/
/
blog-heap o' links
from
2005-oct
Just random links galore. Latest on top.
Links load in a separate page.
Suggestions welcome.
MON 2005-OCT-31
Transport Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 19:39:17
TEMPERANCE HILL, S.C. - The driver of a... 18-wheeler... was charged Monday with drunken driving after slamming into a hayride and killing four people, including a toddler... happened Sunday night... Sixteen people were injured; two remained hospitalized... tried to swerve to the left to avoid overtaking and hitting the hayride... tractor driver... swerved in the same direction to avoid being hit... flatbed trailer did not have tail lights...
Sick, Sick, Sick
chron.com/ ... 05:25:35
Three hurricane evacuees were charged with capital murder Saturday in the strangulation of Betty Blair, a 77-year-old church leader, mother of three daughters and the widow of former Pasadena school board... during a robbery at her Pasadena home Friday... Blair had been helping the three by paying them to do odd jobs and yard work on her property... They were arrested Friday night at [a] toll booth... driving Blair's tan 2000 Buick... located through OnStar, an onboard electronic tracking system...
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 05:21:44
police have arrested a gang of Afghans allegedly caught stealing kidneys from the corpses of quake victims...
Hurricanes Aftermath
sciencedaily.com/ ... 04:52:33
a leading ecologist says that one of the best things that could happen to New Orleans and the rest of southern Louisiana and Mississippi would be more rain... "The floodwater still covering much of New Orleans and elsewhere is full of everything people store under their sinks in their kitchens and bathrooms. Its also full of coliform bacteria from backed-up human waste, plus gasoline, oil and countless other pollutants. It is a really toxic stew." An intense rain would dilute the water and could make it possible to varying degrees for organisms -- both large and small -- to cope with it better...
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:25:03
NEW YORK - A couple committed suicide and killed their two young children with carbon monoxide from burning coals in their Harlem apartment... despairing about a failed business venture... A grandmother who lived with the family was found in another bedroom but was not harmed by the fumes...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:23:20
MOULTON, Ala. - A 15-year-old boy was charged with murder Monday in the killing of a teacher who was beaten, robbed and left for dead at the school where she worked...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:22:32
Police stormed an apartment in Haiti's capital and freed two young children and a foster child of an American missionary... Pentecostal minister from Claremore, Oklahoma... who were kidnapped as they were leaving school... arresting seven suspects, including a former police officer...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 04:51:33
Violence has flared for a fourth night in a north-east Paris suburb, but not on the same scale as before. Six policemen were injured and 11 people arrested in the latest confrontations...
Extraterrestrial
ap.tbo.com/ ... 19:36:44
Pluto has three moons
, not one, new images from the Hubble Space Telescope suggest... The new moons, more than twice as far away as Charon and many times fainter, were spotted by Hubble in May...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 19:33:49
Marine Sgt.
Michael P. Hodshire
, 25, of North Adams, Mich., died Oct. 30 of wounds sustained from an improvised explosive device during combat operations near Nasser Wa Salaam, Iraq on Oct. 29.
defenselink.mil/ ... 19:33:26
Army Pfc.
Dillon M. Jutras
, 20, of Fairfax Station, Va., died in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, on Oct. 28, from injuries sustained while conducting combat operations.
Animal Culture
manchesteronline.co.uk/ ... 05:42:27
...a giant pawprint in Bollington which was spotted by walkers just hours before a sheep was mauled to death. The huge print, which measures about 6in wide and 8in long, was found embedded in a soggy cow pat close to the mutilated caracass...
Science Marches Onnnnnn
thescotsman.scotsman.com/ ... 05:29:25
Scientists have identified a gene that may cause dyslexia...
Viet Nam War - still with us
ap.tbo.com/ ... 19:36:01
The National Security Agency has been blocking the release of an article by one of its historians that says intelligence officers falsified documents about a disputed attack that was used to escalate the Vietnam War, according to a researcher who has requested the article... Many historians believe that Johnson would have escalated U.S. military action in the region anyway...
Psychogangs
latimes.com/ ... 05:28:58
...a deportation policy aimed in part at breaking up a Los Angeles street gang has backfired and helped spread it across Central America and back into other parts of the United States. Newly organized cells in El Salvador have returned to establish strongholds in metropolitan Washington, D.C., and other U.S. cities. Prisons in El Salvador have become nerve centers, authorities say, where deported leaders from Los Angeles communicate with gang cliques across the United States...
Clinton Era -- still with us
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 05:21:19
The film reveals how for more than two decades, the A
rkansas prison system profited from selling blood plasma from inmates infected with viral hepatitis and AIDS.
Thousands of unwitting victims who received transfusions of a product called "Factor 8" made from this blood died as a result... As governor of Arkansas, Clinton awarded a contract to Health Management Associates to provide medical care to the state's prisoners. The president of the company was a long-time friend and political ally of Clinton and later was appointed by him to the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission. Later, he was among the senior members of Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial re-election team. The death toll from the tainted blood has grown since the figure of 3,000 was calculated in 1997, but recent estimates are not available...
Disinformation Propaganda & Spin
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 05:13:29
Shoreline Community College had electronically erased an AK-47 rifle from the image of.. controversial University of Colorado professor... Ward Churchill... who is slated to speak at the Washington campus Nov. 8... after WND interviewed school officials about the doctored photo, Churchill's image was completely removed from the page promoting his appearance...
Hollywood Disaster
variety.com/ ... 04:50:57
Last week Universal acknowledged that "King Kong" costs shot up to $207 million... At Warner Bros., the f/x budget alone on "Superman Returns" is said to be running to $100 million... The notion that costs for CGI would come down just like the costs of other technology hasn't panned out. And that, the insider says, is because of an arms race between studios and f/x houses to constantly replace software and hardware in order to blow away the competition...
Supernatural Consequences
hometownannapolis.com/ ... 05:27:42
...owner of the Zodiac Zone... told police that a woman approached him around 4:30 p.m. and said, "So, you're supposed to be a psychic?" The woman then pulled a soda bottle from her purse and threw it at his head. "Did you see that coming?" ...third time in two weeks the woman has stopped by his kiosk, and each time she has become more aggressive. He said she makes a scene, telling him he's satanic and that his kiosk goes against the teachings of God...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 04:37:31
WACO, Texas - A pastor performing a baptism was electrocuted inside his church Sunday morning after adjusting a nearby microphone while standing in water... The woman being baptized apparently had not stepped into the water and was not seriously injured...
SUN 2005-OCT-30
Sociopath Threats
sundayherald.com/ ... 00:20:22
What can done with Iran? ...Last week it became depressingly clear that the threat of harsher measures was suddenly back on the agenda... "Fortunately his outburst hasnt met with much enthusiasm in the region other than an embarrassed diplomatic silence, but even so, Ahmadinejad may have gone too far on this occasion. Hes also pushed us into a position where many countries will be reconsidering their policy towards Iran..."
dailytimes.com.pk/ ... 00:18:58
TEHRAN: Iran on Saturday slammed the UN Security Council condemnation of its presidents anti-Israeli remarks, which caused international outrage, but insisted there was no intention to attack the Jewish state...
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:22:03
U.S. troops
backed by helicopters and a jet attacked insurgents planning a nighttime ambush... Saturday night near Taji, a U.S. air base 12 miles north of Baghdad...
killing six militants and wounding and capturing five
... The militants fired on Apache attack helicopters that were conducting reconnaissance. The helicopters fired back, and the insurgents retreated. When they tried to regroup, an Air Force F-15E jet dropped a 500-pound bomb on them...
Saturday night, a
U.S. jet dropped a bomb
north of Ramadi...
killing three insurgents who were planting a roadside bomb...
Insurgents killed seven Iraqi civilians
in scattered attacks Sunday...
Sunday morning, a
roadside bomb destroyed one of several oil tanker trucks
driving on a main road in south Baghdad, sending a fire ball up over the area and
killing the two men inside... Four civilian passers-by were wounded
...
Three separate
drive-by shootings in the capital killed two construction workers and wounded three; seriously wounded a shopkeeper
in the Dora district; and
hit the car carrying the vice president's brother and driver...
Officials also
evacuated a primary school
in western Baghdad on Sunday, a school day in Iraq,
to defuse a bomb that was discovered by guards there
...
In Samarra... a
roadside bomb killed a farmer on his tractor and seriously wounded two other civilians
...
On Saturday night, the
corpses of three handcuffed and blindfolded Iraqis were found
in Baghdad, and police said an
Iraqi soldier and the brother of a policeman were gunned down
...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:26:03
Near-simultaneous explosions rocked the Indian capital Saturday evening, tearing through a bus and two markets crowded with people shopping for gifts for a Hindu festival. At least 58 people were killed and dozens wounded in the blasts, which the government blamed on terrorists...
news.independent.co.uk/ ... 00:22:01
The President wants Israel exterminated, defies international outrage and may soon have nuclear weapons. Angus McDowall in Tehran, Raymond Whitaker and Marie Woolf assess the true Iranian threat...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:20:52
GUATEMALA CITY - A group of gang members opened fire on a prison truck here Saturday, killing two guards as they were leaving work at the end of their shift and wounding a third...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:18:01
ALISO VIEJO, Calif. - A 19-year-old in a black cape and a paintball mask went on a shooting rampage Saturday in his upscale Southern California neighborhood, killing a man and his daughter before committing suicide... "It may have been random..." had attended high school with one of the victims...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:15:30
Unidentified assailants attacked a group of high school girls... students from a private Christian high school... on Saturday in Indonesia's tense province of Central Sulawesi, beheading three and seriously wounding another...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:14:12
A bomb hidden in a truck loaded with dates exploded Saturday evening in the center of a Shiite farming village northeast of Baghdad, killing 26 people and injuring at least 34. Three American soldiers died in separate bombings in Baghdad and northern Iraq...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:10:02
...the Pentagon is estimating that 26,000 Iraqis have been killed or wounded by insurgents since Jan. 1, 2004....
Transport Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:08:01
VELIGONDA, India - A passenger train plunged into a rain-swollen river in southern India early Saturday, killing at least 100 people and trapping dozens more inside the derailed cars... Dozens more people remained trapped inside the train cars as soldiers and local villagers used gas torches to cut open the cars, at least five of which were lying on their side, partially submerged in water. One of the coaches was resting on top of another...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 20:56:05
Army 1st Lt.
Debra A. Banaszak
, 35, of Bloomington, Ill., died at Camp Victory, Kuwait, on Oct. 28, from noncombat related injuries. Banaszak was assigned to the Army National Guard.
defenselink.mil/ ... 20:55:09
Army Staff Sgt.
Lewis J. Gentry
, 48, of Detroit, Mich., died in Mosul, Iraq, on Oct. 26, from a noncombat related cause.
Digital Culture
clickz.com/ ... 00:22:58
Sixty-two million U.S. households, or 55 percent of American homes, had a Web-connected computer in 2003...
Under Tyranny
ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:58:40
Two priests from China's underground Catholic Church have been detained, a Vatican-affiliated missionary news agency reported. The two had reportedly just given a rare interview to a foreign journalist...
Fun can be Dangerous
ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:58:14
MADISON, Wis. - A weekend of Halloween celebrations popular with college students resulted in more than 400 arrests, and police used bursts of pepper spray early Sunday to break up crowds of revelers...
What Th'...?
examiner-enterprise.com/ ... 00:27:06
Juggalos are speaking out against what they say is an inaccurate portrayal of them in recent editions of the Examiner-Enterprise.
I'm in a rage about this, one self-described Juggalo
said pointing to the Oct. 13 edition of the E-E.
A real Juggalo would never even tell you they're a Juggalo.
Juggalo ire at the newspaper started after the E-E published articles concerning rumors that began to surface within the community alleging possible gang activity at the Bartlesville Mid-High...
Disturbing Family Patterns
usatoday.com/ ... 00:25:38
A record number of babies nearly 1.5 million were born to unmarried women in the U.S. last year. And those moms were more likely to be 20-somethings than teenagers...
Industrial Incident
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:23:20
NEWPORT, Ind. - Army contractors halted operations Saturday at a western Indiana complex built to destroy a deadly nerve agent after nearly 500 gallons of caustic wastewater spilled in a contained area...
World Without Borders
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:22:25
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Dueling demonstrations over a plan to create state border police drew nearly 1,000 people to the Capitol on Saturday, and about two dozen police officers, some on horseback, stood between the rival gatherings to maintain order...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:14:35
India and Pakistan agreed early Sunday to open the heavily militarized frontier in the disputed Kashmir region to speed help for victims of the devastating South Asia earthquake...
Unclear on le Concept
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:13:45
French youths rioted for a second straight night in a Paris suburb, torching cars and throwing rocks at police to protest the deaths of two youths who were electrocuted while trying to evade police...
SAT 2005-OCT-29
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:29:04
...Saturday, a land mine killed a U.S. soldier and wounded four near Beiji...
...Two.. U.S. Army soldiers died in south Baghdad when their patrol struck a roadside bomb...
...five other American service members were killed in Iraq the day before...
...In western Iraq, U.S. warplanes used precision-guided bombs to attack "safe houses..." in the town of Karabilha... killing at least 10... Witnesses said some of the victims were civilians...
...U.S. ground forces.. raided suspected insurgent safe houses in the nearby town of Husaybah...
...New information.. about a triple suicide vehicle attack that occurred last week near the Palestine Hotel complex in Baghdad... attack killed 17 Iraqis on Monday and wounded several reporters. The U.S. military said that
one of its soldiers guarding the complex probably saved lives at the hotel by killing the suicide bomber who managed to penetrate the complex
before he could reach the entrance of the building and set off his explosives...
...Two police officers died when their patrol hit a roadside bomb in... Kirkuk...
...In the capital, a drive-by shooting in the Dora neighborhood killed a police officer...
...Gunmen opened fire on an Iraqi army checkpoint, touching off fighting that killed 3 Iraqi soldiers and three militants in a town near Baqouba... Seven Iraqi soldiers also were wounded...
---
In political developments, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, and the leader of a broad coalition, said that if its candidates are elected, they will "treat all Iraqi people equally and bring stability, security and a strong leadership" to the country...
Hurricanes Aftermath
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:15:06
On Friday, the New Orleans Police Department fired 51 of them - 45 officers and six civilian workers - for abandonment [during] Hurricane Katrina... "They either left before the hurricane or 10 to 12 days after the storm and we have never heard from them..."
Transport Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:38:38
A passenger train plunged into a rain-swollen river that had washed away the tracks early Saturday, and at least 15 people were believed dead... up to seven train cars, each carrying 50 to 60 people, derailed near the town of Veligonda in southern Andhra Pradesh state...
Sabotage
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:36:41
TUCSON, Ariz. - A fired employee of a natural gas distribution company has been indicted on charges he sabotaged the utility's pipelines by puncturing them and tampering with valves... 30 acts in all - including puncturing of plastic lines with screws or drills and the manipulation of valves to under- or over-pressurize parts of the system...estimated the sabotage cost.. more than $500,000...
US Military
ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:30:55
The United States and Japan agreed Saturday to step up military cooperation and substantially reduce the number of Marines on the strategically important southern island of Okinawa.... phased withdrawal of 7,000 Marines.. to.. Guam... expected to take six years... 14,460 Marines in Japan, the largest Marine contingent based overseas...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:32:45
Army Capt.
Michael J. Mackinnon
, 30, of Helena, Mont., died on Oct. 27, in Baghdad, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during convoy operations.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:32:21
Army Master Sgt.
Thomas A. Wallsmith
, 38, of Carthage, Mo.
Army Sgt. 1st Class
Ramon A. Acevedoaponte
, 51, of Watertown, N.Y.
died in Rustamiyah, Iraq, on Oct. 26, when an improvised explosive device detonated near their HMMWV.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:31:39
Army Sgt.
Evan S. Parker
, 25, of Arkansas, Kan., died at Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany, on Oct. 26, of injuries sustained in Balad, Iraq, on Oct. 23, when his dismounted patrol was attacked by enemy forces who threw an explosive device from their moving vehicle. Parker was assigned to the Army Reserve.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:31:09
Army Spc.
Christopher T. Monroe
, 19, of Kendallville, Ind., died on Oct. 25, in Basra, Iraq, when his 5-ton truck was involved in an automobile accident with a civilian vehicle. Monroe was assigned to the Army Reserve.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:30:48
Marine Lance Cpl.
Robert F. Eckfield Jr.
, 23, of Cleveland, Ohio
Marine Lance Cpl.
Jared J. Kremm
, 24, of Hauppage, N.Y.
died Oct. 27 from an indirect fire explosion in Saqlawiyah, Iraq. Kremm died at the scene while Eckfield succumbed to his wounds at a nearby medical center.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:30:15
Army Sgt.
James Witkowski
, 32, of Surprise, Ariz., died on Oct. 26, near Ashraf, Iraq, of injuries sustained there earlier that day when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during convoy operations. Witkowski was assigned to the Army Reserve.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:29:54
Army Staff Sgt.
Daniel R. Lightner, Jr.
, 28, of Hollidaysburg, Pa., died in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, on Oct. 27, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations. Lightner was assigned to the Army National Guard.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:28:29
Army Sgt.
Michael T. Robertson
, 28, of Houston, Texas, died at Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas, on Oct. 25, of injuries sustained in Samarra, Iraq, on Oct. 17, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The incident fatally injured another soldier and was reported on Oct. 25.
Reasons for Repeal
ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:20:15
SAO PAULO, Brazil - Police killed one of Brazil's most wanted drug lords after an intense shootout in Rio de Janeiro's largest slum Saturday... Erismar Rodrigues Moreira, known as Bem-te-vi, was shot to death after police raided the Rocinha shantytown in an operation to curtail drug traffic... More than 150 police officers... shootout began early Saturday morning, lasting nearly two hours. Moreira, accompanied by nearly 20 heavily armed men... died of gunshot wounds to the head and chest... another gang member dead and at least three Rocinha residents injured... About 30 officers remained at the shantytown to prevent other confrontations and to keep other gangs from battling for the lucrative drug-selling spots... "Arresting criminals is a job that never ends."...
Human Right
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:37:51
A days-old human embryo preserved outside the womb isn't a person under the Arizona law that allows lawsuits for wrongful deaths... Because the terminology surrounding such issues is highly charged, the Court of Appeals said it tried to be neutral by using the term "pre-embryo" to describe the days-old, lab-preserved fertilized eggs involved in the case. Calling such eggs "embryos" could imply the egg is a "person," the ruling by a three-judge panel said...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:34:44
It's unconstitutional to bar benefits to the same-sex partners of public employees, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled Friday...
FRI 2005-OCT-28
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 13:08:34
Israeli aircraft fired two missiles at a car in the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun on Friday, killing a Palestinian militant...
Industrial Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 13:06:41
MOUNT DIWATA, Philippines - Toxic fumes forced rescuers on Friday to abandon an effort to find up to 50 miners inside the tunnel of a gold mine that collapsed following an explosion... known death toll was 18, although the police put the number at six... At least 10 miners have been rescued...
Disturbing Family Patterns
examiner-enterprise.com/ ... 11:42:27
Bartlesville OK - ...6-year-old brother reportedly told police that [the accused] ...choked his sister and put fingerprints on her tummy with one hand while spanking her with the other hand... throws his sister across the room and onto her bed... everyday... being mean when he does it... also.. spanks [boy] but does not hurt him like he hurts his sister... told him that he would shoot everyone in the family if anyone told. ...5-year-old victim.. reportedly told police that [accused] had choked her, punched her in the face and spanked her. ...[she] told her mother on two occasions.. mother.. told her not to let anyone see her face. In April 2004, [mother's] husband... was sentenced to serve 10 years in prison for each of four counts of child sexual abuse... then 3 1/2 year old victim... same [girl]...
Theft
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:24:16
The "flying" Ford Anglia used in the Harry Potter films has been stolen from a film studio lot...
Sociopath Threats
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:23:32
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, cheered by thousands of supporters, signaled on Friday he
stood by his call for Israel to be wiped off the map,
while Iran's foreign ministry sought to defuse a diplomatic storm...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:40:58
COPENHAGEN, Denmark - The arrest of four young Muslims suspected of belonging to a network planning an imminent suicide attack in Europe stemmed from a terror investigation in Bosnia... a Turk living in Denmark and a Swede originally from Serbia-Montenegro are under arrest in Sarajevo, and Bosnian police said they found explosives, firearms and other military equipment in connection with those arrests... also found a video cassette showing three masked men praying and asking God to forgive them for their self-sacrifice... "We don't know exactly what kind of terror (attack) they were planning but our information indicates that it could have been a suicide bomb..." four arrested Thursday at their homes in and around Copenhagen are aged 16 to 20... suspects in Bosnia also are teenagers, the Swede, 19, and the Turk, 18... Danish police seized computers, computer discs, books with radical Muslim literature and cellular phones. Police also found $32,400 in cash... Terrorists have not hit Denmark in 20 years... In 1985, a bomb exploded outside the offices of North West Orient airlines in Copenhagen, killing one person and wounding 16...
Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!
ap.tbo.com/ ... 13:04:40
Daylight-saving time ends... The clocks change officially at 2 a.m. Sunday... The change does not affect Arizona, Hawaii or the portions of Indiana in the Eastern time zone, which do not observe daylight time. Congress has voted to change the dates for daylight-saving time, but that doesn't take effect until 2007...
Extraterrestrial
seattlepi.nwsource.com/ ... 10:53:53
Mars... For the second time in nearly 60,000 years, the Red Planet will swing unusually close to Earth this weekend, appearing as a yellow twinkle in the night sky... will not match its record-breaking approach to Earth in 2003, when it hovered from 35 million miles away. But more skygazers this time around can glimpse the fourth rock from the sun because it will glow above the horizon... On Saturday, Mars' orbit will bring it 43.1 million miles away from Earth, with its closest pass scheduled for 8:25 p.m. PDT. The two planets, normally separated by about 140 million miles, will not be this close again until 2018...
Family Sexual Equality Prison Sucks
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:35:19
Sweden's prison service may allow babies to live in prison with their fathers, putting men on an equal footing with women in prison parenting...
Digital Threat
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:28:12
...Behind the veil of a state dominated media, packed with official lines on the problems facing the southern African country which leave no room for lighthearted tales, Zimbabwe's urban population is resorting to the Internet and short message services via mobile phones to spread some laughter...
today.reuters.com/ ... 11:26:06
A Singaporean man was sent to jail after he threatened to post nude photos of his former girlfriend on the Internet... sent the woman numerous threats using phone text messages... Three men were convicted earlier this year for threatening to post nude photos of women on the Internet unless they were paid or the women agreed to meet them...
Big City Stories
breitbart.com/ ... 10:45:40
Residents from the southern tip of Manhattan to the Upper West Side nearly 10 miles north called a city hot line to report a
strong odor
Thursday night that
most compared to maple syrup
... There were so many calls that the city's Office of Emergency Management coordinated efforts with the Police and Fire Departments, the Coast Guard and the City Department of Environmental Protection to find the source of the mysterious smell. Air tests haven't turned up anything harmful, but the source was still a mystery...
Yawn
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:43:02
Actor George Takei, "Mr. Sulu" from TV's original Star Trek series and six Star Trek movies, has come out as a homosexual in a biweekly Los Angeles magazine covering the gay and lesbian community...
Theory of Education
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:42:26
The National Academy of Sciences and National Science Teachers Association... say [Kansas] can't use their copyrighted material in proposed science standards that critics contend promote creationism...
National academy: http://www.nasonline.org
Teachers' group: http://www.nsta.org
Board of Education: http://www.ksde.org/commiss/board.html
Business Culture
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:38:53
Hershey Co., maker of Milk Duds candy, is trying to stop a California company from using a sound-alike name for a line of clothing designed to make breast-feeding easier... Milkdudz nursing wear... "The clothier is trying to capitalize on the name recognition of Milk Duds to avoid having to build up its own brand..." Kiersten Wall, who co-founded Milkdudz with Stephanie Schulte in March 2004, said the Temecula, Calif., company would fight any name change, and that Hershey had a trademark only for candy, not clothing... "It's not like we'd be right next to them in the candy aisle. We're in boutiques..."
http://www.thehersheycompany.com
http://www.milkdudz.com
Justice?
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:36:59
Indonesian officials said Friday that all prisoners, including a reputed leader of the militant group suspected in bombings on the island of Bali, may have their sentences reduced as part of celebrations marking the end of Ramadan...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:36:36
DENVER - Convictions against eight people accused of crimes including sex assault are at risk because a court reporter who has battled cancer quit her job before fully transcribing her notes...
WW1 - less with us
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:35:52
BORDEAUX, France - Rene Moreau, one of seven remaining French soldiers who fought in World War I, died Wednesday... in the southwestern French town of Angouleme... He was 108... born Sept. 8, 1897... drafted in 1916...
Just Random Chance
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:34:19
MEDFORD, Ore. - A woman bought a winning lottery ticket worth $1 million with a stolen credit card and could wind up with nothing if convicted... card.. belonged to her mother-in-law, who died more than a year ago... search warrant served at her home Thursday turned up some methamphetamine, but little money... "Our investigation is still trying to determine what happened to the [first payout of] $33,500..."
THU 2005-OCT-27
Sociopath Threats
theaustralian.news.com.au/ ... 22:36:28
IRAN is permitting around 25 high-ranking al-Qaeda members to roam free in the country's capital, including three sons of Osama bin Laden...
Sick, Sick, Sick
news.telegraph.co.uk/ ... 22:37:21
A couple have been given permission to exhume the body of their stillborn baby after a four-year campaign of vandalism against his grave...
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 22:30:44
Jerry Vlasak, spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front, told the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works that killing medical researchers was "morally justified" to save laboratory animals...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:17:58
Customers at a Dallas grocery had been complaining that the fresh-baked items smelled and tasted like manure. Their grievances eventually led to charges being filed against a 49-year-old taxi driver who is accused of sprinkling dried feces on the food... allegedly had a beef with the store over the way he'd been treated... [possible] probation to a prison term of two to 20 years...
[I'd go with the 20 years... at least...]
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:08:35
Italian police have arrested two people and seized 7 kilograms (about 15 pounds) of plastic explosive as part of the country's efforts to crack down on the 'ndrangheta crime syndicate...in Brescia, in northern Italy, and Reggio Calabria, the capital of the southern region where the organization is based... Experts say the 'ndrangheta is becoming more powerful in Italy than the Sicilian Mafia... last week 61 suspected mobsters were arrested across Italy...
timesonline.co.uk/ ... 10:40:56
...military death toll in Iraq... senior officials blamed the increasing sophistication of roadside bombs used by the insurgents... said to be four times more powerful than early versions and can pierce the heaviest US armour...
news24.com/ ... 10:38:18
Dutch police, aided by helicopters, have launched a manhunt for eight people who escaped from a detention centre at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport after a fire broke out overnight, killing 11 illegal immigrants and injuring 15 people...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:05:43
NORMAL, Ill. - A body found in a burned-out chicken coop in Mississippi has been identified as that of an Illinois college student who disappeared two weeks ago...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:04:37
HADERA, Israel - A 20-year-old Palestinian blacksmith blew himself up at a falafel stand in an open-air market Wednesday, killing five Israelis and wounding more than 30 in the deadliest attack in the country in more than three months...
The attack came hours after Iran's state-run media reported comments from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and saying a new wave of Palestinian attacks would destroy the Jewish state...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:21:22
Army Cpl.
Benjamin D. Hoeffner
, 21, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., died in Ali Al Salem, Kuwait, on Oct. 25, of a non-combat related cause.
US Military
abcnews.go.com/ ... 22:35:33
A woman who took an unpaid leave of absence from work to see her husband off to war has been fired after failing to show up for her part-time receptionist job the day following his departure...
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:21:01
This week, the Army announced an increase in the number of reservists on active duty in support of the partial mobilization, while the Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marine Corps had a decrease. The net collective result is
4,173 more reservists mobilized than last week...
This brings the total National Guard and Reserve personnel, who have been mobilized, to 150,754...
Animal Culture
newscientist.com/ ... 22:37:59
Elephants may pay homage to the bones of dead relatives in their home ranges, a study of the creatures responses to skulls and ivory suggests...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:11:13
247-acre Skokholm Island, off the coast of Pembrokeshire in southwest Wales... teeming with sea birds that inspired the classic animal fantasy tale "Watership Down" is up for sale for the first time in 300 years... regarded as one of the most important breeding areas for sea birds in Europe and has been designated one of the region's Sites of Special Scientific Interest. Owners of the Dale Castle Estate hope it will fetch $1.3 million. They have given the right of first refusal to the Wildlife Trust, a conservation group that has managed the island for the past 50 years... home to 45,000 pairs of Manx shearwaters as well as puffins, storm petrels, razorbills, guillemots, oystercatchers and three species of gulls...
Business Culture
money.cnn.com/ ... 22:42:04
A Wal-Mart vice president has suggested to the company's board of directors that it could hold down spending on health care and benefits by hiring more part-time workers and encouraging "healthier, more productive employees... Most troubling... the least healthy, least productive associates are more satisfied with their benefits than other segments and are interested in longer careers with Wal-Mart..."
Transport Trouble
thetandd.com/ ... 22:40:40
When the back window shattered on his parked 2002 Chevrolet Tahoe, blowing glass straight out toward the road, I figured a tree limb had fell. However, when Bowman police and fire personnel arrived on the scene, they discovered something more a small hole in his tin-roofed car port, the shattered Tahoe window, a broken house window and a strange silver object lying on the ground. The mystery surrounding the incident caused officials to cordon off the Dibble Street home while they tried to figure out exactly what the object was and if it was dangerous. It took the Air Force to identify the object as a piece from one of its jets...
Theory of Education
wtkr.com/ ... 22:39:43
Virginia Beach... 6th grade English teacher, with almost 20 years in Virginia Beach schools, was arrested at school for being drunk in public... "Like, her hair was all messed up and she just looked a little weird..."
Sex -- always attractive
int.iol.co.za/ ... 22:36:05
Postcards of bikini-clad beauties frolicking on Rio's famed beaches could be banned from sales in the city's shops and newsstands in an attempt to discourage sex tourism...
