astounding accomplishments of North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong-il

Transporttoday.reuters.com/ ... 12:25:29Ugandan police vowed Tuesday to crack down on and arrest dangerous roller skaters they say are adding to high numbers of fatal road accidents in the capital Kampala...

Whoops!today.reuters.com/ ... 12:33:06A Belgian electricity company will reimburse a number of people after a power surge ruined dozens of home appliances and tools... "Smoke was suddenly coming out of the phone, the fax machine and the video recorder..." today.reuters.com/ ... 12:25:06An Australian bus driver who called police after he found a package on his bus which emitted a strange sound when touched was left red-faced when it turned out to be a novelty store cushion...

WW2 - still with usnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:26:58In pictures Hiroshima after the bomb - and today... ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:21:59An aging Chicago carpenter should be stripped of his U.S. citizenship because he was a member of a police unit that helped the Nazis round up Ukrainian Jews for forced labor and death camps during World War II, federal attorneys argue...

Lasting Contributionsap.tbo.com/ ... 01:09:42Al Aronowitz, a pioneer of rock journalism who introduced Bob Dylan to the Beatles, died Monday, his son said. He was 77... In 1959, at the New York Post, he wrote a 12-part series on the "beat" movement... became a friend of such early counterculture luminaries as poet Allen Ginsberg and novelist Jack Kerouac...

Digital Culturenews.zdnet.com/ ... 16:18:17Breaking with longstanding tradition, Apple Computer has introduced its first multibutton mouse for the Mac... Multibutton mice have been standard on Windows PCs for years and even the Mac OS has long recognized a right click. However, the company has stuck by its single-button design, refining it and adding a Bluetooth wireless version, but maintaining only a single-click option... businessweek.com/ ... 16:16:37Apple Computer Inc.'s neglect of the humble mouse is over. It now offers a model that's nimble. Apple introduced on Tuesday its first computer mouse with multiple buttons, including four sensors and a tiny scroll ball. Although a departure from the company's traditional mouse, the "Mighty Mouse" looks very similar to the single-button model Apple has long produced... blogs.pcworld.com/ ... 16:15:57One of the few eternal verities of computing is...no longer a verity. The rumors were true: After twenty-one years, Apple has introduced a mouse with more than one button. What has seemed like one of the defining differences between the Mac and Wintel platforms is no more... macworld.com/ ... 16:15:28No doubt about it — Apple’s announcement that it’s selling a four-button, scroll-wheel-bearing USB mouse is big news. Not in the earth-shattering kind of way that you’d greet the announcement of a new Mac or iPod. It is, after all, just a mouse. But the Mighty Mouse marks the end of 21 years of Apple’s one-button mouse policy. In that way, it’s a little bit like the Berlin Wall coming down. Except, y’know, with mice... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:23:53The blogosphere is continuing to grow, with a weblog created every second... apnews.myway.com/ ... 01:00:28An Arizona National Guardsman serving in Iraq has been demoted for posting classified information on his Internet Web log... Leonard Clark, 40, was demoted from specialist to private first class and fined $1,640... Clark is a Glendale, Ariz., kindergarten teacher who has run for the state Legislature four times. He could have appealed the ruling but declined to... informationweek.com/ ... 00:56:44Even allegedly foolproof biometrics aren't totally safe at Defcon, the conference where crackers, hackers, and feds come to share tips and tricks... Even the ATM machines were suspect... With some of the world's best digital break-in artists pecking away at their laptops, sending e-mails or answering cell phones could also be risky... A group of twentysomethings from Southern California climbed onto the hotel roof to show that RFID tags could be read from as far as 69 feet. That's important because the tags have been proposed for such things as U.S. passports, and critics have raised fears that kidnappers could use RFID readers to pick traveling U.S. citizens out of a crowd. RFID companies had said the signals didn't reach more than 20 feet... Anyone naive enough to access the Internet through the hotel's unsecured wireless system could see their name and part of their passwords scrolling across a huge public screen. It was dubbed the “The Wall of Sheep.”... thieves have been able to dupe people out of their bank cards and passwords by changing the software in old ATM machines bought off eBay for as little as $1,000 and placing the machines out in public venues... nytimes.com/ ... 00:51:17The 27-year-old Briton who was arrested in Rome on Friday and accused of planting a bomb on a British subway... police swiftly tracked his escape... he did not turn off his cellphone... a cellphone is also the perfect tracking device, capable of pinpointing any user's location to within as close as a few feet when it is turned on, even if the user is not making calls... "If your phone is on, they know exactly where you are..."

Extraterrestrialnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 19:59:48"Increasingly, objects are far away and there are objects which are of comparable size to Pluto, so if you think of Pluto as a planet then you should refer to those objects as planets..."

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 13:03:38

Army Spc. Adrian J. Butler, 28, of East Lansing, Mich., and Spc. John O. Tollefson, 22, of Fond du Lac, Wis., died July 27 in Ashraf, Iraq, where an improvised explosive device detonated near their HMMWV during a patrol.defenselink.mil/ ... 13:03:19

Army Staff Sgt. Jason W. Montefering, 27, of Parkston, S.D.

Army Spc. Ernest W. Dallas Jr., 21, of Denton, Texas.

Army Sgt. Milton M. Monzon Jr., 21, of Los Angeles, Calif.

Army Pfc. Ramon A. Villatoro Jr., 19, of Bakersfield, Calif.
died on July 24, 2005, in Baghdad, Iraq, where an improvised explosive device detonated near their Bradley Fighting Vehicle. defenselink.mil/ ... 13:01:58

Army Pfc. Robert A. Swaney, 21, of West Jefferson, Ohio, died July 30 in Baghdad, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his patrol HMMWV. defenselink.mil/ ... 13:01:35

Army Pfc. Jason D. Scheuerman, 20, of Lynchburg, Va., died July 30 in Muqdadiyah, Iraq, of non-combat related injuries.defenselink.mil/ ... 13:01:19

Army Spc. James D. Carroll, 23, of McKenzie, Tenn., died July 31 near Baghdad, Iraq, where an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV.

World Without Bordersap.tbo.com/ ... 12:20:19A company that specializes in anti-counterfeiting technology claims Europe's common currency infringes on a patent obtained from a New York inventor's family... that all 30 billion euro bank notes in circulation infringe on a patent it acquired this year that was issued by the European Patent Office in 1999. It is seeking unspecified royalties...

Justice?ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:16:01PITTSBURGH - A man who spent 19 years behind bars for a rape he didn't commit was released from prison Monday after new tests of DNA evidence cleared him... convicted in the 1986 rape of a 48-year-old woman at a hospital in Pittsburgh. At the time, he was the father of two young children... was sentenced to 13 to 26 years in prison and was denied parole four times because he refused to accept responsibility for the crime... Prosecutors originally opposed DNA testing... "I couldn't walk around with anger and bitterness," said Doswell, speaking on a cell phone for what he said was the first time. "It would have done me more harm than good." Doswell spent his years in prison getting an associate's degree, learning to speak Spanish and mastering seven musical instruments, including the guitar, saxophone, flute, drums and trumpet. "I am so happy to be actually seeing him at home instead of in jail," said Crystal Glover, Doswell's girlfriend. "Now we can get on with our lives..."

