- Signs of the Times Archive for Fri, 16 May 2008 -



Sections on today's Signs Page:

SOTT Focus
Arna's Children

SOTT Editor
Sott.net
2008-05-15 14:43:00

Arna Ashraf
©www.arna.info
Ashraf Abu-elhaje, an actor (1996) in the theatre of Jenin refugee-camp. Ashraf leads a large group of fighters in the battle of Jenin 2002. Ashraf was killed by a rocket fired from a helicopter.


Last night I sat through the screening of a documentary called "Arna's Children". Arna was a Jewish woman, who moved to Jenin refugee camp in Palestine and there created a center for children. The screening was organized by the 'Palestine Solidarity Campaign' to mark the 60th Anniversary of Al-Nakba - the Palestinians "day of Catastrophe" when the state of Israel was illegally established on their land. The film is the work of Juliano Mer-Khamis, Arna's son and an actor. Through the creative arts and games, Arna tried to help the Palestinian children of the camp express their feelings of anger, frustration and helplessness as they see their houses demolished by Israeli tanks, their people murdered by Israeli soldiers.

Juliano created a theatre group as part of Arna's center for children which helped give a voice and meaning to the lives of Palestine's children. It also allowed them to dream of a better future. But living in Jenin camp, under the occupation and brutal oppression by the IDF, we follow their lives to see that they did not become actors, painters, teachers, doctors, whatever it was they dreamed of. Many grew up to become resistance fighters, two of them killed by the Israeli army during fights, one during a "suicide attack".

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Best of the Web
All the President's Nazis (real and imagined): An Open Letter to Bush

Larisa Alexandrovna
Huffingtonpost.com
2008-05-16 10:16:00

Dear Mr. Bush,

Your speech on the Knesset floor today was not only a disgrace; it was nothing short of treachery. Worse still, your exploitation of the Holocaust in a country carved out of the wounds of that very crime, in order to strike a low blow at American citizens whose politics differs from your own is unforgivable and unpardonable. Let me remind you, Mr. Bush, of your words today:



"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said at Israel's 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem.


"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to Israel's parliament, the Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."



Well Mr. Bush, the only thing this comment lacked was a mirror and some historical facts. You want to discuss the crimes of Nazis against my family and millions of other families in Europe during World War II? Let me revive a favorite phrase of yours: Bring. It. On!

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Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation Part 2

Dave McGowan
Center for an Informed America
2008-05-13 21:58:00

"He was great, he was unreal - really, really good."

"He had this kind of music that nobody else was doing. I thought he really had something crazy, something great. He was like a living poet."

Image
©Steven Johnson


[Today's first trivia question: both of the above statements were made, on separate occasions, by a famous Laurel Canyon musician of the 1960s era. Both quotes were offered up in praise of another Laurel Canyon musician. Award yourself five points for correctly identifying the person who made the remarks, and five for identifying who the statements refer to. The answers are at the end of this post.]

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U.S. News
Texas: Prison for Man With H.I.V. Who Spit on a Police Officer

Gretel C. Kovach
The New York Times
2008-05-16 16:10:00

A homeless man who spit in the mouth and eye of a police officer and then taunted him, saying he was H.I.V. positive, was sentenced to 35 years in prison on Wednesday for harassing a public servant with a deadly weapon: his saliva.

Because of the deadly weapon finding, the man, Willie Campbell, 42, of Dallas, will not be eligible for parole until he has served half his sentence.

In May 2006, a passer-by reported an unconscious man, Mr. Campbell, sprawled outside a downtown Dallas building. Mr. Campbell tried to fight paramedics and kicked the police officer who arrested him for public intoxication, prosecutors said.

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Georgia: Gwinnett Mom Accused Of Attacking Her Child's Bully


WSBTV
2008-05-16 16:00:00

The mother of a Gwinnett elementary school student is out on bond after investigators said she physically attacked a student who was bullying her son.

Gwinnett County school police charged Hannah Sesay, 41, with battery. According to a police report obtained by Channel 2, investigators said Sesay started to grab and shake a Winn Holt Elementray School student after he kicked her son in the groin.

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New York outlaws displaying nooses as a threat


Associated Press
2008-05-16 15:56:00

The state of New York has outlawed the display of a noose as a threat, following several high-profile cases involving the symbol of racist lynchings.

Gov. David Paterson signed the law Thursday to make such displays a felony punishable by as many as four years in prison.

"It is sad that in these modern times there remains a need to address the problem of individuals who use nooses as a means of threat and intimidation," he said in a statement. "But it is a reality, and if we ignore it we would be derelict in our duty."

Nooses were found last year on a black professor's door at Columbia University, outside a post office near the site of the Sept. 11 attacks in Manhattan, and on Long Island.

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New Book Claims O.J. Simpson Confessed: Is O.J. a Psychopath?

LBG
Death By 1000 Papercuts
2008-05-11 15:35:00

O.J. Simpson, the unsolved murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman, are back in the news with a tell-all tome written by Simpson's "friend" and sports memorabilia collector, Mike Gilbert.

Gilbert claims in his book, How I Helped O.J. Simpson Get Away With Murder: The Shocking Inside Story of Violence, Loyalty, Regret and Remorse, that he heard the former NFL star, actor celebrity Simpson confess.

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Flashback: Bigamist Anthony Glenn Owens Free After Serving Two Years

Lateef Mungin
Fighting Bigamy/Atlanta Journal Constitution
2005-11-06 15:04:00

Attention Joanna, Earleen, Queenie, Valerie, Mattie, Paulette, Shirley and Gwen: Your husband is out of prison!

Bishop Anthony Owens, the traveling minister who made national headlines by marrying a Duluth woman without divorcing his other wives, got out of prison Saturday after serving two years on a bigamy conviction.

In a prison interview conducted a day before he was to be released, the repentant preacher said he truly has been rehabilitated and has big plans for a new life.

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Texas: Plane's Miracle Piggyback Landing


Sky News
2008-05-16 15:19:00

One pilot got more than he bargained for in Texas, when another plane decided to hitch a ride.

As one of the small aeroplanes came in to land, it hooked onto another trying to take off.

The aircraft got a little too close for comfort as shocked onlookers watched the landing.

It is believed the landing gear of the second plane became wedged into the wings of the plane on which it landed.

Image
©Unknown
The plane crash in Texas


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Flight attendant accused of setting fire on airplane

Dave Kolpack
Associated Press
2008-05-15 14:53:00

A 19-year-old flight attendant angry at having to work a route set a fire in an airplane bathroom, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing, authorities say.

Eder Rojas, of Woodbury, Minn., was arrested in Minneapolis on Wednesday. He is being prosecuted in Fargo, where the Compass Airlines flight with 72 passengers and four crew members landed safely on May 7, after smoke filled the back. No injuries were reported.

Officials said the plane was flying from Minneapolis to Regina, Saskatchewan.

Court documents said Rojas told authorities he was upset at the airline for making him work that route. He allegedly set the fire inside a paper towel compartment in the rear bathroom of the plane.

Compass is a subsidiary of Northwest Airlines. Northwest spokesman Rob Laughlin said Rojas has been fired.

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US soldier refuses to serve in 'illegal Iraq war'


Agence France Presse
2008-05-16 14:00:00

Matthis Chiroux is the kind of young American US military recruiters love.

"I was from a poor, white family from the south, and I did badly in school," the now 24-year-old told AFP.

"I was 'filet mignon' for recruiters. They started phoning me when I was in 10th grade," or around 16 years old, he added.

Chiroux joined the US army straight out of high school nearly six years ago, and worked his way up from private to sergeant.

He served in Afghanistan, Germany, Japan, and the Philippines and was due to be deployed next month in Iraq.

On Thursday, he refused to go, saying he considers Iraq an illegal war.

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Marine sentenced for sex abuse of Japan teen

Isabel Reynolds
News Daily
2008-05-16 12:59:00

TOKYO - A U.S. court martial sentenced a Marine to four years in prison on Friday for sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl on the southern island of Okinawa, in a case that has sparked widespread public anger.

