Blog-heap o' links from 2006-Jul

MON 2006-JUL-31

Scary Timeslocal6.com/ ... 23:52:05Shanghai has constructed a massive underground bunker complex capable of sheltering 200,000 people from a nuclear attack...

Supernatural Threatslatimes.com/ ... 23:51:33STAFFORD, Texas... "Our city has an excessive number of churches..." 51 churches and other religious institutions packed into its 7 square miles... Stafford, population 19,227, is the largest city in Texas without a property tax, and it depends on sales taxes and business fees for revenue. Nonprofits have been attracted by its rapid growth and minimal deed restrictions. "It's thrown everything out of balance, plus providing zero revenue. Somebody's got to pay for police, fire and schools," City Councilman Cecil Willis said...

Nature is Dangerousfoxnews.com/ ... 23:45:25A German beekeeper attracted more than 20,000 wasps into his home when he brought his honeycombs indoors, but managed to escape injury...

Sick, Sick, Sicknews.com.au/ ... 13:32:23THIS is the picture that damns Hezbollah. It is one of several, smuggled from behind Lebanon's battle lines, showing that Hezbollah is waging war amid suburbia. The images, obtained exclusively by the Sunday Herald Sun, show Hezbollah using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy-calibre weapons. Dressed in civilian clothing so they can quickly disappear, the militants carrying automatic assault rifles and ride in on trucks mounted with cannon... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:21:50The Indian Medical Association has launched a probe after three doctors were shown on television offering to amputate beggars' limbs for money... There have long been rumours that criminal gangs pay for the amputation as beggars are able to generate more sympathy and make more money...

Under Tyrannybreitbart.com/ ... 23:48:12Fidel Castro temporarily relinquished his presidential powers to his brother Raul on Monday night and told Cubans he underwent surgery. The Cuban leader said he had suffered gastrointestinal bleeding, apparently due to stress from recent public appearances in Argentina and Cuba... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:23:58There have been clashes between police and Christians protesting against the demolition of a church in eastern China's Zhejiang province... up to 500 police tried to break up a 3,000-strong protest... Twenty people were hurt, including four who were seriously injured... "It is clear that this church was an illegal structure, it did not have the approval of the religious affairs bureau or the government..." A local state newspaper, the Hangzhou Daily, reported the demolition of an "illegal building". "A tiny handful of people with ulterior motives incited members of the public who did not know the facts..." today.reuters.co.uk/ ... 10:07:14An Iranian student has died in jail while on a hunger strike aimed at persuading authorities to release him... arrested for taking part in pro-democracy demonstrations in 1999... was originally sentenced to death as "mohareb", or "one who wages war against God", for his part in the 1999 protests in which tens of thousands of people took to the streets after police and hardline vigilantes attacked a peaceful campus rally in support of press freedoms...

Prison Sucksbreitbart.com/ ... 23:47:55The prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay during the war on terror have attacked their military guards hundreds of times, turning broken toilet parts, utensils, radios and even a bloody lizard tail into makeshift weapons... Military Police guards are routinely head-butted, spat upon and doused by "cocktails" of... [much grossness follows] repeatedly grabbed, punched or assaulted by prisoners... Serious assaults requiring medical attention, however, are rare, the reports indicate... santamariatimes.com/ ... 10:05:09Fewer than three prisoners in every 1,000 report they were sexually abused or harassed, but that probably is not the whole story, a government study says. There may be far more sexual violence in prisons than is reported, the study's authors said, because inmates fear reprisal, adhere to a code of silence, do not trust the staff or are embarrassed... studies found 10 percent of male Midwestern state penitentiary inmates have been raped...

Violencejpost.com/ ... 23:52:38The IDF assessed on Monday that Hizbullah's rocket launching capability was significantly compromised by the fighting that took place in the past three weeks. It was estimated that, while the organization still has hundreds of rockets with a sufficient range to reach Afula and Haifa, there were only a number of launchers remaining with launching capability... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 23:49:02A group claiming to operate out of Syria took credit today for what it said was an attack against Israeli troops operating near the Syria-Israel border, according to a source in Syrian President Bashar Assad's Ba'ath party... A spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces said no soldiers were killed or injured today near the Israel-Syrian border. A mine did reportedly explode on the Syrian side of the border, but no injuries were reported among Israeli troops. It wasn't clear what caused the explosion. Military officials have warned the past few weeks Hezbollah may fire into Syria in attempts to draw Damascus into a confrontation with Israel... sun-sentinel.com/ ... 13:31:07MIAMI -- Authorities were searching Monday for a man who witnesses said shot and killed an Illinois tourist who was asking for directions. After dropping his son off at a shopping mall, Ronald Gentile, 54, pulled over in the Coconut Grove area Saturday afternoon, police said. Witnesses reported seeing Gentile roll down the window on his rented white Chevrolet Cobalt. A man dressed in black then apparently approached the vehicle, robbed and shot Gentile... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:28:08Gunmen wearing Iraqi police uniforms have kidnapped 25 people in a commercial district in central Baghdad... pulled up in 15 vehicles and rounded up staff and customers of a firm on a shopping street in Arasat. There are reports that the offices belong to the Iraqi-American chamber of commerce, while others say it was a mobile phone shop... apnews.myway.com/ ... 13:14:00Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Monday, hours after agreeing to temporarily halt raids... Israel left open the option it might hit targets to stop imminent attacks or if the military completed its inquiry within 48 hours. Monday's airstrikes near the village of Taibe were meant to protect ground forces operating in the area and were not targeting anyone or anything specific, the army said... In a second airstrike around the port city of Tyre, Israel accidentally killed a Lebanese soldier when it hit a car that it believed was carrying a senior Hezbollah official... abcnews.go.com/ ... 10:06:08The suspect in a fatal shooting rampage at a Jewish charity deeply disappointed his parents because he had dropped out of dentistry school, and had been getting psychiatric help for 10 years... newsday.com/ ... 09:49:13He said he hasn't slept or eaten in a week, vomiting everything he puts in his mouth and seeing dead bodies any time he closes his eyes. The hearing in his right ear has been damaged, while others here still carry shrapnel in their limbs. But he said the damage to the soul was much worse. "I think every one of us needs to see a psychologist," he said. "There is not one man who came out of there OK..."

WW1 - still with usnewsday.com/ ... 09:43:26NEW YORK -- The sound of the blast was unearthly, and the tremor was felt 100 miles away in Philadelphia. The night sky over New York Harbor turned orange. People were jolted from bed and windows shattered within 25 miles. The Statue of Liberty, less than a mile away, was damaged by a rain of red-hot shards of steel. Frightened immigrants on Ellis Island were hastily evacuated to Manhattan. The epicenter of the blast -- a small island called Black Tom -- all but disappeared in what was then the largest explosion ever in the U.S., on Sunday, July 30, 1916 at 2:08 a.m. It destroyed about 2,000 tons of munitions parked in freight cars and pierside barges, awaiting transfer to ships and ultimately destined for the World War I battlefields of France. Evidence pointed to German sabotage, and some historians regard it as the first major terrorist attack on the United States by a foreign party... perhaps miraculous that only seven people were killed... a barge captain, two policemen and a child tossed from a crib in Jersey City... recent study theorized... would have been equal to a 5.5-magnitude earthquake...

Transport Tragedynewsday.com/ ... 09:49:40MALVERNE, N.Y. -- A firefighter was crushed to death Sunday between his firehouse and a rescue truck being driven by his chief... Paul Brady, 42, was doing routine maintenance on top of a Malverne Fire Department heavy-duty truck when Chief Robert Meyer, not realizing Brady was on it, drove off and caused Brady to fall... newsday.com/ ... 09:36:23OSHKOSH, Wis. -- The propeller of a Navy warbird sliced into a home-built airplane on a taxiway during an airshow Sunday, killing a passenger...

Science Marches Onnnnnntoday.reuters.com/ ... 13:20:56invisibility could be possible in the not too distant future... the most plausible example is the Invisible Woman, one of the Marvel Comics superheroes in the "Fantastic Four". "She guides light around her using a force field in this cartoon. This is what could be done in practice..."

Healing Ourselvessciencedaily.com/ ... 13:19:54The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning consumers not to purchase or to use high-strength hydrogen peroxide products, including a product marketed as "35 Percent Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide," for medicinal purposes because they can cause serious harm or death when ingested... Ingesting hydrogen peroxide can cause gastrointestinal irritation or ulceration...

History - still with ussciencedaily.com/ ... 13:16:08rchaeologists are confident they are closer to discovering some of Christopher Columbus' lost ships -- and the answer to a 500-year-old mystery, "What was on those ships?.." Among their latest efforts, they retrieved a 300-pound kedge anchor that could be from the Columbus era. The anchor, which is being conserved at the laboratory of the Oficina Nacional De Patrimonio Cultural Subacuàtico (ONPCS), was encrusted with dead as well as live coral within the area of interesting magnetometer anomalies. The live coral was removed from the anchor and cemented onto nearby coral colonies. "We're strong advocates that you need to respect the biology when you excavate..."

Feeding Ourselvestelegraph.co.uk/ ... 23:47:00Revolutionary "self-timing" eggs designed to overcome the perennial problem of how to avoid runny whites and overcooked yolks will appear on supermarket shelves in the coming months... The eggs are marked with logos in "thermochromic" invisible ink, which turns dark when it reaches a certain temperature. Inks have been created to appear after three minutes to indicate a soft-boiled egg, after four minutes for medium and after seven minutes for a hard-boiled egg... sciencedaily.com/ ... 13:18:34Just like their traditionally bred counterparts, transgenic crops have definitively been shown to crossbreed with crops or native plants growing nearby... cause for worry?.. one of the world's most important crops, sorghum, spontaneously hybridized with one of the world's worst weeds, johnsongrass, even when they were grown up to 330 feet apart; furthermore, the two plants are distinct species with different numbers of chromosomes. Other labs have demonstrated crop-to-wild gene flow with sunflower, rice, canola and pearl millet. Transgenic crops are no different. Transgenic canola has crossbred with its native relative, creating herbicide-resistant volunteers. A more well-known example is transgenic Starlink corn, which was not approved for human consumption but appeared in a variety of corn-based foods... in one study "fast-growing transgenic salmon were found to dominate feed acquisition and exhibit strong agonistic and cannibalistic behavior toward their [nontransgenic] cohorts when there were inadequate feed resources..." forbes.com/ ... 10:08:44watermelon... most nutritious when stored and served at room temperature... study author Penelope Perkins-Veazie, a plant physiologist at the South Central Agricultural Research Laboratory with the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Lane, Okla...

Only Naturalhosted.ap.org/ ... 09:36:03Scientists say it's a mirage, but others swear that when the weather is right, Clevelanders can see across Lake Erie and spot Canadian trees and buildings 50 miles away... mirages can occur during an atmospheric inversion, in which a layer of cold air blankets the lake, topped by layers of increasingly warm air. When this happens, it can cause the light that filters through these layers from across the lake to bend, forming a lens that can create the illusion of distant objects...

US Militarynewsday.com/ ... 09:45:05At 17 he enlisted in the Marine Corps, spurred by the memory of 9/11. Now, 21-year-old Galen Wilson has 20 confirmed kills in four months in Iraq -- and another 40 shots that probably killed insurgents. One afternoon the lance corporal downed a man hauling a grenade launcher five-and-a-half football fields away. Wilson is the designated marksman in a company of Marines based in downtown Ramadi, watching over what Marines call the most dangerous neighborhood in the most dangerous city in the world... "I believe God supports what we do and I've never killed anyone who wasn't carrying a weapon..." kansascity.com/ ... 09:34:12There aren’t enough troops to do the job, many U.S. officials privately concede... As many as 4,000 additional U.S. soldiers will be sent to Baghdad, including two battalions of the Army’s 172nd Stryker Brigade, four or five military police companies from northern Iraq, and a field artillery battalion that is in reserve in Kuwait... The frustration of returning to quell violence in the same places multiple times has taken a toll on American morale, undermined Iraqi confidence in the United States and cast doubt on the Bush administration’s hopes of beginning significant troop withdrawals by the end of this election year... The top American military officer in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., has said that such assertions are untrue. When ground commanders ask for more troops, according to Casey, they get them. In February 2003, the then Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, told a Senate committee that the force required to occupy Iraq would be "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers." Shinseki retired that June, ahead of schedule. Many U.S. officers think that Shinseki was pushed out of his position, and they took the episode as a warning not to request more troops...

Fun can be... just Fun!today.reuters.com/ ... 23:53:12It's a smokers' and drinkers' paradise where pajama-clad children and crying babies are welcome and bug spray is essential: The drive-in movie theater is making a muted comeback in the United States... While it's not quite a return to the heyday of the 1950s, when there were more than 4,000 outdoor theaters across the country, 20 new drive-in cinemas have opened up during the past year, taking the national total to 420...

People Diebreitbart.com/ ... 23:50:27FRAMINGHAM, Mass. A man was arrested on charges of practicing medicine without a license after a woman died during a liposuction procedure performed in the basement of a home...

Big Whoops Cascadenews.com.au/ ... 23:46:17A MAN who accidentally shot himself in the groin while driving was dead before his car smashed into a power pole, Melbourne police have said... was wanted by police in relation to a stabbing...

Sex -- always attractivenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:29:39At least eight people have been killed in a car bomb attack outside a mosque in eastern Afghanistan... wounded 16... The governor of Nangarhar province, where the attack took place, escaped unhurt.... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:28:43Biologists have found evidence that people can sniff out the chemical signals of sexual attraction...

Business Culturenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:27:37US retail giant Wal-Mart, which has drawn criticism over allegations it is union unfriendly, has reportedly seen staff in China start their first union. The union was the initiative of some 30 Wal-Mart workers in the south-east province of Fujian... Wal-Mart... has 60 stores in China.... [plans to] hire an extra 150,000 staff in China over the next five years...

Digital Culturetoday.reuters.com/ ... 23:53:25Web-to-television pioneer Steve Perlman on Monday will unveil what he says is an animation breakthrough, creating "photo real" humans far quicker and cheaper than current technology... allheadlinenews.com/ ... 09:50:47

Opera is hoping to lure users away from Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 by building on Opera 9's use of small Web applications called Widgets... Opera wants version 10 to work on any platform... "We will be unleashing developer tools, which are still in the planning stages...We want developers to use Opera as a Web development platform, using open standards. We need to keep the Web ready for open standards..."

Marriage Todaynewsday.com/ ... 09:47:04Excerpts from the marriage vows that Mexicans increasingly are skipping... newsday.com/ ... 09:46:39For 147 years, marriage vows in Mexico portrayed women as delicate, weak and potentially annoying. These days, judges across Mexico are switching to versions that stress equality and mutual support, reflecting the growing power of women in a country still struggling with macho attitudes... The old vows, a 537-word ode to marriage, were considered open-minded and ahead of their time when they were penned 147 years ago by Melchor Ocampo, a Mexican lawyer, scientist and liberal politician... They dictate that a husband should treat his wife with "generous benevolence that the strong should give to the weak" and that a wife should "avoid awakening the most brusque, irritable and hard part of (her husband's) character..."

SUN 2006-JUL-30

Unholy Tyrannytoday.reuters.com/ ... 13:43:26A battle brewing over a draft anti-smut law has laid bare deep divisions within Indonesia and, say critics, threatens its traditionally tolerant approach to Islam... the world's biggest Muslim nation faces what could prove a defining moment. Pressured by growing demands from Muslim activists, lawmakers are expected to hammer out the legislation in the coming months... Supporters say tough measures are necessary to protect the public from corrupting Western influence. Although barred by law, explicit material is available with relative ease in Indonesia, and television programs regularly feature bared flesh and sexual innuendo. Indonesia's population of 220 million is roughly 85 percent Muslim... hosted.ap.org/ ... 13:38:47Paris City Hall has banned thong bikinis, topless sunbathing and nudity at the summer sand-in-the-city event known as Paris Beaches... Violators will be fined $48... Paris was pushed to forbid "indecent attire" because it could "provoke temptation and dangerous behavior along the bank of a river," Pascal Cherki, mayoral aide in charge of sports, was quoted as saying... unclear why the ban was only imposed this year, the fifth year of the popular event... [Um, isn't this like fining people who own things because someone might steal them? Or fining people for being alive because someone might kill them? Arrest the "tempted and dangerous" ones!]

Nature is Dangeroushosted.ap.org/ ... 13:31:47

North Carolina's southern coast. Jellyfish have stung so many people in the area of Wrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach that the New Hanover County Health Department issued an alert on Friday... reports of stings have been gradually increasing over the past couple of weeks, and at least 75 people were stung by sea nettles and other jellyfish from Monday through Thursday...

Fun can be Dangerousorlandosentinel.com/ ... 09:23:09Nearly 230 people aboard a cruise ship fell ill with a gastrointestinal illness during a weeklong Caribbean voyage... Noroviruses affect about 23 million Americans annually, and 16 incidents of the illness have been reported on cruise ships so far this year...

Violenceynetnews.com/ ... 21:23:11"The attack on the structure in the Qana village took place between midnight and one in the morning. The [eight-hour] gap between the timing of the collapse of the building and the time of the strike on it is unclear," Brigadier General Amir Eshel, Head of the Air Force Headquarters told journalists at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, following the incidents at Qana... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 21:16:39Israel has agreed an immediate 48-hour suspension of air strikes over southern Lebanon to allow an investigation into the death of more than 50 civilians... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 21:15:35some believe it to be the scene of Jesus Christ's first miracle, turning water into wine during the wedding at Cana of Galilee... In modern times, it was the scene of one of the bloodiest events of the modern Arab-Israeli conflict, the Israeli shelling of a UN base sheltering Lebanese civilians 10 years ago... The Qana Massacre, as it is known in Lebanon, remains a powerful symbol for Lebanese people... Israel still insists the 1996 shelling was an accident and that its forces had a legitimate militant target... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:41:35US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan say they have killed 20 suspected members of the Taleban, in the southern province of Uruzgan... after they attempted an ambush from a compound... no casualities among coalition or Afghan forces...
Earlier, the coalition said they had detained four suspected al-Qaeda militants in the eastern part of the country... chron.com/ ... 09:26:59The man suspected in a fatal shooting rampage hid behind a potted plant in a Jewish charity's foyer and forced his way through a security door by holding a gun to a 13-year-old girl's head... One woman... was killed at the scene. Five more women were wounded... Naveed Afzal Haq... 30, was ordered held on $50 million bail... a close family friend and a senior member of a mosque founded in part by Haq's father, described Haq as a quiet loner with few friends... the Islamic Center of the Tri-Cities offered condolences to the shooting victims and said "we disassociate this act from our Islamic teachings and beliefs..." jpost.com/ ... 09:21:31One person was wounded in a rocket barrage that landed in Kiryat Shmona shortly after 2:45 p.m. on Sunday. He was listed in moderate condition, MDA reported. Three other residents were lightly wounded, and two suffered from shock. All the wounded were evacuated to a local hospital... Over 100 rockets have rained down on northern cities, including Kiryat Shmona and Acre, since early morning Sunday. Twenty-nine people suffered from shock. All of the casualties were taken to Nahariya Hospital... ynetnews.com/ ... 09:20:56In Qana, corpses continue to be rescued from rubble. In Beirut, demonstrations condemning Israel's massacre. Demonstrators demand Hizbullah take revenge on Israel, vandalize UN building in city Ali Waked Men and women shouted and lamented "massacre, massacre!" to the cameras... apnews.myway.com/ ... 09:19:57An Israeli airstrike killed at least 56 people, including at least 34 children, in a southern Lebanese village Sunday.... 18 people from two families were found in a single room of the building, where dozens of people had been taking refuge from the fighting... The missiles destroyed several homes in the village of Qana as people were sleeping...
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice postponed a visit to Lebanon... Israeli said it targeted Qana because it was a base for hundreds of rockets launched at Israeli, including 40 that injured five Israelis on Sunday. Israel said it had warned civilians several days before to leave the village... "One must understand the Hezbollah is using their own civilian population as human shields..." breitbart.com/ ... 00:55:52The Mediterranean is threatened by its worst ever environmental disaster after Israel's bombing of a power plant in Lebanon sent thousands of tonnes of fuel gushing into the sea, the environment minister charged. "Up until now 10,000-15,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil have spilled out into the sea," after Israel's bombing of the power station in Jiyeh two weeks ago, Lebanese Environment Minister Yacub Sarraf told AFP Saturday. "It's without doubt the biggest environmental catastrophe that the Mediterranean has known and it risks having terrible consequences not only for our country but for all the countries of the eastern Mediterranean..."

Fun can be Fatalpublicbroadcasting.net/ ... 09:14:39[Followup to Sullivan Mo plane crash] ...Four people died at the scene... two died at St. John's Mercy Hospital in Creve Couer. Two other people aboard the plane were injured.... one... in critical condition and one is in serious condition... plane struck a telephone pole before hitting a tree.... foxnews.com/ ... 00:51:01SULLIVAN, Mo. — A small plane carrying skydivers crashed shortly after takeoff Saturday, killing four people on board and injuring four others... may have struck a telephone pole, then clipped a house before hitting the ground... extent of the injuries sustained by the survivors was unclear...

History - still with ushosted.ap.org/ ... 21:19:55"These are unique items. These are the plates that were used to produce notes and paper documents that built this country." Before they go up for auction, the plates are being examined and catalogued by a New Hampshire firm that specializes in rare currency and coins... 200 tons of plates are from the archives of the American Bank Note Co., formed in New York in 1858 by the consolidation of seven major engraving and printing firms. The collection comprises about 900 plates used for printing money plus 10,000 to 20,000 of various sizes that were used for other printing jobs...

Healing Ourselvesnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 21:12:47US scientists have found a way to reverse muscular dystrophy (MD) in mice.... myotonic dystrophy - the most common form of MD in adults... the treatment fully restored heart and skeletal muscle function in mice... Myotonic dystrophy occurs because of a large expansion of DNA code, which most likely causes an accumulation of toxic messenger RNA molecules in cells... Although the treatment was not 100% effective, the researchers believe their results provide the proof scientists have been waiting for to demonstrate that it might be possible to reverse muscular dystrophy...

World Zookeepinghosted.ap.org/ ... 13:39:43Liverpool... Zoo officials installed an electric fence around a construction site to protect workers from 120 primate hecklers... A band of baboons... "Because we're effectively in a cage and the animals are free to roam around us, we do feel as though the roles are reversed and we are the exhibit..."

Only Naturaltimesonline.co.uk/ ... 09:35:41attractive parents are 26% more likely to have a daughter than a son as their first child. It is an inexorable process that has resulted in women becoming increasingly more attractive than men... This is because of differing "evolutionary strategies" that each sex has adopted to survive... While reproductive success for males depends largely on the status of the father (as sons from higher-status families inherit their position and are in turn able to protect and invest in their offspring), daughters’ reproductive successes mostly depend on their youth and attractiveness... [and while we're sorry about the troll-like menfolk, we really salute Evolution for this plan of increasingly attractive women!!!]

US Militaryft.com/ ... 09:22:16A Pentagon spokesman on Friday confirmed that US troop levels in Iraq rose to 132,000 during the past week – the highest since late May – from 127,000 at the start of the week...

Theory of Justicenews.yahoo.com/ ... 21:28:04Iran is to publicly hang five men convicted of carrying out bombings in the southwestern oil city of Ahvaz as well as a militant convicted of involvement in a massacre in the southeast...

US Election 2008nytimes.com/ ... 21:27:39Two summers ago, on a Congressional trip to Estonia, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton astonished her traveling companions by suggesting that the group do what one does in the Baltics: hold a vodka-drinking contest. Delighted, the leader of the delegation, Senator John McCain, quickly agreed. The after-dinner drinks went so well — memories are a bit hazy on who drank how much — that Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, later told people how unexpectedly engaging he found Mrs. Clinton to be. "One of the guys" was the way he described Mrs. Clinton... [um.....]

It's All in Your Mindhosted.ap.org/ ... 21:17:34How many M&MS are enough? It depends on how big the candy scoop is. At least that's a key factor, says a study that offers new evidence that people take cues from their surroundings in deciding how much to eat... It's "unit bias," the tendency to think that a single unit of food - a bottle, a can, a plateful, or some more subtle measure - is the right amount to eat or drink...

Just Random Chancehosted.ap.org/ ... 13:33:25the Austrian pulled the unconscious 6-year-old from the bottom of a swimming pool Friday... Within a few hours, police said, the teenage lifesaver was stung by insects and developed an allergic reaction - prompting medics to rush him to the same hospital...

Human Rightdenverpost.com/ ... 09:38:34A Colorado lawyer stopped by local police in three states because his name appears on a federal terrorist watch list is challenging the government's ability to detain him... lawsuit... alleges federal and state officials violated his constitutional rights during traffic stops... First in Colorado, then in Illinois and New Mexico, police stopped Martinez on traffic violations and held him without a warrant for hours, in one case handcuffing him and placing him in a locked police car, while they checked his status with federal counter-terrorism officials... What if his turning signal stops working? He could be held for hours. ... How many times do they get to stop him?.."
FBI lawyers last year declared terrorist-screening records exempt from the Privacy Act, which lets Americans review their records and correct wrong information, determine who has records and limits records to relevant information...

Alcohol Was Involvedkcentv.com/ ... 21:25:48Waco Police tasered and arrested a US Secret Service agent at a downtown Waco bar after a scuffle... scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/ ... 09:34:03CHILDREN from the age of five should be encouraged to drink wine at home to prevent the toll of alcohol abuse in later life, one of the country's leading experts on the problem has told Scotland on Sunday... believes the practice would cut binge drinking among youngsters by taking the mystery out of alcohol... he said families need to accept that children do experiment with alcohol, so giving them small tastes diluted with water will encourage them to drink responsibly... [Incorrect. All these are the right TECHNIQUES, but they will be COMPLETELY INEFFECTIVE unless you have a CULTURE in the child's family and society where alcohol is used intelligently and moderately]....
The average Scot drinks more than 11 litres of alcohol a year compared with seven litres in the 1970s. Half of Scotland's teenagers drink alcohol at least once a month, with many drinking to excess outside the home...

World Without Bordersocregister.com/ ... 09:29:10The number of people being caught trying to enter the U.S. illegally has dropped slightly this year. But the latest federal figures also show that the California and Texas borders are seeing increased traffic... an increasing number of undocumented immigrants are being picked up near death... Ever since federal officials cracked down on the San Diego and Texas sectors in the 1990s, Arizona gradually has become the focal point for illegal crossers... the most recent numbers show an upswing in illegal traffic in San Diego and two Texas areas – El Paso and Laredo...

Unclear on the Conceptreuters.myway.com/ ... 09:20:32Lebanese protesters broke into the United Nations headquarters in Beirut on Sunday, smashing windows and ransacking offices, after an Israeli air strike killed at least 40 people in south Lebanon... Several thousand people massed outside the building... "Death to Israel, death to America. We sacrifice our blood and souls for Lebanon..."

Digital Culturewashingtonpost.com/ ... 09:16:43If you're still using IE 6, then yes, Opera's offering makes the switch worth considering, if only for the more robust security and convenience of tabbed browsing. For those either already using Firefox or are willing to download the final beta version of IE 7, the answer is less clear-cut. Opera certainly makes it easy to switch... Many of the features Opera pioneered, such as tabbed browsing and the ability to open multiple home pages, are available in the latest version of Firefox and in the beta version of IE 7. Both of those browsers have large developer and support bases to answer questions and create new add-ons. Because all three browsers incorporate many of the same key functions and because Opera has a smaller support community, Opera 9 is at a distinct disadvantage for gaining new adherents -- unless, of course, you are looking forward to using some of those cutting-edge tools. Then you may find yourself a quick download away from a different take on what a Web browser can incorporate...

World of Culturesfoxnews.com/ ... 00:55:02The two finally had it out voice-to-voice when Siegel called in to the "Opie and Anthony" radio show while Smith was a guest. In the end, they finally came to some sort of peace. In the meantime "Clerks II" opened in theaters last weekend, taking in roughly 10 million bucks. That sounds modest, but it’s actually a decent showing considering the film was made for only $5 million...

US Congresstime.com/ ... 00:49:56Vietnam hero and Senator John McCain has unyieldingly backed the Iraq war. Now son Jimmy is heading to boot camp and, maybe, to battle...

SAT 2006-JUL-29

Nature vs Infrastructurebloomberg.com/ ... 18:01:21A wildfire is threatening high- voltage transmission lines that bring power to California from the Pacific Northwest... The Lakin Fire, 26 miles northeast of McCloud, California, is burning near three transmission lines that collectively can transport about 4,200 megawatts of electricity... The lines may need to be turned off to protect firefighters who operate underneath them...

Transport Tragedytoday.reuters.com/ ... 17:35:05At least 17 people were killed and 28 injured in central Venezuela on Saturday when a packed bus veered off a highway and crashed into a mountainside...

Sex can be Dangerouspress-citizen.com/ ... 14:36:25Iowa.... An unidentified middle-aged male bicyclist was trapped under a "Girls Gone Wild" full-size charter bus Tuesday night for about 20 minutes at the intersection of Burlington and Linn streets... extent of injuries suffered by the bicyclist also is unknown...

Civilization vs Gangsterismworldnetdaily.com/ ... 14:32:27The FBI estimates that today there are approximately thirty thousand violent gangs in the United States, with 800,000 members impacting 2,500 communities. The growth in Hispanic gangs dominates the gang underground in America today. MS-13, one of the most notorious Hispanic gangs, operates in some 34 different states and the District of Columbia. Even more frightening, the Hispanic gangs in the U.S. have connected with counterparts in Mexico, Central America, and South America. The large Hispanic gangs in the U.S. are in the process of morphing into truly international gangs, causing legitimate concern for the international law enforcement and intelligence communities...

Fun can be Fatalnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:14:24[followup] Jessie Gilbert, 19, from Croydon, south London, fell from the window of a hotel where she was staying during the Czech Open tournament... John Saunders, editor of British Chess Magazine, said he had been approached independently by several chess players claiming Miss Gilbert had a problem with sleepwalking... Her father, Ian Gilbert, 48, is to stand trial on seven counts of rape and two of indecent assault... it has emerged...

Industrial Tragedynews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:09:14At least 22 people have died and 28 are still missing after an explosion at a chemical plant in east China... Up to 7,000 people had to be evacuated... after concerns over the release of toxic gas...

Mass Murdering Monstersdailytexanonline.com/ ... 17:44:25In rememberance of the 40th anniversary of a shooting spree at The University of Texas on Aug. 1, 1966, the city of Austin named the day in honor of former Austin police officer Ray Martinez during a ceremony that took place at City Hall on Thursday. "We recognize Mr. Martinez for his outstanding heroism on that day," Mayor Will Wynn said in a statement read by Mayor Pro Tem Betty Dunkerley... news.scotsman.com/ ... 14:33:45Between them, the predators known as the Baseline Killer and the Serial Shooter have attacked at least 42 people, killing 11, since May 2005. All the attacks have been at random, increasing the anxiety in the city of 1.4 million. Few people travel alone after dark, thousands of cans of mace and pepper spray have been snapped up from shops and there has been a surge in interest in gun-handling and self-defence classes... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:08:45[Seattle Jewish organization shooting follow-up:] The suspect reportedly burst into the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle saying he was an American Muslim angered by Israel. He gave himself for arrest without a struggle... Staff members have said the suspect opened fire after shouting: "I'm a Muslim American; I'm angry at Israel..."

Violencetimesonline.co.uk/ ... 18:00:02HEAVILY armed American troops have returned to some of the most violent areas of Baghdad, patrolling the streets and setting up checkpoints in an attempt to regain control of the city and quell increasing sectarian violence. Their return sparked fierce criticism from opposition leaders but was welcomed by many ordinary Iraqis desperate for peace after months of murderous violence between rival militias... Yesterday proved to be one of the most peaceful days in months with no deaths reported in the capital by late afternoon, although two Sunni mosques were raked by gunfire which injured a guard. In contrast, an average of 100 people have been dying in sectarian attacks every day in Baghdad... today.reuters.com/ ... 17:35:44"Disarming Hizbollah will not be part of the mandate for the (peacekeeping) mission for now," a senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. "However it is supposed to strengthen the Lebanese army, the responsibility of which will be to implement (U.N. Security Council resolution) 1559 which calls for disarming Hizbollah eventually..." jpost.com/ ... 14:32:53IDF ground forces operating in the southern Lebanon villages of Bint Jbail and Maround al-Ras pulled back on Saturday, and the IAF was striking Hizbullah targets in Bint Jbail. OC Northern Command Maj.-Gen. Udi Adam said Saturday that the army had never intended to take over Bint Jbail, and that the operations there were designed to strike at Hizbullah capabilities. This goal, he said, was "fully realized." Adam described Bint Jbail as "almost in ruins," and added that the IDF had secured strategic posts around the village... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:15:38Gunmen have opened fire on two Sunni mosques in western Baghdad, according to police. Armed men in two cars sprayed gunfire at the Muhammad Rassulluallah mosque shattering windows and damaging walls. An hour later gunmen stormed the nearby Ashra al-Mubashara mosque, fleeing when police arrived...
Earlier, the US military confirmed three of their marines died in clashes with insurgents on Thursday in the western province of Anbar...
Six labourers were wounded by a bomb blast in Tayaran Square, Baghdad....
Three police... wounded in a roadside bomb attack in northern Baghdad....
A Sunni cleric, from a tribe opposed to al-Qaeda, was killed while driving in Samarra....
Iraq's national soccer coach has resigned after receiving a death threat.... today.reuters.com/ ... 08:03:06The killers of a Somali minister had links with foreign terrorism networks seeking to foment chaos in the violence-plagued Horn of Africa nation, Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said on Saturday... "Abdallah Deerow Isaq was killed by criminals linked to international terrorism," Gedi told reporters of the assassination of the constitution and federalism minister by gunmen outside a mosque after Friday prayers. "It's unfortunate that some countries who we thought were our friends have united to destroy the transitional federal government. Such countries include Libya, Egypt, Iran and Eritrea who together are fuelling terrorism in Somalia..." today.reuters.com/ ... 08:02:32Philippine police officers killed nine suspected members of a kidnap syndicate in a gunbattle on Saturday after a brief car chase in a province north of the capital Manila... None of the gang survived... "We're lucky we got the entire crew. We were alerted to their presence by some people who got suspicious about two cars parked overnight in a highway..."

Under Tyrannytoday.reuters.com/ ... 08:01:48Iranians should call helicopters "rotating wings" and pizzas "elastic loaves", according to a decree from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that seeks to rid Persian of European loan words... The presidential decree carried in Saturday's newspapers said official documents, schoolbooks and newspapers should follow the rulings of the Farhangestan, Iran's linguistic policeman -- equivalent of the Academie Francaise...

Supernaturalmanchestereveningnews.co.uk/ ... 17:44:06SUPER-strong hero Colin O'Neill saved a 14-year-old boy's life by lifting a three-ton mechanical digger off him and holding the weight for 20 minutes...

Animal Culturesciencedaily.com/ ... 17:40:35Innate or "instinctive" behaviors are inborn and do not require learning or prior experience to be performed... innate behavior is initiated by a "command" hormone that orchestrates activities in discrete groups of peptide neurons in the brain. Peptide neurons are brain cells that release small proteins to communicate with other brain cells and the body... the command hormone, called ecdysis-triggering hormone or ETH, activates discrete groups of brain peptide neurons in a stepwise manner... sciencedaily.com/ ... 17:39:09

Bumblebees have an incredible homing instinct that allows them to find their way home from up to eight miles away...

Digital Convergencesciencedaily.com/ ... 17:37:21Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine estimate that the human retina can transmit visual input at about the same rate as an Ethernet connection...