Supernatural
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 22:34:44
some people believe they're seeing an image of the Son of God on a silver maple tree in upstate New York... "It's a sign from God that there should be peace.. There is a lot of crime here. People should have faith in God. This is God giving us a sign..."
World Without Borders
msnbc.msn.com/ ... 22:24:45
Cuba has unexpectedly agreed to a quiet U.S. offer of emergency aid following Hurricane Wilma...
It's All in Your Mind
breitbart.com/ ... 22:24:21
...The technology is called galvanic vestibular stimulation _ essentially, electricity messes with the delicate nerves inside the ear that help maintain balance. I felt a mysterious, irresistible urge to start walking to the right whenever the researcher turned the switch to the right. I was convinced _ mistakenly _ that this was the only way to maintain my balance. The phenomenon is painless but dramatic. Your feet start to move before you know it. I could even remote-control myself by taking the switch into my own hands. There's no proven-beyond-a-doubt explanation yet as to why people start veering when electricity hits their ear. But NTT researchers say they were able to make a person walk along a route in the shape of a giant pretzel using this technique...
All in the Timing
breitbart.com/ ... 22:23:07
Police say something bad was bound to happen when a butcher knife, the movie "Halloween" and a group of drinking men came together at a Rogers [Ark] motel room... police they had trouble interviewing Hetzel because he was drunk, but the spokesman said Hetzel told officers that he should have killed the victim...
breitbart.com/ ... 22:22:21
The apparent suicide of a woman found hanging from a tree went unreported for hours because passers-by thought the body was a Halloween decoration...
Under Tyranny
ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:16:23
Anaheim, Calif... City Council on Tuesday tentatively approved an ordinance restricting... hookah bars... 11 hookah bars in the section.. known as Little Gaza strip... bars couldn't allow drinking, live music or dancing unless owners secure a special permit...
History
ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:07:30
Obituaries in the News...
Marshall Clagett, one of the world's pre-eminent historians on ancient and medieval science and the work of the Greek mathematician Archimedes, died Friday... was.. completing the fourth and final volume of a work titled "Ancient Egyptian Science..."
Robert H. Johnston, whose work in the digital restoration of archaeological finds resulted in ways to read ancient degraded texts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, died Oct. 19. He was 77...
Big City Stories
ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:05:01
The Chicago White Sox are World Series champions again at last
, and yet another epic streak of futility is not just wiped away but swept away. After seven scoreless innings, Jermaine Dye singled home the only run in the eighth, and the White Sox beat the Houston Astros 1-0 Wednesday night to win their first title in 88 years. Just a year ago, the same story line captivated baseball when the long-suffering Boston Red Sox swept St. Louis to capture their first title in 86 years.
Who's next, the Chicago Cubs, without a championship since 1908?
...
Digital Threat
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:54:06
...83% of 1,000 people questioned were not doing enough to protect themselves online, with 53% saying they did not know how to improve security...
Disinformation Propaganda & Spin
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 22:33:48
A woman interviewed by controversial filmmaker Michael Moore for "Fahrenheit 9/11" claims he edited her segment to downplay her support for President Bush and for American troops fighting the war on terror...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:54:26
There has been widespread condemnation of a call by the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for Israel to be "wiped off the map"...
michellemalkin.com/ ... 10:53:21
compare the photos for real
usatoday.com/ ... 10:47:00
[USA TODAY caught in the act by Bloggers]
Editor's note: The photo of Condoleezza Rice that originally accompanied this story was altered in a manner that did not meet USA TODAY's editorial standards. The photo has been replaced by a properly adjusted copy. Photos published online are routinely cropped for size and adjusted for brightness and sharpness to optimize their appearance. In this case, after sharpening the photo for clarity, the editor brightened a portion of Rice's face, giving her eyes an unnatural appearance. This resulted in a distortion of the original not in keeping with our editorial standards...
Doctored photo:
Original & unretouched:
Culture
ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:03:26
Michael Kilian, a veteran Chicago Tribune columnist who also wrote mystery novels, nonfiction on public affairs and the Dick Tracy comic strip, died Wednesday after a long illness. He was 66. The Toledo, Ohio, native spent nearly 40 years at the Tribune and wrote more than 6,000 articles on subjects ranging from politics and military affairs to show business, the arts and the niceties of "high society..."
forbes.com/ ... 10:39:17
Celebrated nasal bard Robert Zimmerman--alias Bob Dylan--inked a deal with Starbucks, the world's leading retailer and roaster of specialty coffee back in June. His album, Live at the Gaslight 1962, featuring 10 previously unreleased ditties recorded at New York's Gaslight Café, went on sale with the muffins, brownies and cookies at the chain's outlets in the U.S. in August...
US Executive Branch
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:37:33
President George W. Bush's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, White House counsel Harriet Miers, abruptly withdrew from consideration on Thursday after fierce criticism from the right and the left about her credentials for the lifetime job...
Sex can be Dangerous
hoinews.com/ ... 10:43:42
...a Woodford County teenager is being labeled... Sexually dangerous..." by the State of Illinois... first female in the state with that designation... charged with fondling two young boys earlier this year... admitted to fondling other children before that... suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder from physical and sexual abuse in her childhood, and has uncontrollable sexual urges...
washingtontimes.com/ ... 10:42:00
A Wisconsin man is in big trouble for photographing his penis, making copies and leaving them on women's windshields in at least four towns...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:02:48
This month, the following things were readily available to any teenage girl who stepped into an Albertsons store: at least four brands of condoms. A recent Men's Health magazine article called "Six Secret Ways to Turn Her On." Cosmopolitan's tips on how to make your own sex video. The following item, though, was unavailable in any of Albertsons' 2,500 locations: the October issue of Seventeen Magazine. The chain pulled that issue from shelves earlier this month. The reason? An article on women's anatomy...
WED 2005-OCT-26
Violence
today.reuters.com/ ... 08:20:13
An explosion killed three people in a Tel Aviv building on Wednesday in what Israeli police said was apparently a bomb-making accident involving criminals... five people were injured...
[Hope the right people died...]
Mass Madness
chinadaily.com.cn/ ... 08:14:58
Eight children were killed and another 45 injured in a trampling accident that happened Tuesday evening at a primary school in Tongjiang County, southwest China's Sichuan Province... lighting in the building went out suddenly when the evening class was over. "Ghosts!" Somebody shouted in the dark. The students rushed to the stairways in the dark and some tumbled and were trampled over...
Scary Times
breitbart.com/ ... 08:11:14
A terminal at San Diego International Airport was evacuated Tuesday after luggage screeners mistook a child's toy and a cookie for bomb- making components... The discovery followed bomb threats called in earlier Tuesday to airports in Long Beach and Orange County. The calls triggered massive searches of both facilities but no explosive devices were found...
Nature is Dangerous
ap.tbo.com/ ... 21:23:48
Walking along the narrow strip of sand that once housed Cancun's raucous bars and palatial resorts, hotels are now stripped of marble and glass, their skeletal remains rising from a tangle of debris. Cancun's famous sugar-white sand is washed away, leaving a muddy coastline strewn with chunks of concrete. The resort's clear, sunny skies remain, but little of the Cancun where millions have honeymooned or spent spring break is left. The city lost battles to both Hurricane Wilma and looters, and it will take months to recover...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:35:15
Authorities said Tuesday they have found the body of one of two Argentines missing for more than a month in Antarctica after their snowmobile plunged into a deep ice crevasse.
Age is No Barrier
ap.tbo.com/ ... 21:25:31
Phrase: "Baby Groomer"
Definition: "A man or woman from the age of 40 to 60 who is trying to buck the biological clock."
Use in a sentence: "Geez, Mom, don't be such a Baby Groomer. You're never going to look my age, even if you do whiten your teeth and shop at Forever 21..."
Ten tips...
Digitizing History
today.reuters.com/ ... 08:26:13
A German man killed two men and wounded two others with a pistol in a farming town in the northern Philippines before he was knocked unconscious with a soft drink bottle...
[presumably not one of those soft-plastic 1-litre bottles... unless it was full?...]
today.reuters.com/ ... 08:24:15
In a blast back to an era when the government lectured its citizens on everything from blowing their noses to how to ride a bus, the UK's National Archives will put 60 public information films online dating back to 1945...
Animal Culture
ap.tbo.com/ ... 21:30:08
WASHINGTON - A young deer romped through two upscale shops in the city's tony Georgetown neighborhood Wednesday before animal control officers tranquilized it... a buck with small antlers, ran into the Diesel clothing store... "It ran straight to the back of the store and it saw itself in the mirror, so it started ramming itself..." One employee turned off the lights, and the deer left, then ran into the Ralph Lauren store next door, where it went to a fitting room in the back...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:39:46
followup-- About 130 pilot whales died after three pods became stranded on a remote beach in southern Australia... Nearly 60 whales died and about 10 had been rescued with the help of scores of volunteers and wildlife officials by nightfall Tuesday.
But a third pod began beaching at dusk
... Rescuers found about 70 of the latest arrivals dead on the beach Wednesday morning and 14 still alive... return[ed] eight survivors to the sea by late morning. Another eight died...
US Military
voanews.com/ ... 08:14:01
A major barrier has been cleared for a deal between Japan and the United States on the realignment of American forces in the country...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:32:00
...Since the March 2003 invasion, at least 497 National Guard or Reserve troops have died in Iraq, nearly 1 in 4 U.S. casualties. These are not professional soldiers. These are the people who sell us insurance, drive our trucks, fix our cars. "The Guard is different in the respect that these folks are seen around town every day, driving a deputy sheriff's patrol car or working at the 7-11 or teaching high school," said U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga. "These are everyday folks who have been commanded to go to war...."
20th Century - Less With Us
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:27:43
Elmer "Len" Dresslar Jr., who extolled vegetables to generations of TV watchers as the booming voice of the Jolly Green Giant, has died. He was 80... was an entertainer and singer for nearly six decades. But his voice rang through millions of households when he sang the simple refrain, "Ho, Ho, Ho..." He periodically re-recorded the "Ho, Ho, Ho" for Jolly Green Giant commercials, most recently about 10 years ago. ...auditioned for the Green Giant job without any idea his baritone would become so recognizable... [Daughter:] "He never got tired of it... If nothing else, it put my sister and I through college."
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 21:22:56
Marine Cpl.
Benny G. Cockerham III
, 21, of Conover, N.C.
Marine Capt.
Tyler B. Swisher
, 35, of Cincinnati, Ohio
died when their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations against enemy forces near Al Amariyah, Iraq on Oct. 21. Their vehicle was traveling beside a canal when the attack occurred and the two Marines were thrown from the vehicle into the water.
defenselink.mil/ ... 21:22:18
Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class
Christopher W. Thompson
, 25, of N. Wilkesboro, N.C., was killed in action on Oct. 21, from an IED explosion while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in the Al Anbar Province of Iraq.
defenselink.mil/ ... 21:21:30
Marine Lance Cpl.
Jonathan R. Spears
, 21, of Molino, Fla., died Oct. 23 from enemy small-arms fire while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Ar Ramadi, Iraq.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:20:07
Army Staff Sgt.
Vincent E. Summers
, 38, of South Haven, Mich.
Army Spc.
Thomas H. Byrd
, 21, of Cochise, Ariz.
Army Spc.
Jeffrey W. Corban
, 30, of Elkhart, Ind.
Army Spc.
Richard A. Hardy
, 24, of Newcomerstown, Ohio.
Army Spc.
Timothy D. Watkins
, 24, of San Bernardino, Calif.
died in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, on Oct. 15, when an improvised explosive device detonated near their M2A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle during combat operations.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:18:41
Army Staff Sgt.
George T. Alexander, Jr.
, 34, of Clanton, Ala., died at Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas, on Oct. 22, of injuries sustained in Samarra, Iraq, on Oct. 17, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:18:11
Army Sgt.
Jacob D. Dones
, 21, of Dimmitt, Texas, died in Hit, Iraq, on Oct. 20, when his forward operating base was attacked by enemy forces using indirect fire.
Painfully Obvious
ap.tbo.com/ ... 21:28:28
...from "WARNING," a compilation of odd (but real) caution signs by Nicole Recchia.
1. Be careful not to lose control of your wheelchair on a steep incline and go careening wildly into the
waiting jaws of an alligator.
2. Be careful not to get wrapped around a rotating crank shaft...
6. Don't strike a surface with a chainsaw in such a way that it bounces back into your skull...
8. Do not put your baby in a large tupperware bin and close the lid...
World of Cultures
today.reuters.com/ ... 08:27:50
Indian police have brought charges against a Finnish tourist... [she went] bathing naked in a holy lake in a Hindu pilgrim town [then] walked to her hotel in the nude...
Under Tyranny
today.reuters.com/ ... 08:21:59
A Turkish court fined 20 people for using the letters Q and W on placards at a Kurdish new year celebration, under a law banning characters not used in the Turkish alphabet...
[W W W W Q Q Q Q... because I can!]
9/11 - still with us
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:37:40
NEW YORK - A 23-story landmark known as the "miracle building" for withstanding fallout from the 2001 terrorist attack on the adjacent World Trade Center had a grand reopening Tuesday. Built in 1907, 90 West Street was seriously damaged while seven buildings near it, including the twin towers, were destroyed. Debris [and] fires that burned for days.. damaged the building's northern facade, roof and interior... new incarnation, 410 apartments... At a cost of $100 million in tax-exempt bonds, a new copper roof was put on 90 West and thousands of terra cotta tiles and gargoyles were restored to the facade...
Feeding Ourselves
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:34:34
McDonald's Corp. announced Tuesday that it will display nutrition information on packaging for most of its menu items next year.
Cascading Weirdness
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:34:15
The Kansas attorney general Tuesday sued two psychologists hired by the state to interview BTK serial killer Dennis Rader, accusing them of profiting from a videotape of a session with him. Segments of the interview were broadcast by "Dateline NBC" in August, five days before Rader was given consecutive life sentences for 10 killings committed between 1974 and 1991...
TUE 2005-OCT-25
Transport Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:23:20
..."My knees just buckled and I said, 'God help me... I just couldn't believe God would take two brothers back to back like that." Larry Harrell, 44, took his 32-year-old brother's death in a four-wheeler accident last Wednesday hard... Sherry Harrell wondered why Larry Harrell wasn't at their brother's funeral but hoped he had been just too devastated to come... They passed by a wreck heading home, but Sherry Harrell said she thought nothing of it until she got the call from the hospital, saying she had lost her second brother in less than a week... "It's hard to believe they're gone, but we look at it like they're both in heaven now, fishing with our daddy..."
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:16:59
GLENDALE, Calif. - A Metrolink commuter train slammed into a tractor-trailer rig Monday night... Four passengers on the train and the truck driver suffered minor injuries... Two people in a car next to the truck also received minor injuries from flying debris...
...truck driver had cleared the tracks but backed up as the crossing gate was coming down because the driver realized he had started to turn the wrong way onto an adjacent street... Other drivers began honking to warn him of the approaching train but he apparently did not hear them...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:17:34
A man charged in a traffic accident that killed three Washington State University students has been captured in Ireland, four years after he fled to avoid his trial....
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:21:35
A suicide car bomb exploded near a regional government ministry in a predominantly Kurdish province of Sulaimaniyah on Tuesday, killing at least nine people and wounding four...
two US Marines were killed by a roadside bomb during fighting with insurgents on Friday near Amiriyah...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:20:25
Militants attacked security forces on two sides of Kabul, killing seven people in some of the deadliest attacks near the Afghan capital in months... Security forces also uncovered a cache of bombs inside the city...
late Monday.. rebels fired rockets at a U.S.-led coalition convoy 10 miles south of Kabul... rockets missed their target and instead hit three civilian cars, killing six Afghans... Three civilians were also wounded. A child was among the dead....
...opened fire with assault rifles on a police vehicle 30 miles east of Kabul... killed a senior police officer who was a teacher at a police academy. Two others were wounded...
targeted because they "are teaching new police recruits and are crucial to bringing peace to our country."
fired rockets at the northern city of Fayzabad during the past two nights, wounding a local U.N. staff member and damaging a compound belonging to the government's intelligence agency...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:19:20
TIJUANA, Mexico - A Roman Catholic priest was found shot to death in his car with his hands cuffed in the rough border city of Tijuana on Monday...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:17:10
Suspected rebels launched homemade bombs at a police station and nearby homes in a southwest town near the border with Ecuador, killing seven people... More than a hundred fighters... fired at least a dozen bombs toward the police station Sunday night in San Miguel... Four police officers, two civilians and one army soldier were killed... Six people were injured and several homes near the station were destroyed...
Science Marches Onnnnnn
news.com.au/ ... 08:15:00
US military experts are attempting to create an army of super-human soldiers who will be more intelligent and deadly thanks to a microchip implanted in their brains. Scientists believe the implant will vastly improve the memory of troops so that they can recall every detail of their training and become more effective fighters... removed that section of the brain of dead rats and inserted the chip in its place. The implant sent exactly the same electronic signals as the real thing...
[and if we replace the portion of the brain that controls morals and judgment, just think what a soldier we could make!]
Animal Culture
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:15:30
Nearly 60 whales died in a mass stranding on a remote beach in southern Australia... Rescuers struggled to save about 10 survivors... Two groups of long finned pilot whales... near Marion Bay on the southern island state of Tasmania...
Long finned pilot whales are medium-sized whales, reaching up to about 20 feet in length, with a bulbous forehead rounding to a short beak...
A group of 70 long finned pilot whales beached themselves in the same location in 1998... Only 10 survived...
Lasting Contributions
suntimes.com/ ... 07:36:55
In many ways, Rosa Parks will forever be a snapshot frozen in time, according to Chicagoans who knew her or simply felt the strength that rippled across the nation -- and each generation -- since she refused to give up her bus seat on that day in 1955...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:13:04
"She loved people with a passion, and when she took that seat on that bus that day,
she took a seat for all of us
." - Clara Luper, a retired teacher who led a group of teenagers in a sit-in at a downtown Oklahoma City drug store counter in 1958.
"She must be looked upon as not just the mother of the modern civil rights movement; she must be looked upon as
one of the mothers of the New America, of the New South
." - Rep. John Lewis, D-Atlanta.
"She really was a heroine to us. She was an ordinary woman and we were ordinary kids, and it seems we had a relationship. ...
For me it opened up the possibility and also instructed me that it wouldn't be easy, but it would be worth it in the end.
" - Minnijean Brown Trickey, a member of the Little Rock Nine who desegregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957.
"
In one single day, Rosa Parks made the world face the cause of equality, civil rights and justice.
No words can adequately describe the courage of her actions, the nobility of her character or the impact she had on an entire nation." - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:24:07
...The Montgomery, Ala., seamstress, an active member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was riding on a city bus Dec. 1, 1955, when a white man demanded her seat...
Mrs. Parks refused
, despite rules requiring blacks to yield their seats to whites... Mrs. Parks was jailed. She also was fined $14. Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then little-known Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.... Mrs. Parks said 30 years later, "It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in..." The Montgomery bus boycott, which came one year after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark declaration that separate schools for blacks and whites were "inherently unequal," marked the start of the modern civil rights movement... led to the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, which banned racial discrimination in public accommodations...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:20:44
She sparked the modern civil rights movement by refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man.
Rosa Parks
died Monday of natural causes at her home...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 01:13:42
Marine Lance Cpl.
Kenneth J. Butler
, 19, of Rowan, N.C., died Oct. 21 from an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations against enemy forces near Al Amariyah, Iraq.
Marine Cpl.
Seamus M. Davey
, 25, of Lewis, N.Y., died Oct. 21 from an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in the vicinity of Haqlaniyah, Iraq.
Now
That's
Funny!
nytimes.com/ ... 08:18:45
..."It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the presidential seal on its Web site," Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28... Citing the United States Code, Mr. Dixton wrote that the seal "is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement." Exceptions may be made, he noted, but The Onion had never applied for such an exception. The Onion was amused... The Onion's lawyers responded that the paper's readers. are well aware that The Onion is a joke...
Disinformation Propaganda & Spin
abcnews.go.com/ ... 08:12:52
[Last summer's news]
Cindy Sheehan: "I'm going to go to Washington, D.C. and I'm going to give a speech at the White House, and after I do, I'm going to tie myself to the fence and refuse to leave until they agree to bring our troops home..."
[going to go out on a limb here, and predict that Cindy will be removed from the fence well before the troops come home...]
Post-Racist World
katc.com/ ... 08:10:20
A "whites only" sign at a barber shop on Moss Street in Lafayette... barber Herbert Leger put the sign up Saturday morning after having to over and over again turn down customers he says he's not qualified to help... "The difference is the technique that you use and they have special technique for cutting black people's hair. Just like there's a special technique for cutting white people's hair. I don't have the training, I don't have the experience, I don't have the knowledge and the technique used in cutting black people's hair." ..says he did not intend for the sign to offend anyone. He also says when a customer walks in he can't help, he sends him to his barber friend across the street...
Just Random Chance
kentucky.com/ ... 08:07:52
[Kentucky] State officials have won a $36,300 federal homeland security grant to keep terrorists out of Kentucky bingo halls, although not everyone agrees that's much of a threat... John Holiday, enforcement director at the Office of Charitable Gaming, who applied for the grant: "...the potential there, to me, is just huge. You can earn a lot of money very fast and deal entirely in cash... I actually went on the Web and did a lot of research about this. There are articles that have linked terrorism to charitable gaming..."
Supernatural Threats
theage.com.au/ ... 08:05:49
British banks are banning piggy banks because they may offend some Muslims...
[and possibly animal rights activists?..]
Opposing Tyranny
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 07:55:27
A Saudi columnist says the violent jihad movement of Islam is similar to, or even worse than, Nazism, and that for the West not to oppose it will lead to consequences worse than Nazi Germany...
Justice?
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 07:50:32
Irwin Schiff, the Nevada man who has made a career out of telling Americans that payment of federal income taxes is voluntary instead of mandatory, was convicted on all 13 counts by a federal jury in Las Vegas yesterday... third time Schiff, who served as his own attorney during the five-week trial, has been convicted of tax-related offenses... Schiff, 77, faces a maximum sentence of 43 years in prison and $3.25 million in fines...
Digital Whoops
upi.com/ ... 07:38:52
A class-action lawsuit accuses Apple of knowingly selling defective iPods. Specifically, the company has been charged with shipping out its iPod Nanos, one of the company's smallest and thinnest models to date, even though it knew that the product was prone to being scratched up easily. Moreover, the plaintiffs argue that the scratches make the product unusable as the screen becomes unreadable...
Sexual Equality??
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:27:17
homecoming queen... had to accept the honor in her football uniform...
Feeding Ourselves
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:17:44
Organic food is a multibillion-dollar industry with growing pains it wants Congress to help soothe. At issue is whether small amounts of non-organic ingredients - vitamins, spices, citric acid, even carbonation - should be allowed in food bearing the "USDA Organic" seal. An appeals court decided earlier this year that none of those things belongs in food labeled as organic. Lawmakers could decide as early as Tuesday whether they want to override the ruling...
Under Tyranny
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:20:08
The world's largest shipping carrier, UPS Inc., will stop delivering cigarettes to individuals in the United States under an agreement announced Monday with New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. ..latest in federal and state efforts to combat the sale of under-taxed cigarettes and to fight underage smoking...
Alcohol Was Involved
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:18:53
BENTON, Ark. - An attorney appealing his second drunken driving conviction was jailed Monday after he came to court intoxicated...
MON 2005-OCT-24
Industrial Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:37:11
An explosion at a coal mine in southern China killed 15 miners and injured three... Sunday at the Zhongxing Colliery in Guizhou province's Qinglong County...
China's mines are said to be the most dangerous in the world, with more than 6,000 miners killed last year by fires, explosions, floods and cave-ins.
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:40:11
Three enormous bombs, including a cement-mixing truck packed with explosives, blew up near an Iraqi police post outside the Palestine Hotel
- home to many foreign journalists in Iraq. Iraqi officials said
17 people were killed...
second bomb exploded inside a car not far from the police position on the northeast side of Firdous Square and more than 100 yards east of the hotel grounds. Both were believed to be suicide attacks. Security officials said a third bomb struck the area around the same time... did not appear that anybody was killed inside the hotel... Three of the wounded were in the hotel but were not hurt seriously... exploding cement truck blew a hole in a 12-foot concrete wall that separates the hotel from the square where an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled as U.S. troops captured the Iraqi capital on April 9, 2003...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:32:34
Israeli troops killed a top Palestinian fugitive and a close accomplice in a West Bank shootout Monday, prompting threats of "unprecedented" revenge by the violent Islamic Jihad group... wanted man.. was the leader of Islamic Jihad's military wing in the West Bank and was blamed for the deaths of 12 Israelis in a series of attacks in recent months...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:10:05
"We have interrupted the flow of the suicide missions into the large urban areas. Certainly, we have had success denying free movement of car bombs into Baghdad," Brig. Gen. Donald Alston told reporters in the capital. "It is also a function of Iraqi citizens who have come forward and with their support we have found car bomb factories. We have found a series of large weapon caches..." amid the intensified security clampdown, suicide car bombings have been greatly reduced in recent weeks across the country, and those that have occurred have caused fewer casualties...
More than 33 Iraqis died in a swell of violence...
[suicide car bomb] in a Baghdad square Sunday, killing four people...
other attacks on Sunday.. 12 laborers - five of them brothers - were gunned down.. at a construction site outside the city of Hillah...
Roadside bombs hit three separate U.S. convoys in Baghdad on Sunday morning, wounding a total of five soldiers...
suicide car bomber rammed into a U.S. military convoy Sunday morning in... Kirkuk, killing two civilians and wounding 13...
...slaying of the police colonel and his children.. in Tikrit... had just left his home and was getting into his car with his two sons when a bomb nearby went off, killing the three of them... explosion set a nearby car ablaze, killing two young girls, aged 7 and 9...
...Around.. Baqouba.. a string of drive-by shootings killed a police lieutenant, three civilians and a Shiite student-cleric...
...Gunmen also killed three Iraqis driving a water truck to an Iraqi army base on a highway near Taji...
...In Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on a car carrying Shiite workers, killing one and wounding two...
...killed a leader of a Shiite anti-Saddam group and his driver in their car on a highway outside the southern city of Amarah...
...The U.S. military on Sunday confirmed that four American contract workers were killed and two wounded in Iraq last month when their convoy got lost... Sept. 20...
Transport Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:34:59
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - A car crossed a double yellow line Monday and crashed head-on into a school bus, killing the motorist and injuring 11 other people... driver of that vehicle.. dead at the scene... critically injured passenger... nine [high school] students and the bus driver... minor injuries...
today.reuters.co.uk/ ... 10:48:03
A Nigerian airliner with 117 people aboard was destroyed in a crash shortly after take-off from Lagos and there were no signs of survivors...
Mass Madness
guardian.co.uk/ ... 10:46:50
...after being caught shoplifting, a girl of 13 or 14 had pleaded for leniency, but had been raped by between three and 25 Pakistani men in a suburban beauty store. When the attack was supposed to have happened was never clear... six days after the
rumour
was given even wider circulation by a DJ on a pirate radio station, it was being
blamed for much of Saturday night's rioting in Birmingham which left one man dead and up to 35 others needing hospital treatment.
During the disturbances, shops were attacked, cars set on fire and hundreds of police in riot gear were confronted with bricks and bottles. Four people were stabbed, including a 23-year-old black man who later died in hospital. A police officer was shot in the leg with a ball-bearing gun, one of 12 gunshot incidents...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:32:45
Army Staff Sgt.
Dennis P. Merck
, 38, of Evans, Ga., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Oct. 20, of a non-combat related injury. Merck was assigned to the Army National Guard.
Lost & Found
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:29:09
PITTSBURGH... Robert Gibson.. 70, of Linwood, N.C... got a call.. Thursday... "Before he could even say a word, I said, 'You found my wallet...'" had been in the Air Force... returning from serving almost a year and half in Germany... in 1962... stopped in Pittsburgh.. decided to take a hot shower before boarding his bus to Clarksburg, W.Va... asbestos removal technician.. found the wallet [less $300] Wednesday in the former Greyhound station, which is being demolished... Gibson: "How it got where (it was found) I don't know...
It's not every hip 'n' stitch that someone finds the wallet they lost 40 years ago."
Transport
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:20:39
WASHINGTON DC ...cross a busy intersection... carry a bright orange flag... simple idea... Washington's crosswalk flag program, being tested at two high-traffic locations, mirrors efforts in several other cities... she picked up the flag on one side of the street, waved it at drivers as she crossed and then deposited it on the other side... the flags have been successful in reducing pedestrian accidents in cities that are using them, say supporters... two people crossing with flags have been hit since the program began just over a year ago. In Berkeley, Calif., the program got off to a bad start when a woman carrying one was struck during its first week. Berkeley dropped it altogether last year after the flags kept disappearing...
Disturbing Family Patterns
abcnews.go.com/ ... 10:43:01
...the girls from Bakersfield, Calif., have been performing songs about white nationalism before all-white crowds since they were nine. "We're proud of being white, we want to keep being white," said Lynx. "We want our people to stay white we don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race." Lynx and Lamb have been nurtured on racist beliefs since birth by their mother April. "They need to have the background to understand why certain things are happening," said April, a stay-at-home mom who no longer lives with the twins' father. "I'm going to give them, give them my opinion just like any, any parent would..."
Police Riot
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:41:16
Previously classified documents being released Monday show numerous misuses of FBI surveillance, including improper searches and seizures of e-mails and bank records...
FBI auditors have investigated hundreds of potential violations related to the agency's domestic surveillance since Sept. 11, 2001...
"We're seeing what might be the tip of the iceberg at the FBI and across the intelligence community. It indicates that the existing mechanisms do not appear adequate to prevent abuses or to ensurethe public that abuses that are identified are treated seriously and remedied..." FBI officials [said] that most of the violations were simply administrative errors... [WPost]
Supernatural
msnbc.msn.com/ ... 10:38:16
The queen of the occult has been gone awhile. What's Anne Rice been up to? Getting healthy, finding Godand writing her most daring book yet... In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chronicler of vampires, witches andunder the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaureof soft-core S&M encounters, will publish "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt," a novel about the 7-year-old Jesus, narrated by Christ himself.