Only Naturalboston.com/ ... 20:15:38PEKIN, Illinois --... Norton, 82, spent four decades in and out of court fighting repeated arrests for gardening and wandering his yard in the nude. He said he wanted to be buried without any clothes, but his family is sending him to eternity wearing gray slacks and a matching shirt... Relatives say Norton suffered emotional problems after serving in the Army Air Forces during World War II. Prosecutors counter that he was just stubborn... boston.com/ ... 20:14:43The new residents of a Sedalia duplex were surprised to learn a 4-foot-6-inch constrictor didn't move out when the old residents left. The family made the discovery Sunday when the ball python slithered out from under the dishwasher... "I've never screamed so high in my life..." A previous renter in the duplex admitted the snake was his. He said it had escaped and he decided he didn't want it anymore... today.reuters.com/ ... 12:32:36The odor given off by an unusually large fungus in Germany was so foul that it sparked off a police hunt for a corpse... wftv.com/ ... 12:18:58she was driving home Friday night when a bat flew through her car window and bit her... bat was foaming at the mouth when it attacked her... timesonline.co.uk/ ... 01:38:13WOMEN who have a baby by Caesarean section have more difficulty conceiving a second time, research suggests. A 17-year study of more than 25,000 women has found that women who had surgical deliveries were less likely to have another baby compared with those who gave birth naturally... forbes.com/ ... 00:59:10Removing the ovaries along with the uterus during a hysterectomy done for noncancerous conditions is common in women over the age of 45, but a new study suggests it may not be the wisest course for long-term survival... Keeping the ovaries is clearly best for women up to age 65 who are at average risk of getting ovarian cancer and get a hysterectomy for noncancerous conditions... preserving the ovaries in this group of women reduces their risk for heart disease and hip fractures...

Sex can be Dangerousboston.com/ ... 20:13:03NEW CASTLE, Pa. --Police charged a 19-year-old woman with selling sexual favors to two elderly men for $4 and $6 each... 71-year-old... and 83-year-old...

Sick, Sick, Sickboston.com/ ... 20:11:57A former nurse's aide was sentenced to 10 months in prison Monday for conspiring with another nurse to give nursing home patients laxatives to make them sick... to give five patients milk of magnesia, which caused them severe diarrhea and dehydration, according to court records. The idea was to get back at a nurse on the next shift...

Prison Suckstoday.reuters.com/ ... 12:34:15The California prison system acted improperly when it tried to trim the hair of an American Indian inmate who said a haircut violated his religious beliefs, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday. Billy Soza Warsoldier, who had not cut his hair in 25 years, filed a lawsuit after a minimum-security prison punished him for refusing to comply with a rule that men's hair be no longer than 3 inches (8 cm) long...

Threatsnews.newstimeslive.com/ ... 01:26:22Keeping up with a changing world, school bus drivers will soon be trained to spot danger. Starting this month, the Connecticut School Transportation Association, an umbrella group for the state's school bus operators, will begin offering free training... "We will train bus drivers to watch for all types of things that might cause trouble along a bus route," said Bill Moore, executive director of the transportation school. "They will coordinate with other safety and security agencies when they see anything out of the normal. If a stranger who has no children is hanging out at a school bus stop where children get on and off the bus, it should be noticed..." newsday.com/ ... 01:22:48Federal authorities arrested 582 alleged gang members over a two-week period, officials said Monday, targeting an estimated 80 violent groups they say have spawned street crimes across the country...

Supernatural Threatsap.tbo.com/ ... 01:18:14President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss "intelligent design" alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life...

Transport Tragedyboston.com/ ... 20:06:56Aug-02 1985... 137 people were killed when a Delta Air Lines jetliner crashed while attempting to land at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport... ctv.ca/ ... 20:01:49Officials say all 309 people aboard the plane survived the ordeal, including 297 passengers and 12 crew members... cbc.ca/ ... 16:45:19Local hospitals have started receiving passengers injured when an Air France jet with as many as 200 people aboard skidded off a runway... cnn.com/ ... 16:36:45"This plane came off the runway. It slid off the runway and into this gully," said Toronto radio reporter Leah Walker, who witnessed the crash. "It's come off with probably a great amount of force into trees and the creek." She said a fireball engulfed the plane. "There are hundreds of emergency vehicles here to do whatever is possible to be done at this point." Smoke billowed from the site, as scores of emergency workers sought to put it out. Severe thunderstorms had occurred in the area beforehand. Vito Porto, a freelance photographer, told Canada's Global television network that an explosion occurred after the crash, throwing debris for several hundred feet... ap.tbo.com/ ... 16:28:56An Amtrak passenger train struck a dump truck loaded with gravel and derailed Tuesday.. knocked the train's engine and two lead cars off the tracks... killing two people.. who.. were in the dump truck... no serious injuries among the 180 passengers and crew on the train... washingtonpost.com/ ... 16:21:53A passenger jetliner carrying about 200 people erupted in flames Tuesday after skidding off a runway while landing in a fierce thunderstorm at Toronto's Pearson International Airport... no immediate word on casualties. Reports said the jet had about 200 aboard... ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:17:17A van carrying 20 people overturned several times on the shoulder of a desert highway early Monday, killing five and injuring 15 others... van contained seats for only the driver and one passenger... "No one else had seat belts or were properly secured," [police] said. "No one except the driver had documentation, so I'm not sure if the victims were migrant farm laborers or illegal aliens..."