Digital Future is Nowsciencedaily.com/ ... 17:36:27UB researchers say their "Fingertip Digitizer," which users wear on the tip of the index finger, can transfer to the virtual world the meaning and intent of common hand gestures, such as pointing, wagging the finger, tapping in the air or other movements that can be used to direct the actions of an electronic device, much like a mouse directs the actions of a personal computer, but with greater precision... can transfer to personal computers very precise information about the physical characteristics of an object -- and even can sense the shape and size of a human gland or tumor -- when a user taps, scratches, squeezes, strokes or glides a finger over the surface of the object...

Extraterrestrialfloridatoday.com/ ... 10:41:49According to published reports, Brady died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the woods surrounding his home on Orcas Island in Washington state... eham.net/ ... 10:41:36Retired space shuttle astronaut and DXer Chuck Brady, N4BQW, of Oak Harbor, Washington, died July 23 following a lengthy illness. He was 54. During his years as an active astronaut in the 1990s, Brady was among the pioneers of SAREX (Shuttle Amateur Radio EXperiment)... A physician, Brady held the rank of captain in the US Navy. The North Carolina native packed a lot of activities into his all-too-short lifetime. In addition to ham radio, he enjoyed canoeing, kayaking, tennis, and cycling. He received training as a flight surgeon after joining the US Navy in 1986, and he was flight surgeon for the Blue Angels Navy flight demonstration squadron from 1989 until 1990. In 1992, NASA selected Brady as an astronaut candidate, and he qualified as a mission specialist for shuttle flights, ultimately logging more than 405 hours in space. Survivors include Brady's fiancé Susan, their four-year-old son Charlie, and a sister. A military service is planned...

Healing Ourselvessciencedaily.com/ ... 17:40:56Spray-on skin... forbes.com/ ... 08:28:14A synthetic version of a protein found in scorpion venom has passed its first test in a treatment for one of the deadliest forms of cancer and is headed toward trials against other tumors...

Raising Ourselvesnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:07:38Babies whose mothers do not eat enough during pregnancy appear to be at risk of clogged up arteries later in life...

Animal Companionshosted.ap.org/ ... 08:00:46A man accused of biting the head off his pet rooster was arrested Friday and faces up to a year in prison if convicted... told agents that he bit the rooster's head off because he blamed it for injuring a pet pigeon that he also kept in the apartment.... It is... illegal to possess a live rooster in New York City...

History - still with ushosted.ap.org/ ... 07:54:50Venture Smith... "the black Paul Bunyan..." Standing 6-foot-1 by his own account and weighing more than 300 pounds according to local lore, Smith is said to have carried a nine-pound ax and split seven cords of wood each day. His biography describes him carrying a barrel of molasses on his shoulders for two miles and hauling hundreds of pounds of salt. Smith's story became one of the nation's first slave narratives in 1798 and is regarded by scholars as one of the most important such works. But slave biographies - particularly those told to writers, as Smith's story was - were sometimes embellished. Scientists say a look at Smith's remains could indicate his height and weight, his diet and any injuries he suffered during a life of labor. And DNA taken from him, his wife, his son and his granddaughter could help pinpoint where in Africa he was born and corroborate the account of his early life there...

Business Culturesuntimes.com/ ... 17:47:27Herb Peterson, a Rogers Park native, created the McMuffin breakfast sandwich out of frustration 35 years ago. He was hungry for breakfast, but McDonald's restaurants didn't open until 11 a.m. Last night, Peterson was honored for the frustration that led to the Egg McMuffin as McDonald's Corp. presented him with its highest marketing award, the Lifetime Achievement Award. Peterson is an idea man who, at 87, still makes impromptu phone calls from his California home to McDonald's headquarters to suggest new products. As a newly minted McDonald's restaurant operator in 1971, Peterson believed he wasn't the only McDonald's fan who was hungry before 11 a.m... also credited his role in creating Ronald McDonald's costume and McDonald's first national ad...

World of Culturestimesonline.co.uk/ ... 17:43:32POLICE are preparing for potentially violent protests by right-wing extremists when a film portraying the human side of Emperor Hirohito is released next week. Many academics believe that the film, which supposedly breaks numerous Japanese taboos in its portrayal of the Imperial Family, may represent an important step towards the "normalisation" of Japan and its ability to debate its wartime past. However, scenes that depict Hirohito as weak-willed and suggest that he bore moral responsibility for the Pacific War are likely to enrage Japan’s belligerent and vocal lobby of arch nationalists, who see anything that damages the Emperor’s image as deeply offensive...

Sex & Politicskentucky.com/ ... 17:42:38Melody "Mimi" Damayo... a former adult-film actress with the stage name Mimi Miyagi, is running for governor of Nevada.... Mary Carey... who is still active in the porn business, finished 10th among 135 candidates in California's 2003 gubernatorial re-call election... porno-politicos have been firmly established on the international ballot. Illona Staller, also known as "Cicciolina," is the best-known pioneer, winning a seat in Italy's parliament in 1987. Since then, former and current adult film stars also have run for office in Japan and Chile...

Human Rightwjla.com/ ... 14:33:16The state's highest court has ruled that Marylanders can lend a gun to a friend without going through the seven-day waiting period and background check required by state law before guns can be transferred or sold to a new owner...

AmerIndians Todaykotv.com/ ... 10:44:34Tribal leaders for the Cherokee Nation and Delaware Tribe of Indians traveled to Washington, D.C., to ask Congress to recognize the Delaware as a separate entity... first step toward restoring some $7 million in federal funding and would end years of flip-flopping verdicts on the smaller Delaware Tribe's sovereign status... Cherokee Chief Chad Smith and Delaware Chief Jerry Douglas hand carried the proposed agreement Thursday to Washington. Under the settlement, the Delawares, based in Bartlesville, will continue to be citizens of the Tahlequah-based Cherokee Nation as they have been since an 1867 agreement when the Delawares bought land within the Cherokee Nation...

People are Trashyhosted.ap.org/ ... 07:57:20On a mountaintop overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Steven Cliff collects evidence of an industrial revolution taking place thousands of miles away. The tiny, airborne particles Cliff gathers at an air monitoring station just north of San Francisco drifted over the ocean from coal-fired power plants, smelters, dust storms and diesel trucks in China and other Asian countries. Researchers say the environmental impact of China's breakneck economic growth is being felt well beyond its borders. They worry that as China consumes more fossil fuels to feed its energy-hungry economy, the U.S. could see a sharp increase in trans-Pacific pollution that could affect human health, worsen air quality and alter climate patterns... [What goes 'round comes 'round....]

Alcohol Was Involvedhosted.ap.org/ ... 07:52:52Despite the anti-alcohol warnings and campaigns targeting college campuses, students still find ways to drink and they've developed ways to drink safely... up to 80 percent of students drink, fewer than 13 percent say they've been injured or damaged property after drinking... about 73 percent of student drinkers protect themselves by using designated drivers, setting spending limits at bars, counting their drinks, going out in groups and trusting friends to speak up when someone is drinking too much... "The safest place for college students to drink alcohol is on college campuses. All data points to that.... Yet more is done to force drinking off campus .... Those policies have failed to reduce drinking. Private kegger parties are the most high-risk location for drinking..."

Digital Culturetheinquirer.net/ ... 18:02:20new chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, has been sharing his thoughts with leading analysts. And he's declared that Microsoft will be concentrating on the sort of Internet-based services we've already seen with the Windows Live Mail beta. "In a previous era – in the PC era – Microsoft would naturally begin with a PC mindset," Ozzie opined. "We're in a new era – an era in which the Internet is at the centre..." Microsoft was, of course, initially slow to spot the Internet's potential. It nearly lost serious ground to Netscape before stomping its mark all over the sector with Internet Explorer. Under Uncle Bill, Microsoft also made its software more Internet-friendly through its .Net initiative. Now Windows Live with its mail and search centric capabilities will become the hub of Microsoft's business, Ozzie revealed. There's little doubt which businesses Microsoft is now jealously trying to oust. It's aiming at Google and Yahoo!.. news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:07:24For many years playing computer games has been viewed as a enjoyable way to spend time. But now a new generation of games are emerging with a serious agenda behind the fun...
Fed up of people continually complaining about their taxes, France's ministry of finance developed a video game, so now the people themselves can have a go at doing the minister's job of balancing the country's budget...
The company Kynogon puts artificial intelligence into security games and knows that unless crowds behave like the real thing its clients will not be very interested... hosted.ap.org/ ... 07:59:30A Utah teen with fingers of fury is once again the speed text-messaging king of the world. Ben Cook, 18, of Provo, Utah, returned to the top of the cell-phone text-messaging heap Friday at a Denver text-off at a water park, blazing through a 160-character standardized message in 42.22 seconds. The phrase used for purposes of professional, competition texting is: "The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human..." playfuls.com/ ... 07:50:14Nearly 13 fruitful years of dominance in the processors’ area have ended yesterday for Intel’s Pentium, with the launch of the next generation Core 2 Duo chips. The new corporate slogan, "Leap Ahead", is the exact definition for these spectacular processors... arstechnica.com/ ... 07:48:54Search giant Google has launched a new project hosting service for open source software. Designed to leverage the robust Subversion version control system, the new service provides repository hosting and support for issue tracking. With extremely limited functionality and plenty of rough edges, the nascent open source project hosting service is noticeably inferior to most other Google betaware. Despite the deficiencies, the project has potential, and it will probably become more useful as it continues to evolve. The main page bears the common open source meme "Release early, release often," a principle that Google seems to have embraced with great enthusiasm given the raw status of the system...

FRI 2006-JUL-28

Nature is Dangerousfoxnews.com/ ... 14:30:26EASTLAKE, Ohio — Flood water surged into homes and businesses, forcing people to rooftops to await rescue Friday morning after 9 inches of rain filled the rivers and streets of northeast Ohio. Lake County, east of Cleveland, declared a state of emergency. County Administrator Kenneth R. Gauntner Jr. estimated at least 100 people had been evacuated and all available rescue boats had been pressed into service...

Nature can be Deadlybreitbart.com/ ... 21:12:54A heat wave baking California since mid July has killed 25,000 cattle and 700,000 fowl... foxnews.com/ ... 14:29:56The death toll from California's record-breaking heat wave rose to 123 Friday...

Fun can be Fatalfoxnews.com/ ... 14:27:56AUSTELL, Georgia — A 45-year-old man died of an apparent heart attack after losing consciousness at the end of the newest roller coaster ride at Six Flags Over Georgia amusement park... Goliath soars 200 feet over the park. The ride lasts just over three minutes and reaches speeds of 70 mph...

Viet Nam War - still with usnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:05:48New Zealand troops who served in the Vietnam War suffered significant genetic damage from exposure to Agent Orange, a study suggests.

Rage can be Fatalindystar.com/ ... 08:30:21BROWNSTOWN, Ind. -- A hunting trip with friends and relatives sparked a rage in Zachariah Blanton on Saturday night when it came time for the messy work of gutting a deer... A fight erupted... the 17-year-old... bolted for his car and headed for his... home.... "I was just so bound up inside I didn't know what to do... I found myself driving to the overpass..." firing a high-powered hunting rifle into the windshields of two southbound pickups on I-65, then driving about 100 miles north and firing on two other vehicles in Delaware County.... "I felt that was a way to relieve the pressure...." The Jackson County shooting killed 40-year-old Jerry Ross, New Albany. He was a passenger in one of the trucks that was hit on I-65...

Civilization vs Gangsterismsfgate.com/ ... 08:23:03Jose Santos Bonilla, 33... A top leader of the notorious MS-13 street gang was arrested this morning in Richmond by a task force of federal and local law enforcement agents seeking to stop the Los Angeles-based gang from establishing itself in the Bay Area... Since Bonilla came to the East Bay from San Francisco six months ago, MS-13 members have been linked to three homicides and several other shootings as it sought to carve out territory and intimidate other gangs... Bonilla joked and laughed with heavily armed officers while being led in handcuffs to a police van. The letters "MS" were tattooed on the back of his shaved skull...

Violencewashtimes.com/ ... 21:10:55Intelligence reports indicate the leader of Hezbollah is hiding in a foreign mission in Beirut, possibly the Iranian Embassy, according to U.S. and Israeli officials. Israeli military and intelligence forces are continuing to hunt for Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's secretary-general, who fled his headquarters in Beirut shortly before Israeli jets bombed the building last week... hosted.ap.org/ ... 21:10:35At least five people were shot, one of them fatally, Friday afternoon at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, and one person was arrested... no information on a motive... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 19:42:53At least four people have been killed in a mortar attack on a Sunni mosque in Baghdad...
At least six people were also injured when several mortar rounds hit the al-Ali al-Aadhim mosque in the south of the Iraqi capital... blasts happened as worshippers were leaving the mosque after prayers... today.reuters.com/ ... 19:39:11Hizbollah fired scores of rockets into Israel on Friday, including at least one that the Lebanese guerrilla group said was a new long-range missile, wounding at least six people... landed in an open area near the town of Afula, about 50 km (30 miles) from the Lebanese border... tulsaworld.com/ ... 08:40:39Rockets and mortars rained down Thursday on an upscale, mostly Shiite area of Baghdad, collapsing an apartment house, shattering shops and killing at least 31 people... A car bomb also exploded during the attack in the commercial-residential district of Karradah, an area that is home to several prominent Shiite politicians. More than 150 people were wounded in the blasts... israelnationalnews.com/ ... 08:21:25Hizbullah stored ammunition and weapons in mosques, knowing that the IDF does not attack religious sites. Civilians were not allowed to leave so that Hizbullah could use them as cover. IDF officers said they ordered pilots not to strafe Bint Jbeil in order to spare civilian casualties. A United Nations peace keeping officer from Canada told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that Hizbullah used the same tactic to draw fire on the UNIFIL post which resulted in the death of four U.N. observers. "This is their favorite trick," he said. "They use the U.N. as shields..." worldnetdaily.com/ ... 08:20:41The United Nations post in Lebanon at the center of controversy over a deadly Israeli attack likely was being used as a "shield" by Hezbollah to fire rockets into the Jewish state, according to a former U.N. commander in Bosnia... retired Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie points to an e-mail by one of the observers killed in the attack that backs Israel's claim that it was targeting Hezbollah... "The closest artillery has landed within 2 meters (sic) of our position and the closest 1000 lb aerial bomb has landed 100 meters (sic) from our patrol base. This has not been deliberate targeting, but rather due to tactical necessity." MacKenzie said Hess-von Kruedener was indicating Israeli strikes were aimed at Hezbollah targets near the post... "What that means is, in plain English, 'We've got Hezbollah fighters running around in our positions, taking our positions here and then using us for shields and then engaging the (Israeli Defence Forces)..." news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 07:48:53Israel is continuing its bombardment of Lebanon, with dozens of air strikes leaving at least five people dead...

Sex can be Fatalnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 07:46:14"Until such time as the straight world is not attacking people for cruising, I'd say the gay world could actually keep that to themselves, just for a little bit longer..." --actor George Michael, unclear on the concept of dangers inherent in casual unprotected promiscuity

Only Naturalfoxnews.com/ ... 14:29:20A series of mysterious eruptions in the western Pacific could be caused by a new type of volcano... tiny active volcanoes on the Pacific plate... may be widespread on ocean floors where the mantle just under the crust is squeezed out by tectonic forces when one plate moves under another... "The possibility of this type of volcanism had been proposed in the past, but had never been adequately documented..."

Digital Convergencetoday.reuters.com/ ... 11:10:45Internet retailer Amazon.com Inc. is making its first foray into the big-screen movie business after buying an option to develop a film from Keith Donohue's fantasy novel "The Stolen Child..." today.reuters.com/ ... 11:10:30E! Entertainment Television has joined the steadily growing list of networks and studios to offer their programming for download and purchase via Apple's iTunes Music Store... today.reuters.com/ ... 11:10:18TiVo... on Thursday said it reached a joint marketing agreement to promote the use of its devices with BellSouth Corp.'s high-speed Internet subscriptions... today.reuters.com/ ... 11:09:59Music television is the endangered species of the pop world, and is learning the hard way that it must adapt to the Internet age, or die. Britain's "Top of the Pops", the world's longest running weekly music show, will be declared extinct on Sunday when it is broadcast for the last time on BBC. Two days later MTV, one reason for the demise of Top of the Pops and at the cutting edge of music for so long, begins to reinvent itself with a new interactive TV channel and Web site that will target the online social networking craze...

Animal Companionsnbc5i.com/ ... 21:12:38WICHITA, Kan. -- Two Kansas children... an 11-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl... are in protective custody after authorities found 68 pit bulls living in their home... in deplorable conditions... Many of the dogs have scars and were probably used for fighting... father was arrested on various charges, including resisting arrest and child endangerment... Under local law, pit bulls can't be adopted out to the general public. Unless the dogs are eventually returned to the owner or a credited rescue group comes to their aid, they will be euthanized... timesonline.co.uk/ ... 08:32:21

A COLLIE that can’t bark is recovering after spending 26 days trapped in a 10ft gully that she fell into while trying to escape a thunderstorm... eventually found by a family friend... was able to survive by drinking rainwater dripping from the roof of the neighbouring building and licking moisture off the side of the gully. She is now back home after being treated for malnutrition, dehydration and an eye infection which caused both eyes to gum up, leaving her temporarily blind...

US Militarydenverpost.com/ ... 08:12:47Colorado Springs - The military is relegating its newly renovated airspace and missile defense complex in Cheyenne Mountain to standby status - clouding the future of a Cold War nerve center touted as the most secure spot in America. The green-jumpsuited sentries who electronically scan the skies from deep inside this granite cocoon southwest of Colorado Springs - built in the 1960s to withstand Soviet nuclear blasts - now are to blend into broader homeland defense operations under prairie skies at nearby Peterson Air Force Base...

Healing Ourselvessciencedaily.com/ ... 07:49:29a chemical compound found in many air fresheners, toilet bowl cleaners, mothballs and other deodorizing products, may be harmful to the lungs. ...exposure to a volatile organic compound (VOC), called 1,4 dichlorobenzene (1,4 DCB) may cause modest reductions in lung function... "Even a small reduction in lung function may indicate some harm to the lungs..." news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 07:42:50Contrary to common perception, people with dark skin are more likely to die from skin cancer than those with fairer skin...

Feeding Ourselveshosted.ap.org/ ... 07:40:04The government is too strapped to handle congressional legislation that would strip state-ordered warnings from food labels, a former Food and Drug Administration official said Thursday. The food industry wants Congress to prevent states from adding food warnings that go beyond federal law, affecting laws about milk safety in Massachusetts, Michigan and Nebraska and warnings about allergy-causing sulfites in Connecticut, Michigan and Virginia...

Beatles - still with usnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 19:41:57

The guitar on which Sir Paul McCartney learned his first chords has sold for £330,000 at an auction at London's famous Abbey Road Studios... fetched more than three times its estimate... The Rex acoustic guitar helped Sir Paul persuade John Lennon to let him join his band, The Quarrymen, in 1957...

Theory of Justicedeseretnews.com/ ... 08:26:10PROVO — A man who says God told him to gun down a dozen people can't hope to be found "not guilty by reason of insanity" if tried in Utah. Neither could a Texas mother who drowned her children in a bathtub under the deluded belief that she was saving their souls from Satan. But that verdict is an option in Texas... However, Utah is one of three U.S. states that have abolished the wording in the traditional insanity plea so those accused of murder can't claim they didn't know their actions were wrong...

Theory of Educationamny.com/ ... 08:24:56WATERBURY, Conn. ...which already has a strict dress code for public school students, is considering implementing a similar one for teachers and other professionals in the school system... would ban such clothing as stretch pants, low-cut shirts, sun dresses, sandals and hats in the workplace.... what material is appropriate for pants... skirts can rise no more than three inches above the knee... ban facial piercings....

Big Whoops Cascadenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:12:35Three Australian men who escaped from prison ended up back in jail after flagging down an unmarked police car to hitch a ride...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spinkxxv.com/ ... 21:14:53Crawford- Anti-War Activist Cindy Sheehan is going to become a neighbor of President Bush, and local residents are not happy about the mess... She now wants a permanent place where she and fellow protestors can go to demonstrate against President Bush... Peace Supporter, Gerry Fonseca, says he purchased the 5-acre parcel... cost more than $52,000... bought with the money frome her son, Casey's, life insurance policy... "I doubt they would have sold her the property if she tried to buy it herself," said Foncseca... "I feel deceived," said Celia Ramsey, who sold the land to Cindy Sheehan through a third party.... "I would have never sold it to Sheehan. Nobody wants them here..." news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:08:45The US state department has dismissed as "outrageous" a suggestion by Israel that it has been authorised by the world to continue bombing Lebanon... Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon made the suggestion after powers meeting in Rome refrained from demanding an immediate ceasefire...

Business Culturenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:07:45MOST VALUABLE GLOBAL BRANDS
Coca-Cola - $67bn (US)
Microsoft - $57bn (US)
IBM - $56bn (US)
General Electric - $48bn (US)
Intel - $32bn (US)
Nokia - $30bn (Finland)
Toyota - $28bn (US)
Disney - $28bn (US)
McDonald's - $27bn (Japan)
Mercedes - $22bn (US) kotv.com/ ... 08:39:48She's inspired many a sweet tooth over the years, while raising a family and running a business. Ann Bay, founder of Ann's Bakery, died last week at the age of 100... now run by Ann's daughter... "When she would hire somebody she said if they worked on a farm you know to hire them because they're hard workers..." "She always instilled in us hard work, I mean they started from scratch. I remember when my dad would walk to deliver pies to people and you don't see that today..." "To always treat your customers fairly, I just remember that year after year, she said if you can give the customers a good price and try to treat them fairly. They'll keep coming back..." news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 07:48:24Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, is pulling out of Germany and handing over 85 stores to rival Metro... Wal-Mart, which owns Asda in the UK and has more than 5,700 stores across the world, blamed Germany's economic situation for the decision... The company has been embroiled in controversy over pay and conditions. It has also come in for fierce criticism over the effect its low prices are said to have on suppliers and smaller local stores... [Could this be the beginning of the end for the retail colossus? I've never heard of a Wal-Mart store being closed, except in cases of opening a larger one down the road....]

Digital Culturenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 07:46:53The Who have abandoned a series of live webcasts from their world tour because of a disagreement between band members Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey. Guitarist Townshend said Daltrey was not sure how "the web has any real contribution to make to our career" - but he insisted they were not "at war"... [Just HOW antiquated are these relics?]

Supernatural Threatshosted.ap.org/ ... 07:42:32Islamic clerics have banned Malaysian Muslims from undergoing Botox treatment for cosmetic purposes because the compound contains prohibited and harmful substances... but conceded that using Botox for medical reasons - for example, to treat cerebral palsy sufferers - is permissible if doctors deem it necessary... Botox contains extracts from pigs... Botox is the brand name for a substance derived from the toxin botulin which, when injected into the face, temporarily paralyzes the facial muscles to eliminate wrinkles. It can also be used treat migraines, excessive sweating and muscle spasms in the neck and eyes... Some 60 percent of this Southeast Asian country's 26 million people are Muslims. Malaysian Muslims are required to obey council edicts, even if they have not been enshrined in national or Sharia law...

World - Energyhosted.ap.org/ ... 07:40:47CLOVIS, N.M. -- A price war between two Clovis gasoline stations reached a fever pitch when one store dropped its fuel price to 49 cents per gallon...

THU 2006-JUL-27

Fun can be Fatalnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 22:33:00A teenage chess champion has fallen to her death while competing in an international tournament. Jessie Gilbert, 19, from Croydon, south London, fell from the eighth floor of the Hotel Labe in Pardubice, in the Czech Republic, on Wednesday morning... Police are investigating how she came to fall at 4.40am local time on Wednesday... "Everyone is devastated, she was such a bright spark in English chess and a very promising player..."

Thefthosted.ap.org/ ... 22:32:02BRATTLEBORO, Vt. -- A man convicted of stealing maple syrup has been sentenced to between five and 10 years in prison... [They take their syrup seriously in Vermont!]

Modern Medicine can be Dangeroushosted.ap.org/ ... 14:55:16KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A hospital patient died after receiving a unit of blood platelets tainted with E. coli bacteria... Only one unit of the tainted blood was released... Community Blood Center in Kansas City... tests all its blood products for various contaminants but accidentally released the platelets in question. After discovering the problem, he said, the center notified the hospital a matter of hours after the hospital received the platelets, but the unit already had been used... E. coli bacteria can cause severe diarrhea and abdominal cramps. Young children and the elderly are at risk of complications that can lead to kidney damage or death... The donor never developed symptoms... The bacteria would have had a chance to multiply while sitting in a bag at room temperature... hosted.ap.org/ ... 14:53:24Two U.S. heart transplant patients who died earlier this year had contracted a parasitic tropical disease from their new organs... The two California men are the fourth and fifth U.S. patients believed to have been infected with Chagas' disease through organ transplants, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention... No screening test for Chagas' is licensed in the United States... The infected organs came from one person born in Central America and another who had traveled to Mexico... Chagas' disease can cause high fever, swelling, enlargement of the spleen, liver and lymph nodes, and inflammation of the heart. Most people infected do not get sick, but the disease can be fatal in some cases and can be especially dangerous to people with suppressed immune systems. Transplant patients receive immune-suppressing drugs to prevent organ rejection...

Prison Sucksfirstamendmentcenter.org/ ... 13:12:39PHILADELPHIA — Prison staff who punished a Muslim inmate for refusing to handle pork do not have immunity from his religious-freedom lawsuit, a federal appeals court has ruled...

Criminally Stupidasia.reuters.com/ ... 13:12:04A prison inmate pleaded guilty on Tuesday to sending letters to the FBI and secret service that included bomb and anthrax threats -- as well as his full name and inmate number... "I think it's fair to say we were not dealing with a great criminal mind here," U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie said in a statement...

WW2 - still with ustimesonline.co.uk/ ... 13:11:39POLISH divers have discovered the rusting wreckage of Nazi Germany’s only aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin, solving one of the most enduring maritime riddles of the Second World War...

Nature is Dangerousdailymail.co.uk/ ... 08:55:51

A seven-year-old girl narrowly escaped death when a powerful lightning bolt... hit an aerial on the chimney stack above her bedroom, causing part of the roof to collapse... blew a hole in her bedroom ceiling, sending part of her nightclothes up in smoke... as she lay in bed... she escaped with just a small scorch mark to her arm after the main impact of the blast missed her head by inches, leaving a four-inch long burn mark through her bedsheet and mattress... bolt tore throughout the £300,000 four-bedroom house, blowing out light sockets...

Violenceforbes.com/ ... 13:21:25A Palestinian lawmaker and a spokesman for the Hamas military on Thursday denied that the release of a captured Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip could be imminent... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:09:37Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas says a deal could be "imminent" to free an Israeli soldier held for more than a month by militants in the Gaza Strip... jpost.com/ ... 08:52:16It was a phone call Ibrahim Mahmoud says he'll never forget. The woman on the other end, speaking in Hebrew-accented Arabic, accused the appliance store owner of being a member of Hamas and informed him the IDF would bomb his house. Hours later, after he had already moved 20 relatives out of the four-story building, she called back to tell him she had made a mistake. "Be safe," she said and hung up, according to Mahmoud. Dozens of other Palestinians have recently received similar phone calls, many of them on target, in a new tactic the army said is meant to reduce civilian casualties in its monthlong offensive in Gaza. Palestinian officials dismissed the army's claim that the phone calls are meant to reduce deaths... seattlepi.nwsource.com/ ... 08:07:34Even though he had no reason to fear for his life, [23yo] DS opened fire last week on a carload of young men who were mouthing off to him, shooting so wildly that he killed not only two in the car, but also a friend who was with him... Three of the teens in the car were wounded but survived... a prison sentence of up to 86 years if he were convicted on all of them...

Mass Murdering Monsterskxly.com/ ... 22:28:43COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- He's already serving a life term for murder in Colorado -- and now, he's claiming responsibility for dozens of other slayings throughout the US... Authorities say Robert Browne tells them the killings -- as many as 48 of them -- took place from 1970 until 1995, when he was arrested for the 1991 murder of 13-year-old Heather Dawn Church near Colorado Springs... authorities have linked Browne to 19 of the slayings -- from California, to Washington state, to Mississippi, and even in South Korea... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 07:49:46Two explosions in a central Baghdad district have killed at least 27 people... in the commercial district of Karrada, a mostly Shia area. At least 101 people were injured... car bomb went off near a restaurant popular with Iraqi police. Then several mortars exploded near a petrol station, damaging nearby buildings... Many of the injured were said to be in a serious condition...

Transport Tragedynews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 07:48:57All 16 people on board a helicopter which crashed in south-eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday were killed... dead include two US civilians and two Dutch military personnel... not known what caused the helicopter to crash in mountains about 35km (22 miles) from the city of Khost...

Under Tyrannynews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 07:48:16Chinese investigators say activist Fu Xiancai, who was paralysed after a severe beating, inflicted the blows himself... Mr Fu, who campaigned for people displaced by the Three Gorges Dam, was beaten up returning home after he was summoned by police in Hubei province. The June beating was so severe he is not expected to walk again... official investigation has ruled the attack was fabricated... The blow to the back of his neck was so severe that three of his vertebrae were broken...

Alcohol Was Involvedsun-sentinel.com/ ... 13:13:53A veteran officer and police academy DUI instructor was driving drunk, naked from the waist down, and speeding on Florida's Turnpike at 90 mph... She had a large open bottle of Southern Comfort in her car, which her attorney later argued was used to train police recruits... "I asked her, 'Where are your pants?' and I think she answered, 'I don't know,'" Deputy David Alvarado told Plantation investigators. Alvarado said he asked for backup because "I didn't want to be alone too long with a naked female on the side of the road..." hosted.ap.org/ ... 07:45:55

Visitors to "Pub in the Paddock" in the island-state of Tasmania are invited to pour bottles of beer down the willing throats of resident pigs Priscilla and P.B... the tourist attraction had been attacked as cruel in the latest edition of a magazine published by animal welfare group Choose Cruelty Free... Pub owner... said the pigs liked beer. She also watered the beer down to ensure they never got drunk...

US Militarygay.com/ ... 22:39:57A decorated sergeant and Arabic language specialist was dismissed from the U.S. Army under the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, though he says he never told his superiors he was gay and his accuser was never identified. Sgt. Bleu Copas, 30, told the Associated Press he is gay, but said he was outed by a stream of anonymous e-mails to his superiors in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C...

Digital Future is Nowtoday.reuters.com/ ... 13:09:23Nokia, the world's largest cellphone maker, has started its first tests of a technology that allows users to roam seamlessly between phone networks and local wireless hotspots such as Wi-Fi. Fifty families in Oulu near the polar circle in northern Finland will test the technology over the next two months...

Healing Ourselvessciencedaily.com/ ... 13:08:58honey helps the treatment of some wounds better than the most modern antibiotics... medical experts... largely positive experience with what is known as medihoney. Even chronic wounds infected with multi-resistant bacteria often healed within a few weeks...

Only Naturalhosted.ap.org/ ... 22:29:46"I was SHOCKED to see a giant breast on the cover of your magazine," one person wrote. "I immediately turned the magazine face down," wrote another. "Gross," said a third... Babytalk is a free magazine whose readership is overwhelmingly mothers of babies. Yet in a poll of more than 4,000 readers, a quarter of responses to the cover were negative, calling the photo - a baby and part of a woman's breast, in profile - inappropriate. One mother who didn't like the cover explains she was concerned about her 13-year-old son seeing it. "I shredded it," said Gayle Ash, of Belton, Texas, in a telephone interview. "A breast is a breast - it's a sexual thing. He didn't need to see that..." [The cover shows less breast than practically any TV show on the air. People really have problems!] sciencedaily.com/ ... 13:08:06by altering the risk of cannibalism and observing changes in male behavior... Male Praying Mantids... are able to assess the risk of cannibalism and become more cautious in the presence of particularly hungry females... "Males are clearly not complicit, and the act of sexual cannibalism in praying mantids is an example of extreme conflict between the sexes..."

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 08:09:49

Army Spc. Joseph A. Graves, 21, of Discovery Bay, Calif., was killed on July 25 in Baghdad, Iraq, when his convoy encountered enemy fire. Graves was assigned to the 110th Military Police Company, 720th Military Police Battalion, 89th Military Police Brigade, Fort Hood, Texas.

It's All in Your Mindsciencedaily.com/ ... 07:52:12Obsessive-compulsive disorder tends to run in families, causing members of several generations to experience severe anxiety and disturbing thoughts that they ease by repeating certain behaviors. In fact, close relatives of people with OCD are up to nine times more likely to develop OCD themselves... new research is shedding new light on one of the genetic factors that may contribute to that pattern. And while no one gene "causes" OCD, the research is helping scientists confirm the importance of a particular gene that has been suspected to play a major role in OCD's development...

Digital Convergencehosted.ap.org/ ... 07:46:37Microsoft Corp. will run free episodes of the quirky TV comedy "Arrested Development" through its MSN Video service later this year, making the show available online for the first time... [legally that is... EVERYTHING is online already....]

Uniting Nationsabcnews.go.com/ ... 22:37:13Oddest at the hearing, in almost biblical style (at least as far as the muted world of Senate confirmation hearings), as Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., was beginning to question Bolton about U.S. policy toward Lebanon and Hezbollah, a cascading sheet of water fell from above, landing in the 10 feet directly between Bolton and his Senator inquisitors, separating the two sides. There must be some allegory or omen or some hidden meaning to the waterfall. Perhaps something about discord between question and answer. Choose your own meaning for the indoor rainstorm. The serendipity of its timing and placement are too intriguing for coincidence...

Just Random Chancehosted.ap.org/ ... 22:30:28His family didn't plan it that way, but when Mike Lively became the 1 millionth person to tour the Jelly Belly Center on his birthday Wednesday, he won his weight's worth of the sweet treats... 288 pounds of jelly beans... "Fork it out to my family and kids," said Lively, a steel worker, when asked what he would do with his prize. "None of the guys at work are getting any..."

Supernatural Sillinesstoday.reuters.com/ ... 14:58:19An ancient Irish manuscript found in a bog last week does not refer to "wiping out Israel", the National Museum of Ireland said on Thursday, after a flood of enquiries wondering at the timing of the discovery. The National Museum of Ireland announced on Tuesday what it said was one of the most significant Irish discoveries in decades; an ancient Psalter or Book of Psalms, written around 800 AD. It said part of Psalm 83 was legible. In modern versions of the Bible, Psalm 83 is a lament to God over other nations' attempts to wipe out Israel and many commentators wondered at the coincidence of such a discovery at a time of heightened tension in the Middle East... The confusion arose because the manuscript uses an old Latin translation of the Bible known at the Vulgate, which numbers the psalms differently from the later King James version, the 1611 English translation from which many modern texts derive... The vale of tears is in Psalm 84 in the King James version...

Sex -- always attractivehosted.ap.org/ ... 14:56:13KINGSBURG, Calif. -- KFYE-FM hasn't budged from the Fresno-area dial, but it's about as far as you can get from the Christian music, sermons and Bible stories it was broadcasting until about a week ago. Now it calls itself "Porn Radio" - "all sex radio, all the time," with a suggestion that people under 21 not listen...

Opposing Tyrannylatimes.com/ ... 08:02:26Ohio's highest court ruled Wednesday that cities could not use eminent domain to seize private property in order to use the land for economic development. In 2002, the working-class Cincinnati suburb of Norwood demanded that dozens of property and business owners sell off their holdings in order to turn a neighborhood of about 70 middle-class homes into a $125-million retail and office complex. The development was expected to bring in millions of dollars in tax revenue... state's lower courts had upheld Norwood's claim... three landowners petitioned the Ohio Supreme Court. Although economic issues can be considered in eminent domain cases, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that they could not be the only reason to take private property from owners...