Many on the island, home to about half the nearly 50,000 U.S. military personnel in Japan, are calling for troop numbers to be cut back, citing concerns over crime, noise and pollution.

A string of incidents this year, including the killing of a taxi driver, have forced the United States, pacifist Japan's most important security ally since World War Two, to apologize and vow to raise standards of behavior.

Tyrone Hadnott, 38, was arrested by Japanese police on suspicion of rape following the incident in February, but released after the girl withdrew her complaint, a move some in Okinawa said was to escape public attention.

Hadnott was also given a dishonorable discharge at the half-day trial, a spokesman for Okinawa Marines said.

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Southwest Airlines Passenger Cited for Talking on Cell Phone During Flight Says Father Gravely Ill


Associated Press
2008-05-13 07:16:00

The case of a Southwest Airlines passenger cited for talking on his cell phone during a flight from Austin apparently involved his critically ill father.

Dallas police yesterday met the plane at Love Field to ticket 50-year-old Joe David Jones of Austin.

Jones is accused of disorderly conduct for refusing to get off the phone during the flight.

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A sex offender will likely impact your home's value

Tracy Coenen
WalletPop
2008-05-12 04:37:00

The Real Estate Adviser on Bankrate.com has answered an important question from a reader: Does a registered sex offender living in your neighborhood affect your home's value? The unfortunate answer is "yes."

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If I Was a Terrorist (video)


YouTube
2008-05-05 03:17:00





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Go to Work, Go to Jail: Abuse of Katrina Reconstruction Workers

Ron Jacobs
CounterPunch
2008-05-15 00:31:00

Recently, more than 100 workers in Pascagoula, Mississippi walked off the job at a Mississippi shipyard last week to protest conditions similar to slavery. The workers were protesting the conditions they have been living and working in since being hired from India after Hurricane Katrina.

According to the lawsuit filed in the workers' behalf, the workers were offered jobs, green cards and permanent residency in exchange for as much as $20,000 each that they paid to recruiters working for a Northrop Grumman subsidiary in Bombay. One of the organizers of the march was quoted in a press release put out by the New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition, saying "They promised us green cards and permanent residency, and instead gave us 10-month visas and made us live like animals in company trailers, 24 to a room. We were trapped between an ocean of debtat home and constant threats of deportation from our bosses in Mississippi."

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40 Years After Paris: Can Mass Protests Still Make a Difference?

Randy Shaw
BeyondChron
2008-05-13 19:50:00

Forty years ago today, students, workers, and activists marched through the streets of Paris to challenge the nation's social, economic, and political structures. The marches were a prelude to what became a two-week general strike, the impact of which remains hotly debated to this day. The events of May 13, 1968 were not the world's first mass protests, but their role in the subsequent alteration of French society was widely hailed as proving the power of political action outside the electoral process. The United States also saw mass protests in 1968, but their failure to end the Vietnam War and the election of Richard Nixon that November left many activists frustrated. The successful WTO protests in Seattle reasserted the power of mass protest, but this appears to have dissipated as the Bush Administration invaded Iraq despite millions taking to the streets and the federal government failed to legalize undocumented immigrants despite the mass protests of the Spring of 2006. Can mass protest still make a difference in the United States, or is the electoral process -- embodied in the mass involvement of those in the Obama campaign -- now seen as the leading if not exclusive route to progressive change?

Paris May 68
©Serge Hambourg
Crowd of marching protestors with sign reading "Sorbonne Teachers against Repression," May 10, 1968


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UK & Euro-Asian News
Austria: Natascha Kampusch buys captor's home


Associated Press
2008-05-16 16:07:00

The lawyer for former Austrian kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch says the young woman now owns the house where she was held captive for more than eight years.

Lawyer Gerald Ganzger says Kampusch became the owner of the house and yard in the quiet Vienna suburb of Strasshof earlier this year. She is not thought to live there.

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Sarkozy Suffers Legislative Blow


Time/CNN
2008-05-16 15:58:00

Image
©Charles Platiau / REUTERS
Anti-GMO activists demonstrate in front of the National Assembly as a much disputed law is likely to be approved, which they say blurs the line between natural and GM foods.


The raucous standing ovation of French parliamentarians on Tuesday was a scene French President Nicolas Sarkozy could have done without; it was the opposition Socialists, not his own conservative majority, that were celebrating. The government suffered a surprise defeat over a law on genetically modified crops, but more importantly, the divisions that vote revealed within the French right threaten more trouble for the President in the future.

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Hysteria Alert! Nottingham 'student' detained under Terrorism Act

Anthea Lipsett
The Guardian
2008-05-16 15:45:00

Two men aged 22 and 30 have been arrested on the University of Nottingham's campus under the Terrorism Act, police confirmed today.

Police have been searching premises at the university and properties in Nottingham since the men, believed to be a student at Nottingham and a former student, were arrested on Wednesday morning during a low-key operation between police and the Midlands counter terrorist unit.

The arrests are understood to relate to alleged radical material.

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World doesn't end, Russian doomsday sect members to head home


RIA Novosti
2008-05-16 15:16:00

The members of a doomsday sect who quit on Friday the dugout in central Russia where they had been waiting for the end of the world for around six months are to pack their bags and leave for home with the planet still intact.

"Documents are being prepared by immigration officials to allow those [three] sect members who are from Belarus to return to their homeland," said Alexander Provotorov, the head of the Bekov District in the Penza Region.

"The rest, Russian citizens, also plan to go home. They have all agreed to leave the area voluntarily," he added, also saying that none of the sect members were from the Penza Region.

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Five Norwegian airports shut down by strike


Associated Press
2008-05-16 15:04:00

Five Norwegian airports were shut down by a strike early Friday when 220 union members walked out after all-night contract talks failed to reach a settlement with the national airport authority Avinor.

The strike stranded an estimated 17,000 passengers a day before Norway's May 17 Constitution Day, when thousands of people fly home to join parades and celebrations.

''Avinor strongly regrets the consequences a strike will have for airlines and passengers. Our community and financial considerations made it impossible to meet the demands from the employee representatives,'' said Avinor Chief Executive Sverre Quale.

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Russia to join large-scale NATO-led naval exercises


RIA Novosti
2008-05-16 15:02:00

The Russian Navy will participate for the first time in a large-scale submarine rescue exercise conducted by NATO countries and their allies, a Navy spokesman said on Friday.

The Bold Monarch 2008 exercise will be staged near the Norwegian coast from May 26 to June 7.

"The purpose of the exercise is to ensure compatibility of rescue equipment used by the Russian Navy and the navies of NATO countries, and to demonstrate ability to coordinate cooperative efforts during escape and rescue missions," Captain 1st Rank Igor Dygalo said.

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Josef Fritzl: From the cellar of our deepest fears

Patrycja Romanowska
Edmonton Sun
2008-05-11 14:44:00

When I was traveling through Austria, I was struck by the cleanliness and orderliness that characterized its countryside.

The roadside fields looked like a patchwork quilt and the houses in the towns looked like a picture in a storybook.

The streets of Vienna were so clean you could practically eat off them.

Since my Austrian travels, any mention of that country has brought to mind all that is pristine and picturesque.

Now those Austrian scenes routinely feature in my nightmares.

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French workers strike in protest of job cuts

Jean-Marie Godard
Associated Press
2008-05-16 14:47:00

Teachers, postal workers and other public servants staged a one-day strike and tens of thousands marched through French cities Thursday, a widespread protest against President Nicolas Sarkozy's planned job cuts.

Schools were shut around the country as nearly half the teachers stayed away from work, while about 15 percent of all public workers adhered to the 24-hour walkout, according to the Public Service Ministry.

At the same time, tens of thousands of protesters marched through Paris and other cities to oppose the government austerity moves.

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Cyprus bans private boats ferrying to Lebanon


Reuters
2008-05-14 14:29:00

Nicosia - Cyprus has enforced a ban on pleasure boats ferrying passengers to Lebanon, shipping officials said on Wednesday.