Constitutional Threatap.tbo.com/ ... 01:13:29IDABEL, Okla. - The National Rifle Association began a boycott of ConocoPhillips Co. Monday over the energy giant's attempt to block a state law preventing employers from firing workers who keep guns in their cars on company lots... "Across the country, we're going to make ConocoPhillips the example of what happens when a corporation takes away your Second Amendment rights," NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said... LaPierre called on gun owners and consumers to boycott all Conoco and Phillips 66 products, and asked Conoco and Phillips 66 retailers to urge the corporation to withdraw the federal lawsuit...
in southeastern Oklahoma... employees.. were fired by Weyerhaeuser Inc. for keeping guns stored in vehicles parked at work... After the firings at Weyerhaeuser, the Oklahoma Legislature passed a bill to prevent such terminations. ConocoPhillips filed a federal lawsuit to block the measure...

Radical Family Planningnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 19:58:59Afghan TV broaches marriage taboos... dw-world.de/ ... 01:41:28Between 150,000 and 400,000 people live in polygamous households in France, in which a man is married to more than one woman. The French state is trying to change the situation -- with mixed results... ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:11:05Police discovered the remains of nine newborn babies buried in a garden in eastern Germany and arrested a woman believed to be their mother... 39-year-old woman... Investigators believed the children were born between 1988 and 2004 and died shortly after birth...

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 16:29:44MILWAUKEE - Prosecutors ended their investigation Tuesday into a shooting at a church service without determining the exact reason why the gunman carried out a vendetta against the pastor and his family, killing seven people and then himself... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:23:38The judge in the trial of Iran's best-known political prisoner, journalist Akbar Ganji, has been shot dead... At least one gunman on a motorcycle opened fire at Massoud Moghaddas as he was leaving a court building... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:23:06Two small blasts... injuring at least six people... have been reported in the Turkish resort of Antalya... a popular holiday resort and... Turkey's fourth-largest city... washingtonpost.com/ ... 12:18:11The U.S. military said Tuesday that six Marines were killed in action in western Iraq...
A seventh Marine was killed Monday by a car bomb in Hit, 50 miles southeast of Haditha... kare11.com/ ... 01:37:04Three New Jersey teenage boys were caught trying to dump a steamer trunk containing the dismembered body of a 16-year-old girl into a river... ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:11:22At least 11 police officers were killed Monday when a roadside bomb exploded as their convoy passed down a rural highway in northern Colombia... guardian.co.uk/ ... 00:57:58Egypt... Police have shot dead one of the prime suspects in the bombings which killed at least 64 people in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on July 23... Mohamed Fulayfel and his wife were killed and their four-year-old daughter injured in an exchange of fire with police...

MON 2005-AUG-01

Alcohol Was Involvedtoday.reuters.com/ ... 10:25:51The constant scrutiny of their advertising practices by watchdog groups and government agencies -- combined with network regulations as well as their own self-imposed advertising and placement regulations -- make entertainment marketing a much more complicated task for liquor manufacturers than it is for other brands...

Chaos as Usualnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:19:28An Irish woman who won a £77m (112m euros) lottery jackpot is thought to have gone into hiding because of the interest generated by her record win...

US Executive Branchap.tbo.com/ ... 10:13:52Frustrated by Democrats, President Bush will circumvent the Senate on Monday and install embattled nominee John Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations...