"I promised," she says, "that from now on I would write only for the Lord..."
SUN 2005-OCT-23
Nature is Dangerous
ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:53:34
An earthquake destroyed mud-brick homes and killed five people near Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan on Sunday... Six others were injured...
Reasons for Repeal
ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:55:45
Women made up 7 percent of all inmates in state and federal prisons last year and accounted for nearly one in four arrests... In 1995, women made up 6.1 percent of all inmates in those facilities...
"The number of incarcerated women has been growing ... due in large part to sentencing policies in the war in drugs,"
The Sentencing Project, a group promoting alternatives to prison, said in a statement. The group said the number of drug offenders in prisons and jails has risen from 40,000 in 1980 to more than 450,000 today. According to FBI figures, law officers in 2004 made more arrests for drug violations than for any other offense - about 1.7 million arrests, or 12.5 percent of all arrests. Those sentenced for drug offenses made up 55 percent of federal inmates in 2003, the report said....
SAT 2005-OCT-22
Supernatural Violence
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:41:14
Three people have died during a riot outside a Coptic church in Alexandria, Egypt, after a protest against a play accused of offending Islam... Entitled
I Once Was Blind But Now I See
, the drama tells the story of a poor young Copt who is drawn to Islamist militants who then try to kill him. Coptic Christian leaders have said the play depicts the dangers of extremism, not of Islam...
Disturbing Family Patterns
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:31:25
PITTSBURGH - A mother was convicted Friday on charges alleging she beat her 7-year-old daughter with a dog chain and keys, burned her wrists on a stove, poured bleach on her and forced cat food and salt down her throat... was acquitted of attempted homicide... Police investigat[ed] reports of screams coming from.. home in February 2004... found [child] in a closet, naked and wet... attorneys.. argued [mother] suffered temporary psychosis from asthma medication...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:17:29
The woman charged with tossing her three sons into San Francisco Bay has been battling schizophrenia and once said she was going to feed the boys to the sharks, family members said... was hospitalized twice this year... had made threats before... "No one thought it was that serious..." had been living with her boys in a Salvation Army homeless shelter since September... body of.. middle child.. 2, was recovered late Wednesday.. other two boys.. 6 and.. 16 months.. remained missing.. presumed dead...
had taken the anti-psychotic drug Haldol to control her schizophrenia but stopped when she got her symptoms under control over the summer
...
Sociopath Threats
ap.tbo.com/ ... 19:27:49
At least 20 Guatemalan inmates considered to be extremely dangerous escaped from a high-security prison through a tunnel Saturday...Those escaping included convicts accused of kidnapping, murder, and rape...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:28:21
A Palestinian woman was found Saturday hiding a hand grenade under her baby during a West Bank arrest raid... the woman.. said the grenade was in the pocket of her jacket and she did not know it was there... troops also found 22 pounds of explosives hidden in a suitcase in the house...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:26:07
An unidentified man who claimed to have a suspicious device in his car was taken into custody close to the Capitol on Friday, and police cordoned off several streets as a precaution...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:13:27
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesian police said Friday they had arrested four people allegedly involved in smuggling hundreds of pounds of explosive materials from Malaysia into Indonesia... four other suspects escaped and remain at large...
Transport Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:29:20
A U.N. helicopter on a mission to help Pakistan earthquake victims crashed Saturday in western Azerbaijan, killing at least four crew members... went down in the Goychay region, about 125 miles west of the Azerbaijani capital, Baku...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:12:47
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - A 93-year-old driver apparently suffering from dementia fatally struck a pedestrian and drove for three miles with the man's body through his windshield... was stopped after he drove through a toll booth on the Sunshine Skyway... did not appear to know what happened or where he was... victim's leg was severed... 52...
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:25:21
U.S. troops and warplanes killed 20 insurgents Saturday while destroying safehouses for foreign militants near the Syrian border.... found two caches of small arms, ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and bomb-making materials.. a car bomb...
Seven Iraqis, including two civilians, were reported killed in drive-by shootings and bombings Saturday...
...The latest U.S. deaths reported by the military included a Marine killed by an explosion near the western town of Haqlaniyah on Friday, the final day of an offensive that began Oct. 4. After the blast, Marines fought with insurgents, killing four and destroying a bunker with an unknown number of gunmen inside... Two more Marines were killed by a bomb during fighting near Amiriyah... A U.S. Army soldier died in central Baghdad on Thursday of a "non-hostile gunshot..."
ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:32:41
SANTA ANA, Calif. - The son of a former assistant sheriff and two other men will be sentenced as adults for the videotaped sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl... Judge.. rejected defense requests that the men be sentenced as juveniles, which likely would have brought them lighter sentences... are 20 years old but were 17 when they assaulted the girl in July 2002 as she lay unconscious...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:27:51
A Taliban ambush touched off fierce fighting in southern Afghan mountains that left eight police and four rebels dead...
washingtonpost.com/ ... 07:43:24
President Hamid Karzai on Friday condemned the alleged desecration of the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters by U.S. troops, but he said mistakes happen in war and Afghans shouldn't let it mar their impression of the United States. His apparent attempt to reduce Afghans' anger over the incident came amid warnings by Islamic clerics of a possible violent anti-American backlash...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:35:17
HELENA, Mont. - Border patrol agents shot and killed a man near the Canadian border Friday after he reached for object later determined to be a stun gun...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:23:07
The bodies of nine men in olive green uniforms were recovered Friday in an area of northeastern India wracked by clashes between rival ethnic militants...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:22:47
SAGINAW, Mich. - Security guards used a metal detector to search Saginaw High School students Friday morning, a day after a sophomore was shot in the chest, allegedly by another boy who had been in a juvenile detention center with him... boys, both 15... enrolled.. after being released from the same juvenile detention center and knew each other...
"I didn't know what to think of it," said ninth-grader ..14,, shooting happened one floor above her. "It was crazy."
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:11:22
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A car bomb exploded near a mosque in southern Afghanistan, killing a deputy provincial police chief and one of his bodyguards... second bodyguard was wounded...
Nature is Dangerous
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:10:22
The outer bands of Hurricane Wilma spun off a tornado in Cuba's tobacco-growing region, flattening at least 20 homes and tobacco curing houses in the island's west... Cuba evacuated nearly 560,000... waves of up to seven meters...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:27:15
JABLA, India... The landslides that tumbled across the zone of the Oct. 8 earthquake dramatized not only the power of nature but how humans have brought tragedy upon themselves through massive deforestation and other ecological assaults on the Himalayas. In this once-remote region, loss of green cover from commercial logging, local cutting and overgrazing has weakened the land's ability to retain water, which now rushes easily down mountainsides to set off slides that some call "ecological land mines." Watershed mismanagement has added to the danger, as has the replacement of natural forest by trees that do not absorb as much water... On India's side, landslides killed nearly 300 of the 1,360 who died from the quake... also swept away scores of villages in 2002 in areas of Pakistan not far from the current scenes of devastation. A 1999 quake and accompanying slides killed 100 people and destroyed 6,000 houses in northeastern India's Chamoli area. A year earlier, torrential rains loosened mountainsides that obliterated the India-China border town of Malpa, killing 205... "There has been ecological havoc in the last 15 years. Security forces, the militants, anyone who wanted to cut down a tree in Kashmir did so... Future generations will curse us."
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:07:45
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. ...A rare floating island in a pond here broke free during last weekend's storm and was beached in nearby backyard...
Experts say there are only a few floating islands in North America...
History - still with us
ap.tbo.com/ ... 19:30:10
...Their attempts to set fire to an 80-year-old fishing boat using their own versions of the device, however, failed to either prove or dispel the myth of the solar death ray... MIT['s] first attempt with their contraption made of 300 square feet of bronze and glass failed to ignite a fire from 150 feet away... produced smoldering on the boat's wooden surface... University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory tried a mirrored system shaped like flower petals, but it failed... In "Epitome ton Istorion," John Zonaras wrote:
"At last in an incredible manner he burned up the whole Roman fleet. For by tilting a kind of mirror toward the sun he concentrated the sun's beam upon it; and owing to the thickness and smoothness of the mirror he ignited the air from this beam and kindled a great flame, the whole of which he directed upon the ships that lay at anchor in the path of the fire, until he consumed them all."
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:26:53
...According to sparse historical writings, the Greek mathematician Archimedes torched a fleet of invading Roman ships by reflecting the sun's powerful rays with a mirrored device made of glass or bronze. More than 2,000 years later, two groups who believe they had reconstructed the fabled death ray set out to test them Saturday afternoon. The television show "MythBusters," which sponsored the event, had tried before but failed...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 18:07:36
Marine Staff Sergeant
Richard T. Pummill
, 27, of Cincinnati, Ohio
Marine Lance Cpl.
Andrew D. Russoli
, 21, of Greensboro, N.C.
Marine Lance Cpl.
Steven W. Szwydek
, 20, of Warfordsburg, Pa.
died Oct. 20 from an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations against enemy forces near Nasser Wa Salaam, Iraq.
Animal Culture
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:23:29
GAMALIEL, Ark. - Two owners of an animal rescue operation were arrested after hundreds of dogs, some rescued from Hurricane Katrina, were found on the couple's property groveling for food among urine and feces... Between 400 and 500 dogs were on the two-acre lot, including 50 pit bulls... About 75 dogs were running loose...
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:30:30
Tiny fleas that survive on fungus found under a blanket of snow contain a unique antifreeze that could have implications for farming or transplant surgery...
Supernatural
msnbc.msn.com/ ... 09:22:20
BOMBAY, India - Its a bird. Its a plane. Its ...
the superhero monkey god
? ...the star of Indias first animated feature film is a genuine deity drawn from the Hindu pantheon...
Hanuman
is the industrys first full-length, homegrown animated movie...
Just Random Chance
newsday.com/ ... 09:07:20
A Medford [Oregon] man says he and his family
hold the winning ticket to the record $340 million Powerball jackpot
. ...says he has no big plans for the money, other than a car and a vacation...
20th Century - Less With Us
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:28:40
MINNEAPOLIS - Gordon Lee, the chubby child actor who played Spanky McFarland's little brother, "Porky," in "Little Rascals" comedies, died Sunday. He was 71... played one of the younger members in the "Our Gang" shorts... in more than 40 [films]... from 1935 to 1939... became known as "The Little Rascals" when shown on TV in the 1950s... Porky character is credited with originating the catchphrase "otay..."
US Military
time.com/ ... 08:51:06
There simply wasn't enough room on the rocky hilltop above Gonbaz village in southern Afghanistan for the U.S. platoon and the corpses of the two Taliban fighters. The Taliban men had been killed in a firefight 24 hours earlier, and in the 90 degree heat, their bodies had become an unbearable presence, soldiers who were present have told TIME... platoon leader had sent word.. asking the villagers to pick up the bodies and bury them according to Muslim ritual. But the villagers refused probably because the dead fighters weren't locals but Pakistanis... "We decided to burn the bodies... because they were bloated and they stank..."
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:55:16
For nearly 60 years, the names of a pilot and three crew members who died when their plane crashed into an icy peak have been etched on a military gravestone. During that time, however, most of their actual remains have rested on a lonely mountain... A single headstone bears the names of the pilot.. and three aviation cadets...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 07:52:22
TUSKEGEE, Ala. - Lt. Col. Herbert Carter is 86 years old and ready for deployment. More than 60 years after his World War II tour with the pioneering black pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen, Carter's new mission will be shorter, though no less courageous. Carter is one of seven aging Tuskegee Airmen traveling this weekend to Balad, Iraq... to inspire a younger generation of airmen who carry on the traditions of the storied 332nd Fighter Group.... The retired Airmen who will make the trip - five pilots, a mechanic and a supply officer - shrugged off the dangers of Iraq, saying they have stared down the enemy before. Some fought in Korea and Vietnam as well as World War II... Current members of the 332nd [now 332nd Air Expeditionary Group].. include men and women of different backgrounds and races... But the black retirees said they are thrilled that a group still fights within their 332nd lineage, regardless of skin color...
The original Tuskegee Airmen were recruited in an Army Air Corps program created to train blacks to fly and maintain combat aircraft during World War II - though some of the retired Airmen say it was really designed to try to prove that blacks were incapable of flying and fighting. Even after the first group completed pilot training in March 1942, they were not allowed to fly for more than a year.
Eventually.. flew escort for bombers. .. credited with shooting down more than 100 enemy aircraft and never losing an American bomber under escort to enemy fighters. In all, 992 pilots were trained in Tuskegee from 1940 to 1946. About 450 deployed overseas and 150 lost their lives in training or combat...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:10:47
As the frozen body believed to be a World War II airman slowly thaws after decades encased in a glacier, forensic experts say a picture is emerging of a fair-haired man in an Army uniform who suffered broken bones when his aircraft crashed in the wilderness... soft tissues such as skin and muscle have been well-preserved, as well as the man's sun-bleached hair and his uniform... "There's a very good possibility for identification..." No dog tags or other form of identification have been found yet... most of the body is still frozen, and experts have not been able to search for things like laundry tags or parachute issue numbers...
...there are
88,000 Americans still missing from past wars, most of them, 78,000, from World War II.
Only about 35,000 are deemed recoverable....
Natural vs Transport
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:29:23
Pilots flying into and out of a small airport north of Anchorage, Alaska, no longer have to keep an eye out for stray moose on the runway. The municipal airport at Wasilla, a town about 40 miles north of Anchorage, has installed an electric anti-moose mat around the airfield...
Whoops!
today.reuters.com/ ... 09:25:38
Australian authorities have apologized to the family of an elderly man who was given a parking ticket while he lay dead in his car in a suburban shopping center...
Culture
news.independent.co.uk/ ... 09:18:39
...Lady, the hottest music act to come out of South Korea in years, are not your average girl group. They may have looks that many women would die for - but... all undergone sex change operations and used their new, curvaceous physiques to propel them to stardom... even the odd nude photo shoot... Korea's first transgender pop group... "We love chocolate, shopping and gossip. Mentally we were always women, the only difference being that we changed something physical, simply we are women with an extra scar..."
Modern Family Life
washingtonpost.com/ ... 09:08:59
POTTSVILLE, Pa. -- Child-welfare authorities seized a newborn from a hospital Friday and placed the baby in a foster home because his father is a convicted sex offender. A judge granted the mother supervised visitation rights but prohibited visits from the father... father pleaded guilty to rape and sodomy two decades ago in New York...
Supernatural Threats
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:06:19
Edinburgh University in Scotland will begin banning Holy Bibles from its student halls of residence due to concern they are the source of discrimination against students of other faiths...
OKC Bombing -- still with us
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 09:04:46
...the Oklahoma City FBI office has filed under seal... internal FBI documents related to the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building...
One Planet One People
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 08:56:38
A visiting professor at North Carolina State University says the solution to the problems faced by many blacks is the extermination of "white people off the face of the planet..."
[A refreshing endorsement of out-and-out race hatred...]
World Without Borders
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:45:45
..
.we have been living through a time of extraordinary success.
To travel to the great cities of central Europe in the last few years, to Prague, to Warsaw and to Budapest, has been to witness the rebirth of confident European roots which had been suppressed for nearly half a century under Communism. Europe has grown wider at the same time that it has struggled to go deeper. But where will it all end? What, today, does it mean to be a European?..
WW2 - still with us
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:44:01
In pictures: Lost German art... Thousands of colour photographs of art treasures, commissioned by Hitler at the height of World War II, have been published on the internet... Hitler ordered photos to be taken of the greatest artworks before they were lost forever. Many were subsequently destroyed...
CD/DVD/etc is Dead
msnbc.msn.com/ ... 08:37:36
Sony on Friday declared victory in the battle over the next-generation DVD standard, after Warner Brothers, the Hollywood studio that has been a long-time supporter of rival Japanese group Toshiba, said it would back its Blu-ray disc format in addition to Toshiba's HD-DVD...
Police Riot
ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:31:04
CHINO, Calif. - An Orange County sheriff's reserve deputy was ordered to trial for allegedly pulling a gun on two slow-playing golfers at Los Serranos Golf & Country Club...
Feeding Ourselves
ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:30:06
...Norwegian researcher Anita Lill Hansen wants to know if there's a connection between eating oily fish and controlling violent outbursts... "A lot of crimes are committed on impulse... [If fatty oil found in fish] has a positive effect on people's impulse control, we hope it could result in a reduction in crime..."
Cold War - still with us
ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:23:45
Both the United States and Russia emerged victorious with the end of the Cold War, says former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. "I would not be making a mistake to say that perestroika won. It succeeded," he said Friday night during a celebration of the 20th anniversary of governmental reforms that ultimately ended the hostilities between the two nations... President Clinton and former Secretary of State Colin Powell were among about 200 guests who attended what Gorbachev described as a "meeting of old friends..."
Gorbachev is credited with engineering a series of reforms, called perestroika, in the Soviet Union that led to the fall of communism, the rise of democratic governments in Eastern Europe and the end of the decades-long nuclear arms race between the United States and Russia. In 1990, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work...
Sex can be Dangerous
breitbart.com/ ... 07:47:32
ONTARIO, Calif. - A man was arrested after neighbors reported seeing him sexually assaulting his family's 10-year-old female Rottweiler... Detectives [went to his home] to notify him that he was required to register as a sex offender [for] exposing himself to an 11-year-old girl [in December]... also was wanted on an outstanding $10,000 drug warrant. While at the home, police learned that [he] was living in a large doghouse in the backyard... Neighbors reported that he often slept naked in the doghouse with the family dog... sexually assault the animal with a broom handle and his hand and heard the dog cry in pain when he was in the doghouse... Neighbors also reported seeing [him] in his back yard dressed in a woman's bra and panties, dancing with a broom handle...
Digital Threats
latimes.com/ ... 08:49:14
FESTAC, Nigeria As patient as fishermen, the young men toil day and night, trawling for replies to the e-mails they shoot to strangers half a world away... The targets are called maghas scammer slang from a Yoruba word meaning fool, and refers to gullible white people... The e-mail scammers here prefer hitting Americans, whom they see as rich and easy to fool. They rationalize the crime by telling themselves there are no real victims: Maghas are avaricious and complicit...
breitbart.com/ ... 07:23:25
Repetitive motion injuries, which have long afflicted desktop and laptop computer users, are invading the mobile handheld world. There's even an informal name for the malady _ "BlackBerry Thumb" _ a catch-all phrase that describes a repetitive stress injury of the thumb as a result of overusing small gadget keypads...
Preternatural Patterns
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:32:24
Police discovered on Friday that a passenger aboard a motorcycle involved in an accident in the rough Mexican border city of Tijuana was in fact a corpse which the driver had been carrying through the city strapped to his back... corpse was wearing a helmet... had apparently been killed by strangulation and had wounds to the head and abdomen...
Sexual Equality??
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:25:44
Kansas cannot punish illegal underage sex more harshly if it involves homosexual conduct, the state's highest court ruled unanimously Friday... Supreme Court sided with convicted sex offender Matthew R. Limon. In 2000, he was sentenced to 17 years and two months in prison because, at 18, he performed a sex act on a 14-year-old boy. Had one of them been a girl, Limon could have faced only 15 months behind bars... struck language from the law that resulted in the different treatment... lower court had said the state could justify the harsher punishment as protecting children's traditional development, fighting disease or strengthening traditional values...
Transport Trouble
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:24:15
An apparent electrical fire in a subway storage room produced heavy smoke, forcing the evacuation of a busy Manhattan station... West Fourth Street... and disrupting rush hour service for thousands... heavy smoke condition at street level as well...
Theory of Justice
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:21:16
...defense lawyer in Saddam Hussein's mass murder trial has been found dead, his body dumped near a Baghdad mosque with two gunshots to the head... was defending ..the former head of Saddam's Revolutionary Court...
...four U.S. service members were killed in two attacks Thursday...
Disinformation Propaganda & Spin
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:35:43
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Karen Hughes, who has faced a rocky road since being named Washington's public relations chief, answered tough questions Friday about the invasion of Iraq, and wrongly stated that Saddam Hussein gassed to death "hundreds of thousands" of his people...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:18:57
President Hamid Karzai on Friday condemned the alleged desecration of the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters by U.S. troops, but he said mistakes happen in war and Afghans shouldn't let it mar their impression of the United States.
"Sometimes things happen in these sort of operations, during war. Soldiers make mistakes...
We are very grateful for the international community's assistance. ... Their soldiers have shed their blood in our country... [But] We in Afghanistan in accordance with our religion ... are very unhappy and condemn the burning of the two Taliban dead bodies. I hope such incidents will not occur again."
Opposing Tyranny
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:34:43
Former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui urged the United States and other democratic nations Friday to be on alert as China grows in economic strength and not to tolerate its aggression.
"Free nations must develop and strengthen their global and regional cooperation in both supporting the people of China in their struggle for freedom and democracy as well as taking measures to stop Chinese acts of oppression and aggression..."
Lee, credited with bringing democracy to Taiwan in the 1990s... has advocated for world recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign nation...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:06:53
BLUFFTON, S.C. ...suspect tapped the window of the car... with a gun and motioned the driver to get out... driver slammed the car door on the man's legs, threw the hot coffee at him and wrestled him to the ground... bad guy got away...
Prison Sucks
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:04:04
OKLAHOMA CITY - A man got a prison term longer than prosecutors and defense attorneys had agreed to - all because of Larry Bird. ...reached a plea agreement for a 30-year term for a man accused of shooting with an intent to kill and robbery. But [convict] wanted his prison term to match Bird's basketball jersey number, 33...
Oklahoma County District Judge Ray Elliott said Wednesday, "We accommodated his request and he was just as happy as he could be. I've never seen anything like this in 26 years in the courthouse. But, I know the DA is happy about it."
FRI 2005-OCT-21
Disturbing Family Patterns
ap.tbo.com/ ... 02:02:44
BEAUVAIS, France - A French couple who poisoned their five children and then tried to commit suicide in a desperate bid to escape.. debt burden that exceeded $360,000... was sentenced to prison terms by a court outside Paris on Thursday... stripped of parental rights over their four surviving children for the next decade... The couple had 11 bank accounts and over 20 credit cards and 15 loans... administered insulin injections... led to the death of their 11-year-old daughter...
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 02:01:04
MOLDOVANOVKA, Kyrgyzstan - Inmates took control of prison outside the Kyrgyz capital on Thursday and killed a lawmaker who arrived to look into prisoners' conditions... the legislator's bodyduard and an unidentified person were killed in a shootout... Ikmatulla Polotov, the head of the Kyrgyz prison administration, was severely beaten and gravely injured... guards had vacated the prison, leaving it in full control of the approximately 450 inmates...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 23:57:59
Army Sgt.
Arthur A. Mora Jr.
, 23, of Pico Rivera, Calif.
Army Spc.
Russell H. Nahvi
, 24, of Arlington, Texas
Army Spc.
Jose E. Rosario
, 20, of St. Croix, Virgin Islands
died in Balad, Iraq, on Oct. 19, when their HMMWV was struck by enemy indirect fire during patrol operations.
defenselink.mil/ ... 23:56:56
Army Spc.
Kendall K. Frederick
, 21, of Randallstown, Md., died near Tikrit, Iraq, on Oct. 19, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during convoy operations.
Reasons for Repeal
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:59:26
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - City narcotics officers regularly tampered with drug evidence and falsified records, yet supervisors failed to discipline anyone, a prosecutor said Thursday....
World Without Borders
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:58:54
Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor... Addressing cadets at West Point... on Thursday spoke out for clearer and more high-minded rules governing the detention and interrogation of prisoners in the war on terrorism... she cited
fundamental national values that the rules should reflect, citing "belief in protecting the basic humanity of all people, including our adversaries.
We will not stoop to the atrocities of some of our adversaries..."
O'Connor, 75, became the first woman on the court when she was appointed by President Reagan in 1981. She announced her retirement this year but is serving until her successor is confirmed...
THU 2005-OCT-20
Theft
newsday.com/ ... 21:15:34
A security employee at John F. Kennedy International Airport was charged Thursday with stealing $80,000 in cash from a checked suitcase headed for Pakistan... admitted stealing $60,000 and said he used some of it to pay off a gambling debt. Police recovered $18,000...
Sociopath Threats
aljazeera.com/ ... 21:06:44
Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
refused to rule using the military option against Syria and Iran
, repeating pervious claims that both countries are aiding the occupation resistance in Iraq, according to Boston News...
[It's the Barry Goldwater principle: Never be ignorant enough to say you won't use a weapon in your arsenal... even if it costs you the election...]
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:27:21
BALTIMORE - A fifth man has been arrested during an investigation into a possible terrorism threat to a highway tunnel this week... owns an eastern Boston market that was raided by federal authorities on Tuesday... taken in to custody on a handgun charge... Four other men were detained Tuesday on immigration charges and will be deported...
al.com/ ... 08:47:53
BOAZ, Ala. (AP) A Boaz High School freshman who wrote an essay proposing a "Killer Day" when everyone would be allowed to kill two people to relieve stress has been charged with making a terrorist threat. The 14-year-old girl, who also wrote that she wanted to kill President Bush...
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 08:40:15
In what security officials are calling a "very sensitive" case, Israeli soldiers say they arrested an Arab at a West Bank roadblock near Jerusalem with a mortar shell and launching mechanism. Although hundreds of mortars and Qassam rockets have been fired at Jewish communities in and near Gaza the past few years, a mortar launched from the West Bank parts of which are within firing range of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv would mark a significant escalation in Palestinian terrorism...
Violence
cbsnews.com/ ... 21:05:23
Sunni-led insurgents killed 26 people in Iraq on Wednesday, the opening day of Saddam Hussein's trial, including six Shiites who were lined up at a factory and gunned down in front of their fellow workers...
six civilians were killed when mortar rounds hit their homes in Samarra...
three election commission officials were shot and killed on the outskirts of the capital in Abu Ghraib, as they drove home after another round of counting ballots from the constitutional referendum...
A bomb also went off at a famous monument in a Baghdad square honoring the 8th-century founder of Baghdad to whom Saddam often compared himself... toppled the bust of Abu Jaafar Al-Mansour but caused no injuries, appeared to be a jab at the former dictator...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:58:18
MARTINEZ, Calif. - A teenage neighbor was arrested in the slaying of [the wife of] a prominent defense attorney.. and TV legal pundit Daniel Horowitz... newspaper reported Thursday that he clubbed her to death while looking for marijuana-growing equipment he had ordered... "He was really gothic, always wore a long, dark jacket... He'd hang out with a few kids, but he was pretty quiet, pretty much to himself." ...If convicted as a juvenile, he would be freed on his 25th birthday...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:55:21
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Guards at a juvenile detention center allegedly assigned a teenage sex offender [17] to bathe and change a severely mentally [15yo autistic] boy, who was then raped by the offender...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:51:53
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Two men whose bodies were stuffed in oil drums filled with concrete were identified as a former Interpol commander and his lawyer... were tortured and suffocated with a plastic bag... Portillo Madrid, his wife, his lawyer and another woman were kidnapped Tuesday afternoon in the Villas del Sol neighborhood, where Portillo Madrid owned a home, by at least five men carrying automatic weapons... wife.. was released unharmed late Tuesday but the whereabouts of the other woman remain unknown...
washingtonpost.com/ ... 08:58:14
A woman who was hearing voices tossed her three young children off a pier into San Francisco Bay... found one body, and the two other children were feared dead. ...booked on three counts of murder...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:01:07
SAN FRANCISCO - Rescuers searched Wednesday night for the bodies of three young children who were reportedly tossed into San Francisco Bay near a popular waterfront attraction... children were believed to be under age 10...
Transport Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:58:58
VACAVILLE, Calif. - A speeding car struck a parked car Wednesday, and both vehicles caromed onto a sidewalk near an elementary school, killing a young brother and sister and injuring 11 other people... driver.. held on two counts of murder in the deaths of the siblings, ages 7 and 9... injured included 10 school children and one adult... "He had to be going very fast. There was very major damage to the rear of a Camaro and it went a good 100 feet" before stopping..."
Nature is Dangerous
washingtonpost.com/ ... 21:14:27
The aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Pakistan's northern mountains is turning into
the toughest relief operation the world has ever known...
"We thought the tsunami was bad, this is worse..." confirmed death toll -- 50,000 in Pakistan and 1,300 in Indian Kashmir... could double... number of injured, now 74,000, could also rise substantially with large areas still not reached nearly two weeks after the earthquake struck and the first heavy snowfalls of the harsh Himalayan winter a month or less away... "We need the world's help to provide tents and kerosene heaters to protect people from the cold..."
ap.tbo.com/ ... 21:00:02
A magnitude-5.9 magnitude earthquake shook the Aegean port city of Izmir early Saturday morning, sending panicked residents into the streets in the Aegean port city. About 15 people were brought to hospitals with minor injuries or heart attacks brought on by the quake...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:56:58
A surfer received a bad gash Wednesday when a 14-foot shark bit her leg in the waters off northern California and pulled her underwater... got away after she hit the shark on its tail... bite that stretched from her thigh to her calf...
Science Marches Onnnnnn
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 02:01:12
Scientists are developing a cochlear implant which could allow deaf people to hear music...
Animal Culture
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:32:17
CHUBBUCK, Idaho - Skeeter the poodle can do one thing really well: play dead. That's because the 11-pound pooch has narcolepsy... "He has no personality right now," his owner.. said. "It is scary. I don't want him turning into a couch pillow." ...chasing a squirrel, going for a walk or sniffing a four-legged friend. All of a sudden, the dog would be out cold... being treated with ..Ritalin and an antidepressant...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 02:00:38
The rat was released on the uninhabited island of Motuhoropapa but refused to be captured at the project's end. The NZ team tells Nature magazine the animal finally turned up on the nearby Otata Island - a mighty swim of 400m....