Theory of Justicednaindia.com/ ... 08:01:26The chief judge in ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's trial for crimes against humanity adjourned the case until October 16 on Thursday to allow the bench to consider its verdict...

Transport Incidenttoday.reuters.com/ ... 07:51:06At least 85 people sustained minor injuries on Thursday when a commuter train jumped the tracks near the South African port of Durban...

People Do Drugshosted.ap.org/ ... 14:52:17MADISON, Wis. -- Doctors are testing a radical new way to help smokers quit: a shot that "immunizes" them against the nicotine rush that fuels their addiction... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 07:50:45Doctors have warned teenagers about the dangers of sniffing mothballs after two teenagers fell ill through the habit...

Reasons for Repealhosted.ap.org/ ... 22:31:13WICHITA, Kan. -- Some interesting items have been showing up in the potted plants at Wichita City Hall. Since April, when the city installed a security checkpoint at the hall's front doors, guards have found several bags of marijuana and crack and other illegal goods in the potted plants near the checkpoint... news.bostonherald.com/ ... 08:04:03NEW YORK - Federal agents say they have broken up a smuggling ring responsible for most U.S. distribution of a leafy stimulant called khat, which is illegal here, but commonly used in East Africa and parts of the Arabian peninsula. Prosecutors announced the indictment of 44 people Wednesday on charges that they helped bring 25 tons of the plant into the US in recent years... khat is a common and socially accepted drug in Yemen, Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia. Users chew it, like loose tobacco, and generally experience a mild buzz that lasts for about 90 minutes and can cause an elevated heart rate and blood pressure. It can also create a feeling of euphoria... [OH MY GOD! NOT A FEELING OF EUPHORIA! HOW HORRIBLE! WE MUST KEEP THIS DEADLY DRUG AWAY FROM WILLING USERS IN AMERICA!] Overseas, it is seen as a social ill, but an acceptable one, like alcohol. England considered a ban on khat this year, but decided against it... hosted.ap.org/ ... 07:45:01

ELLICOTT CITY, Md. -- Federal drug agents aren't laughing about marijuana packaged in yellow, smiley-faced gumballs.... "Greenades...." federal Drug Enforcement Agency recently released an intelligence bulletin about them.... school resource officer... seized the bag, which contained two "candy balls" wrapped in foil, police said. Instructions on the foil told users to chew for 30 minutes to 1 hour before they wanted to be high and to "chew for as long as possible, then swallow..."

Digital Culturetoday.reuters.com/ ... 14:59:30An Arkansas state judge on Thursday granted final approval to a class-action settlement between Google Inc. and advertisers who alleged Google allowed third parties to drive up fees by fraudulent use of its Web search advertising system... calls for Google to pay up to $90 million in online credits to customers and legal fees... today.reuters.com/ ... 14:58:57Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday that mobile smartphones and devices running its Windows mobile operating system are gaining market share from Research In Motion Ltd.'s Blackberry... did not specify how much... but said the business was doing well... hosted.ap.org/ ... 13:11:18"Typhoon forecast to make land this evening," said the message sent to millions of mobile phones in the coastal city of Jinjiang and surrounding Fujian province. "Please attend to preparations." Once the domain of gossipy teenagers, text messages have become a key tool for Chinese authorities during this year's unusually powerful typhoon season... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 13:10:54The US has indicated that it may give up some control of net domain names... at a hearing on Wednesday a government official said the US was "committed" to the transition to private domain name control"... a policy statement issued last year asserted the US would not give up its oversight domain names like .com... .net and .org... the deadline for the full privatisation of Icann is 30 September 2006, although the US department has the option to delay the hand-over... sciencedaily.com/ ... 13:05:58an extremely efficient, yet very complicated, technology called text mining is on the brink of becoming a tool useful to more than highly trained computer programmers and homeland security experts... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 07:50:24File-sharing site Kazaa will become a legal music download service following a series of high profile legal battles. The peer-to-peer network has also agreed to pay $100m (£53m) in damages to the record industry... The announcement follows the release of a music industry report that says more than 20 billion music tracks have been downloaded illegally in the last year... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 07:47:18More than 95% of e-mail is junk, be it spam, error messages or viruses... most of this junk mail is originating on hijacked home computers... today.reuters.com/ ... 00:00:36The operators of an X-rated online video game on Wednesday debuted Utherverse.com, an adults-only site that aims to duplicate the success of wildly popular teen hangout MySpace.com... encourage members to upload erotic photos and to complete fantasy profiles...

WED 2006-JUL-26

Criminally Stupidhosted.ap.org/ ... 23:59:15BELLEVUE, Wash. -- Police in this Seattle suburb didn't have to go far to arrest a man for investigation of car prowling. He was found sleeping in a special weapons and tactics van...

Aftermathtoday.reuters.com/ ... 18:23:44Two Indian Muslims, one of them a chemical engineer, have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in this month's Mumbai train bombings that killed more than 180 people... latest arrests take the number of people in police custody to six...

Puritan Tyrannydailymail.co.uk/ ... 15:36:50Men may be barred from baring their chests - and stomachs - in public under new local laws being considered by town halls. They would stop men stripping off their shirts in crowded town centres and give powers to police to remove any who defy the cover-up laws...

Nature can be Deadlytoday.reuters.com/ ... 15:30:50As many as 60,000 people a year die from too much sun, mostly from malignant skin cancer...

WW2 - still with usbloomberg.com/ ... 10:58:36The world's biggest archive of Nazi documents, containing details on millions of victims of the Third Reich, is to be opened up to researchers as 11 nations amend a 50-year-old agreement to allow wider public access to the files...

Nature is Dangeroushosted.ap.org/ ... 18:22:43

A New York man who was hit by lightning has been suffering from headaches and chest pain, but is glad to be a survivor... had one hand touching a truck and the other holding a pole when the lightning hit, throwing him several feet... canada.com/ ... 10:58:18Heavy rains from tropical storm Kaemi caused a 200-metre-long levee in southern China to collapse and floods were threatening 20,000 villagers...

Fun can be Fatalhosted.ap.org/ ... 05:43:46TAMPA, Fla. -- A 52-year-old man who complained that he felt sick after riding a roller coaster at Busch Gardens died about two hours later in a hospital... the Gwazi roller coaster... reaches 50 mph at its highest speed and drops from a 90-foot lift, but does not go upside down...

Transport Near-Tragedyiol.co.za/ ... 05:33:34Human error caused a New York-bound cruise ship to list suddenly as it left port in Florida, injuring 240 people, Princess Cruises said in a statement...

Alcohol Was Involvedsciencedaily.com/ ... 05:19:42Prior research has shown that chronic alcoholism is associated with numerous olfactory deficits in odor judgment, odor identification, odor sensitivity, and the ability to qualitatively discriminate between odors. New findings indicate that olfactory deficits among alcoholics are associated with prefrontal cognitive dysfunction, specifically, impairment in the functional integrity of the prefrontal lobe...

Scary Timeshosted.ap.org/ ... 05:18:48MINNEAPOLIS -- Six friends spruced up in fake blood and tattered clothing were arrested in downtown Minneapolis on suspicion of toting "simulated weapons of mass destruction..." allegedly carrying bags with wires sticking out, making it look like a bomb... Police also said the group was uncooperative and intimidated people with their "ghoulish" makeup...

Violencecbsnews.com/ ... 15:36:22All that's known is her name: Souha Saleh. Earlier this week, this young Lebanese-American woman helped lead 76 other Americans to safety from the battle-torn south of Lebanon... abcnews.go.com/ ... 15:34:16...more than 80 rockets struck Israel, wounding dozens and killing a 15-year-old Israeli Arab girl... "They are attacking us in a very organized position," one soldier said. "They know where we are coming from. They know everything. They shoot us wherever they like. It's their country..." ynetnews.com/ ... 15:32:44Last week, a missile launcher was found in the mosque, IDF sources said. "Hizbullah members don't discount any means to kill or injure, including the use of civilians as a holy human shields. If there will be no choice, we will hit every place from which they shoot at our forces..." breitbart.com/ ... 15:30:09Hezbollah inflicted heavy casualties on Israeli troops as they battled for a key hilltop town in southern Lebanon for a fourth day Wednesday, with as many as 14 soldiers reported killed. Lebanese officials, meanwhile, confirmed that four U.N. observers were killed by an Israeli airstrike on their post Tuesday night... tulsaworld.com/ ... 14:28:41U.S. and Iraqi soldiers captured six members of an alleged "death squad" Tuesday in Baghdad, hoping to reduce the rampant sectarian violence dividing the capital. Attacks elsewhere in Iraq left at least 34 people dead -- including an American soldier...
Gunmen later attacked a police checkpoint in Dujail, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, and ambushed a sport utility vehicle belonging to a private security company in northern Baghdad, killing eight people... washingtonpost.com/ ... 13:59:28Springfield... When the butcher stepped out seconds later, the customer's severed left hand lay on the floor by the meat saw, Asghar said. The customer ran down the Springfield store's center aisle and into the front parking lot, leaving a trail of blood and yelling repeatedly that he was "not a terrorist." Outside, another witness said, the man announced that he had used the meat saw to cut off his hand "for Allah..." Rescue workers arrived minutes after the incident Saturday evening and took the man -- and his detached hand -- to Inova Fairfax Hospital... authorities believe the man had mental health problems... [y'think?] breitbart.com/ ... 13:56:46A 17-year-old confessed Tuesday to committing a series of highway shootings that killed one man, wounded another and damaged at least four vehicles... motive was unclear... an acquaintance told a Delaware County deputy that the teen might be involved in the shootings... Detectives then searched Blanton's home and found a rifle of the same caliber used in the shootings... today.reuters.com/ ... 11:12:33More than 125 rockets fired by Hizbollah guerrillas slammed into the city of Haifa and other parts of northern Israel on Wednesday, wounding dozens of people... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:11:34UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon contacted Israeli troops 10 times before an Israeli bomb killed four of them, an initial UN report says. The post was hit by a precision-guided missile after six hours of shelling, diplomats familiar with the probe say... The UN report says each time the UN contacted Israeli forces, they were assured the firing would stop... nytimes.com/ ... 05:43:00Israel said Tuesday that it would occupy a strip inside southern Lebanon with ground troops until an international force could take its place... abcnews.go.com/ ... 05:33:54Hezbollah fighters battled Wednesday to stop Israeli forces from capturing a southern Lebanese town, leaving 12 Israeli soldiers dead... today.reuters.com/ ... 05:19:03Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians, comprising seven militants, a three-year-old girl and another civilian, in fighting across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday... tulsaworld.com/ ... 05:08:29KABUL, Afghanistan -- Heavily armed Taliban militants in pickup trucks attacked a district police headquarters Monday and killed three officers....

Only Naturalsciencedaily.com/ ... 18:25:58Evolutionarily speaking, the genetic instructions used to construct and position our limbs were being perfected more than half a billion years ago in fishes, not along the sides of the body where the fins that preceded human arms and legs sprouted, but at the midline that runs along the backbone and belly. This midline -- think of the dorsal, tail and anal fins of a fish - is where the genetic template to produce fins originated, about 100 million years before paired fins evolved and about 200 million years before paired fins evolved into limbs...

Science Marches Onnnnnnsciencedaily.com/ ... 18:25:00A team of researchers at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) have experimentally demonstrated something that other scientists have been trying to achieve for decades: the cooling of erbium-doped materials with laser light... sciencedaily.com/ ... 14:22:54Known as a hole quantum wire, it exploits gaps -- or holes - between electrons... The holes can be thought of as real quantum particles that have an electrical charge and a spin. They exhibit remarkable quantum properties and could lead to a new world of super-fast, low-powered transistors and powerful quantum computers... Quantum wires are microscopically small, in this case about 100 times narrower than a human hair. They are so narrow that electrons can only pass along them in single file... Manufacturers are keenly interested in them because they hold the potential for new high-speed electronics applications, known as spintronics, where semiconductor devices have both electric and magnetic properties. Electrons have both electric (charge) and magnetic (spin) properties but today's micro-chips use only the charge properties of electrons...

Language Culturesciencedaily.com/ ... 14:20:45"What we have shown is that the sound of a word can tell us something about how it is used," said Morten Christiansen, associate professor of psychology at Cornell. "Specifically, it tells us whether the word is used as a noun or as a verb, and this relationship affects how we process such words..."

Prehistory - still with usnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:13:55Scientists have extracted marrow from the bones of frogs and salamanders that died 10 million years ago in the muddy swamps of north-eastern Spain. The first fossilised bone marrow known to science provides a rare insight into the make-up of prehistoric animals. It is preserved in remarkable detail... may yield traces of protein and DNA...

Digital Convergencenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:13:23BT has signed a deal with Universal Pictures that will enable broadband users to download movies on the same day as their DVD release...

Healing Ourselvesnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:58:54

Cannabis extracts used in medicines may worsen symptoms rather than have the beneficial effects that are intended, it has been reported. Cannabis extracts can be harmful because of the unpredictable way the body reacts... mysanantonio.com/ ... 15:38:33The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is launching a study of Morgellons disease that may target South Texas where more than 100 people are suffering from the illness. ... Symptoms of the disease include lesions that leave scars, the sensation of bugs crawling under the skin, and fibers that pop out of the skin... Most of the research on Morgellons is being done at Oklahoma State University in Tulsa. Doctors and scientists at OSU said this disease is real, and it's frightening. "I am 100 percent convinced that Morgellons is a real disease pathology," said Dr. Randy Wymore, an assistant professor of pharmacology and physiology at OSU... the more damaging effects of this disease are the nerve and neurological damage, which affects the ability to think and move. "Trouble concentrating, trouble communicating, and problems thinking of the words you want to say, and how you want to express yourself..." today.reuters.com/ ... 14:20:04An international team of scientists has discovered two genes that enable cells to respond to electrical signals in the body to heal wounds... today.reuters.com/ ... 13:57:21A study of men and women age 70 to 79 found that those who downed one to seven alcoholic drinks a week had a significantly lower risk of heart problems or death than those who didn't imbibe... [and yet... alcohol was involved!]

US Militarytelegraph.co.uk/ ... 13:53:15The Pentagon is asking US soldiers in Iraq to stop posting private combat videos on to the internet amid fears that they could be regarded as anti-Arab... defenselink.mil/ ... 11:17:45This week, the Army and Navy announced an increase in the number of reservists on active duty in support of the partial mobilization, while the Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard number decreased. The net collective result is 1,260 more reservists mobilized than last week. ...This brings the total National Guard and Reserve personnel, who have been mobilized, to 108,364, including both units and individual augmentees.

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 18:26:28

Army Spc. Dennis K. Samson Jr., 24, of Hesperia, Mich., died on July 24 in Taqaddum, Iraq, of injuries sustained by enemy small arms fire. Samson was assigned to 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky. defenselink.mil/ ... 05:21:14

Army Cpl. Adam J. Fargo, 22, of Ruckersville, Va., died on July 22 in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries sustained when his convoy encountered enemy forces small arms fire. Fargo was assigned to the 4th Brigade Troop Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky. defenselink.mil/ ... 05:20:57

Army Spc. Stephen W. Castner, 27, of Cedarburg, Wis., died on July 24, of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMMV during combat operations in Tallil, Iraq. Castner was assigned to the Army National Guard's 1st Battalion, 121st Field Artillery, Milwaukee, Wis.

History - still with ushosted.ap.org/ ... 05:17:14...a cache of rare finds... archaeologists fished up Tuesday from the bottom of a 400-year-old well at an overlooked corner of Historic Jamestowne, a national park... [a] Scottish pistol, a man's leather shoe and a small lead plaque reading "James Towne" - the equivalent of a Colonial luggage tag... items are among the oldest ever unearthed in America...

World Zookeepingkotv.com/ ... 05:08:12The second-oldest captive orangutan in North America died Tuesday morning at the Oklahoma City Zoo. Zoo officials say Les Tunku died from heart and kidney failure. The Sumatran orangutan was 44... Les was sent to the Oklahoma City Zoo in 1962, the year he was born. He fathered nine children...

Democracy in Actiontoday.reuters.com/ ... 23:58:21The leftist contesting Mexico's July 2 election on the grounds of vote-rigging declared himself president on Wednesday and said his supporters would step up a campaign of civil disobedience next week...

World - Energykotv.com/ ... 18:34:16the country is facing a growing threat of widespread power blackouts... Doctor Rama Ramakumar has taught at OSU for almost 40 years. He says during his time there, he's watched America's electricity infrastructure crumble... says the nation's power grid is a victim of its own reliability.... it's worked so well for so long, power companies haven't made the necessary repairs to keep it from leaving large parts of the country in the dark...

Transport Incidentbreitbart.com/ ... 15:31:20NEW YORK... A jetliner carrying more than 250 people lost power in one of its two engines Wednesday but landed safely at a nearby airport...

Oh! The Irony!today.reuters.com/ ... 14:19:48A company that sells software to correct irritating Internet spelling mistakes has reissued its latest news release to correct... a mistake that listed the most common spelling errors on "the 16 million we [sic] pages it has spell checked over the past year..." It said commonly misspelled words included independent, accommodation and definitely, which were spelled independant, accomodation and definately. "It's very embarrassing..."

Theory of Justicenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:15:29A US woman has been cleared by reason of insanity of murdering her five children by drowning them in the bath. Andrea Yates admitted killing the children - aged between six months and seven years old - but denied murder. The insanity verdict means Ms Yates, from Houston in Texas, will be sent to a state mental hospital until she is considered sane enough to be released... theage.com.au/ ... 13:55:37A MILITANT Islamic group has filed a police report against Indonesia's Miss Universe candidate, accusing her of indecency... participation in the contest and display of her body in a swimsuit "is actually insulting for Indonesian dignity and women", Islamic Defenders Front lawyer Sugito said yesterday... [surely free womankind alone would ensure we never have a PuriTalibanical world!] sundaymirror.co.uk/ ... 13:52:56IT WAS exactly 6am and the start of another blisteringly hot summer day when 16-year-old Atefeh Rajabi was dragged from her prison cell and taken to be executed. Every step of the way the troubled teenager plagued by mental problems shouted "repentance, repentance" as the militiamen marched her to the town's Railway Square. The Iranian judge who had sentenced Atefeh to death was left unmoved as he personally put the noose around her neck and signalled to the crane driver. Kicking and screaming, Atefeh was left dangling for 45 minutes from the arm of the crane as the crowd sobbed and - under their breath - damned the mullahs. Atefeh's crime? Offending public morality. She was found guilty of "acts incompatible with chastity" by having sex with an unmarried man, even though friends say Atefeh was in such a fragile mental state that she wasn't in a position to say no...

Business Culturebreitbart.com/ ... 14:01:11McDonald's Corp. posted its strongest quarterly results Tuesday since beginning a recovery more than three years ago, boosted by resurgent European restaurants that contributed to a 57 percent jump in profit...

Population Boomingen.wikipedia.org/ ... 11:16:55The Great Leap Forward... of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social plan to use China's vast population to rapidly transform mainland China from a primarily agrarian economy dominated by peasant farmers into a modern, industrialized communist society.... The Leap was initiated and led by Mao, and carried out by the Communist Party of China from 1958 to early 1962.... The plan did not achieve the intended results, led to millions of deaths plus widespread economic dislocation, and is widely regarded both in and out of China as an unmitigated policy disaster... iiasa.ac.at/ ... 11:15:57China... Population growth, crude birth and death rates, 1949 - 1996... [See chart, note anomaly during "Great Leap Forward"] estimates range from 25 to more than 40 million premature deaths due to famine and famine-related diseases... atmos.umd.edu/ ... 11:14:22In the year 1900 the Earth was home to about 1.6 billion people. The total had grown by 600 million in the 100 years since 1800, the year that the first billion was reached... By the middle of the present century another billion had been added... significantly, 80 percent of the growth had taken place in the world's poorer, or "developing," nations. In 1995, but 45 years later, world population had risen by an additional three billion, with most of the increase, as before, in Asia, Africa, and Latin America... today each new billion is added in but 11 years...

Rebuildingtoday.reuters.com/ ... 11:12:54Power was restored to parts of Liberia's dilapidated capital Monrovia for the first time in 15 years on Wednesday, another step in the country's fragile emergence from more than a decade of civil war. Looting during the 14-year conflict, which ended in 2003, shattered the West African country's infrastructure. Power cables were torn down and water pipes ripped up for scrap metal by fighters, many of them child soldiers high on drugs... hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:09:58A prized statue of an ancient king that was stolen during widespread looting in Iraq following the U.S. invasion three years ago has been returned to the country's government...

Human Rightseattletimes.nwsource.com/ ... 13:50:47The Washington Supreme Court today upheld the state's 1998 ban on same-sex marriage — a ruling decried by gay activists but heralded by supporters of traditional marriage... [Ah, yes, good old traditional marriage: adultery, divorce, violence, abuse... why, we can't let the sanctity of all that get spoiled by letting these same-sexuals carry on as if they were fully-entitled human beings, now, can we?] hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:03:24NEW DELHI -- Health authorities are calling for a repeal of a 145-year-old law that makes gay sex a crime, fearing it is causing HIV and AIDS to spread quickly in India's homosexual community...

Fun can be... just Fun!hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:00:11A British version of the classic Monopoly board game released this week substitutes a Visa-imprinted debit card for the stacks of yellow, blue and purple play money long hoarded by children worldwide... Officials at Pawtucket-based Hasbro say they're considering a similar change for American versions... In the new British version of Monopoly Here & Now, players type amounts into a palm-sized scanner and swipe their debit cards to seal the deal...

Digital Culturetoday.reuters.com/ ... 14:18:34U.S. high-speed Internet subscriptions soared 33 percent last year to 50.2 million lines.... DSL subscriptions jumped 5.7 million lines versus cable companies adding 4.2 million subscribers in 2005, according to the FCC. The cable industry's market share dropped 3.5 percentage points to 57.5 percent while DSL gained 3.3 percentage points to reach 40.5... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:10:21Thousands of website names ending in the .eu suffix have been suspended by the body that administers the domain. Brussels-based EURid froze 74,000 domain names which it believes have been stockpiled by a syndicate of registrars who intend to sell them on. The process, known as "warehousing", is not permitted by EURid which is suing 400 registrars for breach of contract... gizmodo.com/ ... 10:59:00It was less than 24 hours ago that we first heard word of a Bluetooth upgrade for the Apple Mighty Mouse, which happens to still suck...

TUE 2006-JUL-25

Police Riotlacrossetribune.com/ ... 18:12:22HIXTON, Wis. — Three Hixton families have filed a complaint with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department against a deputy, claiming that he pepper sprayed four kids and two adults riding on a float during an Independence Day parade. About 20 people, most of them 6 through 8-year-old children, were riding on a rookie-ball float about 10:30 a.m. and spraying parade-goers with squirt guns... the sheriff’s deputy said to her daughter jokingly, “Don’t you dare throw it at me" and pulled out his pepper spray. Wathen said her daughter did throw the cup of water at him... deputy then... shot his pepper spray at her. The girl turned her back, but the pepper spray hit 6-, 7- and 15-year-old boys and two adults in the face... "Everyone that I’ve talked to is really peeved and hope he loses his job..."

Digital Threattoday.reuters.com/ ... 17:41:10The U.S. Commerce Department will hold a Wednesday hearing on the government's September deadline to give up control over Internet domain names, a schedule that some high-tech industry advocates say should be delayed... Some foreign governments and critics have been concerned that the U.S. government has too much control...

Sick, Sick, Sicktheaustralian.news.com.au/ ... 15:33:16NOBEL peace laureate Betty Williams... during a speech to hundreds of schoolchildren... at the Earth Dialogues forum, being held in Brisbane... "Right now, I would love to kill George Bush." Her young audience at the Brisbane City Hall clapped and cheered...

Nature can be Deadlytoday.reuters.com/ ... 15:26:57Around 40 people in France, mostly elderly, have died in a heatwave over the past week and Czech energy grid operator CEPS announced a state of emergency on Tuesday after its power network was overloaded...

Transport Near-Tragedytoday.reuters.com/ ... 15:26:35Helicopters hoisted the crew of a Canada-bound cargo ship to safety late on Monday after it nearly capsized south of Alaska's Aleutian Islands... Singapore-based Cougar Ace... carrying 4,813 vehicles, issued a distress call Sunday after it began taking on water in the North Pacific. The cause of the mishap was not known... The crew, one of whom had suffered a broken leg, were taken to Alaska and were reported to be in good condition...

Violencethebostonchannel.com/ ... 18:20:03A Boston woman became the city's 43rd homicide victim this year when she was gunned down at the same spot her brother was slain four years ago... was lighting candles at a makeshift shrine to her brother... she was shot in the face and died three hours later... So far, police said, they have no leads in the killing... apnews.myway.com/ ... 18:14:26Investigators questioned a 17-year-old Tuesday in connection with a series of highway shootings that killed one man, wounded another and damaged at least four vehicles... msnbc.msn.com/ ... 18:06:16Fifteen hundred times in the past two weeks, an Israeli jet has taken off with a load of bombs. But as NBC News has learned, the targets have not just been military. Israeli intelligence sources tell NBC News that among the targets hit in Lebanon are as many as a dozen financial institutions — part of a previously secret campaign to destroy Hezbollah's financial infrastructure. Some banks were demolished, others deliberately damaged but not destroyed. In one case, Israel also took out a bank manager's home... today.reuters.com/ ... 17:57:54An Israeli air strike on Tuesday hit a U.N. base in southern Lebanon, killing four United Nations observers... The UNIFIL peacekeeping force in Lebanon confirmed that there were U.N. casualties but declined to say if any observers had been killed at the base, which appears to have collapsed while the U.N. observers were in the shelter... today.reuters.com/ ... 17:57:29Israeli troops on Tuesday killed a senior Hizbollah commander in fighting near the Lebanese border, the army said... Abu Jaafar... commander of Hizbollah's "central sector" on the Lebanese border with Israel.... killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli troops near the Lebanese border village of Maroun al-Ras... today.reuters.com/ ... 17:47:01A man in northeast China has killed himself and three others in a suicide bombing sparked by marital problems... broke into a restaurant on Saturday in Jixi city in Heilongjiang province and shouted loudly before setting off the explosives... husband of a waitress at the restaurant... flattened the restaurant... another four people were seriously wounded... did not say if Feng's wife was among those killed or wounded... today.reuters.com/ ... 17:46:09Israel launched air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, wounding eight people, local residents and medics said. The Israeli military said it had targeted and destroyed buildings used to store rockets and munitions belonging to the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 17:45:52A Malaysian princess has been murdered while trying to defend her husband from the couple's 21-year-old son... the youngest of the couple's eight children... the youth... the nephew of the sultan of the Malaysian state of Pahang, died later in hospital apparently from a drug overdose... Sixty-four year old Princess Kamaria Sultan Abu Bakar, who was the Sultan of Pahang's half-sister, was killed... Her husband, Prince Ismal Sulaiman, was seriously injured... alertnet.org/ ... 15:25:32Israeli forces have killed at least 20 Hizbollah guerrillas in a battle for a key stronghold in southern Lebanon, an Israeli army commander said on Tuesday... Two Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting nearby on Monday... theeveningbulletin.com/ ... 15:23:17Nine Israeli soldiers were wounded early this morning by a bomb or a grenade while seizing control of the ground overlooking the small town of Bint Jbeil, which is regarded as Hezbollah's capital in south Lebanon... breitbart.com/ ... 15:13:29BEIRUT, Lebanon... A senior Hezbollah official said Tuesday the guerrilla group did not expect Israel to react so strongly to its capture of two Israeli soldiers...

Digital Future is Nowtoday.reuters.com/ ... 17:59:38As the bikini turns 60, it's entering the electronic age with a new model featuring a built-in alarm to warn wearers to get out of the sun -- and ease concerns that the scanty swimsuits damage the health...

Prehistory - still with ustoday.reuters.com/ ... 17:58:59Disgraced South Korean stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk said on Tuesday he spent part of private donations for his research in failed attempts to clone mammoths...

Only Naturalnytimes.com/ ... 18:13:57Researchers believe they have found a second code in DNA in addition to the genetic code... The genetic code specifies all the proteins that a cell makes. The second code, superimposed on the first, sets the placement of the nucleosomes, miniature protein spools around which the DNA is looped. The spools both protect and control access to the DNA itself. The discovery, if confirmed, could open new insights into the higher order control of the genes, like the critical but still mysterious process by which each type of human cell is allowed to activate the genes it needs but cannot access the genes used by other types of cell... sciencedaily.com/ ... 18:01:21color coding... allows spectators, players and coaches at major sporting events to overcome humans' natural limit of tracking no more than three objects at a time... "We report the rather surprising result that people can focus on more than three items at a time if those items share a common color.... Our research suggests that the common color allows people to overcome the usual limit, because the 'color coding' enables them to perceive the separate individuals as a single set..." today.reuters.com/ ... 17:58:19The worst drought in 20 years has reduced South America's Iguazu falls to a trickle and tourists may have to wait until October to see water gushing over the cliffs again... Considered one of the world's natural wonders, the huge thundering Iguazu Falls dwarf North America's Niagara Falls and rival in size Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River in southern Africa...

Extraterrestrialdailyrecord.co.uk/ ... 18:18:39The first men to walk on the Moon reported seeing a UFO.... Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon's surface after Neil Armstrong, says space agency bosses covered up their sighting. And the Apollo 11 astronauts were also careful not to talk about it openly... The documentary, tonight on Five, also reveals that the astronauts had to repair the lunar module with a ballpoint pen after the historic landing in July 1969. In the cramped conditions, someone's bulky spacesuit had snapped off a circuit breaker essential for starting up the engine. To this day, Aldrin treasures the everyday object that saved their lives... sciencedaily.com/ ... 18:00:21...researchers running computer simulations for four nearby systems that contain giant planets about the size of Jupiter have found one that could have formed an Earth-like planet with the right conditions to support life... hosted.ap.org/ ... 17:39:51Scientists said Monday they have found the first widespread evidence of giant hydrocarbon lakes on the surface of Saturn's planet-size moon Titan... near Titan's frigid north pole... about a dozen lakes six to 62 miles wide. Some, which appeared as dark patches in radar images, were connected by channels, while others had tributaries flowing into them. Several were dried up, but the ones that contained liquid were most likely a mix of methane and ethane...

World Zookeepinghosted.ap.org/ ... 17:56:46BISMARCK, N.D. -- Joe the [1yo] wallaroo has been reunited with his owner. ...escaped... July 10.... captured Sunday morning.... healthy and "actually quite happy to be back...." an off-duty police officer... spotted the wallaroo by the city's water plant. Eight friends, two on-duty police officers and a passing bike rider helped... capture Joe. "There were some good wallaroo wranglers out there...." hosted.ap.org/ ... 16:03:24

LA CROSSE, Wis. -- Hundreds of dead bass have been collected from La Crosse-area river waters, days after a major fishing tournament was held in the region.... Nearly all of the 582 bass were marked with a clipped tail fin, evidence they were caught and released during a bass-fishing tournament from July 12-15.... second year that higher-than-normal fish deaths were reported.... Last year, most of the dead fish tested positive for largemouth bass virus, which can cause death when the fish is stressed. The majority of the fish Hobbs collected this year were largemouth, and he said the stress of being caught, held in a livewell and released might be a factor in their deaths...

History - still with usnews.scotsman.com/ ... 15:28:17ancient prayer book was found by chance in an Irish bog... fragments of what appeared to be an ancient Psalter or Book of Psalms, written around AD 800, were uncovered by a bulldozer in a bog in the south Midlands. "In discovery terms this Irish equivalent to the Dead Sea Scrolls is being hailed by the Museum's experts as the greatest find ever from a European bog..." comprises extensive fragments of what is thought to be an Irish Early Christian Psalter, written on vellum, a fine animal skin parchment...

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 15:24:43

Army Capt. Blake H. Russell, 35, of Forth Worth, Texas died on July 22 of injuries sustained from enemy forces munitions while investigating a possible mortar cache during combat operations in Baghdad, Iraq. Russell was assigned to the Army's 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky. defenselink.mil/ ... 15:24:21

Army 1st Sgt. Christopher C. Rafferty, 37, of Brownsville, Pa., died on July 21 in Sharana, Afghanistan of injuries sustained on July 20, when his unit encountered small arms fire during combat operations. Rafferty was assigned to 37th Engineer Battalion, Fort Bragg, N.C. This incident is under investigation. defenselink.mil/ ... 15:23:52

Marine Capt. Christopher T. Pate, 29, of Hampstead, N.C., died July 21 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 2nd Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company, Command Element, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Love is Strangedailymail.co.uk/ ... 18:16:30A love-struck man's overblown email to a woman he met at a party is being sent around the world... Instead of the keeping the mail short, sweet and to the point as he suggested at the beginning, he was soon pouring his heart out... more than 500 words long... [she] found the rambling email anything but sweet and proceeded to forward it to her sister... who titled it: "How to ask a girl out (in a round about way)". Before long, it had reached global proportions...

Opposing Tyrannyworldnetdaily.com/ ... 18:07:18A judge ruled today a Virginia teen who has refused chemotherapy for his cancer does not have to report to a hospital as previously ordered by a court...

World Without Bordersworldnetdaily.com/ ... 18:07:00Responding to information from WorldNetDaily, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has taken steps to ensure the Senate will not act on a bill that would further a plan to create a European Union-style alliance in North America. Cornyn made the decision after WND pointed out Friday the legislation – the North American Investment Fund Act – would constitute an attempt to pass a key piece of American University Professor Robert Pastor's plan to create a "North American Union." Yesterday, Cornyn's office notified WND the senator had been assured by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that no action will be taken on Senate bill 3622 in the 109th Congress. If the Senate Foreign Relations Committee does not act, the bill will expire at the end of the term in January...

Unclear on le Concepttoday.reuters.com/ ... 17:48:27Greek leftists pulled down a statue of former U.S. President Harry S. Truman as part of an anti-war demonstration on Tuesday against the Israeli bombing of Lebanon...

Rebuildingtoday.reuters.com/ ... 17:47:48The last contingent of Japanese ground troops based in Iraq came home on Tuesday, completing the military's riskiest overseas mission since World War Two without firing a shot or suffering any casualties...

Big Nannyhosted.ap.org/ ... 17:44:12FREEPORT, Maine -- Armed game wardens seized 10 exotic fish from the tank of a popular Chinese restaurant, leaving its owner shaken and outraged. "They treated me like a criminal," said Cuong Ly, who escaped from Vietnam 25 years ago. "I lived under communism and I felt like I'm back there again." ...pet koi were like family members.... had been on display since Ly opened the restaurant nearly 15 years ago and he credited them for bringing good luck to the business in a way akin to the arrangement of articles in the ancient Chinese practice of feng shui. A few years ago, however, Maine outlawed the importation and possession of koi, and Ly was charged with importing freshwater fish without a permit...

People Carry Onhosted.ap.org/ ... 17:42:45Emily Gibbons has been collecting dolls for 15 years, amassing about 200 of them in her small apartment. They've brought her a lot of joy, at times reminding the 73-year-old woman what it's like to hold a baby in her arms again. Most recently, though, they've gotten her in trouble with the Greenwich Housing Authority. Housing officials said the doll collection cluttered the public housing apartment and is a fire hazard. The Housing Authority threatened to evict her if she didn't clear the clutter...