Preternatural Patternsap.tbo.com/ ... 10:11:16A Taiwanese man is breathing easier after a surgeon removed a missing set of dentures from one of his bronchial tubes - three years after he lost them in a fall...

Lasting Contributionsap.tbo.com/ ... 10:10:07Hildegarde, the "incomparable" cabaret singer whose career spanned almost seven decades, died Friday. She was 99... credited with starting the single-name vogue among entertainers... k nown for 70 years simply as "The Incomparable Hildegarde," a title bestowed on her by columnist Walter Winchell... ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:07:47Key Dates in Life of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd... ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:07:34Facts About Saudi Arabia's King Fahd... today.reuters.com/ ... 10:04:23Saudi Arabia's King Fahd died on Monday and Crown Prince Abdullah was swiftly pronounced monarch in a smooth succession set to maintain the policies of the world's largest oil exporter and key U.S. ally... King Abdullah, who is at least 80, has run day-to-day affairs since a stroke debilitated Fahd in 1995...

Extraterrestrialap.tbo.com/ ... 10:13:34Two of Discovery's astronauts floated outside their spacecraft Monday with one key task: to replace a failed washing machine-sized spinning wheel, which along with three other gyroscopes, helps to steer the international space station...

Under Tyrannynews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:23:00Photo journal: Learning the facts of life in Egypt... In Egypt the term “sex education” is deeply controversial, school biology lessons often skip reproduction altogether and most teenagers rely on word of mouth to learn the basics about their own bodies... "I wanted to know whether female circumcision is really important – do we have to do it? I have been circumcised. In our society most farmers say that circumcision makes girls' morals better. But if the girl is following her religion well, I think this is enough. I learned that circumcision is only needed in a few cases where the vagina is deformed..."

Mechanical Disasterap.tbo.com/ ... 10:17:42An explosion and a fire at a shipyard that decommissions nuclear submarines killed at least one person and injured one other... Since the 1991 Soviet breakup, the United States and other Western countries have provided several billion dollars to help Russia dismantle and destroy its weapons under arms control agreements. Much of the work has involved dismantling nuclear submarines in an environmentally friendly manner at Arkhangelsk, less than 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle...

Missingap.tbo.com/ ... 10:16:20An 8-year-old girl who authorities said was abducted by a convicted sex offender celebrated her safe return home by sharing a group hug with her mother and older brother, and declaring "I missed you guys.. Home is good. It's great to be home..." ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:14:57BELLEFONTE, Pa. (AP) - Two fishermen found a laptop computer at the bottom of a river that belonged to a county prosecutor who has been missing for 3 1/2 months... was missing its hard drive...

Violenceap.tbo.com/ ... 10:16:59GUADALAJARA, Mexico - Explosions rocked a horse racing track where bettors were staging an illegal cock fight, killing four people and injuring at least 20 others... police in Tonala said they found remains from two exploded grenades. Six people were arrested trying to rescue one of the injured from a hospital... ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:13:08Rioters burned cars and threw stones in Sudan's capital on Monday after a helicopter crash killed the country's vice president, who until recently was a southern rebel leader...

Transport Tragedyap.tbo.com/ ... 10:07:17SUPERIOR TOWNSHIP, Mich. - A driver apparently ran a stop sign at an intersection near Ann Arbor and collided with a classic car carrying a family of five, killing two adults and a child... Two other children in the 1929 Duesenberg convertible were injured... All five victims were thrown from the vehicle, which did not have seat belts... The driver of the Duesenberg recently helped complete a three-year restoration project for its owner... Dead at the scene of the crash were driver Bradley M. Patton, 35; his wife, Kristin Patton, 35; and their son, Nathan, 8, authorities said; injured were Emily, 7; and Taylor, 9...

London 2005-Julytimesonline.co.uk/ ... 10:05:29THOUSANDS of police marksmen will be on London’s streets and rooftops again today after warnings that another team of suicide bombers is plotting a third attack on the capital... new group is believed to be made up of British Muslims who were understood to be close to staging an attack on the Underground network last week...