Modern Culture
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 01:59:38
Energy workers in Russia have marked the onset of the country's severe winter - with a monument to the world's first radiator. The sculpture, of a cat lying on a windowsill over a heater, was unveiled at a power station in the city of Samara south-east of Moscow. Russians say the device was invented in St Petersburg 150 years ago...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 20:48:01
Army Spc.
Daniel D. Bartels
, 22, of Huron, S.D., died in Mosul, Iraq, on Oct. 19, of a non-combat related cause identified there on Oct. 18.
defenselink.mil/ ... 20:47:33
Marine Lance Cpl.
Norman W. Anderson III
, 21, of Parkton, Md., died Oct. 19 from a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Karabilah, Iraq.
defenselink.mil/ ... 20:47:13
Army Staff Sgt.
Tommy I. Folks Jr.
, 31, of Amarillo, Texas, died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Oct. 19, of injuries sustained on Oct. 18, in Iskandariyah, Iraq, when multiple improvised explosive devices detonated near his HMMWV during convoy operations. Folks was assigned to the Army National Guard.
defenselink.mil/ ... 01:51:36
Army Chief Warrant Officer
Paul J. Pillen
, 28, of Keystone, S.D., died in Salwa, Kuwait, on Oct. 17, of a non-combat related cause. Pillen was assigned to the Army National Guard.
defenselink.mil/ ... 01:51:12
Army Spc.
Lucas A. Frantz
, 22, of Tonganoxie, Kan., died in Mosul, Iraq, on Oct. 18, when he was hit by enemy fire while performing a combat mission.
defenselink.mil/ ... 01:50:20
Marine Lance Cpl.
Daniel Scott R. Bubb
, 19, of Grottoes, Va., died Oct. 17 from small-arms fire while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Rutbah, Iraq.
defenselink.mil/ ... 01:49:58
Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class
Fabricio Moreno
, 26, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was killed Oct. 14 in a single-vehicle accident in Manda Bay, Kenya. Moreno was assigned to Naval Mobile Construction, and deployed as part of a Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa construction team.
Carelessness Consequences
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:48:15
NEW YORK - block of four rare stamps - misprinted in 1918 with an upside-down airplane - sold Wednesday for $2.7 million.. highest price ever paid for U.S. stamps... depict a Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny," a World War I trainer that became an airmail plane. About 700 of the stamps were misprinted but inspectors caught all but 100 of the mistakes before they were sold... block sold Wednesday.. is the only one in existence that features the printing plate's number upside down and in the stamps' margin...
In 1918, the entire pane of 100 was bought by stamp collector William Robey at a Washington post office. It was later sold and separated into individual stamps and blocks.
In June, a single "Jenny" stamp sold at auction for $525,000, then the highest-ever price for a 20th century U.S. stamp...
US Military
drudgereport.com/ ... 21:29:10
In his first U.S. television interview, the former U.S. Army sergeant who deserted to North Korea speaks for the first time about the abuse and control inflicted on him by the communist dictatorship over his nearly 40 years there... "It was the worst mistake anyone ever made..." 60 MINUTES interview to be broadcast Sunday...
smh.com.au/ ... 08:59:42
US soldiers in Afghanistan burnt the bodies of dead Taliban and taunted their opponents about the corpses, in an act deeply offensive to Muslims and in breach of the Geneva conventions. An investigation by SBS's Dateline program, to be aired tonight, filmed the burning of the bodies. It also filmed a US Army psychological operations unit broadcasting a message boasting of the burnt corpses into a village believed to be harbouring Taliban...
abclocal.go.com/ ... 08:32:25
It was a plane crash back in 1942 that wasn't discovered until 1947. Now, hikers made a frozen discovery in connection with a World War II plane crash. Hikers found the frozen body of an airman while scaling Mount Mendel Glacier in the Kings Canyon National Park. Now, the military is working to find out who this airman is and whether he was ever reported missing...
defenselink.mil/ ... 01:50:49
This week, the Army and Air Force announced an increase in the number of reservists on active duty in support of the partial mobilization. The Navy and Marine Corps had a decrease, while the Coast Guard number remained the same. The net collective result is
2,460 more reservists mobilized than last week.
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:59:34
The U.S. military said Wednesday it was investigating a report carried on an Australian television network that claimed American soldiers in Afghanistan burned the bodies of two Taliban fighters and then used the action to taunt other Islamic militants...
Transport Future
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:51:19
JEFFERSON - CITY, Mo. ...In what would be the largest project of its kind, the Missouri Department of Transportation is finalizing a contract to monitor thousands of cell phones, using their movements to map real-time traffic conditions statewide on all 5,500 miles of major roads...
Criminally Stupid
examiner-enterprise.com/ ... 21:34:01
As a result of the arrest, Joseph Brian Tapscott, 38, faces charges of drug trafficking, possession of controlled dangerous substances within 1,000 feet of a school, possession of drug paraphernalia, eluding an officer, failure to stop for a roadblock, possession of a firearm, driving under suspension, speeding, failure to register vehicle, no right mirror, no insurance, improper tag display and improper decal...
Transport Trouble
newscientist.com/ ... 21:17:48
Dangerous levels of bacteria have been found in drinking water aboard 15% of planes at US airports...
Broadcast is Dead
today.reuters.com/ ... 21:09:56
Fox accounted for six of the 10 shows the Parents Television Council named on Wednesday as the most offensive this season... "We were alarmed to find that the three worst shows ... are being marketed as family-friendly when in fact these shows are none other than wolves in sheep's clothing..."
Reasons for Repeal
ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:52:29
GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands - Police arrested seven U.S. citizens and confiscated US$2 million worth of cocaine during a raid outside the Cayman Island's capital... and seized small quantities of marijuana, ecstasy tablets and 9.9 pounds (4.5 kilograms) of cocaine... cocaine has a street value of US$2 million...
Digital Threats
ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:50:32
Google Inc.'s rapidly rising profits soared to new heights in the third quarter as its Internet-leading search engine churned out a
sevenfold earnings increase
that blew past analyst expectations...
Rebuilding
ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:50:01
An Iraqi Airways plane landed in Cairo on Thursday, making the first regular flight between Iraq and Egypt in 15 years... 75 passengers... took off from Baghdad nine hours late because of bad weather...
Business Culture
krnv.com/ ... 09:02:43
State Supreme Court justices questioned Wednesday whether high school cheerleaders trying to flag down motorists for a car wash might run afoul of a broadly written ordinance targeting pushy Las Vegas-area prostitutes... Under the ordinance, police can arrest someone who "repeatedly beckons to, stops, attempts to stop or engage persons passing by in conversation, or repeatedly stops or attempts to stop motor vehicle operators by hailing, waiving of arms or other bodily gestures..."
WW2 - still with us
jpost.com/ ... 08:55:29
...Through a combination of cajoling, bribes, threats, and sometimes desperate stratagems... Raoul Gustav Wallenberg, a 32-year-old Swedish businessman... managed to save some 100,000 Jews from the clutches of Hitler's army. The Russians, who seized Budapest from the Germans on January 13, 1945, arrested Wallenberg four days later for reasons unknown to this day... From the date of his arrest to the present, Wallenberg's fate has remained a mystery, kept alive over the years by testimonies from former prisoners about rumors or sightings of Wallenberg in the Russian Gulag...
Alcohol Was Involved
breitbart.com/ ... 08:51:36
Almost one in three people bitten by deadly saltwater crocodiles in Australia had been drinking alcohol before the animal attacked... the research found that crocodiles were opportunistic predators and that when people took risks while in their habitat, they sometimes paid the ultimate price...
Digital Culture
centredaily.com/ ... 08:45:07
CHICAGO -- Visitors to the
1893 World's Fair
were awed by delicate feather armbands worn for decoration in Paraguay, complex necklaces beaded by the Zulu people of South Africa and fantastical masks used in exorcism ceremonies in Sri Lanka.
Tens of thousands of cultural objects
were collected for the fair, formally called the World's Columbian Exposition. But due to space constraints, it's been almost a century since the public has seen most of them. Instead, the objects reside in storage rooms at
Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History
. Now a project getting under way at the museum aims to
photograph up to 30,000 of these artifacts for the development of a Web site
that will allow the public virtual access to the amazing collection...
theregister.co.uk/ ... 08:43:15
Encouraging signs from the Wikipedia project, where co-founder and überpedian Jimmy Wales has acknowledged there are real quality problems with the online work. Criticism of the project from within the inner sanctum has been very rare so far, although fellow co-founder Larry Sanger, who is no longer associated with the project, pleaded with the management to improve its content by befriending, and not alienating, established sources of expertise. (i.e., people who know what they're talking about.)... if you thought Apple, Amiga, Mozilla or OS/2 fans were er, ... passionate, you haven't met a wiki-fiddler. For them, it's a religious crusade...
Human Right
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 08:39:00
Officials at a New York state school may have violated the constitutional free-speech rights of a kindergarten student who included an image of Jesus in his homework assignment, according to an appeals court decision...
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 08:38:32
He says he wants to live. But his wife, caregivers and South Carolina state officials are so focused on carrying out a decade-old, out-of-state living will that 79-year-old Jimmy Chambers can't get a word in edgewise. That's the account of 10 of Chambers's children and their spouses who signed sworn affidavits in an attempt to block their mother from removing his life-sustaining ventilator and gastric feeding tube, which would cause his death...
Justice?
ap.tbo.com/ ... 20:48:36
The trial of Saddam Hussein took startling turns Thursday when prosecutors said the first witness would be a bedridden cancer patient who helped run Iraq's feared intelligence agency. In the first setback, a lawyer for one of the dictator's co-defendants was kidnapped....
baptiststandard.com/ ... 08:41:22
Differences in fertility rates account for 70 percent of the decline of mainline Protestant church membership from 1900 to 1975 and the simultaneous rise in conservative church membership...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:52:33
A piece of key evidence in the trial against Saddam Hussein is a video clip allegedly shot by his own photographer: Prosecutors say it shows Saddam interrogating four residents of the town of Dujail after a purported attempt on his life. Later, 148 people were killed in Dujail, allegedly in retaliation. Other pending cases against Saddam involve more notorious atrocities with far more deaths... prosecutors say they brought the Dujail case against Saddam first, because they had more solid, easy-to-gather evidence...
WED 2005-OCT-19
Sociopath Threats
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:22:26
Police have arrested one person... in the Netherlands... who may have been connected to a threat to blow up vehicles full of explosives in one of the busy tunnels underneath Baltimore's harbor... Shortly before the tunnels were reopened, authorities made about a half-dozen raids in the Baltimore area... Four people were arrested on immigration charges at businesses with Middle Eastern connections...
nytimes.com/ ... 00:20:31
An uncorroborated tip about a terrorist plot to blow up a vehicle loaded with explosives prompted the authorities to shut down a busy tunnel under the Baltimore harbor on Tuesday and partly close another...
Transport Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:31:23
TEXAS CITY, Texas - A car slammed head-on Tuesday morning into a sign support along a freeway south of Houston and burst into flames. Killed were... 39-year-old man; boys ages 12, 10 and 6; and a 7-year-old girl... apparently members of the same family... driving to school....
chron.com/ ... 00:16:51
The
[illegal immigrant] driver of the bus
that erupted into flames last month, killing 23 Bellaire nursing home residents as they were transported out of Hurricane Rita's path, now faces criminal charges for each of the passengers' deaths... had a Mexican commercial driver's license which is valid on U.S. roads under the North American Free Trade Agreement and recognized in Texas... investigators found no evidence that Robles offered any assistance to passengers as they and staff members tried to flee the burning vehicle... We don't understand how he could be charged and not the bus company," said [Brother]... "He was simply an employee. What is his crime? To help people?.."
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:35:45
A roadside bomb hit a U.S. Army patrol south of Baghdad, killing one soldier and wounding two others... about 11 p.m. Tuesday near Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:31:55
A body discovered in a Pennsylvania landfill was identified as the mother of a 4-year-old girl found wandering the streets barefoot last month....
newpaper.asia1.com.sg/ ... 00:11:45
HER boyfriend had just been shot dead. And now, the alleged killer was after her. Caught in the middle of nowhere in the Australian outback with her hands bound and a sack over her head, all Ms Joanne Lees could do was curl up 'like a rabbit' and hide under a bush. The terrified woman stayed motionless for five hours, before she was decided it was safe enough to look for help. She was eventually rescued by a passing trucker. The details of one of Australia's most mysterious murders came to light yesterday in a Darwin court as prosecutors outlined their case against the prime suspect...
Lasting Contributions
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:42:42
MOSCOW - Alexander Yakovlev, a key architect of former President Mikhail Gorbachev's political reforms of perestroika and glasnost that shook the last years of the Soviet Union, died Tuesday, according to a foundation he headed. He was 81... known as the "godfather of glasnost..." means "restructuring..."
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:34:39
Marine Lance Cpl.
Chad R. Hildebrandt
, 22, of Springer, N.M., died Oct. 17 from small-arms fire while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Rutbah, Iraq.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:34:20
Marine Lance Cpl.
Christopher M. Poston
, 20, of Glendale, Ariz., died Oct. 17 from a non-hostile vehicle accident in Hit, Iraq.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:33:56
Army Air Forces 2nd Lt.
Augustus J. Allen
, of Myrtle Springs, Texas
Army Staff Sgt.
James D. Cartwright
, of Los Angeles, Calif.
Army Cpl.
Paul R. Stubbs
, of Haverhill, Mass.
On June 8, 1941, Allen, Cartwright and Stubbs departed France Field, Panama in an O-47A aircraft, en route to Rio Hato, Panama. When the aircraft failed to arrive at its destination, a search was initiated by both air and ground forces, but with negative results. In April 1999, a Panamanian citizen reported to Panamanian Civil Aeronautics (PCA) he had discovered aircraft wreckage while hunting in the mountains of Panama Province, Republic of Panama....
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:32:39
Army Pfc.
Joseph Cruz
, 22, of Whittier, Calif., died in Bagram, Afghanistan, on Oct. 16, of non-combat related injuries sustained in an accident at Organ-E, Afghanistan, on Oct. 15.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:32:16
Marine Sgt.
Mark P. Adams
, 24, of Morrisville, N.C., died Oct. 15 from an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Saqlawiyah, Iraq.
Science Marches Onnnnnn
theaustralian.news.com.au/ ... 00:26:58
Stem cells have been harvested from embryos for the first time without killing or hurting them...
Animal Culture
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:54:49
...Fluffy the cat took up to 10 minutes to die after 34-year-old [mother] put the animal in the machine at her home in Hellesdon... Fluffy was gripping to the washer's metal drum so tightly its claws broke off as it spun round. Eventually the cat drowned... [Woman] was jailed for six weeks... had put the cat in the washing machine because it had scratched her... allegedly bragged: "I put it on boil wash as well..."
aftenposten.no/ ... 08:53:14
...had erected a statue of a moose in their garden, but a pair of the real thing apparently didn't approve... It remains unclear whether the moose felt threatened by the statue, or whether they were simply irritable, since it's the middle of the annual moose hunting season in Norway...
timesonline.co.uk/ ... 08:49:40
10ft boa constrictor slithering from their lavatory bowls... one brave resident trapped the giant reptile during a night-time confrontation in his bathroom... managed to coax the snake.. into a bin, ending a two-month reign of terror at the flats in West Didsbury, Manchester... a former resident.. forced out in August for rent arrears.. had owned a 12-year-old snake... "It would have no problem travelling up and down the waste pipe and has probably been eating rats from the sewer...
washingtonpost.com/ ... 00:27:36
A young gorilla in a Congo sanctuary is smashing palm nuts between two rocks to extract oil...
Digital Threats
news.com.com/ ... 09:16:00
When last we wrote about the Electronic Frontier Foundation's attempts to decipher the hidden watermarks in color laser printers, the group had identified that some miniscule yellow tracking dots appeared under blue light. Now the intrepid civil liberties group says it has cracked the tracking codes used in Xerox printers. (Other codes appear in printouts from machines by manufacturers such as Canon, Epson, HP, and Lexmark.) While no law appears to require the manufacturers to embed the
hidden dots -- which encode the printer's serial number and time and date information
-- they nevertheless do it voluntarily as a way to help the Secret Service reduce counterfeiting... the hidden dots may
erode Americans' right to anonymity
by making it more difficult to print out political or religious pamphlets anonymously...
Justice?
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:00:42
Saddam Hussein's trial has begun in Baghdad... He refused to confirm his identity... pleaded not guilty to charges of ordering the killing of 143 Shia men in 1982... Later, as the trial adjourned, he was involved in what appeared to be a scuffle with the guards who wanted to grab his arms to escort his out. But this appeared to be for the benefit of the media...
Sex can be Dangerous
timesonline.co.uk/ ... 08:56:09
Britain - Children
[so-called]
under 16 would be automatically reported to the police if they seek advice on contraception, pregnancy or abortion, under government proposals. Family planning and health campaigners said yesterday that the plans, which would do away with a childs right to confidential sexual health advice, would be disastrous because they would deter many from seeking much-needed help...
Theory of Education
torontosun.com/ ... 08:46:04
...high school teacher was found guilty of professional misconduct yesterday for kissing her Grade 10 student, asking him to make love to her and showering him with gifts, e-mails, phone calls and visits to his home...
Whoops!
signonsandiego.com/ ... 08:44:44
A Mexican man who admitted to fabricating a story this year that he had smuggled Chinese and Iraqis who planned to detonate a nuclear bomb in Boston was arrested Saturday in Mexicali... faces up to eight years in federal prison... appeared to be a "disgruntled employee" of a smuggling gang...
Transport Trouble
macon.com/ ... 08:42:40
It took 24 hours and detours to Birmingham, Ala., Atlanta and Macon before 72-year-old [and 84- and 86-year-old passengers] found her way back home to Upson County after a trip to church. "We tried to find our way home and the more we tried the farther we went.. I wasn't scared. We just locked the car doors and just rolled...
Theory of Medicine
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:30:24
WICHITA, Kan. - The owners of a home for the mentally ill required residents to work in the nude and perform sex acts on each other, a former resident testified Tuesday... said residents worked for years on a "clothing optional" farm in Butler County to pay off expenses from a trip to Florida... "It never ended... We worked year after year and were reminded about that debt..."
Nature is Dangerous
forbes.com/ ... 09:01:29
Hurricane Wilma, which swelled into an 'extremely dangerous' Category 5 storm early today, is the strongest hurricane ever recorded... 882 millibars, was 'the lowest pressure on record for a hurricane in the Atlantic basin,'... creeping west-northwest toward Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, but it is expected to change course within 24 hours...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:39:28
Two strong aftershocks from South Asia's deadly earthquake shook the devastated region on Wednesday, unleashing landslides and setting off another wave of panic... A new tally from regional officials pushed the death toll to 79,000 [from the] Oct. 8 disaster... estimated half-million survivors, many of them in Pakistan's portion of Kashmir, have yet to receive any help... Thousands need urgent medical care...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:37:16
Hospital officials say a January ice storm that kept thousands in the dark and without heat for days might have led to a baby boom in eastern Indiana...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:28:23
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. - A 6-year-old boy was severely burned when he tripped and fell into a hot spring while walking off a trail with his father... second-degree burns to his legs and one arm...
Infrastructure Failure
boston.com/ ... 00:26:04
TAUNTON -- Authorities yesterday evacuated about 2,000 people living downstream from a century-old timber dam that began buckling under pressure from a rain-swollen river and threatening this community with a potential 6-foot flood surge...
World Without Borders
breitbart.com/ ... 00:24:42
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff... told a Senate hearing... "
Our goal at DHS is to
completely eliminate the 'catch and release' enforcement problem, and
return every single illegal entrant, no exceptions.
It should be possible to achieve significant and measurable progress to this end in less than a year..."
Peace 3000
telegraph.co.uk/ ... 00:23:08
Widespread fears about a world in a perpetual state of war are unfounded
, a study says today. It emphasises that the number of conflicts between nations, civil wars, battle deaths, coups and genocides has been falling steeply for more than a decade. While the authors note that bloody wars continue in Iraq, Afghanistan and Congo, they argue that there are substantial grounds for optimism...
Supernatural Threats
msnbc.msn.com/ ... 00:20:01
A leading proponent of "intelligent design" acknowledged Tuesday in a trial over the concept's place in public schools that major scientific organizations and even his own colleagues oppose his ideas... claimed that teaching intelligent design would clear up what he said were students' misconceptions
that evolution is fact and not a theory...
[siiigh...]
Worth Checking Into
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:08:34
GREENWICH, Conn. - Historian Alven M. Josephy Jr. who wrote or edited more than a dozen books about the struggles of American Indian tribes, died Sunday at his home, his daughter said. He was 90...
MON 2005-OCT-17
Violence
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:00:50
Helicopters and warplanes bombed two villages near Ramadi in western Iraq on Sunday, killing about 70 people, the US military says. It said all the dead were militants, although eyewitnesses are quoted saying that many were civilians. One of the air strikes hit the same spot where five US soldiers had died on Saturday in a roadside bombing. The US statement said a group of insurgents was about to place another bomb, although local people deny this...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:55:20
Israel suspended contacts with the Palestinian Authority on Monday and slapped tough travel restrictions on the West Bank after Palestinian gunmen killed three young Israelis and wounded five in two drive-by shootings near Jewish settlements...
Nature is Dangerous
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:44:09
Pakistani officials predicted Sunday that many more thousands of dead would be found in earthquake-ravaged Kashmir... latest estimate would raise the death toll from the magnitude-7.6 quake in the mountains of northern Pakistan and India to
at least 54,000
... About a fifth of the villages in the quake zone remained cut off eight days after the tremor turned villages scattered across lush mountainsides into death traps, and the bad weather over Kashmir halted aid flights by helicopters... hundreds of aftershocks... "Some people fear that the death toll could be 100,000 and they may be right..."
Transport Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:46:30
OSSEO, Wis. ..bus carrying high school students home from a band competition... five dead, including the band director and his 11-year-old granddaughter... Twenty-nine others were injured, some seriously... semi had gone off the shoulder of Interstate 94 and jackknifed, and was blocking the westbound lane... bus slammed into the overturned truck, but it didn't roll or catch fire... first of four buses carrying about 200 students and 40 adult chaperones,..
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:37:44
A weekend plane crash near Seattle killed two students from a special school for teenagers interested in careers in the aviation industry... A third person also died in the crash... Witnesses said the plane took off quickly after an apparent attempted landing, hit trees and crashed in flames.
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 10:59:01
Army Sgt.
Brian R. Conner
, 36, of Baltimore, Md.
Army Spc.
Samuel M. Boswell
, 20, of Elkridge, Md.
Army Spc.
Bernard L. Ceo
, 23, of Baltimore, Md.
died in Al Taji, Iraq, on Oct. 14, when they were conducting convoy operations and an 18-wheel tractor trailer accidentally struck the rear of their HMWWV, starting a fire and causing ammunition to detonate. The soldiers were assigned to the Army National Guard.
Animal Culture
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:54:33
WASHINGTON... National Zoo... 2-year-old giraffe... named Jafari, was being treated for complications from skin cancer, but Sunday morning it appeared disoriented and was walking in circles... [staff] decided to put the giraffe down... was operated on Oct. 5 to treat a cancerous, grapefruit-sized tumor on the top of his head. However, the disease had spread to bone and not all the tumor could be removed. The National Zoo now has only one giraffe, Randall, a 3-year-old male.
Fun can be Dangerous
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:37:39
A Ghanaian band has defended a hit song and video that poke fun at a rural town, portraying locals as backward. Angry elders in the small western Ghanaian town of Tuobodom campaigned to get the song banned, saying it was making all their lives a misery. But controversy over the song, which showed Tuobodom residents mesmerised by a tarred road, made it a bigger hit...
Prison Sucks
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:58:07
The Supreme Court, in an abortion case of relatively narrow scope, cleared the way Monday for a Missouri prison inmate to terminate her pregnancy...
People Die
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:57:41
Charles Rocket, a comedian and actor who appeared on "Saturday Night Live" and had roles in a variety of movies and television series, committed suicide... 56... real name ..Charles Claverie... found dead in a field near his home in Canterbury on Oct 7. His throat had been cut... gained notoriety when he was fired from SNL for swearing on the air... movie credits included "Earth Girls are Easy," "Dumb and Dumber" and "Dances With Wolves..."
Feeding Ourselves
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:52:08
SEMINOLE, Fla. - Just a few decades ago, much of Pinellas County was covered in orange groves. As the years passed, developers flattened the trees until Orange Blossom Groves was the only commercial grove left in the state's most densely populated county. Now, Orange Blossom Groves has closed and the acreage is for sale, a victim of economics and Mother Nature. In Pinellas, the era of free juice and Yankee tourists loading cars with the bright orange fruit has come to an end..."Whoever gets it is going to build it as dense as they can get the permit for. ... It's not going to stay a grove, I'm pretty sure of that."
Transport Trouble
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:48:12
U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy attempted to rescue six men who had become trapped by high tide on a jetty off Hyannisport on Sunday. The Massachusetts Democrat eventually left the rescue to Hyannis firefighters...
[understandably, old Ed is no young Jack...]
Industrial Incident
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:38:45
CLEVELAND - A faulty pump at a steel plant spilled about 500 gallons of oil into the Cuyahoga River just south of downtown Sunday... Floats were used to contain the oil on the water... Vacuum trucks started removing the oil about four hours after workers discovered the leak...
The Cuyahoga may be best known as the river that caught fire when an oil slick burned in 1969. Cleanup efforts have been under way since then...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:36:36
An explosion set fire to a Houston refinery Sunday as workers tried to restart gasoline-producing equipment that had been shut down since Hurricane Rita. One contract worker suffered minor burns to his hands and arms...
Extraterrestrial Tyranny
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:35:53
A space capsule carrying two Chinese astronauts landed by parachute in the country's northern grasslands before dawn Monday following a five-day mission meant to affirm China's status as an emerging technological power...
Digital Threats
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:35:17
WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. - A man described as one of the nation's leading senders of spam says an FBI raid on his home office has halted his e-mail operation... "They didn't shut us down. They took all our equipment, which had the effect of shutting us down..."
A federal law that took effect last year bans use of misleading subject lines and the sending of commercial e-mail messages that appear to be from friends. It also bans use of multiple e-mail addresses or domain names to hide senders' identities.
SUN 2005-OCT-16
Transport Trouble
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:51:41
OSSEO, Wis. - A bus carrying a high school band collided with a truck early Sunday, killing several students... from Chippewa Falls High School... on their way back from a competition at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater on Interstate 94 when a semi jackknifed in front of them...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 09:53:02
Army Spc.
Scott J. Mullen
, 22, of Tucson, Ariz., died in Makati City, The Republic of the Philippines, on Oct. 14, of injuries sustained there from a non-combat related accident on Oct. 13.
Transport
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:45:32
POINT REYES, Calif. (AP) - A husband-and-wife team reached the Pacific Ocean on Saturday after a 4,900-mile.. nearly eight month.. cross-country hike, becoming the first to backpack the transcontinental American Discovery Trail in one continuous trek... deep snow in the East, a quicksand scare in Utah, close lightning strikes in the Midwest and blinding desert sandstorms in the West while averaging 22 miles a day and taking only four days off...
The transcontinental trail starts in Delaware, meandering through Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, St. Louis and other cities, 14 national parks and 16 national forests before hitting the Pacific at Point Reyes. The trail officially opened in 2000, 11 years after it was proposed by hiking enthusiasts as the first coast-to-coast footpath.
Prison Sucks
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:50:17
A fire apparently set by rebellious inmates swept through a prison southeast of Buenos Aires on Sunday, killing at least 17 inmates...
Rebuilding
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:47:41
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Sunni Arabs voted in surprisingly high numbers on Iraq's new constitution Saturday, many of them hoping to defeat it in an intense competition with Shiites and Kurds over the shape of the nation's young democracy... With little violence, turnout was more than 66 percent in the three most crucial provinces...
Digital Threats
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:54:55
Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam expressed concern Saturday about a free mapping program from Google Inc., warning it could help terrorists by providing satellite photos of potential targets....
SAT 2005-OCT-15
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:50:04
TEHRAN, Iran - Two bombs hit a shopping center Saturday in Ahvaz, near Iran's southwestern border with Iraq, killing two people and wounding at least 50... Shops also were damaged... in central Ahvaz, the capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province....
post-gazette.com/ ... 06:23:20
FORD CITY, Pa. -- An Armstrong County teenager's routine check of a tree stand near his home in preparation for hunting season undoubtedly saved the lives of a pregnant woman and her unborn son after she was attacked by another woman who was prepared to cut the child from the victim's womb... Adam Silvis, 17, riding an all-terrain vehicle, happened upon the spot... "With [victim's] blood loss in the morning and late afternoon, I don't think there's any question she would have died [without Adam Silvis' help]..."
Sociopath Threats
latimes.com/ ... 05:56:31
Dutch police today arrested a known teen-age extremist and six other suspects accused of plotting to assassinate Dutch politicians and attack the headquarters of the country's intelligence service...
Norman Was Blessed
online.wsj.com/ ... 05:49:14
To that unsettling set of facts, blogs and local Oklahoma TV stations added several apparent inaccuracies, including: that Mr. Hinrichs was a Muslim and visited the mosque frequently; that he tried to enter the stadium twice but was rebuffed; that he had a one-way airplane ticket to Algeria; that there were nails in the bomb and that Islamic extremist literature was found in his apartment. None of these claims are true: Mr. Hinrichs's family, university officials and the Federal Bureau of Investigation say Mr. Hinrichs suffered from depression, and the explosion was an isolated event...