It's All in Your Mindhosted.ap.org/ ... 17:40:23new research shows distractions affect the way people learn, making the knowledge they gain harder to use later on... "...even if you can learn while distracted, it changes how you learn to make it less efficient and useful..." dailymail.co.uk/ ... 15:47:54...Almost overnight my life was turned upside down. One moment I was busy raising four children and working as a school nurse. The next I could barely remember my own name. Even now, after more than two years of constant treatment and therapy, I fight to maintain an independence which has been so sorely compromised by having almost no recollection of my past life... I had contracted viral encephalitis, which is an inflammation of the brain. As a result the temporal lobe — the part of the brain which governs memory — was damaged... caused memory problems, including a condition called prosopagnosia — the inability to recognise faces... At first, when food was put in front of me I'd even forget to pick up a fork.... I had to re-learn everything from scratch... even the simplest instructions were difficult to follow unless I wrote them down... once I had re-learnt a 'skill', I could usually remember to do it because it was routine. But memory can be random and at times I'd simply forget... Strangely, not all of my long-term memory had been affected. I could recall my childhood in Sheffield and how it cost two pence to go to school on the bus... Ed and I often talk about the person I used to be. When he tells me I was an effortless organiser and consummate multi-tasker it seems utterly incredible, considering now I can even forget my children's names. But I have to concentrate on the positive...

Politics as Usualwashtimes.com/ ... 15:35:48Josh Rales, a Democratic candidate for Maryland's U.S. Senate seat, paid a drug-treatment center in Baltimore to drive its recovering addicts to last week's debate in College Park, where they held signs supporting his campaign...

Reasons for Repealbreitbart.com/ ... 15:31:31Police in France said they had thwarted an attempt by a group of marijuana smokers to roll the world's longest joint by seizing a work-in-progress measuring 80 centimetres (32 inches) in length. "At some point, these young people had wanted to craft a joint of 1.12 metres to beat the world record in the discipline and get it officially registered," said a police officer in eastern France. "We don't know who had the idea. Sometimes ideas are created in an astonishing way," he said... [oh, the irony!]

People Do Drugshosted.ap.org/ ... 17:41:54Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler says he was just playing along with the joke when comedian Stephen Colbert prodded him in an interview to say: "I enjoy cocaine because it's a fun thing to do..." thestar.com/ ... 15:29:41...now scientists think they know one reason why smoking and drinking are so often associated with each other... smoking actually allows people to drink more beer, wine or liquor without getting drunk... But if — as is often the case — the goal of drinking is to get intoxicated, then smoking will make people drink more in pursuit of a buzz... [Nicotine is a Drag and Alcohol is Involved together!]

MON 2006-JUL-24

Nature can be Deadlynewsday.com/ ... 14:47:06A search has turned up no new evidence, but searchers strongly believe [19yo woman] drowned after she attempted to go to the bathroom in the Colorado River... The river's current, which looks placid in spots but can be strong underneath, probably swept away the Ukrainian citizen...

Nature is Dangerousnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:22:05MySpace, the world's most popular networking website, has restarted after being shut down for more than half a day following a power cut. The company blamed the closure on record-breaking heat in Los Angeles where its data servers are held... newsday.com/ ... 14:20:45ST. LOUIS -- Nearly a quarter-million homes and businesses still had no electricity Monday as the city struggled to recover from last week's devastating thunderstorms. The blackout kept air conditioners from running as temperatures soared into triple digits. Four deaths in the region had been blamed on the storms or the heat. As of Monday morning, about 231,000 homes customers were still without power...

Threatsworldnetdaily.com/ ... 10:40:06Israel has raised the level of alert for its embassies and consulates worldwide, including in the U.S., for fear Hezbollah sleeper agents are seeking to attack Israeli targets oversees...

Violencetoday.reuters.com/ ... 14:59:37An Israeli shell exploded near a crowd of people outside an apartment building in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least three people and wounding several others, Palestinian witnesses said. Israel has killed around 118 Palestinians in a nearly month-long offensive in Gaza to force militants to release a captured soldier and halt rocket fire on Israeli cities. It was not immediately known whether the three dead were militants or civilians... today.reuters.com/ ... 14:59:20Car bombs killed at least 62 Iraqis on Sunday... Two separate blasts killed 42 civilians in Sadr City... Another car bomb exploded in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing at least 20 civilians outside a courthouse... Arabs and others are contesting control of the city, which sits atop one of the world's great oil lakes... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:57:53At least 22 people are reported to have been killed in the latest violence in Afghanistan - 19 of them Taleban fighters and three policemen. The Taleban were killed in fighting with UK troops and Afghan police in the southern Helmand province, local officials say. The police were killed by suspected Taleban fighters in Ghazni province... newsday.com/ ... 14:47:52Gunmen attacked Oaxaca's university radio station, authorities said Sunday, the latest incident in a wave of confrontations and protests that have driven many tourists out of this historic Mexican city. Assailants fired rounds of ammunition into the station's windows while it was broadcasting late Saturday, the Oaxaca state government said. Nobody was hurt in the attack. Witnesses said the attack was carried out by at least 10 assailants wearing ski masks. The university radio station has supported a wave of protests aimed at ousting Oaxaca state governor Ulises Ruiz, who is accused of rigging the 2004 election to win office and of violently repressing dissent... newsday.com/ ... 14:47:19Hezbollah Rocket Attacks Not Subsiding... newsday.com/ ... 14:46:19TYRE, Lebanon -- Israeli warplanes hit a convoy of people fleeing their homes in southern Lebanon Sunday, killing three refugees in a minibus and a journalist racing to cover their flight... newsday.com/ ... 14:21:37DALLAS -- A man who carjacked an 18-wheeler and held the driver hostage for four hours surrendered to police after an officer shot out the tires and fired tear gas into the cab... The driver and her dog ran to safety after the standoff, which followed a 3-hour police chase through three counties... wthr.com/ ... 10:15:06Two sets of shootings early Sunday morning along Indiana interstates left one person dead and another wounded. The most serious shootings took place along I-65 near Seymour. Two pickup trucks were targeted. A person was killed in the first; another was wounded in the second. The interstate was closed for hours as a result. Two hours and 100 miles north on I-69 near Muncie, someone targeted a semi and an abandoned SUV. The semi driver was uninjured. The governor has the National Guard and Homeland Security on standby. They are not currently being utilized...

Mass Murdering Monstersforbes.com/ ... 10:14:37Suicide bombers killed eight people, including two U.S.-led coalition soldiers, in Kandahar Saturday, officials said. A purported Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the blasts and warned of more as NATO prepares to take control of the volatile southern region. The two near-simultaneous blasts highlighted the continuing challenges confronting the U.S.-led coalition and its Afghan allies as they battle still defiant and, at times, all-too-effective Taliban militants...

Prehistory - still with ushosted.ap.org/ ... 14:57:37PHOENIX -- An archaeological site containing the remains of a Hohokam settlement dates back to a rarely explored Hohokam era, according to recent dating. The settlement in Queen Creek, just southeast of Phoenix, has preliminarily been dated between 1400 and 1450, which could make it one of the latest settlements of the mysterious desert dwellers ever identified. Hohokams are believed to have inhabited the Sonoran Desert between 500 and 1450 before they abruptly disappeared...

US Militarynewsday.com/ ... 14:45:51Teens looking to hook up with a friend on the popular Web community MySpace may bump into an unexpected buddy: the U.S. Marine Corps. So far, over 12,000 Web surfers have signed on as friends of the Corps in response to the latest military recruiting tactic. Other military branches may follow...

World Zookeepingsmdp.com/ ... 10:54:39PALISADES PARK — City Hall’s latest plan for the resident squirrels here: Trap them, gas them and feed them to the birds. Once the population has been reduced to acceptable levels by county officials, the remaining female squirrels’ sex organs will be inhibited by a vaccine so they can’t reproduce...

Extraterrestrialchron.com/ ... 10:52:48A spacecraft taking off from a private West Texas spaceport being bankrolled and developed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos would take off vertically, but unlike NASA's space shuttle would also land vertically, according to an environmental study that offers a glimpse into the secretive plans. The craft would hit an altitude of about 325,000 feet -- or almost 62 miles -- before descending and restarting its engine for a "precision vertical powered landing on the landing pad" in sparsely populated Culberson County, about 125 miles east of El Paso... timesonline.co.uk/ ... 10:14:05AS a girl growing up in Tehran before the Islamic revolution, Anousheh Ansari watched repeats of Star Trek and dreamt of becoming an astronaut. She never tired of telling friends that one day she would “see the stars". Nearly three decades later, Ansari’s childhood fantasies are about to come true as she prepares to become the first female space tourist. Now a multi-millionaire in the United States, Ansari, 39, who made her fortune from telecommunications software, has secured a flight in a Russian Soyuz rocket to the international space station 220 miles above Earth...

Digital Culturetoday.reuters.com/ ... 15:00:47There is plenty of new indie and mainstream music available on legal download sites, but the obscure, the out-of-print and the experimental often remain relegated to used vinyl bins at small retailers. Kemado Records' Keith Abrahamsson aims to change that. He'll launch his Anthology Records online store this fall. His initial releases may not be household names, but there is plenty for music enthusiasts to get excited about...

Business Culturetoday.reuters.com/ ... 15:00:25Steve Case, co-founder of the one-time biggest online service AOL, apologized for the company's merger with media conglomerate Time Warner Inc. in an interview with U.S. journalist Charlie Rose... known as one of the worst corporate mergers in history, destroyed some $200 billion in shareholder value...

World - Energynews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:58:32US petrol pump costs have hit an all-time high as prices reached an average of just over $3 a gallon...

Theory of Justicenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:58:15Iraq's former leader Saddam Hussein has been taken to hospital as a result of a hunger strike... is thought to have begun refusing food on 7 July in protest at the murder of his lawyer...

People Livesouthcoasttoday.com/ ... 10:59:28Like many young swimmers, Charles "C.J." Murphy Jr. often wears a flotation device, or a "bubble," when paddling around the deep end. But on the afternoon of July 14, 5-year-old C.J. didn't think twice about taking off the foam bubble and diving to the bottom of his family pool to save his drowning grandpa...

Transport Incidentdenverpost.com/ ... 10:55:10Airport authorities in Clark County, Nev., shut down part of the airport and scrambled hazardous material teams Saturday after 11 people became ill on a United Airlines flight from Denver to Las Vegas, including four of the plane's flight attendants...

People Diebreitbart.com/ ... 11:04:23INDIANAPOLIS... ...a 3-year-old boy... was apparently playing near the 5-foot-tall floor-mounted mirror in the children's section of a Wal-Mart when it fell Saturday... killing him... thescotsman.scotsman.com/ ... 10:51:46TWO women died and a three-year-old child was seriously injured after a freak gust of wind blew a massive bouncy castle-style artwork 40 feet into the air yesterday. Horrified families watched as the huge structure, with 30 people inside, broke free from its moorings and soared into the air, spilling adults and children on to the ground beneath...

Theory of Sex Educationdailymail.co.uk/ ... 10:50:20Children as young as three should be taught about same-sex relationships in a bid to stamp out homophobia in schools, it was claimed yesterday. The National Union of Teachers, the country's largest teaching union, sparked outrage by demanding that nursery staff help to educate children about gay families...

Bill Clinton - still with usnews.independent.co.uk/ ... 10:42:18

Bill Clinton's decision to site his office in the largely black Manhattan neighbourhood of Harlem, as a gesture of solidarity with African-Americans, appears to have backfired. Dozens of angry blacks demonstrated last week outside the building that houses the former president's staff, claiming that his move had led to the gentrification of the area and increased the price of homes beyond their reach...

Supernatural Sillinesstimesonline.co.uk/ ... 10:46:02THE Bishop of London has declared it sinful for people to contribute to climate change by flying on holiday, driving a “gas-guzzling" car or failing to use energy-saving measures in the home... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 10:41:09A California woman publishing a novel similar to "The Da Vinci Code" claims she is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ of Nazareth...

Rebuildingusatoday.com/ ... 10:16:39Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora in Beirut on Monday in a show of support for that country's weakened democracy...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spincbsnews.com/ ... 10:41:50William F. Buckley... finds himself parting ways with President Bush, whom he praises as a decisive leader but admonishes for having strayed from true conservative principles in his foreign policy. In particular, Buckley views the three-and-a-half-year Iraq War as a failure... arutzsheva.com/ ... 10:40:49The British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) has admitted that many of the victims of Israeli retaliation in Lebanon are terrorists and not innocent civilians. A BBC reporter said he saw Hizbullah terrorists using a private home and added, "It is difficult to quantify who is a terrorist and who is a civilian..." azcentral.com/ ... 10:15:39...So long as the U.S. and Israeli leadership insist on seeing violence against Hezbollah as "the fix" they will overlook the far more important goal of educating Hezbollah's base - i.e., educating the enablers of Iran's fanatical leadership and of Syria, as well as the unknown multitudes who send them money. Bush apparently believes that by "taking out" Hezbollah militarily, Israel will "send a message" to Tehran and Damascus, minds will change, there will be talks, agreements will follow, and there will be a cowboy's "peace in the valley." Absent overwhelming force of the kind that eventually won World War II, that formula has never worked. Since it has never worked, isn't it time to try something different, like converting the Hezbollah grass roots and enablers to the cause of peaceful coexistence?..

Sex -- always attractiveworldnetdaily.com/ ... 10:39:45With some of the world's most beautiful women on display at tonight's Miss Universe Pageant in Los Angeles, viewers of the NBC broadcast were exposed to a celebration of homosexuality with continuous "gay" jokes and innuendo. Providing commentary for the program were Carson Kressley, a homosexual who stars on the Bravo network's "Queer Eye," and 2004 Miss USA Shandi Finnessey. At one point in the program, when Finnessey was promoting a beauty guide viewers could order, Kressley said, "It'll tell you how to be a true queen. A beauty queen..." abcnews.go.com/ ... 10:13:40An 18-year-old from Puerto Rico who hopes to someday star in U.S. and Latin American films was crowned Sunday night as Miss Universe 2006. Zuleyka Rivera Mendoza shared a nervous emotional hug with first runner-up, Kurara Chibana of Japan, moments before the winner was announced, then clasped her hands to her mouth in amazement as her name was called.... She beamed as the crown was placed on her head but briefly fainted after a post-pageant news conference...

SUN 2006-JUL-23

Fun can be Fatalnews.independent.co.uk/ ... 21:01:34Two women were killed and 13 people injured when an inflatable sculpture was blown 70ft into the air by a gust of wind. The women, aged 68 and 38, had been on the sculpture with 30 other children and adults when it broke from its mooring and flew into the air, drifting for about 200ft before colliding with a metal CCTV post. The collision brought the artwork a multi-coloured complex of interconnected rooms called Dreamspace back to the ground, preventing more casualties...

Threatstheindychannel.com/ ... 21:00:38SEYMOUR, Ind. -- Motorists traveling the long stretch of Interstate 65 between Indianapolis and Louisville are a bit more guarded after sniper shootings terrorized a stretch of road early Sunday morning... More than 100 miles of highway span between Seymour and the Delaware County shootings, giving motorists and police a lot to think about as they traverse the open road...

Thefthosted.ap.org/ ... 20:58:26GREENCASTLE, Ind... More than 100 letter R's swiped from businesses' signs were returned Thursday in a box left outside the police department... A surveillance camera outside the station captured the image of one of the teen's mothers returning the letters. Images of the woman's car also caught on tape led officers to track her down, and to find the alleged R-snatching culprits...

Nature can be Deadlychron.com/ ... 20:54:12

MONTVALE, N.J. — Two teenagers were recovering Sunday from a lightning strike that killed two other teens a day before on a school soccer field.... The four had arrived at Montvale Memorial School around 6 p.m. Saturday, but waited for a rain storm to let up before taking the field to play soccer.... When a violent storm swept back in... [two] ran for shelter while [two others] began walking off the field. One of the survivors turned around when he heard thunder and saw [the two others] knocked to the ground by lightning....

Fun can be Dangerousforbes.com/ ... 20:55:19Kansas City... Gunfire erupted early Sunday outside a Knights of Columbus hall where a party had attracted hundreds of young people, killing two men and wounding at least 10 other people... at least two other people were critically wounded - a 17-year-old shot in the chest and a 24-year-old shot in the neck - and at least eight others were also injured... kotv.com/ ... 15:46:03LAWTON, Okla... A nine-year-old boy has drowned during a swimming party at a house in Lawton... about 50 adults and 20 children were at last night's party when the child disappeared in the water...

Family Tragedykotv.com/ ... 15:43:46Tulsa... A two-year old boy was rushed to the hospital in critcial condition Saturday afternoon after he was found at the bottom of a pool...

Puritan Tyrannykotv.com/ ... 15:43:17ENID, Okla... Drug agents have torched 650 marijuana plants growing in southern Garfield County and northern Kingfisher County. They were burned Thursday at a Garfield County shale pit northwest of Enid, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs said...

Disturbing Family Patternstulsaworld.com/ ... 15:34:46WICHITA, Kan. -- Two emaciated girls who told police they ate only when their father wasn't traveling on business were hospitalized after police found them in an advanced state of starvation. "It's the worst case of malnutrition I've ever seen," said police Lt. E.J. Bastian. The 6- and 7-year-old girls were found Friday in a home's basement, where they were kept. The girls' stepmother, whose biological children were found healthy and well-fed upstairs, was taken in for questioning. Their father, traveling on business, was to be questioned when he returned, police said... The house had plenty of food, and the stepsiblings, a 4-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy, were well cared for...

Infrastructure Failurehosted.ap.org/ ... 12:09:59NEW YORK -- The damage to a utility's underground network in the borough of Queens is greater than imagined - a twist in the six-day power outage that could mean electricity won't be back until early in the week.... Consolidated Edison CEO Kevin Burke apologized to customers for the inconvenience and attributed the outages to an unprecedented failure of multiple power lines.... "It was really a very extraordinary event, something that I've never seen before.... I don't know right now what has happened...." began with failures on a series of feeder cables, circuits that carry 27,000 volts and power entire neighborhoods...

Violencetulsaworld.com/ ... 15:41:25A Tulsa couple are glad to be home after spending a week trying to get out of Lebanon in a harrowing journey that took them through Syria and Jordon before arriving in Rome and then the U.S. "We went to enjoy ourselves, have a good time, and all of a sudden life turned around. One day everybody's celebrating and happy, and then the next day you see the whole city (of Beirut) dead." John and Knarig Alajaji arrived in Beirut on July 5, a week before Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid that started the conflict in the region. They went to Lebanon for a fa... tulsaworld.com/ ... 15:37:19One U.S. soldier died in the second of two roadside bombs that exploded in east Baghdad at midmorning. An Iraqi civilian was killed by the first blast...
Another American soldier died Saturday evening when gunmen attacked his patrol with small arms fire...
seven Shiite workers were killed and two were wounded when gunmen opened fire on a construction site near Baghdad International Airport...
Saturday, a mortar shell killed five civilians at a market in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Amil in west Baghdad...
Two rockets also blasted the heavily guarded Green Zone, which includes the U.S. and British embassies as well as major Iraqi government offices, but the U.S. military said there were no casualties...
Shiite politicians called on the prime minister to cancel his visit to Washington to protest Israel's attacks in Lebanon...
U.S. and Iraqi forces backed by a helicopter gunship launched a major attack Saturday on a headquarters of a radical Shiite militia south of Baghdad, killing 15 militiamen in a three-hour battle, the U.S. said... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:10:12Israeli warplanes have struck at suspected Hezbollah sites in Sidon and the capital Beirut. In Sidon, 14 people were injured and a mosque was destroyed in the first strikes on the southern port city... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 02:58:54A car bomb has killed at least 33 people in a mainly Shia Muslim area of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. More than 60 others were injured...

US Militarykotv.com/ ... 15:42:14An Oklahoma woman whose son was killed in Iraq wants his name off anti-war T-shirts being sold on the Internet... The front of the shirt reads "Bush Lied" and the back reads "They Died..." persuaded state lawmakers to pass a law making it a misdemeanor to use a soldier's name or likeness without permission. Now Congressman Dan Boren has introduced a similar bill in Congress... tulsaworld.com/ ... 15:40:52Bill Gibson of Pryor [Oklahoma], who lost part of his left leg in Iraq, says he would return to the country if he could... "I hate that it happened," said his wife, Chaney. "But we're fortunate; we're lucky. We're happy to still be kicking." The couple has a 2-year-old daughter, Lauren... More than 18,000 U.S. military personnel have been wounded in action...

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 02:51:59

Army Cpl. Matthew P. Wallace, 22, of Lexington Park, Md., died on July 21, in Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Landstuhl, Germany, of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Bradley Fighting Vehicle during combat operations in Baghdad, Iraq, on July 16. Wallace was assigned to the Army's 10th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

Sexual Equality??news.moneycontrol.com/ ... 20:56:02When men spend the night in the same bed with someone else their sleep patterns are disturbed, even if they do not have sex. This leads to poorer performance in intelligence tests the next day... Women, too, get disturbed sleep if they share a bed, but their mental ability is not affected...

Unclear on le Conceptwashingtonpost.com/ ... 16:44:00KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A Kansas church group that protests at military funerals nationwide filed suit in federal court, saying a Missouri law banning such picketing infringes on religious freedom and free speech. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit Friday in the U.S. District Court in Jefferson City, Mo., on behalf of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church, which has outraged mourning communities by picketing service members' funerals with signs condemning homosexuality...

Population Boomingkotv.com/ ... 15:46:22While Oklahoma's population growth lags behind the nation as a whole, the state's population could hit four (m) million in less than a decade...

Theory of Sex Educationkotv.com/ ... 15:45:33LAWTON, Okla... A [34yo male] Comanche County teacher has been charged with raping a former student... accused of having consensual sex with a 17-year-old female student... the student, now 19, filed a report earlier this month that alleged she had consensual sex with [accused] several times at his home and once on the Eisenhower campus... He is employed as an assistant coach for the boys and girls track teams, assistant wrestling coach, cross country coach and science teacher...

Theory of Justicetulsaworld.com/ ... 15:38:10Richard Hatch has been sent to a federal prison in Oklahoma as he serves a 51-month prison sentence for failing to pay taxes on the $1 million he won on the debut season of the reality TV show, "Survivor..." sentenced in May to 51 months in prison by a judge who said the reality TV star had lied repeatedly on the witness stand...

SAT 2006-JUL-22

Nature can be Deadlynews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 22:15:41The death toll in the tsunami that struck the Indonesian island of Java has risen to more than 650. Around 100 new bodies have been found in recent days... More than 300 people are still missing after Monday's disaster... today.reuters.com/ ... 11:27:54A moderate earthquake in China's southwestern Yunnan province on Saturday toppled scores of houses and killed at least 18 people... 5.1... struck a mountainous area close to the border with Sichuan province, injured 60 people... Houses in Yanjin, a county on the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau with a population of 350,000, were mostly built near hillsides and vulnerable to earthquakes... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:24:32Hundreds are dead or missing in North Korea after days of heavy rain... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:24:04The number of people killed in a storm that hit southern China last week has risen to more than 500 - more than double the original estimate. Tropical Storm Bilis hit on 14 July, causing massive flooding and forcing three million people from their homes. The government of Hunan province has accused local officials of deliberately playing down the death toll...

Alcohol Was Involvedsciencedaily.com/ ... 11:30:57People who drink alcohol are up to four times more likely than non-drinkers to be hurt from physical injuries such as a fall or punch... [um... duh?] news.independent.co.uk/ ... 08:53:23the world's most expensive bottle of tequila... Tequila Ley .925, a company that specialises in vintage and premium-quality tequila, unveiled a new luxury range that included 33 solid platinum bottles selling for $225,000 (£120,000) a piece. Such a price tag would almost certainly create the world's most expensive tequila shot - somewhere in the region of £6,000... theage.com.au/ ... 08:51:39While heavily under the influence of alcohol, the 30-year-old made a bet with his friend for 1000 lats ($2360) that he would cut off his penis... He was brought to hospital bleeding severely yesterday... had it stitched back on by Latvian doctors, the first such operation in the country's history... The surgeon said that he was proud of his work but also "really angry that he (the patient) did it to himself". Doctors said that it would take four or five days to assess if the operation was successful. It would take about half a year to be sure that the man's penis was functioning properly...

Violencesuntimes.com/ ... 22:20:41Seven Shiite workers were gunned down Saturday in a religiously mixed area of west Baghdad, and explosions in the heart of the capital shattered a one-day calm after a ban on private vehicles expired...
The United States was moving to bolster U.S. troop strength in Baghdad to cope with escalating violence... suntimes.com/ ... 22:20:12Iraqi forces backed by a U.S. helicopter battled Sunni gunmen south of Baghdad on Friday, and at least 11 combatants died. U.S. troops killed five Iraqis -- including two women and a child -- in a separate exchange of fire... today.reuters.co.uk/ ... 11:34:41Eight people were killed, including two foreign soldiers, in a two-pronged suicide attack in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Saturday... a suicide car bomber rammed a coalition convoy in the city of Kandahar on Saturday at 5:45 p.m... at least one civilian was killed in that attack... A second suicide bomber blew himself up a short time later at the same location, killing five Afghans... forbes.com/ ... 11:34:01Israel opened up its blockade of Lebanon's ports to allow the first shiploads of aid to arrive... Some 35,000 Lebanese filled the southern port town of Sidon as they searched for a place to stay or a way to get farther north. With the town of 100,000 unable to absorb more refugees, many families were joining Palestinians in a refugee camp... today.reuters.com/ ... 11:28:12A suicide car bomber rammed a vehicle carrying foreign troops in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Saturday, but there was no immediate word on casualties, a U.S.-led coalition spokesman said... today.reuters.com/ ... 11:27:15Bombs outside Sunni mosques in Khalis, north of the capital, and in the mainly Shi'ite east of Baghdad, each killed one man and wounded two during weekly prayers... theage.com.au/ ... 11:18:09Israeli armoured vehicles were last night reported to have crushed a border fence and entered Lebanon, surrounding a United Nations observation post... also reported that Israel was giving villagers in southern Lebanon until 2 o'clock this morning to evacuate... bloomberg.com/ ... 11:17:54"The recent crisis in the region was triggered by the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers by the terrorist group Hezbollah and the launch of rockets against Israeli cities," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "I believe sovereign nations have the right to defend their people from terrorist attack, and to take the necessary action to prevent those attacks.... Secretary Rice will make it clear that resolving the crisis demands confronting the terrorist group that launched the attacks and the nations that support it.... [Syria] has been a primary sponsor of Hezbollah... [and] has helped provide Hezbollah with shipments of Iranian-made weapons.... [Iran has] repeatedly defied the international community with its ambition for nuclear weapons and aid to terrorist groups..." telegraph.co.uk/ ... 08:46:54British forces in Iraq have seized a two-ton cache of weapons - including rockets, grenades and bomb-making equipment - belonging to the gang responsible for the deaths of numerous servicemen... which military commanders believe is the most significant breakthrough since they arrived in Iraq in 2003, followed the arrest of the leader of the fundamentalist Shia group in Basra last weekend... sfgate.com/ ... 08:43:19"Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared," said Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University. "In a sense, the preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal, when it became clear the international community was not going to prevent Hezbollah from stockpiling missiles and attacking Israel. By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board..." boston.com/ ... 07:13:33The United States told Iraq's leaders in stern language on Wednesday they must act swiftly to halt a surge in attacks by both Sunnis and Shi'ites that the United Nations said risks pitching the nation into civil war. On a day of more gun attacks, bombings and the kidnap of 19 Sunni mosque officials, the U.S. ambassador and U.S. commander in Iraq implicitly blamed Shi'ite and Sunni groups respectively for two major attacks that killed some 120 people this week... rte.ie/ ... 07:13:08Israeli forces have been continuing their limited incursions into southern Lebanon, where they are trying to destroy Hezbollah guerilla positions. Israeli soldiers are occupying one Lebanese village but have withdrawn from another... abcnews.go.com/ ... 07:12:53Two Israeli soldiers were killed in fierce battles with Hizbollah guerrillas inside Lebanon on Thursday and five people were injured when two Israeli helicopters collided on the ninth day of the conflict...

Animals can be Deadlyusatoday.com/ ... 07:06:30A 36-year-old woman whose love for pachyderms led her from her native Maine to rural Lewis County, Tenn., was attacked and killed Friday morning at a preserve for aging elephants... Also, a man who handles the 22 Asian and African elephants at The Elephant Sanctuary was injured and hospitalized late Friday... The aggressor was Winkie, a 40-year-old female Asian elephant who has been at the sanctuary for six years and who has a history of attacking humans who worked with her...

Threatsworldnetdaily.com/ ... 06:51:30It is only a "question of time" before Palestinian terror groups and other Islamic organizations in the Middle East target the United States both abroad and on the home front, Abu Nasser, second-in-command of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, told WorldNetDaily in an exclusive interview... [It's like they're hanging a sign on themselves, saying, "put us out of existence, please!" But they do that all the time already....]

Supernatural Tyrannytelegraph.co.uk/ ... 06:48:20The beaches of Turkey, crowded with women in bikinis or sunbathing topless, are witnessing a new phenomenon: neck-to-ankle swimwear worn by increasingly confident Muslim women. The Islamic swimwear consists of a full-body suit and a hood that is pulled over a tight bonnet... latest versions let the sun through, allowing the wearer to obtain a tan...

Under Tyrannytelegraph.co.uk/ ... 06:46:26Television advertising for breast enhancement surgery and slimming aids was banned in China yesterday... tighter regulation on one of the country's fastest growing industries... follows a scandal in which hundreds of women were maimed by unsafe implants. The "magic gel" used in the implants leaked into the body and even caused flesh to rot...

Nature is Dangerouswftv.com/ ... 06:45:49

CANTONMENT, Fla. -- A teenager hit by lightning while playing online poker... lightning strike traveled through his home computer... "I heard the lightning and I saw a flash. I felt a jolt go up my right arm and through my whole body.... I couldn't move. My whole body was weak..." will need physical therapy to recover full use of his arm... said he had been warned about using the computer in storms, but didn't take the warnings seriously... Computers can be protected from lightning strikes by surge protectors...

It's All in Your Mindsciencedaily.com/ ... 22:28:09Researchers at Yale School of Medicine and the University of Oxford have identified the very first neurons in what develops into the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that makes humans human...

History - still with ushosted.ap.org/ ... 22:26:45ISTANBUL, Turkey -- It seems a typical scene of urban decay: abandoned buildings, crumbling walls, trash and broken wine bottles. Yet it's more than 1,500 years old. Engineers uncovered these ruins of an ancient Byzantine port during drilling for a huge underground rail tunnel... has grown into the largest archaeological dig in Istanbul's history, and the port's extent is only now being revealed...

Digital Future is Nowhosted.ap.org/ ... 22:16:23Washers and dryers that link wirelessly to Internet-connected home networks are being tested by consumers who are receiving updates on their dirty laundry via cell phones, computers and TV sets...

Only Naturaltoday.reuters.com/ ... 11:30:37CHICAGO - Scientists reported on Friday what they said was the first scientific evidence that people unconsciously gesture with their voices.... first evidence of "analog acoustic expression" -- people unconsciously modulating their voices in ways that provide an additional channel of expression understood by others....

Prehistory - still with usnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:23:28Prehistoric humans roamed the world's largest desert for some 5,000 years... The Eastern Sahara of Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Chad was home to nomadic people who followed rains that turned the desert into grassland. When the landscape dried up about 7,000 years ago, there was a mass exodus to the Nile and other parts of Africa...

World Zookeepingnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 22:27:28

Only 56 butterfly species now remain in Britain as others have fallen victim to disappearing habitat... urban sprawl, modern farming techniques and lack of woodland management had all played their part in habitat loss... hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:22:59CORONA DEL MAR, Calif. -- There was good news and bad news when Crash, the California brown pelican that earned her nickname when she flew beak-first into a car windshield, was released back into the wild. As soon as workers with the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center released Crash on Big Corona Beach on Thursday, she stumbled and fell beak-first into a pile of rocks. But after taking a few moments to gather her bearings, Crash shook her tail, bobbed in the surf and then headed for the heavens... "What happened was, there were so many cameras.... She looked back and then took a step..." hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:21:43STOCKTON, Calif... About 1,000 bats lost their home when a Central Valley church had the top of its roof torn off... Central United Methodist Church had left the winged-pests alone for 10 years until the population exploded and they feared bat urine would soak into the roof and cause a stink in the sanctuary... The church's next plague? Termites, with a scheduled eradication in August...

Dinosaurs -- still with ushosted.ap.org/ ... 11:19:23BOZEMAN -- A Montana State University student unearthed the skull of a baby Triceratops last week near Jordan... only the third of its kind ever to be discovered. He said he believes the Triceratops was less than a year old when it died about 65 million years ago. "It is a precious size," Horner said. "The orbital horns are only about three or four inches long..."

Raising Ourselveshosted.ap.org/ ... 11:18:39European and international health experts say a new study makes the most convincing case yet for the benefits of children being active. They say the research may lead to new guidelines saying youngsters between ages 5 and 16 need to be active up to 1 1/2 hours a day. For some parents, that might be accomplished simply by showing their children the door...

US Militaryazcentral.com/ ... 08:47:47EL PASO, Texas - Four U.S. soldiers accused of murdering suspected insurgents during a raid in Iraq said they were under orders to "kill all military age males," according to sworn statements obtained by The Associated Press. The soldiers first took some of the men into custody because they were using two women and a toddler as human shields. They shot three of the men after the women and child were safe and say the men attacked them...

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 08:43:57

Marine Cpl. Julian A. Ramon, 22, of Flushing, N.Y., died July 20 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C. defenselink.mil/ ... 08:43:39

Army Pfc. Derek J. Plowman, 20, of Everton, Ark., died on July 20 in Baghdad, Iraq, from a gun shot wound. Plowman was assigned to the Army National Guard's 1st Battalion, 142nd Fires Brigade, Rogers, Ark. This incident is under investigation.

Good is Innatehosted.ap.org/ ... 22:19:15DETROIT -- A [59yo] homeless man searching for returnable bottles in a trash bin found 31 U.S. savings bonds worth nearly $21,000 in a bag of clothes.... family had given away many of [owner's] clothes shortly after his death in 2004. How the bonds ended up in the trash bin is a mystery, but ...left Moore a $100 reward....

Theory of Justicehosted.ap.org/ ... 22:18:00MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. -- A jury acquitted a man who had been charged with assault after authorities said an assistant prosecutor, police officer and courtroom bailiff got sick after shaking hands with him. John Curtis Ridgeway, 42, was seen pulling out a vial of liquid and rubbing his hands with the contents after a December jury trial in which he was found guilty of driving without insurance...

Rebuildingtoday.reuters.com/ ... 22:14:58Iraqi leaders met in a show of sectarian and ethnic solidarity on Saturday before a White House visit by the prime minister, but some were pessimistic about the chances of reducing the bloodshed...

People are Trashysciencedaily.com/ ... 11:33:38Researchers have come up with an additive that enables plastic bags to be quickly decomposed by sun and rain... also makes the plastic considerably stronger, and it is cheap to produce...