The move comes as local media reported that private boat owners were charging large amounts of money to ferry people out of but also into Lebanon, wracked by sectarian violence and with its international air links cut for the past week. Since last weekend 34 yachts have sailed from Lebanon to Cyprus, carrying an estimated 340 people, including the ambassador of Saudi Arabia, authorities said. Between 15 and 20 people had left Cyprus for Lebanon on private boats.

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China on alert against quake radiation leaks

Benjamin Kang Lim
Reuters
2008-05-16 13:57:00

China is on precautionary alert against possible radiation leaks from the deadliest earthquake to hit the country in three decades, according to government website seen on Friday.

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Diving Bell star joins outcry against Sarko


The First Post
2008-05-12 05:03:00

Juliette Binoche with Sarkozy
©Unknown
Juliette Binoche with Sarkozy


Last month the French actress Juliette Binoche revealed the shame she felt at having Nicolas Sarkozy as her country's head of state. Now Mathieu Almaric (pictured), star of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and the baddie in the forthcoming Bond movie Quantum of Solace, has added his own protest against the president. "It's not a joke," he told the Observer. "It's very tough, very, very tough and it's only been one year that he's in power. It's finished. I mean, the belief people had in him is just dead. I have a lot of difficulty now to find that exotic or funny or ridiculous. I'm disgusted."

Mathieu Almaric
©unknown
Mathieu Almaric


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Around the World
US paid bounty to Pakistan to arrest Canadian terror suspect


Agence France-Presse
2008-05-13 17:27:00

Ottawa - A US intelligence agency paid a 500,000-dollar bounty to Pakistan's military for the arrest of the Canadian son of a suspected Al-Qaeda financier, said court documents.

According to an October 2004 memo to the head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) ordered released by Canada's federal court, Abdullah Khadr was wanted for "supporting insurgent activity in Pakistan and Afghanistan."

Thus, Khadr "is deemed to be a national security threat and has a 500,000 US dollar outstanding bounty for his capture," said the memo published on the website of the daily Globe and Mail, which fought for its disclosure.

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Health disaster feared in Burma

Amy Kazmin
The Boston Globe/Washington Post
2008-05-12 14:59:00

Burma
©AFP/Khin Maung Win
A cyclone survivor carried away useable articles from the debris of destroyed houses in Kyauktan, Burma


An estimated 1.5 million Burmese are on the brink of a "massive public health catastrophe," the British charity Oxfam warned yesterday, as desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis poured out of the devastated Irrawaddy Delta into regional towns in search of water, food, and other help.

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Suspected drug hitmen dump head in Mexican city

Gabriela Lopez and Cyntia Barrera
News Daily
2008-05-16 14:34:00

MONTERREY - Suspected Mexican drug hitmen dumped the head of a murdered man on top of a car in the street, police said on Friday, in a rare outrage in the wealthy city of Monterrey.

The head, found on Thursday night on the roof of a car parked in a middle-class residential area, had a written message next to it signed by the Gulf cartel, the country's most violent drug organization.

The ears were chopped off, a senior state police officer told reporters on condition of anonymity.

Mexican drug gangs, engaged in a bitter fight with each other and security forces, often behead opponents to scare rival traffickers but this was the first such decapitation in Monterrey, home to large corporations and a wealthy business elite.

The message, written on cardboard or paper, suggested the victim may have been a common criminal who had passed himself off as a member of the Gulf cartel's feared Zetas hit squad.

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Indian village proud after double "honor killing"

Simon Denyer
News Daily
2008-05-16 14:02:00

BALLA - Five armed men burst into the small room and courtyard at dawn, just as 21-year-old, 22-week pregnant, Sunita was drying her face on a towel.

They punched and kicked her stomach as she called out for her sleeping boyfriend "Jassa," 22-year-old Jasbir Singh, witnesses said. When he woke, both were dragged into waiting cars, driven away and strangled.

Relatives of Jasbir Singh
©REUTERS/Vijay Mathur
Relatives of Jasbir Singh, 22, speak during their interview at Machhrauli village in the northern Indian state of Haryana May 13, 2008 after Jasbir and his partner Sunita Devi, 21, were killed by villagers in an "honour killing" in Ballah village on May 9, 2008.


Their bodies, half-stripped, were laid out on the dirt outside Sunita's father's house for all to see, a sign that the family's "honor" had been restored by her cold-blooded murder.

A week later, the village of Balla, just a couple of hours drive from India's capital New Delhi, stands united behind the act, proud, defiant almost to a man.



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South Africa: Water contamination kills 123 babies

Patrick Cull
The Herald online
2008-05-13 01:17:00

A total of 123 babies died in the Ukhahlamba region in the first three months of this year, the DA's Eastern Cape leader said at a DA Youth Conference in Uitenhage on Saturday.

Delivering the keynote address, Athol Trollip said this was not as a result of a natural disaster or catastrophe as was the case in Myanmar, but because of the absence of systems that would have led to the prevention of the deaths.

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A New Dirty War -- Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

John Ross
CounterPunch
2008-05-15 00:10:00

Even in the best of times, Mexican justice is a euphemism - and these are not the best of times. With 90% of all crimes unprosecuted or unreported, conviction rates are below 10% and too often those who are convicted are innocent victims themselves, rounded up and summarily charged so that security forces - there are 1671 police agencies in Mexico - can clear crimes that may well have been commited by the police themselves.

The two-tiered justice system is profoundly disequal in its treatment of those arrested. Odds are that the rich and powerful will never see the inside of a jail cell - if not immediately released, they will be held for questioning ("arraigo") at private hotels such as the Federal Prosecutor's Office maintains in Mexico City.

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Big Brother
Richmond, California gets video surveillance fever

Elinor Mills
CNet News
2008-05-14 15:17:00

Taking a cue from surveillance camera-laden London, this San Francisco Bay Area city is installing security camera systems for the police and at the port to reduce crime and protect against terrorism.

The systems are being built and maintained by ADT, known for its home burglar alarm systems, and use a high-speed wireless mesh network.

Clusters of video cameras transmit data to wireless radios, which then send it over a 1-gigabit back-haul feed to servers in the Port of Richmond's security office, and for the city to police headquarters and the dispatch center. Eventually, the video will be transmitted directly into Richmond police patrol cars.

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Durban: Principal ordered to remove surveillance cameras


SABC News
2008-05-15 15:15:00

Image
Durban primary school principal has been ordered to remove surveillance cameras


A Durban school principal has been given an ultimatum to remove surveillance cameras from his school, or face the wrath of the department of education. Teachers at Roseland Primary School in Newlands have refused to teach until the cameras are gone and no schooling has taken place for two months.

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Korea: Playgrounds, Elevators Required to Install Surveillance Cameras


Arirang News
2008-05-16 15:13:00

Surveillance cameras will be mandatory on all apartment playgrounds and elevators in Korea as early as this July.

The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs has revised a housing construction law to make it compulsory for all underground apartment parking lots, elevators, playgrounds and building entrances to be covered by surveillance cameras.



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Connecticut Man Says Cops Broke Into His Home and Ripped Out His Catheter


Associated Press
2008-05-09 08:02:00

A man alleges that police entered his home illegally and ripped a catheter from his body during a child pornography investigation that led to the arrest of two neighbors.

Andrew Glover, 60, of New Britain filed a notice with the city Thursday that he intends to pursue a federal civil rights lawsuit. He accused the officers of inflicting severe injuries as he was recovering from intestinal surgery in February.

Glover's lawyer, Paul Spinella, said police entered Glover's apartment Jan. 30 and Feb. 28. Glover wasn't involved in child pornography, has not been charged and has no criminal record, Spinella said.

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Mozilla Stealth Data Project: Considering Opt-In Browsing Tracking

Michael Arrington
TechCrunch
2008-05-13 07:34:00

One of the most frustrating tasks about my job is finding reliable traffic and other usage data about websites.