Nature is Dangerous
apnews.myway.com/ ... 05:49:46
NEW YORK (AP) - The bird flu virus that infected a Vietnamese girl was resistant to the main drug that's being stockpiled in case of a pandemic, a sign that it's important to keep a second drug on hand as well, a researcher said Friday. He said the finding was no reason to panic...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 05:26:37
Killer Quake a Grim Reminder to Pakistanis of Last Century's Quetta Disaster... Mohammed said he realized immediately when he heard the quake had registered a magnitude-7.6 that this time around it could be worse than the quake he survived as a 10-year-old in 1935, the year the Richter scale was developed. That quake was magnitude-7.5. "I knew that the killer has again come back..." The 1935 earthquake flattened Quetta, killing an estimated 26,000 people in the city alone, more than half its population. Almost every building in town was destroyed or damaged beyond repair...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 05:23:18
The [official] death toll from the earthquake in Pakistan rose Saturday to 38,000... 62,000.. injured...More than 1,350 other people died in the quake in neighboring India...
Dance Naked
icsouthlondon.icnetwork.co.uk/ ... 06:19:07
The craze for letting it all hang out on the dancefloor is pulling in punters to South Central in Kennington Lane. Clubbers have to wear shoes to protect their feet in case of smashed glass but the only pants to be seen in the whole place belong to the bar staff. Even the DJ is naked behind his decks, though fully-clothed bouncers are stationed outside to stop clothed clubbers stumbling in unawares...
Animal Culture
local6.com/ ... 06:18:21
A cat in Dobson, N.C., is believed to be the only cat in the world with two tongues... named Five Toes, was born with two tongues and five toes on each paw...
news.independent.co.uk/ ... 05:43:18
Researchers have found that chimps make different calls when given different kinds of food. High grunts denote a highly prized treat, such as bread, and low grunts food of low value, such as apples. Other chimps seem to know exactly what the calls mean...
[Where teen-age grunt-speak originally evolved...]
ap.tbo.com/ ... 05:34:51
OWOSSO, Mich. ...A five-pointer [buck deer] crashed through the front door of his plumbing store Thursday evening... knocked a few things off some shelves and broke a radio before it ran out a garage door... [Owner] returned home last week from an Alaskan hunting trip, is a trophy hunter whose front office is filled with mounted animals...
Digital Threats
redherring.com/ ... 13:00:01
Hewlett-Packard is voluntarily
recalling about 135,000 battery packs worldwide for HP and Compaq notebook computers, including 85,000 in the United States...
An internal short in the lithium ion rechargeable battery packs can cause the battery cells to overheat and either melt or char the plastic case on the laptop... can also cause a burn or fire hazard... The battery packs have bar code labels starting with the initials GC, IA, L0, or L1. They were manufactured in China and Taiwan. The batteries came inside a variety of HP and Compaq models, including the HP Pavilion, Compaq Presario, and Compaq Evo lines. The notebooks were sold at computer and electronic stores, as well as online, from March 2004 through May 2005 for $1,000 to $3,000...
WW2 - still with us
ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:49:11
A Nazi war criminal known as "Dr. Death" for sadistic experiments that killed hundreds of prisoners during World War II has been tracked down to Spain, an Israeli newspaper's Web site said Saturday. Spanish police said they had not yet found the man.
Transport Trouble
ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:40:41
TEXARKANA, Ark... train car struck a liquid propane gas tank on Saturday morning, causing a massive explosion and spreading poisonous chemicals through the south side of this city about a quarter mile from the Texas border.... reported no injuries... several structures were destroyed by the fire. One of the trains cars was carrying vinyl acetate, which if inhaled can irritate the eyes, nose and throat. Police evacuated hundreds of homes...
VINYL ACETATE... a flammable, clear liquid used mostly to make other industrial chemicals. It enhances the plastic used to package food, and also can be found in glue, paint, paper and textiles
.
Rebuilding
ap.tbo.com/ ... 12:38:56
A roadside bomb killed three Iraqi soldiers in northeast Iraq on Saturday, and seven people were wounded... attacks by insurgents near five of Baghdad's 1,200 polling stations...
Insurgents also attacked a U.S. military patrol in central Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, and fired six mortar rounds at a sports hall being used as a polling center... No injuries were immediately reported....
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 06:07:20
The people of Iraq are due to begin voting on a new constitution...
Reasons for Repeal
breitbart.com/ ... 06:17:16
Melissa Etheridge says she smoked medicinal marijuana to help with the side effects of chemotherapy during her treatment for breast cancer. The 44-year-old singer, who was diagnosed over a year ago, is now cancer-free... "Instead of taking five or six of the prescriptions, I decided to go a natural route and smoke marijuana..." When asked how her doctors reacted, Etheridge says, "Every single one was, `Oh, yeah. That's the best help for the effects of chemotherapy.'..."
[Ask yourself: Why is this news?]
medpagetoday.com/ ... 06:06:52
A synthetic cannabinoid -- similar to the compounds found in
marijuana
, but substantially stronger --
causes the growth of new neurons
and reduces anxiety and depression... And researchers.. found evidence that the brain contains so-called CB2 cannabinoid... Most so-called drugs of abuse -- such as alcohol or cocaine -- inhibit the growth of new neurons... "
Only marijuana promotes neurogenesis
..."
Disinformation Propaganda & Spin
alertnet.org/ ... 06:03:46
U.S. intelligence officials who released a letter purporting to be from an al Qaeda leader to Iraq insurgency leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi this week said on Friday they could not account for a passage that has raised doubts about the document's authenticity. The July 9 dated letter, which U.S. officials say was written by al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri, appears near its close to urge the Iraq insurgent leader to send greetings to himself if visiting the Iraqi city of Falluja...
Transport
timesonline.co.uk/ ... 05:44:50
RYANAIR was accused last night of ignoring industry practice by ordering nine blind and partially sighted passengers off a plane shortly before take-off. Safety regulators dismissed the budget airlines claim that it was only following safety rules...
World Without Borders
news.telegraph.co.uk/ ... 05:42:21
To the anger of Servicemen whose comrades fell in the Falklands, Argentinians are putting Hispanic names to places on the islands on a new internet website. Three-dimensional satellite maps on Google Earth, which can be opened by anyone who downloads free software, allow people to insert their own place names... Sukey Cameron, the islands' representative in Britain, said yesterday: "The Argentinians like to try every trick in the book to make out the islands are theirs. It is a bit disappointing that an international organisation like Google has allowed this to happen. It seems to be part of the relentless push by the Argentinians to claim our sovereignty... "
History - still with us
themoscowtimes.com/ ... 05:38:57
ATHENS -- Deep under a quiet valley in southern Greece, archaeologists are struggling to unravel a 1,400-year-old tragedy that wiped out a rural Byzantine community. Sometime in the late 6th century, a group of at least 33 young men, women, and children sought sanctuary from an unknown terror in a sprawling subterranean network of caves in the eastern Peloponnese. Carrying supplies of food and water, oil-lamps, a large Christian cross and their small savings, the refugees apparently hunkered down to wait out the threat. But experts believe the sanctuary became a tomb once supplies ran out. "In the end, they knew there was no hope of escape and just lay down to die in the pitch black," archaeologist Dimitris Hatzilazarou said... Digs in late 2004 and early 2005 revealed human remains -- many huddled in what look like small family clusters -- 113 fired clay pots, a large bronze processional cross inscribed with the Lord's Prayer in Greek, cheap jewelry and over 200 coins. Some of the pots had been wedged among the cave's impressive stalagmites, an indication the refugees tried to gather water dripping from the roof...
Disturbing Family Patterns
ap.tbo.com/ ... 05:32:05
WEST JORDAN, Utah - A prominent polygamist and his wife have surrendered their parental rights to two teenage daughters whose abuse allegations triggered a lengthy custody battle with the state... [father] is believed to have 14 wives with more than 100 children. He is under a no-contact order and cannot see any of his children with [these girls' mother]... The two teenage girls had called police, saying their father threatened them with violence after they got their ears pierced. [Mother] also had been accused of neglecting her children by not providing enough supervision or a clean home...
[Sounds to me like a couple of spoiled, vindictive teenagers using the System to abuse their parents, who happen to have some socially unaccepted aspects of their lifestyle which the dishonorable brats can use to their parents' disadvantage... but I may only think that because this sounds just like brats I've known...]
Prison Sucks
ap.tbo.com/ ... 05:20:11
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The U.S. Supreme Court late Friday temporarily blocked a federal judge's ruling that ordered Missouri prison officials to drive a pregnant inmate to a clinic on Saturday for an abortion. Justice Clarence Thomas, acting alone, granted the temporary stay pending a further decision by himself or the full court. Missouri state law forbids spending tax dollars to facilitate an abortion. However, U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple ruled Thursday that the prison system was blocking the woman from exercising her right to an abortion and ordered that the woman be taken to the clinic Saturday. An appeals court on Friday refused to stay the ruling...
FRI 2005-OCT-14
Transport Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:00:05
ROOTSTOWN, Ohio - Two small airplanes collided Friday over northeast Ohio and crashed in a field, killing four men...
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:05:59
An explosion outside a popular nightclub in Trinidad's capital wounded at least 10 people on Friday...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:03:28
Iraqis were in the dark after insurgents sabotaged power lines across Baghdad... between the northern towns of Kirkuk and Beiji leading to the Baghdad region... lights went out soon after sundown, when Muslims break their daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan, at around 6 p.m. Power was still off more than two hours later, ahead of the start of the 10 p.m. curfew...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:01:41
An explosion outside a popular nightclub in Trinidad's capital wounded at least six people on Friday...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:07:11
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A blast destroyed eight fuel tankers Friday outside the U.S.-led coalition's main base in southern Afghanistan. Two drivers were injured...
Lasting Contributions
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:57:50
Edmund N. Bacon, a renowned city planner whose vision transformed postwar Philadelphia and whose influence continued to shape the look and feel of the nation's fifth-largest city, died Friday. He was 95. ...children include actor Kevin Bacon... "He told me when he was a little boy, he went to the top of City Hall and looking out on the city, he understood the plan William Penn laid out," said Alexander Garvin, a Yale University professor and member of New York City's planning board. "From that point on, his plan was very clear how the city should progress..." a 1964 issue of Time magazine.. called Philadelphia's redevelopment "the most thoroughly rounded, skillfully coordinated of all big city programs in the U.S." His 1967 book "Design of Cities" remains one of the key texts for architecture students... maintained his influence long after his retirement... At 90, he lashed out at city leaders for banning skateboarders...
"...city planning is about movement through space, an architectural sequence of sensors and stimuli, up and down, light and dark, color and rhythm..."
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:36:29
Army Spc.
Robert W. Tucker
, 20, of Hilham, Tenn., died in Ad Dujayl, Iraq, on Oct. 13, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations. Tucker was assigned to the Army National Guard.
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:36:00
Army Sgt.
Donald D. Furman
, 30, of Burton, S.C.
Army Sgt.
Lorenzo Ponce Ruiz
, 26, of El Paso, Texas...
died in Balad, Iraq, on Oct. 12, when their military vehicle collided with a civilian vehicle and overturned.
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:35:18
Marine Master Sgt.
Kenneth E. Hunt Jr.
, 40, of Tucson, Ariz., died Oct. 12 at Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas, from wounds received July 24 when the vehicle he was riding in struck an anti-tank mine while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Taqaddum, Iraq.
Animal Culture
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:10:46
Sarah Sevick... 19, has filed an Americans With Disabilities Act complaint against her school because it won't let her keep [her ferret] in her dormitory. She said she needs the ferret, named Lilly... to calm her during panic attacks...
Play Nice
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:06:42
The Decline of American Civilization, or at Least Its Manners
Opposing Tyranny
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:05:34
A U.S.-based Chinese dissident has been sentenced to life in prison on terrorism and kidnapping charges by a court in central China... Peng Ming, who lives in San Francisco, was convicted Thursday of setting up a terrorist training base in Myanmar and directing others to murder and kidnap people... arrested in Myanmar in May 2004 on charges of possessing fake Chinese money and turned over to China.. supporters in the United States say he went to Myanmar to set up a haven for fleeing Chinese dissidents... Washington-based group Worldrights has accused China and Myanmar of colluding to snare Peng... Peng is leader of the China Federation Foundation, which was founded in San Francisco in 2003.... goal was to replace communist rule with democracy - by violence if necessary. "We would rather avoid force if we can," he said....
Why People Go Vegan
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:41:34
EXETER, Mo. - A
rancid odor gripping this tiny southwest Missouri town
prompted a judge Friday to order the cleanup of
250,000 pounds of meat left to rot
at a shuttered chicken processing plant. [Company] must reconnect the coolers and freezers to refreeze the raw chicken parts and discard the waste by Saturday, the court said... president of the plant's parent company... would not talk about how the problem came about, but promised to clean it up...
Barry County Sheriff Mick Epperly
said the meat was left to rot after lightning zapped the plant's refrigeration system last month, and the company's insurance would not pay for repairs... Students at the town's only school one block from the plant have been chased indoors from their recess because of the smell... At Chelawndray's, a restaurant across the highway from the plant, co-owner Alice Shape waved away flies as she talked about the chicken problem. "The flies have been really bad," she said. "It depends on which way the wind is blowing. Last night was God-awful..."
Rebuilding
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:11:27
Insurgents determined to derail this weekend's referendum carried out two attacks against Iraq's largest Sunni Arab political party on Friday, after the group dropped its opposition to the draft constitution... exploded a roadside bomb just outside the Iraqi Islamic Party office in central Baghdad, then set fire the party's main office in Fallujah... No injuries were immediately reported...
1960s - less with us
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:05:37
Vivian Malone Jones
, one of two black students whose effort to enroll at the University of Alabama led to George Wallace's infamous "stand in the schoolhouse door" in 1963, died Thursday. She was 63... went on to become the first black to graduate from the school... had enrolled at historically black Alabama A&M University in Huntsville when she transferred to the University of Alabama... led to then-Gov. Wallace's infamous stand in defiance of orders to admit black students. Jones and James Hood, accompanied by then-Deputy U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, enrolled after Wallace finished his statement and left...
Theory of Medicine
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:03:44
LOS ANGELES - A liver transplant candidate was misled about his prospects for a transplant, missed out when an organ became available, and died less than a year later... The organ was improperly given to a less needy patient... and records were falsified to cover the switch...
Preternatural Patterns
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:04:00
LIVERMORE FALLS, Maine - A woman who fell 12 feet into a well while trying to rescue her dog was pulled to safety after her disabled husband had to crawl down a road to call for help...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:12:58
A passenger punched out the interior pane of an airplane window on an American West flight from Las Vegas to Florida... The outer window was not damaged and the plane did not depressurize... arrested when the plane landed Wednesday at Tampa... faces up to 20 years in federal prison...
...About 90 minutes after the plane departed [he] "woke abruptly from his sleep and turned to the passenger seated in 7B ... raised a clenched fist to his shoulder as if he was going to strike the passenger in 7B, then suddenly turned and struck the exterior window..."
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:01:25
AMARILLO, Texas ..A man crashed a stolen pickup truck into three vehicles, a light pole and a bridge pillar before a crowd caught him and tied him up with a garden hose... suspect was arrested and charged with unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, failure to stop and render aid, driving under the influence of drugs and driving with a suspended license... About 20 people chased [driver] before they tied his feet with a garden hose and handcuffed him...
THU 2005-OCT-13
Threats
today.reuters.com/ ... 22:55:43
...Washington Monument [closed].. Thursday for unspecified reasons, less than one week after a telephone bomb threat prompted them to evacuate [the Monument]... local NBC affiliate said.. new telephoned bomb threat but ...U.S. Park Police declined to give a reason...
555-foot (170-meter) obelisk
, named to honor the first U.S. president...
abcnews.go.com/ ... 09:25:55
A four-month ABC News investigation found gaping security holes at many of the little-known nuclear research reactors operating on 25 college campuses across the country. Among the findings: unmanned guard booths, a guard who appeared to be asleep, unlocked building doors and, in a number of cases, guided tours that provided easy access to control rooms and reactor pools that hold radioactive fuel...
Sociopath Threats
wtkr.com/ ... 09:54:28
Did Osama bin Laden's secret lair crumble in the earthquake that devastated northwest Pakistan? So far, U.S. government officials and terrorism experts caution against too much speculation... He has been rumored to be taking cover anywhere from urban areas of Pakistan to remote cave structures winding along the Afghan-Pakistani border to villages in western Pakistan's lawless tribal areas. Any of these possible hideouts could have been at least shaken by Saturday's 7.6-magnitude quake, forcing bin Laden to move...
washingtonpost.com/ ... 09:21:23
Al Qaeda's top deputy urged the leader of his Iraq branch in July to prepare for the inevitable U.S. withdrawal by carrying out political as well as military actions, and he lectured him that he risked being shunned by an Islamic world angered over his gruesome and not "palatable" killings of fellow Muslims, according to an intercepted letter released yesterday by the U.S. government...
Nature is Dangerous
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:32:22
TORONTO - An outbreak of legionnaires' disease that killed 17 elderly people could have been spread by a rooftop air conditioner that sent bacteria through a Toronto nursing home and to passers-by on the streets below, health officials said Thursday... two middle-aged men contracted the pneumonia-like illness despite having no connection to the dozens of sick seniors at [the nursing home]... One of the men is a resident at.. a nearby apartment complex.. the other works at a hospital across the street... outbreak includes more than 100 cases of legionnaires' disease involving 71 nursing home residents, 23 staff, 14 visitors, one hospital worker and the [apartment] resident...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:01:54
I start injecting myself in November 1990. The first time I do it on my own I am not scared. I can follow directions, especially if it means being a few inches taller than the girls instead of being forced to look up at them...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:01:05
The toll of those missing in Guatemala in last week's flooding and mudslides linked to Hurricane Stan rose to 828, while the number of confirmed deaths held steady at 654...
abcnews.go.com/ ... 22:43:16
Four children in an Amish community in Minnesota have contracted the polio virus the first known infections in the U.S. in five years...
state epidemiologist said the cases do not pose a threat to the general public because most people have been vaccinated against polio and are unlikely to have contact with Amish people... expects to find more infections within the Amish community... About one in 200 people who contract the polio virus suffer paralysis because of it; others typically rid themselves the virus after weeks or months...
sci-tech-today.com/ ... 09:54:57
Earthquake victims scuffled over badly needed food that arrived Tuesday in the first aid convoys to reach Muzaffarabad, Pakistan. An army official said the country's government estimated that the quake killed more than 35,000 people, a stark assessment that almost doubled the official death toll...
insidebayarea.com/ ... 09:52:56
The massive earthquake that rocked Kashmir appears to have dealt a blow to the disputed region's Islamic militants, ripping through their heartland along the mountainous frontier and wrecking their network of camps, safe houses and weapons caches. One former militant said Tuesday that a temporary rebel cease-fire called after the quake was a "clear sign they are in trouble..."
news.yahoo.com/ ... 09:35:54
....research now provides visual evidence that the
AIDS virus ravages some parts of the brain
... 15 percent thinner in areas that control language, planning and movement...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:55:13
A sixth straight day of rain from a storm that has parked itself over New Jersey snarled traffic Wednesday, delaying flights and causing flooding that was only expected to worsen. Several northeastern states have been hit with heavy rain in the past week, including New Hampshire, where three people have been confirmed dead in floodwaters and four others remained missing...
Violence
cnn.com/ ... 22:40:59
A Pennsylvania woman beat her eight-month pregnant neighbor with a baseball bat before taking her to a remote area and trying to cut out her unborn baby... injuries were described as "severe..." underwent an emergency caesarian... her baby -- a boy -- "appears healthy at this time..." "It would appear from the defendant's statement that her goal was to get the victim's unborn child and take it as her own..." appeared to have waited hours, thinking Oskin would die before she cut out the baby. A 17-year-old boy on an all-terrain vehicle discovered the two women and sought help despite Conner's insistence that Oskin, who was bleeding from the head and abdomen, was fine... [alleged assailant] has three children... lied to her family and boyfriend about being pregnant...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:11:04
NALCHIK, Russia - Scores of Islamic militants launched simultaneous attacks on police and government buildings in this city in Russia's turbulent Caucasus region Thursday, sparking battles that killed at least 63 people... Chechen rebels claimed responsibility... forced the evacuation of schools and left corpses littering the streets of Nalchik, the capital of the republic of Kabardino-Balkariya... a city of 235,000... Estimates of the number of militants involved ranged from 60 to 300... Of the 63 killed, 50 were militants and at least 10 were police officers... at least three civilians were among the dead, and 84 people were wounded...
The Chechen rebels' decade-long struggle against Russia, originally a separatist movement, has melded increasingly with Islamic extremism in the past decade and spread far beyond Chechnya's borders to encompass the whole turbulent Russian Caucasus region...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:22:26
Forty-nine members of a street gang known as the Almighty Latin King Nation were indicted Wednesday on federal racketeering charges for crimes that include four murders, 38 attempted murders and widespread drug trafficking. All 49 defendants - with aliases like Squirt Guns, Spider, Fat Fat, Icy White and Lil' Wolfy - face up to life imprisonment if convicted on the racketeering charges and between 10 years to life on the drug offenses... In the past four years, police have conducted a series of raids that have taken down nearly 200 members in seven different gangs...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:21:32
SWEETWATER, Fla. Wednesday... 35-year-old [wife] fled in her car after she was shot [by her husband], but lost control and collided with another vehicle... While the woman was being treated by paramedics, her husband.. forced his way into the ambulance.. and fatally shot himself... husband.. pronounced dead... wife was treated for multiple gunshot wounds... driver of the other vehicle.. unhurt...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:12:26
Kidnappers shot and killed a businessman on a busy street in Haiti's capital Wednesday after he resisted being taken, then sped off in his car with his wife and two children...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:58:26
Army Spc.
James T. Grijalva
, 26, of Burbank, Ill., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Oct. 12, of a non-combat related injury. Grijalva was assigned to the Army National Guard.
Researching the Obvious
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 22:49:45
A chemical found in
cannabis
can act like an
antidepressant
, researchers have found...
[STOP THE INANITY! REPEAL! REPEAL! REPEAL!]
Lasting Contributions
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 22:48:12
An 80-page handwritten manuscript by Beethoven which was missing for 115 years has been put up for auction... expected to fetch up to £1.5m... last seen at an auction in Berlin in 1890, is "the most important Beethoven manuscript to appear in recent memory"... composer wrote Grosse Fuge while contending with deafness... score dates from 1826, the year before he died...
"It has never before been seen or described by Beethoven scholars... "Its rediscovery will allow a complete reassessment of this extraordinary music..."
found by librarian Heather Carbo at the Palmer Theological Seminary in Philadelphia... in a basement cabinet...
Love is Strange
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:06:19
...was nearly finished etching the big question into a harvested soybean field when he realized the 'm' in 'marry' took up too much room. Since he couldn't erase a plowed field, he had a decision to make. "I figured it would look better to spell it wrong and get a laugh out of it, rather than botch it all... I could have fit all the letters in, but it would have looked tacky." Instead, it read: "KATIE WILL YOU MARY ME?.."
Digital Culture
today.reuters.com/ ... 22:56:15
Finnish scientists have invented a device to make it harder to steal mobile phones and laptops by enabling them to detect changes in their owner's walking style and then freeze to prevent unauthorized use...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:11:35
Apple unveiled its new
video iPod
on Wednesday, announcing it will make some ABC television shows available for downloading one day after they air...
haaretz.com/ ... 09:51:00
Milliondollarhomepage.com... He acquired the catchy but not very friendly domain name and opened a site that he divided into a matrix of 10,000 small squares. The size of each square is 100 pixels (10x10) and in total there are 1,000,000 pixels on the home page. The deal Tew offers is simple: whoever pays $100 per square (or one dollar per pixel, it sounds cheaper) will in return receive a tiny bit of real estate on the site. The happy buyer can fill his square in any way he wants, so long as it is in Jpeg or GIF format (without animation), and then transform the square into a hyperlink to any site he chooses, so long as it is not hate-mongering, racist, pornographic or fraudulent and the like. Anyone can buy adjacent squares at the same price per square, depending on availability, and thereby highlight his message in comparison to others...
Feeding Ourselves
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:02:07
Shares of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. fell nearly 13 percent Wednesday in heavy trading as analysts and company officials said they did not know what triggered the plunge...
US Military
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:02:54
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. - A soldier was arrested after firing five shots at a group of comrades during their morning workout Thursday... No one was wounded... a nonmilitary-issue handgun, in violation of regulations...
Nearly 17,000 troops from Fort Campbell are serving in Iraq...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:01:41
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - The final resting place of a 28-year-old soldier killed in Iraq is now in the hands of a judge who said he would have preferred the bitterly divided family could have resolved the matter without him....
[no doubt!]
"I wish I had the power to reconcile this family, but I don't... However, I have the power to decide this case, and I will." ...made an unusual - and futile - plea midway through the five-day trial for the family to try to reach a compromise... divorced parents of Army Staff Sgt. Jason Hendrix... buried last month - against his mother's wishes - in a plot next to his paternal grandfather in Oklahoma. ...father Russell Hendrix had argued that his son's body should stay where it is... mother, Renee Amick of Watsonville, says her son asked to be buried there during a telephone conversation before he was deployed to Iraq... If this happens, it will be his body's third journey across the country. The Army initially sent Hendrix's body to Watsonville. But the body was later shipped to Oklahoma after Russell Hendrix appealed to an Oklahoma probate court...
The case has highlighted little-known Defense Department rules, which have come under criticism... If a slain soldier is unmarried and has no children.. the military grants custody to next of kin based on seniority.
Jason Hendrix grew up in Watsonville with his mother but finished high school living with his father in Oklahoma....
Digital Yawn
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:33:28
A year ago, America Online Inc. was seen as an ailing dinosaur of the dial-up era, its Internet access business fading fast. Now that it's tapping into the online advertising boom by opening its content to anyone who wants it, AOL is a hot property being courted by powerhouse suitors...
Hurricanes Aftermath
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:30:06
French Quarter bar owners plan to challenge the city's midnight-to-6 a.m. curfew the only way New Orleans knows how: with a party...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:29:45
NEW ORLEANS ...The manatees that grazed in Lake Pontchartrain before Hurricane Katrina haven't been seen since, but eight dolphins were leaping in the lake this week...
About 10,000 animals died after four days without support systems at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas.. survivors, including a 19-member penguin colony, two sea otters and several hundred freshwater fish, were evacuated to other aquariums....
Big City Stories
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:27:54
NEW YORK - A reputed mobster facing a five-year prison term in a waterfront corruption case disappeared in the middle of his trial, prompting speculation that he had instead received a Mafia-imposed death penalty... Lawrence Ricci... 60-year-old alleged capo in the Genovese crime family... charged with two officials of the International Longshoreman's Association with extortion and fraud in connection with mob domination of the New York waterfront...
Headline of the Day
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:04:49
[OH! THE PAINFUL IRONY!]
White House Says Miers Won't Withdraw,
Complains About Focus on Religion
Sex can be Boring
today.reuters.com/ ... 22:57:37
Sultry actress Marlene Dietrich, one of the 20th century's most iconic figures, hated sex and had a schizophrenic personality, according to her daughter Maria Riva...
Preternatural Patterns
today.reuters.com/ ... 22:56:41
Four years ago, Etienne Verhees broke two vertebrae falling off a ladder, after which doctors put a metal plate in his neck to help heal the wound. This week, the Belgian coughed up one of four screws used to hold the plate in place...
breitbart.com/ ... 22:53:45
A 79-year-old woman was sentenced to five year's probation Wednesday after pleading guilty to drug dealing...
retired waitress... first-offender status... guilty to three counts of selling prescription drugs... undercover officers went to the home [she] shares with her 84-year-old husband four times and bought $1,600 in prescription pills including the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, the painkiller hydrocordone and muscle relaxer Soma... the couple, married almost 40 years, were set up by the son of a family friend... the younger drug abuser begged the [couple] for pills, then got into trouble and brought undercover police to the house... [Husband] did not stand trial. The retired welder, who uses a walker and relies on the prescriptions to ease pain cause by back operations, was
judged mentally incompetent.
...the couple's daughter was appointed their guardian. If she violates probation
[septagenerian woman] faces 30 years in prison...
Criminally Stupid
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:08:01
PITTSBURGH --Police say they caught a serial burglar.. in the basement of an apartment building he had broken into.. having sex with a woman...
Under Tyranny
timesonline.co.uk/ ... 09:57:15
THE Netherlands is likely to become the first country in Europe to
ban the burka
, under government proposals that would bring in some of the toughest curbs on Muslim clothing in the world... Integration Minister, Rita Verdonk, known as the Iron Lady for her series of tough anti-immigration measures... gave warning that the time of cosy tea-drinking with Muslim groups had passed... admitted that a complete ban on the garment would be legally tricky because of freedom of religion legislation. However, she said that she would prohibit the garments in specific situations on grounds of public safety. The ban is likely to be enforced in shops, public buildings, cinemas, train and bus stations and airports, as well as on trains and buses...
Supernatural Consequences
timesonline.co.uk/ ... 09:51:57
THE guitarist Carlos Santana sacked his personal assistant of 16 years for not being spiritual enough, a court has been told. An action filed by Bruce Kuhlman against Mr Santana, says that the musicians wife, Deborah, ordered him to meet a guru called Dr Dan to improve his consciousness or awareness level, which would bring him closer to God and make him a better worker...
timesonline.co.uk/ ... 09:47:48
THE Vatican is hoping to regain control of the Room of the Last Supper in Jerusalem, one of the most sacred sites in Christianity. It will, in exchange, hand over to the Jewish community the historic synagogue at Toledo in Spain, at present a Catholic church... The Upper Room, where the Last Supper is said to have taken place, is held by Christians to be the place where Jesus broke bread and drank wine with the disciples on the eve of his Crucifixion and also where the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples at Pentecost... The present Gothic-arched room is not the original but was built by the Crusaders in the 14th century...
The renewed Christian-Jewish dialogue comes on the 40th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council document which condemned anti-Semitism and paved the way for the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Vatican in 1993...
ansa.it/ ... 09:45:39
An art expert has uncovered a sculpture of Christ on the Cross he claims Salvador Dali made to thank an Italian friar who exorcised him... [friar] told friends and relatives he exorcised Dali of a demon in 1947 during a spell in France... during a period in which Dali had broken away from Surrealism and started producing more realistic works, often with religious imagery...