Digital Culturetoday.reuters.com/ ... 22:27:55The bar itself is just one of several live music venues scattered throughout the city that caters to emerging artists hungry for a stage -- however small -- to hone their skills and attract a following. Attendance tonight is sparse, maybe 30 patrons hang on the bar or linger on the beer-stained dancefloor. But the band on the dinner-table-sized stage plays to a much larger audience. Practically unnoticed to all but the performers are four domed, Vegas-style security cameras hanging from different areas of the ceiling capturing their every move. The Gig films all performances -- three a night, seven nights a week -- and broadcasts them the next day from its Web site, http://www.liveatthegig.com... suntimes.com/ ... 22:14:27Advanced Micro Devices Inc., the world's second-biggest maker of microprocessors, plans to buy ATI Technologies Inc. for about $5.5 billion, according to a source... sciencedaily.com/ ... 11:31:11Researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Spanish charity for the blind ONCE (Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles) have developed a Braille keyboard for PCs that has some unique features. The keyboard provides more applications for blind people and is particularly useful for scientific texts and musical scores... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:26:26Hailed as "the most significant memory invention of the decade", magnetoresistive random-access memory or Mram could one day overthrow hard discs and flash memory... Put simply, Mram stores data magnetically, in the same way a hard drive does. This makes it non-volatile. It is also very quick, and does not wear out over time. So it seems to have the advantages of both RAM and flash, with none of the disadvantages... cbs.marketwatch.com/ ... 08:54:49Demand for personal computers is expected to rise again in the coming year, yet technology giants including No. 1 computer maker Dell Inc. and software giant Microsoft Corp. are facing slowing growth rates, particularly from corporate customers and in mature markets. Many would-be consumers are awaiting the next version of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system, known as Vista, and corporations have been upgrading fewer machines after a solid replacement cycle in the past two years when many companies replaced machines they'd upgraded ahead of the rollover to the year 2000... After suffering delays, Windows Vista currently is expected to reach business customers in November, with a rollout to consumers in January...

Business Culturenzherald.co.nz/ ... 08:55:44Is your workplace an adhocracy? And if it is, should you be worried? According to online collaborative encyclopaedia Wikipedia, in the jargon of management theory an adhocracy is an organisation in which everyone has the authority to make decisions and take actions affecting its future. Wikipedia reminds us that Future Shock author Alvin Toffler predicted that adhocracies were on the rise. He went as far as to suggest that they would replace bureaucracies in the near future... news.yahoo.com/ ... 08:52:38Japanese carmaker Nissan said Friday it has pulled a raunchy commercial starring "Sex and the City" actress Kim Cattrall from New Zealand television after complaints over its content... "Why didn't you tell me it was so big, I just wasn't prepared for it?" she gushes. "The all-new Nissan Tiida makes you feel really, really, really good inside." She tells a salesman: "Ah! That was amazing. Absolutely fabulous! I mean the great body and the way you moved it." The double entendre-laced ad was approved by New Zealand's Television Commercial Approvals Bureau before broadcast. Nevertheless, it sparked a number of complaints to the Advertising Standards Complaints Board...

Industrial Incidentlocal6.com/ ... 08:50:02Pipkin was transported to Florida Hospital South in critical condition and initial scans of his brain were abnormal. Doctors feared he suffered brain damage. However, seven days after the near drowning, Pipkin was given the OK to leave the hospital. He was diagnosed as being healthy with no permanent damage from the incident... local6.com/ ... 08:49:23A 14-year-old who was sucked to the bottom of a hotel hot tub and kept under water for at least seven minutes was likely saved by air his father breathed into his mouth during the ordeal...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spinonline.wsj.com/ ... 11:59:23WHEN SECRETARY of State Condoleezza Rice heads to the Middle East next week, she'll be coping with a lot of pressures: a Lebanese government desperate for help to end the current fighting there, an Israeli government determined to smash Hezbollah's military structure before it stops the conflict, and Arab allies so fearful of their own publics' anger over the fighting that they have decided to meet Secretary Rice in Rome rather than in an Arab capital. Most surprising, though, is one kind of pressure she won't be feeling: There is little public outcry back home in the U.S. to compel Israel to pull back. This is the dog that isn't barking in the current crisis, giving President Bush and his secretary of state a considerably freer hand in responding -- and in pursuing their staunch support of Israel -- than they might have expected... townhall.com/ ... 11:49:10Sometimes one almost envies the terrorists. At least they’re allowed to say what they mean. Consider Hezbollah. It aims to turn Lebanon into an Islamic republic in the style of Iran. It also wants to conquer Israel and end Western influence in the Middle East. And it’s willing to fight to accomplish those goals. So is Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization that makes no bones about its desire to destroy Israel through “holy war." Even Iran speaks clearly, when we’re willing to listen. Last year President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Israel should be “wiped off the map." No diplomatic subtleties there. In light of their words, recent events are no surprise... The fact is, Israel is merely the front line in this fight. Radical Islamists, who’ve made it clear that they aim to destroy our democratic way of life, are on the offensive. So what’s the West’s reaction? “The extremists must immediately halt their attacks," announced the official statement issued by the G-8, the club made up of the leaders of the world’s industrial powers. “It is also critical that Israel, while exercising the right to defend itself, be mindful of the strategic and humanitarian consequences of its actions. We call upon Israel to exercise utmost restraint." How very measured. How very diplomatic. How very useless. Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah have any intention of halting their attacks. They exist to attack. That’s what they say, and that’s what they mean... jewishjournal.com/ ... 11:47:41On my trip I saw how Israel is bustling -- filled with tourists from around the world. Aren't we playing into the hands of the few terrorists? Aren't we letting them bring Israel to a standstill? A strong state that has a strong army like Israel's surely has the means to come up with a solution that is better than merely hitting back harder. I am sure the Israeli army knows how to keep our borders and soldiers safe, so that small groups of terrorists will be unable to cross and kidnap soldiers... channelnewsasia.com/ ... 11:46:03It might push into more active opposition those already hostile to them, at least in Lebanon, but having seen the beginnings of a return of prosperity, no one wants the country to go back to a reliving of the nightmare of the 17 years of civil war that only ended in 1990. Even those in the middle classes, who are seeing their livelihoods going up in smoke, or in the well-established elites of the various Lebanese communities, who regard Hezbollah as a troublesome upstart, are likely to be wary of sponsoring actions that would make them appear to be doing Israel's bidding or capitulating to its intimidatory tactics, especially against an organisation that displayed courage, skill and imagination in freeing the occupied south. These days, the Israeli government hardly bothers with the pretence that it is only waging war on those it regards as terrorists. The bombing of civil institutions, destruction of power stations and killing of civilians constitutes warfare against the unarmed and everyone knows it, even if the attempt is made to justify it as being directed at inducing action against Hezbollah and Hamas. The specific attacks that they carried out, which led to the Israeli assaults on the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, seem very discriminating by contrast: They were directed at military units... timesonline.co.uk/ ... 07:12:36Why hasn’t the Prime Minister publicly condemned the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza? Most British — and many Israeli — citizens are horrified when they see the devastation wreaked by Israeli bombings. There were 80 such raids in the early hours of yesterday alone. By late afternoon, some 327 civilians had died in Lebanon, compared with 34 Israelis... Even the most hardline supporters of Israel, who justifiably point to the country’s right to defend itself against attacks from Hezbollah, must by now have come to realise that the “overkill" will have the opposite of its desired effect. For every member of Hezbollah who dies, another ten will be recruited to its cause... [If such logic had been used with the Nazis, they would have been handed Europe in WW2!] washingtonpost.com/ ... 07:10:29The Lebanon Blitz By Alvaro Vargas Llosa... Israel's pursuit of Hezbollah in Lebanon is a mistake. It is unwittingly targeting the best hope of civilized life in the Middle East (outside of Israel itself) and creating the kind of moral and institutional vacuum that engenders sectarian violence... zaman.com/ ... 07:08:17Hezbollah's Refusal to Join the Israeli Age of Dominance by Dr. Ali Al-Hail... [Presented as a public service by BlogHeap, if anyone is interested in reading about how the problems are all Isreal's fault...]

World Without Borderstoday.reuters.com/ ... 11:28:48Across the front line between Lebanon and Israel, bloggers hiding in bomb shelters and watching from rooftops are trading terrifying experiences, bitter barbs and words of sympathy. The postings on Web logs, online journals, are a rare forum for communication between two countries that had no open border even before the latest war, no flight connections and working phone lines only in the direction from Israel to Lebanon... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 06:50:43more than 3,000 American citizens are leaving the comfort and security of the United States to make war-torn Israel their home...

Marriage Todayboston.com/ ... 06:50:15Boston... They told the world that their relationship was like any other and that's why they should be allowed to marry. Now, friends say, they are showing once again that they are just like any other couple: Two years after getting married, Julie and Hillary Goodridge, lead plaintiffs in the state's landmark gay marriage case, are splitting...

Supernatural Sillinesstelegraph.co.uk/ ... 06:49:49

A Church of England school has dropped John Lennon's song Imagine from a concert - because it was not felt to be "an appropriate song to perform publicly"... contain the words "and no religion too"... "We are a Church school and we believe God is the foundation of all we do. As such we did not feel that Imagine was an appropriate song to perform publicly..." [One wonders just how far they got before discovering this oft-criticized line!]

FRI 2006-JUL-21

Under Tyrannybreitbart.com/ ... 19:23:54NORFOLK, Va... A judge ruled Friday that a 16-year-old boy fighting to use alternative treatment for his cancer must report to a hospital by Tuesday and accept treatment that doctors deem necessary... also found Starchild Abraham Cherrix's parents were neglectful for allowing him to pursue alternative treatment of a sugar-free, organic diet and herbal supplements supervised by a clinic in Mexico... [parents] must continue to share custody of their son with the Accomack County Department of Social Services...

Threatshaaretz.com/ ... 19:17:29Tel Aviv police apprehended three people Friday night suspected of planning to carry out a terrorist attack in the city. The three, who matched the descriptions of suspected terrorists received by security forces, were apprehended in a car at the entrance to the Tel Aviv port and were taken into custody for questioning by police. Sappers who searched the vehicle, however, did not find any weapons or explosive devices nearby...

Violencebreitbart.com/ ... 19:20:10A knife-wielding grocery store employee attacked eight co-workers Friday, seriously injuring five before a witness pulled a gun and stopped him... news.yahoo.com/ ... 19:18:33Israel massed tanks and troops on the border Friday hours after calling up reserves, as the army announced plans for a ground operation to destroy Hezbollah's tunnels, hideouts and weapons stashes... voanews.com/ ... 19:15:14The Iraqi military extended its weekly vehicle ban in Baghdad Friday, after the U.S. military warned that insurgents are pouring into the city for an all-out assault... chron.com/ ... 19:14:38BAGHDAD, Iraq... Iraqi forces backed by a U.S. helicopter battled Sunni gunmen south of Baghdad on Friday, and 18 combatants died. U.S. troops killed five Iraqis -- including two women and a child -- in a separate exchange of fire... 770chqr.com/ ... 17:36:51CALGARY... Foreign Minister Peter MacKay is asking Israel to check unconfirmed reports that a ship carrying Canadians was attacked after it left Lebanon. MacKay says he has no way to verify the reports independently because the ship is still in the water between Beirut and Cyprus... washingtonpost.com/ ... 17:36:14Israel on Friday ordered several thousand reserve soldiers to report for duty as signs grew that the army might be preparing for a major ground invasion of southern Lebanon. A military source said more than 3,000 reservists were called up. Army Radio said it could be six battalions, which might mean up to 6,000 soldiers. Israel has been massing troops, tanks and artillery pieces near the border with Lebanon since the crisis with Hizbollah guerrillas erupted on July 12... today.reuters.co.uk/ ... 17:35:43Ten days into Israel's offensive, many Sunni, Druze and Lebanese Christians, while still blaming the guerrilla group for triggering the conflict by capturing two Israeli soldiers, have shifted their anger at Israel for its devastating retaliation.... The Israeli bombardment has so far killed 343 people, displaced 500,000 civilians and hit ports, bridges and roads across the country, shattering the country's infrastructure...

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 17:19:13

Army Staff Sgt Eric Caban, 28, of Fort Worth, Texas, died on July 19 in southern Afghanistan of injuries sustained when his combat reconnaissance patrol came in contact with enemy forces using small arms fire during combat operations on July 18. Caban was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Fort Bragg, N.C.

Summertimeapnews.myway.com/ ... 19:22:17ST. LOUIS (AP) - National Guard troops stepped up their search for people in hot homes without power to run air conditioning Friday as heavy rains and tree-toppling winds added to the misery of the worst power outage in the city's history. "We have 55 percent of the residents without power. Our biggest fear is that the number will go up..." heat... blamed for at least 28 deaths, three of them in Missouri... The death toll in Oklahoma alone rose to seven... Oklahoma City was so hot that a portion of Interstate 44 buckled, forcing the temporary closure of two lanes... breitbart.com/ ... 19:21:12NEW YORK... A mysterious blackout during the hottest week of the year left tens of thousands of New Yorkers without power for a fifth day Friday as residents sweltered, businesses idled and city officials seethed... Power company Con Edison initially said fewer than 2,500 customers were affected, but it increased that number tenfold Friday morning to 25,000 customers... Bloomberg estimated that would translate to about 100,000 people considering that each "customer" could be more than one household in an area where homes are often sectioned into multiple units, and could even be an entire apartment building...

Broadcast is Deadzap2it.com/ ... 19:19:03PASADENA, Calif. -- NBC is hoping several hundred thousand YouTube fans can't be wrong, rescuing the discarded pilot "Nobody's Watching" from oblivion with an eye toward eventually putting it on the air...

THU 2006-JUL-20

Threatstoday.reuters.com/ ... 10:58:12MOGADISHU - Somalia's Islamists vowed a "holy war" on Thursday against Ethiopian troops crossing into the Horn of Africa nation, while Addis Ababa threatened to "crush" any attack on the interim government it supports. The aggressive rhetoric -- combined with this week's military moves on both sides -- have heightened fears of a new war in Somalia, plagued by violence and without central rule since the 1991 ouster of a military dictator... cnn.com/ ... 10:56:17Two young men from the Atlanta area were accused in a federal indictment Wednesday of undergoing paramilitary training in northwest Georgia and plotting violent holy war. Their civilian and government targets included an air base in suburban Atlanta...

Mass Murdering Monsterstulsaworld.com/ ... 10:55:29Assailants slit the throats of a mother and her three children Wednesday in southern Iraq, where the family had fled to escape threats because they had cooperated with Americans. The mother's sister was also slain in the attack, which occurred in an apartment in the southern city of Basra... Five other family members were rescued before they bled to death...
20 Sunnis who work for a government organization that maintains mosques and shrines of that Muslim sect were abducted in two areas of Baghdad...

Prison Suckstulsaworld.com/ ... 10:53:12ST. LOUIS -- Authorities on Wednesday released Johnny Briscoe from a prison in Charleston, Mo., where he had been for the past 23 years for crimes that the state now says he didn't commit. Crime scene evidence and its tests for DNA showed that Briscoe wasn't the man who broke into a woman's apartment in Maryland Heights, Mo., on Oct. 21, 1982, and raped, sodomized and robbed her... Tests of cigarette butts from the crime scene matched another person... in prison in Missouri serving a long sentence... there was a resemblance between the two men and that the real villain had used the name "Johnny Briscoe" that night. The attacker knew Briscoe from the same neighborhood...

Animals can be Deadlynews-press.com/ ... 10:28:07

A man in Bonita Springs did die of a coral snake bite last month, although he was also very intoxicated... may be the first reported death of a person from a coral snake bite in some four decades... friends were drinking in some woods in Bonita Springs on June 10 when they found a snake and started beating it... [two] were bitten by the snake... The large amount of alcohol in his system may explain why Hernandez-Hernandez didn't seek medical treatment, but it isn't what killed him, the doctor said...

Violenceseattlepi.nwsource.com/ ... 18:49:11KIRKLAND -- The 24-year-old man suspected of stabbing four people in Kirkland and burning a house to cover up the slayings has been booked into King County Jail. The man is scheduled to make his first court appearance today at 2:30 p.m... Olga Milkin, 28, Lyubov Botvina, 24, who also lived in the house, and Olga's two sons, Justin Milkin, 5, and Andrew Milkin, 3. Olga's husband, Sgt. Leonid Milkin, 29, is a member of the 341st Military Intelligence Battalion, most of which is in Afghanistan, but Milkin has been on special assignment in Baghdad since September and is currently assigned to the 415th Military Intelligence Battalion. Milkin was told of the fire and was returning to the area, most likely on an emergency leave, Maj. Philip Osterli of the Washington National Guard said... uu news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:45:33Israel kept up its three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip overnight as warplanes bombed three tunnels it said were being used to channel weapons. On Wednesday evening, a Palestinian died in an Israeli strike on Mughazi refugee camp in central Gaza - taking the day's death toll in Gaza to 10. Israeli troops also arrested 12 wanted Palestinians in the West Bank... defensetech.org/ ... 10:19:36Lasers: Israel's Rocket Defense?..

Digital Threatarstechnica.com/ ... 10:57:46Savvy Internet users don't bat an eye when they receive e-mails offering to make them a partner in shady money-laundering schemes. The venerable Nigerian 419 scam has been around for so long that it can be difficult to believe it still takes people in, but a recent roundup of worldwide coverage suggests that the ruse is still going strong—and that it works... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:15:01Microsoft is warning Windows users about a virus that takes over PCs via the popular PowerPoint program. Attached to the virus is a poisoned presentation that, if opened, installs keylogging software on a computer. Users are being told to take care because it could be weeks before Microsoft produces a patch that protects against the security loophole... purports to be 18 humorous slides about love between men and women... is attached to an e-mail that arrives from a Google GMail address... aimed at companies in Asia because Chinese characters are used in the subject line of the e-mail... and in name of the poisoned PowerPoint presentation...

Nature is Dangerousbreitbart.com/ ... 10:09:27ST. LOUIS... Powerful storms left nearly half a million homes and businesses without power early Thursday with the region expecting another day of 100-degree heat. ...ripped roofs off buildings, toppled trees and injured more than 30 people. The city's light rail system was down, and a building partially collapsed, injuring at least two people. At least 486,000 customers lost power.... Winds near 80 mph blew out press box windows and ripped the tarp at the new Busch Stadium before the start of a baseball game between the Atlanta Braves and St. Louis Cardinals. Five fans were taken to hospitals and at least 25 others were also injured.... knocked windows out of a rooftop restaurant, downed trees and power lines, and ripped off a section of roof off Lambert- St. Louis International Airport....

Digital Sex can be Dangerousnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 00:06:24Reports of child abuse pictures on the internet have risen sharply... a rise of 24% on the year before...

Only Naturaltoday.reuters.com/ ... 18:44:34Snakes may make people jump for a good reason -- human close-up vision may have evolved specifically to spot the reptiles... sciencedaily.com/ ... 18:44:12Too much sun -- for plants as well as people -- can be harmful to long-term health. But to avoid the botanical equivalent of "lobster tans," plants have developed an intricate internal defense mechanism called photoprotection, which acts like sunscreen to ward off the sun's harmful rays. "We knew that biomolecules called carotenoids participate in this process of photoprotection, but the question has been, 'How does this work?'..." Carotenoids act as "wires" to carry away the extra sunlight energy in the form of unwanted electrons, somehow wicking away the extra electrons across long distances from locations that could damage plant tissues and photosynthesis... o

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 18:40:38

Army Staff Sgt. Robert J. Chiomento, 34, of Fort Dix, N.J., died on July 17 in Khwaya Ahmad, Afghanistan, when his patrol encountered enemy forces using rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Chiomento was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Polk, La. defenselink.mil/ ... 18:40:16

Army Sgt. Mark R. Vecchione, 25, of Tucson Ariz, died on July 18 in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his M1A1 Abrams tank. Vecchione was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment, 1st Armored Division, Friedberg, Germany. defenselink.mil/ ... 18:40:00

Marine Lance Cpl. Geofrey R. Cayer, 20, of Fitchburg, Mass., died July 18 from a non-hostile incident in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif. The incident is under investigation.

Supernaturalabs-cbnnews.com/ ... 10:31:51BACACAY, Albay - A 10-year-old boy, reported earlier to have come to life 17 hours after doctors pronounced him dead... at his wake in the family abode in Puro, Legazpi City, he suddenly woke up and hugged his father and asked for food and water.... could barely communicate... related his out-of-this-world experience. "It was a nightmare at first, then I saw angels singing in a beautiful church...." Another incident he remembered was being told to wake up "by Jesus Christ, who had a beard and long blond hair." He said when he woke up, in his father’s arm, he looked up the sky, where he saw Jesus, but the kindly man was gone....

World Zookeepingtelegraph.co.uk/ ... 10:23:07

less than a week later he was startled when he landed the same 11 lb sea bass after it had been caught by a member of his angling party. "I have lost other species before and caught them 20 minutes later but never after a gap of three days," said Mr Watton, who has been sea fishing since he was a boy. "I couldn't believe it..."

Digital Future is Nowworldnetdaily.com/ ... 10:17:11Hewlett-Packard is introducing new technology to allow the storage of large amounts of information on small chips that can be attached to various objects. ...called Memory Spots, have an adhesive back enabling them to be placed on objects such as paintings, photographs, passports and medical-alert bracelets.... Stored information... could include sound, text or video. ...have a distinct advantage over... RFID tags... ability to store more than 250 times as much data and transmit 20 times faster. The information can be accessed by touching the chip with an inexpensive handheld electronic reader.... RFID tags, which have raised privacy concerns, can be read from many feet away while Memory Spots can be read only up close...

History - still with usnbc10.com/ ... 10:25:07ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- A University of Illinois researcher has discovered a fourth copy of a rare letter that Abraham Lincoln wrote to the nation's governors in 1861... one that Lincoln wrote as part of an unsuccessful ratification process for a constitutional amendment... would have made slavery the law of the land... Lincoln... was willing to push the amendment as "kind of a carrot to the Southern states" if that would preserve the union... Until Tuesday, only three of the 1861 letters were known to have survived... hosted.ap.org/ ... 00:08:15A team of archaeologists announced Wednesday they have uncovered part of what they believe is the birthplace of Rome's first emperor Augustus. Leading archaeologist Clementina Panella said the team has dug up part of a corridor and other fragments under Rome's Palatine Hill, which she described as "a very ancient aristocratic house..."

Cryptozoologyhosted.ap.org/ ... 00:07:48One of the leading searchers for the creature is suing the Great American Bigfoot Research Organization for breach of contract, claiming it never paid to use keepsakes he collected in his pursuits, including a plaster impression of what he describes as the hairy beast's actual big foot... "You can't get this stuff anywhere.... It's worth thousands of thousands of dollars..."

Healing Ourselvesnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 00:07:14People in lower social classes are biologically older than those in higher classes... Telomere length is used as an age indicator...

Long Underwear Heroes are Deadnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:46:44A set of US postage stamps celebrating 10 of DC Comics' superhero characters are being issued this week... Half of the 20 stamps feature portraits of the characters, while the rest show covers from their comic books... Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman... Green Lantern, Aquaman, Supergirl, the Flash, the Green Arrow and Hawkman... A set of stamps celebrating characters from the Marvel Comics stable will reportedly follow in 2007...

Population Boomingforbes.com/ ... 10:59:51U.S. health officials have approved the only long-term implantable birth-control product for the American market. Implanon continually releases a low dose of the hormone progestin for up to three years. The product has already been used by about 2.5 million women in more than 30 countries since 1998...

Transport Incidentsun-sentinel.com/ ... 10:55:55A glitch in the autopilot system on the Crown Princess likely caused the month-old cruise ship to tilt harshly to one side, injuring 240 passengers, marine experts said Wednesday...

World Without Bordersnbc10.com/ ... 10:43:32OLEY, Pa. -- The people who run the Oley Legion Diner in Berks County have put up a new sign poking fun at the English-only cheesesteak flap in Philadelphia. The owner of Geno's Steaks in South Philadelphia has posted signs stating, "This is America: When Ordering Speak English." In response, the Oley Legion Diner's new sign says, "Please Order in PA Dutch..." isn't enforced...

Work can be Dangerousmsnbc.msn.com/ ... 10:42:32In 2004 (the latest available figures), non-government employers reported 4.3 million non-fatal injuries and illnesses (skin disorders, respiratory conditions, poisoning and hearing loss) [in the workplace]... workplace injuries have been declining for at least a decade, and the safety cops at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration expect the trend to continue... Running into or getting whacked by an object is the most common threat... (Fun fact: You are close to five times more likely to be injured by a violent attack by another person than by a fire or explosion.)...

World - Energycsmonitor.com/ ... 10:39:02In his two-car garage, Kevin Newman is pouring used French fry oil from local restaurants into a pair of General Electric household water heaters - his version of the giant petroleum cracking towers found at an oil company refinery. He deftly moves hoses around, scrubs the impurities from the oil, performs chemical tests, and, voilà, a week later, he is filling-up his pickup truck with biodiesel. He figures his home refinery saves him and his business, which has six trucks, about $1.75 a gallon... "If you can bake a cake, you can make biodiesel," says Mr. Newman...

Marriage Todayreuters.iwon.com/ ... 10:38:09RIYADH... a form of temporary marriage, described by some in Saudi Arabia as legal prostitution... a "misyar" contract -- a kind of marriage-lite under which couples often live separately but get together regularly, sometimes just for sex... thousands of people... choose misyar in this ultraconservative Islamic kingdom where contact between unrelated men and women is forbidden and extramarital sex regarded as a grave sin... also offers an alternative to cash-strapped men who want to avoid lavish weddings but would like a relationship, without incurring the wrath of the morality police... Under misyar, the husband is not financially responsible for his wife, and the marriage often ends in divorce... Misyar is allowed under Sunni Islam and it is legal in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam. But it is traditionally frowned upon and the fact that it leaves the wife financially vulnerable has angered many women's activists and intellectuals... Wealthy Muslims sometimes contract misyar when on holiday to allow them to have sexual relations without breaching the tenets of their faith... A misyar is often one of the only options for older spinsters, divorcees and widows who often struggle to find husbands in a society where they are stigmatised. This vulnerability has sometimes encouraged abuses: women sometimes act as matchmakers for less than scrupulous men on the prowl for lonely and wealthy spinsters...

Sex can be Boringtelegraph.co.uk/ ... 10:35:16...a survey... found half of women are dissatisfied with their sex lives. Eleven per cent said they regularly have sex when they do not really want to and one in 12 admitted frequently faking orgasms. One in nine women view sex as “like any other household chore", “an irritating annoyance" or “only enjoyable for men". ...rises to 10 per cent in Scotland.... Across the UK 6.3 per cent of women said they considered sex to be “like any other household chore"... While younger women were having more regular sex, their satisfaction levels were much lower than those of older generations. The Welsh, both men and women, said they were having sex more frequently than adults in other regions...

Big Whoops Cascadethetimes-tribune.com/ ... 10:33:04City firefighters extinguished an appliance fire early Tuesday after a South Scranton man attempted to clean his washing machine with gasoline... was apparently trying to get rid of a sticky substance in the drum of his washing machine, possibly a pack a bubble gum... cleaned the interior with fuel and ran it through a cycle before it started to smoke... “No sooner after he put it in, he smelled gas and thought, ‘That was a pretty stupid thing to do,’ " Assistant Chief White said...

Supernatural Sillinesssouthflorida.com/ ... 10:25:59In Kenosha County, Wisconsin, Michael Wilk holds his 12-year-old gator, with white markings that Wilk believes form the letters G-O-D on the scales...

Digital Culturesciencedaily.com/ ... 18:43:17complex scattering of incident light off of individual hairs and from one hair to another... Reproducing this effect in computer graphics has always been a challenge... Cornell researchers have developed a new and much quicker method for rendering hair that promises to make blond (and other light-colored) hair more realistic... The problem is that light traveling through a mass of blond hair is not only reflected off the surfaces of the hairs, but passes through the hairs and emerges in a diffused form, from there to be reflected and transmitted some more. The only method that can render this perfectly is "path-tracing," in which the computer works backward from each pixel of the image, calculating the path of each ray of light back to the original light source. Since this require hours of calculations, computer artists resort to approximations... Marschner and Moon's algorithm begins by tracing rays from the light source into the hair, using some approximations of the scattering and producing a map of where photons of light can be found throughout the volume of hair. Then it traces a ray from each pixel of the image to a point in the hair and looks at the map to decide how much light should be available there... news.com.com/ ... 10:59:04Google was set to unveil a Web search site on Thursday designed to help blind people find results that will work best with their text-to-speech software... prioritizes the list of search results based on how simple the Web page layouts are... abclocal.go.com/ ... 10:22:27WorldJumpDay.org, an Internet site created to recruit 600,000,000 people to jump simultaneously on July 20 at 11:39:13 GMT in an effort to shift Earth's position... stop global warming in one fell swoop... created by Torsten Lauschmann, a German-born artist...

Unclear on the Conceptlifesite.net/ ... 10:20:56Middle East Hostilities May Cancel Homosexual ‘WorldPride’ in Jerusalem... Rabbis in Israel have linked the sudden outbreak of violence in the country to the government’s acceptance of the event celebrating the homosexual lifestyle...

Liberty Worksnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:12:23A New Zealand policewoman has been allowed to keep her job... moonlighting as a prostitute. ...apparently took up the part-time work due to financial difficulties. A police spokesman said although secondary employment was allowed... [and] Prostitution has been legal in New Zealand since 2003... prostitution was [deemed] "inappropriate and incompatible with policing". ..the officer is receiving counselling..."

Opposing Digital Tyrannynews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 00:05:57UK users of Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google are being urged by Amnesty International to email the companies to change the way they operate in China. The firms have aided or colluded with internet censorship in the country, the human rights watchdog says. It is asking the internet giants to reveal which words they have banned from blogs in China or filtered out of web searches...

WED 2006-JUL-19

Industrial Tragedynews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 19:01:51At least 20 people have died and many are trapped after a building collapsed in Nigeria's main city of Lagos... block of flats caved in on Tuesday evening... Lagos state governor Bola Tinubu vowed to prosecute those responsible for allegedly shoddy construction of the 36-flat complex... More than 100 people are feared to have been in the building when it collapsed...

Mass Murdering Monsterstoday.reuters.com/ ... 19:03:21Five people were killed and 22 wounded in a triple bomb attack on Wednesday near central Baghdad's Technology University... Following a car bomb blast, two bombs planted nearby exploded a few minutes later, apparently targeting a crowd that gathered at the scene. Three policemen were among the wounded... tulsaworld.com/ ... 18:35:02The man behind the killing and mutilation of two U.S. soldiers died after a clash with security forces, and authorities arrested three leaders of a group linked to al-Qaida in Iraq...
a Sunni suicide bomber lured Shiite laborers into a van Tuesday and blew it up, killing 53 people...

Nature is Dangerousnewsday.com/ ... 18:29:13

MARBLE, Colo. -- Lightning struck a tree where seven mountain hikers were resting, seriously injuring a 15-year-old and sending all seven to a hospital...

Missingnewsday.com/ ... 18:27:44SALT LAKE CITY -- Police scoured the neighborhood Tuesday of a missing 5-year-old girl whose parents said she disappeared from her front porch after arguing with them about having to go to bed...

Transport Tragedynewsday.com/ ... 18:27:17JEANERETTE, La. -- A small plane... was about three blocks from the airport when it struck the roof of a home, then hit a tree and struck a mobile home across the street... Tuesday, killing two people in the plane and one on the ground... A man inside the mobile home...

Disturbing Family Patternsnewsday.com/ ... 18:23:13LITCHFIELD, Conn... A man and his girlfriend were arrested after his 3-year-old son was found locked in a room with a broken arm as punishment for swearing... The boy and seven other children in their apartment were taken into state custody... a neighbor... told police she went to the apartment after seeing several children hanging off a second-floor balcony...

Police Riotupi.com/ ... 17:02:09A 4-year investigation by special prosecutors has found a fired Chicago police commander and other officers tortured confessions out of suspects for years. The "systematic" torture of more than 100 criminal suspects allegedly included electric shocks, suffocation and burns and went on at the Area 2 and Area 3 headquarters on the predominately African-American South Side from the 1970s through the 1980s... "regrettably" cannot be prosecuted because of the statute of limitations...

Digital Whoops Cascaderegisterguard.com/ ... 16:58:36"Blogging is easy, instant and forever." The last word of that quote, a word of caution from Kari Chisholm of the left-leaning political blog www.blueoregon.com, is one that a former adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Oregon says she forgot about in the heat of the moment. And it cost her. Deborah Frisch, 44, resigned last weekend from a similar position at the University of Arizona and moved back to Eugene after writing the following comments, among others, to a conservative blogger in Colorado: "You live in Colorado, I see. Hope no one Jon-Benets your baby..." a lesson in how not to use the blogosphere... "It's really easy to say something in the heat of the moment," Chisholm says, "and yet have it indexed at Google forever, by a future spouse, a future boss, anybody. It's important to keep your eye on the ball that way, and avoid anything you'd regret later..."

Threatstoday.reuters.com/ ... 09:33:08The FBI is trying to ferret out possible Hizbollah agents in the United States amid concerns that rising U.S.-Iranian tensions could trigger attacks on American soil...

Under Digital Tyrannynews.com.com/ ... 09:15:58India.... For reasons yet to be articulated by the authorities, the government has directed local Internet service providers to block access to a handful of Web sites that are hosts to blogs, including Google's popular Blogspot... The move has sown anger and confusion among Indian bloggers, who accuse the government of censorship and demand to know why their sites have been jammed...

Fun can be Dangeroushosted.ap.org/ ... 09:04:06As many as 1.5 million people are sickened by bacterial pollution on Southern California beaches each year, resulting in millions of dollars in public health care costs, a new study has found... covers 100 miles of shoreline in Los Angeles and Orange counties, which is visited by an estimated 80 million people annually... study did not examine the prevalence of other illnesses associated with polluted water, including eye, ear and nose infections...

Transport Near-Tragedynewsday.com/ ... 18:20:23DEARBORN, Mich... A 16-year-old boy apparently had a seizure during his driving test, causing him to hit five vehicles, flip his Jeep and wreck the front of a store... examiner... was hospitalized overnight with a broken arm... hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:01:48FULDA, Minn... ...three young people were in a Chrysler Town and Country minivan on U.S. Highway 59 on Monday when they tried to switch drivers while the cruise control was set. During the exchange, the van went out of control and overturned, sliding into a ditch. The van was totaled. The driver, 19, was airlifted to a hospital with possible internal injuries. Two passengers were sent to another hospital with head injuries...

Nature can be Deadlytoday.reuters.com/ ... 19:03:56An aftershock in Indonesia's tsunami-ravaged region sent hundreds scrambling for high ground on Wednesday as the toll from Monday's disaster climbed to 550... tulsaworld.com/ ... 18:36:21Corpses were recovered Tuesday from beaches, homes and hotels ravaged by Indonesia's second tsunami in as many years, pushing the death toll to at least 463. Nearly 280 people were missing... channel3000.com/ ... 17:04:02MOAB, Utah -- In three separate cases, hikers from eastern states have died in western wilderness areas... timesonline.co.uk/ ... 09:45:03Tomorrow may be Britain's hottest day ever... Roads have begun to melt... forecasters predict an all-time record high temperature for Britain tomorrow, when the mercury could nudge 38C... "We are starting to see much higher summer demand as Britain gets a taste for air conditioning..." The heatwave has coincided with a time when many power stations have been shut down for maintenance and repair... sciencedaily.com/ ... 08:39:33Oppressive summertime heat claims more lives than all other weather-related disasters combined, including tornadoes and hurricanes. During 2003, a heat wave across Europe killed as many as 40,000 people...

Nicotine is a Dragsciencedaily.com/ ... 08:39:20Scientists know that children of women who smoke during pregnancy can develop hearing-related cognitive deficits. For the first time, researchers believe they have evidence that not only implicates nicotine as the culprit, but also shows what the substance does to the brain to cause these deficits... the probable cause of the deficits was damage to the receptors in the brain that are sensitive to nicotine, which seems to occur when humans or animals are exposed to the substance during development... Children with auditory processing deficits can have a number of hearing-related problems. They may have difficulty understanding speech in a noisy environment, not understand information that is presented verbally, and may not be able to tell the difference between similar sounds...