But today, Mozilla CEO John Lilly and VP Engineering Mike Schroepfer said they may fix that problem in the future, via the massive installed base of Firefox users.

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Stockholm syndrome sets in: Is electronic tracking for students a good idea?

Christopher Dawson
ZDNet
2008-05-13 07:26:00

A pilot program in Texas is testing GPS tracking devices to combat truancy in chronic offenders who might otherwise be sent to detention facilities. According to an article in the New York Times (free registration required), not only does the program seem to be working, but also doesn't seem to bother students as much as one might expect.


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Big Brother Close Up: An FBI Terrorism Conference in the Heartland

Stan Cox
CounterPunch
2008-05-15 17:09:00

I'd never had to show my driver's license to speak at a conference before, but not being the type to seek out trouble -- especially at this conference -- I obediently handed the card over to the woman at the registration desk. She ran it through a scanner, looked at her screen, paused, and, for the first time, smiled. "It's real!" she announced [1]. "Now put your license in the clear pocket below your namecard and keep it visible at all times." She pointed to the big black pouch I was to hang around my neck. It read, "FBI - 3rd Annual International Symposium on Agroterrorism." [2]

For the third year in a row, the attendees at this Kansas City event were all dressed up with no place to go to encounter a real bioterror attack. One PowerPoint slide after another, in endless progression, focused on the threats that everyday world commerce, with an assist from Mother Nature, poses to foods, crops, and animals. There were plenty of dark predictions, and plenty of ideas about how to set things right. All it will take, it seems, is more government intrusion in your life and more corporate control over your food.

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Wiki, the Chaos Controlled

Israel Shamir
Israelshamir.net
2008-05-15 18:06:00

In the art of surveillance, there is a cunning ploy, familiar to the readers of Le Carre: the target is followed by a clumsy gumshoe; he discovers he is being tailed, easily shakes the tail off and goes on, feeling secure and unobserved. Unbeknownst to him, there are other detectives who stick to him like glue and follow him to his perdition. Professionally it is called a "double tail".

Apparently, some of us were duped by such a ruse in the peculiar affair of a Zionist plot to infiltrate Wikipedia. This powerful online encyclopaedia is ostensibly free and open: everyone can be an editor, add or edit any entry. Editors remain anonymous; their true identity is hidden behind a nickname. This rule has a serious drawback: using this anonymity, a dedicated group may infiltrate the system by stealth, distort reality and create a false picture of the world in the eyes of billions. Apparently this script has been recently enacted.

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Axis of Evil
Peres' lies at int'l meet: Iranian threat clouds Mideast skies

Anshel Pfeffer
Haaretz
2008-05-14 16:24:00

President Shimon Peres told the Facing Tomorrow conference, which opened last night with a festive session at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem, that Israel's enemies belonged to yesterday, and that "the skies of the Middle East are clouded over with Iranian ambition."

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Flashback: Dissociation and war crimes. Or, who WAS that grinning, thumbs-up idiot in the Abu Ghraib pictures?

Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris
The New Yorker
2008-03-19 12:31:00

The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib

Sabrina Harman
©The New Yorker
"I guess we weren't really thinking, Hey, this guy was just murdered," Harman said of the corpse photographs. "I know it looks bad."


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Flashback: "Bush - Nazi Dealings Continued Until 1951" - Federal Documents

John Buchanan and Stacey Michael
New Hampshire Gazette
2003-11-07 08:11:00

After the seizures in late 1942 of five U.S. enterprises he managed on behalf of Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, failed to divest himself of more than a dozen "enemy national" relationships that continued until as late as 1951, newly-discovered U.S. government documents reveal.

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Flashback: The Whitehouse Coup

Mike Thomson
BBC Radio 4
2007-07-23 13:16:00

Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen

Listen to this program in full

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush's Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy

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Flashback: Bush told reporter Jews are 'all going to hell'

Larisa Alexandrovna
The Raw Story
2006-09-02 11:32:00

Bush
©Unknown


An upcoming book about presidential advisor Karl Rove reports allegations of anti-semitism by President George W. Bush, Raw Story has learned.

In The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power, Austin-based journalist James Moore and Wayne Slater, senior political reporter for the Dallas Morning News, will allege that Bush once made anti-semitic comments to a reporter.

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Flashback: How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

Ben Aris and Duncan Campbell
The Guardian (UK)
2004-09-25 00:00:00

Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

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Flashback: Bush's Grandfather Directed Bank Tied to Man Who Funded Hitler

Jonathan D. Salant
Associated Press
2003-10-17 11:16:00

President George W. Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government documents show.

©New Hampshire Gazette
Prescott Bush



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Like an Energizer Bunny: Osama Bin Laden's birthday message of hate for Israel

James Hider
The Times
2008-05-16 10:51:00

Osama bin Laden added his voice to the birthday messages accompanying Israel's 60th anniversary, vowing to fight on in the name of the Palestinian cause which he said was of primary concern to all Muslims.

As President Bush left Israel's anniversary celebrations with effusive pledges of US support for the Jewish state, the al-Qaeda leader chipped in with own analysis of the intractable conflict, saying it was one of the principle reasons he had turned to jihad as a young man.

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"We Created Terror Among the Arabs": The Deir Yassin Massacre

William James Martin
Counterpunch
2008-05-13 08:09:00

On April 9, 1948, members of the underground Jewish terrorist group, the Irgun, or IZL, led by Menachem Begin, who was to become the Israeli prime minister in 1977, entered the peaceful Arab village of Deir Yassin, massacred 250 men, women, children and the elderly, and stuffed many of the bodies down wells. There were also reports of rapes and mutilations. The Irgun was joined by the Jewish terrorist group, the Stern Gang, led by Yitzhak Shamir, who subsequently succeeded Begin as prime minister of Israel in the early '80s, and also by the Haganah, the militia under the control of David Ben Gurian. The Irgun, the Stern Gang and the Haganah later joined to form the Israeli Defense Force. Their tactics have not changed.

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We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession -- An American Jew With Conscience Speaks

Eve Spangler
CounterPunch
2008-05-15 00:46:00

This month, Israel is celebrating its 60th anniversary. American Jews will be invited to join in those celebrations. But, in refusing to recognize that its national existence rests on the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland, Israel fails to speak to Jews of conscience. Here is why I cannot join the celebration.

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Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Jeff Halper
CounterPunch
2008-05-15 00:03:00

Israeli Independence Day 2008, marking the sixtieth anniversary of the rise of the Jewish State, should be cause for sober reflection and reevaluation as well as celebration. Indeed, we Israeli Jews have much to celebrate. But something, it appears, is amiss. Israel's 60 Year gala appeared exaggerated, the joy expressed through the blaring loudspeakers somewhat artificial and forced. The celebrations were certainly more militaristic and triumphalist than usual. Neither the Palestinians nor the Occupation were allowed to penetrate the close narrative encasing Independence Day, of course, but military themes and displays, plus the presence of thousands of soldiers and police in every public place, conveyed an underlying disquiet. Something else was present, an unsettling but unspoken element. I call it the Palestinian poltergeist.

Perhaps our loud triumphalism had to do less with celebration than with the disturbing realization that the two-state solution, which even Olmert claims is Israel's only hope of remaining a Jewish state, is disappearing before our eyes. Anyone familiar with Israel's massive settlements blocs, its fragmentation of the Palestinian territories and their irreversible incorporation into Israel proper through a maze of Israeli-only highways and other "facts on the ground," anyone who has spent an hour in the West Bank, can plainly see that this is the case. The expansion of Israel's Matrix of Control throughout the Occupied Territories, coupled with American protection from any international pressures for meaningfully withdrawal, have rendered a viable Palestinian state, and thus a genuine two-state solution, unattainable.

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Middle East Madness
IOF troops shoot at Palestinian protesters at Biet Hanon


The Palestinian Information Center
2008-05-16 05:32:00

Palestinian rally
©The Palestinian Information Center


At least nine Palestinian children and a woman were wounded on Thursday after IOF troops stationed at the Beit Hanon (Erez) crossing point north of Gaza Strip opened their fire at thousands of Palestinian citizens demonstrating near the crossing to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Nakba and protest against the Israeli economic siege on the Strip.