Digital Sex can be Dangerous
bizjournals.com/ ... 09:39:15
Yahoo! has agreed with the attorneys general of New York and Nebraska to
remove and bar the posting of user-created chat rooms with names that suggest they are promoting sex between minors and adults
...
Disturbing Family Patterns
wtkr.com/ ... 09:59:01
A man in Austria [spiked his wife's] food and drinks with sedatives to keep her [from meeting] her lover apart... A court in a western province today found the 47-year-old man guilty of "coercion" and sentenced him to a 540-dollar fine should he repeat the offense....
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 01:00:59
A Wisconsin man is behind bars for allegedly using an electric dog collar to zap his 8-year-old stepdaughter as punishment for eating breakfast too slowly... also threatened to shoot the child's pet rabbit due to the girl's alleged inadequate care of the animal... set its shock intensity at "4" and told her she was lucky he didn't set it on "6," as he does with the family dog... company specifications indicate a setting of "4" delivers 2,680 volts, enough to control a medium-size dog... admitted he placed it on her "to calm her down..." the girl is now living with a relative...
Rebuilding
seattlepi.nwsource.com/ ... 00:57:43
Text of proposed Iraqi constitution...
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 00:57:22
There was wild celebration on the floor of the Iraqi National Assembly last night as political leaders celebrated the adoption of compromises aimed at winning Sunni Arab support for a new constitution...
Disinformation Propaganda & Spin
breitbart.com/ ... 22:50:20
It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution...
newsobserver.com/ ... 09:37:48
Patrick Guerriero, president of the Log Cabin Republicans... a national gay Republicans group... was speaking.. at UNC-Chapel Hill.. on the future of sexual politics when a person ran down toward the lectern and hurled a chocolate-laced cream pie at him... "I faked to the left and moved to the right, which is probably something I do in politics sometimes," he said Tuesday...
apnews.myway.com/ ... 09:34:30
Al Gore.. Wednesday.. no intention of ever running for president again...
[hope he means it!]
... said the United States would be "a different country" if he had won...
[NO question! Like we were becoming the world's Target under his boss Bill]
... "We would not have invaded a country that didn't attack us..."
[Never mind all the people who agreed, including the UN and Hillary, that we should do it, and never mind that nobody misses Saddam & family...]
"
...We would not be routinely torturing people,
" Gore said...
Tracey Schmitt, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, called Gore's comments "fictitious rants that border on dangerous." "
To accuse Americans of participating in 'routine torture' is absurd and reveals that while Al Gore may no longer be a leader in his party, he still embodies the maniacal anger that guides Democrat leaders in Washington today,
"
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 00:56:34
Jewish soldiers murder Arab brides in cold blood, and the Israeli coastal towns of Jaffa and Haifa are really Palestinian cities, according to broadcasts this week on official Palestinian Authority television...
Sex can be Dangerous
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 00:47:35
...wealthy Manhattan socialite... [molested at 7, now 51] "I believe that my life would be very different now... I'd probably be married, living in Greenwich, with four children in boarding school. Romano bent my life..." planning a $5 million lawsuit against the Catholic Church... He'd "explain to me that this was a rite of passage..."
US Judicial Branch
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 00:42:39
Harriet Miers is never going to be grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee. She is going to withdraw her name from consideration before such hearings ever begin. You can take that to the bank...
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 00:41:47
Harriet Miers is never going to be grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee. She is going to withdraw her name from consideration before such hearings ever begin. You can take that to the bank...
Reasons for Repeal
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:03:41
Federal agents arrested 28 people and seized more than 1,300 pounds of cocaine during an overnight raid around Atlanta that dismantled one of the largest drug trafficking cells on the East Coast, the Drug Enforcement Administration said Thursday.... [also] 40 pounds of methamphetamines and $8 million in cash....
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:18:02
An Army veteran who fled to Canada to avoid prosecution for growing marijuana to treat his chronic pain was yanked from a hospital by Canadian authorities, driven to the border with a catheter still attached, and turned over to U.S. officials, his lawyer says. He then went five days with no medical treatment and only ibuprofen for the pain... was still fitted with the urinary catheter when he shuffled into federal court for a detention hearing Wednesday... "This is totally inhumane. He's been tortured for days for no reason..." suffered debilitating injuries in the 1980s when his parachute failed to open during a jump, and those injuries were exacerbated by a car crash in 1990... In 2001, while he was living in McKinleyville, Calif., his marijuana operation was raided for the second time. He fled to British Columbia to avoid prosecution but asylum was denied. Last Friday, he checked himself into a Vancouver hospital for prostate problems, and it was there that he was arrested... Though Tuck has taken morphine - as prescribed by doctors - for about 16 years to help with his pain, he was given no painkiller or treatment at the jail other than ibuprofen... appeared emaciated in court...
[STOP THE INSANITY!
REPEAL!
REPEAL!
REPEAL!]
Opposing Tyranny
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:14:11
...Jordan's King Abdullah II said Wednesday.. after meeting with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono... "We reaffirmed the importance of working together to defeat the scourge of terrorism that Indonesia and Jordan have suffered... The malicious attacks in Bali are a reminder that we need to unite in the struggle to defeat ignorant extremists who distort the teaching of Islam."
More than 80 percent of Indonesia's 220 million people are Muslims. Most practice a broadly tolerant version of the faith tinged with remnants of Hindu and animist rituals, which predate Islam in the archipelago.
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:11:56
BEIJING - Zhang Bairen, an underground Chinese Catholic bishop who served 24 years in jail for his loyalty to the Roman Catholic pontiff, died Wednesday... 90... the Roman Catholic bishop of Hanyang.. in China's northern Hubei province.. heart disease.. also known as Peter Chang, earned a doctorate in theology from the Pontificio Collegio Urbano in Rome and was ordained as a priest in 1942.. wrote in 1997 that he told Chinese authorities in 1955 that he would rather be shot dead than renounce the pope.. was imprisoned from 1955 until 1979..
In China, worship is allowed only in government-controlled churches, which recognize the pope as a spiritual leader but appoint their own priests and bishops. Catholic Chinese who meet outside sanctioned churches are frequently harassed, fined and sometimes sent to labor camps.
World Without Borders
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:08:02
The United Nations is looking at everything in its search for cheap temporary space - islands, cruise ships, and even large tents. And Brooklyn is definitely still in the running...
The sprawling U.N. headquarters complex, overlooking the East River, was considered modern when it was constructed 50 years ago but now violates most New York City fire and safety codes and desperately needs renovation. The 38-story Secretariat building has no sprinkler system, is packed with asbestos and loses about 25 percent of the heat pumped into it in the winter...
Sexual Equality??
timesofoman.com/ ... 09:22:49
Female civil servants
at Irans Culture Ministry and female journalists at the state newspaper and news agency
must be out of the office by dusk to be with their familie
s, a directive said yesterday. The directive was issued by Culture Minister Mohammed Hossein Saffar-Harandi, one of a batch of cabinet ministers brought in by President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad. Owing to the sensitive role of women in the family and in raising children, women employees are banned from staying at the office after 6pm, the Tosea newspaper quoted the directive as saying...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:06:05
The world must confront widespread social and economic discrimination against women before it can hope to make a significant reduction in poverty, the United Nations said Wednesday...
"We cannot make poverty history until we stop violence against women and girls," the fund's executive director, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, said at the report's launch in London. "We cannot make poverty history until women enjoy their full social, cultural, economic and political rights."
...gender equality and better reproductive health could save the lives of 2 million women and 30 million children over the next decade - and help lift millions around the world out of poverty...
"Inequality is economically inefficient,
it is a violation of human rights and it is a hazard to health..."
WED 2005-OCT-12
Industrial Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:46:48
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. - An explosion on Wednesday rocked a pork processing plant being built on the city's south side, killing one person and injuring 14... apparent natural gas explosion may have been sparked by a welding torch... ripped a 150-foot hole in the building's roof... The factory, the largest development in the city in decades, had been expected to open this fall, employing 1,000 to 1,500 workers...
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:55:20
Armed men hijacked a ship carrying food aid Wednesday as it was unloading at a port in the strife-torn African country of Somalia, said the United Nations food relief agency... Nearly half the total cargo of 850 tons of WFP food aid was on board at the time...
Somalia's 1,880-mile coastline is Africa's longest and the country has had no effective central government since opposition leaders ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. They then turned on each other, transforming this nation of 7 million into a patchwork of battling fiefdoms ruled by heavily armed militias...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:52:53
Palestinian gunmen briefly kidnapped an American and a British journalist on Wednesday as the pair drove through the central Gaza town of Khan Younis... "They have been released by their captors to the Palestinian Authority and are being transported back to Gaza City... They are safe and unharmed..." abducted by a renegade group of militants who had formerly belonged to the ruling Fatah group, said Palestinian police chief Brig. Gen. Ala Husni... kidnappers demanded that they be given jobs as officers in the Palestinian security forces... officials refused to negotiate and the journalists were eventually freed after one of the kidnappers turned himself in for questioning...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:51:12
In a hearing Wednesday at the El Dorado Correctional Facility, District Judge Gregory Waller... wants to make sure... BTK killer Dennis Rader [is].. treated as a sexual offender...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:06:33
The interior minister in Syria killed himself in his office, according to the country's official news agency. Interior Minister Brig. Gen. Ghazi Kenaan. Before he was promoted to that position, he was Syria's intelligence chief in Lebanon, presiding over Syria's control of its western neighbor....
Transport Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:05:48
MOAB, Utah - A minivan crammed with 16 people rolled over in southeastern Utah, killing two passengers... ferrying immigrant workers... Some admitted being in the country illegally... driver, a 17-year-old, left the scene and was found walking along the road about a mile from the accident... A 20-year-old woman.. and.. a female between 15 and 21 years old - died... normally seats seven or eight, depending on how it is configured, but the middle seat had been taken out to make more room...
Feeding Ourselves
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:58:04
Florida growers are expected to produce 190 million boxes of oranges during the upcoming growing season,
a 27 percent increase over last season's crop
, which was ravaged by a barrage of hurricanes... Citrus officials greeted [the] news.. with optimism that was tempered by an awareness of the
creeping spread of three diseases
that could cause the loss of more trees than the hurricanes: citrus canker, citrus greening and tristeza...
Each box of oranges from Florida... holds about 90 pounds of fruit.
US Military
defenselink.mil/ ... 23:29:59
This week, the Army, Navy and Air Force announced an increase in the number of reservists on active duty in support of the partial mobilization. The Marine Corps and Coast Guard had a decrease. The net collective result is 1,507 more reservists mobilized than last week.
defenselink.mil/ ... 08:52:59
The Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force met or exceeded their recruiting goals in September.
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 23:31:37
Army Sgt. 1st Class
Brandon K. Sneed
, 33, of Norman, Okla.
Army Sgt.
Leon M. Johnson
, 28, of Jacksonville, Fla.
died in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, on Oct. 10, when an improvised explosive device detonated near their M2A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle during combat operations.
defenselink.mil/ ... 23:30:47
Marine Lance Cpl.
Sergio H. Escobar
, 18, of Pasadena, Calif., died Oct. 9 from an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Ar Ramadi, Iraq.
defenselink.mil/ ... 23:30:26
Army Staff
Sgt. Matthew A. Kimmell
, 30, of Paxton, Ind., died in Muqdadiyah, Iraq, on Oct. 11, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV.
defenselink.mil/ ... 23:29:28
Army Spc.
Jeremy M. Hodge
, 20, of Ridgeway, Ohio, died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Oct. 10, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV. Hodge was assigned to the Army National Guard.
defenselink.mil/ ... 08:54:03
Army Staff Sgt.
Jerry L. Bonifacio Jr.
, 28, of Vacaville, Calif., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Oct. 10, when a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated near his checkpoint. Bonifacio was assigned to the Army National Guard.
defenselink.mil/ ... 08:53:38
Army Lt. Col.
Leon G. James II
, 46, of Sackets Harbor, N.Y., died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 10, of injuries sustained in Baghdad, Iraq, on Sep. 26, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations. James was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 314th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 78th Division, Fort Drum, N.Y. For further information related to this release, contact Army Public Affairs at (703) 692-2000.
defenselink.mil/ ... 08:52:26
Army Staff Sgt.
Gary R. Harper Jr.
, 29, of Virden, Ill., died in Baghdad, Iraq on Oct. 9, when his reconnaissance mission was attacked by enemy forces. Harper was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group.
Disturbing Family Patterns
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:58:32
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. Michelle Duggar just delivered her 16th child, and she's already thinking about doing it again...
People Die
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:04:06
The verdict on how Yasser Arafat died: It's still a mystery nearly a year later... official investigation.. didn't determine what killed him Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said Wednesday.... Medical records showed that Arafat died of a massive stroke after suffering intestinal inflammation, jaundice and a blood condition. The records were inconclusive about the causes of the blood condition, known as disseminated intravascular coagulation, or DIC. The condition has numerous causes ranging from colitis to liver disease...
[howzabout... he was a sick, old man?]
Theory of Education
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:02:26
Wayne Booth
, a prominent literary critic and professor whose books are required reading at many universities, died Sunday... at his home from complications of dementia... 84... University of Chicago... faculty member for more than four decades... Booth's "The Rhetoric of Fiction," published in 1961, is
"the single most important American contribution to narrative theory - a book that continues to be read, taught and fought about..."
Other works include "A Rhetoric of Irony..." and... "The Company We Keep," about the ethics of fiction. His book "For the Love of It" was a memoir about how he became an accomplished amateur cellist, starting at age 31...
TUE 2005-OCT-11
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:05:55
Insurgents determined to wreck Iraq's constitutional referendum killed more than 40 people and wounded dozens in a series of attacks Tuesday, including a suicide car bomb that ripped apart a crowded market in a town near the Syrian border...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:03:41
A suspected Taliban militant detonated explosives strapped to himself, killing a former militia commander and two others Monday in a southern Afghan city, while a second suicide bomber was thwarted when he blew himself up as he fled police...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:03:06
DETROIT - A late-night drag race led to a crash that killed three people and injured two others... two Ford Mustangs, one black and one silver... Sunday night... [one] broadsided a van that was passing through an intersection... van rolled over... not immediately clear whether those killed were in the van or were standing on the street... [one] driver.. abandoned the car and ran away. The [other] ..drove off...
Hurricanes Aftermath
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:01:01
...Bush is dining in New Orleans on Monday night... with Louisiana officials in the French Quarter and will stay overnight in a hotel with the first lady...
Nature is Dangerous
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:05:09
ALSTEAD, N.H. - Residents began assessing the damage left by deadly flooding that tore up highways, swept away houses and tossed boulders and vehicles around like toys.
More than a dozen people remained unaccounted-for in hardhit southwest New Hampshire... At least 10 people died in the heavy weekend downpours or in rain-related traffic accidents from Pennsylvania to Maine. About 1,000 New Hampshire residents fled their homes...
Three deaths were confirmed in New Hampshire and a fourth was feared...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:00:25
...I am not a diabetic. I am not a heroin user. But I am an addict. My drug is Protropin, a synthetic growth hormone... the drug's use is legal... to give a measure of health and happiness to a high-school freshman whose growth has been stunted by a hormone deficiency...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:57:31
Four Brazilian cities in the Amazon jungle state of Amazonas... Manaquiri, Atalaia do Norte, Anori and Caapiranga... have been declared disaster areas as the worst drought in 60 years dries up rivers that thousands of families depend on
to receive food and medicine... dwindling supplies of medicine... more than 42,000 people... drinking water has also become scarce... "The little water that exists in the rivers is polluted..." fears a yellow fever epidemic in the region... Another 17 cities and towns declared a state of alert...
Many cities in the vast Amazon region have little or no road access and rely on rivers for transportation...
Beatles - still with us
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:11:47
On a warm August night in 1974, John Lennon was staying in New York with his assistant May Pang when he stepped naked out to the balcony of his apartment to enjoy the breeze. In the dim haze he saw a circular, brightly lit UFO floating silently in the sky about 100 feet away. He screamed for Pang who ran to the terrace and saw it, too. It hovered for a few minutes, then disappeared. Lennon refers to this on the cover of this "Walls and Bridges" album, released later that year. Pang has given several interviews swearing that it's the truth...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:08:59
"He's relevant today, he'll be relevant tomorrow... It doesn't matter how old you are. This is where all other popular music comes from..."
"Baby faces, faces of kids who weren't even a thought when Lennon was shot. It shows he was bigger than the music. He was a social leader..."
Supernatural Equality
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:36:53
The Supreme Court rejected an appeal on Tuesday from a Wiccan priestess angry that local leaders would not let her open their sessions with a prayer. Instead, clergy from more traditional religions were invited to pray at governmental meetings in Chesterfield County, Va., a suburb of Richmond... most.. led by Christians. Simpson said she wanted to offer a generalized prayer to the "creator of the universe..." the county [has] changed its policy and directed clerics to avoid invoking the name of Jesus...
[Another] case this fall... raises the question of whether federal agents can stop a church from using hallucinogenic tea in its religious services...
Rebuilding
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:01:29
Sunni Arab activists are going door to door to supporters' homes and using mosque imams in a final drive to persuade the minority community to go to the polls on Saturday and vote against the Iraqi constitution...
MON 2005-OCT-10
Norman Was Blessed
channeloklahoma.com/ ... 20:58:58
...The Pakistani roommate... and three other Muslim students... were led in handcuffs from a party shortly after Saturday's explosion... authorities continue to believe that Hinrichs did not try to get into the stadium and that he acted alone... father told investigators his son was skeptical of ideology. "Joe would have become a Muslim fanatic when pigs fly..."
freerepublic.com/ ... 20:56:33
OKC Ch 9... 3 videos... Hinrichs spent time in the same Norman mosque as Moussaui Ticket to Algeria was found linking back to his Pakistani roommate 5 others possibly involved Hinrichs attempted to enter the stadium and may have had a ticket to the game...
normantranscript.com/ ... 20:55:06
Hinrichs apparently never visited the Masjid An-Nur Islamic mosque that has served the Muslim community at 1304 George Avenue since 1978. "He had never been to our mosque and he's not associated with our mosque in any way, shape or form," said 44-year-old Mohamed Farid Elyazgi, who has lived in Norman with his family since 1985. "We had never seen him until we saw his picture in the media." Elyazgi emphasized that Islam forbids suicide and Muslims condemn all acts of violence...
channeloklahoma.com/ ... 20:30:16
Norman police... ran a routine investigation of... [Hinrichs, after] an off-duty, plainclothes officer... a veteran of the Norman police department with 11 years of experience on the force... overheard a [suspicious] conversation.. Hinrichs.. with the proprietor of a Norman feed store last Thursday at 4 p.m... [about] purchase of ammonium nitrate fertilizer...
freerepublic.com/ ... 20:25:49
KKTV (Video Link) ^ | 10/6/05 This video news report is mostly what's been aired on past news reports: that Joel Hinrichs was turned away from the stadium, etc., but the the KEY quote from this story occurs about :30 seconds into the story, and that is when the reporter says "...a homemade REMOTE CONTROLLED bomb was strapped to his back The story goes on to detail his attempted purchase of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, etc...
opinioneditorials.com/ ... 20:18:44
...After all, its not every day that theres a terrorist attack on U.S. soil and supposedly there hasnt been one since 9/11. But thats exactly what happened outside a packed football stadium at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma on Saturday night (10/1). 21-year-old engineering student Joel Henry Hinrichs III of Colorado Springs detonated a bomb near the stadium, killing himself in the process. The explosion was so powerful that people up to four miles away reported hearing it and windows in the George L. Cross building 100 yards away shattered. One of the drivers of several buses parked in a nearby lot was taken to the hospital after being knocked over by the blast. No one else was injured and 84,000 fans left the stadium, mostly unaware of the magnitude of what occurred outside... Not only was the story essentially buried when it first broke, but the major media outlets have still not seen fit to address it. But thanks to the investigative efforts of Oklahoma photojournalist Lan Lamphere (whose blog features a firsthand account and video), World Net Daily and the Northeast Intelligence Network (cited above), the evidence points to the likelihood that the incident was indeed a botched terrorist attack... According to the Northeast Intelligence Network, initial information suggested that that the so-called suicide-bomber was attempting to attach bombs to the buses parked in the area when one of the bombs detonated prematurely. Witnesses also described seeing a second device being detonated by robot... a significant amount of Jihad literature both in his home and on his computer... a Colorado Springs Gazette photo posted at the Northeast Intelligence Network website shows him with a beard too similar to those worn by newly observant Muslim men...
tapscottscopydesk.blogspot.com/ ... 20:07:32
...If Hinrichs was just a disturbed guy who decided to kill himself with a bomb 100 yards from a crowd of 84,000 people instead of simply putting a bullet through his temple, slashing his wrists or some other traditional way of doing away with himself, why is the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force now the lead agency in the investigation?..
tapscottscopydesk.blogspot.com/ ... 20:05:06
...Hinrichs attended a nearby mosque, the same one apparently attended by the "20th hijacker" of 9/11, Zaccarias Moussaoui. Moussaoui attended the same Norman, OK, flight school attended by 9/11 mastermind Mohammed Atta and another of the hijackers... took up residence in the university owned apartment complex known as "Little Tehran" in Norman... Hinrichs' roommate in the apartment is reportedly a Palestinian national... bomb-making materials in Hinrichs' apartment [are] known as "Mother of Satan" among Islamofascist terrorist bombmakers...
normantranscript.com/ ... 19:58:59
University of Oklahoma President David Boren on Tuesday said
investigators are saying there is no known threat connected to the Saturday bomb explosion near a packed football stadium... an FBI press release repeated Boren's opinion...
FBI release: "There is no known current threat posed by any additional explosive materials. At this time, there is no known threat from any other person(s) related to this incident. At this time, there is no known link between Hinrichs and any terrorist or extremist organization(s) or activities..." Channel 5 News reported Tuesday night that Hinrichs' bomb contained acetone peroxide.. highly unstable chemical.. made from household items.. very sensitive to heat and shock...
Boren made a shift in describing Hinrich's death
by saying, "I do not say suicide, I say it's an individual death that we're dealing with. That's all we really know..."
tapscottscopydesk.blogspot.com/ ... 19:54:45
...car registered in the name of OU Suicide Bomber Joel Henry Hinrichs III... inventory of the contents found by law enforcement officials... [included] "13 plastic bottles" in the trunk... a tree near where Hinrichs' bomb detonated displays a number of small round holes and some areas of a metallic substance... only on the side facing the bench on which Hinrichs was seated when the bomb detonated... holes appear to be about the size of the head of 16 penny nail... [neighbor] believed Hinrichs lived with "three or four Arab guys..." [and] all of the residents of the university apartment complex where he and Hinrichs lived are from Nigeria, China and Middle Eastern/Southeast Asian countries...
Disturbing Patterns
11alive.com/ ... 19:33:56
Three explosive devices found in a courtyard between two Georgia Tech dormitories on the East Campus Monday morning were part of a "terrorist act," an Atlanta police official said. One of the devices exploded, injuring the custodian who found them inside a plastic bag. Two others were detonated by a bomb squad. The custodian suffered ringing to the ears... picked up the bag, one exploded, as it was designed to do when handled.
The explosives were made up of chemicals placed inside plastic bottles
dailybruin.ucla.edu/ ... 19:32:19
....Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad inspected and detonated an explosive device found within the Midvale Plaza apartment complex on the 500 block of Midvale Avenue.... [found] "an improvised explosive device" in the building's open-air courtyard... No injuries were reported... authorities have been slow to release details... Residents.. heard a small explosion sometime between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. Friday... a resident found an explosive device later that morning... Shortly after 1 p.m., the bomb squad remotely detonated the device...
Police Riot
twincities.com/ ... 19:47:00
NEW ORLEANS ...One of the 73 people listed as victims of Hurricane Katrina was actually shot by police... outside the convention center.. about 2 a.m. Sept. 3, in the darkness before the National Guard arrived and began evacuating... police statement.. [described] attempted murder of a police officer... [but the victim's] daughter.. and.. niece... both of whom were there... say the officer who shot Brumfield had hit him twice with a squad car before doing so a nudge the first time, a heavier bump the second. That was when he leaped onto the hood and was shot... Afterward... the car ran over him, and other officers didn't come to investigate for several hours... By all accounts, that night was a time when looting was rampant and widespread rumors of violence had everyone, including police, running scared... [Victim] spent several sleepless nights caring for his five grandchildren and others in the area... He was that kind of man, relatives said one who would protect children, who would fix his nieces' cars and mow their lawns, who would talk straight to his nephews. He was a straight arrow who didn't even drink, said his sister-in-law...
wkyt.com/ ... 19:40:38
NEW ORLEANS Louisiana officials are looking into allegations that New Orleans police officers stole Cadillacs from a dealer as Hurricane Katrina closed in.
At first, the city's police chief said officers were using the cars for patrols. He said that was not looting. Now the department will only say it is cooperating with the state investigation.
The Cadillac dealer president says more than 150 cars were taken, including 88 new Cadillacs and Chevys, used cars and customers' cars and two restored classic cars. Doug Stead says that amounts to more than four (m) million dollars...
suntimes.com/ ... 19:37:37
NEW ORLEANS -- Two New Orleans police officers repeatedly punched a 64-year-old man accused of public intoxication, and another city officer assaulted a TV producer as a cameraman taped the confrontations. There will be a criminal investigation, and the three officers were to be suspended, arrested and charged with simple battery Sunday...
Sportsmanship
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:58:18
ELMWOOD PLACE, Ohio - Police were searching Monday for a man who allegedly drove his car into a crowd of people on a sidewalk, killing one and injuring five, after getting into a fight about a soccer match....
Transport Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:30:29
...the sedan rolled down a steep hill.. sped through a busy intersection.. went airborne for about 100 feet before plowing into the house... killing four women [passengers] and seriously injuring the [male] driver... Saturday evening in the Town of Superior, about 390 miles northwest of Milwaukee... Three.. in the back seat died at the scene... fourth.. later at a hospital... driver remained unconscious.. preventing investigators from learning more... no witnesses... couple in the front seat were married.. two.. in the back seat were the man's sisters... coming from a church dinner. All were over 70 years old... rammed through... bedroom just as he was walking in... "I went flying and got knocked out but I'm fine It scared me. There was a big boom like a bomb went off." His wife had gotten out of bed 15 minutes earlier.
"She would have been dead if she would have been sleeping..."
Sociopath Threats
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:24:16
JERUSALEM - Three Israeli Arabs pleaded guilty Sunday to planning to plant bombs on a commuter train track and discussing bombing Tel Aviv's Azrieli Towers, the tallest buildings in Israel... Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel's citizens. Though many have been radicalized by five years of violence between Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, including their relatives, few Israeli Arabs have taken an active part in the conflict...
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:49:10
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A man fatally shot his wife and then himself while discussing their upcoming divorce with his attorney on the telephone... both in their 30s.. married for about 12 years.. their four children.. 4 through 12.. were attending church with their grandparents...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:44:52
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Two suicide attackers exploded bombs in the main southern Afghan city Monday, killing at least three people and wounding eight... five.. suicide bombings in Afghanistan in the past two weeks - four of them in southern Kandahar city, a former Taliban stronghold...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:22:18
Four bullet-ridden bodies have been discovered at a ranch 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of the northern Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo...
four more shooting deaths in two attacks also were reported over the weekend in Nuevo Laredo, across the U.S. border from Laredo, Texas...
More than 140 killings have been reported in Nuevo Laredo in 2005 during a surge in violence attributed to rival drug trafficking groups...
Nature is Dangerous
breitbart.com/ ... 17:33:04
A powerful storm that dropped up to 20 inches of snow in parts of Colorado knocked out power Monday to thousands of people, closed an 80-mile stretch of a major highway and trigged rock slides in the foothills. Authorities said a 60-year-old Denver woman died after an 8-inch- diameter tree limb snapped off and struck her...
Whoops!
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:52:18
DARLINGTON, S.C... An officer answering the alarm noticed tiles, insulation, wires and metal braces hanging from the roof and on the floor of the Check 'n Go... A naked man with scrapes all over his body then dropped from the ceiling and tried to open the front door and leave... "He had a charming story to go along with it though... He said somebody threw his keys on the roof and that's why he was up there. He kind of got a little fuzzy on the
'taking all his clothes off and sliding in the store'
part..." The cash advance business doesn't keep money on the premises...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:47:54
LINCOLN, Neb... For 30 to 45 minutes Friday, three of the Kabredlo's Convenience Store's four pumps sold premium unleaded gas for 29 cents a gallon. Gas hasn't been that cheap since 1955, according to AAA Nebraska... lines formed at the store as news of the cheap fuel spread... "I was on E, and I filled my tank up for $4... It made my day..."
Lasting Contributions
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:43:40
Leopold B. Felsen
, an expert on the properties of waves who co-authored a standard text on electromagnetics, has died. He was 81... published more than 300 articles and several books... The book "Radiation and Scattering of Waves," co-authored with Nathan Marcuvitz, is considered
one of the most important works on electromagnetics.
...lived with muscular dystrophy for 30 years, traveled extensively to lecture on wave physics.... Born in Munich, Felsen was sent to live with relatives in the United States when he was 16 to escape Nazi persecution of Jews. His parents survived and came to the United States in 1946, but many relatives, including an older sister, died during the war...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 18:20:38
Army Sgt.
Eric A. Fifer
, 22, of Knoxville, Tenn. Fifer died in Al Asad, Iraq.
Army Pfc.
Nicholas J. Greer
, 21, of Monroe, Mich. Greer died in Haqlaniyah, Iraq.
died of injuries sustained in Haqlaniyah, Iraq, on Oct. 7, when their dismounted patrol was attacked by enemy forces using small arms fire.
defenselink.mil/ ... 18:18:48
Army Staff
Sgt. Timothy J. Roark
, 29, of Houston, Texas, died in Balad, Iraq, on Oct. 2, of a non-combat related injury.
defenselink.mil/ ... 17:25:47
Army Pfc.