Violencedailystar.com.lb/ ... 23:59:13BEIRUT: Israeli air strikes killed at least 57 civilians and a Hizbullah fighter on Wednesday, the single deadliest day of the war so far, as thousands of villagers continued to flee... "It's simply terrifying. Nowhere is safe anymore..." english.people.com.cn/ ... 23:58:21No one was killed in a late Wednesday air strike on what the Israeli military officials described as a bunker where senior Hezbollah leaders were thought to be, the Lebanese Shiite militant group said... suntimes.com/ ... 20:44:00The police department announced that it believes Justin Geiger, 20, of South Beloit, Ill., killed Amber N. Carlson, 19, of Denver, with a high-powered rifle. They say Geiger also killed Adam Towler, 20, of Laramie, with a knife before killing himself with the rifle. Geiger also stabbed another man, Anthony Klochak, 19, of Chardon, Ohio, police said. Klochak survived and fled the residence and has been cooperating with the police investigation... investigators didn't know the motive... "There was alcohol involved..." news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 19:00:56Italian police say they have freed at least 100 Poles "kept in a state of slavery" in forced labour camps in the south of the country... tulsaworld.com/ ... 18:35:46Afghan and coalition soldiers reclaimed the second of two southern towns Wednesday that had been overrun in recent days by the Taliban... Hundreds of ground forces battled Taliban fighters after entering the Helmand provincial town of Garmser, which had been captured by insurgents on Sunday... newsday.com/ ... 18:19:23Israeli warplanes dropped bombs late Wednesday on a bunker in south Beirut where senior Hezbollah leaders were thought to be... a wave of aircraft dropped 23 tons of explosives on the bunker... top Hezbollah figures were thought to be there, possibly including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah... jpost.com/ ... 17:03:48The two brothers, three-year-old Muhammad Taluzi and nine-year-old Rabiya Taluzi... while playing outside... several Katyusha rockets fell on the Arab Israeli town of Nazareth... hit by shrapnel... buried in the town on Wednesday night... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 15:21:02With the Hezbollah terrorist group firing hundreds of deadly Katyusha rockets into Israeli population centers the past few days, stories here have been surfacing of citizens with close encounters who escaped unharmed... 13-year-old son of a Jewish couple in the coastal town of Safed reportedly was almost hit by a Katyusha rocket on three separate occasions... ynetnews.com/ ... 15:18:17Syria was continuing to smuggle arms into Lebanon to rearm the group, IDF Operations Branch Head Major General Gadi Eisenkot said during a press briefing Tuesday... Thus far, the IAF managed to intercept a number of trucks transporting rockets from Syria to Hizbullah, including trucks laden with the 220mm-diameter rockets with warheads like the one that hit the Haifa train depot Monday, claiming eight lives... guardian.co.uk/ ... 09:33:28The US is giving Israel a window of a week to inflict maximum damage on Hizbullah before weighing in behind international calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon, according to British, European and Israeli sources... bloomberg.com/ ... 09:14:33Israeli ground troops moved across the Lebanese border today, tearing apart Hezbollah arms caches and searching for signs of two captured soldiers... Hezbollah has launched more than 600 missiles across the border, killing 25 Israelis... bombings as far north as Beirut have left at least 300 Lebanese dead and about 1,000 injured... hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:00:49MONROE, Conn. -- A 46-year-old man is accused of assaulting his wife with a carrot, causing her to lose sight in one eye.... couple was arguing when [he] tossed the carrot... [husband] told Judge Patrick Carroll that it was a terrible accident, and was advised to remain silent... globalpolitician.com/ ... 08:38:01Why Restrain Israel? Their Victory is America's and Lebanon's Nicholas M. Guariglia - 7/19/2006
One of the most unusual aspects of the last four years has been how Hezbollah camps in Lebanon have remain undestroyed. You would think any serious effort to democratize Lebanon, or to eradicate terrorism, or to discredit undemocratic Islamist dogma would incorporate some semblance of an attempt to disarm, disband, or dissolve the Iranian-backed jihadist organization. And yet both the supposed confrontational governments in Washington and Tel Aviv have, for far too long, played dove to Hezbollah’s hawk, holding a different standard to the Shi’ite theocrats than we do with the Wahhabis of al Qaida...

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 23:15:47

Army Spc. Manuel J. Holguin, 21, of Woodlake, Calif., died on July 15 in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries sustained when his dismounted patrol encountered enemy small arms fire and an improvised explosive device. Holguin was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, Baumholder, Germany. defenselink.mil/ ... 23:15:09

Army Sgt. 1st Class Scott R. Smith, 34, of Punxsutawney, Pa., died on July 17 in Al Iskandariyah, Iraq, of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated during a controlled ordnance clearing mission. Smith was assigned to the 737th Explosive Ordnance Detachment, 52nd Ordnance Group, Fort Belvoir, Va. defenselink.mil/ ... 23:14:52

Army Cpl. Kenneth I. Pugh, 39, of Houston Texas, died on July 17 in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries sustained when his M1A2 Abrams tank encountered enemy forces small arms fire. Pugh was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 67th Armor Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. This incident is under investigation. defenselink.mil/ ... 23:14:38

Army Staff Sgt. Michael A. Dickinson II, 26, of Battle Creek, Mich., died on July 17 in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, when his dismounted patrol encountered enemy forces small arms fire. Dickinson was assigned to the 9th Psychological Operations Battalion, 4th Psychological Operations Group, U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg, N.C.

Extraterrestrialnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 23:57:58In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun's necklaces. The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it is older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation... traced its origins to unexplained chunks of glass found scattered in the sand in a remote region of the Sahara Desert... An Austrian astrochemist Christian Koeberl had established that the glass had been formed at a temperature so hot that there could be only one known cause: a meteorite impacting with Earth. And yet there were no signs of an impact crater, even in satellite images... suggested... Tunguska event... could happen as frequently as every 100 years... "There are hundreds of times more of these smaller asteroids than there are the big ones the astronomers track," says Mark Boslough. "There will be another impact on the earth. It's just a matter of when..." sciencedaily.com/ ... 19:05:09The European Space Agency's spacecraft constellation Cluster has hit the magnetic bull's-eye. The four spacecraft surrounded a region within which the Earth’s magnetic field was spontaneously reconfiguring itself... In space, different regions of magnetism behave somewhat like large magnetic bubbles, each containing electrified gas known as plasma. When the bubbles meet and are pushed together, their magnetic fields can break and reconnect, forming a more stable magnetic configuration. This reconnection of magnetic fields generates jets of particles and heats the plasma. At the very heart of a reconnection event, there must be a three dimensional zone where the magnetic fields break and reconnect. Scientists call this region the null point but, until now, have never been able to positively identify one, as it requires at least four simultaneous points of measurements...

US Militarynewsday.com/ ... 18:28:33KIRKLAND, Wash. -- Fire gutted the home of a National Guard soldier serving in Iraq, and authorities feared the four bodies found inside included those of his wife and children... Sgt. Leonid Milkin, 29... He will likely be put on emergency leave... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 15:16:44The ground combat element for the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) headed to Beirut to assist in the evacuation of Americans is BLT 1/8 – the same battalion massacred Oct. 23, 1983, by a Hezbollah suicide bomber, killing 241. "This is truly surreal," said Bob Newman, retired Marine gunnery sergeant. "I was the Marine Corps' liaison to the FBI forensics team sent to the V Corps morgue in Frankfurt in October 1983 to ID all the Marines and sailors killed in the bombing. We had all the bodies on steel gurneys in there, the walls covered with brown paper bags from the commissary we had cut up and taped to the walls covered with their names, etc. I rather vividly remember being in the morgue with the FBI guys and seeing faces I recognized staring up at me with sightless eyes." Newman said his sources in the BLT unit are hoping Hezbollah provides them an excuse for payback... defenselink.mil/ ... 14:50:14This week, the Navy announced an increase in the number of reservists on active duty in support of the partial mobilization, while the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps number decreased. The Coast Guard number was unchanged. The net collective result is 4,664 fewer reservists mobilized than last week. This brings the total National Guard and Reserve personnel, who have been mobilized, to 107,104, including both units and individual augmentees.

Healing Ourselvessciencedaily.com/ ... 19:06:01Adults who are highly anxious can perceive changes in facial expressions more quickly than adults who are less anxious... By jumping to emotional conclusions, however, highly anxious adults may make more errors in judgment and perpetuate a cycle of conflict and misunderstanding in their relationships... dailymail.co.uk/ ... 09:46:20Manufacturers claim that the vibrating platform offers the same benefits of an hour-long sweaty gym workout in just 15 minutes with the machine burning the calories for you. The Power Plate is said to be responsible for the incredible shapes of not only Madonna, but also star such as Claudia Schiffer and Natalie Imbruglia. But the "miracle" machine doesn't come cheap - at £6,995 it costs far more than the average annual gym membership... today.reuters.co.uk/ ... 09:18:47Men and boys with autism have fewer neurons in the amygdala, a part of the brain involved in emotion and memory... "One possibility is that there are always fewer neurons in the amygdala of people with autism. Another possibility is that a degenerative process occurs later in life and leads to neuron loss. More studies are needed..." medicalnewstoday.com/ ... 09:18:05Older women who experience migraines with aura have a higher risk of experiencing heart attacks, strokes, angina and heart-related deaths, say American researchers. Older women who experience migraines without aura are at no higher risk than older women who never have migraines... What is Aura? Some people have a visual warning that the headache is coming - their eyesight goes funny. For those who have never experienced it, imagine that a photographer takes a close-up picture of you with a powerful flash. For a few seconds you cannot see properly - the visual experience of aura at the onset of migraine is similar. The migraine aura appears about ten to thirty minutes before the headache...

World Zookeepingen.wikipedia.org/ ... 19:54:19

Piaractus mesopotamicus... postring.net/ ... 19:52:50

Pacu are related to piranha but are not considered piranha. They are a vegetarian version and are cousins in a sense. They have teeth that could resemble a piranha and will eat other fish. However, they are much more docile and their facial features are a bit different. The jaw and the mouth size are different than most piranha... local6.com/ ... 19:51:25

A fish caught in Lubbock, Texas, with teeth that look like they belong to a human has baffled wildlife officials in the area... A search for what the fish may be suggested that it may be a pacu, which is found in South America.... believes he saw another similar fish while on the lake... newsday.com/ ... 18:24:14KETCHUM, Idaho -- It took surgery to save a 12-foot Burmese python after it swallowed an entire queen-size electric blanket -- with the electrical cord and control box... today.reuters.com/ ... 18:18:40A kangaroo is roaming the green hills of Ireland after escaping a circus near the picturesque port of Kinsale... hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:04:29After living in cardboard U-Haul boxes for two days, 28 endangered North American aplomado falcons got a glimpse of their new home in the rugged West Texas desert Tuesday...

History - still with usnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:41:33Scientists believe a small population of migrants from Germany, Holland and Denmark established a segregated society when they arrived in England. The researchers think the incomers changed the local gene pool by using their economic advantage to out-breed the native population. The team tells a Royal Society journal that this may explain the abundance of Germanic genes in England today...

Only Naturalnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 19:02:49Geologists say a crack that opened up last year may eventually reach the Red Sea, isolating much of Ethiopia and Eritrea from the rest of Africa. The 60km-long rift was initially sparked by an earthquake in September... [includes map of the split] news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:59:49breastfeeding newborns helps relieve the pain from a needle prick used to screen their blood for disease. Breastfed babies appeared to experience less pain than those who were swaddled, given a pacifier, or a placebo. Comfort from a mother's presence may be key... sciencedaily.com/ ... 08:39:52a new study published in the journal Brain and Language, which accounted for and corrected these methodological factors, confirmed that men and women do indeed use different parts of their brains when processing both language and visuospatial information...

Transportsciencedaily.com/ ... 19:05:35elders who stay behind the wheel are less likely to enter nursing homes or assisted living centers than those who have never driven or who have given up driving altogether...

Business Culturenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 19:00:43US entertainment giant Disney is to cut 650 jobs worldwide as part of plans to produce fewer adult-oriented films and concentrate on family blockbusters... to reduce its film output from about 18 to 12 movies a year, with only two or three from adult-oriented subsidiary Touchstone Pictures...

Marriage Todaynewsday.com/ ... 18:25:57Gov. Bill Owens signed a measure banning child brides, ending an uproar sparked by a court ruling that said 12-year-old girls could enter common-law marriages in Colorado... "It was imperative that Colorado change its law concerning the minimum age for common law marriage. The age of consent for marriage should be consistent in our statutes and, most importantly, our young children must be protected," Owens said... [from marriage?]

Big Whoops Cascadenewsday.com/ ... 18:25:12MELVILLE, N.Y. -- Police arrested a man accused of firing a rifle in his backyard while calling in to a syndicated radio show...

American Culturenewsday.com/ ... 18:21:56

A Short History of the Pledge of Allegiance... After the Civil War, concerns about immigration and a changing culture raised an interest in having schoolchildren honor the American flag...

Sexual Equality??thescotsman.scotsman.com/ ... 16:56:23FORCING your wife to kneel down and scrub the house floor clean is a crime because it amounts to mistreatment, Italy's highest appeals court ruled yesterday... thescotsman.scotsman.com/ ... 16:56:07AT THE time, most people agreed it seemed a good idea: carriages on Japanese commuter trains set aside specifically for females would dramatically reduce the number of women being molested by the chikan who get their kicks by having a sly fondle among the tightly packed bodies. And it worked. The idea was so effective that it was quickly adopted by numerous train companies across the country, with pink signs adorning certain carriages warning men to keep their distance. What is less welcome, however, is the sudden embracing of an entire male-free environment by whole sectors of the Japanese service industry. It has become so common to see "no males" signs outside stores, restaurants, hotels, spas and even entertainment outlets that the victims of this policy are beginning to grumble that they are becoming second-class citizens...

It's Only Moneydailyrecord.co.uk/ ... 16:55:17A COUPLE too poor to buy a home on burger bar wages have scooped £1.3million on the National Lottery. But despite their windfall... insisted: "We're staying where we are. It's not many people who are served by millionaires when they pull up at McDonald's...."

Why People Go Vegan9news.com/ ... 16:53:38California-based Liborio Markets, a Latino-based grocery store, is branching out to Colorado. Eight stores in all are planned for the state... talking with the U.S. Department of Health and the Tri-County Health Department, seeking approval to bring in live chickens that will be killed at the store... Every morning, the chickens are given a fatal electric shock, de-feathered, cleaned, cut, and put on the shelves...

World of Culturesnypost.com/ ... 09:49:42DON'T joke about women, donkeys and bestiality if you expect Joel Siegel to watch your movie. That's what director Kevin Smith found out when the pun-loving "Good Morning America" film critic stormed out of a press screening of Smith's "Clerks II," which opens Friday.... "Time to go!" roared Siegel to his fellow critics. "First movie I've walked out of in 30 [bleeping] years!" His tirade came 40 minutes into the long-awaited Weinstein Company sequel to Smith's 1994 cult classic about two foul-mouthed Long Island convenience store clerks who razz customers and goof off... Smith fired back on his MySpace blog: "Getting a bad review from Siegel is like a badge of honor... man, man - how about a little common [bleeping] courtesy? You never, never disrupt a movie, simply because you don't like it. Cardinal rule of moviegoing: Shut your [bleeping] mouth while the movie's playing... Leave the diva-like behavior and drama-queen antics to the movie stars, not the movie reviewer, ya' rude-ass [bleep]..."

World Without Borderssuntimes.com/ ... 20:42:08Chicago.... Thousands of people supporting more lenient treatment of illegal immigrants marched through downtown and rallied on the lakefront Wednesday, calling for a moratorium on deportations. Marchers gathered at Grant Park after passing through downtown in waves, some chanting "We are Americans!" and others hoisting U.S. flags and signs with messages such as "Deportation equals broken families" and "We build your American dream..." [Uh.. I may be confused, but why should being exploited workers be something to be proud of? and how exactly are non-citizens "Americans"? Could some folks need a refresher in grade-school Civics?] news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 19:03:02The first direct cargo flight for 57 years between Taiwan and mainland China has landed in Shanghai... breitbart.com/ ... 09:43:30About 100 illegal immigrants were rescued from the desert about 50 miles west of Phoenix, many suffering from dehydration and exhaustion after triple-digit heat. Seven immigrants and three sheriff's deputies were taken to hospitals after the rescues late Tuesday... The immigrants told authorities that three people had died... no bodies had been found... investigators suspect the immigrants were left in the area until smugglers could arrange for transportation elsewhere. "They are stashing them out there..." Some immigrants said they hadn't had water since Sunday...

Modern Family Lifebreitbart.com/ ... 09:42:00A 52-year-old Greek woman is to give birth to her own grandchild after being granted legal permission to act as a surrogate mother for her daughter...

Sportsmanshipbloomberg.com/ ... 09:20:42The Seattle SuperSonics were sold for $350 million to a group led by Oklahoma investor Clayton Bennett, raising the risk that the city will lose its National Basketball Association team after almost 40 years... finished last season with a 35-47 record, missing the playoffs... triggered speculation that the team will move to Oklahoma City... [and would be Oklahoma's first-ever professional sports team] "Ultimately we hope for basketball in Oklahoma City, but it's unrelated to this transaction," Bennett said...

Only Rock n Rollhosted.ap.org/ ... 09:03:15...New Zealand rock band the Mint Chicks... four-member group was playing at the historic St. James Theater in the northern city of Auckland last week when chunks of plaster fell onto the heads of two audience members.... One 17-year-old youth required stitches in a head wound and the other, a young woman, was brought to a hospital with a concussion.... St. James manager... said vibrations and sound waves from the music had dislodged plaster in the building... Lumps of plaster had fallen from one of the decorative portals, ricocheted off another fixture and hit the two concertgoers on their heads... "It's an old, old theater, built in 1936, and there is a lot of ornate plaster work... It was an exceptionally loud concert, the loudest there has been at St. James for a long time..."

That's Not Funny!hosted.ap.org/ ... 08:59:40

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. -- A man's idea of a joke, putting a pet 6-foot boa constrictor in his mailbox to startle a mail carrier, could bring him time behind bars... "It was an incredibly stupid practical joke that wasn't funny," said James R. Mell, 31... "I thought it was funny. Looking back on it, it isn't, and it wasn't..."

Defending Ourselveshosted.ap.org/ ... 08:56:01PHILADELPHIA -- Sunday afternoon... About 15 customers were in Gomez Grocery in the city's East Germantown section... 23-year-old... armed robber... walked in... jumped atop a small freezer and pointed the gun at store owner Eddie Gomez... [66yo] Customer... 5-foot-4, grabbed the 6-foot-1 gunman from behind when he was on the freezer, and with help from Gomez knocked him down... [Customer] beat him with a can of applesauce [Mott's] when he refused to drop his gun... suspect shot himself in the head during the struggle, and passed out... "Finally, the guy passes out," said Det. Curtis Matthews. "There's blood everywhere - on the floor, all over..." [We need more details! What SIZE was that can of Mott's? Did the 66yo man have a government license to use cans in self-defense? Did the other customers applaud and laugh and grab more cans in case the guy got up again?]

Human Rightnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:41:22The US House of Representatives has rejected a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, ending the congressional debate on the issue... President George W Bush had backed the amendment...

Digital Culturehosted.ap.org/ ... 18:59:10The European Commission on Wednesday banned a small Dutch town from building its own fiber-optic network, saying the plan would be unfair to broadband companies - a decision with potentially far-reaching consequences. It was the first time the EU has vetoed a municipality's plan to build a public network... online.wsj.com/ ... 16:54:15"It's a paradox of abundance," said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of culture and communication at New York University. If people aren't pressured to see a movie in a specific time frame, he said, viewers tend to put it lower on their priority list. "When you have every choice in front of you, you have less urgency about any particular choice..." breitbart.com/ ... 16:51:28CHICAGO... E-mail is so last millennium. Young people see it as a good way to reach an elder _ a parent, teacher or a boss _ or to receive an attached file. But increasingly, the former darling of high-tech communication is losing favor to instant and text messaging, and to the chatter generated on blogs and social networking sites.... The shift is starting to creep into workplace communication, too... dailytech.com/ ... 09:16:56Samsung [announces] 8Gb NAND flash memory devices. The new high density multi-level-cell (MLC) memory is based on a 60nm manufacturing process and allows a 25% increase in production output compared to 70nm designs... blogs.pcworld.com/ ... 09:15:16It's hard to know how to feel about Microsoft's purchase, announced today, of Sysinternals, one of the best sites around for free Windows utilities, and Winternals, its sister site that produces paid enterprise recovery, security and defragging tools. While Sysinternals tools -- such as Process Explorer, Regmon and DiskMon -- are wonderfully useful, you have to feel that this deal is more about Redmond acquiring two more big brains: the sites' co-founders, Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. Russinovich will be one of Microsoft's technology fellows and Cogswell a software architect. Now, I'm not one who believes that Microsoft is evil; I'm certain they want to produce superior, highly useful products that make a decent profit. It's just that their system doesn't seem very well set up to do that at this point... hosted.ap.org/ ... 08:42:53An independent news reporter sued the popular video-sharing service YouTube Inc. for copyright infringement, claiming the Web site encouraged users to copy his protected materials... Robert Tur, who gained fame with his helicopter-based coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots... suit alleges Tur's images of the beating of trucker Reginald Denny during the riots have been downloaded thousands of times. The practice is ruining the market for his work while attracting lucrative advertising revenue to the Web site... San Mateo-based YouTube said the lawsuit was without merit. Tur's video clips were removed from the site as soon as it learned of his complaint.... "It is our intention to work with Mr. Tur, as we work with all copyright owners, to remove any unauthorized works from our site...." today.reuters.com/ ... 08:40:44China... will now begin tracking its vegetables. In an attempt to ensure food safety during the 2008 Olympics, Beijing is to give every cabbage, carrot and pea pod its own identity number and file.... If there is a "safety incident" the vegetable's file can be immediately checked and its origins traced....

Transport Incidentwftv.com/ ... 09:39:00"All the water from the pools was coming right over the edge. It was like Niagara Falls. There were dozens of people with bleeding noses..." The Crown Princess was 11 1/2 miles southeast of Port Canaveral en route to New York late Tuesday afternoon when its crew reported problems with the steering equipment and the 113,000-ton ship listed hard to one side... injuries ranging from fractures and dislocated joints to elderly people suffering shortness of breath and chest pains... All 3,100 passengers and 1,200 crew members were accounted for... hosted.ap.org/ ... 08:58:16YPSILANTI TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- A 5-year-old boy hopped behind the wheel of a sport utility vehicle and drove it several blocks looking for his mother following an argument with his grandmother... started the truck, cranked up the stereo and stood on the driver's seat to see over the steering wheel... child was not injured... grandmother's 2004 Cadillac Escalade was stopped without incident... He was not expected to face any charges... floridatoday.com/ ... 08:35:43Passengers and ship furniture flew everywhere when the cruise ship, Crown Princess, suddenly listed at sea Tuesday afternoon. “The ship tilted for at least 15 seconds and furniture and people were falling and flying..." [people were apparently surprised to find out that a boat on the ocean does not ride perfectly level all the time!]

Reasons for Repealhosted.ap.org/ ... 08:34:40Meth abuse continues to fuel an increase in crimes like robbery and assault, straining the workload of local police forces despite a drop in the number of meth lab seizures... Nearly half of county law enforcement officials consider methamphetamine their primary drug problem, more than cocaine, marijuana and heroin combined... [An interesting statement because those latter drugs, by and large, would not generate crime except for the inflated prices and black-market availability created by PROHIBITION. In addition, what "crimes" are we talking about? There is the so-called but not-really crime of buying and smoking some pot, and the real and horrible crimes that people commit when drunk or addle-pated on crack. The latter is a real problem; the former is a false problem created by prohibition.]" Abuse of this highly addictive brain-altering drug continues to destroy lives and strain essential county services across America," said Bill Hansell... National Association of Counties... president and commissioner of Umatilla County, Ore... About half the counties reported that one in five inmates are jailed because of meth-related crimes like robberies and burglaries. Another 17 percent of counties reported that one in two inmates are incarcerated for meth-related activity...

TUE 2006-JUL-18

Threatstoday.reuters.com/ ... 20:19:09Iran's Hizbollah, which claims links to the Lebanese group of the same name, said on Tuesday it stood ready to attack Israeli and U.S. interests worldwide. "We have 2,000 volunteers who have registered since last year. They have been trained and they can become fully armed. We are ready to dispatch them to every corner of the world to jeopardise Israel and America's interests. We are only waiting for the Supreme Leader's green light to take action. If America wants to ignite World War Three ... we welcome it..."

Digital Threatsnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:37:00A racist mobile phone ringtone has been condemned by South Africa authorities in the city of Cape Town. The lyrics are in Afrikaans and advocate violence against black people in derogatory terms...

Vigilantismnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:36:37Kenyan vigilantes have killed six teenagers suspected of crimes including rape and robbery near Nakuru, north-west of Kenya's capital, Nairobi. Police said villagers rounded up the youths, who were playing cards, beat them and then set their bodies on fire...

Nature can be Deadlytoday.reuters.com/ ... 20:19:45the experiment could change the way wood-frame buildings are designed and built, producing homes able to better withstand the effects of earthquakes from California to Japan... edition.cnn.com/ ... 10:01:57The death toll from a major earthquake off the southwest Java coast and the tsunami that followed climbed quickly Tuesday as the Indonesian Department of Social Affairs pegged the death toll at 305 people, with another 431 injured...

Fun can be Dangerousnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:50:43Children who use an indoor swimming pool may be at increased risk of developing asthma... --Belgian study... researchers believe the key could be exposure to chlorine...

Animals can be Dangeroushosted.ap.org/ ... 09:49:58

WILLIAMSBURG, Pa. -- Tests have confirmed that a bobcat that bit a bicyclist was infected with rabies... 48-year-old high school music teacher, was cycling on a popular trail... stopped by a bench... heard a rustling in the weeds before the bobcat sprang at him... bit him on the right arm and scratched him several times... threw off the bobcat and screamed at it to leave him alone... then got behind the bike and used it to fend off the animal...

Violencetoday.reuters.com/ ... 20:18:25The two men standing on either side of the spiraling war between Israel and Hizbollah have never met, will likely never meet and could not be more different ideologically. But the decisions of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah will affect millions in their countries and beyond as the face-off deepens... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:37:29Pakistani police say they have arrested more than 50 Taleban militants in raids overnight in the south-western province of Balochistan... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:35:55Major donors have pledged to increase aid for peacekeeping in Sudan's Darfur region, responding to warnings that the delicate peace process is in danger. The 7,000-strong African Union force in Darfur is running short of funds. At a donor conference in Brussels, the US pledged an extra $116m (£64m), while the EU offered $30m (£16m)... jpost.com/ ... 10:22:33With the exception of the Palestinians, the Arab world appears to be united in blaming Iran and Syria for the fighting in Lebanon. Until last week, Arab political analysts and government officials were reluctant to criticize Hizbullah in public. But now that Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and his top aides are in hiding, an anti-Hizbullah coalition is emerging not only in Lebanon, but in several other Arab countries as well... timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ ... 10:08:21A suicide bomber blew up his vehicle among a group of construction workers near a Shia mosque in Kufa city... in southern Iraq... at about 7:30 am... on Tuesday... killed at least 57 people and injured around 93... rferl.org/ ... 10:05:54A senior U.S. military commander says an anti-insurgency campaign in southern Afghanistan has seriously disrupted Taliban fighters in the area... have killed "numerous low and midlevel commanders," which the Taliban had used to intimidate people in the region... Operation Mountain Thrust, which began in June, has involved more than 10,000 Afghan, British, Canadian, and U.S. troops...
Afghan police say two of their officers were killed in an execution-style shooting in the southern part of Ghazni Province late on July 17... english.people.com.cn/ ... 10:05:02One coalition soldier was killed and 11 others injured during a fierce battle against Taliban militants in the southern Uruzgan province of Afghanistan... During the battle on Monday in Tarin Kowt district, capital of the province, coalition troops attacked and destroyed a truck which extremists were loading with mortar equipment... attack was followed by a heavy engagement with Taliban fighters and assessments of their casualties were yet to be reported... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 09:24:21Taleban fighters have overrun a town in southern Afghanistan just a few miles from where British forces are based... Naway in Helmand province... Taleban forces are said to be "moving freely" in another key Helmand town, Garmser, which they entered on Sunday...
a coalition soldier has died in fighting in nearby Uruzgan province...
Eleven other soldiers were wounded in the heavy clashes against the Taleban in the Tirin Kot district of the southern Afghan province...

Only Naturalsciencedaily.com/ ... 20:21:23mutations in the progranulin gene cause frontotemporal dementia (FTD)... progranulin function plays an important but previously unrecognized role in neuronal survival... sciencedaily.com/ ... 20:20:38first to learn why the cornea, the clear window of the eye, is free of blood vessels--a unique phenomenon that makes vision possible. The key, say the researchers, is the unexpected presence of large amounts of the protein VEGFR-3 (vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-3) on the top epithelial layer of normal healthy corneas... VEGFR-3 halts angiogenesis (blood vessel growth) by acting as a "sink" to bind or neutralize the growth factors sent by the body to stimulate the growth of blood vessels...

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 23:24:47Nine servicemen missing in action from World War II have been identified and are being returned to their families for burial with full military honors.

Army Air Corps 1st Lt. William M. Hafner, Norfolk, Va.;

Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Arthur C. Armacost, III, Cincinnati, Ohio;

Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. David R. Eppright, Warrensburg, Mo.;

Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Charles F. Feucht, Reynoldsburg, Ohio;

Army Air Corps Technical Sgt. Raymond S. Cisneros, San Antonio, Texas;

Army Air Corps Technical Sgt. Alfred W. Hill, Temple, Okla.;

Army Air Corps Technical Sgt. James G. Lascelles, New York, N.Y.;

Army Air Corps Staff Sgt. William C. Cameron, Los Angeles, Calif.; and

Army Air Corps Staff Sgt. Wilburn W. Rozzell, Duncan, Okla.
All were members of the 63rd Bombardment Squadron, 43 Bombardment Group.
On November 4, 1943 Hafner and his crew took off in a B-24 Liberator from Dobodura, Territory of New Guinea. The men were on an armed reconnaissance mission over the Bismark Sea. A few hours into the flight Hafner sighted a convoy of Japanese ships and was told to shadow the convoy and report back. Four hours later the crew radioed from the B-24 that they had made three direct hits on the convoy and destroyed the target. That was the last radio contact with the crew. In March 2002 a team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) was contacted by a local government official through the U.S. Embassy. The team was exploring unrelated WW II aircraft crash sites in Papua New Guinea. The official turned over aircraft data plates, human remains and three ID tags which had been found at a crash site in Morobe Province. During the excavation of the site in Aug.-Sept. 2003, the team recovered additional remains and personal effects including identification tags and bracelets.... defenselink.mil/ ... 23:20:05

Army Cpl. Nathaniel S. Baughman, 23, of Monticello, Ind., died of injuries on July 17 in Bayji, Iraq, when his HMMWV encountered enemy forces rocket-propelled grenades during patrol operations. Baughman was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky. defenselink.mil/ ... 23:19:47

Army Sgt. Alkaila T. Floyd, 23, of Grand Rapids, Mich., died on July 13 in Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Landstuhl, Germany, of injuries sustained on July 8 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Mine Protected Vehicle in Ar Ramadi, Iraq. Floyd was assigned to the 54th Engineer Battalion, 130th Engineer Brigade, Bamberg, Germany. defenselink.mil/ ... 20:05:48

Army Staff Sgt. Jason M. Evey, 29, of Stockton, Calif., died on July 16 of injuries sustained when his Bradley Fighting Vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device during combat operations in Baghdad, Iraq. Evey was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 10th Calvary Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, Fort Hood, Texas. defenselink.mil/ ... 11:50:41

Army Sgt. Andres J. Contreras, 23, of Huntington Park, Calif., died on July 15 of injuries sustained when his HMMWV encountered an improvised explosive device in Baghdad, Iraq during combat operations. Contreras was assigned to the 519th Military Police Battalion, 1st Combat Support Brigade, Fort Polk, La.

Lasting Contributionsbloomberg.com/ ... 10:14:37Mickey Spillane, creator of Mike Hammer, a hard-boiled detective who avenged wrongdoing in 13 novels and became a popular character in films and television, died today at his home in South Carolina. He was 88... The Mike Hammer novels were disdained by many critics but sold 130 million copies. Relishing his success, Spillane played the part of Mike Hammer in the 1963 film version of "The Girl Hunters" and appeared in Miller Lite beer commercials for almost two decades... Spillane changed both the publishing world and mystery writing, said Max Allan Collins... "You can't have Dirty Harry without Mike Hammer. Spillane opened the door for all the tough guy characters to follow..." Spillane's writing also spurred growth in paperback publishing, Collins said. While fewer than 10,000 hardcover copies of Spillane's first Mike Hammer novel were sold, the paperback version exploded with more than 2 million sales...

Healing Ourselvessciencedaily.com/ ... 20:22:00Titanium dental implants coated with proteins that induce bone formation may be a key advancement in treating tooth loss due to gum disease... forbes.com/ ... 10:12:14A Pittsburgh company says it's developed a new way to prevent doctors from leaving surgical sponges inside patients: by embedding radio frequency-equipped tags inside the sponges... surgeons or nurses could wave wands over patients near the end of their operations and detect any leftover sponges still in the body... a leading critic of radio-frequency identification (RFID) devices questioned whether simpler and less-expensive devices could serve the same purpose... an estimated 1,500 objects are left in patients after surgery in the United States each year; the accidents occur in about one out of every 10,000 surgeries that involve an open cavity... Emergency procedures make the accidents more likely, as do operations on obese people... "Two-thirds of all objects left in the body cavity are sponges... retained sponges may be asymptomatic and remain undiscovered for decades." In the worst cases, they can lead to infection and death... hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:48:33Private rooms would be standard in new U.S. hospitals under recommendations from an influential architects' group that says building design can help curb infectious diseases and medical errors...

Digital Future is Nownews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:35:30The vision of a digital home in which music and video is streamed between devices is still 10 years away... John MacFarlane, chief executive of Sonos, said neither consumers nor the technology itself were ready. Sonos makes wireless (wi-fi) music streaming systems, aimed at customers who want to listen to their digital music around the house... hosted.ap.org/ ... 12:34:03Japan is planning ultra long-range 30-year weather forecasts that will predict typhoons, storms, blizzards, droughts and other inclement weather... will harness the powers of one of the world's fastest supercomputers and is an offshoot of ongoing research by the country's science ministry to map global warming trends for the next 300 years... Using the Earth Simulator supercomputer, housed in a hangar-sized building in Yokohama... news.zdnet.com/ ... 10:10:20After years of hoping to crush Linux, Microsoft is trying to show it can get along with its open-source rival. The software maker is announcing a partnership Monday night that will make sure its next virtualization technology can run versions of Linux that have been adapted for a different, open-source virtualization foundation called Xen. It is linking up with commercial software maker XenSource to offer joint development and support for the two technologies, which take a similar approach... news.com.com/ ... 10:09:46In a major shift for Microsoft, the company decided last week to allow business customers to run up to four instances of Windows on the same PC. It's part of a sea change that has the Redmond, Wash.-based software maker and the rest of the industry headed into unfamiliar waters... Virtualization, or technology that allows one physical PC or server to act like many separate computers, is just one of many strains on traditional software licensing. In the old days, things were simple: Each program ran once on a computer that had a single user and a single processor. Now, it is not uncommon for a program or operating system to be running multiple times on the same piece of hardware, which may be powered by multiple processors, or a single chip with multiple processing cores... On top of this, the machine in question may not even live in the company's own data center. The company may not even run the software itself, instead buying it or renting it from a third-party hosting service... sciencedaily.com/ ... 09:15:27A three-year project led by the University of York, which aims to revolutionise broadband communications... uses balloons, airships or unmanned solar-powered planes as high-altitude platforms (HAPs) to relay wireless and optical communications... the system could bring low-cost broadband connections to remote areas and even to high-speed trains. It promises data rates 2,000 times faster than via a traditional modem and 100 times faster than today's 'wired' ADSL broadband...