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Hamas to Bush: Hamas will not be defeated and occupation will not last long


The Palestinian Information Center
2008-05-16 05:26:00

The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, said on Thursday that Hamas will not be defeated as all attempts to break or weaken the movement have failed.

These comments were made in a press release in response to US president George Bush's speech on Thursday at the Knesset. Hamas added that the Israeli occupation will certainly not last another 60 years as Bush predicted.

Hamas also said in the statement that Bush tried to beautify the image of the Israeli occupation by describing it as one of the best democracies in the world ignoring all the atrocities committed by the occupation against the Palestinian people.

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Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory


Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
2008-05-15 05:03:00

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)



* 13 Palestinians, including 2 civilians, were killed by IOF in the Gaza Strip.
* A Palestinian civilian was killed by the guards of "Ofra" settlement in Ramallah.
* 2 Palestinian children died from previous injuries in Khan Yunis town in the southern Gaza Strip.
* 27 Palestinians and Israeli human rights defender were wounded by IOF.
* Of the 27 injured, 20 were civilians, including 4 children, an elderly woman and 2 journalists.
* IOF conducted 20 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, and 4 into the Gaza Strip.
* IOF razed 388 donums[1] of agricultural land and destroyed 61 greenhouses in Khuza'a village in the southern Gaza Strip.
* IOF arrested 30 Palestinian civilians, including 7 children and a journalist, in the West Bank, and arrested 4 civilians in the Gaza Strip.
* IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT.
* The fuel crisis in the Gaza Strip has escalated.
* 2 Palestinian civilian were arrested by IOF at military checkpoints in the West Bank.
* IOF have continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attacks Palestinian civilians and property.
* IOF razed an area of Palestinian land in Hebron in order to establish a military post.




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Palestine: Public Statement of the National Committee to Commemorate the Nakba at 60


Ma'an News Agency
2008-05-15 03:30:00

Nakba 60
©Ma'an News Agency


There is no Alternative to the Return to Our Homes and Properties

To the People of Palestine,

Whether you live within the 'Green Line', in Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, or in exile; you shall return, there is no doubt that you shall return.

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Killing by the numbers -- Snipers In Iraq

Mark Benjamin and Christopher Weaver
Salon
2008-05-09 02:31:00

Evan Vela
©Salon / AP
U.S. Army Sgt. Evan Vela in Baghdad, Iraq, on Feb. 10, 2008.


In 2007 elite U.S. snipers executed an unarmed Iraqi prisoner in cold blood. Have the insidious tactics that led to atrocities in Vietnam reemerged in Iraq?

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Bogus Claim -- Al-Maliki Stalls U.S. Plan on Iran Arms

Gareth Porter
Inter Press Service
2008-05-14 02:15:00

Early this month, the George W. Bush administration's plan to create a new crescendo of accusations against Iran for allegedly smuggling arms to Shiite militias in Iraq encountered not just one but two setbacks.

The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refused to endorse U.S. charges of Iranian involvement in arms smuggling to the Mahdi Army, and a plan to show off a huge collection of Iranian arms captured in and around Karbala had to be called off after it was discovered that none of the arms were of Iranian origin.

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Sickening: Israel blames Hamas for school teacher decapitated by IDF

Alastair Macdonald
Reuters
2008-05-12 18:36:00

The Israeli army said on Monday it regretted the death of a Palestinian teacher killed during an Israeli raid in the Gaza Strip last week and blamed militants for operating in built-up areas.

Responding to a call by her U.N. employers for an inquiry into the death of Wafa al-Daghma on May 7, the Israeli Defence Forces said: "Following an initial inquiry into the matter, the incident took place in an area in which ongoing fighting and fire exchanges occurred between IDF forces and armed gunmen."

The statement added: "The IDF wishes to express sorrow for any injury of uninvolved individuals.

"The IDF places complete and utter responsibility on the Hamas terrorist organisation for the injury and killing of uninvolved civilians."

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Grand Theft Economics
Bush Food Aid Package Promotes Genetically-Modified Crops


RedOrbit / Chicago Tribune
2008-05-13 15:49:00

The Bush administration has slipped a controversial ingredient into the $770 million aid package it recently proposed to ease the world food crisis, adding language that would promote the use of genetically modified crops in food-deprived countries.

The value or detriment of genetically modified, or bio-engineered, food is an intensely disputed issue in the U.S. and in Europe, where many countries have banned foods made from genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.

Proponents say that GMO crops can result in higher yields from plants that are hardier in harsh climates.

"We certainly think that it is established fact that a number of bio-engineered crops have shown themselves to increase yields through their drought resistance and pest resistance," said Dan Price, a food aid expert on the White House's National Security Council.

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US Consumers' mood grim as early-80s in May

Burton Frierson
News Daily
2008-05-16 14:25:00

NEW YORK - Consumer confidence tumbled to its lowest in 28 years this month, a survey showed on Friday, as short-term inflation expectations reached the highest levels since the stagflationary early 1980s.

The news heightens the dilemma for the Federal Reserve, which has bet that slowing economic growth will tame inflation pressures. The report also showed that lower-income households were the focus of the downturn in sentiment.

5th Avenue
©REUTERS/Joshua Lott
Pedestrians walk past a Banana Republic store along 5th Avenue in New York City, May 11, 2008.



The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers' preliminary index of confidence fell to 59.5 in May, the lowest since June 1980. In April it was at 62.6.

"Troubling all around, lower confidence and ongoing inflation worries," said Ian Lyngen, interest rate strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital in Greenwich, Connecticut.



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US Market falls on record oil price

Cal Mankowski, Ellis Mnyandu and Kristina Cooke
News Daily
2008-05-16 14:20:00

NEW YORK - Stocks fell on Friday after the price of oil hit a record and consumer sentiment data came in surprisingly weak, reviving concerns over spending.

The unease about the state of the consumer outweighed earlier optimism following a surprise rise in U.S. housing starts and stronger-than-expected earnings from retailers Nordstrom and Abercrombie & Fitch .

U.S. consumer confidence tumbled to its lowest in 28 years this month, according to the Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, as short-term inflation expectations hit their highest since the stagflation era of the early 1980s.

Traders
©REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, April 29, 2008.


The price of oil shot to a record high near $128 a barrel after Goldman Sachs , the most active investment bank in energy markets, sharply raised its price forecast for the second half of 2008.

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Monsanto: Wanted for Murder in India

Tom Harper |
Bring It On!
2008-05-12 05:18:00

Well, technically it isn't murder. And Monsanto isn't the only culprit; they're just the biggest.

Tens of thousands of farmers in India have committed suicide during the past few years. A large part of the problem is Monsanto's increasing stranglehold on the world's seed supply. Their patented seeds cost three times as much as most other seeds.

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Africa Plays the Rice Card

G. Pascal Zachary
Foreign Policy
2008-05-16 01:17:00

For years, Western experts promised Africans that free-market ideology would save them from poverty and famine. Now, one African country is showing that sometimes, a little protectionism can work wonders.



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Nigeria: U.S. Probes Halliburton-KBR Oil Scandal

Festus Akanbi
AllAfrica.com
2008-05-11 18:01:00

United States of America has launched a comprehensive probe of the Nigerian oil industry over an alleged bribery scandal involving a former Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown and Root, (KBR) and some unnamed Nigerian officials during negotiation for its work on a key Royal Dutch Shell project in Nigeria. The probe is to cover a period of 20 years.

Halliburton's Nigerian scandal widened from accusations of bribery to accusations of embezzlement by senior executives. The company recently dismissed two of its most senior executives, Robert Stanley and William Chaudin, on suspicion of embezzling $5 million from a Nigerian energy project.

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The Living Planet
Al Gore And Climate 'Ka-Ching'


Investor's Business Daily
2008-05-08 17:55:00

Junk Science: Al Gore blames the Burma tragedy on global warming despite growing evidence to the contrary. Could the hype be related to his financial interests?