Benny S. Franklin
, 19, of Hammond, La., died in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Oct. 7, of injuries sustained earlier that day in Helmand, Afghanistan, when he stepped on a landmine during patrol operations.
defenselink.mil/ ... 17:25:21
Army Sgt. 1st Class
Moses E. Armstead
, 44, of Rochester, N.Y., died at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany, on Oct. 6, of a non-combat related illness identified on Oct. 5, as he was returning from leave status and preparing to redeploy to Afghanistan.
Beatles - still with us
ap.tbo.com/ ... 19:01:33
LONDON ...Yoko Ono picked up a special trophy at the Q Awards on behalf of John Lennon... Ono said Lennon had sometimes felt insecure about his songs, asking why "they always cover Paul's songs and never mine." "I said, 'You're a good songwriter, it's not June with Spoon that you write. You're a good singer, and most musicians are probably a little bit nervous about covering your songs...'"
...awards ...sponsored by British music magazine Q...
Under Tyranny
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:56:38
gag-me-with-a-spoon headline of the day:
Fidel Castro Congratulates North Korean Leader on 60 Years of Communist Rule
["Your people are even more destitute and brainwashed than mine! Congratulations!" {thx mj}]
War of Independence still with us
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:40:25
SAVANNAH, Ga. - The Polish nobleman regarded as the father of the American cavalry finally received a hero's funeral on the 226th anniversary of the Revolutionary War battle in which he was mortally wounded. However, the mystery continues over whether the remains buried Sunday are those of Brig. Gen. Casimir Pulaski, a hero in Poland and among Polish-Americans for his sacrifice... After eight years of trying, investigators failed to extract a complete DNA sequence to compare with a living Pulaski descendant found in Poland... A regiment of Polish cavalrymen on horseback escorted the casket in a procession through the streets, followed by a riderless horse with empty boots in the stirrups... read funeral rites beneath the marble obelisk built to Pulaski in 1854, sprinkling the flag-draped casket with holy water and dirt from the gravesite... The bones had been entombed inside the marble monument in 1854 after they were discovered in an unmarked grave at the former family plantation of William P. Bowen. Bowen said his grandmother and aunt told him the grave was Pulaski's... other historical accounts.. say the general was buried at sea...
...Pulaski came to America in 1777, exiled from Poland after helping lead an uprising against Russian incursion. Recommended by George Washington, he took command of the colonial cavalry. After his legion of 600 troops helped fight off the British at Charleston, S.C., Pulaski headed to Savannah for the ill-fated battle to reclaim the captured city. He fell mortally wounded by grapeshot from a British cannon on Oct. 9, 1779.
Animal Culture
tampabays10.com/ ... 17:37:32
Miami Gardens, Florida - ...had been looking for her year-old Siamese
cat for two days when her son pointed out the bulging Burmese python
slithering in her backyard... that bulge in the 12-foot snake is probably the missing 15-pound cat.... Earlier this month, authorities say a 13-foot python burst after it apparently tried to swallow
a live, six-foot alligator whole...
Under Digital Tyranny
editorandpublisher.com/ ... 17:32:25
Bloggers would "probably not" be considered journalists under the proposed federal shield law, the bill's co-sponsor, U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.), told the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) Monday afternoon...
SUN 2005-OCT-09
Sociopath Threats
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 08:45:26
An Internet posting at an Islamic forum relayed what purports to be a command to the al-Qaida organization in America to strike nuclear power plants inside the country...
Nature is Dangerous
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:03:28
Angry villagers blocked roads in earthquake-ravaged regions of Indian-controlled Kashmir on Sunday, complaining the government was too slow in getting rescue and aid efforts to them. Hundreds were known dead... damage was severe in parts of Jammu-Kashmir. Collapsed houses and shops line the streets... Hundreds of people were injured... Mud, debris and knee-high slush from landslides blocked roads, cutting off many remote villages... Teams of doctors and Red Cross volunteers were traveling by road and on foot to remote areas in the mountains...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:01:12
More than 30,000 people have been killed in a massive earthquake that flattened dozens of villages and towns near the border between Pakistan and India... Villagers dug with their bare hands Sunday through the debris of a collapsed school, hoping to rescue children who had been heard crying beneath the rubble... Pakistan called Saturday's magnitude-7.6 earthquake the country's worst on record... "We are handling the worst disaster in Pakistan's history," chief army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said. In mountainous Kashmir, the dead included 250 girls at a school razed to the ground and more than 200 Pakistani soldiers on duty in the Himalayas. Near the ruins of one collapsed school, at least a dozen bodies were strewn on the streets and at least 250 pupils were feared trapped inside the rubble of the school...
today.reuters.co.uk/ ... 08:41:35
A
Guatemalan village buried under tons of dirt and debris may be declared a Mayan mass grave
as rescuers give up digging for the remains of
up to 1,400 people killed
in a mudslide triggered by Hurricane Stan. After days of heavy rain, mud, rocks and trees crashed down a volcano's slopes and into the Maya Indian village of Panabaj as people slept early on Wednesday, covering it in a
quagmire up to 40 feet (12 meters) deep in places...
sfgate.com/ ... 08:40:10
Villagers desperate to find survivors dug with bare hands Sunday through the debris of a collapsed school where children had been heard crying beneath the rubble after a massive earthquake
killed more than 30,000 people in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir alone...
also struck India and Afghanistan, which reported hundreds dead...
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:59:33
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A suicide bomber attacked a group of British government officials in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, ramming an explosives-laden Toyota Corolla into an armored Land Cruiser carrying the officials... Four of the officials were wounded...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 08:58:32
BASRA, Iraq - A suicide car bomb killed two people Sunday outside an apartment building used by the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade, a Shiite militia linked to one of the main parties in the Iraqi government... also injured three people... Those who escaped injury included former Basra Gov. Hassan al-Rashid, a senior local leader of the brigade who was in the building at the time of the attack...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:07:18
New York... medical examiner sought fingerprint and dental records Saturday to determine if a body recovered from a Pennsylvania landfill was a Bolivian immigrant allegedly killed by her boyfriend two weeks ago... boyfriend.. confessed to choking her to death... the slain woman's mother was headed from Bolivia to New York, where her granddaughter remained with a foster family...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:04:19
PATNA, India - A land mine exploded beneath a police vehicle in eastern India on Saturday, killing at least 15 officers... Maoist rebels were suspected... the policemen were about to raid a village where rebels were believed to be hiding...
Science Marches Onnnnnn
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:52:47
Stem cells from amniotic fluid have been used to repair windpipe defects in unborn lambs while still in the womb...
news.independent.co.uk/ ... 08:52:25
British scientists have made a breakthrough in the control of malaria: by creating
mosquitoes with fluorescent testicles...
A laser beam then singles out the glowing larvae, which are then separated from the females. "This advance could have enormous implications for controlling mosquito populations... Now that we can identify males and females at an early stage, it will be possible to release sterile males into the population without the risk of releasing additional females..."
History - still with us
news.xinhuanet.com/ ... 08:48:16
The description of the metropolis Shangdu (Xuanadu) by Marco Polo some 700 years ago has somewhat been confirmed by aerial photography, Yang Lin, director of the center of remote sensing and aerial photography of China's National Museum, told Xinhua on Saturday. "We can see the spectacular city with its scale and the densityof buildings," Yang said. The ruins have been overgrown with grass for more than 600 years... The capital Shangdu was built in 1256 under the command of Kublai Khan who was enthroned there four years later. It became a summer resort after the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) moved its capitalto present-day Beijing and was destroyed during a peasant war at the end of the dynasty. According to Marco Polo's Travel Notes, there were palaces madeof marble in the city, with the rooms gilded and painted, and the palaces were so exquisite that people derived both visual and mental satisfaction...
Because It's There
kantipuronline.com/ ... 08:43:40
Chinese government announced Sunday that the summit rock of Mount Everest is 8,844.43 meters above sea level. The newly measured height is 3.7 meters shorter than the measurements of 8,848.13 meters; a figure obtained during the previous measurement in 1975...
Transport Future
sfgate.com/ ... 08:42:38
Stanford engineers steered the world toward a new era of driverless vehicles Saturday when their
robotic Volkswagen SUV was the first to cross the finish line after a 132-mile race across the Nevada desert.
The Stanford car, nicknamed Stanley, unofficially edged out two robotic Hummers from Carnegie Mellon University. The three vehicles were competitors in a race sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA, which backed the early research behind the Internet, drummed up interest in the race by offering $2 million to the first team to complete the course in less than 10 hours...
US Military
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:05:21
RENO, Nev. - Military investigators have determined
that a helicopter crash that killed five Army National Guardsmen in Afghanistan last month was the result of hostile fire, not an accident.
...
World Without Borders
kvoa.com/ ... 08:56:27
Yuma County sheriff's deputies will now be patrolling the Arizona-Mexico border in a surplus British military armored personnel carrier. The $18,000, nine-ton, six-wheeled vehicle is needed because of increased attacks against deputies and U.S. Border Patrol agents by drug and migrant smugglers, sheriff's and patrol officials said...
Disinformation Propaganda & Spin
news.telegraph.co.uk/ ... 08:55:57
Help! Mom! There are Liberals Under My Bed!..
Two young brothers who try to make money from a lemonade stall... including "Congresswoman Clunkton" who tells the boys to reduce the amount of sugar in their lemonade and forces them to add a sprig of healthy broccoli to every glass... "Mayor Leach" who takes half the profits for tax and then squanders it on dustpans... the boys are ordered to take down a picture of Jesus by the civil liberties lawyer Mr Fussman and eventually lose the stand when it is taken over by the government of "Liberaland", at which point it goes broke...
Internet Threat
today.reuters.co.uk/ ... 08:53:18
Traffic resumed between two feuding Internet access providers on Friday, mending a rift that had blocked off portions of the Internet for thousands of users over the past two days...
Preternatural Patterns
southflorida.com/ ... 08:50:53
MEDFORD, Ore... A registered sex offender who fashioned a loin cloth from a rope and... a strip of leopard-print vinyl peeled from the seat of a lawn chair... was arrested near a high school, where he asked four girls for a ride to the mall or a motel... appeared to be covered in feces...
Transport Trouble
ap.tbo.com/ ... 00:06:00
An airliner en route from New York City to Miami made a precautionary landing at Washington Dulles International Airport on Saturday night after smoke was reported aboard...
SAT 2005-OCT-08
Sociopath Threats
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:44:11
Details emerged about an alleged plot to attack the city's subways with bombs hidden in bags and possibly baby strollers as local and federal officials jostled over the credibility of the threat... the attack was reportedly scheduled to take place on or around Sunday, with terrorists using timed or remote-controlled explosives hidden in briefcases, suitcases or in or under strollers... In Iraq, authorities detained a third suspect in the plot and investigated whether a fourth had traveled to New York as part of the scheme, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the case... authorities had not confirmed whether the fourth man even exists... Those arrested had received explosives training in Afghanistan [and] had planned to travel through Syria to New York...
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:38:55
NEW YORK ...9-year-old girl... Shanice... pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter Friday, admitting she... admitted she stabbed... 11-year-old playmate... Queen... once in the chest at a Memorial Day gathering in Brooklyn... fatally... after a tug-of-war over a rubber ball went sour... Judge.. ordered.. Shanice remain in a non-secure setting pending sentencing [and] ordered an investigation into the child's background.... Police.. could not recall a younger suspect being arrested for a killing in the city...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:29:37
TAMPA, Fla. -
Police officers shot and killed a man and the woman he was holding hostage
after he fired a shotgun at them... "He has the woman in a headlock with the gun pointed at her head... He spots an officer to his right, levels the shotgun at the officer and fires at the officer..." Tampa Police Chief Stephen Hogue said
officers typically don't shoot at suspects holding hostages...
"It developed very quickly, and the suspect forced the issue by coming out of the room with the hostage and shooting at police...." The SWAT team and a hostage negotiator had been called but hadn't arrived yet.... shootings came soon after [he] had held another woman, his girlfriend, hostage at her condominium for more than seven hours... She broke away and called police, but [he] fled before officers arrived. The girlfriend told police
he had used crack cocaine throughout the night...
still trying to determine how Brewer knew the woman who died. The first gunshots inside the motel room hit a
dog, which was wounded.
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:24:41
Five farm workers... arrested Thursday... beat a German woman [38] to death and hid her body on her ranch in a mountain city near Rio de Janeiro... The farm workers claimed they were mistreated and threatened by [her. She] had a history of violent behavior... was charged three times for shooting at hikers and killing a neighbor's cow that was on her property...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:20:52
Gunmen opened fired on the motorcade of a Jamaican member of parliament, killing her motorcycle escort as they drove through one of the Caribbean's most violent cities... Olivia Grange, parliamentarian for the opposition Labor Party... represents Spanish Town several miles west of Kingston... For three years, Spanish Town was the scene of battles between two politically aligned gangs, the Clansman, which supports the governing party, and One Order, which supports the opposition. Jamaica is struggling with its worst violent crime wave on record. More than 1,250 people have been killed this year on the Caribbean island of 2.6 million, compared to 1,467 in 2004. Police blame the violence on well-armed street gangs vying for control of lucrative drug and extortion rings...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:14:07
PHILADELPHIA - A man shot and killed two women at two different strip malls on Friday and then turned the gun on himself... officer witnessed the man shoot a woman inside a car at the first strip mall around 10 a.m... followed the man to another shopping center, where he shot another bystander... an on-duty officer shot the suspect, who then killed himself...
Nature is Dangerous
abcnews.go.com/ ... 23:57:17
Rescuers choking on the smell of death dug for bodies in a black grunge of mud, rock and trees on Saturday where a Guatemalan village had stood until Hurricane Stan spawned a mudslide that killed up to 1,400 people...
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:56:20
Pakistan says
more than 18,000 have been killed by Saturday's powerful earthquake
that also hit northern India and Afghanistan. The 7.6-magnitude quake, with an epicentre 80km (50 miles) north-east of Islamabad, flattened entire villages. Another 40,000 people are believed to be injured...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:49:00
Village after village was reduced to rubble, and landslides flattened an apartment building after an earthquake shook the Pakistan-India border Saturday.
Nearly 1,700 were killed
in both nations
[nature knows nothing of political borders]
...
hindu.com/ ... 10:53:47
A powerful 7.6-magnitude earthquake reduced villages to rubble in Pakistan and India on Saturday, killing as many as 1,000 people. Pakistan's army described the damage as widespread and said it included villages buried by quake-induced landslides. At least 500 people died and 1,700 were injured in four quake-hit districts in northwestern Pakistan...
Extraterrestrial
olympics.reuters.com/ ... 23:57:44
A European satellite designed to measure how fast the polar ice caps are melting crashed into the Arctic Ocean after its launch went wrong, the Russian agency that launched it was quoted as saying on Saturday...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:00:04
Marine Cpl.
Nicholas O. Cherava
, 21, of Ontonagon, Mich.
Marine Pfc.
Jason L. Frye
, 19, of Landisburg, Pa.
died Oct. 6 from an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations against enemy forces near Al Karmah, Iraq.
defenselink.mil/ ... 23:59:29
Marine Lance Cpl.
Shayne M. Cabino
, 19, of Canton, Mass., died Oct. 6 from an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations against enemy forces near Al Karmah, Iraq.
defenselink.mil/ ... 11:54:05
Marine Lance Cpl.
Patrick B. Kenny
, 20, of Pittsburgh, Pa., died Oct. 6 from an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations against enemy forces near Al Karmah, Iraq.
Marine Lance Cpl.
Daniel M. McVicker
, 20, of Alliance, Ohio, died Oct. 6 from an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations against enemy forces near Al Qaim, Iraq.
defenselink.mil/ ... 11:53:24
Army Spc.
Jeremiah W. Robinson
, 20, of Mesa, Ariz., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Oct. 6, of injuries sustained there on Oct. 5, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during convoy operations. Robinson was assigned to the Army National Guard.
Whoops!
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:47:58
Russian and European teams searched for an experimental mini-spacecraft on the eastern peninsula of Kamchatka on Saturday, a day after the prototype was test-launched from a nuclear submarine thousands of miles away... was reported to have descended toward its target on time... engineers had no communication with the craft and had to call off the search at nightfall...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:45:49
...The script called for the governor to say: "It's time to drop the puck. So everybody say it with me - 'Let's play hockey!'" It was the governor's tripping over the word "puck" that provoked the snickers. Instead of telling people to drop the puck, he used a very similar-sounding word... "It was an unfortunate slip of the tongue, and I am sorry for that. I tried my best to say it as they wanted me to say it, and it just came out..."
World Without Borders
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:41:19
MARSHALL, Mo. - ...everyone in this central Missouri town seemed to know Manuel "Paco" Lopez.. devoted father and civic volunteer... translator at the local hospital, schools, crime scenes and anywhere else people asked. So when police asked for help interrogating a Spanish-speaking murder suspect, he dutifully agreed - even though it meant revealing he was actually an illegal immigrant named Francisco Xavier Inzunza... immigration officers made the 43-year-old an offer: work as a confidential informant for the federal immigration agency in exchange for an annual work permit. But his informant career was a spectacular flop. Drug dealers and fake identification peddlers didn't want much to do with a church leader and school volunteer. Soon after the murder suspect's conviction in 2002, Inzunza was informed he faced deportation from the place he has called home for a dozen years. The Marshall mayor, police chief, school superintendent - even the prosecutor who Inzunza helped - pledged to support a man who for years hid his true identity...
Science and Justice
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:52:51
Dead Lab Worker's Records Mean Freedom to Convicts... RICHMOND, Va. ...The forensic scientist cut off the tip of a cotton swab and taped it to a lab sheet next to a snippet of stained clothing.
Always save a piece of what you test
, Mary Jane Burton instructed her watchful trainee.
But why? This was 1977, years before the invention of DNA testing. Yet day after day, she repeated this seemingly pointless procedure
under the glow of the cramped laboratory's fluorescent lights - taping swabs smeared with blood, semen and saliva and inserting them into their case files...
Rebuilding
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:47:09
CHAGCHARAN, Afghanistan ...NATO's top brass flew into this regional capital this week to evaluate the expansion into the most dangerous parts of a land that refused to be pacified by Moscow's troops in the 1980s. Under plans up for approval by the 26 allies in November, the NATO mission could almost double in size over the next year to as many to 17,000 troops... The changes appear set to make NATO the predominant security force in Afghanistan...
Fire can be friend or foe
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:36:24
Fire destroyed a [Lawrence] Kansas apartment building Friday, sending 19 people to the hospital and forcing some tenants to jump to safety from the second and third floors... Three people were missing after the blaze at the Boardwalk Apartments... destroyed 75 apartments... Many of the residents were University of Kansas students...
...two North Carolina State University students died Friday in a fire near campus... among eight members of Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity who shared the duplex....
[Causes not determined in either instance]
Sex can be Dangerous
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:22:15
The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday ousted a county judge for viewing Internet pornography on his office computer... Saline County District Judge.. 56, had been on the bench for 10 years...
Digital Threats
blogs.washingtonpost.com/ ... 11:15:28
...first virus discovered for Sony's PlayStation Portable. "Trojan.PSPBrick," Symantec says, is a low-level threat (only 1 on its 1-to-5 scale) that has not been confirmed to have infected any of these handheld video-game machines... by default, PSPs can't even play any software beyond Sony-authorized releases... you'd have to hack your PSP to allow this trojan to get on board. ...apparently presents itself as a PSP-hacking tool that will let users/victims play other games. Instead, it "deletes system files and renders the machine inoperable..."
FRI 2005-OCT-07
Sick, Sick, Sick
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:32:51
Police in Shanghai were looking for a taxi driver who ordered a pregnant woman going into early labor out of his cab... The woman, seven months pregnant, suffered a miscarriage and lost her child after she was forced to take a motorcycle part of the way to the hospital... had hailed the cab with her sister-in-law and was on the way to the hospital on Thursday when the driver suddenly ordered the pair out, saying he couldn't find the hospital...
Transport Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:44:38
VERNON, Calif. - A speeding tow truck lurched onto a sidewalk where a crowd was waiting for a bus, killing three people and injuring eight... flung people into the air, scraped the side of a bus and hit two power poles before coming to a stop... Moments before, the tow truck driver had been involved in a hit-and-run accident in which nobody was injured... knocked out electricity in parts of this largely industrial city on the southeast edge of downtown Los Angeles...
breitbart.com/ ... 01:37:38
A cargo plane carrying small amounts of flu virus crashed on railway tracks near Winnipeg's city center Thursday, killing the pilot but missing buildings and vehicles, authorities said. The research samples of frozen influenza and herpes viruses were destroyed in the crash and ensuing fire along with other freight...
Sociopath Threats
breitbart.com/ ... 12:07:50
...A discarded soda bottle filled with an unidentified green liquid was found at the station during morning rush hour, Amtrak officials said. The substance did not pose a threat to passengers and was removed for testing. A majority of the station was reopened by about 10:45 a.m., more than an hour after it was closed...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:58:08
Authorities closed part of Penn Station on Friday... after a newly disclosed terror threat against the New York subway system. Workers in hazardous material suits, National Guardsmen and police with dogs were at the transportation hub beneath Madison Square Garden by late morning. "We do have a police situation at Penn Station," said Amtrak spokeswoman Marice Golgoski, who declined to elaborate. "The Amtrak police and the NYPD are involved..."
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:39:48
A newly disclosed terror threat against the New York subway has raised the specter of an attack with explosives concealed in a baby stroller and prompted an underground show of force by the nation's largest police department... Homeland Security officials in Washington downplayed the threat, saying it's of "doubtful credibility..."
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:13:41
New York City officials stepped up security after receiving a credible threat against the city's mass transit system...
An estimated 4.5 million passengers ride the New York subway on an average weekday. The system has more than 468 subway stations...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:08:31
President Bush referred in speech Thursday to 10 al-Qaida plots foiled by the U.S. and its allies in the past four years... - mid-2002... targets on the West Coast of the United States using hijacked airplanes... - mid-2003... targets on the East Coast of the United States using hijacked commercial airplanes... - May 2002... blowing up apartment buildings in the United States... [with] possibility of using a "dirty bomb..." - mid-2004... using explosives against a variety of urban targets in the United Kingdom... - spring of 2003... attack Westerners at several targets in Karachi, Pakistan. - 2003... attack Heathrow Airport using hijacked commercial airliners. - spring of 2004... to conduct large-scale bombings in the U.K. - late 2002 and 2003... attack ships in the Arabian Gulf. - 2002... attack ships transiting the Straits of Hormuz. - 2003... attack a tourist site outside the United States. The White House also listed what it call five "casings and infiltrations" [of]... important U.S. government and tourist targets within the United States... U.S. gas stations and their support mechanisms... exploring the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York... [a facilitator of] post-Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S.... conduct[ing] reconnaissance on populated areas in the U.S...
Nature is Dangerous
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:29:01
Rescuers were digging through the mud Friday to find victims from a landslide that struck a rural village in northwest Colombia, killing nine people, leaving 40 missing and destroying 11 homes...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:52:48
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. - Rain apparently had unleashed a slide that sent the boulder bouncing down the mountainside, glancing off tree branches and then ...the
boulder.. crashed through one wall of her second-story apartment and out another
landed on the lawn outside, leaving a trail of debris... might have struck her if she'd been in her usual spot watching "Oprah..."
[Quote of the day:]
"We're like, 'Oh my God, what is that?'"
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:01:51
Rescue workers in Guatemala pulled at least 40 bodies from a massive mudslide and found 20 more dead in a swollen river Thursday, officials said, raising to at least 231 the number of people killed from five days of pounding rains in Central America and Mexico...
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:57:04
Bomb blasts killed six Marines in western Iraq, and U.S. forces killed 29 militants in U.S. offensives... In southern Iraq, British troops detained 12 militiamen loyal to a radical Shiite cleric in the city of Basra, accusing them of carrying out recent attacks on British and U.S. troops... On Thursday, warplanes dropped four precision-guided bombs on an abandoned three-story hotel seized by militants in the town of Karabilah, near the Syrian border... Twenty militants were killed... Seven more insurgents were killed when planes destroyed three buildings from which gunmen were firing on Marines, and two gunmen were killed in fighting in Karabilah...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:35:23
Assailants with assault rifles attacked a mosque belonging to a small Muslim sect in eastern Pakistan early Friday, killing at least eight people and wounding 19... mosque belonging to Ahmadiyya sect... in the village of Mong, about 240 miles northeast of Multan, a main city in the eastern Punjab province... ...An estimated 150 of the 18,000 people in Mong belong to the Ahmadiyya sect. The sect was founded in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, a 19th century Indian religious leader who claimed to be a prophet seeking Islam's renewal. The religious group
differs with other mainstream Muslim groups over the definition of Islam's founder Mohammad being the "final" prophet
. Ahmadiyas have been persecuted and ostracized in many countries, including mainly Sunni Muslim Pakistan, where a law dating to the 1970s forbids them to call themselves Muslim...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:20:43
NORMAN, Okla. - A University of Oklahoma student
tried to buy fertilizer of the type used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing two days before
he committed suicide using explosives outside a packed football stadium... the attempted purchase raised the suspicions of an off-duty officer who happened to be in the feed store at the time. But though an investigation was begun, authorities were not able to act swiftly enough to stop the student from taking his own life...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:14:31
BELLEVILLE, Ill. - A man was arrested Thursday in the slayings of his former girlfriend, her infant and two acquaintances in a suburban St. Louis apartment...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:00:25
OLYMPIA, Wash. - A 10-mile freeway chase ended early Wednesday when the man pursued by police killed himself... began sometime after 3:30 a.m... suspected of driving drunk... spike strip.. flattened his tires... crashed into a concrete barrier... After the crash.. man appeared agitated and took pictures of officers with his cell phone... then dialed 911 and asked.. officers back off for a minute... five minutes later... officer moved to open the car door... The man drew a gun and shot himself in the head... "That bullet almost hit one of the officers..."
Only Natural
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:48:35
MILTON, W.Va. - It took five men and a forklift to get Ron and Sue Boor's prize pumpkin onto the scale at the West Virginia Pumpkin Festival... 1,085 pounds...
Lasting Contributions
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:43:44
Jerry Juhl
, who was the head writer for "The Muppet Show" before he co-created "Fraggle Rock," has died. He was 67. Juhl... became the first full-time employee of Jim Henson Co. in 1961 after meeting Henson at a puppeteer's convention. Juhl worked on Henson's first television show, "Sam and Friends" as a puppeteer and later spent six years writing for "Sesame Street" after its 1969 premiere... received two Emmy Awards for his work... --
Harold Leventhal
, a folk music promoter who worked with Woody Guthrie... had died. He was 86... From the 1950s to the end of the 20th century, Leventhal was a champion of folk music who introduced audiences to both foreign and American artists. Leventhal presented a 21-year-old Bob Dylan at Town Hall in New York on April 12, 1963. He also was the longtime producer of the Thanksgiving folk concert at Carnegie Hall, which featured Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger... won a Grammy in 1989 as a producer for the album "Folkways: A Vision Shared - A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly." He also produced several movies about the folk music world, including "Alice's Restaurant" in 1969; a 1976 biography of Woody Guthrie called "Bound for Glory"; and "Wasn't That a Time!" in 1982...
Science Marches Onnnnnn
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:11:36
This year's other Ig Nobel winners include...
MEDICINE: prosthetic testicles for neutered dogs...
PHYSICS: researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia... tracking a glob of congealed black tar as it drips through a funnel - at a rate of one drop every nine years...
PEACE: Two researchers at Newcastle University in England monitored the brain activity of locusts as they watched clips from the movie "Star Wars."
CHEMISTRY: An experiment at the University of Minnesota was designed to prove whether people can swim faster or slower in syrup than in water.
LITERATURE: to the Nigerians who introduced millions of e-mail users to a "cast of rich characters ... each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled."
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:56:35
Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class
Brian K. Joplin
, 32, of Hugo, Okla., was killed Oct. 4, when he fell out of a U.S. Navy MH-53 helicopter during a regularly scheduled training mission in the Central Arabian Gulf. Joplin was assigned to Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 15.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:53:58
Army Sgt.
Bryan W. Large
, 31, of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
Army Spc.
Jacob T. Vanderbosch
, 21, of Vadnais Heights, Minn.
Army Pfc.
Roberto C. Baez
, 19, of Tampa, Fla.
died in Al Haqlaniyah, Iraq, on Oct. 3, when an improvised explosive device detonated near their HMMWV during combat operations.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:53:06
Army Staff Sgt.
Jens E. Schelbert
, 31, of New Orleans, La., died in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, on Oct. 1, when his forward operating base was attacked by enemy forces using indirect fire.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:52:42
Army Sgt.
Larry W. Pankey Jr.
, 34, of Morrison, Colo., died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 3, of non-combat related injuries sustained in Balad, Iraq, on Sept. 23. Pankey was assigned to the Army Reserve's 467th Engineer Battalion.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:52:08
Army Spc.
Joshua J. Kynoch
, 23, of Santa Rosa, Calif., died in Bayji, Iraq, on Oct. 1, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his M2A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle during convoy operations.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:51:41
Marine Pfc.
Andrew D. Bedard
, 19, of Missoula, Mont., died Oct. 4 from an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Ar Ramadi, Iraq.
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:50:17
Army Staff Sgt.
Sean B. Berry
, 26, of Mansfield, Texas, died in Taqaddum, Iraq, on Oct. 3 of non-combat related injuries.
US Military
defenselink.mil/ ... 00:49:25
This week, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard announced a decrease in the number of reservists on active duty in support of the partial mobilization. The net collective result is
5,794 fewer reservists mobilized than last week.
Broadcast is Dead
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:08:21
Veteran UK broadcaster Sir David Frost is to join Arabic-language TV station al-Jazeera, the network has confirmed...
Sex -- always attractive
ap.tbo.com/ ... 11:28:12
Developers announced plans Friday to open a multimillion dollar sexual "theme park" near London's Piccadilly Circus... the London Academy of Sex and Relationships, due to open next spring, will not be a sleazy sex museum, but an educational multimedia attraction that will teach visitors to become better lovers and provide valuable information about disease and sexual problems...