World Zookeepinghosted.ap.org/ ... 09:13:57

PEWAUKEE, Wis. (AP) -- A small monkey made its way into a woman's home but disappeared into a nearby marsh when an officer tried to corral it...

Rebuildingnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:36:13The final batch of Japanese soldiers has left Iraq, ending the country's first foray into an active foreign war zone since World War II...

Yeah, Sure!news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:35:03China says growth 'under control'...

World Without Borderstoday.reuters.com/ ... 12:37:48Thousands of Buddhists have converged on a Buddhist monastery in western China mistakenly thinking the Dalai Lama would be there, underscoring the devotion many feel toward Tibet's exiled spiritual leader... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:34:40The only crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt has been opened for the first time in three weeks. Thousands of Palestinians stranded in Egypt rushed to the border on Tuesday which EU monitors said would be open for up to 11 hours... Only "humanitarian cases" travelling in one direction, from Egypt to Gaza, are allowed to cross...

Revealing Momentsnytimes.com/ ... 10:03:39For anyone who has ever wondered what President Bush sounds like when the microphones are off, the answer, at least at lunchtime on Monday, was blunt to the point of profane, laced with a wiseguy edge...

Human Righthosted.ap.org/ ... 09:47:59Women who consult with pregnancy resource centers often get misleading information about the health risks associated with having an abortion, according to a report issued Monday by Democrats on the House Government Reform Committee... were routinely told of increased risk for cancer, infertility and stress disorders... Only a small fraction of the more than 4,000 pregnancy clinics nationwide get any federal funding, mostly for promoting sexual abstinence... Care Net, an umbrella group for evangelical pregnancy centers across the country, instructs its affiliates to tell callers there is a possibility that abortion can lead to greater risk of breast cancer, according to Molly Ford, an official with the organization. She said there have been several studies that say it does, and several that say it doesn't. "I know the report is wanting to say that it's conclusive, but it isn't," Ford said... One pregnancy center... [said] the risk of cancer after an abortion could be 80 percent higher.... In February 2003, a National Cancer Institute workshop concluded that having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman's subsequent risk of developing breast cancer... report... also said the pregnancy resource centers provided false information about the mental health effects of abortion... that it could cause severe long-term emotional harm... an American Psychological Association panel said, "Severe negative reactions are rare..."

Policing Ourselveswftv.com/ ... 10:17:13COCOA BEACH, Fla... Eyewitnesses recorded a video showing Chris Culleny with a stun gun being used on him near the Minutemen Causeway. Culleny said police thought they were breaking up a fight, but he and friends were just wrestling. The officers said Culleny refused to obey verbal commands so they used pepper-spray. “There's no way I could have been resisting because I was already sprayed with mace. I had my arm behind my back, his knee was on my head and my face was in the sand..." [video online] hosted.ap.org/ ... 09:44:46INDIANAPOLIS -- Lawrence police officers are using a new scanning device that can quickly identify stolen cars. The system has helped the department recover 21 stolen cars in seven weeks... two cameras attached to a squad car that scans license plates and compares them in less than a second to a nationwide FBI database of reported stolen vehicles...

World - Energyhosted.ap.org/ ... 09:44:05RAYMOND, Ohio... Honda Motor Co.'s research facility... makes ice at night and then melts it during the day to cool the 1 million-square-foot complex of buildings, where vehicles are designed. Honda says the ice-chiller system saves money in electricity costs and uses less water than its old system... It can take businesses a long time to recover the costs of buying such a system and they take a lot of space... Honda's ice pit, which sits under the floor of the power plant that serves the complex, is 20 yards long, about 9 yards wide and about 8 feet deep. A spider's web of white pipes snake through the spotlessly clean plant, and the only sound is the metallic hum of a condenser...

Digital Culturehosted.ap.org/ ... 09:42:22At MySpace.com and many other popular online hangouts, a 30-something woman can celebrate her Sweet 16 over and over with just a click of the mouse. A 12-year-old can quickly mature to meet the sites' minimum age requirements, generally 14, while an adult looking to chat with teens can virtually shed several years. With heightened concerns over sexual predators lurking at so-called social-networking sites, state attorneys general have called for such communities, particularly MySpace, to improve age and identity checks. If only it were so easy, experts say... News Corp.'s MySpace has met with several companies on technologies to verify ages, but it has yet to find an effective one

MON 2006-JUL-17

Criminally Stupidnewsday.com/ ... 20:15:07DARIEN, Conn. -- A store clerk who was said to be unhappy over not being promoted was arrested Monday on charges he spiked bottled grape juice with dishwashing liquid and caused more than 40 people to fall ill at a church communion service... charged with 22 counts of assault and 22 counts of assault on a victim 60 or older. He was jailed on $50,000 bail... His mother... asked him about the juice tampering. "He said they didn't treat him right.... But he didn't really come out and admit to doing anything wrong...."

Transport Near-Tragedysuntimes.com/ ... 19:43:27Chicago... Sunday... A 72-year old woman... became disoriented at 6:30 p.m. and began driving... from westbound Wilson Avenue onto the bike path of a lakefront park off Wilson Avenue... While the [2yo] boy was crossing the bike path, Kim's SUV struck him in the back and he fell forward... [boy is] in good condition with bruises to the top of his head and cuts to his face...

Threatsnewsday.com/ ... 20:07:16Britain on Monday banned two Islamist groups operating in the country, invoking for the first time a new law against glorifying terrorism.... a criminal offense for a person to belong to or encourage support for al-Ghurabaa and the Saved Sect... Both groups are believed to be splinters of al-Muhajiroon, formed in 1996 by Omar Bakri Mohammad to promote a global Islamic state. The group was officially disbanded in 2004, and Bakri Mohammad has been banned from returning to Britain... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 14:13:50possible possession by the Lebanese militia of missiles with warheads capable of carrying chemical and biological weapons... [article is ad for newsletter]

Summertimethestar.com/ ... 10:39:06A 97-year-old woman is recovering in a Burlington hospital after she was left alone in a sweltering vehicle for almost an hour during the worst heat wave of summer while her family went shopping... criminal charges laid against her daughter and granddaughter... "We do love her. It's not like we meant to do it," her granddaughter... said yesterday. "It was an accident ... we just didn't think..." was incoherent and dehydrated by the time emergency crews arrived... estimate the temperature inside the vehicle, which had its front windows open about eight centimetres, was close to 50C [122F]... rapidcityjournal.com/ ... 10:35:18Rapid City received reports of 120 degree temperatures in Usta in the northwest corner of the state, but the reports had not been officially confirmed by Saturday evening...

Violencenewsday.com/ ... 20:09:30Investigators said Monday that RDX -- a military explosive favored by Islamic militants in India's part of Kashmir -- was used in the deadly attack on Bombay's rail system... newsday.com/ ... 20:06:34A brief history of the Lebanese-Israeli conflict... breitbart.com/ ... 19:41:08An Israeli airstrike in Lebanon on Monday destroyed at least one long- range Iranian missile capable of hitting Tel Aviv, military officials said. Israeli aircraft targeted a truck carrying the weapons before they could be launched... haaretz.com/ ... 19:40:30Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert... told the Knesset... "Citizens of Israel, there are moments in the life of a nation, when it is compelled to look directly into the face of reality and say: no more.... And I say to everyone: no more. Israel will not be held hostage -- not by terror gangs or by a terrorist authority or by any sovereign state.... There is nothing we want more than peace on all of our borders.... [Israel will not agree to live with rockets fired on its citizens... "Only a nation that can protect its freedom deserves it.... [Israel has] no territorial dispute with our southern neighbors or our northern neighbors... [but while] Israel did not ask for this confrontation... [it would] continue to fight with full force to stop terror [on both fronts]..." news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:20:16At least 10 Lebanese have died in an Israeli attack on their vehicles in the south of the country, sources say. Reports suggest they were crossing a bridge when the missiles hit. Seventeen people died elsewhere in Lebanon on the sixth day of Israeli bombardment. In Israel, four people were hurt in a new rocket attack on the city of Haifa, where eight people died on Sunday... jpost.com/ ... 10:34:44A suicide bombing in downtown Jerusalem was thwarted Monday, after a 25-year-old Palestinian [male] was caught carrying a bomb in a bag on a main city thoroughfare... estimated five kilograms of explosives... breitbart.com/ ... 10:33:47It wasn't meant to be overheard. Private luncheon conversations among world leaders, picked up by a microphone, provided a rare window into both banter and substance _ including President Bush cursing Hezbollah's attacks against Israel... "See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s--- and it's over," Bush told Blair as he chewed on a buttered roll... The leaders clearly did not realize that a live microphone was picking up their discussion... nypost.com/ ... 10:32:51Tel Aviv... Officials believe Hezbollah is plotting to hit the country's second-biggest city, and worked through the night to install upgraded radar and radio systems that could detect an attack... today.reuters.com/ ... 08:57:12Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said on Monday that no Israeli jet or helicopter had been shot down over Lebanon but did not rule out that a drone many have been downed. Lebanese television stations said an Israeli aircraft had been shot down over Lebanon and showed footage of burning debris falling from the sky. Lebanese security sources said they could not confirm that it was a plane, suggesting it might have been a fuel tank ditched by an aircraft... today.reuters.com/ ... 08:56:38A suicide bomber destroyed an Afghan government office in the southern province of Helmand on Monday killing at least three officials...
U.S.-led forces said they had killed four suspected al Qaeda fighters during a raid in Khost province, once a stronghold of Osama bin Laden... today.reuters.com/ ... 08:56:16NATO and Afghan forces will be able to break the back of Taliban resistance in southern Afghanistan before the end of this year, the country's defense minister said in an interview published on Monday... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:56:01British troops say they have come under fire from Taleban fighters hiding in a hospital in southern Afghanistan... in Helmand province defending a government compound.... they did not attack the building in case there were civilians inside... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:54:37Israel has extended its air campaign to northernmost Lebanon, killing at least 14 people, including nine soldiers, in the port of Abdeh near Tripoli. The raids come after a Hezbollah rocket attack killed eight Israelis in Haifa...

Nature can be Deadlytoday.reuters.com/ ... 19:37:30...tsunami caused by a strong undersea earthquake off the south coast of Indonesia's Java island... "There are 104 people dead from 10 regencies, 148 people are injured and 122 still missing..." today.reuters.com/ ... 14:21:13A tsunami triggered by a strong undersea earthquake off the southern coast of Java island swept away buildings at an Indonesian beach resort on Monday and killed between 40 and 50 people... [100] still missing.... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:53:52Five people have been killed in a tsunami triggered by an earthquake [7.2] off the island of Java... two-metre-high wave... "Many small hotels were destroyed.... Boats have been thrown into hotels..."

Mass Murdering Monstersnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:54:15Suspected Maoist rebels have killed at least 26 villagers in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh... 23 people were wounded... The villagers belonged to a voluntary people's movement which resists the Maoists and is backed by the state government... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:49:22At least 42 people have been killed and 60 injured in an attack on a market in the town of Mahmoudiya south of Baghdad... Many women and children were among the casualties. Most of the victims were believed to be Shia Muslims...

World Zookeepingnewsday.com/ ... 20:04:54

Two humpback whales that became entangled in marine gear off the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts were freed by whale rescue teams... Humpback whales are listed as endangered species in the United States. About 12,000 humpbacks are estimated to live in the North Atlantic, with 900 feeding seasonally off the Northeast coast of the U.S., according to the center. Entanglements are a leading cause of whale deaths. Boat strikes are also a threat...

Animal Companionsnewsday.com/ ... 20:02:18

PHILADELPHIA... A toddler [almost 2yo] who climbed out a second-story window onto the porch roof of his family's row house was followed by his dog, whose barks alerted neighbors who rescued the child...

US Military Casualtiesdefenselink.mil/ ... 15:33:21

Army Sgt. Thomas B. Turner Jr., 31, of Cottonwood, Calif., died on July 14 at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Landstuhl, Germany, of injuries sustained on July 13 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Bradley Fighting Vehicle in Al Muqdadiyah, Iraq. Turner was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky.

It's All in Your Mindsciencedaily.com/ ... 14:19:38Scientists at The University of Manchester have created a virtual computer world designed to test telepathic ability...

US Militarynewsday.com/ ... 20:02:53Three American soldiers were killed Monday in separate attacks, two in the Baghdad area and one in western Iraq... At least 2,553 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war in 2003... includes seven military civilians... philly.com/ ... 14:15:30There are 38 religious symbols approved for placement on government-issued grave markers and memorials for military veterans, but the pentacle isn't one of them. The five-pointed star within a circle that represents the Wiccan religion, a neo-pagan, earth-based belief system, is not on the list. As a result, the space reserved for Sgt. Patrick D. Stewart's memorial plaque at the Northern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Fernley, Nev., remains empty. Stewart, 34, was killed in September 2005 when his Chinook helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan. He was a follower of the Wiccan tradition, and his wife is fighting to have the fact engraved in stone...

Transport Futuresuntimes.com/ ... 19:45:06Zipcar -- offering fuel-efficient cars for use by the hour -- opened its Chicago operation Wednesday with about 20 cars in 10 locations. "We'll double that by the end of July and ramp up to 100 as quickly as we can..." Car-sharing offers vehicles at hourly rates for short trips. It aims to save urban dwellers the expense of buying and maintaining a car and to increase the use of public transportation, cut air pollution and ease traffic congestion. Rates for most cars at Zipcar's Chicago sites are $9 or $10 an hour. There is no mileage charge for driving less than 125 miles in 24 hours. I-Go charges $6 an hour and 50 cents a mile, or $8.25 an hour with 25 free miles an hour... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:10:01in the future, says the chief of Boeing... All 737 planes would be made from non-metal materials, or composites... because it does not corrode... Composites are formed when two or more materials with differing properties are combined. Such materials are already used in items such as tennis rackets and bicycle spokes... The US company's new 787 Dreamliner - which is expected to make its first flight next year - is already being constructed using carbon fibre-reinforced plastic composites...

Extraterrestrialnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:50:11The Discovery space shuttle and its six-strong crew have returned to Earth after a 13-day mission to the International Space Station. The orbiter touched down at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1314 GMT...

Digital Future is Nownews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:55:10A chip the size of a grain of rice that can store 100 pages of text and swaps data via wireless has been developed by Hewlett-Packard. The tiny chip was small enough to embed in almost any object... at least two years away from being a finished product... tulsaworld.com/ ... 08:42:03Terry Farrell, sales manager of Video Revolution. "Sixty percent of the TVs we sell are now true high-definition," he said. "Tube TVs will soon be a thing of the past, probably within the next two to three years..." tulsaworld.com/ ... 08:41:12Congress has mandated that all stations begin broadcasting over the air in digital high-definition by next year and cease broadcasting old-style analog programming by February 2009. After that, digital will be the only standard. However, the change won't necessarily render all old TVs useless. ATSC tuners, or converter boxes that can translate digital broadcasts to analog, are already available...

Rebuildingnewsday.com/ ... 20:16:16a growing number of Iraqis turning to drugs to help them cope with the daily violence and other problems that have become part of their lives... in a shift from Saddam Hussein's ousted regime, the abuse of prescription and illegal drugs has become more widespread than alcoholism... "Illegal narcotics are available everywhere in Iraq and anyone can get products containing amphetamines and codeine from any pharmacy or sidewalk throughout Iraq... While getting alcohol became harder due to ongoing harassment and threats by extremists against the liquor shops and factories as all bars and night clubs are closed..."

Love is Strangenewsday.com/ ... 19:59:21ROSWELL, N.M. -- Ross Savedra fought aliens to rescue his girlfriend... Ariana Ash... then popped the question in an out-of-this-world proposal... They embraced in a cloud of shiny colored confetti tossed by onlookers and were applauded by tourists who had been tipped off by the aliens -- Ash's brother-in-law and stepfather. "By the way, everyone, she said yes..."

Digital Whoops Cascadenews.zdnet.com/ ... 19:36:58Earlier this month, Microsoft began offering Private Folders 1.0, a free add-on to the operating system that let users create password-protected Windows folders. However, there was a near-immediate outcry saying that, without proper safeguards, what was intended as a benefit could turn into a big headache for businesses. The software could make it harder for companies to meet compliance regulations as well as to handle users who forget their password, critics said... customers who go to the Web site that once hosted the add-on are in for more confusion. Instead of a message saying the software is no longer available, customers get an error message that suggests there has been a problem validating the customer's copy of Windows... Microsoft had required those who wanted the tool, before its removal, to go through the software maker's controversial Windows Genuine Advantage process...

Movies are deadmercurynews.com/ ... 19:34:27Online video service Movielink LLC said Monday it has licensed technology that allows customers to download films onto DVDs for playback on standard DVD players...

Reasons for Repealftd.de/ ... 19:33:38War on Afghan opium farming an "absolute disaster" -- For Britain, which has deployed 3,300 troops in and around the province Helmand and is the lead nation for Afghanistan's counter-narcotics programmes, the bumper harvest will be deeply embarrassing...

World Without Bordersdispatch.com/ ... 14:12:32Homeland Security agents took to Ohio streets the past week, arresting 154 undocumented immigrants... They took in immigrants from 30 countries and every continent save Antarctica. Among those arrested, 82 were from Mexico, followed by 19 from El Salvador and seven from Mauritania... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 14:11:54Several Hidalgo County deputies and at least four Border patrol agents were met with a sustained hail of gunfire alternating from the south to the east and lasting nearly 10 minutes, the officers said. Yet, not a single shot was returned by the deputies or the Border Patrol officers last Wednesday night because they were outmanned and outgunned – a condition increasingly common along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border... ktul.com/ ... 11:01:27Tulsa - A federal task force swept through Tulsa Wednesday, netting dozens of illegal immigrants. Dubbed 'Operation Return To Sender', it's being run by the Department of Homeland Security... the Oklahoma chapter of Operation Return to Sender, a nationwide crackdown by US Immigration and customs enforcement to apprehend illegal aliens with federal warrants. It began May 26th and has netted over 21-hundred aliens...

Big Whoops Cascadepeninsuladailynews.com/ ... 10:57:46PORT ANGELES -- A five-hour standoff between Port Angeles police and a reportedly suicidal woman with a knife Friday afternoon ended without a bang, or a whimper. She wasn't there...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spinmercurynews.com/ ... 10:53:40Dan Quayle... [went] on Friday to attend John Mellencamp's concert.... Before launching into... [his] rendition of "Walk Tall...." Mellencamp told the Harveys casino crowd, in effect, that it was dedicated to everyone hurt by policies of the current Bush administration. Quayle... walked out of the venue before Mellencamp finished the song. Quayle said through a publicist: "Well, I think Mellencamp's performance was not very good to begin with, and the comment put it over the top..."

Digital Culturenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 14:19:52A third of children in the UK use blogs and social network websites but two thirds of parents do not even know what they are... nytimes.com/ ... 10:39:48when does new news become old news? In the case of a news article on the Internet, the answer is surprisingly long: 36 hours on average.... More precisely, 36 hours is the amount of time it takes for half of the total readership of an article to have read it.... traditional ideas about the way people use the Internet would have led researchers to expect a much shorter half-life, more like two to four hours...

Sex & Politicsnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:52:50A Dutch court has turned down a request to ban a political party with a paedophile agenda... Judge HFM Hofhuis ruled that the Brotherly Love, Freedom and Diversity Party (PNVD) had the same right to exist as any other political party... seeks to lower the age of sexual consent from 16 to 12 and legalise child pornography and sex with animals... also wants children from the age of 12 to be able to vote. It promotes the legalisation of hard and soft drugs and free train travel for all... has only three known members... opponents had sought the ban, arguing that children had the right not to be confronted with the party's platform...

People are Bornnews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:49:50A cloned human would probably consider themselves to be an individual, a study suggests... Scientists drew their conclusions after interviewing identical twins about their experiences... [oh, duh!]

SUN 2006-JUL-16

Under Tyrannynewsday.com/ ... 20:17:07Washington and Cuba have -- no surprise -- startlingly different versions of a post-Castro Cuba, and many dissidents on the island complain they will be caught in the middle...

TWA Flight 800 -- still with usnewsday.com/ ... 20:14:04It's been 10 years since TWA Flight 800 fell from the sky... Andy Krukar boarded TWA Flight 800 with a diamond ring in his pocket, planning to place it on his fiancee's finger at the Eiffel Tower during a romantic weekend in Paris. His fiancee, Julie Stuart, was going to follow him on another flight the next day. Krukar died when Flight 800 exploded... The ring, in its burgundy jewel box, was found bobbing in the waves by a Coast Guardsman working at the crash scene, and Stuart wears it every day... To observe the anniversary of the July 17, 1996, disaster, hundreds of family members will gather for a memorial Monday on Long Island at Smith Point County Park, the closest point on land to the crash site... some TWA families have rediscovered happiness, others battle lasting depression... Ann and Ron Dwyer of New River, Ariz.... split up after the death of their 11-year-old daughter, Larkyn... "I grow older, and the hate against those who lie only grows," said Michel Breistroff Sr., who lives in France and still believes a missile brought the plane down, killing his son, Michel. "As long as I live, I hope I will get the truth." Most of the families accept the official explanation and find the continued conspiracy speculation painful... newsday.com/ ... 20:10:28Grief Group for TWA 800 Families... She matched Pan Am families with Flight 800 families, who later consoled families of 229 people killed when Swissair Flight 111 plunged into the Atlantic on Sept. 2, 1998. The next year, those families consoled relatives suffering after an EgyptAir plane crashed on a flight from New York to Cairo, killing all 217 people on board. Volunteers also were ready to help after four planes were hijacked in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Snow said her reward comes when she sees proof that ACCESS has helped people rebuild lives...

Transport Tragedynewsday.com/ ... 20:07:34HILLSBORO, Ore. -- A plane participating in an air show crashed into a residential neighborhood near the Hillsboro Airport, setting at least two homes on fire. ...three homes were hit... [not known] if there were any injuries...

Disturbing Family Patternsnewsday.com/ ... 20:06:37LYMAN, S.C. -- A couple was jailed on felony charges after police discovered their three adopted sons were severely malnourished, including a 5-year-old boy who weighed less than 20 pounds. An 8-year-old brother weighed less than 40 pounds and a 7-year-old brother weighed about 32 pounds... also were treated for bruises, scratches, burns and head lice... told officers they were tied up to be kept from food in the mobile home... A fourth child, Molly McCurry's 10-year-old biological daughter, was found to have head lice but was not malnourished...

Industrial Incidentfloridatoday.com/ ... 16:00:32A 14-year-old boy in Osceola County, Fla., was critically injured Friday when he was sucked down to the bottom of a resort hot tub... in Radisson Parkway Hotel... submerged from five to 15 minutes... "The suction was so strong that they could not get him out," mother.. said. "He stayed under there until the paramedics and fire department came and they were trying to get him out... Fortunately there was an engineer walking around the hot tub at the time of the incident and he was able to shut off the water pumps before it was too late...."

Mass Murdering Monsterstimesonline.co.uk/ ... 15:59:14A DISCIPLE of one of Britain’s most notorious preachers of hate has embarked on a series of video broadcasts, praising Osama Bin Laden and calling for all “sinners” to be killed. Abu Muwahhid, a London-based cleric, mocks the victims of September 11 and calls for the foundation of a Muslim state in Britain with a “black flag” over 10 Downing Street... timesonline.co.uk/ ... 15:58:25Shamil Basayev... the Chechen terrorist behind the Beslan school massacre was killed by Russian security forces with the help of a mole who betrayed him for £250,000, according to intelligence sources quoted in a Moscow newspaper... said to have been blown up by a mine that the informant placed in a lorry load of explosives and set off by remote control... According to the sources, Basayev — known as Russia’s Bin Laden — was planning to detonate a lorry bomb at the interior ministry headquarters in Nazran, the former capital of Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya... during this weekend’s G8 summit...

Threatstimesonline.co.uk/ ... 13:16:53IN the past seven months, Chinese dealers have bought 30 tons of ivory from Zimbabwe’s Parks and Wildlife Management Authority — representing the tusks of some 2,250 elephants. “It’s an incredibly profitable trade,” said one game ranger. “They’ve not only run the parks’ stockpile right down, but elephants are now being poached across the border from Botswana and other neighbouring countries to fulfil the demand, which seems to be bottomless.” The purchases are typical of China’s rapacious scramble for Africa, in which oil, minerals and all manner of raw materials are being eagerly snapped up. Opportunities for deal-making are swiftly exploited, sometimes with detrimental effects on the continent... “They see no evil. They hear no evil. That’s very bad for Africans...” “In effect, China is forcing Africa back into the role of raw material suppliers — undermining its textile industry and importing raw cotton instead...” “The Chinese are far more ruthless than the Brits ever were...”

Violencesuntimes.com/ ... 20:31:43One of more than 30 people seized during an Iraqi Olympic Committee meeting was released blindfolded in Baghdad on Sunday... Nashat Mahir al-Salman, 75, a former member of Iraq's Olympic committee, was left unharmed in the capital's Baladiyat neighborhood, Iraq's Sport Journalist Union said. There was no word on the other hostages... newsday.com/ ... 20:07:53Israeli military said Sunday that rockets fired from Lebanon have hit Upper Nazareth and Afula, the farthest south so far... hosted.ap.org/ ... 19:59:42A suicide bomber detonated explosives Sunday inside a cafe packed with Shiites in northern Iraq, killing 26 people and injuring 22...
an American soldier was killed in a roadside bombing in south Baghdad...
In the south, a British soldier was killed and another wounded during a raid against a "terrorist suspect" in Basra... hosted.ap.org/ ... 19:58:50Hezbollah and its backers, not the government, now appear in control of Lebanon's fate... The government seems paralyzed over how to deal with Hezbollah, whose Shiite Muslim fighters have had near autonomy in the south for more than a decade. Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah acted Sunday like the man holding Lebanon's reins, though he looked tired and stressed as he vowed that his group had only begun to fight... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 19:56:13A foreign office minister has said the evacuation of up to 10,000 Britons from Lebanon could begin on Wednesday... would prioritise the elderly, children and families... today.reuters.com/ ... 19:55:39Eight Canadians were killed in Lebanon on Sunday... six who have been critically injured... Around 16,000 Canadians in Lebanon have registered with the embassy there but MacKay said the real figure could be as high as 40,000. Canada has a significant population of Lebanese origin... nypost.com/ ... 19:52:01Israeli officials charged that elite Iranian troops operating in Lebanon were involved in the Hezbollah offensive, and were responsible for firing an Iranian-made, radar-guided C802 missile - not the unmanned bomb-laden drone originally reported - that struck the warship on Friday, killing four sailors... news.monstersandcritics.com/ ... 16:12:08A coalition soldier, six Afghan army forces, and scores of Taliban fighters were killed in separate firefights in Afghanistan, while four civilians were killed in a suicide attack in the eastern province of Paktia... cbsnews.com/ ... 13:04:29Foreign ministers of 18 Arab countries passed a unanimous resolution Saturday calling on the U.N. Security Council to intervene to stop escalating Mideast fighting. "The Middle East peace process has failed. The whole process should now be sent back to the Security Council for a complete overhaul," said Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa. "We are going to the Security Council — this is a unanimous position — to discuss the whole situation from scratch...." worldnetdaily.com/ ... 13:03:59While Israeli military sources in the Golan Heights are reporting Syrian military gunfire directed inside the Jewish state, Lebanese political sources are telling WND they expect a provocation of some kind from Damascus... israelnationalnews.com/ ... 13:03:19Among the Lebanese targets attacked by the IAF over the weekend were the radar positions on the Lebanese coast, belonging to both the Lebanese army and Hizbullah. The IDF Spokesperson's Office explained that some of the demolished radars were used in the fatal Hizbullah C-802 missile strike on an Israeli naval gunship Friday night... ynetnews.com/ ... 13:03:01Fouad Siniora offered to deploy the forces along the international border with Israel according to UN Resolution 1559, but Israeli officials reject the offer claiming that Israel will continue its operation against the kidnappers in Lebanon until the two kidnapped soldiers are released... ynetnews.com/ ... 12:19:15The Israeli Air Force hit five long-range rocket launchers in Lebanon, a senior Air Force commander revealed Sunday afternoon... an IDF soldier was severely wounded Sunday morning when a long-range Fajer rocket hit an IDF base near Haifa... Air Force sorties over Lebanonhit 60 buildings in the Dahiya quarter, Beirut’s Shiite quarter, in which Hizbullah infrastructure is located. During the air strikes, “bunker buster” bombs were fired in attempt to destroy underground targets... “In one of the strikes in the Tyre area, a number of senior Hizbullah leaders were hit...” The IDF assessed that Hizbullah was focusing its attacks during the morning and daytime hours to maximize the likelihood of hitting Israel’s civilian population... theglobeandmail.com/ ... 12:08:11Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah... denied an Israeli accusation that it was receiving help from Iran that included advanced missiles... breitbart.com/ ... 12:04:31U.S. security teams landed at the American embassy just outside Beirut on Sunday to plan the evacuation of some of the estimated 25,000 U.S. citizens living in war-torn Lebanon... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 05:47:35Israeli forces have moved back into the northern Gaza Strip... Troops and tanks, backed by helicopters, moved towards the town of Beit Hanoun early on Sunday. Three were killed and eight wounded by an Israeli air strike... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 05:47:09Rockets fired by Hezbollah militants in Lebanon have killed at least nine people and wounded dozens of others in the coastal Israeli city of Haifa. It is the worst attack on Israel since the clashes with Lebanon began. Israeli jets have again hit targets in the south of Beirut as they continue a fifth day of air strikes, which have killed at least 100 Lebanese people... Eight of the nine people who died were part of a train repair crew working at a railway depot... More than 400 rockets have been fired into Israel by Hezbollah since Wednesday...

Nature can be Deadlyhosted.ap.org/ ... 19:59:59Tropical storm Bilis killed at least 115 people and injured hundreds as it pounded China's southeast, toppling houses and forcing the evacuation of a prison and thousands of villages... today.reuters.com/ ... 05:39:54Typhoon Bilis killed at least 42 people and left more than 100 missing as it swept across southeast China at the weekend... In Hunan, the dam of a reservoir could collapse at any time because trees brought down by the storm were blocking the sluice gates... Seven other reservoirs were in a dangerous state... number of dead at 28 in the Philippines, where on Saturday more bodies were found in swollen rivers and creeks and dug from dozens of minor landslides. The storm also caused one death in southern Taiwan...

Industrial Tragedytoday.reuters.com/ ... 05:36:48A blast has killed 18 coal miners and trapped 39 at a colliery in northern Shanxi province... six other miners escaped the blast on Saturday afternoon... Accidents occur almost daily in China's coal-mining industry. Last year nearly 6,000 miners died in 3,300 blasts, floods and other accidents...

Nature is Dangeroushosted.ap.org/ ... 05:29:41Thousands of Ecuadorean villagers have fled their homes on the slopes of the Tungurahua volcano since it began erupting lava and toxic gases.... No injuries have been reported, but some 3,700 people have abandoned their homes in half a dozen hamlets since Friday.... "all the vegetation has died and we have lost cattle...." In May, the volcano, located 85 miles south of the capital of Quito, began emitting its loudest and most frequent explosions since it rumbled back to life nearly seven years ago after being inactive for eight decades...

Transport Near-Tragedynewsday.com/ ... 20:16:45Three men survived 6 1/2 hours in the Pacific Ocean by clinging to an ice chest after their boat sank about 45 miles off the Oregon coast... Only one was wearing a life jacket... suntimes.com/ ... 05:11:38Chicago... Federal safety investigators said Tuesday's CTA train derailment could have been caused by rails that were farther apart than they should have been.... distance from one rail to the other should fall between 56.5 inches and 57.5 inches. But in a few locations within feet of the accident site, this distance -- known as the track's tolerance -- was wider by more than an inch in some cases....

World Zookeepingnewsday.com/ ... 20:18:22

Rescue crews were attempting Sunday to free two humpback whales entangled in commercial fishing nets or marine rope in New England coastal waters...

Future is Nowsciencedaily.com/ ... 19:53:27"Paint-on" antennas, designed to establish new high-altitude communications and surveillance platforms, successfully transmitted voice and data links as well as teleconferencing capabilities during test flights in the Nevada desert June 21 on board a SA-60 spherical airship...

Only Naturalhosted.ap.org/ ... 05:31:48BAYARD, Neb. -- Erosion created Chimney Rock. And erosion will likely destroy it. A long-familiar icon in Nebraska, gracing everything from license plates to decorative spoons, Chimney Rock catapulted into the national spotlight in April with its appearance on the back of the state's commemorative quarter... Historic natural formations on the back of commemorative quarters don't have a good track record...

Big Whoops Cascadenewsday.com/ ... 20:17:38WILMINGTON, Del. -- Workers tried to clean up 2,100 gallons of spilled waste oil Sunday that fouled a five-mile stretch of the Christina River on the Wilmington Riverfront. The oil spewed into the river after a hose ruptured Saturday evening during a transfer of waste oil from one tank to another at the International Petroleum Co. of Delaware facility...

Sexual Equality??newsday.com/ ... 20:15:36macho backlash on Lima's streets, where most male traffic officers were replaced by women in the late 1990s in an effort to give law enforcement a kinder, gentler and less corrupt face... Eighty percent of the 405 incidents reported in the past two years have involved one of the capital's 1,031 female police, meaning roughly a third of them have been cursed, shoved, punched, dragged, run over or taken hostage by angry men. Cabbies and bus drivers are the worst offenders... Lima isn't the only Latin American city to have tried using women to tame its wild drivers, based on studies concluding they are less likely to be corrupt. Mexico City attempted it and gave up...

It's All in Your Mindsciencedaily.com/ ... 19:54:24Headline of the Day:
Most Effective Antipsychotic Drug Has Serious Health Consequences...
[Well, you'd expect it to, one way or another...]

Business Cultureseattletimes.nwsource.com/ ... 16:06:39Fans of Target stores long ago nicknamed the retailer "Tar-zhay" for its cheap and chic clothes, the French accent lending the discounter acceptance among fashionistas. Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that the company would spin the pet name into a marketing opportunity...

Only Rock n Rolltimesonline.co.uk/ ... 16:04:35THE world’s largest independent rock and pop music archive, featuring stars from Jimi Hendrix to Elvis Costello and from Janis Joplin to Madonna, is to be opened for the first time. Up to 100,000 songs recorded and filmed between 1966 and 1991 by Bill Graham, the American concert promoter... 7,000-plus concerts captured on audio tape and film... unseen footage of a legendary performance by the Who in 1973, when drummer Keith Moon collapsed and a student was picked from the audience to finish the show, and the final concert in 1978 by the Sex Pistols... also moments luminaries may prefer to forget, such as Joe Cocker vomiting on stage and Madonna hitting herself in the face with her chunky necklaces... Graham hoarded everything, from ticket stubs and backstage passes to psychedelic Jefferson Airplane posters and surplus Duran Duran T-shirts. When Graham died in a helicopter crash in 1991, he had packed an air-conditioned cellar with 30m artefacts. Three years ago his corporate heirs sold it for £2.9m to... Bill Sagan, a health company executive turned rock entrepreneur... a Led Zeppelin fan from Minnesota, who joked that he had only snapped it up for the garish Zeppelin tour ties. He beat Paul Allen, the Microsoft billionaire, to the deal... enough boxes to fill 25 40ft-long lorries when he moved the archive to a more secure warehouse... estimates his trove could be worth more than £50m...