Gore's reaction to the death and destruction caused by a cyclone ravaging Burma was to utter an emphatic "I told you so" Tuesday on National Public Radio. In an interview on NPR's "Fresh Air" broadcast, the jolly green giant made the charge while talking about the paperback release of his ironically named book, "The Assault on Reason."

Ignoring the fact that the rising death toll is due in part to an incompetent, isolationist and authoritarian government that allows most of its people to live in shanty towns of tin and bamboo, Gore claimed that "we're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming."

In other words, people die in Rangoon because of an SUV in Richmond, Va.

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Global Warming or Insanity?

V. Paul Reynolds
Sun-Journal Lewiston
2008-05-11 17:43:00

Why do intelligent, well-meaning people throw themselves and their organizations money and energies behind causes without first doing their homework?

Back in February, a coalition of Fish and Game Clubs and conservation organizations from around the country petitioned our U.S. Congress to pass climate control legislation. New Hampshire, one of the many states involved, issued a press release that read in part:



Concord, NH (February 19) - More than a dozen of the leading hunting and fishing clubs and wildlife-related businesses in New Hampshire joined forces Tuesday to call on the state's elected leaders in Congress to support strong legislation to confront climate change.



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China quake boy pulled out after 80 hrs under school rubble


RIA Novosti
2008-05-16 15:52:00

A school boy was rescued after 80 hours trapped in the rubble of a collapsed school building in southwest China's Sichuan province, hit by a powerful quake Monday, local media said on Friday.

The massive earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale led to the destruction of many school buildings with over 6,000 classrooms destroyed. In one school alone 300 children were killed when a three-storey building collapsed burying over 850 pupils in Qingchuan.

The death toll from the quake could soar to over 50,000, the country's State Council said on Thursday. The official death toll stands at 20,000 with thousands still trapped beneath the debris.

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Estonian bear caught trying to enter Russia


RIA Novosti
2008-05-16 15:37:00

A brown bear was caught by an Estonian environmental inspector in the Narva River swimming toward the Russian border, the Eesti Paevaleht daily reported on Friday.

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US: Giant pythons invade southeastern Florida


Agence France-Presse
2008-05-16 15:11:00

Giant pythons capable of swallowing a dog and even an alligator are rapidly making south Florida their home, potentially threatening other southeastern states, a study said.

"Pythons are likely to colonize anywhere alligators live, including north Florida, Georgia and Louisiana," said Frank Mazzotti, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences professor, in his two-year study.

The pythons thriving in Florida are mostly Burmese pythons from Myanmar that were brought over as pets and then turned loose in the wild.

From 2002-2005, 201 of the beasts were caught by state authorities, but in the last two years the number has more than doubled to 418, Mazzotti said in his study published on the university website.

Image
©Unknown


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China buries quake dead as new aftershock hits

John Ruwitch, Emma Graham-Harrison in Yingxiu, Jason Li in Houzhuang, Lucy Hornby, Benjamin Kang Lim and Guo Shipeng in Beijing and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva
News Daily
2008-05-16 14:38:00

BEICHUAN - China struggled to bury its dead and help tens of thousands of injured and homeless on Friday when a powerful aftershock brought new havoc four days after an earthquake thought to have killed more than 50,000.

President Hu Jintao flew to the battered province of Sichuan and Premier Wen Jiabao said the quake damage could exceed the devastating 1976 tremor in the northeastern city of Tangshan that killed up to 300,000 people.

Image
©REUTERS/Stringer
An elderly woman mourns as her grandson is buried under the debris of a collapsed building behind at Yingxiu primary school at the earthquake-hit Yingxiu town of Wenchuan, the epicenter, Sichuan province, May 16, 2008.


Wen called on officials to ensure social stability as frustration and exhaustion grew among survivors, many of whom lost everything and were living in tents or in the open air.

China put the death toll at just over 22,000 on Friday but has said it expects it to exceed 50,000. About 4.8 million people have lost their homes.

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Rain deepens Myanmar misery; death toll spikes

Aung Hla Tun, Ed Cropley and Darren Schuettler in Bangkok
News Daily
2008-05-16 14:29:00

YANGON - Torrential rain lashed victims of Cyclone Nargis on Friday as Myanmar's junta admitted more than 130,000 people were dead or missing, putting the disaster on a par with a 1991 cyclone that killed 143,000 in neighboring Bangladesh.

In a shock update to a death toll that had consistently lagged behind international aid agency estimates, state television in the army-ruled former Burma said 77,738 people were dead and another 55,917 missing.

village hit by Cyclone Nargis
©REUTERS/Stringer
A boy watches as a man builds a shelter in a village hit by Cyclone Nargis, near the Myanmar capital Yangon, May 16, 2008.



The May 2 storm has left another 2.5 million people clinging to survival in the delta, where thousands of destitute victims are lining roadsides, begging for help in the absence of large-scale government or foreign relief operations.

In the storm-struck town of Kunyangon, around 100 km (60 miles) southwest of Yangon, men, women and children stood in the mud and rain, their hands clasped together in supplication to the occasional passing aid vehicle.

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New rumbling from Chilean volcano worries experts

Monica Vargas
News Daily
2008-05-16 12:46:00

SANTIAGO - Chile's Chaiten volcano groaned, rumbled and shuddered on Thursday, raising new concerns among authorities, as lightning bolts pierced the huge clouds of hot ash hovering ominously above its crater.

Chile's National Emergency Office, ONEMI, said heavy ash kept shooting from the volcano in southern Chile as it generated small tremors.

On the ground, heavy flooding hit the area around Chaiten as falling ash swelled rivers, overflowing their banks.

"There's been additional volcanic activity that we're really worried about," regional governor Sergio Galilea told reporters.

The Chaiten volcano, 760 miles south of the capital Santiago, started erupting on May 2 for the first time in thousands of years, spewing ash, gas and molten rock into the air.

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Post-quake Beichuan: a vision of hell

Clifford Coonan
The Independent
2008-05-16 05:33:00

Beichuan was a town of 160,000 nestling in one of the world's most beautiful valleys. When rescuers arrived yesterday, they found a scene of unimaginable devastation and despair

Reaching Beichuan is a long march into hell. When you finally emerge scrabbling through the dirt into the town, what lies before you is a breathtaking vision of horror. Official estimates say China's worst natural disaster in 30 years has claimed 50,000 lives so far, but looking at the devastation here, it is hard not to imagine the final toll will be much, much higher.

Beichuan county in Sichuan province used to be home to 160,000 people, and most of them lived in the now-forsaken town of the same name, nestling in one of the world's most beautiful valleys. But everyone is gone, either dead or having abandoned their flattened home.

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Recovery effort turned disaster for desert tortoises

Alice Short
Los Angeles Times
2008-05-11 05:21:00

tortoise
©Unknown


In an $8.7-million relocation effort, 760 California desert tortoises were moved out of an Army training center and onto safer ground. But even the best-laid plans sometimes go awry. What federal biologists did not foresee was an unexpected predator: hungry coyotes. Times staff writer Louis Sahagun reports:

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German Beehives Hit by Mass Die-Off

Andrew Curry
Business Week
2008-05-12 01:25:00

Beekeepers are pointing the finger at a Bayer CropScience pesticide marketed under the name Poncho, but government tests aren't conclusive

In Germany's bucolic Baden-Württemburg region, there is a curious silence this week. All up and down the Rhine river, farm fields usually buzzing with bees are quiet. Beginning late last week, helpless beekeepers could only watch as their hives were hit by an unprecedented die-off. Many say one of Germany's biggest chemical companies is to blame.

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Why China's buildings crumbled

Geoffrey York
globeandmail.com
2008-05-15 00:00:00

Survivors blame corruption, shoddy construction and cost cutting for the collapse of so many 'tofu buildings' - and even state media outlets are asking questions

The bodies of the children were lined up in a long row in the mud of a basketball court, just outside the flattened school. Every few minutes, another corpse was brought out of the rubble, carried on a wooden door, covered in rags.