Billions and Billions...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:32:01
The Senate voted Friday to give President Bush
$50 billion more for the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan and U.S. military efforts against terrorism, money that would push total spending for the operations beyond $350 billion.
[Senate:]
97-0 vote
... would also put restrictions on the treatment of detainees who are suspected terrorists - a provision that has drawn a White House veto threat... $50 billion should last through the first half of the year...
Rebuilding
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:54:44
YATTA, West Bank - Palestinian police went door-to-door early Friday in this West Bank town and arrested 30 suspected criminals in a crackdown aimed at restoring law and order in the chaotic territories... a previously unknown group said it had kidnapped three leaders of the Islamic group Hamas in three West Bank towns... accused Hamas of putting itself above the law... More than 200 policemen participated in Friday's raid in Yatta, searching for drug and arms dealers and other wanted criminals... Villagers said they could not recall such a heavy crackdown by Palestinian police...
Viet Nam War - still with us
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:39:08
...It's called an I-94, the government form that proves they came here legally and the ticket to obtaining a green card next year. It's also the first document they've had in 16 years proving they belong anywhere at all. The Nguyens are among 229 refugees from Vietnam who have landed in the United States after a journey that began when they fled the communist nation by boat in 1989... Due to a quirk of timing, their journey would require years in a refugee camp in the Philippines... arrived three months too late. In March 1989, 14 years after communists completed their takeover of Vietnam, the United Nations stopped recognizing Vietnamese as political refugees, saying most were leaving Vietnam for economic reasons... "For so many years we tried to get out, it's hard to believe we are here," the 44-year-old Nguyen said last week, just days after arriving at Los Angeles International Airport with his wife and teenage daughter... In 1996, after the United Nations cut funding for Vietnamese camps throughout Asia, some countries began forcible repatriation back to Vietnam, a policy greeted by hunger strikes and rioting. In the Philippines, then-President Fidel Ramos let the Vietnamese stay under the supervision of the Roman Catholic Church, but they were not given residency status or legal rights... Some Western-educated Vietnamese lawyers took up their cases and lobbied the governments of their adopted countries...
Opposing Digital Tyranny
technology.guardian.co.uk/ ... 01:48:11
After troubled negotiations in Geneva, the US may be forced to relinquish control of the internet to a coalition of governments...
breitbart.com/ ... 01:42:32
...the Delaware Supreme Court on Wednesday reversed a lower court decision requiring an Internet service provider to disclose the identity of an anonymous blogger who targeted a local elected official...
Under Tyranny
timesonline.co.uk/ ... 01:38:13
A VISION of an Islamic society that bans mixed dancing and sternly disapproves of homosexuality has been given by Mahmoud Zahar, the most senior leader of Hamas in Gaza. After controversies when a Hamas-led council halted a dance festival and Islamist gunmen stopped a rap band performing in Gaza, Dr Zahar defended the enforcement of a strict interpretation of Islam...
Opposing Tyranny
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 01:35:12
Charlie Cole describes how he captured the dramatic 1989 photo of a protester confronting a line of People's Liberation Army tanks in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, during demonstrations for democratic reform...
Disinformation Propaganda & Spin
breitbart.com/ ... 01:44:26
A woman was booted off a Southwest Airlines flight for wearing a T- shirt that bore an expletive and images of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice... said she plans to press a civil- rights complaint... several passengers complained... "Here we are trying to free another country and I have to get off an airplane ... over a T-shirt. That's not freedom..."
[get a CLUE!]
drudgereport.com/ ... 01:39:39
Louis Freeh Speaks for the First Time About his Terrible Relationship with President Clinton... "The problem was with Bill Clinton -- the scandals and the rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended. Whatever moral compass the president was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction. His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out..."
news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 01:28:42
The White House has dismissed as "absurd" allegations made in a BBC TV series that President Bush claimed God told him to invade Iraq. "He's never made such comments," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. The comments were attributed to Mr Bush by the Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath in the upcoming TV series Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs...
Modern Family Life
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:18:32
A woman who gave birth to triplets using donated eggs is the legal mother of the children even though she has no genetic link to them, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled Thursday...
Industrial Incident
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:17:51
POINT COMFORT, Texas - At least eight people were injured Thursday.. at least one [seriously]... in a series of explosions and a fire at a plastics plant in southern Texas... many of the town's nearly 1,000 residents had evacuated voluntarily... appeared no toxic materials had been released into the air...
Oh! The Irony!
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:15:44
The Rolling Stones' concert
at the University of Virginia was interrupted Thursday night while several police officers and three
bomb-sniffing dogs searched the stage
. The show resumed after about a half-hour intermission... about the first 20 rows of spectators were cleared until police finished their work. The Rolling Stones are touring North America to promote their latest album,
"A Bigger Bang."
CD/DVD/etc is Dead
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:01:11
Movie-rental giant Blockbuster Inc. said Thursday that its online service won't add new customers as quickly as expected and that same-store rental revenues fell in the third quarter but not as badly as at other stores. Blockbuster said it still expects to reach 2 million customers for its online DVD rental service next year, but not in the first quarter as company officials had forecast...
WED 2005-OCT-05
Scary Times
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:40:15
Entrances to the White House from Pennsylvania Avenue.. were briefly closed on Wednesday.. workers.. told to remain in the building... lasted about 20 minutes.. prompted by discovery of a suspicious package...
Hurricanes Aftermath
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:39:08
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said the city is now forced to lay off half its workforce because of financial troubles thanks to Hurricane Katrina...
[insult to injury]
columbiatribune.com/ ... 01:44:55
Tale of the forbidden pillow offers insights into FEMA work... many of the firefighters who were sent to the Gulf Coast.. never got an opportunity to do [their] job... One of them, a Missouri firefighter who used to ply his trade in Boone County, kept his wife informed of his exploits, and she kept a diary...
sptimes.com/ ... 01:40:20
MADEIRA BEACH, Fla--...opened her mother's mail last week to find two checks worth nearly $6,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency... [But they] haven't housed any evacuees. "I was shocked when they came, and certainly I never considered cashing them... The way it was written out, I could have cashed it!.."
Sociopath Threats
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:42:28
A detained Taliban spokesman has told his interrogators that the militia's fugitive chief, Mullah Mohammed Omar, is hiding in Afghanistan and is in contact with top commanders.
washingtonpost.com/ ... 00:04:38
Pakistan said Tuesday that it had captured a spokesman for the Taliban who has often asserted responsibility for attacks on behalf of the militia. Abdul Latif Hakimi was caught in the southwestern province of Baluchistan after using a local cell phone...
World Zookeeping
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:34:03
FEDERAL WAY, Wash. - Two high school boys swallowed goldfish at a school assembly and were punished with a stern talking-to. Animal rights activists say that's not enough...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:32:45
...Ai Ai, began scavenging cigarette butts left by visitors at the Qinling Safari Park in the late 1980's after her first mate, Jian Jian, died... Zookeepers eventually began giving Ai Ai cigarettes of her own and lighting them... She was smoking between eight and 10 cigarettes a day before zookeepers decided in August to help her kick the habit....
Extraterrestrial
local6.com/ ... 01:36:22
Workers may have accidentally cut or crushed the section of foam that broke off Discovery's fuel tank during its launch two months ago -- a mishap that threatened the safety of the astronauts and grounded the shuttle fleet. That is the leading theory for the cause behind the disturbing loss of foam insulation...
Only Natural
egyptelection.com/ ... 01:25:40
An antioxidant found in green tea may protect the brain and fight the memory-robbing effects seen with plaque deposits in Alzheimer's disease...
Supernatural
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:35:21
RIPON, Calif. - A self-proclaimed psychic will be allowed to give a speech at a community library after agreeing not to take "psychic questions" from the audience... A library flier that claimed [she] would "communicate with the dead" also will be reworked...
Transport Trouble
honoluluadvertiser.com/ ... 01:47:42
Hawaii... Under state law, parking tickets are attached to the motor vehicle, not the registered owner, so the unpaid fines must be dealt with before the car registration can be renewed...
Theory of Education
local6.com/ ... 01:42:25
A substitute teacher in Lake County, Fla., was terminated and banned from teaching in the county after he ripped out a student's insulin pump during class apparently thinking it was a ringing cell phone... Witnesses said... teacher.. asked the student what the beeping was... then grabbed the device, thinking it was a cell phone beeping and detached the tube that connects the insulin pump to the student's leg. The student went to the school's clinic and had the tube reinserted...
World Without Borders
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 01:02:52
[
rrrrr...]
Angered lawmakers in Taiwan are protesting Google's listing of the island nation as a "province of China" on its online map service...
Nature is Dangerous
news.scotsman.com/ ... 00:07:41
AN AMERICAN surgeon said yesterday that he would attempt to separate two Indian sisters joined at the head, if their parents agree. Benjamin Carson, of Johns Hopkins Children's Centre in Baltimore, said the separation was possible using an untried procedure in which cerebral fluid would be utilised to erode the girls' brains over several months to create a separation... While the girls' brains are joined, between the join there is a microscopic channel running vertically. The brain sits in a sac of cerebral fluid which pulses in tune with the heart. The surgeon's plan is to pull the brains apart just enough to create a wider channel and allow the cerebral fluid to penetrate the channel...
[age not mentioned, but]
"The girls sometimes have different opinions about things. Their solution is never to do anything unless they both agree to it. There are never any fights...."
TUE 2005-OCT-04
Hurricanes Aftermath
nola.com/ ... 22:52:29
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was accused of mismanagement, fraud and wasting money after last year's four hurricanes, has
asked more than 7,600 Floridians to return $30.3 million in emergency hurricane aid...
[Oh, yeah, here, I kept it all in a jar...]
Transport Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:43:37
AYACUCHO, Peru - At least 13 people, including five children, where killed when the truck they were riding on plunged 200 meters (660 feet) into a mountain gorge...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:41:37
GUADALAJARA, Mexico - A small plane operated by a military air school crashed near the western city of Guadalajara on Tuesday, killing the two Air Force cadets aboard the craft.,,
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:38:56
HAQLANIYAH, Iraq - Some 2,500 U.S. troops along with Iraqi forces launched their second major offensive in western Iraq in a week Tuesday, sweeping into three towns to take them back from insurgents who had killed Marines there last month....
Digital Future is Now
contactmusic.com/ ... 22:55:18
Blind soul legend
STEVIE WONDER could get his sight back
- thanks to new microchip technology. The 55-year-old singer has been blind since infancy, but is in negotiations to become a guinea-pig for pioneering sight surgery...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:37:18
Army Sgt.
Marshall A. Westbrook
, 43, of Farmington, N.M., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Oct. 1, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV. Westbrook was assigned to the Army National Guard.
defenselink.mil/ ... 22:36:31
Marine Cpl.
John R. Stalvey
, 22, of Conroe, Texas, died Oct. 3 from an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations against enemy forces during Operation Iron Fist in Karabilah, Iraq.
Digital Threats
nytimes.com/ ... 22:54:21
Malicious hackers could take down cellular networks in large cities
by inundating their popular text-messaging services with the equivalent of spam, said computer security researchers, who will announce the findings of their research today. Such an attack is possible, the researchers say, because cellphone companies provide the text-messaging service to their networks in a way that could allow an attacker who jams the message system to disable the voice network as well...
Under Digital Tyranny
csmonitor.com/ ... 22:53:14
Italy... An antiterror law
makes Internet cafe managers check their clients' IDs and track the websites they visit...
US Judicial Branch
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:57:24
A federal judge on Tuesday struck down part of a California law that restricts banks from selling consumers' private information to their affiliates, ruling that the state law is pre-empted by federal rules....
news.yahoo.com/ ... 22:56:13
William Kristol... I'm depressed. Roberts for O'Connor was an unambiguous improvement. Roberts for Rehnquist was an appropriate replacement. But moving Roberts over to the Rehnquist seat meant everything rode on this nomination--and that the president had to be ready to fight on constitutional grounds for a strong nominee. Apparently, he wasn't. It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy. Miers is undoubtedly a decent and competent person. But her selection will unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president...
townhall.com/ ... 22:51:36
Miers is the wrong pick, by George Will... First, it is not important that she be confirmed. Second, it might be very important that she not be. Third, the presumption -- perhaps rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting -- should be that her nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion to which senatorial deference is due...
the president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution...
Industrial Incident
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:42:51
MARION, Ind. - Construction workers mistakenly cut a live wire at a former television picture-tube plant, sparking an explosion Tuesday that critically burned a worker and injured four others...
Feeding Ourselves
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:42:18
FOOD RECALL -About 180 bags of cornmeal mix, sold by The White Lily Foods Co., because the cornmeal contains undeclared wheat flour, which can cause a severe reaction in those allergic to it....
Modern Family Life
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:41:23
HYDERABAD, India - A man who kept the embalmed body of his mother at home in a glass casket for 21 years was buried along with her after his death...
Nature is Dangerous
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:43:14
Hurricane Stan slammed into Mexico's Gulf coast before quickly weakening to a tropical storm Tuesday, forcing authorities to close one of the nation's busiest ports and unleashing rains in Central America and Mexico that have killed at least 59 people....
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:40:52
If a category 4 hurricane did hit New York City... - The East and Hudson rivers flooding across lower Manhattan, submerging the island from its southern tip to Canal Street. - More than 3 million people requiring evacuation; an additional 800,000 requiring shelter. - The Rockaways in Queens, Coney Island in Brooklyn, and the Staten Island coastline all hit with extreme flooding. - Widespread power outages. (A 1938 hurricane knocked out electricity to Manhattan above 59th Street and all of the Bronx)...
Why People Go Vegan
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:40:06
FACE-OFF: Meat Man and the Vegetarian - a Clash of the Gullets Contestant No. 1 favors ribeye steaks and pork loins, bacon rinds and deep-fried chicken skin. Contestant No. 2 is the author of a vegan cookbook. They've been taking good-natured culinary snipes at each other for years. One night, they went out to eat. The next day, they went out to eat again. This is their story....
Under Tyranny
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:45:17
KABUL, Afghanistan - The editor of an Afghan women's rights magazine was jailed after a presidential adviser accused him of publishing un-Islamic material - including an article critical of the practice of punishing adultery with 100 lashes... and another in the monthly Haqooq-i-Zan - or Women's Rights - that argued that giving up Islam was not a crime,..
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:38:31
ALMATY, Kazakhstan - Police raided the office of a pro-democracy youth movement Tuesday, and the group said it was an attempt to intimidate opponents ahead of December presidential elections...
Reasons for Repeal
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:37:56
A federal police officer was killed and another wounded in a Tijuana shopping mall, in an attack that investigators say could be connected with a major marijuana bust...
MON 2005-OCT-03
Mass Madness
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:43:32
...Concertgoers trying to enter a stadium Monday evening sparked a stampede, killing at least 11 people and injuring 50 others... in the city of Sangju, 165 miles southeast of Seoul... victims identified so far ranged from a 7-year-old boy to a 72-year-old woman...
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:24:54
The father of a University of Oklahoma student who committed suicide outside a packed football stadium using explosives said Monday his son didn't intend to harm anyone else or push a political agenda... said his son did not leave a suicide note and that FBI agents told him hydrogen peroxide was used to construct the bomb...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:49:00
Bombs exploded almost simultaneously Monday at three court buildings in Bangladeshi towns, killing two people... suspicion quickly fell on communist radicals and Islamic militants, each fighting separately to overthrow the government...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:46:42
The U.S. launched airstrikes Monday in a town on the Euphrates River in western Iraq, part of a three-day offensive against insurgents that has killed at least 36 militants since the fighting began... No serious U.S. casualties have been reported in the "Iron Fist" offensive... In Baghdad, Iraq's oil minister narrowly survived an assassination attempt Monday when a roadside bomb blasted his seven-car convoy, killing three of his escorts... A U.S. soldier died Saturday of wounds suffered after being hit by indirect fire in Ramadi... Roadside bombs and fighting between insurgents and Iraqi forces wounded at least seven Iraqis in Ramadi... Insurgents in black hoods were seen carrying machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in the streets... Mosul.. drive-by shooting killed Nafi'a Aziz, a female member of Ninevah's provincial council, and her son...
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 10:38:30
Local and federal agents were carting away what was described as a huge cache of explosives from the apartment of the 21-year-old student who blew himself up outside the stadium where 84,000 watched a Sooners football game. Joel Henry Hinrichs III, 21, a junior from Colorado Springs, Colo., died in the explosion...
web.israelinsider.com/ ... 10:35:32
Palestinian police and Hamas militants waged gunbattles across Gaza City on Sunday night that killed three people, including a police officer, and wounded 47 others, including 10 police officers...
Transport Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:21:58
The Seven Mile Bridge leading into the lower Florida Keys was closed Monday by a fiery tanker crash that killed two drivers... truck transporting gasoline was traveling south on the bridge around 5 p.m when the driver lost control and collided with a sport utility vehicle... male drivers of the truck and the SUV died... female passenger in the SUV was air lifted to a hospital... Firefighters battled the fire for about two hours...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:10:36
...investigators do not know what initially caused the Ethan Allen to tip. But he said passengers either slid or were thrown to one side of the boat after it began lurching. "And that, of course, would automatically mean an even bigger shift of weight..."
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:48:26
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A driver who swerved to avoid a cat in the road instead struck a skateboarding teenager.. [who] had been standing partially in the road... killing him...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:08:42
At least 16 people were killed and dozens injured when six cars of a speeding passenger train derailed Monday in central India... traveling from the north Indian city of Varanasi to the central city of Gwalior, derailed near the town of Datia... Six cars and the engine derailed... At least 36 people were injured and several others were trapped in badly mangled coaches... apparently derailed because the train was speeding...
55 mph... speed limit along that stretch of track is 9 mph...
Digital Culture
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:11:29
The digital music market has more than tripled in a year, and that has helped offset a continuing decline in sales of CDs and other physical formats... digital music sales totaled $790 million in the first half of this year, equivalent to 6 percent of industry sales...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:09:16
Airlines, theme parks, restaurants, tourism offices and others in travel and tourism are eligible for Web sites and e-mail addresses ending in ".travel"...
US Military Casualties
defenselink.mil/ ... 17:59:34
Army Staff Sgt.
John G. Doles
, 29, of Claremore, Okla., died in Shah Wali, Afghanistan, on Sept. 30, during patrol operations when his unit was attacked by enemy forces using rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire.
defenselink.mil/ ... 17:58:53
Army Sgt. 1st Class
James J. Stoddard Jr.
, 29, of Crofton, Md., died in Afghanistan on Sept. 30, when his vehicle accidentally rolled over.
Sanity May Yet Prevail
abcnews.go.com/ ... 10:34:53
SHOCKING POLL RESULTS!!
Most Americans rule out either a deliberate act of God or the effect of global warming as direct causes of the recent Gulf Coast hurricanes... two-thirds.. see them as an occurrence on God's Earth, but not a deliberate act on God's part... 54 percent think that the severity of recent hurricanes mainly reflects "severe weather events that happen from time to time," rather than the effects of global climate change...
Animal Culture
thesun.co.uk/ ... 09:16:55
STRAY dogs are being skewered on hooks and dragged behind boats as live shark bait...
The cruel practice takes place on French-controlled Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, where Prince William spent two holidays...
[WARNING: really ugly graphic of skewered live dog]
People Die
en.wikipedia.org/ ... 23:39:24
Actor Nipsey Russell Dies at 80... cast included Diana Ross (Dorothy), Michael Jackson (Scarecrow), Nipsey Russell (Tin Man), Richard Pryor (The Wiz), and Lumet's mother-in-law, Lena Horne, as Glinda the Good Witch...
Under Tyranny
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:20:37
Seattle City Council... on Monday approved some of the strictest adult-entertainment regulations of any big city in the country, banning lap dances and the tipping of dancers in their G-strings...
Under Digital Tyranny
time.com/ ... 18:17:37
,,,Even though Web surfers in China can't normally access dajiyuan.com$#8212;it's among a long list of sites blacklisted by government censors$#8212;police arrested Zheng last December on charges of inciting subversion. On Sept. 22, he was sentenced to seven years in prison. Beijing had once again sent a stern message to Chinese who dared to use the Internet to express their political opinions...
Sex can be Dangerous
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:03:52
...Percy Skuy, the former president of Ortho-Macneill, started collecting weird and historical contraceptives in the early 1960s when he was just starting out at the company. He's amassed more than 700 items, and the collection is now housed at the Dittrick Medical History Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Skuy explains some of the stranger contraptions and their place in contraception's long history...
World Without Borders
ap.tbo.com/ ... 13:00:42
Austrians have thought of themselves as Europe's gatekeepers ever since they vanquished the Ottoman Turks in the 1683 Battle of Vienna. Today, they have again raised doubts over whether the mostly Muslim nation belongs in the European Union. But ancient animosities are mingled with modern fears, and Austrians insist they're not racist or xenophobic - just deeply distrustful. Geography helps explain why only one in 10 Austrians, by far the weakest support in Europe, backs the idea of an EU with Turkey as a member....
Feeding Ourselves
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:54:29
The Food and Drug Administration is warning people not to eat certain Dole pre-packaged salads that have been connected to an outbreak of E. coli infections in Minnesota.
..salads carrying the same production codes have been distributed nationwide... At least 11.. sickened... Two.. hospitalized... The particular type of E. coli connected to the salads is known as O157:H7. An infection can cause bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramps. Most healthy adults recover within a week, but children under 5 and the elderly are at risk for complications that can lead to kidney damage or death...
Policing Ourselves
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:49:38
More than three dozen Palestinian police officers broke into the parliament building in Gaza City on Monday, firing in the air to protest a lack of bullets and equipment in what they said was a humiliating confrontation with Hamas...
US Judicial Branch
humaneventsonline.com/ ... 23:17:28
...by Patrick J. Buchanan... Handed a once-in-a-generation opportunity to return the Supreme Court to constitutionalism, George W. Bush passed over a dozen of the finest jurists of his day -- to name his personal lawyer. In a decision deeply disheartening to those who invested such hopes in him, Bush may have tossed away his and our last chance to roll back the social revolution imposed upon us by our judicial dictatorship since the days of Earl Warren...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:52:49
Reaction to President Bush's Nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court ..."It is the responsibility of every generation to be true to the founders' vision of the proper role of the courts in our society. If confirmed, I recognize that I will have a tremendous responsibility to keep our judicial system strong and help ensure that the courts meet their obligation to strictly apply the law and the Constitution." - Harriet Miers. ..."The Supreme Court would benefit from the addition of a justice who has real experience as a practicing lawyer. The current justices have all been chosen from the lower federal courts. A nominee with relevant non-judicial experience would bring a different and useful perspective to the court." - Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. ..."This is a smart move. You try to pick a nominee that Democrats won't be able to criticize as much because they are a woman or minority. This is a classic Clarence Thomas strategy." Artemus Ward, Northern Illinois University political science professor.
whitehouse.gov/ ... 10:44:14
Text of President's nomination of Harriet Miers as Supreme Court Justice, and Miers' acceptance.
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 10:31:59
President Bush today nominated a Texas lawyer who serves as White House counsel, Harriet Miers, to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court a pick that apparently was pre-approved by Senate Democratic leadership. In choosing Miers, Bush tapped a person who has never been a judge and therefore has no judicial record for opponents to criticize...
Nature is Dangerous
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:22:50
Raging floodwaters spawned by a typhoon along China's coast swept away 59 soldiers and washed away two buildings at a military training school... destroyed 5,400 homes in Fujian...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 18:04:16
Heavy rains triggered landslides that killed 15 people - including children - in El Salvador on Monday, while rising rivers forced the evacuation of dozens of people there and in neighboring Guatemala...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 13:01:29
Landslides caused by heavy rains killed 15 people, including three children, in El Salvador on Monday while dozens of people were evacuated both here and in neighboring Guatemala as rivers rose to dangerous levels. No deaths were reported in Guatemala...
reuters.myway.com/ ... 09:15:28
Small amounts of a bacteria that causes "rabbit fever" were found on Washington's National Mall last weekend as thousands of protesters marched against the Iraq War, U.S. health authorities said on Saturday... low levels of Francisella tularensis bacteria that cause Tularemia...
Rabbit fever
can not be passed from person to person... can be effectively treated with readily available medicines... Symptoms usually appear 3 to 5 days after exposure, but in rare cases can take up to two weeks... include: sudden fever, chills, headaches, conjunctivitis, diarrhea, muscle aches, joint pain, dry cough and progressive weakness...
Disinformation Propaganda & Spin
worldnetdaily.com/ ... 10:28:33
...Cindy Sheehan.. has elevated "second guessing" to a new art form. "Why did my son have to die?" Ms. Sheehan wants to ask President Bush. Simple answer: He didn't have to die, he could have made the choice to become a doctor, lawyer, electrician, accountant, truck driver, carpenter or garbage man, but instead, Casey Sheehan chose to become a soldier. Of course, being an accountant, lawyer or truck driver also has its risks. You may be one of the 42,600 who will meet their Maker on the roadways this year... One has to wonder: Is Casey Sheehan rolling over in his grave in disgust seeing his mother use his gravestone as a steppingstone for the anti-war movement?..
drudgereport.com/ ... 09:11:39
Donald Sutherland: "They were inept. The were inadequate to the task, and they lied... And they were insulting, and they were vindictive. And they were heartless. They did not care. They do not care. They do not care about Iraqi people. They do not care about the families of dead soldiers. They only care about profit." At one point during the session, Sutherland started crying: "We stolen our children's future... We have children. We have children. How dare we take their legacy from them. How dare we. It's shameful. What we are doing to our world..."
SUN 2005-OCT-02
Transport Tragedy
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:07:28
LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. - A glass-enclosed boat carrying tourists on a senior citizens' cruise overturned Sunday on a calm, chilly lake in upstate New York, killing at least 21 people and sending more than two dozen cold and wet passengers to a hospital... boat was hit by the wake of a larger passing vessel... one passenger told her "she saw a big boat coming close and she said, 'Whoop-dee-doo. I love a rocking boat...'" did not know how she got out of the water but said her mother was killed...
Sociopath Threats
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:02:15
Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed to have captured two U.S Marines participating in an offensive in western Iraq, threatening in a Web statement issued Sunday to kill them within 24 hours. The U.S. military said the claim appeared to be fake...
Violence
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:48:18
A University of Oklahoma student with "emotional difficulties" was identified Sunday as the person who apparently committed suicide near a packed football stadium using an explosive attached to his body...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 23:47:20
MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan - Assailants fired rockets at a Pakistani army base Sunday, killing a soldier and four government employees in a spate of violence in the lawless tribal area along the Afghan border,,, About 20 rockets were fired before dawn... In South Waziristan, masked gunmen killed the 20-year-old son of an elder who helped track down Islamic militants last year... two suspected militants were killed at a checkpoint...
washingtonpost.com/ ... 09:56:47
Suicide bombers targeted the Indonesian resort of Bali with coordinated attacks that devastated three crowded restaurants, killing at least 25 people. Two men linked to even deadlier blasts at the same resort in 2002 were suspected of masterminding the strikes...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:22:57
Hundreds of U.S. troops combed through a village near the Syrian border Sunday, breaking into houses and fighting sporadic gun battles with gunmen on the second day of a new offensive against al-Qaida insurgents. At least eight militants were killed...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 09:22:22
A 4-year-old girl abandoned on a city street has been asking for the mother she says looks "like a princess" as authorities consider how best to break the news the woman is dead... Police searched Sunday for the body of 26-year-old Monica Lozada-Rivaineira, a day after Cesar Ascarrunz, 32, was arrested on murder charges. Police say the two lived together and Ascarrunz killed her and dumped her corpse in a pile of trash on a Queens street corner...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 01:11:43
NORMAN, Okla. - One person was killed in an explosion near a packed football stadium at the University of Oklahoma on Saturday night in what authorities said appeared to be a suicide... in a traffic circle about 100 yards from Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, could be heard by some in the crowd of 84,000, but... no one inside the stadium was ever in danger...
Digital Future is Now
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:05:51
Flash-based devices store content on a chip... no movable parts ...use.. 30 times less.. battery power.. than hard-drive players... much smaller.. extremely durable... limited storage capacity and a higher price... But flash costs are dropping dramatically... cost for flash memory has fallen 56 percent in the last year... projects the price will fall an additional 47 percent by next year and then another 33 percent by 2007. Memory capacity also is improving. Samsung plans to begin mass-producing 16GB flash-memory chips by the end of next year and points to a 32GB prototype on the horizon...
Reasons for Repeal
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:05:15
Leftist rebels attacked a police station in an isolated jungle town in western Colombia on Sunday, but it was not immediately known whether there were any casualties... came about the same time that an earthquake struck the region, causing no injuries or material damage... "We have lost contact with the station in Sipi," Choco Deputy Governor Freddy Lloreda told Caracol radio... Choco has in the past few years turned into a center for cocaine production and is also a strategic corridor for the smuggling of arms and drugs through nearby Panama...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:03:57
A U.S. Embassy official was found dead Sunday in an apartment in northeastern Colombia with a gunshot wound to his head... Jerry Benavides, the U.S. federal Bureau of Prisons' representative in Colombia...
ap.tbo.com/ ... 22:02:51
The U.S. ambassador urged Colombia Sunday to spray weed killer inside the country's spectacular nature parks to destroy cocaine-producing crops, insisting the chemicals will not cause widespread damage to the reserves' ecosystems...
[LIARS]
Nature is Dangerous
ap.tbo.com/ ... 10:13:11
A storm dumped up to a foot of rain over parts of northeast Kansas early Sunday, sparking flash flooding that left people stranded in their homes and cars... hardest hit areas were Jefferson and Jackson counties... A mobile home also was reported to have washed away in Jackson County, but the home's resident made it out safely. "But now he's stuck in a tree... They're working to get him out..."
Jesus Sells
today.reuters.com/ ... 10:06:32
Sony has apologized for an advertising campaign for its PlayStation game console which featured a young man wearing a crown of thorns with the slogan "Ten years of passion"...
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