What's In a Name?timesonline.co.uk/ ... 14:49:07NEWLYWEDS in America are “meshing” their names in an attempt to banish the sexism that comes when a woman takes her husband’s surname... Gary Ruderman, 43, a playwright and architect, got married last year to Jodi Wilgoren, a writer for The New York Times. The couple now go by the name of Rudoren... [As Don Tyler, husband of Mary Jo Clark II, known also by the surname Tyler-Clark for over 35 years (which a relative once criticized as sounding "like a law firm"), with daughter Mary Jo ("Majic") Clark III, and sons Michael Tyler and Christopher Tyler, I salute even these goofy efforts to progress beyond the cultural heritage of paternalistic nomencleture. Cller? Tyark? It wouldn't've worked for us....]

Theory of Justicecnn.com/ ... 13:12:19The New York state Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics has ruled that it is permissible for judges to pack a pistol beneath their robes while on the bench...

Theory of Educationsfgate.com/ ... 13:11:55The federal Education Department reported Friday that, in reading and math, children attending public schools generally do as well as or better than comparable children in private schools. The exception was in eighth-grade reading, where the private-school children did better... conservative Christian schools lagged significantly behind public schools when it came to eighth-grade math...

Transportbiz.yahoo.com/ ... 13:08:36Roads and bridges built by U.S. taxpayers are starting to be sold off, and so far foreign-owned companies are doing the buying. On a single day in June, an Australian-Spanish partnership paid $3.8 billion to lease the Indiana Toll Road. An Australian company bought a 99-year lease on Virginia's Pocahontas Parkway, and Texas officials decided to let a Spanish-American partnership build and run a toll road from Austin to Seguin for 50 years... tolls from the U.S. side of the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor, Canada, go to a subsidiary of an Australian company -- which also owns a bridge in Alabama...

Theory of Sex Educationc-n.com/ ... 13:07:37A 32-year-old Hillsborough High School history teacher... coached boys' and girls' track... was arrested at his home Friday and charged with sexually assaulting one of his students during most of this past school year... engaged in various sex acts with the student when she was 17.... inside the high school, in Canata's classroom and other locations... victim is now 18.... According to the arrest affidavit, the victim came to authorities Thursday.... [teacher] acknowledged a sexual relationship but told police the relationship began after the victim turned 18....

World Without Bordersthereporter.com/ ... 13:11:15exchange student from Ghana reportedly had been robbed by his host mother... a host mother was charged with forgery and petit larceny after endorsing and cashing allowance checks meant for the 18-year-old foreign exchange student she was hosting from Uzbekistan... "Sadly, these aren't isolated incidents..." students from abroad staying with host families frequently are treated as second-class citizens. Unfamiliar with their surroundings and frequently shy, they make easy targets for predators... azcentral.com/ ... 13:05:25Mexico is warning National Guard troops to toe the line, literally, as they begin surveying the U.S.-Mexican border in an attempt to create more precise maps. A Foreign Ministry official said Friday that Mexico is uncomfortable with the Pentagon's plans to use a mapmaking unit from the Alabama National Guard to chart the border, noting that there is a binational committee that has sole authority over the border and its markers... svherald.com/ ... 13:05:02A new Bureau of Land Management report paints a bleak picture of the impact of illegal immigration and drug smuggling on public lands in Arizona, with estimates that as much as 25 million pounds of trash were left in the state’s borderlands during the 2000-2005 fiscal years...

Your Government at Playworldnetdaily.com/ ... 13:02:34A newly published paper by a researcher for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis warns that a ballooning budget deficit and pension and welfare timebomb is growing into a $65.9 trillion fiscal gap that will force the United States into bankruptcy... "The U.S. government is, indeed, bankrupt... insofar as it will be unable to pay its creditors, who, in this context, are current and future generations to whom it has explicitly or implicitly promised future net payments of various kinds..."

Digital Culturetoday.reuters.com/ ... 19:54:48YouTube, the leader in Internet video search, said on Sunday viewers have are now watching more than 100 million videos per day on its site, marking the surge in demand for its "snack-sized" video fare... home.sc.rr.com/ ... 12:25:38MacBook Pro... Quite the mess, with thermal paste even on the mainboard!.. news.softpedia.com/ ... 12:23:33A small, but still significant number of people have been reporting an unnaturally fast discoloration of their new Apple portables, especially in the areas where the hands come into contact with the device. While initially passed off as improper handling by their owners, it turns out that there is indeed something strange about the plastics used in some models of the white MacBooks, that causes the discoloration, sometimes after not even two weeks of use... blogs.guardian.co.uk/ ... 12:23:25An enterprising fellow figured out that it would be possible to actually fry an egg on the bottom of his black MacBook... blogs.guardian.co.uk/ ... 12:14:21Windows Genuine Advantage: it only gets more confusing... WGA seems increasingly like a subversive tool to expose just how confusing the Windows licensing scheme can be...

People Dienewsday.com/ ... 20:02:30LYON, France (AP) -- Christophe Merieux, the vice president of French pharmaceutical group bioMerieux who was kidnapped as a child, has died. He was 39... The Merieux family, one of Lyon's most prestigious, has lived through several dramas, with Christophe being kidnapped in 1975 and held for a ransom of 20 million francs. Charles Merieux paid the kidnappers and Christophe was freed. Rodolphe, Christophe's younger brother, was killed in the July 17, 1996, explosion over the Atlantic Ocean of TWA 800 flight en route from New York to Paris when a fuel tank caught fire... apnews.myway.com/ ... 12:04:48NEW YORK - The doctor suspected of blowing up his town house rather than allowing his ex-wife to benefit from its sale has died, nearly a week after suffering critical injuries in the blast...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spinnytimes.com/ ... 12:10:51Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, returning to her red-state ties, chastised Democrats Saturday for taking on issues that arouse conservatives and turn out Republican voters rather than finding consensus on mainstream subjects. Without mentioning specific subjects like gay marriage, Mrs. Clinton said: “We do things that are controversial. We do things that try to inflame their base.... We are wasting time....” [the more things stay the same....] dw-world.de/ ... 12:09:09European newspapers have almost unanimously condemned Israel's retaliatory offensive against Lebanon as "out of proportion..." [Hmm.. If Israel had just run into Gaza and Lebanon, killed a bunch of soldiers, kidnapped others, and then rained rockets down on both countries, that would have been "in proportion"??] blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/ ... 12:04:05Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says America is in World War III and President Bush should say so... [Yet another public figure gets what the BlogHeaper has been saying for years...!] nypost.com/ ... 12:03:13Israeli airstrikes targeting Hezbollah strongholds pounded central Beirut yesterday as terrorist rockets continued to be fired back across the border - and Iranian involvement was exposed in the attack on an Israeli warship... Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [said]... "the Zionist regime behaves like Hitler..." [Riiight... I remember poor old Hitler getting his noble soldiers attacked and kidnapped, being shelled by all his neighbors, having to defend poor beleagured Germany against those external aggressors who called for Germany's elimination... oh, wait a minute...]

SAT 2006-JUL-15

Under Tyrannyhosted.ap.org/ ... 22:54:12Time, Tibetan exiles fear, is running out...

Nature can be Deadlyhosted.ap.org/ ... 11:21:16A landslide triggered by monsoon rains swept through a village in northwest Nepal before dawn Saturday, killing at least 17 people as they slept.... Another 13 people were missing and feared dead after the wall of mud and rock buried seven houses...

Mass Murdering Monsterstoday.reuters.com/ ... 11:19:33Gunmen kidnapped about 30 Iraqi sports officials, including the head of the national Olympic committee, as they met in Baghdad on Saturday...

Scary Timesreuters.myway.com/ ... 08:51:59The New York Times on Friday received a letter containing a suspicious white powder and a copy of a recent editorial in which the paper defended its coverage of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism programs. Tests found the powder to be harmless... probably corn starch... but not before the incident helped push U.S. stocks lower and raised fears of a possible recurrence of anthrax-tainted letters sent to newsrooms and other offices in late 2001...

Nature is Dangeroussbsun.com/ ... 08:37:21The two fires, caused by separate lightning strikes last weekend, became one in the rough terrain of the Mission Creek drainage area... As of about 8 p.m., the Sawtooth portion of the fire had burned 59,000 acres and was about 35 percent contained. The Millard portion of the fire had consumed about 10,000 acres, and was about 5 percent contained. The merger of the fires around 3 p.m. caused no changes in the weather, as some feared Thursday...

Violenceguardian.co.uk/ ... 21:21:37Although Hizbullah has used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to overfly Israel at least twice before, last night's remote-controlled attack on an Israeli missile ship was the first time it has deployed explosive drones in its battle against the Israeli military... voanews.com/ ... 21:20:54Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora made an impassioned plea for help in a televised address to the nation and the world. He said, "We call for an immediate ceasefire, backed by the United Nations." He declared Lebanon a disaster zone and pleaded with the country's friends in the international community for help. The Lebanese prime minister acknowledged that his government has been too weak to fully control the entire country, especially the Shi'ite-dominated south... ynetnews.com/ ... 21:16:09About 700 Katyusha rockets fired at Israel, 500 citizens injured, four killed since fighting in northern border began... breitbart.com/ ... 21:14:50Israel intensified its air assault on Lebanon on Saturday, striking Hezbollah strongholds, bombing central Beirut for the first time, and pounding seaports and a key bridge as it tightened a noose around this reeling nation. Trying to defuse the crisis, Lebanon's prime minister indicated he might send his army to take control of southern Lebanon from Hezbollah _ a move that might risk civil war. In a more ominous sign that the struggle could spread, Israel accused Iran of helping fire a missile that damaged an Israeli warship, a charge denied by Iran. Hezbollah guerrillas, meanwhile, fired waves of rockets ever deeper into Israel... death toll in the four-day-old conflict rose above 100 in Lebanon, and stood at 15 in Israel... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 16:51:04Defence Secretary Des Browne has given orders for HMS Illustrious and HMS Bulwark to "make ready" for operations off Lebanon.... No order for evacuating UK citizens has yet been given, but ministers and defence staff are considering a plan to evacuate those trapped in Lebanon... ynetnews.com/ ... 16:50:36The IDF has stationed three Patriot anti-ballistic missile batteries in Haifa Saturday, aimed at intercepting missiles launched at the area. Two of the batteries were deployed Saturday morning, and the third one was placed in the area in the afternoon. Patriot missiles were stationed across the country for the last time in 2003 during the Iraq War... ynetnews.com/ ... 16:46:31The body of one of four sailors who went missing during Friday’s Hizbullah attack on an Israeli Navy ship operating off the Beirut shore was recovered by IDF forces, who are continuing the search for the other three... english.people.com.cn/ ... 16:16:48Palestinian militants blew part of the border wall on the Gaza-Egypt border on Friday... many Palestinians, who were stranded at the Egyptian side, crossed into the Gaza Strip through the hole... jpost.com/ ... 16:15:58Eight people were suffering from shock and several buildings were damaged after five Kassam rockets landed in the Sderot area on Friday morning. Two rockets landed in a residential area, a third landed in an industrial zone... IDF forces, which were operating in the central and northern Gaza Strip, left the areas on Friday morning after neutralizing over 30 Palestinian terrorists in the last three days... seattlepi.nwsource.com/ ... 16:15:24TIBERIAS, Israel -- Here where Jesus calmed a stormy sea, a rain of rockets from Lebanon shattered the quiet Jewish Sabbath on Saturday, sending holiday-makers fleeing for their lives and residents crowding into bomb shelters... the first Arab attack on Tiberias, a usually safe 20 miles from Lebanon, since the 1973 Mideast war. "We never thought, until the day that I die, that this would happen in Tiberias," said ex-mayor Asher Yaish... hosted.ap.org/ ... 11:22:05Heroic fighters to some, dangerous militia to others. The bloody fight that Hezbollah picked with Israel has deepened a longtime divide in Lebanon. While Hezbollah supporters celebrated in the streets, other Lebanese were furious at being dragged into a costly confrontation with the Jewish state... Emergency sessions this week were torn by bickering over how to respond to Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers that provoked Israel's assault... "The government is helpless," said former President Amin Gemayel, a longtime critic of Hezbollah. "Hezbollah took a unilateral action, but its repercussions will affect the entire country..." today.reuters.com/ ... 11:20:00Israel fired rockets near the Lebanese-Syrian border on Saturday, heightening fears that it could hit Syria... At least 29 civilians were killed in other air strikes as Israel battered Lebanon for a fourth straight day. Dozens of Hizbollah rockets fell in Israel, wounding several people... today.reuters.com/ ... 11:19:12Angry Shi'ite Muslims set an American food outlet... Pizza Hut... a bank and scores of vehicles on fire in Karachi on Saturday after funeral prayers were held for a leading cleric killed in a suicide bombing a day earlier... "Fourteen people were trapped inside (Pizza Hut). But we rescued them. Luckily, nobody was injured..." washingtonpost.com/ ... 08:48:23Hasan Nasrallah... a man of God, gun and government, a cross between Ayatollah Khomeini and Che Guevera, an Islamic populist as well as a charismatic guerrilla tactician... the most controversial leader in the Arab world, at the center of the most vicious new confrontation between Israel and its neighbors in a quarter-century... "He is the shrewdest leader in the Arab world," Israeli Ambassador to the United States Daniel Ayalon told me on Friday, "and the most dangerous..." today.reuters.co.uk/ ... 08:39:03KABUL - U.S., British and Canadian troops launched a pre-dawn offensive against Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan on Saturday, taking control of a southern district from militants and their drug-gang allies. The attack was part of a big offensive foreign troops have launched in response to the most intense phase of violence by a resurgent Taliban across the south... orlandosentinel.com/ ... 08:38:19Amid rising international criticism of Israel's fierce counterattacks against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, it is important to keep in mind how the fighting started. Both terrorist groups conducted raids in Israel to kidnap soldiers, and both were raining rockets on Israeli civilians. No responsible government could be expected to remain passive in the face of such outrageous provocations from terrorists lurking on its borders. President George W. Bush was right Friday to turn down a request from the government in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based, to pressure Israel into a cease fire. Israel understandably is insisting first that the two prisoners seized by Hezbollah be released, that the group halt its rocket fire, and that the Lebanese government carry out a United Nations resolution to disarm the group. The Lebanese government, which includes Hezbollah members, sowed the seeds for the current crisis by failing to crack down on the group. So did the Palestinian government, now controlled by Hamas, by refusing international pleas to renounce violence and accept Israel's right to exist... abcnews.go.com/ ... 08:36:33Israeli warplanes pounded Hezbollah's south Beirut stronghold and roads around the country, killing at least 15 Lebanese as they fled the onslaught. Hezbollah expanded its rocket fire, hitting another of Israel's main cities, and Israel warned that the guerrillas could strike Tel Aviv. A senior Israeli intelligence official said Iranian troops helped Hezbollah fire a missile that damaged an Israeli warship off the Lebanese coast Friday night. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information, said about 100 Iranian soldiers are in Lebanon and helped fire the Iranian-made, radar-guided C-102 at the ship that killed one and left three missing... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:35:23Nick Thorpe BBC News, Lebanese border... More than 60 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel launched its offensive four days ago... Militants in Lebanon continue to fire rockets across the border into Israel... Even to my untrained eye, a Katyusha rocket is a world apart from a Qassam... The Qassams regularly fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza at Israeli towns have inflicted some casualties, but are crude, blunt instruments - rusty iron pipes welded together with engines and fins in secret workshops in Gaza. What was left of this Katyusha betrayed a sleek, professional weapon - slimmer, steelier, more lethal than its homemade brother. The Qassams mostly needle the Israelis, like pinpricks in the ankles of a giant, taunting him to stamp back with his big, US-issue army boots. The Katyushas are like poisoned arrows. They drive him mad... Different Arab peoples in this region are vying with one another to become Israel's greatest enemy... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:21:45British forces in Afghanistan have defended their decision to call in US planes to drop 500lb bombs on Taleban fighters in a town in Helmand province. Witnesses say there were many civilian deaths and injuries but UK forces said there was no evidence of any... UK commanders said they had been under constant attack for the past two weeks and the Taleban fighters were close to overrunning the base when the US air strike was called in...

Sex can be Dangerouswzzm13.com/ ... 16:45:08[18yo] Wayland teenager accused of taking a picture of his underage friends having sex and putting the photo on-line has plead guilty... kxan.com/ ... 08:16:31A [29yo] former Tennessee teacher is back in prison after violating her probation by contacting the teen-age student she'd been jailed for having sex with.... served 198 days in jail for her actions. A condition of her release was to have no contact with the student... also barred from using the Internet.... continued talking with the now 14-year-old boy and sending him text messages and sexually explicit photos and video of herself.... judge revoked... probation and ordered her to serve the rest of a seven-year prison sentence.... [she] apologized as she was led away in handcuffs....

Supernatural Violencewashingtontimes.com/ ... 08:13:37Opponents of same-sex "marriage" won two key legal victories yesterday, with the reinstatement of Nebraska's voter-approved constitutional amendment banning such unions and a ruling that killed efforts to keep similar restrictions off the ballot in Tennessee in November...

Animal Companionshosted.ap.org/ ... 22:55:11

Hundreds of laboratory mice and rats died when a power outage at Ohio State University produced sent room temperatures soaring as high as 105 degrees... In one building, 598 mice, 90 rats and one rabbit died... A second generator was offline because of a renovation project... About 21 projects involving research into epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, cancer and cardiovascular disease were affected... Some researchers had been working on their projects for years...

Only Naturalusatoday.com/ ... 16:41:49The first half of the year was the warmest on record for the USA...

Science Marches Onnnnnnsciencedaily.com/ ... 11:18:27An experimental atomic clock based on a single mercury atom is now at least five times more precise than the national standard clock based on a “fountain” of cesium atoms...

Healing Ourselveshosted.ap.org/ ... 11:22:44A tiny telescope designed to be implanted in the eyes of some elderly patients should not receive Food and Drug Administration approval, the panel recommended on a 10-3 vote. The FDA's ophthalmic devices panel recommended against the pea-sized bionic device for safety reasons... could enable some patients to do away with the special glasses and handheld telescopes they now use to compensate for the loss in central vision caused by age-related macular degeneration... forbes.com/ ... 08:42:14A protein previously linked to the development of type 2 diabetes and atherosclerosis may also be associated with asthma... Called aP2, the protein has no useful function in the body. It only appears during the course of disease, and seems to cause adverse effects on blood sugar levels and fatty acid metabolism. It previously has been found in fat cells and macrophages (a type of immune cell) in people with obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Now, for the first time, a team of Australian and American researchers has found aP2 in the lining of the human lung, where it appears to regulate the inflammation associated with asthma... suggests there's a link between the metabolic and immune systems...

World Zookeepingsciencedaily.com/ ... 08:26:47the common practice of killing wild animals to control disease outbreaks can actually make matters worse in some cases... a detailed mathematical model that demonstrates how the combination of hunting and factors such as birth season and mating season influence disease outbreaks... suggest that wildlife managers and health officials use caution when considering hunting or culling as a means to manage diseases as diverse as rabies, tuberculosis and even avian influenza.... The reasoning behind killing wild animals to control disease outbreaks is simple: fewer animals should result in reduced transmission of disease... didn’t take into account an ecological principle known as compensation. When a portion of the animal population is reduced, those that survive are left with more resources such as food and shelter. As a result of the newly plentiful resources, the death rate decreases and the birth rate increases, compensating – and sometimes overcompensating – for the loss. Killing wild animals can also increase the proportion of the population that’s susceptible to disease by removing those individuals who have contracted a virus but have developed lifelong immunity as a result of their infection... compensation and lifelong immunity conferred by a virus interact so that the timing of mating and birth seasons determine whether hunting increases or decreases disease prevalence... an outbreak is barely affected when hunting occurs between mating and birth season while an outbreak lessens when hunting occurs during the birth season. An outbreak increases dramatically when hunting occurs between the birth season and the next mating season... The effect can be so dramatic that in some cases hunting can increase not only the proportion of infections and deaths, but also the absolute numbers...

Extraterrestrialtoday.reuters.com/ ... 08:22:05Astronauts aboard shuttle Discovery prepared to leave the International Space Station on Friday while ground control teams revamped landing plans to handle a small leak in one of the ship's power generators. Managers believe the leak is inconsequential but because there is not enough proof, they are proceeding cautiously...

History - still with ushosted.ap.org/ ... 08:18:47CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) -- Scientists say they may have found an important clue in the mystery of why the Confederate submarine Hunley sank 140 years ago after making history by sinking an enemy warship in battle... the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship... the Union blockade ship Housatonic... evidence the forward hatch may have been opened intentionally on the night the sub sank... "Even on a calm day, three-foot swells can occur out of nowhere on the waters off Charleston. Every time the hatch was opened, the crew ran the deadly risk of getting swamped." The Hunley sank three times, killing a total of 21 crew members. But the reason it sank on the night of its successful mission remains a mystery...

Blah Blah Blahhosted.ap.org/ ... 22:53:54The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Saturday to impose limited sanctions on North Korea for its recent missile tests, and demanded that the reclusive communist nation suspend its ballistic missile program. North Korea immediately rejected the resolution and vowed to launch more missiles...

Policing Ourselveskotv.com/ ... 17:02:05The three-member police force in the northeast Oklahoma town of Shamrock is disbanding after officials say its officers lacked state certification. [Anarchy is sure to follow....]

Your Government at Playwashingtontimes.com/ ... 16:46:13Less than two months after voting overwhelmingly to build 370 miles of new fencing along the border with Mexico, the Senate yesterday voted against providing funds to build it...

Theory of Sex Educationtelegraph.co.uk/ ... 16:44:30A head teacher has banned pupils from using an internet chatroom and urged parents to monitor their children more closely after pupils posted lewd pictures of themselves on a website...

Big Whoops Cascadetiscali.co.uk/ ... 16:43:11A [36yo] Berlin postal worker who was caught with more than several thousand undelivered letters in his basement has admitted he was overwhelmed by the job but insisted he planned to deliver them soon..... some of the letters found had been postmarked as early as April. The postal worker faces disciplinary action...

Star Trek -- still with usabc.net.au/ ... 16:41:31The Star Trek-themed maize maze in York... Star Trek fan Tom Pearcy has planted 1.5 million maize plants to cut the maze, which features images of Mr Spock, the USS Enterprise and what looks like Captain Jean-Luc Picard and a Borg cube...

It's All in Your Mindsciencedaily.com/ ... 11:17:32Consumer preferences for a brand can be increased over the competition by techniques used to manipulate memory... when participants had to solve an anagram before seeing a target brand, they were more likely to claim to have seen the brand before. Participants also had higher preference ratings for the brand relative to competing brands in the same product category... second experiment showed that when participants had to solve an anagram before seeing a target brand, they were more likely to claim to have known the brand in high school, and to prefer it over competing brands...

Long Underwear Heroes are Deaddailymail.co.uk/ ... 09:07:04Superman star has tantrum after make-up made him look 'wimpy'...

Disinformation Propaganda & Spinasia.news.yahoo.com/ ... 21:16:46President Vladimir Putin said Saturday that he thinks Israel is pursuing wider goals in its military campaign against Lebanon than the return of its captured soldiers... [Gee, like what? Maayybee.... stopping the missles and deterring future attacks?] jpost.com/ ... 16:55:56Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Friday that Israel could not harm Iran... "Despite the barbaric and criminal nature of the occupiers of Jerusalem, the regime and its Western supporters do not even have the power to give Iran a nasty look..." He held Israel responsible for unjust conditions in neighboring countries, saying Israel's "impudence and shamelessness" help deny the region of advanced technology... [oh, man, this is the worst yet... yeah, those diabolical Israelis, preventing their neighbors from acquiring technology and the other benefits of .. oh, say, having a peaceful productive instead of a gangster terrorist society...] dailystar.com.lb/ ... 16:50:10US allies Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan indirectly accused Hizbullah on Friday of harming Arab interests but also condemned the Israeli assault on Lebanon... While not naming Hizbullah, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdul-lah II warned of the risk of "the region being dragged into 'adventurism' that does not serve Arab interests..."
"It is necessary to make a distinction between legitimate resistance [to occupation] and irresponsible adventurism adopted by certain elements within the state," an official Saudi source told the Saud Press Agency late Thursday. "These elements ... risk putting in danger all the Arab countries and their achievements before these countries have said a word..."
[Actually, it's just amazing that there's any criticism of anyone but Israel, so I suppose that should be counted for something....] jpost.com/ ... 16:48:41"The government is helpless," said former President Amin Gemayel, a longtime critic of Hizbullah. "Hizbullah took a unilateral action, but its repercussions will affect the entire country."
"Hizbullah is playing a dangerous game that exceeds the border of Lebanon," Druse leader Walid Jumblatt said in comments published Friday. But Jumblatt, a leading anti-Syrian figure, also denounced the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, calling them completely unjustified... [unclear on the can't have it both ways concept] Lebanon's government has refused international pressure to disarm Hizbullah and move the army into the south near Israel's border, where the guerrillas have near autonomy. The government has insisted Hizbullah is a legitimate resistance group against Israel... news.yahoo.com/ ... 08:52:47Democrats pulled an Internet ad that showed flag-draped coffins Friday after Republicans and at least two Democrats demanded it be taken down on grounds the image was insensitive and not fit for a political commercial...

Digital Culturewashingtonpost.com/ ... 16:18:36The FBI last month warned MySpace users of a phony bulletin post urging people to click on a link to "check out old school pictures." A virus seeking financial information recently invaded Orkut, Google's social networking site. Early last month, unsolicited instant messages attempted to lure MySpace users into divulging account information, and about a dozen other sites that spoof the MySpace log-in page have been discovered. Because people reveal so many intimate details on the sites, scammers "can look at those profiles and use that information to better hone their attack..." itwire.com.au/ ... 08:39:57With news that a Chinese software firm has reverse engineered the Skype VoIP protocol and encryption, the pundits are predicting doom and gloom for eBay which forked out $US2.6B in cash and stock for Skype in September 2005, but that seems unlikely...

Theory of Justicehosted.ap.org/ ... 08:20:46...raised his hands and exclaimed, "Thank you, Jesus!" in court last month when he was acquitted by a jury of abusing his son. But his joy was short-lived when Circuit Judge Patrick Border held him in contempt of court for the "outburst" and threw him in jail... Deputy Public Defender Susan Arnett: "I don't think there's anything about saying 'Thank you, Jesus' that rises to the level of contemptuous behavior in this case..." later dropped the charge because... [defendant's] trial lawyer... did not have time to tell Stowers the judge had ordered both sides not to show emotion when the verdict was announced...

FRI 2006-JUL-14

Threatstoday.reuters.com/ ... 18:38:04A well-known Toronto Muslim says he acted as a government spy to infiltrate a gang accused of plotting terror attacks in Canada, describing the group as "fruitcakes" who could have caused great damage...

Supernatural Violenceiht.com/ ... 09:13:39BATMAN, Turkey... For 17-year- old Derya, a waif-like woman, the order to kill herself came from an uncle and was delivered in a text message to her cellphone. "You have blackened our name," it read. "Kill yourself and clean our shame or we will kill you first..."

Sex can be Dangerousjdnews.com/ ... 09:11:46[26yo] ...police officer... and... youth pastor pleaded guilty Tuesday in Onslow County Superior Court to four counts of indecent liberties with a child... eceived a suspended sentence of 64 to 80 months. He must serve six months in the N.C. Department of Corrections and then will be on supervised probation for 36 months. He must do 72 hours of community service, pay court costs and fines and register as a sex offender... was originally charged with four counts [each] of statutory rape... statutory sexual offense... indecent liberties with a child and... crime against nature [???].... girl is now 17... was 15 at the time.... When the girl went to the prom with a boy she liked in April 2005, Boothe called her several times on her cell phone. He screamed at her “in a jealous rage....” [victim's mother:] “We stood up for him when he was fired.... We admired him, and we trusted our daughter with him.… He knew she was a virgin. He knew she’d been taught to save herself for marriage.”

Animals can be Dangeroushosted.ap.org/ ... 08:04:10

Reports of mountain lions roaming neighborhoods and devouring family pets have cropped up from suburban Denver to Fort Collins, one of the most heavily populated stretches in the Rockies. In April, a lion attacked and broke the jaw of a 7-year-old boy on a trail in Boulder before it was chased off. The following month, witnesses said a mountain lion walked into a Boulder home, ate a pet cat and the cat's food before being captured. And a man shot and killed a 130-pound mountain lion that attacked his dog in May outside the family's home near Buckhorn Canyon in the Arapahoe National Forest. The number of human-lion encounters nationwide has increased from about two each year in the 1970s to between six and 10...

Opposing Tyrannytoday.reuters.com/ ... 08:01:42BEIJING (Reuters) - Hundreds of Chinese attacked police and smashed up squad cars after a migrant was apparently beaten up for refusing to pay for a resident's permit.... The riot in Guiyang, capital of the southwestern province of Guizhou, was the latest eruption of unrest the Communist Party fears could spin out of control and threaten its monopoly on power. At least one police officer and a taxi driver were wounded and more than 10 police cars were overturned...

Civilization vs Gangsterismhosted.ap.org/ ... 07:50:50SAO PAULO, Brazil -- Gangs torched buses and attacked banks and police stations across South America's biggest city Thursday, deepening crime fears as a wave of rampant violence entered its third day. At least six people have been killed in nearly 100 attacks on police and civilian targets since Tuesday night in what authorities believe is retaliation for a possible transfer of gang leaders to Brazil's first federal penitentiary...

Violencenews.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:32:22Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has promised "open war" against Israel, in an address broadcast shortly after his Beirut offices were bombed by Israel... It was not clear when his remarks were recorded... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 18:31:56Gunmen have killed at least 12 Iraqi soldiers in an attack on a checkpoint in the north... on a highway south of Kirkuk... hosted.ap.org/ ... 18:23:21Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces killed nine militants after suspected Taliban fighters attacked two army checkpoints... Six militants were wounded in three hours of clashes but escaped, and one other militant was arrested... none of the Afghan and coalition forces were hurt... suntimes.com/ ... 18:12:09French President Jacques Chirac castigated the Israeli offensive into Lebanon on Friday, calling it "totally disproportionate," while he and other European leaders expressed fears of a widening Middle East conflict that could get out of control... [time to revive the classic Simpsons line, "cheese eating surrender weasels!"] suntimes.com/ ... 18:10:49President Bush rejected Lebanon's calls for a cease-fire in escalating Mideast violence on Friday, saying only that Israel should try to limit civilian casualties as it steps up attacks on its neighbor... suntimes.com/ ... 18:10:36Hezbollah rammed an Israeli warship with an unmanned aircraft rigged with explosives Friday, setting it ablaze... indicated Hezbollah has added a new weapon to the arsenal of rockets and mortars... Israeli army said the ship suffered severe damage and was on fire hours later as it headed home. There were no details on the ship's crew, though Al-Jazeera TV said the Israeli military was searching for four missing sailors... The toll in three days of clashes rose to 73 killed in Lebanon and at least 12 Israelis, as international alarm grew over the fighting and oil prices rose to above $78 a barrel... nydailynews.com/ ... 18:09:21NY Daily News editorial: Eleven months ago, Israel withdrew from every last inch of the Gaza Strip. They dismantled all military bases, turned over functioning greenhouses that could employ 4,000 people, expelled all 7,500 Israeli settlers at a huge financial and political cost and declared the lines that divide Israel from Gaza to be an international frontier, making Gaza the first independent Palestinian territory ever. Everyone's expectation was that the Palestinians, so treated, would show the world what they could achieve with freedom. Alas, they have shown all too well. Not one day of peace has followed... The Palestinians have given the lie to virtually all the scenarios so hopefully envisaged by their friends. They did not construct schools, roads and hospitals; they made no effort to turn Gaza into a thriving state. They elected a radical Islamic Hamas government. They permitted the smuggling of huge quantities of weapons and terrorists while creating new bases for terror. Palestinian society has descended ever more into advanced anarchy... washingtonpost.com/ ... 17:55:35Sri Lankan government troops clashed with Tamil Tiger rebels Friday in the worst fighting since a cease-fire halted the civil war in 2002, leaving as many as 16 dead, officials said. The military said 13 soldiers were missing... jacksonville.com/ ... 09:12:26A Jacksonville woman told police she thinks heated jealousy prompted an attack in which her lips were sealed with super glue and her eyes taped shut while five women ransacked her Woodland Acres house... haaretz.com/ ... 09:00:28Israel Air Force planes struck a Hezbollah stronghold, a bridge in the southern suburb of Beirut, and the fuel stores of the Jiyyeh power plant south of the city early Friday... The Lebanese Army responded with anti-aircraft fire... reported that two people were killed and 17 were wounded as a result of the strike... Israeli attack came after a rocket slammed into the northern port city of Haifa on Thursday evening. Earlier, two Israelis were killed and another 120 were wounded when scores of Katyusha rockets fired by Hezbollah guerillas rained down across northern Israel... heraldsun.news.com.au/ ... 08:28:19ISRAELI forces bombarded fuel tanks at Beirut international airport after nightfall... disrupting air traffic at a peak time for the country's tourist season... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 08:02:28At least 19 suspected Taleban militants have been killed in clashes in southern Afghanistan... Taleban fighters attacked the village of Nawzad, targeting a garrison of Afghan and coalition troops. Shopkeepers were surrounded and ordered to leave the centre of the village before the attack began... Seven attackers were killed and two injured in the initial fighting, with another 12 killed when coalition forces bombed a Taleban vehicle trying to leave the area... today.reuters.com/ ... 08:00:07The United States on Thursday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution put forward by Qatar on behalf of Arab states that called on Israel to immediately end its two-week military incursion in Gaza. Ten of the council's 15 member-nations voted in favor of the resolution, while the United States cast the sole "no" vote. Four countries abstained -- Britain, Denmark, Peru and Slovakia... [The United Cowards....] newsday.com/ ... 00:40:08Gunmen on Tuesday kidnapped an Iraqi diplomat who specializes in relations with Iran as he was driving near his home in Baghdad...

Nature is Dangerousnewsday.com/ ... 00:35:51

MOUNT PLEASANT, N.Y. -- A commercial building was destroyed, a hotel's roof was partially ripped off and hundreds of trees were uprooted when a tornado struck Wednesday afternoon, a Westchester County official said...

Nature can be Deadlynewsday.com/ ... 00:34:27MANSFIELD, Ohio -- A [40yo] woman drowned after jumping into fast-moving floodwaters to try to rescue her 9-year-old daughter, who slipped on a stone walkway into the water and was swept through 460 feet of drainage pipe into another creek. The girl emerged from the pipe without serious injuries and was able to get out of the water and seek help.... Firefighters found the body of her mother... about 100 feet downstream from where the girl came out of the pipe...

Theftnewsday.com/ ... 00:33:36

GALT. Mo. -- Residents in this small northwest Missouri town are grumbling about a bizarre crime spree that has some recalling a Christmas tree caper in the 1980s. Vandals swept through Monday and Tuesday, stealing U.S. flags -- even those on churches. At least 10 are missing...

Mass Murdering Monsterstoday.reuters.com/ ... 18:33:35Leftist Colombian rebels killed 10 civilians and took 170 hostage... [where is the world outrage?] sfgate.com/ ... 09:12:06Train bombers took aim at Bombay's businessmen Only men's first-class compartments hit -- women's cars spared... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 08:59:45The former California heavy metal music fan turned al-Qaida leader had his Islamic conversion testimonial featured on the official website of the University of Southern California's Muslim Student