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Scientists Investigate Recent Coyote Attacks on Children in California


Associated Press
2008-05-12 19:43:00

Los Angeles - The coyote was limping as it approached a girl in a sand box at a public park - but it was still dangerous. It snapped its jaws on the girl's buttocks and her nanny had to pry the toddler from the wild animal.

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Health & Wellness
Greece: Girl's twin found inside her stomach


Associated Press
2008-05-15 15:49:00

A nine-year-old girl who went to hospital suffering from stomach pains was found to be carrying her embryonic twin, doctors in central Greece said Thursday.

Doctors at Larissa General Hospital examined the girl and surgically removed a growth they later discovered was an embryo about six centimeters (more than two inches) long.

"They could see on the right side that her belly was swollen, but they couldn't suspect that this tumor would hide an embryo," hospital director Iakovos Brouskelis said.

The girl has made a full recovery, he said.

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New Study Casts Further Doubt on Risk of Death from Higher Salt Intake


Albert Einstein College of Medicine
2008-05-16 15:41:00

Contrary to long-held assumptions, high-salt diets may not increase the risk of death, according to investigators from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. They reached their conclusion after examining dietary intake among a nationally representative sample of adults in the U.S. The Einstein researchers actually observed a significantly increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease (CVD) associated with lower sodium diets. They report their findings in the advance online edition of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

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Separation from mom, dad linked with learning trouble in kids


University of Rochester Medical Center
2008-05-16 15:06:00

In the wake of divorce, illness, violence and other problems that can unsettle homes, countless young children are liable to experience temporary separations from one or both parents before packing their knapsack for kindergarten. Published in the May/June issue of Ambulatory Pediatrics, a new, community-wide study from Rochester, New York, warns that such kids are at increased risk for learning difficulties and that these separations are good predictors of which children may require special educational interventions to succeed.

Previous research on parent-child separation has concentrated on children in foster or kinship care, who are known to often experience considerable emotional, behavioral and developmental problems. Yet little is known about the impact of separation more generally, especially in less formalized situations in which one or more parents temporarily leaves.

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Pattern Recognition, Awareness, and Escape From Abuse

Stormchild
GaleWarnings
2008-05-16 09:04:00

This concept has been on my mind a lot lately.

If you Google 'pattern recognition', by itself, you'll get a lot of hits about computer programming, and one hit for a spy novel - today, anyway.

But pattern recognition is a lot older than computer programming. And it's about a lot more than being able to tell circles from squares and sawtooth waves from sine waves.

Patterns don't just occur in the carpet, or the linoleum, or in sets of numbers, or on maps. Patterns also occur in behavior, and in time.

In fact, much of the stability of our lives depends on patterns.

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Air pollution can trigger blood clots: study


Individual.com / APU Newswire
2008-05-13 07:20:00

A research in the United States has suggested that smog from traffic and factories can trigger the formation of potentially deadly blood clots.

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Time Capsule: Husbands, rate your wives in the most sexist way possible!

Nick Joyce and David B. Baker, PhD
Monitor Magazine
2008-05-05 04:41:00

A psychologist's attempt to improve marriages provides an interesting glimpse into the social norms of the 1930s - and into one of the first scientific matchmaking services.

marital chart
©Archives of the History of American Psychology



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The Facts Behind The Medical Mystery Of Morgellons


KTNV News
2008-05-15 19:44:00

It has been nearly a year since Action News first started investigating a bizarre skin condition known as Morgellons.

The mysterious infection causes open sores with string like fibers poking out of the skin.

The condition has baffled health officials, leaving patients confused and frustrated.

Action News Kimberly Tere has more on the findings of one San Francisco doctor who says the disease is very real, very serious and talks about what might be causing it.

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Science & Technology
Parrot Fossil 55 Million Years Old Discovered In Scandinavia


Science Daily
2008-05-16 17:09:00

Palaeontologists have discovered fossil remains in Scandinavia of parrots dating back 55 million years. Reported May 14 in the journal Palaeontology, the fossils indicate that parrots once flew wild over what is now Norway and Denmark.

Mopsitta tanta
©Dr David Waterhouse
Artists impression of the parrot-like bird 'Mopsitta tanta' dating back 55 million years. The fossils indicate that parrots once flew wild over what is now Norway and Denmark.



Parrots today live only in the tropics and southern hemisphere, but this new research suggests that they first evolved in the North, much earlier than had been thought.

The fossil parrot was discovered on the Isle of Mors in the northwest of Denmark - far from where you'd normally expect to find a parrot. It's a new species, officially named 'Mopsitta tanta'. However, already its nick-name is the 'Danish Blue Parrot', a term derived from a famous comedy sketch about a 'Norwegian Blue Parrot' in the 1970s BBC television programme 'Monty Python'.



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How Did That Chain Letter Get To My Inbox?


NSF
2008-05-16 16:03:00

New research shows the surprising paths taken by forwarded messages through the Internet.

Everyone who has an e-mail account has probably received a forwarded chain letter promising good luck if the message is forwarded on to others--or terrible misfortune if it isn't. The sheer volume of forwarded messages such as chain letters, online petitions, jokes and other materials leads to a simple question--how do these messages reach so many people so quickly?

New research into these forwarded missives by Jon Kleinberg of Cornell University and David Liben-Nowell of Carleton College suggests a surprising explanation.

In the past three decades, as more and more individuals have come online and begun using e-mail, the number of these mass-forwarded messages has grown substantially, reaching more and more people each year. It had been assumed that the messages traveled to e-mail users in much the same way that a disease spreads in an epidemic--people received the messages and passed them on to those they came in contact with, who, in turn, spread them to people they encountered, and so on. In recent years, some scientists, as well as marketers, have used the term, "viral," to describe this pattern.

Image
©Jason Koski/Cornell University Photography
Jon Kleinberg of Cornell University and David Liben-Nowell of Carleton College used a tree diagram to analyze the paths that forwarded e-mail petitions took through the Internet and into people's inboxes. The diagram allowed them to see how the messages got to people, and how many steps it took to get to them.


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Scientists identified earthquake faults in Sichuan, China


British Geological Survey
2008-05-16 15:53:00

Only last summer research published by earth scientists in the international journal Tectonics concluded that geological faults in the Sichuan Basin, China "are sufficiently long to sustain a strong ground-shaking earthquake, making them potentially serious sources of regional seismic hazard."

An international team of scientists including Dr. Alexander Densmore (Institute of Hazard and Risk Research, Durham University), Dr. Mike Ellis (Head of Science for Climate Change at the British Geological Survey) and colleagues from research institutes in Chengdu, carefully mapped and analysed a series of geologically young faults that cross Sichuan Province like recently healed scars.

The team mapped the densely populated Sichuan Basin and adjacent mountains using what is known as 'tectonic geomorphology'. This technique can demonstrate significant changes in ground movement over time, such as observations of offset river channels, disrupted floodplains, abnormally shaped valleys and uplifted landscape features. These subtle signals of deformation, when combined with the ability to measure the age of the disfigured landscapes (using cosmogenic nuclides that bombard the Earth from all corners of the universe), produced surprising results.

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Huge hole in the cosmos disappears as a 'statistical artefact'


New Scientist Issue 17 May 2008
2008-05-17 15:52:00

Now you see it, now you don't. A giant hole in the cosmos that shocked astrophysicists last year may not exist after all. A re-examination of the area has found that the 'void', which supposedly contained far fewer stars and galaxies than expected, could be a statistical artefact.

The apparent void was spotted by Lawrence Rudnick and colleagues at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Rudnick had become intrigued by another puzzling finding: a cold spot in the cosmic microwave background measured by the WMAP spacecraft. He used data from the Very Large Array telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory near Socorro, New Mexico, to study the area and concluded that the cold spot coincided with a void almost 1 billion light years across, the largest anyone had ever seen.

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Genealogical Conclusions

Paul Spinrad
Innovations, Berkeley College of Engineering
2008-05-05 15:36:00

Image
©Innovations
EECS and statistics professor Yun Song studies computing problems related to the human genome.


There are about six billion base pairs in the human genome, and our family tree includes about six billion living humans. For other species, these numbers are also enormous. So, although DNA sequencing begins in a laboratory, it requires research-level computer science and statistics to crunch the resulting mass of data and make sense of the results, which have applications ranging from medicine and biology to anthropology and history. As EECS and statistics professor Yun Song remarks, "Just 15 years ago, it was very difficult for population genetics researchers to run their computationally intensive analyses on desktop computers. It's thanks to relatively recent improvements in computers and algorithms that these problems have become tractable."

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Code crackers wanted!

David Harris
Symmetry Breaking
2008-05-16 15:22:00

A little over a year ago, the Fermilab Office of Public Affairs received a curious letter in code (see the image below). It has been sitting in our files all that time and we haven't had much of a chance to look into breaking the code, nor are we particularly expert at this!

If you have a cryptological bent, perhaps you'd take a crack at this code and email us anything you find at letters@symmetrymagazine.org.

Note that this scan is from a fax of the original. The holes punched in it were not in the original and a tiny sliver has been cut off the top of the page where the fax information was printed. I'm hoping that the precise positioning on the page isn't relevant!


Image
©Fermilab


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Life Falling Back to Earth

Aaron Gronstal
Astrobiology Magazine
2008-05-15 15:27:00

Asteroid and comet impacts on Earth can cause catastrophic extinction events. They can also bring life back, new research shows.

Many scientists believe that a massive rock from space came crashing down 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The resulting blast set forests ablaze. The skies of Earth were filled with ash that blocked out the sun and the planet went cold. Vegetation died in the absence of sunlight. Shortly thereafter, the dinosaurs and many other life forms on Earth went extinct. Millions of years of evolution were wiped clean in an instant.

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Interior Of Mars Is Colder Than Previously Thought, So Any Possible Liquid Water Would Be Deep Underground


Science Daily
2008-05-16 13:57:00

New observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that the crust and upper mantle of Mars are stiffer and colder than previously thought.The findings suggest any liquid water that might exist below the planet's surface and any possible organisms living in that water, would be located deeper than scientists had suspected.

Mars
©NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems
New observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that the crust and upper mantle of Mars are stiffer and colder than previously thought.


"We found that the rocky surface of Mars is not bending under the load of the north polar ice cap," said Roger Phillips of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. Phillips is the lead author of a new report appearing in the online version of Science. "This implies that the planet's interior is more rigid, and thus colder, than we thought before."



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Crystal (Eye) Ball: Visual System Equipped With 'Future Seeing Powers'


Science Daily
2008-05-16 13:15:00

Catching a football. Maneuvering through a room full of people. Jumping out of the way when a golfer yells "fore." Most would agree these seemingly simple actions require us to perceive and quickly respond to a situation. Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Mark Changizi argues they require something more - our ability to foresee the future.

Hering illusion
©Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
The Hering illusion is exemplified by the perceived curvature of the straight lines near the vanishing point in the center of the drawing. The optical illusion occurs because our brains are predicting the way the underlying scene would project in the next moment if we were moving in the direction of the vanishing point.


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Rapid, Dramatic 'Reverse Evolution' Documented In Tiny Fish Species


Science Daily
2008-05-16 12:55:00

Evolution is supposed to inch forward over eons, but sometimes, at least in the case of a little fish called the threespine stickleback, the process can go in relative warp-speed reverse, according to a study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and published online ahead of print in the May 20 issue of Current Biology.

"There are not many documented examples of reverse evolution in nature," said senior author Catherine "Katie" Peichel, Ph.D., "but perhaps that's just because people haven't really looked."

Image
©iStockphoto/Shelly Hokanson
Ironically, the effort to clean up Lake Washington may have sparked a 'reverse evolution' in the threespine stickleback fish, scientists have found.


Peichel and colleagues turned their gaze to the sticklebacks that live in Lake Washington, the largest of three major lakes in the Seattle area. Five decades ago, the lake was, quite literally, a cesspool, murky with an overgrowth of blue-green algae that thrived on the 20 million gallons of phosphorus-rich sewage pumped into its waters each day. Thanks to a $140 million cleanup effort in the mid-'60s -- at the time considered the most costly pollution-control effort in the nation -- today the lake and its waterfront are a pristine playground for boaters and billionaires.


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'Mitochondrial Eve' Research: Humanity Was Genetically Divided For 100,000 Years


Science Daily
2008-05-16 12:49:00

The human race was divided into two separate groups within Africa for as much as half of its existence, says a Tel Aviv University mathematician. Climate change, reduction in populations and harsh conditions may have caused and maintained the separation.

mitochondrion
©U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services/National Institutes of Health
Electron micrograph of a single mitochondrion showing the organized arrangement of the protein matrix and the inner mitochondrial membranes.


Dr. Saharon Rosset, from the School of Mathematical Sciences at Tel Aviv University, worked with team leader Doron Behar from the Rambam Medical Center to analyze African DNA. Their goal was to study obscure population patterns from hundreds of thousands of years ago.



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Simple Artificial Cell Created From Scratch To Study Cell Complexity


Science Daily
2008-05-16 12:40:00

A team of Penn State researchers has developed a simple artificial cell with which to investigate the organization and function of two of the most basic cell components: the cell membrane and the cytoplasm--the gelatinous fluid that surrounds the structures in living cells. The work could lead to the creation of new drugs that take advantage of properties of cell organization to prevent the development of diseases. The team's findings will be published later this month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

cell
©Christine Keating, Penn State
The model cell developed in the lab of Christine D. Keating at Penn State uses as the cytoplasm a solution of two different polymers, PEG and dextran (Panel A). The image in Panel B is the image in Panel A highlighted with fluorescent dyes. The blue region is PEG, which is concentrated in the outer polymer solution; the green area is the portion of the membrane that contains PEG groups, which interact with the contents of the cell; and the red area is the portion of the membrane with fewer PEG groups, which interact with the contents of the cell to a lesser extent. After exposure to a concentrated solution of sugar, the cell converted to a budded form (Panel C). A dextran-rich mixture filled the bud, while a PEG-rich mixture remained inside the body of the cell. Panel D shows the image in Panel C highlighted with fluorescent dyes. The blue area is the PEG-rich region. This new structure exhibits polarity both in the membrane and in the aqueous interior of the model cell.




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Online device checks carbon dioxide impact


GetBracknell
2008-05-12 04:58:00

A new online tool has been created to provide companies in Reading with a clear picture of the extent of their environmental impact.

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Astonishing! Rocket man flies into record books at 180mph

Elizabeth Stewart and agencies
The Guardian (UK)
2008-05-15 19:33:00

A Swiss rocket man has become the first person to fly with nothing but a wing and a jet engine strapped to his back, hurtling above the Alps at 300km/h.

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Europe's first crewed spaceship on the horizon

David Robson
New Scientist
2008-05-15 17:33:00

Europe's first crewed spaceship may be on the horizon. The European Space Agency may build a new spaceship - based on its recently launched cargo ship - that could transport humans to the International Space Station and possibly the Moon.

Jules Verne ATV
©ESA


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Our Haunted Planet
Oahu North Shore Hawaii Mystery Jolt


KGMB9 News
2008-05-13 01:29:00

KGMB9 has made multiple calls, but so far what caused a jolt on Oahu's North Shore Tuesday night, is a mystery.


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Don't Panic! Lighten Up!
Baby subpoenaed for unpaid chiropractor bill


Associated Press
2008-05-15 13:10:00

Harrisonburg, Virginia - A Harrisonburg court has dismissed a case against a baby boy summoned to appear in court for an unpaid bill. Richard White said he was shocked when he got a subpoena in the mail requiring his 1-year-old son, Jacy, to appear in Rockingham County General District Court next Tuesday over a $391 chiropractor bill.


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